When A Bright Idea Dims

By Sinead

Author's Note: Thank you for your reviews, story-alerts, author-alerts, and for adding this to your favorite stories lists! I'm honored! I hope that I don't disappoint with this chapter, but it covers some important thought-processes. I'm probably not going to focus much on Ivan Vanko as much on this story until the points that he crosses paths with Stark and Company.

Chapter Two

"You . . .you, Stark, are an absolute train-wreck in slow motion."

Tony looked up from a screen with wide eyes, shocked. He hit a panic button that shut down anything having to do with his current medical situation as Rebeckah stalked forward in her customary "off-camera" look. She could pull off polished and look like a movie star to the world, but Tony could never get over how gorgeous she was when she was in combat boots, old jeans and a t-shirt that was probably three years old and looked the part.

She had hands on her hips, the ring glittering just as brightly as her simmering gaze.

She was a force of nature.

Tony loved her unconditionally.

"Hi, love. Why's that?" Standing slowly, he walked closer as if he was approaching an irritated tigress. What was up with him seeming to collect women who held their own against him, holding them in positions where he was daily harangued by them? It wasn't masochism.

He loved the challenge of an intelligent woman who, while not on the genius-level that he was on, was in possession of lightning-fast intuition that challenged him. Of course.

"You ran off to the Senate without saying anything to me except through text, leaving me with Happy to watch you mock the Senate, mock their software and operating systems, then show up back at the hotel expecting me packed to go? I mean, what the hell?" She stalked off towards Tony's cars. So of course, he followed her as she continued to rant. This was the first time that they had gotten a chance to talk privately since even before the Expo. "You still think that the world revolves around you!"

"Beck, you know I don't." His voice softened as he walked closer. "You know that."

She whirled to face him, mahogany shoulder-length hair flying out in all directions. "Oh really, now?"

Tony sighed and held his hands out to either side in a helpless expression. "What do you want me to say? What do you want me to do? I'm trying to set things up for—" For when I'm gone wasn't going to be a good way to end that sentence. "For when I can step down from being CEO and focus on us, on starting a family, and let my work be my second job."

"That's not how it's coming across to me."

Moving closer, Tony rested his hands upon her shoulders, sliding them down along her arms and down to enfold her petite and deft hands in his larger ones. "I'm sorry. I'm really trying."

"You were hung over on the plane."

Uh-oh. She knew.

"Pepper told me. She said that you've been drinking when I'm not around."

Tony sighed and released Becka's hands to walk over to the old Ford and sit on a fender. "Yeah."

The lecture that he almost expected from her didn't come. Instead, he found himself looking down at her boots and jean-clad legs. Looking up, he found that she crouched and rested her hands on his knees. "Why?"

He shook his head.

"Tony."

"Yeah?"

"You want to marry me?"

His smile was immediate, genuine, loving, bright and his brown eyes shone with happiness. "Yes, of course."

"Then trust me. Open up to me. Please."

"I . . . Beckers, I need you to understand something." He rested his hands on hers, hoping that his thoughts weren't transparent upon his face. She could read him like nobody else ever had. When he had her nod of assent, Tony continued. "There are things that I just can't talk about right now."

"It's not about Yinsen?"

"No."

"Afghanistan?"

"No."

She paused, then sighed deeply. "You're not under contract to the U.S. Department of Defense anymore, so you can't be sworn to secrecy through them."

Tony couldn't handle this. "Please, please don't ask, don't guess. Not yet." Pulling her to her feet, Tony embraced her, resting his head against the bottom of her ribcage and against her stomach, which had since flattened as she worked off sugar weight through martial arts training. He closed his eyes as he listened to her heartbeat. When her hands went down to stroke through his hair and rub his shoulders softly, the man squeezed his eyes tighter together.

But that didn't stop the tears from soaking Becka's t-shirt.

"Pepper, something's seriously wrong with Tony."

The woman didn't look up from her work of organizing files on a new glass tablet screen that was installed upon one whole wall of the office she used when she was at the Malibu house. Each of the houses that Tony owned had at least a nine-by-nine space where she could retreat to do at least a little work, and for that she was thankful. "There's never been anything 'right' with Mr. Stark and that hasn't changed in the time that you've known him, sad to say."

"No, I mean there's something seriously wrong."

The tone of her voice caused Pepper to turn around and look at Becka before blinking and pausing once. "Did something spatter on your shirt? Where did you get those silver spots?"

The younger woman's face was pale as she stripped the shirt off, and walked over to the desk, revealing a dark tank-top underneath the old shirt. Her voice was solemn, scared. "That's the problem. Those are his tears."

Pepper Potts sat down heavily upon the low bookshelf under the new screen as the women silently stared at the now-ruined shirt.

This wasn't good.

Waking up to Jarvis' verbal prodding, Tony Stark groaned and rolled off of the couch, dropping the throw blanket on the floor as he made his way back to his desk and activated the desktop again. "You nag worse than Pepper."

