When A Bright Idea Dims
By Sinead

Author's Note: Sorry that this took so long! My Tony muse decided to go on vacation and leave me behind. Meanwhile, though, I had a chance to stop and look at where I was going to have this story head towards, and how I was going to adjust the way that it would end. As of right now, I'm not sure if I'll be doing a story for Iron Man 3, whenever that comes out. So that means that a lot will be happening by the end of this fic.

For all of my awesome watchers and reviewers, thank you so very much for your patronage and your patience! While yes, I write because I enjoy it, it's also really fun to know that there are others that enjoy it. I hope that I don't disappoint with this and the following chapter!

And to the reviewer who asked about how the film reel in the movie was different than what I wrote? I had combined both the movie version as well as the novelization version, to create something that I feel would have the greatest impact upon Tony in this AU.

Chapter Ten

"How did he get out of your sight," Natasha demanded of Rebeckah over the phone as she stalked out towards the tarmac, seeing her "boss" disappear into the plane.

"Look, you had enough trouble trying to keep him in your sight when he was trying to be in your sight and mine, right? Well, I thought he was running down to the lab again," replied the irritated voice. "And you owe me an apology for ruining a moment he and I were having."

"I owe you nothing."

"Really? Because without me, I really don't think that Tony would be cooperating with you and SHIELD."

"You sound just like him when you talk like that."

"Good. Means that you're actually hearing me, so listen up, Natasha: You tell me that Tony was at Stark HQ fifteen minutes ago and talking with Pepper? Fine. Good. He's on the trail of something, and if you want him to get to the end of his trail, survive, and discover whatever Fury wants him to discover, then you're going to have to learn to work with him and his eccentric moments of behavior. Deal with it. I've got work to do."

The line clicked, and the phone went dead in Natasha's hand. Glaring at it, she curled a lip in disgust and put it away. Maybe she had been wrong about bringing that woman into the fold. Give her a little power and it went right to her head. In fact, she'll call Coulson and Fury and tell them to get her off of the property until Stark had completed his work, completely in disbelief of Rebeckah's claim that without her presence, Tony wouldn't be as effective.

.o.

Putting the last of the crate contents back, Rebeckah found her Dr Pepper and sipped at it before walking back to wipe the table down.

Jarvis spoke up. "Fury is calling for you."

"Patch him through, please."

"Of course."

"Hello?" she greeted, grabbing a cloth and wiping the table down.

"I heard that you and Agent Rominoff had words."

"Yeah, she's bitchy because I lost sight of Tony for a moment and he escaped and is on the trail that old man Howard set up for him."

"That so? She said that you claimed Tony couldn't work without you by his side."

Barking a laugh, Becka sat upon Tony's favorite chair. "Not true. I have a recording of the phone conversation, and I said that without me, Tony probably wouldn't be cooperating as well with you and your organization."

"I'll take your word for it for now. Did he give any sign that he was going to return to his house?"

"Yes. He took my car."

"So that's why you didn't let me tag it." Director Fury sounded more amused than angry.

"Nope. I didn't let you tag it because it's my car and I like my anonymity and have more than one phone."

"Sneaky."

"Yep."

"So he's finding the trail of bread crumbs that his father left for him?"

"I believe so. Thank you."

"For . . . ?"

Smiling, she looked up at the ceiling. "For giving back to us our future together."

For a moment, there was silence before the man replied, "We all need him, and to let him die wasn't an option. You're welcome. Have to go."

"Take care."

The line cut, and she remained in her seat, watching the ceiling.

.o.

"Becks! Becks, I need your help!"

She must have fallen into a light doze, because she jolted awake and blinked sleepily at the man getting out of her car. "Tony?"

"C'mon, shortcake!" He had either backed down the curved drive, or he had turned the car around, because . . .

"Is that the model?"

"Yep! Need you to help me get it onto the table!"

Darting around the obstacles in her path, she helped him lift and carry each of the four pieces, settling them upon the table, then going for supports so that the edges wouldn't bow and warp since they hung over the edge of the table. Once the diorama was complete, they each took their time staring at it, walking around it and comparing it in their minds to the current sculpt of the land. "Wow."

