A/N: The second part. This time with a little Tony/Pepper fluff (I adore them) and a lot more talk about time travel. I tried to make it interesting beneath that much theory and sincerely hope that you won't get too bored/confused reading it... and thanks to all the reviewers. I hope you'll like this chapter as much as you liked the first.

Disclaimer: I still don't own Marvel

Backwards

The (now to him) telltale crack of the timeline opening was followed by the same way too bright light and when he opened his eyes seconds later Tony was standing in his lab, Natasha and Clint both staring at him like they didn't believe what they saw – he could actually understand them, after just having appeared from pretty much out of nowhere.

"Tony, is that you?" Clint had his dagger drawn, subconsciously standing between him and Natasha.

He grinned, "It's standing in my lab, it looks like me, it talks like me and it has an arc reactor in its chest… so I'd say that it's a pretty save guess to say I am me. Jarvis, tell the others that I'm back and well."

There were a lot of things he wanted to do now. He wanted to hug Clint and Natasha, but they wouldn't have understood it. He wanted to make sure what the power level of the reactor in his chest was, but that just would have ticked off the others. He wanted to sleep, but he couldn't have even if he'd tried. He wanted to double-check the calculations he'd made to get here, but this was obviously his timeline so it was unnecessary. And of course he wanted to…

"Jarvis, call Pepper. On the big screen, let it ring until she answers." he strode over to the biggest monitor in the room, the others already forgotten.

"Done, sir." the voice of his AI was always the same, no matter the years passed, "And Doctor Banner is worried about your well-being, he asks if he should come down."

A smile grazed his lips (good old Bruce, always concerned), "No, tell him that I'll be up in the living room in a few minutes."

"Tony, what just happened?" there was that hint of steal in the Black Widow's voice Tony normally cringed under, "You vanished. And now you are back ten hours later and acting as if nothing happened at all. This-"

"Later." he waved her off and God he probably shouldn't have done it because the woman looked positively livid now. Provoking a master assassin was never that good an idea.

"Tony, what do you think you are doing?" his head snapped around so he could stare at Pepper in all her glory, her lips puckered, cheeks flushed from anger and eyes blazing, "I'm in the middle of a meeting. You can't just expect me to be there whenever you want something. The world doesn't revolve around you. Some of us are actually trying to get some work done here! So whatever it is you-"

"I love you."

She stopped dead in her tracks, mouth forming a cute O before she closed it and looked at him wide-eyed and stunned into silence.

"Tony…?" her face softened, the anger in her eyes being replaced by warmth.

"We're going on vacation when you come back to New York. I don't care where, just you and me and no one else. Maybe we can go on that Caribbean island you liked so much, or the villa in Spain or wherever else you wanna go… and that tower in Hong Kong will read Potts all over it. Biggest damn neon sign you've ever seen… I'll get you everything you want… nothing will happen to you, ever. I promise, Pepper."

"Tony…" now she looked concerned, "You are shaking."

"Oh." he looked down at his hands that were indeed trembling violently, as was his whole body. Letting out a slow breath Tony willed the quivers to subside, "Sorry, I didn't notice."

"What happened?" straight to the point as she always was.

"I… I got a taste of the world without you."

"The two of you always tried to have another child, but it never worked. You proposed IVF but Mom didn't want it…" Jack closed his eyes for a second to regain his composure, "She got pregnant again somewhere before my thirteenth birthday. The docs made it clear that it was high-risk pregnancy, but Mom didn't want an abortion and you could never say no to her when it mattered… Kayla was a preemie, but she was healthy. Mom… they couldn't do anything for her. She died a few hours after the delivery."

It had rocked him to the core. Hearing from his son that Pepper died at the birth of their daughter… from all the deaths hers had been the most painful and he couldn't bear the thought of it happening again. It wouldn't happen again.

"Should I come back early?" damn, he had to look like shit for her to suggest that.

"No." Tony tried to get back to his usual self, but it was harder than ever before, "I just missed you screaming at me, I guess. Don't bother, I know your meeting is important."

She nodded, still not convinced but knowing better than to argue with him, "I'll be back tomorrow evening. Don't do anything stupid until then ...I love you too."

He watched the screen go black after she had hung up.

"Tony?" the pissed off spy did look more confused than pissed off right now.

A grin formed on his lips, "What is it with everyone calling my name lately? Yes, I'm Tony Stark. Iron Man, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. Get over it already."

Natasha shot him a dirty look and everything was back to the way it was supposed to be (everything but him). She motioned towards the door and he followed her and Clint up to the living quarters without any further ado. They were both too clever to be persuaded that there wasn't something wrong with him so he didn't bother trying to do so.

This time the windows weren't blind; the light of the setting sun illuminating the room – he had never been happier to see the skyline of Manhattan.

"Jarvis, coffee. Now. A big cup, with a lot of sugar." the three men sitting around the flat screen TV looked up when they heard him and Tony gave them a small nod before sinking into the couch. His two shadows followed his example, sitting down beside each other facing him.

