This one is a bit shorter than my usual fics, so sorry if it seems a bit prorated.

(Also, I don't own the Avengers or any Marvel property.)

It came out of nowhere, the realization that something was missing. Tony looked around his room and on his person to pinpoint exactly what it was that felt so out of place. Yet he came up empty handed and even more confused than before. How do you find something you didn't know you had lost?

It was then that he knew, as soon as that kiss on the cheek was placed, or that loving goodbye, or the way they made love. It was gone, and he tried to ignore it, tried to ignore the constant nagging feeling in the back of his mind, because this isn't how it was supposed to go…no. We all knew that it would be Steve to go first.

So the weeks passed after his realization, he tried to find out exactly why he was feeling the way he was. They had been married for seven years and never once had the thought of divorce crossed his mind; until recently, he could have sworn that he was madly in love with Steve. He didn't tell anyone yet, he didn't think it was cause for alarm. Maybe it was that Seven Year Itch all married couples went through… maybe.

"Tony." Tony looked up from his papers and into the eyes of the man who had been plaguing his thoughts, but not in the way that he wanted. Steve seemed to have been standing there and calling Tony's name for quite some time.

"I'm sorry, did you need something?" Tony asked, placing his papers on the desk and giving his husband his undivided attention.

"You seem to be quite lost in thought, it's nothing bad is it?" Steve asked. The blonde always had had a great deal of intuition for his own good.

"No, no, of course not. Just thinking…" Tony trailed off and looked at his hands, the thought of feeling so empty scared him more than anything, he tried to pin-point the time when Steve's smile didn't make his heart skip a beat, when his voice didn't send shivers down his spine, when his touch stopped feeling warm and loving. Was he going insane?

"About what?" Steve pressed on, picking up a paper-weight and throwing it in the air as he waited for Tony's answer.

Was it the age difference? They were only six years apart, but could it be that Steve was still too young for him and he'd gotten bored… no that couldn't be it.

"Did you hear Happy and Pepper are getting a divorce?" Tony asked in order to take his mind off the subject of Steve.

"Yeah I did, so sad, I hope the kids will be alright." Steve said, oblivious to Tony's crisis. On his front, their relationship was stronger than ever.

"Has it ever crossed your mind that we…" Tony started to say but cut himself short. He couldn't even look at Steve properly.

At this the blonde placed the paper-weight down and looked directly at his disgruntled husband. "…might get a divorce?" He finished for him, his eye-brows coming together to create a confused scowl.

Tony didn't answer, but his silence was enough.

"Tony, if something happened… if-if you-

"No, it's nothing like that! You know I would never cheat on you!" Tony reassured quickly, probably a bit too quick, even though he was telling the truth. Great, now he had planted a seed of doubt in Steve's mind and God knows if the blonde would believe him or not.

"Then what is it?" Steve asked a bit rougher than he intended, he was starting to get worried for the health of their relationship, if Tony was contemplating divorce, what else had he kept hidden?

"I was just going to say… hypothetically, has it ever occurred to you that maybe we weren't the best match?" Tony asked, trying again to retain eye-contact but he was weak, he looked down to his clasped hands and nervously fingered the ring on his left instead. He could remember so clearly the vows they had made, yet right this second, they felt like empty promises—carrying as much weight as the air they were expelled into.

"Tony." Steve sighed, exasperated. He brought his hands over Tony's and forced his husband to look up. "What has gotten into you?"

"Do you still love me?" The billionaire asked, deadpan. He never meant for those words to come out, but they had and now he had a doe-eyed Steve staring back at him as if he'd spoken in tongues or grown a second head.

"Of course… why would you even ask such a thing?" Steve asked a little breathy, almost to the point where he sounded offended.

"Because… I-

The knock on the door was a blessing in disguise, he almost said something he might have regretted later.

"Come in."

"Oh Mr. Stark, I didn't know Mr. Rogers was here, if you're busy I'll come back later." The secretary said quite apologetically.

"No, it's nothing." Steve shot him a look that said otherwise. "What did you need?" Tony asked, ignoring the look.

"Just some signatures to okay the next project and…

Her words drifted off into the space around his ears but never quite making their way to them, he looked at his husband with a form of detachment he usually reserved for his experiments. It wasn't a question of looks, the man hadn't aged a day since twenty; it wasn't his personality, the man was as lovable as a puppy. So maybe it wasn't Steve's fault, but rather his. His heart imploded at the thought of losing his husband, but he couldn't find a reason for him to stay either.

