Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: This chapter concludes the Iron Man plot and introduces us to the plot of my highly edited Iron Man 2. Emotions get a little frayed in this chapter, just letting you know that now. But it'll all work out in the end, I promise!

Chapter title comes from Water Under The Bridge by Adele.

Anyways, as always, I hope you enjoy. Until next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~the black and gold 'verse~

~black and gold~

~chapter 9: water under the bridge~

Beep...beep...beep...

Tony woke up slowly, his mind and entire body feeling sluggish and like he had been through hell. He was aware that he was hooked up to several machines, one of which had to be an oxygen machine because he was pretty sure the itch under his nose was a cannula. A familiar, rough, and weathered hand was holding his left one, rubbing circles into the top of his hand with the pad of his thumb.

Bruce.

Tony's eyes fluttered open.

Sure enough, he saw that his husband was at his bedside, but he wasn't the only one. Dick and Jason were on the other side of his hospital bed and both of them were sleeping: Dick was leaning into his chair, his head tilted back and eyes closed as a line of drool made its way down from his mouth, his arms wrapped around his growing stomach protectively, while Jason had his head rested on his arms on the hospital bed. It couldn't have been a comfortable position even for a fourteen-year-old, but Tony figured that he didn't care.

He was surprised to realize that he was wearing his glasses. The Mark One and escaping from the Ten Rings aside, he'd worn contacts the three times in total he'd gone out in the Mark Two and the Mark Three. The doctors must've taken out the contacts, and since he couldn't move all that much because of all of the machines he was hooked up to, Bruce must've decided to go ahead and put his glasses on for him.

His perfect husband quickly noticed that he was awake. He smiled weakly. "Tony."

"Alpha," Tony returned. His eyes slowly took in the rest of his surroundings. He quickly noticed that the room didn't look like any hospital room he'd ever seen before. "Where the hell are we?"

"A SHIELD facility in upstate New York," Bruce explained patiently, adding on, "Agent Coulson's doing. We didn't need the press to know that you were hospitalized. They'd connect the dots between everything that happened yesterday too easily."

That...made sense.

The events of yesterday came back to him as Tony smacked his lips together, his mouth tasting like cotton. "Is Obadiah – ?"

"He's dead," Bruce confirmed.

Tony closed his eyes. He wouldn't say that he was happy or relieved at the news, because like Howard, he was grieving over the person that Obadiah could've been because that was what happened when you spent a lot of time with someone you thought you'd been able to mostly trust for six years, even though it felt like ants were crawling on his skin from what Obadiah had almost done yesterday after he'd paralyzed him.

"I'm sorry," Tony whispered. "He came to the house yesterday...JARVIS said he was able to make a backdoor in his program, how I don't know, but..."

Bruce squeezed his hand. "It's okay."

The omega continued on anyways. "He used that one device I made with the high-frequency to paralyze me...took out the arc reactor..." He shuddered at the reminder of what had come after that, glancing down at his chest through the hospital gown that he was wearing. The old arc reactor was still there; he didn't know how the SHIELD people had fixed it, but they must've. In the process, however, he also saw the rest of his torso, and the one crucial question that his brain hadn't remembered to form yet instantly came to him. His eyes widened. "Is the – ?"

He cut himself off from saying the word at the last second, cognizant of the fact that Dick and Jason were here, sleeping or not, and they didn't know about him being pregnant.

...At least, he'd thought that they were asleep and didn't know about him being pregnant.

But he was shown to be wrong on both of those accounts when Jason groaned, lifting his head from his arms to look at him with his sea glass eyes. "Are you worried about your baby?" he asked sleepily. "The doctor told Bruce that they're fine."

Tony blinked. He stared at his second eldest son as his eldest opened his eyes and wiped the saliva off of his face. "Wha' – ?" he began to ask. Then he saw that Tony was awake. "Oh. You're up finally."

"You know that I'm pregnant?" Tony inquired softly. He didn't know whether to be relieved that he hadn't had to tell them himself, although he would most assuredly have to tell them how it had happened as they were old enough to be told about most of it, or heartbroken. His heart felt like it was breaking into a million pieces regardless.