No one said a word until Bruce sighed, "You vanished."

Tony couldn't help but grin, "No, if we're objectively correct you vanished. Or none of us vanished …it really all depends on your point of view."

"Cut the bullshit, Tony." angry (and concerned, and even a little afraid) blue eyes locked with his.

"I kinda think I liked your older self better, Cap." it wasn't the whole truth, but he had to say something, had to order his thoughts, "I mean he was still bitchy but he actually acknowledged that I know what I'm doing most of the time."

They blinked, all of them. Well, almost all of them. Thor didn't look overly surprised. But he was a god who used a damn wormhole to travel form one planet to another and probably knew a way to revive the soul of a dead human in Asgard, so really there was nothing surprising to him in the thought of traveling through time.

"You were… in the future?" Clint looked kind of amazed.

"Yep." Tony grinned because Steve, Natasha and Barton all obviously thought that he must've hit his head too hard somewhere, "A little more than thirty years, I think. They didn't let me see anything outside the tower and no one told me the year, but it had to be somewhere between thirty-one and thirty-two years, thirty-three max."

"Are you sure?" Bruce looked intrigued. The good Doc Banner was almost as much of a science fanatic as he was, and there wasn't a scientist in the world who wouldn't have taken the bait when someone said they'd actually traveled to the future.

That was the critical point: he had to make them believe him. Bruce would've been satisfied with a simple yes, and Thor wasn't thrown off by the concept either, but he had to somehow convince the Captain and master assassin one and two that he was indeed telling the truth – their lives depended on it.

Tony took a gulp from the hot coffee that was suddenly in his hand, "I know my own kid when I meet it."

A deathly silence followed.

The others had repeated a thousand times that he wasn't allowed to tell his friends anything about their future lives (or lack thereof) aside from what was absolutely necessary. Telling someone that they would die wasn't recommended, even more so disclosing the date or location of said event. It would inventible lead people to try to avoid that, what in turn would make the event even more likely to occur. They'd only told him about parts of his own future because they'd had to tell someone, and he was apparently the only one they trusted to understand the timeline principle enough to not fuck it up (aside from Bruce, whose not so little indestructible green problem had ruled him out from the beginning).

So the only things he could tell them to actually make them believe him were facts about his own future that didn't concern them directly. His kids.

"So Pepper is dead in that time."

The billionaire froze in the motion of the bringing his cup to his lips once more, his fingers losing their grip and the cup dropping on the carpet, the coffee leaving an ugly stain on the expensive Persian.

"You will not tell her that." Natasha actually flinched a little at the venom in his voice. Tony Stark never lost control, not like this.

"Tony, calm down." Steve.

"That means that some of us are most likely dead, too. Did they send you to prevent us from dying?" Clint (too clever for his own good at the moment).

"Yes. No. Probably. I don't know." this was going way too fast for Tony's liking. He'd wanted to ease them into some things before explaining others, but of course they had to dive head first into this whole mess.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Natasha. Of course, the woman was like a blood hound. Once she'd found a track she didn't leave it until she had hunted down her prey.

"Back off. Let him explain." Bruce was suddenly standing in front of him and handing him a new cup of coffee, before he picked the old one off the floor. He was calmness personified, seemingly not bothered in the least by their bickering …but having the Hulk inside you taught you that.

Tony was thankful to get some space, but he still didn't really know how to explain a principle to them that was surreal even to him – and he had compiled it.

"Thor." he locked eyes with the Asgardian, "That thing you used to come to earth with, Bifröst, most likely is what we call a wormhole on earth. Do you know how it works?"

The big blond grinned, "Of course, my friend …but I cannot explain it your language."

He nodded. That was as much as he'd expected. He had about the same problem. Once you'd a general grasp on the principle it was easy to work from there, but explaining the space/time relationship and how it could be used to switch timelines required a basic knowledge of physics three of the four people he tried to explain it to didn't posses.

"Okay, I'm trying to explain the basic of timelines to you now. Speak up if you can't follow." he especially looked at Steve, who gave him a dirty look, "It's… kind of a river actually. Yeah, that should work. Our timeline is our river. We can change certain things inside the timeline without disturbing it, like you can throw a stone in the river and it will create a stir but won't disrupt the overall flow. It get's problematic however when someone tips a big load of debris into the river. It will block the flow of the water and the river will flow in another direction …savvy?"

They nodded all at once and Tony let out a relieved breath. He could work with that.

"The debris can be called a key event, something big enough to change a whole timeline, but that leaves us with two problems: one is that we can't be certain what exactly qualifies as such a key event. A single stone doesn't disrupt a river, but what if hundreds of people throw stones in it for a prolonged period of time? Enough small changes can add up to one big change, while others might seem big to us but in reality are not relevant for the timeline at all."

