Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I feel like you’re driving me to a court-martial. What did I do?” Tony asked, looking around at the faces of the soldiers in the car with him. The silence was so tense and awkward it could be cut with a knife, and the light undertones of AC/DC emanating from his portable stereo did nothing to drown it out, nor did the ice clicking around in his glass. None of the soldiers responded, instead casting him a nervous side glance. “I feel like you’re gonna pull over and snuff me. What, you’re not allowed to talk? Hey, Forrest!”

“We can talk, sir,” the one seated next to him finally answered him.

“Oh. I see, so it’s personal?” Tony asked. As long as he kept asking questions, they’d keep talking, right? Anything to fend off the awkwardness of the long drive back to the air base.

“No, you intimidate them,” the driver pointed out. She sounded slightly amused, if only slightly.

“Good God, you’re a woman! I honestly, I couldn’t have called that,” Tony quickly said. “I mean, I’d apologize, but isn’t that kinda what we’re going for here? I thought of you as a soldier first.”

“I’m an airman,” She answered back. Finally, some conversation! Weave in some flirting, and maybe he could keep this going.

“You have, actually, excellent bone structure, there.” Well, that sounded ridiculous. He could do better, and he really didn’t want the awkward silence to settle over the car again like a blanket. “I’m kind of having a hard time not looking at you, now. Is that weird?”

That earned a responsive of light chuckles, though it was quickly fading. In a last ditch effort to keep the mood lifted, Tony tried, “Come on, it’s okay! Laugh!”

The soldier in the front turned around in his seat. “Sir, I have a question to ask,” he started. Tony nodded and told him to continue. “Is it true you went twelve for twelve with last year’s Maxim cover models?”

Tony quickly whipped his sunglasses off for effect, then went on to tell him about the whole “twins” situation. Then the soldier next to him - he really should ask them their names, Tony told himself - raised his hand, like a schoolboy waiting for a teacher’s attention. Did he really intimidate them that much? Sometimes he wondered if it would be easier to just be normal, then maybe people wouldn’t treat him like some kind of idol. He was not the type of person somebody should look up to, or at least Tony thought so.

It was soon after that when everything went to shit.

One moment, the soldier up front was struggling to figure out how to work the camera for a picture. Then suddenly there was fire, and the car in front of theirs was in pieces in the air, raining back down to the desert sands around them. There was a beat of stunned silence where Tony didn’t know what to say.

“What’s going on?” He got out, even though it was pretty obvious.

“Contact left!” The driver shouted. She rushed to get out of the car, rifle in hand - but she got less than a step before she fell. Gunshots sounded all around Tony, the ding of bullets ricocheting off the Humvee’s hood ringing in his ears with every impact. The calm atmosphere of just moments ago was now submerged in chaos.

“Jimmy, stay with Stark!” The soldier up front ordered, and the one next to him - Jimmy - put a hand on his shoulder and demanded that he stay down. Tony could only sink lower on the seat, still too dumbfounded to take action himself. The noise of gunfire didn’t cease, and Tony found himself looking back over the seat just in time to see the second soldier get shot down. The windshield cracked as shrapnel bounced off it.

“Son of bitch!” Jimmy cursed, having seen his comrade go down. He readied his own gun, prepared to enter the fray on his own.

“Wait wait wait, give me a gun!” Tony called frantically, arm outstretched towards Jimmy as though the action alone could stop him from leaving the car just a little longer.

Jimmy turned back to him, barking an order from behind the closed door. “Stay here!” Then he turned around, and was shot down far too quickly by the barrage of enemy bullets. The explosion of metal was too close to the car - it came through the vehicle's too-thin walls, leaving Tony’s ears ringing as sunlight filtered in through the holes left behind.

There was another loud explosion, and the sound of flying missiles joined the echoing gunshots. Tony’s heart was beating nearly in time with the guns themselves - he could hear the beats in his head behind the ringing in his ears. He had to get out of the car, he had to find Rhodey. Make sure his friend was okay. They had to get away.