"Dad knew what he was doing, and he knew that at some point in my life, the technology would be advanced enough to do something about his discovery." Blowing dust off of the sphere depicting the world, he straightened and began working again, his mind running in ever-broadening circles. "Jarvis, would you kindly vacu-form a digital wireframe? I need a manipulatable projection."

As the blue lines of the hologram/scanner ran over the old diorama, Tony looked down at the buildings again and continued upon his line of thinking, double-checking what his old man had been getting at. His math was adding up, but he had to play around with this to find out what, exactly, Howard Stark had discovered.

"1974 Stark Expo model scan complete, sir."

Lifting it and turning to a blank spot in the room, Tony asked, "Uh, how many buildings are there?"

"Am I to include the Belgian waffle stands?"

He was going to have words with his AI later about being polite in certain situations. "It was rhetorical; just show me." He rotated the virtual model so that it was standing straight upwards in the air. "Tell me, what does that look like to you?" He was talking to both AI and his lover, but his eyes were on the hologram before him, focused upon the world. Ironic, and yet quite symbolic. He frowned, seeing Becka moving closer from the corner of his eye. "Not . . . unlike anatomy. In which case, the nucleus would be here."

Whether it was math or science, Rebeckah just didn't get it. They were both unfathomable in the way that they dealt with mostly numbers, and there was only a few moments where intuition combined with knowledge gave a scientist, physicist, engineer or mathematician the end result of their studies and quite possibly giving them the means to find the answer to their theories, or begin an entirely new string of theories altogether.

Needless to say, Becka didn't operate like this. Tony was in his own world right now, thinking and moving faster, looking more like his old self than he had in at least a month.

His mind was going through calculations and theories faster than he could hold onto all of them. He knew that his math was correct, but he didn't know where the theories would bring him. "Highlight the unisphere."

It turned yellow, and he enlarged it before something hit him. His voice went soft, introspective. "Lose the footpaths. Get rid of 'em." He swiped his hand from right to left and they were gone.

"What is it that you're trying to achieve, sir?" Jarvis inquired, his voice sounding calm, but there was a hint of confused concern within its depths.

Tony answered, since he had arrived at the destination of his thought processes just at that point. "I'm discovering . . . correction, rediscovering a new element." Rubbing his face with one hand and straightening his signature goatee absently, he continued to study the hologram. Becka walked closer, not wanting to intrude on his moment, but found that once she was in arm's reach of Stark, he stretched to grab her wrist, tugging her closer. "You help me think better when you're right here."

Smiling, she kissed his temple and murmured, "So think better." Moving to stand with her hands upon his shoulders, staring at the holographic artistry that Jarvis was responsible for, she couldn't help but begin to feel a giddy sense of awe.

Tony's mouth was already moving. "Lose the landscaping, shrubbery, trees . . . parking lots, exits, entrances . . ." With each thing that he had commanded to be gone, he flicked his fingers at the bent light, sending it skittering out of sight and away from them. Licking his lips, he stared at the unisphere, frowning lightly before murmuring, "Structure the protons and neutrons using the pavilions as a framework."

Clasping his hands and then magnifying the sphere, Tony pinched at the bridge of his nose to ward off a headache, resting his hand over his mouth while he stared at the pieces falling together, literally right before his eyes. And once the last light fell into place upon the skin of the sphere, he flung his arms wide, causing the hologram to fill the room in a sphere around them. He felt Rebeckah tightening her grip upon his shoulders as they stared at the wondrous creation that spun slowly with the couple in its exact center.

"Wow," the woman breathed, eyes reflecting the pinpoints of light.

Anthony Edward Stark, son of Howard and Maria Stark, stared at the legacy that his father had left for him to unravel and create. He couldn't believe what his father had discovered, but had left a secret for thirty years and then some for Tony to rediscover in an age where the technology was at a point to do something about it.

Howard had been a very patient man when it came to some forms of technology, and yet . . . "Dead for almost twenty years, and he's still taking me to school. I don't think I ever knew this side of my old man," Tony murmured to himself.

