A/N: Hello and welcome, as promised, to the sequel! I don't think there's too much I can say here... I was worried the summary was too spoiler-y, but I didn't know what else to put as an adequate description. Hmm. Either way, please enjoy this first chapter and let me know what you think!

Chapter One

June 2013

It was never going to be a good day when your so-called best friend opened fire on you in the streets above New York. Tony really should have realised that it was only going to get worse.

He'd suspected for a while now that something was going to go dreadfully wrong, felt the creeping sensation of dread climbing up his neck at all hours of the day and night. The place was just so empty without Penny. She'd been away at school for a year now and he still hadn't quite got used to it. He'd certainly lost a lot of weight without her constantly checking up on when he had last eaten. He'd gotten a lot more work done, too, continuous and uncountable modifications to and variations on the Iron Man armour, so that the lab beneath his apartment was full of them. It was like being surrounded by a cold, silent army. Tony liked that. It made him feel prepared. New York had caught him by surprise; he wasn't going to let that happen again. Next time, he'd make sure that Stevie and Penny and everyone else, everyone that mattered to him personally and everyone that didn't, all of them, everyone, everyone would be safe. He wouldn't be caught off guard again.

He still had the antenna Loki had used to open the portal, which he had carefully dismantled from the roof and brought down to his lab to analyse, along with helpful notes from Selvig and less helpful ones from Thor. (At least Selvig's were scientific. Thor's sounded more like a fairy tale, technical terms mixed with magic and legend. 'And lo, when the polarity is reversed, the great gateway to another realm dost creep open assuming there is sufficient energy to overcome the barrier of Coulomb' or whatever. The worst part was, Tony got the distinct feeling this was a result of Thor trying to dumb the tech down for the poor backwards mortals to understand. It was beyond infuriating. Also, Thor's handwriting was terrible.) Either way, the analysis was progressing. Not as quickly as Tony would have liked, but between sessions working on the armour, when he couldn't stand the strange creeping sensation of having the antenna behind him, he would turn and examine the equipment in a frenzy. He felt he almost understood it now, almost.

There was nothing in the notes, though, about the weird vibe that stuff gave off. For want of a more scientific word, it gave off an aura of fear and something that made it hard to breathe. Tony had learnt to tolerate it, as long as he worked fast enough to distract himself, but he couldn't work out what caused it. Even so, he was close to understanding the rest now, and then, once he knew how it worked, he'd be able to stop it being used ever again. No more uninvited guests from other worlds, not from portals above his tower, anyway.

He was painfully aware that it was almost Penny's birthday again and he still hadn't done anything towards making the telescope or observatory he'd promised her last year. But she was a good kid, she would understand. Anyway, she was probably way too busy having fun at the Xavier Institute to even spare a thought for home. She wasn't coming back that summer beyond the odd visit, staying at school with her friends so that Tony and Stevie could go on a honeymoon- a honeymoon Stevie didn't know about, incidentally. She didn't know about the big party planned for when they got back, either. There were times when Tony lost confidence in the wisdom of these ideas, but no, she would love it, he was sure.

The way he saw it, they'd had three options for their wedding. Number one, which would have been his choice, would have been to make it the wedding of the decade. After all, this was a superhero wedding; she was an icon for all ages and he was something of a celebrity himself. Besides, Stevie hadn't got a proper wedding last time. He didn't know the details- he refused to talk about it, not seeing what good it would do- but if it had been kept such a closely guarded secret there was no way she got the big white fairy tale. He'd wanted to find the biggest Church (he had assumed she'd want it to be in a Church) and fill it with hundreds of guests, a few selected members of the press, the other Avengers, with flowers and music and get a dress made for her, one that was perfect for her, make sure that this time, she got the wedding she deserved.

She had rejected that outright, of course, which had caused a little tension, but finally he accepted that showy wasn't really her style- at least not away from the battlefield. So, he had offered option two- No press in the ceremony, a small guest list of just personal friends and family, and the dress; with some sort of publicity photo for the morning papers, maybe an interview the week before. She'd rejected that too.

Tony had been frustrated, then. He explained that it wasn't an option to keep it secret, that they were both in the public eye, and it would come out somehow- better that they controlled the how. Besides which, he didn't want it to be secret. He wanted to tell everyone. He didn't tell her how much it hurt him that she apparently didn't feel the same.

