DNL: Hear ye, hear ye. Chapter Two is up. I own nothing but the OC. Here is Tony's story as told by the genius himself. Enjoy!

I met her at MIT.

Now, before you say anything or make any assumptions, I never slept with her. Not that she was ugly or anything, it's just…

Never mind. Maybe you'll get it when I'm done explaining.

Anyway, I was 15; she was 19. I had a few big reasons; she didn't have any. Either way, we both ended up sitting on the edge of the same roof at the same time, looking down at a street far below us as tiny cars drove by.

"Hey," she said, "don't I know you?"

I shrugged.

She sat beside me on the edge of the roof and offered me a bottle of opaque, white liquid. I think I asked her if she was trying to get me drunk.

"It's Calpis soda," she told me, "one of my favorite soft drinks."

I took a sip. It wasn't fantastic, but it was good.

We sat there for a long time, pretty much silent while the bottle slowly emptied between us.

"I've been thinking about this for two years," she said. "You?"

"…Since I was ten," I told her.

She nodded, and we were silent again. Then the bottle ran dry.

She stood on the edge of the roof, the toes of her bright green Converse sticking out into the air while the wind played through her hair. I felt a thrill of fear in my belly; I didn't want to watch her fall, and I really didn't want to watch her land.

"Why are you still alive?" she asked.

I stared at her for a moment. "Because I want to finish my AI."

She laughed. "Tell me more."

You know me; I don't really need an invitation to talk. So, I listed every goal I had, every project I wanted to finish, every idea I wanted to make real, and she listened to everything. When I ran out of things to say, I asked her the same question.

"Me?" She shrugged. "I don't know. Because I want to write a book one day."

I nodded, a smile on my face for the first time since I got up on that roof. "Tell me more."

She told me that she was a programmer because that was what she was good at, but while computers were her passion, writing was her first love. "You might be a bit young for it, but you never really get over your first love," she informed me, ruffling my hair. I still looked amazing, of course.

We talked for another hour, about life, about death, and about why we wanted both.

"It's not that I want to die," she said. "I just want a break from living, you know?"

I knew.

After that, she sat back down, and I felt a lot less nervous.

When the eastern sky turned pink, she reached into her satchel and pulled out a piece of paper and a pen. She wrote down a cell phone number.

"Call me if it gets bad," she told me, "or if it doesn't." She walked away. Thirty minutes later, I did too.

Her name was Ruth.

I called her a few months later. It was just after my sixteenth birthday, I think, and, as promised, Ruth appeared on the same rooftop, bearing a bottle of Calpis soda. We talked about everything and nothing, as clichéd as it sounds, until I was relaxed enough to tell her why I called.

My dad and I… had issues. I'll just say we had a huge blowout over what I was going to do with my life after I graduated. You know what that's like, right?

"I think my dad is afraid of what I'll be when I grow up," I said.

She looked at me for a minute. "Are you?"

I had to think about that.

We drained the bottle, I gave her the phone number for my personal lab, and then we went our separate ways at dawn.

When I graduated, I called her. Ruth congratulated me with a pat on the shoulder and a bottle of Calpis soda. It was then that we worked out the System. Once a year, on the anniversary of the day we met, I would call her. She would pick up. We would remind each other why we were still alive. Then we would hang up and move on with our lives.

As she put it, "I promise not to leave as long as you don't."

We stuck to the System like our lives depended on it.

…Haha. Sorry, bad joke.

It wasn't like we ever got to the same level we were on at MIT.

…Come on, doc, don't look at me like that.

We met for emergencies, too, like when I was twenty-one and my parents were killed—"I don't know how to feel about that"—and when Ruth was fired and got stuck in a depressing job—"It's like I'm not even human anymore". We muddled through.

She got married at some point; it was a pretty nice wedding. Old-fashioned, but nice. He was a good guy, and he treated her like gold. We stopped being so angsty around our late twenties, and the System was kind of only used to update each other on our lives. We were both pretty happy.

Then came Afghanistan. Iron Man. I came home to dozens of missed calls and as many voicemail messages. I called her to let her know I was okay.

Obadiah Stane. I called her to let her know I wasn't okay.

"He was like a father to you, right?" she asked.

"Something like it, yeah," I said, taking a swig of the Calpis soda. "I think I might be cursed."