A rifle was laying on the ground when he left the car, and he rushed to pick it up, ducking his head as the sound of gunshots grew slightly louder. Bursts of fire and smoke filled the air, sprays of sand blew in the wind as stray bullets missed their mark, and the distant shouts of soldiers taking cover behind the next car drifted to him on the wind. Tony snatched the gun from the ground, taking cover behind the hood of the car and resting his finger on the trigger.

But when he tried to shoot, no bullets flew. It was empty. Tony cursed and threw the weapon to the ground, pressing his back against the car. How was he supposed to help if there weren’t any weapons he could use within reach?

Surely not his powers.

No. Despite promising Elios he would train himself, and even being able to control them better, Tony still despised actually using them. They were still much too volatile, and in a situation such as this, with explosions and gunfire and smoke all around him, and his heart beating so fast it felt like it might burst from his chest… Not a chance in hell he would even attempt it.

It was more likely he would accidentally awaken that dark thing inside him, anyway. It was writhing, but not yet awake - and he’d like to keep it from getting to that point.

Tony heard a familiar voice past the gunfire. Rhodey, shouting something to the troops. He turned his head to see him manning the .50 caliber turret on top of the Humvee, firing into the dust as bullets whizzed past him, just out of reach.

“Rhodey!” he called out. His friend looked to him, though, how he’d heard him over the cacophony of the firing, Tony didn’t know.

“Stay down, To-” Rhodey shouted back, but was cut off when a missile landed and went off in the dirt next to the vehicle. Tony’s heart nearly stopped - but Rhodey’s head popped back up from the cover of the inside of the car, unharmed as far as he could tell.

“Rhodey!”

“Get down!” he shouted again, then went back to focusing his attention on his attack. Tony waited, just to make sure he wouldn’t be shot the moment he turned away or blinked.

He saw the missile before Rhodey did.

It soared through the air, almost in slow motion just to make sure he watched. It made contact, just barely scraping the car’s left headlight. But it was enough - the shell burst, and all Tony could see was fire and smoke.

“No!” Tony screamed. He couldn’t let this happen, he couldn’t let his friend be taken from him like this, it wasn’t fair and Rhodey didn’t deserve to die like this and-

Tony didn’t think about what he was doing. His eyes flashed gold, and he reached, reached, reached towards the flames. He smothered them without ever touching them, snuffed the source out like a candle. The smoke cleared a moment later, and the brilliant gold of his eyes was lost to the dust.

Rhodey was okay.

Tony breathed a sigh of relief as his friend came back into sight. But he had to get away, to find some better cover than an already damaged car so that he could focus on calling for help - because there was no way they’d get out of this alive without backup. Tony ran, using the smoke as cover as he found a large boulder. He sunk to ground behind it and pulled out his phone.

A missile landed in the sand, less than a meter from his face.

And it had his name on it.

It was all he could do to push the flames away as it burst, to keep from being eaten up by the heat.

He laid on his back on the ground, winded and struggling for breath. The sounds of battle in his ears was muddy, and something was itchy on his chest. Or, was that an itch?

Everything came back at once - his breath, his hearing, and worst of all was the pain. It ripped across his chest in waves with each shuddering breath he took. When he looked down, he saw crimson bleeding through his shirt. Tony struggled to pull the shirt open, to see the wounds. But the vest underneath, he’d forgotten about the bulletproof vest. It was stained with his own blood. This couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t…

The sunlight shining down on him from above grew dark.

When Tony opened his eyes again, he was seated in a chair and blindfolded, his arms stretched behind him and bound with rope. A wave of panic crashed into him. Blindfolds and rope meant he was captured. He wasn’t dead; that wouldn’t have been so bad. But being trapped in the desert, in the unfriendly hands of the enemy - worse. A thousand times worse.

Suddenly the cloth over his eyes was torn away, and Tony had to squint against the blinding light. Somebody started speaking, in a language unfamiliar to Tony’s ears. He couldn’t understand the words themselves, but they sounded demanding, harsh. As his eyes adjusted, he found a camera pointed directly at him. He cast his face down, at the bloody bandages across his aching chest.

