Tony almost smiled but stopped when Sue walked further into the room. She was slow and sluggish, her feet dragging and the strands that hung out from her low bun swung in front of her face. Tony was ready for another lecture about needing to sleep as his episode from today was a prime example of what Sue was worried about. But he now thought it would be him encouraging Sue to lie down.

'I signed over the company today...' Sue decided to say and leaned against his worktable's edge. 'Over to Aldrich Killian. God, what a creep...'

Tony took the screen off his face and typed on the one JARVIS displayed in the air. Sue kept her stare on the floor while he brought up the face of the man that creeped her to no end. The company 'AIM' sat next to Aldrich's name on the screen and a picture of the handsome, cringeworthy Killian beamed in all his glory.

'Huh...' Tony hummed as his eyes raked over the face. He was sure he recognised it and clicked his fingers once he remembered. 'I know! Switzerland, 1999. New Year's. I hated that conference. There was this big hall, and I apparently gave a riveting speech.'

'I know. I was there.'

Tony whipped his head around and looked to Sue who leaned with a lazy smile on her lips. He was glad to see something other than fatigue on her face. He thought back to the time of his dark period of sleeping with countless women and barely ever being sober. The start of the 2000s was blurry for him, besides some very minor details he didn't know why he remembered.

'Green dress!' he snapped his fingers again and pointed them at Sue. 'I remember that! I remember seeing you. Why am I thinking of the Backstreet Boys?'

'I'm surprised you remember anything from that night,' Sue hummed, her tone all in one note of zero energy. 'I knew the dress stood out too much.'

'You were blonde,' Tony pondered aloud. 'I can see it peeking through again.'

Sue put her hand on the roots that were producing her natural blonde. JARVIS theorised that the radiation that changed her hair colour in the first place was wearing off. Her abilities came from the altering of her DNA, so they would remain, but her hair was a physical effect of her outer characteristics. The same thing was happening to Johnny. They'll soon be blonde again, although it was a trait they got from their father, so she wasn't too enthused by the idea.

'What happened today?'

Tony hoped she wouldn't bother asking. The conversation was going well, and he thought he had gotten out of it. But that proved to be a mistake of assumption on Tony's behalf. Nothing was ever forgotten by Susan Storm.

'Nothing's been the same since New York,' he said plainly. His hands sat on his hips, and he leaned on one foot. The ache behind his eyes proved how exhausted he was and the rush from today had a lasting effect on his chest. The arc reactor powered intensely as the body around it was strained and pulled. The breaths he heaved and the acceleration of his heartbeat from the anxiety attack would stay with him for a while.

'You experience things and then they're over and you still can't explain 'em,' Tony talked and Sue listened to every word. 'Gods, aliens, other dimensions. I.. I'm just a man in a can. The only reason I haven't cracked up is because you're around. I'm lucky... but I can't sleep. You leave, I come down here. I do what I know, I tinker.'

This was more than Sue had ever gotten out of him. Tony Stark was expressing his feelings and down moments. But she couldn't relish in it like she thought she could. Tony's eyes watered and he threw his gaze down so she wouldn't see, but she caught it. His foot tapped nervously on the floor, and he hated the feeling of being vulnerable. He felt exposed, just like a nerve, as Bruce Banner expressed on the SHEILD helicarrier.

'But threat is imminent, and I have to protect the one thing that I can't live without. That's you and...'

Sue saw Tony look to the suits that sat in display cases on the other side of the room. She knew he wanted to add them to the mix of things he couldn't live without. She didn't mind. This was more than she had ever hoped to come out of Tony. The sound of his voice saying he couldn't live without her made her forget about the events of the day.

'Stay here tonight. Don't go home this time,' he said as he looked up. His eyes locked on hers and she felt his pain. 'I'll sleep if you're here.'