As it turned out, she had already accepted that what he was saying about the press made sense. No, her issue was with the wedding. For all Tony's determination that she would have a real wedding this time, for all his intent to spoil her with all the trimmings, she just hadn't wanted it. She had been the one to offer up option 3- a private ceremony, with only close family and friends, and then a photograph and press release after the event; not before. And that was all. The whole thing was laughable as 'family' boiled down to 'Penny' and 'friends' to Rhodes and Pepper. Tony had incredulously pointed out that three guests did not make a wedding, to which Stevie had answered they would have enough witnesses. When she had seen his face, she had pointed out they should also invite Penny's Aunt May. She seemed to think this addition was enough.

And so, that's what they were doing. She wouldn't even let him pay for a dress to be made for her. He wasn't even sure she was going to wear a dress. She just kept saying that she didn't want any 'fuss'. What Tony didn't understand was why. Sometimes he wondered if she really wanted to get married at all.

As she wouldn't let him make any plans for the wedding, Tony had turned to what he did best outside of engineering- started planning a party to end all parties. Not right after the wedding; he had also booked them three weeks in various luxury hotels across Europe as a honeymoon. He'd neglected to mention it to Stevie; it was his wedding gift to her, and he'd spent a long time on deciding what to do. He had debated over taking her to France and Germany and places that would remind her of the war, but eventually decided she would probably enjoy it. She was a bit of a nut for history of all kinds, the things before she was born and the stuff she had slept through, and he had ruefully accepted that Cathedrals and ruins were probably more her thing than beaches and nightclubs. He had even bought her some new paints and a watercolour pad and a set of artists' tools for the trip. They would fly off the morning after the wedding, when across the newspapers stands of America the news of the wedding would be breaking. Then, three weeks later, they'd come home to the surprise party that all the best people would be invited to and finally celebrate properly. It was going to be perfect. He would make sure of it.

The train of thought reminded him that he needed to try and persuade his fellow Avengers to the party. Everyone- including him- seemed to be behaving as if New York had been a one-off gig, but he knew Fury wasn't the kind to let that kind of team up slip away. Widow and Hawkeye wouldn't have come to the wedding, he knew, but they might be persuaded to come to the party. Clint wouldn't be a problem as long as there was beer, Natasha might be a harder nut to crack- and harder to reach in the first place, as she had refused to leave a number. Bruce was the other way around; he would have been more likely to come to the wedding than the party, but Tony was sure he'd show his face if only to be polite. Thor, well, Tony had no idea how he was going to send an invitation to another dimension (and honestly didn't really want to think about it), but Thor seemed a party kind of guy. Still, Stevie would want them all there, so he would make sure they were there. They'd all be together with everyone else and party like there was no tomorrow. Maybe Penny would invite her friends from school. She'd never had friends over before, ever, so as long as they all kept their powers on the down low, everything would be awesome.

None of this was any help in his present situation, which was that Rhodes, in the War Machine suit, had come out of nowhere and was proceeding to shower Tony's brand-new prototype armour with bullets; bullets the armour was reflecting rather well, thank you very much.

"What the hell, man?" Tony demanded, opening up his speakers to the outside world. It seemed the most pertinent question. "Stop it!"

"Then answer my damn calls! Answer anyone's calls! What the hell are you doing?!"

"Uh, right now I'm running a diagnostic to make sure that someone's trigger happy fingers haven't-"

"Tony. Where have you been?"

"Road testing the new Iron Man armour! I'm sorry, mom, I didn't know I needed to check with you first."

Rhodes sighed, and went to fly away. "Just go home, Tony. Asshole."

There was so much disgust in his voice that Tony, for once had no response. Instead he found himself- after a few more laps of his patrol route in the sake of defiance- heading home and still trying to puzzle out what he had done to make Rhodes so angry.

"Jarvis, did we delete Rhodey's birthday or a dinner date or something?"

"I have no idea, sir." Jarvis still sounded aggrieved. He hadn't approved of Tony's latest version of diary management, when he had ordered a complete wipe of his entire schedule for the month in order to focus on the antenna and the suits, but Tony had insisted. He hadn't wanted any distractions. He wanted to make sure everything was ready, that when he did get married (and it was still weird that he was getting married, he tried not to think about it) he would be able to keep everyone safe. "His birthday is on your calendar in September. As for the rest, I have no idea what was there before. You were the one who ordered me to completely wipe everything, delete it all, no restores, etc."

"I know, I know, don't nag."

"Sir, I'm worried about your health." Jarvis tried again. "I really think you should talk to a professional."

"I'm fine, J. I don't know what you expect me to pay two hundred dollars an hour to talk about."