Bruce looked over at Dick and Jason. "The doctor came in to tell me the news about you and the baby while they were in the room without realizing they didn't know about them," he began evasively.

Jason snorted. Dick, meanwhile, admitted sheepishly, "We were beginning to wonder if something was up with you. Your scent's already beginning to change, Tony."

...Oh. Well, he was going to be six weeks this week. That also made sense.

Jason bit his lip nervously. "It's...it's not Bruce's, is it? It happened while you were in Afghanistan."

Both Bruce and Tony tensed. And of course, that was all the answer the other two omegas needed.

Their scents quickly became stressed. Tony reached out to grab Dick's hand and made the motions for Jason to scoot over so he could grab his, too. "I know what you're thinking. It's okay, it wasn't like that. If it was, I – we wouldn't be keeping it," he assured them softly. "I wasn't raped."

Dick's lips thinned. "Then what was it like? Because you wouldn't – " his dark blue eyes darted between his parents " – you wouldn't – "

Bruce's hands clenched into fists. "He didn't cheat on me, Dick. That wasn't infidelity."

"I did what I had to do in order to survive and get back home to you guys," Tony agreed. "It's a long story, but that's basically the gist of it."

"Oh, come on," Jason complained. "You can't just say something like that and not tell us more, especially when you weren't supposed to be able to get pregnant again in the first place!"

Bruce abruptly looked like he wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Jason."

But Tony could understand where their son was coming from. "It's okay," he repeated. "And you're right, Jason, my tubes were tied. But..."

He was most of the way through the story by the time that the doctor came into the room; why they hadn't before then, he didn't have a clue. The doctor briefly had Dick and Jason go outside so that he could perform a physical examination on Tony and talk with him and Bruce about the extent of his injuries, of which there were a lot. Although he'd managed to avoid miscarrying the baby, he had also managed in cracking several of his ribs, getting internal bleeding from the newer arc reactor being removed and the older one's power flickering, receiving bruises to his lungs that had necessitated the oxygen along with the internal bleeding, and having a minor fracture to his left radius.

Key word for all of these things: "had."

The doctor couldn't explain it, didn't know how, but somehow, all of Tony's injuries had become a lot better than when he'd arrived at the SHIELD facility and been initially treated yesterday. It was like two weeks had passed in the span of hours in terms of his healing.

He didn't see the look that Bruce sent Tony's way because of it, not that he would've understood it even if he had.

Tony swallowed. He knew that the baby in his womb was...special, Anahita had thoroughly debriefed him on that, but she'd said nothing about their quirks affecting his body as well...

The doctor told him that, because he no longer needed oxygen because of his injuries, he could be discharged today. But he added along with it a warning: "We also did some bloodwork while we had you, Dr. Stark. And while mostly everything seems to be in order, I must inform you that I'm not sure what the long-term effects of the arc reactor inside your chest will be. We've already been able to detect evidence of neutron bombardment in your blood."

Bruce was a genius, but he wasn't an expert in this particular field. Tony doubted any other doctor that wasn't part of SHIELD would be either, to his alpha's defense. "In layman's terms?" he asked for clarification.

Tony already knew.

It was taking everything in his power to not have too strong of a reaction to the news.

The doctor looked over at Bruce. "Neutron bombardment of palladium can lead to the production of a radioactive isotope of the element. With enough exposure to the radioactivity, it can be..." He trailed off as Bruce's form became very, very rigid. He cleared his throat. "We've only detected very trace amounts of evidence, not incredibly dangerous yet. Given your current condition, Dr. Stark, I cannot advise for you to undergo major chest surgery to remove the shrapnel as well as your arc reactor, and as long as you don't use the arc reactor for the purposes that you have been, you should be fine, but once you recover from giving birth..."

Tony shuddered in a breath. "I understand."

The doctor – who had never introduced himself, hence why he was still being referred to as such – nodded. "Good. I will go and get the discharge papers ready for you."

He and Bruce didn't get a chance to talk about that particular revelation. As soon as the doctor had left, before Dick and Jason could've even gotten a chance to pop back in, a very familiar agent walked in through the door. "Dr. Stark, I hear that you're being discharged already. That's at least a few days earlier than what I was expecting."