"You seem to be in quite a bind." Bruce commented as Tony retold the past couple of months in a matter of hours. They were sitting by the bar in low-key section where they'd be rarely interrupted. Tony had wanted to tell someone, someone he could trust.

"Tell me about it." Tony said, taking a sip from his Rum and Coke. He hadn't had a drink in many months, Steve was against all that type of stuff, so for his sake, he sacrificed them, at least in the house; but at the moment, he needed something stronger than water. "I don't want to go home… can I crash at your place?" Tony asked.

"Dude, you know good and well that running from this is not gonna fix anything… besides, I have Clint at home." Bruce reprimanded.

"Come on, Clint loves me! Bruce, I can't… I can't face him right this second. I need some time to think properly." Tony said in his defense.

"Now see, that's the problem right there. Thinking is the one thing you in particular should not do." Bruce said pointing a finger to Tony's head. But he sighed and said "I'll be waiting in the car, don't be more than ten minutes or I'm leaving."

"I'll be right there, just let me pay for the drinks." Tony said searching for his wallet. As he laid the crisp twenty dollar bill on the counter the barkeep walked over. He had a messy black ponytail and too-blue eyes, he was handsome if not a bit cynical, and a lot taller than he looked from afar.

"I don't mean to pry, but you should try this number on the card… just in case." The tall man said, sliding a white card with nothing but some numbers and an unrecognizable name on the front of it.

Now normally Tony wasn't the one to pick up random stranger's business cards, but this wasn't 'normally' and he was willing to try anything once.

"Stark… I thought I wasn't supposed to see you until our high school reunion in twenty years." Clint said as he opened the door to his and Bruce's apartment.

"Blow me Clint."/"He's staying the night." Bruce and Tony said simultaneously, then Bruce turned around and scowled at Tony "And no, he's not blowing you."

"You know I'm just kidding." Tony said crashing on the couch and closing his eyes. When he opened them again, it was the next day and as he reached for his phone (which had been conveniently on silent) the card the strange man gave him fell out. He fingered the standard-issue business card trying to see if he recognized the name in the early morning light. No, it still didn't ring a bell.

He looked at the missed calls and messages on his phone. Ten missed calls and one text message, all from Steve. He should call… he should definitely call.

Then why didn't he?

Tony looked above his head to the sign that had the same strange name as the card. Chronos; he'd looked it up—it was the God of time, yet that didn't do anything to elucidate the meaning. He called it late last night, after crashing again on Bruce's couch. The call had gone straight to some automated voice message where it told him the address and time he should be meeting the mystery person inside the building.

Tony took a deep breath and stepped inside, he didn't like the uneasy feeling at the base of his stomach, but he ignored it and walked through the barrier anyways.

"Come in, come in. I have been expecting you." The mystery person called from way in the back of the shop. The little space was made even smaller by all the books, stacked in precarious positions, and random artifacts strewn about on the floor and in overflowing shelves. The bead curtain was an added effect to the "mystical and magical" world that he'd unexpectedly stepped foot in.

He recognized the man behind the desk as he approached him. It had been the same man behind the bar, this time his hair was let out and it flowed down his scalp and shoulders like many waves, crashing against the ocean floor, his eyes were green this time, instead of blue, and he appeared to be a lot paler than before, as if he were merely a reflection of the real thing.

"I hear you're having marriage issues." The man behind the desk said, getting to the point.

"How could you have possibly heard that?" Tony asked, taken aback by the sudden intrusion of privacy. He didn't think Bruce and he had been that loud.

"That's why you're here isn't it, that's why you took the card?" The raven-haired man asked. tilting his head to the side.

"So it was you who handed it to me?" Tony asked.

"Or another version of me." The man said. Tony had a feeling that the man enjoyed talking in riddles.

"I don't quite get your meaning." Tony confessed.

"The 'me' that you're seeing now and the one that you saw then are two very different 'me's', how can you be sure that the 'you' I'm seeing now is the same 'you' I saw then? Maybe there are different 'you's'?"

"Okay, I'm gonna go, I see that you and I are on two very different terms of 'reality.'" Tony said getting up to leave when he noticed that the entire layout of the room had changed.

"Not so fast there-

"Mr. Stark." Tony filled in from reflex rather than actually responding to the unasked question.

"Mr. Stark, I have a proposition for you, obviously you don't understand what I'm trying to say, and that's fine, very few people ever do. You, however, are in an emotional bind, you can't quite make out what's wrong. Am I getting close?" The man asked, clasping his long fingers on the table-top.

