When A Bright Idea Dims

By Sinead

Author's Note: Sorry that this took a while . . . I'm job-hunting while going to school for 20 hours a week as well as acting for 16 hours on the weekend. Busy schedule and a lot of personal stress that should chill out a little once the Faire is over and I have a job. Thank you all for your reviews and story watches!

Chapter Six

"Palladium in the chest . . . painful way to die."

Those words echoed through his mind all through the night, keeping him up. Finally, unable to take any more tossing and turning, Tony got out of bed and walked to the other side of the luxury apartment that was being rented while they were in Monaco. He paused outside the door, then bit his lip and opened it silently, walking into Becka's room and closing the door behind him. He didn't want to wake her up.

Sitting upon the bed beside his sleeping lover, Tony let himself watch her peaceful face. He wanted to be able to fix this problem, to be able to live past the next few weeks. He knew that once Becka saw his chest, she would know that he didn't have much time left. She would know that he wasn't dying as slowly as everyone else was around them; that his due date was creeping up faster than he was letting anyone know.

Running a hand over his face, Tony sighed and gently stood, walking to the window and staring up at the stars. Yinsen . . . Yinsen would know what to do in this situation if he was still alive.

"Nn . . . Tony?"

"Hey," he whispered, smiling and turning, walking back to the bed and stroking the hair out of Becka's face while he crouched closer to her. "Go back to sleep."

She frowned, then yawned and replied, "Then stop hovering. In the bed or go back to your own."

"You're letting me stay with you tonight?" This wasn't usually like her. But then again, today hadn't been a usual day.

"The offer runs out in five seconds," came the sleepy mutter.

Smiling and slipping under the covers, wrapping his chilled arms around her and hearing her muttered protests about body temperatures, Tony felt her sigh and settle back into a deep sleep, one arm around his waist, the other between their chests, resting in the space between his heart and his arc reactor, fingers overlapping both parts of his chest. Kissing the top of her head and sighing, Tony looked up at the ceiling, taking the problem up again.

Yinsen had told him not to waste the gift of his life. He had imparted a great amount of wisdom in a short amount of time to both Tony and Becka. And the truth of the matter was that the time spent in the caves had bonded the two of them so closely that working together was more along their instincts than working apart was.

So what should he do? How should he plan this?

Closing his eyes and burying his face against Rebeckah's crown, Anthony Edward Stark let himself stop thinking, enjoying the simple sensation of being able to hold his fiancé.

"Mister Stark?" Natalie walked into the apartment, Pepper and Happy behind her. She went up to the ajar door, opening it and frowning, turning to look around for her boss. Happy held his hands up, indicating that she wait where she was as Pepper silently opened the other bedroom door in the first floor of this apartment, peeked in, then closed it again to walk back to his side. "They're both in there, still sleeping. Happy? Want to make breakfast with me?"

"You're going to make breakfast when we're expected back in the States in less than twelve hours?" Natalie hissed, eyes wide with shock.

Looking to one another, then to the newbie, neither replied and instead headed to the kitchen to wake the slumbering couple with smells of bacon, eggs, pancakes, waffles, and maple syrup. Not surprisingly, they stumbled out together with identical bleary-eyed looks upon their faces. "Jet lag?"

"Nnmph." Sitting at the table and resting her forehead upon it, Becka muttered, "You crazy rich people and globetrotting."

"I had espresso," Happy replied, setting down what seemed to be black coffee by her hand. "Hot cocoa with coffee in it."

"You're an angel," Rebeckah breathed in awe, moving her head upwards to breathe in the scent of coffee and expensive hot cocoa. She felt a heavy head rest upon her shoulder as Tony sat beside her with a yawn. "An' you woke me up last night."

"Sorry, Beckers," Tony replied, stroking her hair as she laid her head back down upon crossed arms.

Natalie sat down in one of the seats, incredulous. "What should I do about the meetings that we have to be at?" She hadn't known that this is how they operated! It was almost as if they didn't care about their executives and shareholders!

"Postpone them," Tony and Pepper chorused before meeting each other's gaze and grinning. Tony got his cup of black coffee. "How late are we?"

"Three hours," Happy replied, putting down the three local newspapers while Pepper pulled up the English news feeds about what had happened the day before on the race circuit. "But we figured that you needed the extra rest, and I had persuaded Pepper to stay in bed a little longer."

"Not gonna ask how," Becka muttered, raising her head off of the table and blowing on the hot drink by her hand before carefully taking a sip, not wanting to burn her tongue. Even though it was early morning and she was not known to be an early riser, it was easy to see that both Tony and Becka's minds were far, far away.

Natalie was sulking in the forward cabin, Tony was skulking around the kitchen, Happy hated flying and was in a drugged haven of sleep in the forward cabin as well, and Becka was standing in the cockpit, watching the pilots fly. Pepper sighed. Nobody wanted to be around anyone else, but when you're in a smallish private jet, you really can't get away from each other.