"If you won't see a therapist, then at least talk to Captain Rogers-"

"Uh, didn't you see us yesterday?"

"I wouldn't call that talking, sir."

Tony had to smile at that. No, he wouldn't exactly call it 'talking' either. She seemed to be in cahoots with Jarvis in deciding something was wrong with him, constantly fussing about what he had or hadn't eaten, with the end result that she had shown up the day before with a Chinese takeaway and forced him to eat it. 'Forced' here meaning that she had literally come and physically removed him from the lab when she decided he was taking too long to come up. It was kind of embarrassing to be carried unceremoniously over your girlfriend's shoulder, she, of course, having no more trouble lifting you than she would a child or, indeed, a truck. It was also kind of embarrassing (and unexpected) to admit to himself how attractive he found it. It made it difficult to concentrate on the food in front of him, even though she'd taken the time to make the trip to order from his favourite place. Stevie was still going strong on the no-sex-before-marriage thing, and he was happier than words could express that his enforced almost-year of celibacy by proxy was almost over. He still didn't really think it was fair that she would have been mad if he'd gone off and slept with someone else when she wouldn't sleep with him herself, especially as she kept saying that she wanted to. Well, she obviously didn't want to as much as he did, as much as she wanted to keep to some old convention, or they would have done it. As time had gone on the whole thing had begun to feel tantamount to blackmail. Still, he wasn't foolish enough to say so- not again. He developed coping mechanisms over time, various things to distract him from her and the idea of what those strong arms could do to him. So, he had been picking at his Chinese and pointedly thinking about the next suit he wanted to make, grunting and nodding his way along whatever she was saying about their wedding plans (the idea that there was enough in them to talk about was laughable), when he suddenly felt her lean over to take his hand, that had been nervously drumming the table next to his idle fork.

"Tony," she said, very quietly. "I want you to know it isn't too late to back out."

"Back out?" he repeated dumbly, before realising she meant the wedding. It felt like everything inside him rushed to his throat at once, his thoughts in tatters. The idea of her leaving- of not being here all the time- the idea of her being here all the time was sometimes all that kept him- he couldn't- he had known. He had known she didn't really want to get married. He had realised, then, that he was stammering and spluttering verbally as well as mentally. "What? No, I, what? I don't… do you?"

"It's okay, it's okay." She said, looking a little alarmed, squeezing his hand tightly. She couldn't quite look at him. "Tony, look, I love you. I was surprised when you proposed out of nowhere and I, I think maybe you were too. So… it's okay. It's okay if you're getting cold feet. I don't want you to be unhappy, and if it's the wedding making you so ill then-"

"No!" he protested, on his feet suddenly. In his panic he'd slammed his hand down right in the middle of his chow mein, and he could feel the splatters up his arm and over his shirt. Stevie could have laughed, but he was glad she didn't. Instead, she looked alarmed, and sorry for him, and he had felt such a fool he'd stomped off to wash his hands without saying another word.

She had come to find him, though, wrapping her arms round his waist and burying her face in his shoulder. He loved it when she did that, and not even in a sexual way. It always felt like things were going to be okay, like they would be able to face whatever was coming, when she did that.

"Tell me what's wrong," she'd said quietly, a solid and comfortable presence at his back. "Let me help."

And suddenly, he had wanted to. He'd wanted to tell her every last thing preying on his mind, all the worries for the future that disturbed his peace of mind, the sense of dread he couldn't seem to shake, no matter how illogical. How often he couldn't breathe. But he didn't know how to say any of that, he didn't seem to have the words.

"I can't sleep." He'd blurted instead, eventually. "I just can't sleep. After you go home, I go down to the lab, and I work. All night. I can't sleep."

"Okay," she'd said, and he'd felt her press a kiss to the back of his shoulder. "Tony… do you, do you want me to stay tonight?"

"Yeah." He'd said, hating himself for taking her pity, but wanting it all the same. "Yeah, that would be good. You can… I think there's still sheets in Penny's room, they should be clean, she's never here anymore."

"I meant with you."

This was the sort of conversation you had to have face to face. He turned in her arms. "You don't have to do that."

"I want to."

He wanted to, too. Wanting to was an understatement. He was desperate to. But he couldn't let her, not unless she was certain. "Stevie… are you sure? You wanted to wait, for some reason."

"I know." She said, and for a second he thought he saw uncertainty in her eyes, but it disappeared as she reached to run her fingers over his cheek. "But… you've waited this long for me. I want to do something for you." Apparently certain now, she kissed him, fumbling with the buttons on her blouse.