"I would say yes, but I feel like my answers have no merit in this place." Tony said, still on edge from the sudden shift in the room.

"Au contraire, young Stark, there is power in your words and even more in your actions. Tell me, how did Steve take it to being called out on his feelings for you?"

"How do you-

"How about the twenty-three, scratch that, twenty-four missed calls on your phone? Are you not happy with your current 'you' Mr. Stark?" The green-eyed man asked, already knowing the answer but not wanting to spoil the fun.

Tony frantically checked his phone and noticed that the call had just ended leaving in its wake exactly twenty-four missed calls, calls that had been on silent.

"I don't know what sort of sick game you're playing, but I'm leaving—now!" Tony said, but was pushed back down on the chair by another man who looked exactly like the man in front of him.

"People are often afraid of what they don't know. It can be quite frightening to not know the outcome of your actions… sometimes it's too late to fix mistakes we've made."

"I really don't understand what you're trying to say." Tony said exasperatedly and he normally knew everything.

"Young Stark, what if I told you I could rid you of your current problem, the whole turmoil in your heart, make it all disappear." The green-eyed man said conspiratorially.

"You don't even know what that is." Tony replied.

"You wish you'd never married Steve, he was the love of your life once, but knowing now what you know of your current state, you'd rather not have troubled with the whole mess in the first place. You want to spare him the trouble of a messy divorce. You've stopped loving him, and you want to know why… you want to know if you ever truly loved him in the first place. Am I close?"

Tony didn't reply to that smug smile, he simply leaned back in his chair in utter defeat.

"All you have to do is say you want it fixed and it'll be done. Just know that once I make the change, it's irreversible." The man said cracking his knuckles in anticipation.

"Why… why are you doing this, what's the catch?" Tony asked through clenched teeth.

"No catch, just know this, you can never return. You have the option of saying no now and leaving with no harm done to this timeline… or you can change your future, right here, right now, by saying yes. I believe every human deserves a do-over if they're not satisfied with their current outcome. Just one per customer, though, any more and I'd be tempting something bigger than you or I." The man said.

"What if I'm not happy with the change?" Tony asked, not foolish enough to believe that this would end well for him.

"Then remain in this one, you have two choices Tony, dating back to the moment Steve first proposed. Marry him or don't, it is up to you which to decide. If you no longer feel for him as you once did, this drastic measure will be nothing but an unpleasant stain in your memory and the seven years you've been married will be nothing but an unnecessarily long commercial break in the program of your life. Of course, if that is what you want." Tony looked down at his phone, it was lighting up with another call from Steve. His husband must be so worried… he was gonna take that worry away.

"Yeah, okay. Fine, I don't know what it is that you're gonna do but do it." I'm sorry Steve.

"There, it's done."

"Wait, what?"

"Enjoy you're new life."

"Wait!" Tony gasped as he woke up in his bed, sweating and a bit disoriented. So it had been a dream then. But how did he get back to his place from Bruce's? Whatever, the whole dream had him shaking and he was morbidly aware of the terrible thing he'd done in it. Of course he wouldn't sacrifice seven years of a marriage rationally. He'd have to be out of his mind to do something like that.

"Steve you wouldn't believe-

Tony stopped talking as he realized Steve's side of the bed was empty, actually, it was more like no one had occupied that side of the bed for a long time.

He felt cold immediately, a strong sense of dread overcame his entire being as he bolted out of bed and ran into the main room of his house.

"Steve!" Tony called out frantically, his voice echoed in the hollow house and at that moment, when his ears rang from how silent it was, when the realization of his actions came crashing down on his head like a gavel, it was then that he knew he had fucked everything up.

And like the icing on the proverbial cake, there lay a singular card at his feet, Tony picked it up and crushed it in his hands seconds later.

It had read:

You're Welcome.

Well? How was it? Did you like it, is it too early to tell?

Side note, some warnings before we continue; this is utterly and irrevocably a Stony. However, to further the plot, for quite some time it will be a Stucky. I am in no way/shape/form a Stucky fan, nevertheless, I will try my hardest not to ridicule the people who are by ridiculing the ship—no ship-hating from my part. The story is already complete (though it needs major revision) and I think I did the pairing (Stucky, I mean) justice. That being said, be prepared for interactions from both.

Also, not to drag this out, but like I mentioned earlier, this fic will be quite short (30K). Because of that I hope that it doesn't feel rushed. Please, don't be afraid to point out things that could be improved; I am always open to honest and useful criticism. Other than that, enjoy!

P.S. Thank you so much for reading, I appreciate it very much.