"They didn't tell you what the key events are that need to be changed …or they probably don't know them at all." his science bro summarized (Tony always knew why he liked him as much as he did).

"Wait…" Steve held up both hands to get them to slow down, "So you are telling us that you met a group of people and they told you that you need to change things in this time, but not what things?"

"Exactly." actually he was a little proud that the Cap had gotten it that fast.

Natasha raised an eyebrow, "Why didn't they simply tell you what they thought needs to be changed?"

Even Bruce looked a little confused now, and Thor had stopped listening half-way in and instead turned to the mute TV to watch a baseball game with the excitement of someone who had no clue what was going on. Well, he was the least affected anyway, and the saddest part was that he most likely was aware of it. Damn Gods.

"It would've been too much of a risk." he fidgeted around with his hands a little, "I (or we) would've just tried to avoid the event altogether, and the more you actively try to stop a certain event from happening the higher the chance of it actually happening is. Some events are immovable in the timeline …or at least as immovable as time and space can be. It has to happen, we can only change how it happens."

"What you are trying to say is that we just have to change a few small things in-between and it will most likely change the flow of our timeline? …I mean so that the outcome isn't what you saw." he'd always known that Legolas was sharp. Maybe he should try teaching the guy the basics of physics in the near future.

"Why don't we just send one of us to a certain point in the future and find out what has to be changed?" the gleam in his eyes showed Tony that Bruce was very well aware of the fact that there was a high possibility of this not working.

The others however seemed to warm up to the idea pretty fast from the looks on their faces – he had to stop that line of thought before they liked it too much.

"It won't work." that got their attention again, "That's the second problem of the timelines: you can only go backwards in your own time. People like Thor can cross from one world into another regardless of the time because our planets have no direct connection in timelines. We could go to Asgard 1000 years after Thor's time alright, but we can't even go a year head in our own timeline."

"Why?" Tony could actually see the gears in Steve's head turning.

He chuckled at the image, "Rivers. When you put that load of debris in the river you know that its flow will change, but you can't be a hundred percent sure in which direction …basically every key event marks the origin of a new timeline. You can always go back in time because you knew what happened in your own timeline, but you can't go forward because you neither know what the key events will be nor how they will turn out."

"…and you can't find a way around that?" Natasha didn't look convinced.

It was nice to know that they trusted that much in his genius (that they trusted him, period).

Tony shook his head, "I'm afraid I can't. I think I tried in the future. I apparently had the idea of stabilizing the portal with the power of the arc reactor, but… it must've gone horribly wrong. It probably killed me."

"You're… dead in the future?" they all looked nonplussed at the idea.

"Yeah." it was actually a little funny that it shocked them more than it had shocked him. Really, there were metal pieces way too close to his heart, he drank, he smoked on occasions and of course he was in the middle of potentially deathly situations every other day. Tony had never expected his life expectancy to be every high in the first place.

"What are we going to do about all of this now?" one could always count on Steve to be practical.

He yawned, "Nothing."

"…nothing?" he hadn't really known that Natasha's voice could reach that height, because shrill was just too girly to work on her, but obviously it could. Damn, that sound had hurt his ears.

"Nothing." Tony confirmed, planting his feet on the coffee table in front of him (he was tired), "Jarvis, order pizza from somewhere. I don't care what, it only has to be enough to feed all of us and be here in twenty minutes. I'm starving… no, we don't do anything. They gave me stuff to tell each of you, but it's still too early for that. I don't know… this conversation was probably enough to change a few events already."

"Aren't you being a little too casual about everything?" that exactly was why he didn't get along well with Steve Rogers. The man always ascribed incompetence to Tony where in reality he was doing the best he could – he wasn't taking it easy, he just tried to not make a damn fuss about something that at the moment couldn't be changed.

"I just came from a time some thirty years in the future where Pepper is dead, most of you are dead and I obviously tried to raise my kids on my own while continuing to save the world until I fucked up and got myself killed, leaving said kids to fend for themselves." his ire was back in full force in seconds, "Now tell me again that I'm treating this too casual."

"You…" realization flashed across the Captain's face, "are scared."

Tony sighed and ran a hand through his hair, "I'm scared shitless."

"…I am sorry, I should have trusted you." and that was why he couldn't be angry with the guy for more than a day. He always apologized, no matter if it was his fault or not.

"It's okay." a tired smile spread on his face, "I just need my pizza, a glass of something really strong and a lot of sleep …I'll make this work, I promise you guys. We will get through this and none of us will die. I'll make things right."

Natasha just rolled her eyes, Clint and Thor smirked and Bruce gave him another one of those reassuring smiles he had perfected.

Steve shook his head, amused, "No, Tony. We are the Avengers. We are a team. We'll make things right."

…somewhere between sleep and waking Tony couldn't suppress a grin of his own.

Still the same: I virtually made up the time travel stuff from my own imagination and hope that it sounds at least halfway credible. TBC.

Reviews are very welcome.