"But… Stevie, you're making it kind of hard to say no…" He mumbled against her lips. If she really had changed her mind about waiting, it wouldn't be wrong to go along with it, right? He still didn't get why it had been so important to begin with.

"I'll stay." She repeated, and she did, and it was everything he had hoped it would be. He'd fallen asleep with her hand sleepily tracing round the edge of the arc reactor, feeling more secure than he had for some time. She was safe, and here, and she loved him enough to compromise her principals for him. For a while he forgot all about the lab, about Loki's tech, about the suits. It was just him and Stevie, and once they were married, they would be able to do this forever. Life would be good. Marriage would be good. He'd fallen asleep feeling everything was right in the world.

He'd woken up the next morning- this morning- to the sound of an alarm, the first time in months. Groggy, disorientated, he'd switched it off, looking next to him for Stevie, wondering stupidly if it had been a particularly vivid dream. But no, there had been a note for him left on the next pillow.

Get up! No snoozing! It advised. See you later. I love you. –S , followed by a frankly excessive and, he suspected, somewhat ironic string of kisses. He'd smiled and done as he was told; after all, who was he to disobey the whims of his lady? He had showered, dressed, and gone down to the lab for an early start. He'd been starting to feel the creeping of guilt about not doing any work the previous night, and was soon engrossed in the latest prototype. This one, he thought, would adapt itself nicely to Stevie's fighting style if she needed armour for a tough fight. That was why he'd instructed Jarvis to block all his calls, it wasn't uncommon for him to do so when he needed to concentrate. There was no need for Rhodes to get so pissed, or to open fire on the new suit just as Tony was taking it out for a trial.

Rhodes had told him to go home, quite firmly, but so far Tony wasn't seeing the need. There wasn't anyone waiting for him, not even a call. Nothing was amiss. Tony had no idea what he'd done to be put under house arrest this time, but he wasn't going to waste the time he had hanging around waiting for it to become clear. There had been some performance defects in the suit where it wasn't fluid enough for mid-air physical attacks. He wanted to recalibrate the limbs- and of course, now, he had to check for superficial damage from Rhodes' bullets. It should only take an hour, tops.

"Sir, Captain Rogers is here." Jarvis said at some point.

"Okay, I'll be right up." Tony said, taking up a screwdriver. There had been more damage than he'd hoped.

"Sir, don't forget the Captain is still waiting." Jarvis said a while later.

"In a minute, don't nag." Tony answered. Stevie would come down if it was anything urgent, she always did. Otherwise, she would just amuse herself until he was done with work. This was important.

As it turned out, it took a little more than an hour. He wasn't sure how much more, time seemed to disappear when he was working. Several more increasingly exasperated reminders from Jarvis that Stevie was upstairs anyway, but she didn't come down. Eventually Jarvis informed him that she had just left.

"Oh, okay." Tony said, distracted by the new body plate he was shaping. "That's alright. Remind me to call her tonight."

"I think that would be wise. She waited for over two and a half hours."

"Really?" Tony was surprised. He hadn't realised. He was probably in the dog house now. "Okay, better make that a reminder to call her before about seven tonight, J."

"It is already seven-ten, sir." Jarvis did not sound impressed. "And Miss Penelope has just arrived home."

"Penny?" That really did surprise him. She was supposed to be at school. "Where is she?"

"The kitchen, sir."

Tony set his work aside for the moment and headed upstairs, hoping nothing was wrong. He thought she liked Xavier's. She always seemed happy there, and from what she'd told him, actually had friends. He didn't think she'd even care if she was reverse-grounded now. He didn't want her to go back to the old place, not when she was doing so well.

"Penny?" She looked well, he thought. Older, taller. She was just beginning to lose the angles of a gawky pubescent and soften into the curves of a woman, although she had some way to go. She was wearing a pretty summer dress, like she was going to a garden party. She looked great. Judging by the worried look she was giving him, however, she wasn't thinking the same about him. He went and hugged her, hoping to hide his tiredness, the weight people kept saying he'd lost. She hugged back, cautiously, reluctantly, and broke away quickly without a word. "What are you doing here?" He asked.

"I told the school I wouldn't be back for a few days." She said. "Family emergency. Dad… what were you thinking? Uncle Rhodes said you were just flying around in the suit! What's wrong? What did Stevie say?"

"About the suit? She hasn't seen it yet. I want to get it right before I show her."