There was no way that the doctor could have told Coulson that in the brief, few seconds that had passed. Tony narrowed his eyes, looking around the room for any cameras. "Are you people watching me while I'm in the hospital? Don't I get any semblance of privacy?" He knew he sounded a lot like Jason with that, but he didn't care.

"No, there aren't any cameras in here, rest assured. I simply have my way of knowing things," Coulson said. He walked over to the hospital bed and plucked the TV remote off of it, before turning the TV in the room on to the news. Rhodey was on the screen, being covered, much to Tony's surprise. Judging by the headline, his best friend was giving some sort of statement on the behalf of Stark Industries. Understandable, considering that one of its two highest executives was now dead and the other had been injured.

But Tony additionally had to snort at something in the headline, despite the news he and Bruce had just been told. "'Iron Man?'" he quoted. "They're calling me Iron Man? I mean, that's kind of catchy. It's got a nice ring to it. But it's not accurate. The suit's made out of a gold-titanium alloy, but it's kind of evocative – the imagery, anyways."

Coulson looked like he was hiding a smile. Impressive. He'd actually gotten Mr. Agent to do one of those, and his bureaucratic bullshit ones didn't count. "Your friend, Colonel Rhodes, is telling the press that is the same thing on this paper – " he handed said piece of paper to Tony " – among other things. It's your alibi for yesterday."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "You mean nobody saw that I was – " he waved his hands towards the TV " – yesterday?"

That was good news. While being in the suit was exhilarating, the press knowing that he'd basically killed Obadiah and stopped the not-Ten Rings in Gulmira was not what his family needed right now...especially right now.

"No. After your kids came home from school or the doctor's for an assessment of mono, in the case of Mr. Grayson, you and your husband had a dinner party at your home with your family friends, the Gordons, Selina Kyle and her son, Elizabeth Dawes, and a few others. All of them have given sworn statements."

"That's not...flimsy, or anything?"

"This isn't my first rodeo, Dr. Stark," Coulson said. "Just stick to the official statement, and soon, this will all be behind you."

Bruce cleared his throat. "Thank you for your help, Agent Coulson. Throughout all of this."

The beta man shook his head. "That's what we do. Don't worry about it."

He and Bruce still didn't get a chance to talk about the obvious until that night, after they got back home.

Tony changed into the clothes that Bruce had brought with him, Dick, and Jason to the SHIELD facility, and then the two younger omegas came back into the room and demanded that he finish bringing them up to pace. He had just finished everything that they needed to know by the time that the doctor came back, a small stack of papers in his hands. He didn't go over the directions – not that there was probably much for him to go over – just handed the papers to Bruce, who made sure to not let their sons see the contents of. It didn't escape Tony's notice how he was holding onto the papers so tightly, the skin of his knuckles had practically turned to the same color as white beneath his flesh.

At home, they avoided the topic before the kids had been put to bed so that they could put on a show that everything was alright for them. "Omi!" they all cried out when he walked through the door, bombarding him with hugs just as they had when he'd first come back from Afghanistan.

Tony appreciated it; he appreciated every single second that he could get with his kids. "Hi, babies," he said.

"Are you alright?" Peter asked him, his doe brown eyes wide.

"Yes, I'm alright."

"I was so scared!" Bea wailed. "I woke up after you left yester – yesterday, and you weren't home!"

Tony felt so bad. He'd left her and the twins home with Alfred after Alfred had discovered him in the lab with the arc reactor torn out of his chest. Yes, it had been necessary, because Obadiah would've killed Pepper and who knew how many more people otherwise, but still. "I'm sorry, carina," he apologized. "I didn't mean to scare you."

But once the kids were put to bed, and once Tony had replaced the palladium core that SHIELD had put in his arc reactor with one of his own, just to make sure that it did its job, they couldn't put off the inevitable any longer. As Tony stood in front of the mirror in their room, surveying the bumps and bruises that were still healing at a far faster rate than they should've, Bruce came up behind him. Their eyes locked through their reflections.

