Epilogue: "Loki."

The papers blamed his hard and fast living. For years to come, he would be used as a warning to the dangers of alcohol and too much time and money, and even the burden of genius. In contrast, he would be exalted and praised as an example of living life to the fullest, alongside such legends as James Dean, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin. Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse, and all that.

And just like those revered stars, he had had his demons.

The only one who knew the truth would never tell a soul, not for as long as she lived. He didn't think she knew; he thought he fooled her along with everyone else with his witty humor and self-deprecating jokes. But she knew.

She knew from the beginning—or the end, really; the end of their relationship, to be exact. When she came back from that vacation she knew right away something was different with him. At first, it was a positive change. He smiled more; he didn't roll his eyes as much when other couples were being romantic in public. But then the smile started to fade. And something began to haunt him, to torment him; she saw it in his eyes.

When he ended the relationship, because of her insistent pushing to know what was wrong with him, she realized in hindsight now, it turned out not to be the worst thing that could have ever happened to her. If he hadn't, if he had pretended to still want her and spend years denying the truth, she wouldn't have the life she had with a man she loved—a man who had always been there but she never noticed.

As he deteriorated from the inside out, she took control of everything: her life, the company, her heart. Still, as his friend it hurt her to watch him sink further and further into the pits of what she eventually figured out was heartbreak.

She was shocked at first, of course. Who wouldn't be? She was shocked because he actually fell in love. That it was with another man meant nothing to her. She knew of his past.

If she had gone to him, tried to talk to him about it, he probably would've been proud that she figured it out on her own. Well, with a tiny bit of help from Google.

Her curiosity was piqued when, after months had passed, she still had to physically pull him from the bed every morning, and discovered him sleeping with a book in his arms. At first she simply brushed it off. He was a scientist, a scholar, a genius; it wasn't that far-fetched of an idea for him to fall asleep reading a book. It was more far-fetched that he slept. But one morning, as he dragged himself into the shower and she went about making the bed, she found the book among the sheets, opened to the middle of it. The first thing that struck her was how beautiful the penmanship was—and that it was hand-written. How many books were hand-written?

She had gasped loudly as her cornflower blue eyes skimmed the text, but shoved it closed and set it aside as he had called out for her from the bathroom. Over time, she did her best to sneak more peeks into what was clearly a journal. Her questions—why did he have this? What led to this circumstance? What the actual fuck happened?!—were all answered in the last brief paragraph. She had looked up the stories on the Internet, to understand why he wrote it, and in her search found a photo of a piece of armor that looked alarmingly similar to the design on the spine of the journal.

It had all come together now. She knew what was wrong with him, but still she did nothing. She knew him too well; he would lash out at her, for invading his privacy, for butting in—for embarrassing him, though he would never admit that. And she sat by as his grief continued to overwhelm him and, inevitably, consume him.

It was she who found him that morning. It was a beautiful summer day, warm but not overbearingly so, and the city was just coming back to life after an exciting 4th of July weekend—a holiday that he didn't seem to enjoy that year. A year after everything had happened. He had shut himself away since before she left to celebrate with Happy, Natasha, Clint, and Steve and a new friend of his. It was the first day back and she felt refreshed and invigorated; she was high on being in love again.

But it all came crashing down when she stepped foot in that bedroom. The air was stale, like no one had cracked a window in months. The lump in the bed hadn't moved, even as she cheerily talked, crossing the room, and getting his clothes ready, like she always did now that he seemed incapable of doing it himself.

She screamed when she shook him and his body stiffly rolled onto its back. His eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted, as if in the middle of speaking. But his skin had gone gray; dark purple circles had formed around his eyes, and bracketed his nose and mouth like two pairs of morbid parenthesis. And one arm was stretched out, reaching she thought, for his phone, and clutched the journal with his other.

She had called for Jarvis but he didn't respond, so she used her to call for security. There was no use trying any life-saving maneuvers. She could tell he had been gone for at least a day or two. And he had disabled Jarvis before he slipped into unconsciousness, they discovered, effectively taking the A.I. with him.

They checked the footage to get an idea of what happened, and she knew most of those uniformed men probably thought they had just hit the jackpot and were about to watch a video feed of debauchery and hedonism reminiscent of Rome's heyday. But they didn't. All they saw was a sad, broken man in his last moments before the feed gave out.

Because he had no heirs, the company, his estate, everything that belonged to him, was left to her. People were surprised but she wasn't; he never changed his will from when they were together.

Eventually, everyone moved on. Wings of hospitals, parks, and even some science buildings on college campuses across the nation were named in his honor. And she attended every dedication; in time, with her husband, Happy, by her side.

The papers and the blogs said it was his drinking habit that killed him, even speculating that after New York, his habit worsened and he graduated to something stronger, something deadlier.

But Pepper Potts-Hogan knew the truth. Anthony Edward Stark died of a broken heart.

She had watched the video repeatedly for weeks afterward. Something about the way she had found him that dreadful morning made her curious. No one else saw it because no one else knew what to look for.

In those last seconds of his life, Tony was happy again. She saw the faint smile on his lips. He had been doing what he always did; he was reading through Loki's journal. And crying. It was difficult to see, but she knew he was. And in those brief moments before the feed cut, as he breathed in his last few breaths, Tony had reached out, and just barely audible, he spoke his last word: "Loki."