Two words stood out from the speech his captors were reciting - Tony Stark.

This was no accident, that they only took him captive. He turned his head up, gaze staring directly in the dark lens of the camera. Flames danced underneath his skin, eager to lash out, to burn the ropes from his wrists and set the people around him ablaze in glorious red and orange light.

Tony stomped the urge down.

It would do him no good. He didn’t know where he was, how many there were just outside the room they were recording their ransom video in, or how to get himself home. Sure, he could probably take out a dozen men, but it wasn’t like he could stop bullets. Every man around him was armed with an assault rifle; those too with his name on them, just like the missile.

Now just wasn’t the right opportunity. He had to hope a chance would come, a better time than now. Perhaps Rhodey would find him. If he was still alive… Tony shook his head. It would do him no good to worry about the fate of the rest of them now.

The man speaking continued for a while, reciting whatever was written on the parchment he held, until at last he rolled it up and tossed it onto a nearby table. The camera was shut off and put away. Two of the men approached from either side, and Tony braced himself for whatever would come next, be it a bullet in the head or a punch to the jaw or being clubbed with the end of a gun.

Instead of pain, however, the men gripped his biceps and pulled him to his feet. Tony staggered along as they dragged him away, towards a dimly lit room of the cave, closed off by a curtain. With every step, a sharp pain tore through his chest beneath the bandages. It was enough to make him gasp, and wince when one of the men tugged him along faster with an impatient grunt.

The curtain was drawn back, to reveal a room with nothing but a small box and an old metal table that had definitely seen better days. The once blue paint was mostly chipped away, and rust coated the corners. One of the legs was bent, setting the table at an awkward angle and leaving the leg on the opposite corner an inch in the air. A pillow was placed on top of it.

He had little time to react as a needle poked his forearm, but by the time he’d gathered his senses enough to try and back away, the world was spinning. His vision blurred and Tony swayed, only held upright by a firm hand on his shoulder. It directed him to the table and he was made to sit on it, but he couldn’t find it in him to fight the person’s grip. At least the pain in his chest was dulled. Could he sleep now? He somehow found himself looking up at the rocky ceiling a moment later.

But there wasn’t enough of the drug to really put him under.

Tony thought he saw a man with greying hair and glasses, so unlike any of his captors, enter the room and reach for the box. Blurry shapes of men passed by the table, positioning themselves at the corners. They spoke to the man with the glasses - a garble of unfamiliar sounds. Then, a beat of silence, followed by more speech. But it was words he knew.

Most of it was lost to the effects of the drug, the only words sticking in his mind being, “help you,” and “sorry.” They were forgotten just moments after, pushed to the corners of his muddy mind. Something shiny was held above him, the reflecting light sharp to his eyes. He tilted his head so the shine wasn’t in his face. Whatever it was, it looked silver, like metal. And it was coming closer.

Then the pain returned to his chest, but it was worse, and it wasn’t an ebbing throb like before but rather constant and tugging, the movements precise and deliberate. And it went deeper, deeper than the surface of his skin. The pain became agony. Tony screamed.

The power in his veins took over. It was primal. Instinctual. Another scream tore from Tony’s throat, and a raging fire started eating away the curtain. One of the men positioned at the door yelped, and ran from the room trailing an orange blur. A grunt of pain, and flames clawed at the stone walls of the cave. Another guard disappeared in a bright flash. More shrill screams, and the fire coalesced on the ceiling, burning bright and dripping embers.

But the pain did not cease.

Something heavy pushed down on his heart.

Tony’s throat had gone raw by the time he quieted, by the time the fire finally ceased it’s burning.

He died.

Tony gasped awake, the pain still fresh as he sucked in several breaths of air. Above him was the stone ceiling of the cave, and under him was what felt like a lumpy pillow. The air on his face was cold, though his fancy suit had been replaced with something warmer, at least. Rubbing at his nose, Tony found an oxygen tube fed up through it and down into his lungs. Ripping it out, he rubbed at his nose again and looked around.