And then his alpha said the four simple words that were the only conclusion to what the doctor had told them earlier:

"You're going to die."

"Everybody dies someday," Tony said flippantly.

For the first time ever in the face of his defiant sarcasm, even after all of their other arguments, as few as they were, even after their most recent one over the suit, Bruce got angry – right and properly angry. It flashed in his eyes. "Don't do that," he warned. "I know you use sarcasm as your defense mechanism, Tony, but don't use it now, please. Not after what the doctor told us today. You're going to die. Not today, not tomorrow, probably not even after that baby is born, but the radiation...you're going to get cancer, if radiation sickness doesn't get to you first. Aren't you scared by that?"

Something snapped inside Tony, hearing that. He turned around, glaring. "Of course I'm scared!" he said. His voice probably wasn't as quiet as it should've been, even with their soundproofed walls, but right in the moment he couldn't give less of a shit. "Bruce, I'm fucking terrified! I've been terrified ever since that shrapnel got embedded in my chest back in Afghanistan! I thought I was going to die! Then I thought I was going to die in the cave I don't know how many times! Then again yesterday after Obadiah ripped the arc reactor out of my chest and during our fight! And I was terrified then, too, when I was paralyzed, about what he was going to do to me while he had me at his mercy, and what he was going to do to Pepper, to you, to our children, and to the rest of our family! Not to mention, I've been scared shitless about whatever it is that you've been keeping from me!" His chest was heaving by the time that he was finished. It occurred to him that he probably looked like a crazy person then.

Bruce's face went through so many emotions it was hard for even Tony to place them all. But the one that stood out in the end was shock – a guilty sort of shock. "I haven't been keeping anything from you."

Tony snorted, shaking his head, diverting his gaze. "Yes, you have. You have been ever since I got back from Afghanistan – whatever it is, I know it's about what happened while I was there. And, look: in theory, while I know that we don't keep secrets from each other, I maybe wouldn't mind it so much. But what is so important about what happened when I was gone that you don't think you can tell me it? Are you trying to protect me from it, whatever it is? Or do you not think you can – "

"Stop changing the subject!" Bruce interjected, his voice bordering on a growl. And combined with how vulnerable his eyes were, though his face was hard and didn't show it...

Tony wasn't going to argue with him.

But it did terrify him even more:

What had happened while he was gone in Afghanistan?

"Fine." Tony crossed his arms. "But I don't know what it is that you want me to do! I can't just create a cure to cancer, Bruce! That's not my area of expertise! I can hire people who might be able to do that, but – "

"You could lower your exposure to the neutron bombardment as soon as possible to keep its effects minimal."

He knew as soon as the words had left Bruce's mouth that his husband hadn't actually meant to say them. Bruce himself looked aghast, horror constricting on his face. He'd thought it, but he hadn't meant to say it.

But just the fact that he'd thought it, even in the heat of the moment...

. . .

. . .

The muscles in Tony's jaw locked. "Are you suggesting that I get an abortion?" he asked quietly.

He did not get an answer to his question.

That just infuriated him even more.

At least if Bruce had admitted to it, that would've been an honest answer. But this, this attempt at evasion...

Yes, Tony realized now that they still hadn't gotten around to talking about what him being pregnant with Anahita's child really meant for them and their family. Yes, he recognized that it had to be an unfair strain on his husband for him to come back home from Afghanistan knocked up by another person, and it wasn't a result of rape, it was consensual as consensual could be when you had to do what was necessary in order to survive. He knew that Bruce knew that; his husband had defended him earlier when Dick had insinuated that he'd cheated. Yes, he understood that Bruce had reached his breaking point now, that the suggestion he get an abortion did not come from the heart, it was just him desperate to not lose yet another person in his life after he'd lost his parents and Harvey and Rachel, his childhood friends.

However, Tony couldn't see his side right now, much less forgive him. He was so angry right now, he was practically seeing red.

"Before we got married, after you helped me through that first heat and you showed me our betrothal contract for the first time, you told me, 'Whatever you want, Tony. It's yours. I'll let you have it,'" Tony quoted, his voice just as quiet as when he had asked his question. His arms were no longer crossed; they were down by his sides, though his hands weren't clenched into fists. He felt as robotic as DUM-E, Butterfingers, and U. "Now, I know marriage is all about compromise. We've done a fair bit of compromise in the almost eleven years we've been married, I would say, wouldn't you?