"You know what about! Are you staying together?"

"As far as I know." He suddenly wondered if Stevie had come over for some other reason than just to see him, to check on him. What if the sex had been bad? What if she wanted to split up? He felt his head start to pound. "Why? What has she been saying?"

"What do you think she's been saying?!" Penny demanded. "Dad, how could you?! How could you do this to her?! I thought you loved her! I knew you were dumb, dad, but I never thought-"

"She wanted to do it, it was her idea!"

"…what?" Penny looked confused, and then horrified, truly horrified. She covered her mouth and everything. "Oh, Dad, no. No, not even you- tell me you know what I'm talking about."

"The sex before marriage thing?"

Penny sat down heavily, still looking at him with a kind of horror he could now only describe as awestruck. "Oh, Dad… Dad, you-she was here. She came here. Didn't you at least talk to her?!"

"I… figured she'd come down if it was important. Like normal." He said, sitting down next to her. "Pen-pen, come on, what is it? Is this why Rhodey was so mad? What's going on?"

"Dad…" She whispered. "You were supposed to get married this morning. The wedding was today. We thought something awful had happened to you. Dad, you missed the wedding."

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

The rest of that night became a kaleidoscope of shattered memories, out of focus and out of order. Refusing to believe Penelope must have been first, demanding an explanation. He'd probably started drinking then. When was it that he had held his hands up in front of him, fascinated to see they were trembling? No, that must have been much later, when he was so drunk he couldn't see straight. He remembered shouting at Jarvis, threatening to shut him down, even though he knew Jarvis wasn't to blame, or Pepper or Rhodes or Stevie or Penny, or any of the people he claimed should have reminded him. He had been the one to insist Jarvis delete his month's schedule beyond recovery, it wasn't Jarvis' fault he had no record of the wedding.

He remembered calling Rhodes, wanting to explain he hadn't skipped out on the wedding to test the suit, not deliberately, but by then he had been slurring and his tongue was twisting like a serpent and he wasn't sure he had been able to get the words out. He remembered wondering if it really had been an accident, if there wasn't some sneaky part of his subconscious, buried down deep, that had been so scared of forgetting that it had made him forget. He wanted to lobotomise himself, like he had Jarvis, like the stupid, stupid moron he was.

He remembered the taste of whiskey and bourbon and something putrid and sour in his mouth. Had he been sick at that point? He remembered Penny's wide, frightened eyes as she tried to take the alcohol away. He'd gone as if to strike her when she tried to insist, stopped short, and then cried, cried the pathetic, ashamed and shaming tears of a drunk. She had hugged him and the undeserved sympathy had made him feel sick. Maybe that was when he had been sick.

He remembered yelling at her, really yelling at her, telling her to fuck off and go back to freak school. He remembered the click of her bedroom door and the clunk of her locking it and the three events must have coincided, but his twisted memory was sure she'd locked the door long before she went in.

He must have called Stevie before any of it, before he was truly drunk. He'd left her two, three, four voicemails before she'd picked up and then he still remembered perfectly her icy tone of voice. She'd been worried. She'd thought he was delayed because he was in trouble, but no. She wouldn't come back over so they could talk. She thought he hadn't turned up because he'd gotten all he wanted when they had sex.

He wasn't sure when he'd gone down to the lab, or what he had been doing to make Penelope follow him there. He could remember the noise as the pieces of Stevie's suit had hit the floor as he threw them aside, making room at his main work station for the antenna. It had the power to open up other dimensions; he remembered being certain, in the way only drunken desperation can be, that it would also open a way to the past. He wasn't going to put up with this, live with this. He would do it again, go back and get it right. He remembered pulling his arm free of Penelope's grip.

At some point, he'd broken a glass tumbler that had been the last of a set his parents had been given as a wedding present. The rest had been broken over the years in similar drunken rages of his father. Maybe they weren't so different. Maybe that, at least, would make Stevie happy.

The antenna had just needed energy to work. He didn't have a tesseract, but the arc reactor would work. It had to. It was the most powerful generator on earth. It didn't matter what Thor thought, this mortal wasn't stupid. He would go back, put this right, and no-one need ever know.

Penny tried to stop him, but he wired it to the reactor in his chest, activated the antenna, and then there was swirling darkness, and he passed out.

The darkness must have been the last thing. Logically, he knew that, but still, his memory would always insist that the last sound he heard in that place, at that time, was the cold impersonal click on the phone line as Stevie hung up on him.