To his left was a mug of what he hoped was water, perched on the side table just out of easy reach. Extending his arm to try to grasp the mug, his fingers merely pushed it around, still too numb to stretch forward and wrap around the handle. He turned further, intending to attempt to stand.

A man stood with his back to him, casually shaving in front of a small, dirty mirror attached to a post. Tony froze, watching the reflection of his face. He had large, rounded glasses on his face that Tony swore he had seen before, somewhere.

Tony tried to move again, but something tugged on his chest, resulting in another wave of throbbing pain.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Turning onto his back, Tony saw wires. On one end, they hooked up to a car battery - and on the other, they connected to him, disappearing under the bandages on his chest. An icy chill crawled down Tony’s spine. He grasped at a wire and gave it a light tug. The chill grew colder when it did, indeed, result in more pain as the skin of his chest seemed to be pulled with it. Something heavy and hard protruded just underneath the bandages. Tony ripped at the gauze, fingers grasping desperately, desperately, pulling the fabric apart, it had to get out of the way he had to see-

The bandages fell away, and Tony was left gasping for breath at the sight that greeted him.

There, in the center of his chest, was a large and circular chunk of metal, screws and copper wires and all. His skin was pulled back and puckered up around the edges of the metal, still unused to its new shape. Red and raw, his chest was still tinged slightly with his own blood that hadn’t been quite washed off. The device went deep, too deep.

Tony’s heart hurt with every beat.

Tony sat on the cot, holding the small mirror the man had given him to more closely examine the thing in his chest. The car battery sat off to the side. He felt as though he’d been mutilated - the way his skin scrunched up around the metal reminded him of old films with cyborgs who looked more ugly than badass, with too much scar tissue around primitive synthetic replacements. And with how deep the thing went, his sternum had to be half gone at least, several ribs floating and relying only on the pressure exerted on the metal casing to keep from collapsing on his lungs.

He shouldn’t even be alive.

The crackling of the fire and the sound of a spoon in a pan drew his eyes back up to the man. “What the hell did you do to me?” he whispered.

The man looked to him. “What I did? What I did is to save your life. I removed all the shrapnel I could, but there's a lot left, and it's headed into your atrial septum,” he explained, setting down the stirring spoon in the pan and picking up a tiny glass bottle. He shook it in the air, and tings of metal on glass came from within. “Here, want to see? I have a souvenir. Take a look.”

Tony caught the bottle in his hands, turning it over to look at the minuscule pieces. Traces of his blood were still on them, leaving small smears behind on the glass to mix with the dirt coating the groove at the bottom.

“I've seen many wounds like that in my village. We call them the walking dead, because it takes about a week for the barbs to reach the vital organs,” he explained as Tony examined the shrapnel. Something so small, yet so terribly deadly.

“What is this?” Tony asked. There was no need to point to what he meant.

“That is an electromagnet, hooked up to a car battery, and it's keeping the shrapnel from entering your heart.”

Tony zipped the hoodie back up. He didn’t want to look at it, didn’t want to see the horrid intrusion in his body. Then maybe he could pretend he wasn’t being kept alive only by the most crude life support system in the entire world. Maybe he could forget that he could die so, so easily, if only the wire was unplugged.

“May I ask you something?” the man said, sitting down on the cot next to Tony and holding out a bowl of whatever it was he’d prepared. Tony took it.

“About what?”

“Who you are,” he stated, eating a spoonful of the stew. Tony stirred his own food around with his utensil.

“I’m Tony Stark,” he said.

“And my name is Yinsen,” he replied, “But that isn’t what I meant.”

Tony looked to the blinking red light in a corner of the wall. The security camera was the ever vigilant eye; his captors could be watching right now. Yinsen followed his gaze.

“That’s right. Smile,” he remarked, offering him a halfhearted chuckle. “No need to worry, they don’t have an audio system installed.”