"But the one thing that you've never, never, asked me to compromise on is my own body. When I said that abortion wasn't an option with Peter, you didn't question me on it. When you agreed with Dr. Maxwell that I needed to have my tubes tied after Edward and Gemma were born, because I know that you did, you didn't say anything about it, because you respected me and you knew that I would make the right decision over my body. My body, my choice."

Bruce's expression was beyond pained. It was absolutely devastated. "Tony – "

"Let me finish," he said over him, calmly. Calm just like the eye of the hurricane. "I can't get rid of this baby, Bruce. I thought I could before I found out that Anahita was the last of her kind when she was dying, meaning that the last of her kind is really our child. If you've decided now that that's a dealbreaker for you, that no matter how much we love each other this isn't going to work because keeping the arc reactor in me means that I might die of cancer one day, fine. I understand. But you do not have the right to say what I should do with my own body because of that.

"Now, I think we're both too emotionally charged to continue this discussion tonight, so I'm going to take my main pillow and go sleep in one of the spare bedrooms. We can talk about this more in the morning, if you want. Maybe you can finally tell me what it is you've been hiding from me for the past month. But we're not continuing this conversation until then."

This had never happened before. Neither one of them had ever kicked out the other or exiled themselves from the bedroom.

Without another word, Tony grabbed his pillow and marched out of the room. He went to the farthest spare bedroom from theirs and threw the pillow on the bed once he'd opened the door, before he'd even walked into the room. Then he did cross over the threshold and closed the door behind him. Locked it, too, though he knew that wasn't fair to any of their kids.

But it was what had to be done, because the second that the door was closed was the second that he fell apart. His hand clamping over his mouth to stifle his sobs, he pressed his back up against the door and let the back of his head crash against it with a smack! Slowly, as he gave in to the desire to cry his heart out, his other arm wrapped around his stomach, he allowed his body to lower until he was sitting on the floor, his legs pulled up to his chest like he was sixteen or younger all over again.

Over two hours later, once he finally pulled himself together, he got up and took a glass out of the ensuite bathroom's mirror cabinet and filled it up with water. He drank the contents of the glass, then filled it up and drank the contents again in order to partially recoup the water in his body he'd lost due to his tears. Then he washed off his face and went back into the bedroom, settling down on the bed. He was so exhausted, sleep quickly overtook him.

When he woke up later that morning (because it had drifted into the next day during all the crying he'd done), he went back to his and Bruce's bedroom to change his clothes. Bruce wasn't there. He was downstairs with the kids, taking care of their breakfast. They didn't talk.

In fact, outside of when they had to, they didn't talk at all for the next several days, and Tony kept on sleeping in that spare bedroom.

A week and a half later, including after a very thorough debriefing with Mr. Agent Phil Coulson at Stark Industries, it was Tony's birthday and his eleventh wedding anniversary with Bruce.

Like with Edward and Gemma's birthday on the 9th, though Tony really would have preferred otherwise because each of his children only turned once after all, it was a small affair. They invited the Potts-Rhodes family, the Gordons, Selina and Felix, and even Dinah and her kids over for a birthday dinner. Surprisingly, albeit it was not for the first time since Dick had become Robin, Dinah agreed to come over – although it was for the first time that she'd brought Tim and Laurel with her. The six-year-old twins looked around the contents of the Glass House with wide eyes, hardly believing what they were seeing.

"It's so big," Tim breathed. "Even bigger than Grandpa Lawrence's place!"

Laurel, who seemed to be much shyer than her brother and had inherited their mother's blonde hair instead of (presumably) their father's black, nodded without speaking.

Then the twins' eyes fell upon Tony.

"You're the Tony Stark!" Tim shrieked, looking like he was just about to die on the spot, which was a rather amusing expression for a six-year-old to have.

Laurel started to giggle quietly.

