This chapter really got away from me an is much, much longer than I originally anticipated. I apologize for repeating the same point a bunch of times but for Tony this concept is kind of looped in his head so I think it works. Crying won but I'm definitely going to have something funny where Tony snores later. Thank you everyone for your input!

Not mine, never mine, usual disclaimers

God, why were all the people on the board so stupid. Just by looking at the statistics they should have been able to see that the problem was not in the device itself but the limited options available. It had taken an unbearable amount of time just to convince them of that and then there was the totally unnecessary discussion over what tools, apps, and services should be added now and what should be added later when he could easily be in his workshop creating said things as they spoke. There were reasons he never went to these.

While the meetings had lasted longer than he had initially expected, so far past the mind numbingly boring stuff it was sad, they were not why Tony was late getting home.

As soon as he had stepped out of SI headquarters he had yanked loose his tie, the damn thing always tried to strangle him, and stood on the sidewalk for a moment while he basked in the lack of stupid voices trying to talk his ears off. Minutes before the car that was scheduled to pick him up and take him to his tower drove up the unthinkable happened.

Ms. Potts appeared.

Actually, she didn't so much as appear as turn the corner and nearly run him over, not that a woman of her size could but she did turn the corner pretty fast. The first thing Tony noticed about her was that her hair was shorter, almost like a bob, and that she was in a business suit similar to the ones she used to wear when she was his CEO. So much had changed but, unfortunately, Tony still had the persistent urge to call his ex-everything Pepper. Some things just stuck.

"I'm so so-" The apology was quickly cut off when Potts realized just who it was that she had run into. Her face immediately darkened as she stiffly stood in front of him. Tony couldn't figure out if he was happy to see her or would dearly regret it.

"Sorry?" It was both a sincere apology and a question because it didn't seem as though Potts was willing to continue her statement.

"You should be." Tony was unsure if she meant he should be sorry for running into her or sorry for making her leave him. Which he hadn't. Definitely not his fault for her not accepting who he was and trying to fix what wasn't broken, at least not completely. He was definitely going to regret this little run in.

While Tony's reaction to seeing Ms. Potts again was rather reminiscent, the woman's was more on the explosive side of the spectrum. It was immediately obvious to the genius that Potts was very angry with him, a rather impressive glare forming on her face, and blamed Tony for the run in because that was never a possibility when they were right outside of SI headquarters.

The universe couldn't hate him this much. Right? One person that haunted his nightmares appearing spontaneously was way enough, especially when that person is the injured god of lies, but two was just over kill. Obviously the universe had a personal vendetta against him and was determined to make him drop from exhaustion or angry ex's before the day was up. Hopefully it was the former father than the latter as he had things at the tower that needed tending to. Yes, very dangerous things.

For a minute they just stared at each other. Well, Tony stared at Potts and began to mentally run through a list of things that could be the reason for this encounter or why Potts was so mad while Potts glared at him. Tony came up with a blank. He had been perfectly good these last few months, the model CEO ever since Potts had left, not that she likely cared much about the company if she quit when they broke up. She could have stayed his CEO still but no, she couldn't stand to see his face at all. Maybe she was so angry just from simply seeing him again. It was possible if not probable. It was a sad thought.

Out of nowhere, and coincidentally right when Tony was planning on backing away slowly, Potts broke the tension filled silence but not the tension. That she only made stronger with her abrupt announcement of, "I'm getting married." The "and you are not invited" was silently acknowledged by both people present.

"To whom?" It wasn't that Tony necessarily cared about Potts still, he did care but he would never admit that to anyone, maybe not even himself, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

"Mr. Stone." It was the perfect question to ask apparently as the glare on Potts's, soon to be Mrs. Stone's, face lessened from killing to severely damaging. Potts must really like the guy if just the thought of him could make her glare dial down slightly. Tony had no idea who the guy was, he didn't care or at least told himself he didn't, but he would pretend to if that would mean he could get away quicker.

"Great guy," Tony said vaguely as he wondered where the car he had requested would show up because he wanted to leave yesterday.