Not that it really mattered if they did or not, they’d seen him burn those guards. But could he really tell Yinsen about his powers, about the heritage he’d hidden from the world, from his friends, from even Pepper and Rhodey for his entire life? It wasn’t like he owed anything to him. Tony sighed. Maybe he did owe Yinsen something of an explanation. The man had saved his life, despite everything about his injury making the job nearly impossible.

But could Tony really trust him? What was there to tell him Yinsen wouldn’t betray his trust the moment the opportunity arose?

He took a deep breath. And did something he’d only ever done once before in his life, with Jarvis.

Tony told Yinsen about his powers.

He described the fire running through his veins, the other worlds, the phoenixes and how they protected entire universes. How one of them had died for Tony, because of the demons’ virus that brooded quietly in his soul. Tony told him of the dal’thek and shifting and phasing, and about the prophecies of the Oracles and wisdom of the Elders. He told him how the virus had made him kill - and at such a young age.

The information, the history, it poured from Tony’s heart like a weight being lifted from his shoulders. A lifetime of holding it back finally came tumbling down as the secret was unveiled, even if it was only to one person. He wasn’t hiding anymore. Yinsen had seen all of him, now - the strength, the weakness, the shrouded darkness and the buried light. He’d bared his soul, and it was freeing.

For a moment, just a moment, he wasn’t a prisoner, wasn’t in pain, wasn’t burdened by the weight of living.

“You will keep this between us, won’t you?” Tony asked, no longer afraid to let Yinsen see the pleading and hope in his eyes.

“Of course,” Yinsen promised.

Tony smiled.

“He wants you to build the missile,” Yinsen translated for him as one of his captors spoke, and held out a piece of paper. “The Jericho missile that you demonstrated. This one.”

The men had come banging on the cave door not long after Tony had finished telling Yinsen his story, nothing but angry shouts and fierce faces as Yinsen urged him to hold his hands in the air. Now, Tony looked down at the paper held out to him. His newest design stared back at him, the image mocking. All these weapons, bigger and better each time, to fight against the people currently holding him captive - only to find out that they were using those weapons against the people he only ever wanted to defend. And now they wanted him to make another, personally, at their orders.

“I refuse.”

Yinsen grimaced, but translated the words back anyway.

The man’s face turned into a snarl as he ordered two of his men to grab Tony on either side. Two more grasped at Yinsen’s arms, and together they were dragged from their cell in the cave. Tony clutched desperately at the car battery in his arms as they dragged him along. Erratic beats from his heart made his chest hurt. But the men didn’t notice his wincing or seem to care, nor did they respond to Yinsen, who was saying something to them in their language. He sounded pleading; Yinsen was probably trying to tell them to take it easy. Or at least, he hoped so.

“Tony, you have to agree to their terms,” Yinsen said to him, switching back to English. “They’re going to torture you until you do.”

“I won’t submit to them,” Tony growled.”They won’t be getting any more weapons from me. I won’t let them have the satisfaction of it.”

He should have listened to Yinsen.

The men plunged his head into the water. Tony struggled in their grasp as the little bit of air in his lungs was gone when he opened his mouth, half caught in an aborted scream of pain as the very raw wound of his chest was shoved onto the edge of the bucket. Bubbles rose frantically to the surface around his head, the air leaving him alone in the cold, the dark.

And then suddenly there was light; water ran from his hair and into his eyes in rivulets, fell from his lungs in heaving gasps. Respite. But it was short lived.

They did it over, and over, and over again. Fingers tangled in his matted hair again, forcing him back down until his face was submerged once more. Tony tried to hold his breath - he really, really tried. Screaming lungs forced him to thrash, to long for air with such strong desire that he couldn’t fight the need. Frigid water flooded his body, again. Electricity sparked from the wires.

The breath of life left his body. Darkness pressed down around him. Whispers prodded at his mind, flitting past his ears like half shadows.

You can’t give up now - you won’t be missed anyway - and Pepper will be heartbroken - Pepper won’t care.