Their mother, Dinah, sighed. "Remember what we said about being polite, Tim?" she asked her son. "Hello, Tony. I'm sorry. He's your self-proclaimed – "

"Number one fan!" Tim explained, practically bouncing in place.

Tony smiled tiredly. A tired smile was the best he could manage right now, even though it was his twenty-eighth birthday and eleventh wedding anniversary and he knew that he should be happier. "It's alright," he assured Dinah, crouching down in front of the twins. "And you're the Tim Drake, right? I've heard a lot about you."

Tim's wide eyes became even wider, practically becoming the size of saucer plates. He looked from Tony up at his mother. "You have?"

"Of course," Tony said patiently, winking at Dinah when she gave him a confused look. He knew that she didn't talk with Bruce, Selina, Dick, and now Jason all that much about her family due to her desire to keep her vigilante and private lives separate. That was why it was so surprising she'd brought over the twins this time. "You're a very smart kid, from what I hear. You too, Ms. Laurel."

Laurel blushed. "Thank you, Dr. Stark. You're very pretty," she said.

His smile became a bit more genuine. "Why, thank you. You know, Bruce and I have a son who is just the same age as you. Do you want to meet him?" At their exuberant nods, he called him over: "Peter, come over here please!"

Peter was just as shy as Laurel as he approached. Tony knew his fourth (second biological) son had problems making friends at school, just as Tony had even before he'd advanced so many grades and become years younger than his peers. The other kids at St. Philomena's didn't make fun of him, Bruce and Tony had more than made sure of that, but the fact remained that he was an introvert. A loner who preferred the company of his family, including Alfred the cat, than he did people besides them.

"Omi?" Peter asked tentatively.

"Peter, I'd like for you to meet Tim and Laurel. Tim, Laurel, I'd like for you to meet Peter," he introduced them to each other. "Is it okay if they play with you for a bit?"

Peter bit his lip. He leaned in close to his omither and whispered in his ear, "Do I have to?"

Tony almost laughed. As it was, his smile widened as he patted his son on the back. "Just until dinner, okay?" he reasoned. At Peter's nod, he stood back up, and watched with satisfaction as Peter led Tim and Laurel over to the blocks that he'd been playing with alongside Bea until Tony had called him over. To Dinah, the omega said, "Sorry, I hope you don't mind. Peter doesn't make friends easily."

She tentatively smiled back him. "It's alright. My twins unfortunately don't either."

It did seem like Peter and the Drake twins settled into having fun with each other and the four-year-old Bea. Tony didn't really get a chance to watch them, busy talking with the others and gawping at the younger Barbara Gordon when she arrived with her parents. It was the first time he'd seen her since getting back from Afghanistan, because she'd had a soccer game the Saturday they'd celebrated Edward and Gemma's birthday and Jim had taken her there. As for the absence of James, he was in college now. College. It was mind-boggling how the time could pass like that.

"Wow, Barbara, you're getting so tall!"

The younger Barbara flushed, ducking her head. "Thanks, Uncle Tony," she said. Unlike Jason, she hadn't presented yet, but Tony figured it couldn't be too far down the road with how she'd shot up several inches in height over the past three months...

The dinner for the night was one of Tony's favorite meals along with a homemade ice cream cake, prepared by Alfred and Rebecca because Tony had been banned from the kitchen because it was his birthday. Over the past week and a half, the beta man and female alpha had both been watching Bruce and Tony with concern; the kids had too, for that matter. But Tony knew Alfred and Rebecca were especially concerned in the way that only adults could be due to the more that they could notice. Tony was doing his best to ignore said concern.

There weren't a lot of gifts for him to open afterwards, since he was twenty-eight now. Since it was his and Bruce's wedding anniversary alongside his birthday, he did give his husband his anniversary gift at the table while he was opening gifts, because although they were fighting, they were still married and Bruce hadn't told him after Tony had mentioned the neutron bombardment from the arc reactor maybe being a dealbreaker for him that it actually was. Plus, just because they were fighting and not really talking to one another, it didn't mean that they couldn't do nice things for one another.