She was sitting in a chair, peering thoughtlessly out the window. If Becka hadn't claimed the cockpit after takeoff, Pepper would have loved to hide up there with the pilots. They knew when silence was necessary. However, she was still getting silence, thanks to the lack of company in the aft cabin.

A thought bubbled to the surface, no matter how much she tried to squelch it down. She was still aching from yesterday, and her mind and heart were still raw from the near-death experience. There was something to be said about finding peace and quiet again after having chaos coming to stamp its way in through one's life. No. She needed to have some noise to help block her thoughts off. Otherwise . . .

She didn't want to think about it.

Leaning forward and finding the clicker for the satellite TV, Pepper turned it on and left it on the first channel that came up. Of course, the subject was yesterday's fiasco, and who was talking upon it? Senator Stern, who had led the bar against Tony in the hearing. Sighing at the fact that the man couldn't speak in anything above a monotone, not to mention the fact that the man was speaking about how the type of suit that Tony wore, operated, and was augmented by was now truly elsewhere in the world, Pepper wondered how her life had come to this point.

She was now, more so than ever, fully responsible for Tony Stark and his actions.

"Mute." Tony walked around Pepper's chair, setting down a covered plate and a set of silverware. He didn't want to deal with the small bits of actual truth that resided within Stern's snarlfests. He'd get the low-down from Jarvis when he returned to Malibu upon the important parts. So, he played it flippantly. "The guy should be giving me a medal."

Pepper wasn't impressed. Her back and neck hurt from being jostled about in the car, but she was thankful that was the least of her injuries. But she still wasn't very happy with the way that their trip to Monaco had fallen out. It wasn't purely Tony's fault, but there were behaviors that he exhibited that would make her life very hard if they continued. "What's that."

"This? This, uh, is your in-flight meal." He didn't expect that question from his former-assistant, now-boss.

"Did you just make that?"

"Yeah. Where do you think that I've been for the last three hours?"

"Sulking in the kitchen because we've taken up the other areas of the cabin."

"Ouch. Thanks for your . . . your vote of confidence." Tony turned to look out the window, unable to look at the woman who had made his life happen in the last several years and knew him better than Becka did.

Was this how Tony had felt when he had come close to death in Afghanistan? Needing to know answers and needing to have people level with him? Maybe that was the true sobering moment of his life, and thankfully, the two people who had been around him in that time had been extremely healthy for his sanity, and had just the kind of willful personality that would continue to make sure that Tony wouldn't stay stagnant even past that point of sobriety.

"Tony . . . what aren't you telling me?"

I'm dying, and I can't do a damn thing about it. "I don't want to go home. At all." And even that was more than he wanted to say. He went off on a tangent that he knew, somehow, Pepper wouldn't agree to, and yet . . . it was her final word on the situation that had him retreating to the kitchen.

"Not all of us run on batteries."

Opening the door between the two cabins, Becka just looked at Pepper with the same sort of dead eyes that Tony sported. Part of it was tiredness, part of it was worry that plagued the mind even through sleep, and part of it was a pain so deep that it couldn't be put into words.

"Are you going home again?" were the first words out of Pepper's mouth before she could stop herself from saying something stupid in her aching exhaustion. She, of all people, knew that Tony would be eavesdropping, and to overhear that . . .

Shaking her head, the younger woman sighed. "No. Tony needs me here. I don't know why he's been the way he has, but I know that if I were to leave, nothing would be fixed or dealt with. He hasn't asked me outright, but I'm going to stay in Malibu." Sitting down in the chair that Tony had vacated, Rebeckah looked at the plate of food left behind. "Did he make that?"

"Yes."

"He did something serious if he's trying to apologize to you with food."

In reply, Pepper silently indicated the next cabin up . . . and the other woman in there, lowering her voice to just above the hum of the engines. "Don't tell me that you're not angry at his decision about bringing her into the team."

"I'm not."

"You're lying."

Shaking her head and popping her knuckles in a stress-relieving habit, Becka sighed. "I'm really not angry or frustrated about her. She has skills that I sorely lack, and that you no longer can help me learn with the diligence that you've shown so far. You have all-new responsibilities that require your full attention. I know that if you were to spare the time for trying to help me catch up to speed, your work and what is now your company will suffer."

"Well, one of those responsibilities may just be nailing your fiancé and my star employee to the floor and hope that he doesn't do something exceedingly stupid for once."

Nodding and sighing, the younger woman replied, "Tony will do what he needs to do, and neither of us will ever be able to always persuade him to rethink some of his actions. I'll stand with him, and, unless he does something excessively moronic, I'll be standing with him until the end."

You're a brave woman . . . and that end might happen all too soon, Tony Stark thought as he leaned against the bulkhead, having listened to that conversation. He didn't deserve her, he really didn't. Walking as silently as possible back to the kitchen, the millionaire looked for something easier to make, and something that his bride-to-be would enjoy.