She walked towards him and encircled her arms around his shoulders. He lowered down to press his nose into her hair, smelling the cucumber shampoo that he had noticed the first time they met. His forearms locked around her middle and he felt safe. It was like being in his own mother's arms. He was a little boy again who was afraid that his father would never truly love him. But there they were, two women he has and will always love.

Sue leaned the side of her head against his, letting her fingers circle on the nape of his neck. Tony let out a muffled sigh into her shoulder and she felt the heat from his breath on her skin. The hard metal of the reactor in his chest dug into her abdomen, her short height requiring her to stand on her tippytoes to embrace Tony. But she didn't care and let him hold her as if she would slip away.

Sue was surprised that Tony went to sleep beside her. They laid in his king-sized bed that was against the back wall of his large bedroom. Shutters sat over the floor-to-ceiling windows to shut out the sun that rose over the horizon in the early morning. The sheets were a light orange and Sue never felt more relaxed on such a soft yet firm mattress.

It was about one in the morning when her sleep was disturbed. Ruffles of the sheets and jerks of the bedframe made her eyelids peel open and turn over. Tony shifted in his sleep and let out grunts and gasps as he gripped the pillow in his fists. Sue sat up and put her hand on his shoulder, feeling how tense his muscles were. She saw his sleeping face curl into fear, and she hated to hear his whimpers.

'Tony, hey, Tony,' she soothed, and the sound of her voice made him stop. His gasps stopped and he let out a loud sigh, his expression relaxing. The pillow sunk as his head fell further into its hold and he was peaceful for the first time in the night.

Sue got out of bed and decided to head into the kitchen for some water. She practiced her light-footing and made it out of the room without disturbing Tony. There was no question that he had nightmares nearly every time he closed his eyes, so she didn't want to wake him up when he finally rested normally.

The kitchen was dark besides the light that JARVIS kept on above the oven. She grabbed a glass and filled it with the water from the dispenser built into the fridge. JARVIS greeted her quietly and she hummed back, still in the haze of sleep. She faced the living room and drank from the glass, relishing in the silence of the house.

Her own house was usually filled with the mumbles of the TV during the night. Johnny liked to fall asleep on the sofa and leave whatever show that played during the late hours running. The house was always filled with some sort of noise ever since Johnny's return, so Tony's big, quiet, dark house was a fresh change.

The silence was broken from the unmistakable sound of Iron Man powering up that came from her left. She saw the rectangular eyes that lit up through the dark and the white of the arc reactor in its chest glowed in warning. It took her a moment to realise what she was looking at through the dark, but when the ring of the repulsor rang and the light on its hand powered up, Sue barely had time to react.

The Mark 42 fired its repulsor at what it thought was an intruder. Sue held her palms up and blocked the shot, the power colliding with a forcefield. The room lit up from the spark that dissolved against the barrier and Sue took steps backwards as the suit stalked towards her.

'JARVIS! Shut it down! Shut down the suit!' she cried out. Mark 42 kept its arm raised as it fired its repulsors, its boots thudding against the tiles as it walked.

'I'm afraid I have no control, ma'am,' JARVIS said through the house. 'Only the micro-repeater implants can control it. I'm working on breaking into its system now.'

Sue cursed as she held up the forcefield. The suit held its repulsor against the barrier and fired, cracking through and dissolving the shimmering blue. It swung its arm and attempted to plant its fist into Sue's face, but she ducked and slipped under its eyelevel. The mask of Iron Man looked down and followed her as she slipped behind it. She attempted invisibility, but the tank top and cotton shorts stood lonesome in the air. She didn't think she would ever need to use the aspect of her abilities, so she never asked for unstable molecule-based pajamas.

'Tony!' she yelled through the house. The suit pulled back its elbow and collided its fist with Sue's sphere she formed in her hand.

'Tony! Wake up!'

The commotion of repulsors firing through walls and Sue's loud calls made Tony stumble out of his bedroom. He was halfway through another nightmare when he heard the crashes and bangs that came from the kitchen. When he appeared from the bedroom, the scene that was playing out in the kitchen was like from his nightmares.