Tony's gift to Bruce for their anniversary was a watch made of steel and turquoise, the typical gift for an eleventh wedding anniversary. Bruce also gave him his first gift for their anniversary to him, a steel version of the bouquet that Tony had held on their wedding day, the one with the flowers lily of the valley, red roses, marigolds, and Queen Anne's lace. And that alone would've sent the message loud and clear as Tony held the steel bouquet, looking up at Bruce with tears in his eyes.

But it wasn't his alpha's only gift to him.

That night, as Tony brought his things back to their bedroom from the spare one, Bruce walked in and shut the door behind him. "I'm sorry," he began without preamble. "I shouldn't have suggested that you get an abortion."

"No, you shouldn't have," Tony agreed, barely looking up.

He heard Bruce chuckle wearily and dryly. "Can you let me finish?" he said, echoing what Tony had told him during their argument. And now Tony did look up, if uncertainly. "I'm not going to deny that adjusting to you being pregnant with...another person's child hasn't been hard, because it has. I'm not holding it against you for doing what you had to do to survive, because it brought you back to me, but..." His Adam's apple bobbed. "It's been...difficult. More difficult than I've let on."

"I know. To be fair, we should've talked about it before letting our feelings fester like that."

"Yes. But I meant my vows when I said them to you when we got married. I meant them when you told me you were pregnant on the plane coming back from Afghanistan." Bruce crossed the distance between them, coming to a stop when he was only a few inches apart from Tony. He put his hand against Tony's stomach, lowering his head so that he could rest his forehead against the top of Tony's head. "I know and understand why you can't get an abortion with this pregnancy. But I'm scared too, Tony. I'm terrified. I can't lose you again. The two months you were gone, I felt like a ghost. The only reason I was living was to find you and for our kids."

Tony inhaled a breath to say something. What exactly, he wasn't sure of.

"And you're right, something...happened during those two months," Bruce said over him. "I want to tell you what...happened. But...I'm not ready. Not yet."

"Why?" Tony asked. "Is it because – " of me?

"It's not because of you," Bruce responded, saying aloud what he couldn't. His alpha brought two fingers underneath his chin, gently lifting it as he pulled away slightly so they could look each other in the eyes. "It's...because of me. It was my fault. I thought it was a problem that I could handle on my own, and by the time I realized that I couldn't, it was too late."

Tony frowned. He couldn't stop himself from guessing what the problem was. "Did you...did you kill someone? Because I couldn't care about – "

"No, it's not that." Bruce looked like he was on the verge of telling him, in spite of what he'd said, but at the last second, he squeezed his eyes shut. It was quite the unusual reaction from him. "I can't tell you yet. I think I'll be able to by the end of the summer, but in the meantime...I think I need to go off again in order to make sure this problem doesn't happen again. And I found a doctor for you in Malibu that might be able to help with keeping the neutron bombardment from being a problem even with you not getting into the suit again until after the baby is born."

Tony blinked in surprise. "Wait, are you suggesting that the kids and I spend the summer in Malibu while you're off who knows where?"

"Yes," Bruce said. As Tony started to protest the very idea, Bruce once again cut over him, "Even though it's not mine and it could be dangerous for you to have the arc reactor in for that long, I want this baby, Tony. Really, I do. Like I said, it's been an adjustment, but they'll have part of you in them. They'll be different from their siblings, but we'll raise them together. We'll make sure they understand where they came from, that their other biological parent was their themither, but that they're just as much mine as Dick and Jason are not just because they're yours, but because I want them to be that way. But I need to make sure the problem I've been dealing with is taken care of. And I need to make sure you'll be safe too, Omega, now and in the future."

Tony didn't really want to agree with this. It felt like he'd just come back from Afghanistan, just been reunited with his husband, and now Bruce was asking him to spend the summer across the country while again, he went off to who knew where.

But, he and his husband were a team, now and forever. If this was what Bruce thought would be best, despite how him going off on his own to handle this problem when he'd just admitted that he hadn't been to handle it on his own didn't really make sense, he would do it. It wasn't like they hadn't done this once before, after all.

So, he nodded. "Alright. But I expect an explanation for all of this by the end of the summer."

Bruce chuckled again. "I know, Tony. I know. I'll give you one then, I promise."

Word Count: 6,135

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