"Maybe because he didn't want you trying to force yourself to create something prematurely."

"Mm." Resting his hands upon Becka's, he took in the sight of an atom that may or may not actually save him. "Just . . . while Jarvis analyzes this . . . can I ask you something?"

"Yes."

"If . . . if this doesn't work . . . can we just escape, go somewhere, and be alone?"

"You mean that in the way that I think you mean that?"

"Look, I'll be honest. The way that the seat of your jeans are filled and how you've been moving has gotten me distracted, and it's partially because of the fact that I may or may not live past tomorrow, and if I don't, I'd like to have at least a solid five hours with you. In that way." Chocolate eyes with fiery molten depths turned up to lock upon the storming eyes of his fiancé, and Tony didn't bother hiding anything from her within his gaze. He was strung tighter than a piano string with tension about the fact that his future was literally hanging by a thread.

But would that thread be made of brittle cotton or would it be titanium?

She was silent for a moment, weighing his words, his options, and then smiled gently, resting her cheek against his forehead, sliding her head down until their cheekbones were resting against one another and her arms were crossed over his chest, as if to hold him together. "Tony, if this doesn't work, and there are no more options, I don't think we'd be able to get farther than the couch over there."

He didn't smile as he brought his hands up, one to rest over where her arms crossed over the arc reactor in his chest, and the other to curl around her other cheek, guiding her closer for a tender kiss. The emotions that he felt both from himself and from her side as she kissed him were almost overwhelming, and he did everything he could not to cry and break into a thousand pieces because of the stress running rampant through him.

Pulling away as tenderly as he could, Tony pinched at his nose before gesturing for the hologram to shrink into something he could look at in his hands, turning it over between his thumb and forefinger thoughtfully.

"The proposed element should serve as a viable replacement for palladium."

Breathing in deeply, feeling tension drop from his shoulders, Tony kept his gaze upon the blue light. "Thanks, Dad."

"Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to synthesize."

Grinning against the side of her man's neck, kissing the corner of his jaw, Becka all but knew the response Jarvis was going to get. "Uh-huh?"

Leaving the hologram hanging in mid-air and spinning to pick his fiancé up and continue spinning her around, kissing her soundly, Tony laughed carelessly for the first time in what felt to be too long. "Damn, so I don't get laid tonight! But!" Lowering his voice and pressing his forehead to the woman's, he murmured intensely, "I get to live to see our children!" Kissing her again, he whispered, "I love you. Thank you for being so patient with me and inspiring me."

Smiling, shaking her head, Becka replied, "You would have done this without me by your side just as well, if not better than, if I was with you."

"You think so?"

"You're the genius; you tell me."

Unable to keep the broad, face-splitting grin from his face, Tony set her down. "Time to get to work again." Kissing her forehead, he murmured, "Go find somewhere to nap, okay? I know that I woke you up earlier."

"We'll see," she replied, resting her nose against his chest and breathing deeply, capturing his scent of expensive cologne and working-under-the-car man that mixed into the most perfect description of just who this man was.

Tony slowly disentangled himself with another kiss, this time much more chaste and controlled than the last few. Knowing that he had to start construction immediately, Tony began moving towards where he stored his tools.

There was a sledgehammer with his name on it and he knew that it was going to feel good to decimate a wall of concrete.

He didn't see Rebeckah watching him walk away, a look upon her face indicative of calculations of a different sort going on within her head. She looked down at her engagement ring, then felt for the necklace that held his MIT ring, the now-familiar surfaces reassuring her. She knew that he held onto the ring she had worn for many long years as a physical indication of her decision to remain chaste until marriage.

She bit the inside of her lip as she continued to debate with herself, watching the man she would marry as he prepared to further demolish the house in the interest of extending his life. It wasn't as if he couldn't afford to rebuild it entirely from scratch, after all.

She wanted him, and she could have him. All she had to do was ask.

But even if she did ask, would he honor her prior decision to not make love with him until they were married, or would he go for the opportunity to sate what had to be an almost intolerable level of lust-laced tension that had built itself up over the past two days?