Their fight had damaged more things than Bruce wanted to think about. Tony started going out every night and came back too drunk to function, crashing on the first available surface that he stumbled into. He had almost totally stopped working in the lab and would only talk to Bruce when prompted directly.

Bruce had screwed everything up and unfortunately this was not a new feeling for him. He had really hoped this time it wouldn't happen. Bruce liked Tony a lot. Under all his bravado Tony truly did care for everyone he was connected to, maybe too much. Tony had trusted him and believed that Bruce could find a way around this disaster. Lucky for Tony he wasn't giving up and rolling over just yet; Bruce refused to let down another person that he wanted to protect. There had to be something he was too blind to see, something he had overlooked.

With his mind lost deep in research and notes on the arc reactor, Bruce was surprised when Jarvis spoke up, informing him of an incoming phone call. It was Pepper calling to ask if Bruce knew were Tony was. She seemed stressed, busy and overwhelmed. He would be too if he were trying to run Stark Industries.

"I haven't seen him in a while. He hasn't been coming down to the lab much, sorry." Bruce said. There was a worried silence on the other end of the line.

"I wish I could get ahold of him to talk. He seems more erratic than usual, but everyone's playing fifty-two card pick-up with Tony gone and I just have no time." Bruce heard a second voice in the background of the call and Pepper quickly replying to it before turning her attention back to him. "I hate to ask you Bruce, but seeing as no one can find Tony, could you pick up some of the old stuff from his office? We really need the space."

"Of course," Bruce responded, shoving all his notes to the side. This, at least, he could help with. "I need a break anyway."

Tony finally returned to the lab late that night, looking like death warmed over. Bruce was starting to wonder if he had been keeping up with the preventative measures Jarvis had put in place that slowed the metal poisoning. Bruce mentioned the boxes he'd retrieved from Tony's old office, that were now sitting on one of his work benches. Tony cast a bleary-eyed glance at them before shuffling past, with a grunt and a dismissive hand motion.

"May I look through them?" Bruce asked.

"Yeah, sure, whatever." Tony sighed, reflexively rubbing at the rash on his neck. Flopping onto the couch in the lab, he curled up into a ball and fell into a restless doze.

The stuff that Bruce picked up looked to be Howard Stark's old work.

The boxes contained old notes and reels of the work that he had done while testing stolen Hydra tec. There was the testimony from the captured red skull scientist. They talked about Johann Schmitt's obsession with this thing called the Tesseract. It was used to power all their most destructive weaponry and was supposedly a massive power source in and of itself. Tony's father, as the lead scientist, had the most hands-on experience working on it and studying it after it was rediscovered near the end of WWII. Howard Stark had done some ground-breaking research in his time, maybe this could be what they were looking for. It was too bad that the original Tesseract was not something they would be able to their hands on. Bruce started to feel like he was really on to something. It wasn't going to be simple or easy to connect these two vastly different objects into one workable reactor small enough to save Tony, but it was certainly a start.

Just then, Tony was seized by ragged coughing and sat up with a groan, clutching his head and looking pale and drained. It was time. Bruce had whipped up the symptom reducer he had known about since the first week they were in lab together, but Tony insisted on waiting to use it. It was a one-shot remedy. Taking multiple shots would make the effects of the poisoning spread faster and each one only lasted for a day or two. Bruce had been saving this for the right time and his instincts told him it was now or never. He walked over and held the injector to Tony's neck.

"I think I found something," He said and pushed down on the trigger. The serum had a little bit of a kick to it and Tony gasped as his body tensed and his hands dropped away from his face. Bruce watched the dark rash disappear back under the collar of Tony's shirt and his brown foggy eyes cleared. Tony looked up in surprise and Bruce could see a glimmer of hope in his now focused eyes.

"Do you know anything about the Tesseract?"

"Sure, some. But that stuff is ancient." He said in a confused tone, relaxing back onto the couch, finally not in pain.

"I know your father worked with it after the war. The boxes I picked up today had a lot of information about it, but there was something missing. The research doesn't seem conclusive. Do you have any more of his notes that we could look through?" Tony had to admit it was an interesting idea for a power source, but trying to using the original Tesseract for their needs raised more questions than it answered in his mind.

They found Howard's additional research material fairly easily and it said a lot of what they already knew. Bruce and Tony scoured through all the information looking for the thing that would tip the scales in their favor. In the midst of all the papers, a blueprint of the first Stark Expo slid out of a dog-eared folder.

"That's odd." Bruce said, holding up the blueprint. Why would that be with the info about the Tesseract? Tony, sitting on the other side of the lab table, saw what appeared to be the outline of an atom exposed as the light shown through the paper, highlighting the most prominent parts.

"Hey, Bruce, do you think the layout of the Stark Expo could be the Tesseract's atomic outline?"

"What?" Bruce said, fumbling a second before he could see what was right in front of him, what they desperately needed, thought of years before either of them had started to explore the world of science. They stared in amazement at the element Howard had envisioned.

"In my father's time, it was not a synthesizable element." Tony said, scanning the outline into Jarvis' databanks. "I wonder if he put this in here for me to find?" The 3-D computer hologram of the new element now slowly rotated in the center of the lab.

Bruce was doing massive amounts of math in his head as he nodded.

"Tony, this just might work. I can't see anything that would interfere with using it in the reactor. It's stable with massive power output and with the right casing I don't think you would even need to change the design of the reactor that much. The only problem would be making the element the right size to fit in your chest piece. That won't be easy."

"Bruce, after all this, I don't see how anything could be too hard for our combined genius."

"We would need a particle accelerator." Bruce said, looking at Tony, feeling more optimistic than he had in a long time.

"I suppose you have one of those just laying around." The first smile since the beginning of all this started crossed Tony's lips.

"No, but we can make one." Tony declared, already running simulations and having Jarvis order up a parts list.

In passing, Bruce wished the research he needed would show up in Howard's work as well.

After quite a bit of grunt work and a lot of incredible science, the particle accelerator was assembled in Tony's basement. Tony redesigned the casing beautifully and the new element emitted the same luminous blue color as the original. Jarvis began a final safety check before the old arc reactor was switched for their new and improved version. They both decided to grab some well-deserved sleep while the tests were running.

Settling into bed, the thrill of finding not only a fix to Tony's problem, but a new element, made it hard for Bruce to fall asleep. The whole experience had been an immense confidence boost; he felt ecstatic, inspired. Screw sleep, he needed to go talk to Betty! He had been avoiding the thing that could save him, just like Tony. Jumping out of bed, he started packing a bag. Sure, he felt reckless and knew he should be more level-headed and well-rested before making this kind of decision, but with Tony finally safe, he just had to do this for himself before life caught up with him again.

Tony had just gotten up from his nap when Jarvis alerted him that the tests were done. Grabbing the last chlorophyll slurry he would ever have to drink, he went down to the lab to share it with Bruce in celebration, seeing as alcohol was off the table. The problem was that he couldn't find Bruce. When he asked Jarvis all he got was a crisp, "Dr. Banner left the building three hours ago."

Had Bruce run off again, leaving Tony for a second time, before he could even thank him? Just as Tony was about to shove the new tec in his chest and don the Ironman suit, consequences be damned, he saw a note attached to his computer screen. It said, "Finally going to see Betty. Hope I can find the answer to my problem too." Good, about time, Tony thought, but was he going to hitchhike his way from Malibu to Virginia? Tony smirked as he slid into his R8 Spyder convertible with the new reactor and his portable Ironman suit.

He was going to pick himself up a science bro.