"Yes he is," Potts replied quickly. "Much better than you are." The scary thing was how she smiled faintly at her last statement. While the comment was quite common and Tony was used to letting such things bounce off of his metaphorical armor, it stung a little coming from Potts. For so many years she had stood by his side and seen through all of his stupid bullshit. She had been there through the drunkenness before Afghanistan, after Afghanistan, through Stane, through the palladium poisoning, through the Mandarin attacks. The one thing she had never been able to deal with was Iron Man. And Tony was Iron Man, Iron Man was Tony.

Tony wished he could say that they had parted on amicable terms but that would be a lie. Through the weeks that preceded Potts's abrupt departure the inventor had known somewhere in the back of his head that Potts would leave but what he hadn't accounted for was just how she would do it. The scenario Tony had hoped for was Potts calmly saying she was leaving and walking out the door. Potts was a woman of fire and ice so of course it could never happen that way. Tony still wished it had.

Potts couldn't cope with Tony's way of coping with nightmares so she had begun to sleep in a different bed to avoid being woken by his thrashing. As recompense the inventor began to spend more time in the labs than Potts though he needed to building improved versions of the armor Potts thought was gone for good. Tony had known that she would be disappointed in him but his mind needed something to do and he wanted the protection the armor gave. Another Mandarin and no armor would be very bad. Potts would understand and they would be fine. That was a month before she left.

About a week before Potts left him and the company for good she figured out about the armor and spent almost and hour ranting and talking about how he needed to be fixed, that Iron Man was an obsession, how he needed to be less selfish. After explaining that they were only for protection purposes did she quiet down some. It wasn't the armor that broke her but the reactor.

Such a small, powerful device that could revolutionize the world of clean engery or turn into the power source of the next generation of weapons. Tony was rooting for the former and working against the latter. Unknown to Potts he had created the most efficient reactor to date. It was smaller, slimmer, and ran on Vibranium, the element his dad had discovered and he had synthesized, and it fit perfectly in the smaller hole left by the surgery to remove the shrapnel.

Yes, he knew that the arc reactor was no longer needed to keep him alive but it was the suits last ditch effort backup plan, was a comfortable weight that filled the hole in his chest and it was the best nightlight ever. For weeks he had wrapped cloth around the reactor when he was around Potts to extinguish the glow. After she had calmed down about the suits Tony though that it was only logical that he would show her the new reactor. That plan crashed and burned before it even left the ground.

For reasons unknown, Potts took one look at the new reactor and flipped. She claimed that he was holding onto his painful past and the memory of the man that had died for him, cruelty using the memory of Yinsen, a story he had told her in confidence, against him. In his mind, Tony could have done the same thing Potts had done before, make a little memorial of it in a glass case, as a tribute to Yinsen's death but when he pointed that out Potts ignored him. She was CEO, she had to be right, and right then Tony had been really tempted to fire her and the urge only grew stronger when she began to use all that he had told her in confidence against him.

Everything from his childhood to Iron Man to Captain America to his father. She insulted him, goaded him, beat him down and tried in her own way to build him up in a way that fit what she wanted. She left when her way didn't work.

In hindsight she had been too controlling and too anti-Iron Man for anything to ever work between them. She really should have known that when he activated the Clean Slate protocol he wasn't destroying all of the suits, he could never blow up Mark I or Mark II or Mark III because there were too many memories attached to them. Each of them did but those were the first. The first suit, the first improved suit, and the first Iron Man suit with the classic red and gold. Nothing could replace those and he was really lucky they hadn't fallen into the sea with the rest if his house when the Mandarin had attacked. Granted, they were were a little scorched but otherwise perfectly fine.

Despite knowing that they never would have worked as a couple the years before that proved they could work together in some form and even be friends. She was a good CEO and Tony really hated all of the paperwork and meetings included in the job, but she had left that all to him and he was doing great. They were calling him the best CEO Stark Industries has seen, the stocks higher than ever and his PR department happier than ever. He was so busy with his new status as CEO that he caused fewer scenes in public and when he drank he did in the safety of the tower penthouse. Most of the time.