She shrugged. "You might be. I think you just have rotten luck."

I laughed.

Palladium poisoning. I let her know I was dying. She appeared at my house in Malibu, a white-knuckled grip on the bottle of Calpis soda.

"Don't die, Tony," Ruth told me, "not if you can help it."

I smiled, but I didn't say anything.

Ruth lost her husband in a car crash somewhere between the invention of Starkium and Loki's attack on Stuttgart. This time, I brought the Calpis, and we talked.

"I just don't know what to do," she said, staring vacantly into the city lights. "I feel empty."

I rested a hand on her shoulder. We stayed on the roof until long after dawn, but nothing more was said.

The Avengers assembled, and we repelled the alien invasion, snagging ourselves a wayward god in the process. I almost died throwing a nuke into the portal. But I bounced back with no ill effects, and we went off to eat shawarma.

I was fine.

So I took a few days before I called. Ruth was frantic, of course.

"I was already in New York, you know," she said, sitting with me on top of the ruins of Stark Tower.

"Why?"

"I'm moving here," she said. Then she snorted into her bottle of Calpis. "Well, to the suburbs. I found a job with a private school outside the city."

I smiled and told her how happy I was for her.

Ruth just smiled back.

"So, how are you really?" I asked.

She shrugged. "In the words of a great artist, 'I'm doing okay, but not very well'." She sighed. "I miss him, you know?"

I knew.

"But this new job, it's something you want to do, right?"

She smiled. "It's a great opportunity for me. And I've always wanted to work with kids." She seemed to hesitate a moment. "These kids… they're special."

I blinked. "Like… handicapped? Autism or something?'

"No," she said, "like mutants with superpowers."

I made the connection. Stop laughing, Bruce, it didn't take me that long. "You're going to work at the Xavier Institute?"

She rolled her eyes. "I guess I should've known you would know."

I just laughed. "Yeah, you should've."

The sound of our laughter didn't carry far, nor did it linger, but it was refreshing to hear and to feel. I guess it was just nice not to be in pain.

I really should've known it wouldn't last.

A few weeks later, she called me and asked to meet. There was something in her voice, something that just… sounded wrong. So we met on top of the tower.

Ruth never hides things, not from me. Not intentionally, anyway. She's naturally a private person. Not really secretive, but kind of closed-off, if you know what I mean. If she hides any emotions on the rooftops with me, it's a holdover from wearing her mask in front of the uninitiated. That's when she's feeling the worst.

When we met that night, her face might as well have been marble.

"I thought I was doing okay," she said softly, hugging herself. I sat beside her with an arm around her shoulders. "I thought I was getting better."

"You are," I told her. I'm really not good at the whole 'comfort' thing, but I did my best, you know?

Ruth shook her head violently. "It's just… it's our anniversary, Tony. It would've been eleven years, and I…" She broke off, looking down at the sidewalk 60 floors below us.

I gritted my teeth, trying not to look at her face. She wouldn't jump, not with me here watching. It wasn't in her to subject me to that. Besides, she knew I would be able to stop her; I'm a lot bigger than she is.

Yes, Bruce, I am a lot bigger than her. She's short, okay?

Ruth seemed to collect herself after that little 'Let's Scare the Crap Out Of Tony' moment.

"I just miss him," she finished, her voice soft and her eyes wet.

I squeezed her shoulders. "No one blames you for that. He was a good man. Much as I'm sure he misses you too–"

She glared at me, but I could tell her heart wasn't in it. "You're an atheist, Tony."

I grinned. I may not be good at the whole 'comforting' shtick, but I thought I was on a roll. "Doesn't matter. I had your husband pegged, and he wouldn't leave you. Not really. And he would want you to be happy. So… be happy."

Her answering smile was weak, but I took it. She wouldn't lie to me. We weren't angsty teenagers anymore; we could both handle our problems like adults and talk them out. We were both on the up-and-up.

Today is the 28th anniversary of the day Ruth and I met, so I called her, like usual. I tried calling her at least fifteen times.

Bruce, you gotta understand, I'm not gonna kill myself. I'm a lot better than I used to be.

But Bruce…

She's not picking up.

She always picks up.

But she's not.

DNL: Well, that's ominous. Next chapter should provide resolution. Also, I'm considering writing a series based on their meetings. Yes? No? Let me know what you think.