"Of course. You've said as much before, sir. You wanted me remind you—"

"I know, I know." Reaching for a thermos of a dark liquid, the man sighed and started to drink down a glass of it. "How much of this gobbledy-gook do I have drink a day?"

"We're up to eighty ounces, sir."

"Nnph," he replied around the glass before setting it to one side and pulling out the silver blood-count device. "Check palladium levels."

Jarvis' voice was neutral as he replied, "Blood toxicity, twenty-four percent." But the AI continued as Tony wiped the blood off of his thumb with a small gauze pad, his mind not really on the pinprick he endured at least twenty-four times a day. "It appears that the continued use of the Iron Man suit is accelerating your condition."

Sitting silent and stoically, Tony processed this information and decided that he had to start making all the decisions necessary to get everything in place before his time came. Considering that at the opening ceremony of the Expo his blood read only nineteen percent toxicity, the man was sure that things were really starting to heat up, and not in any way that he liked. Four percent toxicity in just over twenty-four hours was twice as fast as it had been last week. If things kept speeding up like this, he was bound to be facing his mortality within the next month, six weeks if he was able to stretch his time on earth.

He didn't have much time, and wanted to secure two things in place before he was gone.

"Another core has been depleted."

Obligingly, Tony lifted his shirt and pulled the miniature arc reactor out of his chest. After the initial idiocy that had occurred regarding plugging the damn thing into the base plate had passed, he had redesigned the RT to be interchangeable. Thankfully, that also meant that he could replace the palladium cores whenever they needed it. When he held it up and triggered the device to open and reveal the metal core, he winced. "God, they're running out quick."

Jarvis was quick to reply, "I've run simulations on every known element. None can serve as a replacement for the palladium core."

While he had been talking, Tony had been switching out the old core for a new one, trying not to think about what he was doing and what it meant.

"You are running out of both time and options. Unfortunately, the device that is keeping you alive is also killing you."

Clicking it into place and breathing shallowly as he felt the power run through his chest again, Tony's handsome face was transformed into a concerned frown while he ran through everything he possibly could speculate upon in regards to his current state of affairs.

He knew what to do about the CEO position in his company.

He knew what to do for Happy and how to make sure that the man would never need to work for the rest of his life unless he wanted to.

He knew what to do in regards to Becka, and was going to be putting everything she needed to know in a file that would be accessible to her on the occasion of his death. And as much as she was unhappy with him right now, Tony knew that they had to be officially married before that point in order for him to will everything he owned into her capable, steady hands. That was the hard part.

"Miss Potts is approaching. I recommend that you inform her of—"

"Mute," Tony commanded as he looked up and hit the panic button again, returning the screens to their normal status of hot rods. Oh. She was mad at him, too.

"Is this a joke?" she asked right off the bat, her tone dead serious. "What are you thinking?"

Damn. Everything was about death to Tony today. "What?"

"What are you thinking?"

"Hey, I'm thinking that I'm busy. And you're . . . angry. About something." Probably the fact that he had donated a bunch of art that had been gathering dust in climate-controlled storage in some remote area of California.

"Did you just donate our entire modern art collection to the Boy Scouts of America?"

Muttering his thought in regards to how it was a worthwhile cause, that it was his collection, not ours and disregarding her snarl that she had curated that collection over the past ten years.

Ten years? Had she been working for him for that long? Probably longer, actually. Tony lost track of all the years she had been at his side, but he was grateful for every moment, whether he had been sober at the time or not. Up until last year, usually not sober.

Oh, right. Tax write-ups about the donation . . . but Pep would still be pissy about the donation anyway. She was moving onto other topics, and Tony was evading them all as he continued to get her mad, which he always enjoyed and couldn't help himself as he baited her endlessly.

Finally, he had her right where he wanted her. By the couches, and Dummy was rolling over discreetly.

He stared at her. "You do it."

"I do what?"

"You run the company."

"Yeah." She glared at him with that wonderful intense gaze of hers. "I'm trying to run the company."

"Well stop trying to do it and do it."

"Well, you not giving me the information that I need—"
"Well, I'm not asking you to try to do it, I'm asking you to physically do it. I need you to do it."

"I am—"

"Pepper! You're not listening to me!"
"No, you're not listening to me!"

Tony's voice shifted from intense to sincere. "I'm trying to make you CEO! Why won't you let me?"

Pepper was silent for one long moment, keeping her thoughts regarding his sanity under wraps as she blurted the first thing that came into her mind. "Have you been drinking?"

He knew that she was going to give in.

And once they drank in celebration together, he checked that one large item off of his to-do list in his mind.

Next, set up the trust funds for Happy.

And after that, he'd have to figure out a way to get to a fertility clinic and as humiliating it was going to be, he was going to have to set that special something-something aside for his wife-to-be. She wanted kids, and he did too, even if he wasn't going to be able to raise them with her. Becka was a strong woman, and she was going to be an amazing mother. But he needed to set aside the means to provide a biological heir to the Stark name.

He wanted to cry again. Damnit.