The miracle was how with the insane amounts of paperwork and stupid paper pushers along with being Iron Man and improving his suits made him so exhausted that most nights he didn't dream. It made him think about why he didn't do this sooner and then he remembered. He used to have Pepper and now he doesn't even have Ms. Potts. Soon he will lose one of the few people he used to call friend to some Mr. Stone and will likely never see her again, which might be a good thing considering the glare that had returned full force.

"I am so happy I left when I did because now I have a man that isn't broken, that doesn't pretend to be something he isn't," and then she calmly walked away as if she hadn't just dug up all of the painful memories in Tony's past. Again. Thankfully the engineer was saved by the car pulling up, right on time. Why could they have been early for once?

The ride home was a blur as is the elevator ride to the penthouse and the walk to a bedroom. The same bedroom that Tony and Potts used to share. The same room that Tony had left Loki in but Loki was nowhere in sight. Tony was too wrapped in his own head to remember that he had left the injured god here much less question where said god was, that would be too much to ask even for a genius.

Stane and Potts. Two people that had been the closest to him for the longest. Two people that have hurt him, hated him, and nearly killed him. The list of people he could call friends now was cut in half from what it was before Afghanistan. All that was left was Rhodey, who he rarely saw anymore, and JARVIS, because despite being an AI he had as much of a personality than anyone Tony had ever met.

After what had happened with Stane, Tony had promised himself that it would never happened again. He would never allow himself to be so close to someone that they could hurt him so much if they left. He had refused to add on to the alarmingly short list of friends and had decided to share with the people that he had. The only flesh and blood human left was Rhodey but they had grown apart since Tony no longer made weapons for the military and because his friend was working as War Machine or Iron Patriot as he was now called.

Around Potts he had taken his masks off, the ones that shielded his thoughts and emotions, and shown her the real him underneath with the hopes that the real him was what she had fallen in love with, that she could see through the masks. He could not have been more wrong. She had fallen in love with the masks and wanted to make one of her own design, even if she didn't know it herself, she wanted to fix him but he wasn't truly broken, simply damaged.

This time hurt worse than Stane's betrayal and the older man had pulled out his arc reactor, had tried to have him killed multiple times, and had inadvertently gotten him tortured. The only good things that came out Stane's departure was Iron Man and a better perspective of the world. Pepper had been closer, she had been his crutch in hard times, she had comforted him and acted like she understood and cared. It was clear now that she didn't and it was like a knife of his heart.

Still in his suit from the meetings, Tony lay face down on the bed and resisted the urge to curl up into a ball and cry. Silent tears slid down the inventor's face but he remained still and made as little sound as possible. Pepper had been so sweet and kind and had seemed so perfect but now she had left him for another and was gone for good, taking her warmth and understanding with her. On the up side, now he had fewer friends to worry about leaving him.

The thought brought a watery smile to Tony's face before it quickly fell. He had so few connections to this world. Other than Rhodey and maybe Bruce, if he ever came back, there would be no other human beings that would truly mourn him when he was gone. He had been so close to giving up when he had been dying from palladium poisoning and Potts had brought him back. Now she was gone and Rhodey was rarely around. Tony would bet that if he put the old reactor back in and died of palladium poisoning that there would be no one to stop him in time. More tears traced their watery paths down the brown eyed man's cheeks.

The crushing feeling of loneliness forced a choked sob from Tony, the sound so soft that it was near inaudible. To Tony, it filled up the entire room with his crushed hopes, dreams, and love. He had loved Pepper and now she hated him for being himself. Tony drowned in his thoughts, barely aware of the occasional sob that broke through his facade of silence and even less aware of the door to the bedroom silently opening and closing or the slim figure that made its way over to his bedside.

"Stark. What are you doing in my bed?"

I do realize that the last two chapter ended at the same spot and I think that the next chapter will be from Tony's POV but I might do Loki's because I don't have much of him yet and to get his opinion on Tony crying should be interesting. Maybe I should do Loki's POV... Whichever one is easier to write the day I start the chapter is the one I will do.

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