But Rhodey is still looking for you - Rhodey died in the attack - imagine how he’d feel if you died.

These men have your weapons - because you don’t control your own company - you can’t let them continue.

You have to stop this.

Stop this.

Stop them.

Life was restored to his heart. Weak, damaged, desperate, but it was life.

He was gasping, heaving, the water forced from his lungs as blessed air returned with a vengeance. Yinsen looked on, something like sorrow in his eyes as the men dragged Tony off his knees and into a rickety wooden chair. The men immediately backed away. Wary stares bored into Tony’s skin.

“What?” he rasped. A throbbing ache pulsed through his body, settling like ice in the marrow of his bones. The familiar warmth he’d known all his life, the heat that normally coiled around his heart like a protective shield, was gone.

One of the men spoke, and Yinsen translated. “He wants to know how you did it.”

Tony almost asked what it was he’d done, but it was easy enough to guess. A different man was cradling a hand to his chest, covered in burns and surrounded by the charred remains of his sleeve. The man spoke again.

“They want to know about the fire when I was operating on you, and the fire now.”

Tony remained silent. The men looked ready to dunk him in the bucket again, but none of them volunteered to step forward to have the honor. Tony’s gaze flicked around at the faces surrounding him, staring directly into their eyes - a challenge, a call to face the flames and see just who walked away.

They had no reason to know he was bluffing, that his normally bountiful power was seemingly gone, driven away by the cold and the water. Or that he was internally panicking because of it. Years of growing up in front of cameras was the only thing keeping his glare steady. Otherwise, he’d probably be on the cusp of tears.

It felt wrong. His heat, his core; it was missing, gone, blank, cold, unnatural. As if part of his being had been smothered, then forcefully ripped out of his chest. How was he supposed to live when the roaring fire around his soul was suddenly nothing more than cold ashes, not even smoldering with embers?

Forcing the fear back before it had the chance to break through his mask, Tony said, “I don’t know.” If they bought his pleas, he’d be honestly surprised. It sounded weak even to his own ears. “It happens when I’m scared.”

One of the men stepped forward from the crowd. His head was bald and his jawline clean shaven, but his face was fierce and a glimmer of anger shone through his dark eyes, despite his younger appearance.

“Tell me the truth,” he said in English, his words carrying a heavy accent.

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” Tony lied, weaving a tone of desperation into his voice. “Believe me, I wish I knew.”

Before Tony could determine if his lie had worked, a canvas bag was dropped over his head to act as a blindfold, a dry shirt was wrenched over his shoulders, and he was dragged from the cave holding his car battery in his arms.

“He wants to know what you think,” Yinsen translated as a different man, apparently Abu Bakaar, spoke. Tony looked around, still squinting his eyes from the harsh light of the sun after the bag had been ripped away from his eyes.

Throughout the small sandy valley, tents upon tents were perched up, covered with effective desert camo netting. Inside each tent was a large stack of Stark Industries weapons. Guns, ammo, missiles, pretty much anything and everything. They only lacked the bigger and newer designs. The rows of missiles upon missiles was a mockery of everything he'd tried to do by making them.

“I think you got a lot of my weapons,” Tony said. A coldness rested in his eyes that drove away even the heat of the desert air. Abu took a step back, but pushed on with his mission.

“He says you have everything you need to build the Jericho missile,” Yinsen translated Abu’s words for him. “He wants you to make the list of materials.”

Abu gestured around to the various missiles as he spoke. The words rolled off his tongue smoothly, reminding him of the phoenix accents. Just another mockery, he thought bitterly.

“He says for you to start working immediately, and when you're done, he will set you free.”

Set him free. If only he could believe that, if only he could be happy at that promise of relief, of salvation. There would be no way he’d make it out of the desert alive. No, he needed something else. And if he couldn't get out, he was damn sure that the Ten Rings would lose a hell of a lot of weapons.

He looked to Yinsen and nodded - a silent conversation. “No I won't.” Tony put a faux smile on his face and stuck his hand out.

“No he won't,” Yinsen repeated.

The Ten Rings were about to get more than they'd bargained for.

Chapter Text

“I'm sure they're looking for you, Stark. But they will never find you in these mountains. Look, what you just saw, that is your legacy, Stark. Your life's work, in the hands of those murderers,” Yinsen said, once the hectic activity of moving missiles and tools into the cave was all said and done. He paced before the small fire warming the cave. “Is that how you want to go out? Is this the last act of defiance of the great Tony Stark? Or are you going to do something about it?”

Tony scoffed. “That’s not how I’m going to be remembered.” He shook his head, picking at a loose thread on his jacket. “But you know they won’t release me, you; if I make them the missile, we’ll both be dead within a week anyway.”

“Well, then, this is a very important week for you, isn’t it?” Yinsen sat down across from him on his cot. “You have a plan. Your powers..?”

Cold emptiness writhed in Tony’s chest, a cruel reminder of what was missing. “I… I can’t,” he murmured, looking down at his hands. “I don’t know what happened, but-- they’re gone. It’s… cold.”

Pity or sorrow or fear swam behind Yinsen’s glasses. “Have you at least tried to use them? Here, try to make the fire bigger,” he said hopefully, gesturing to the pit of charred logs in the middle of the cave. Embers smoldered among the ashes, the remains of a dying fire. What good would trying even do? There was no heat to draw from. Tony sighed, but delved in, reaching towards the place where his fire normally coiled behind a veil. But, punching through, only a frigid pain bit his chest, a frostbite on his core. He immediately withdrew.

“It won’t work, Yinsen. It just won’t work.”

The doctor reached across the space between them and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Then we’ll just think of something else,” he said with a small smile. “We will.”

“Thanks,” he uttered, then rose to his feet to grab several sheets of translucent tracing paper. “Now, I guess it’s time to get to work.”

It ached, that cold in his chest. It was foreign, dark, wrong, a chunk of ice where once there was a raging flame. Work didn’t manage to take Tony’s mind off of it, as he’d hoped it would. No matter how many missile parts he tore apart for scrap, it lingered in the back of his mind, a ghost of what was and what could have been.

He dropped the last palladium scrap into the small crucible Yinsen held out for him. It landed with a light clink, and Yinsen turned away to put it into the flames of the rudimentary forge brought in by Abu and the other members of the Ten Rings. Tony leaned against the workbench in front of it, letting the heat pulse over his skin.

Soaking up the warmth helped to drive away the frigid chills running through what was left of his ribcage, as if the flames themselves sought to force their way back into his core. Tony closed his eyes, relishing in the soothing lick of the fire’s light, the way the heat wrapped around him like a blanket and even drove back some of the pain from the electromagnet in his chest.

But still, the cold, dark, empty hole probed at his mind - what if he couldn’t ever use his powers again, what if the demons’ virus had found a foothold while he’d been thrashing around for his life in that cold water? He’d been terrified, then, it had been a wonder the dark side of him didn’t shove itself to the surface like it had in his childhood. But… What if it could think, and it was biding its time for the opportune moment, when he thought it’d been locked away for good?

What if he ended up on the wrong side of things, when the Oracles’ prophecies came to pass?

What if, what if, what if.

“Stark?” Yinsen asked, drawing Tony’s attention back. The doctor held the crucible with iron tongs, ready to pour the palladium into the mold he’d made.

“I’m good,” Tony said, nodding at Yinsen to go ahead.

He didn’t quite believe himself.

To be free of the trailing wires and bulky car battery was just one part of the relief. Gentle warmth pulsed from the blue light of the miniature arc reactor, and heated the metal casing in his chest to a comfortable temperature that soothed away more of the cold - not much, but the heat was an effective balm.

He stood, and somehow, the arc reactor wasn’t an intrusion or something he loathed. It was a part of him, fueling and heating his core - however slowly - fighting the cold emptiness that threatened to swallow him whole.

It belonged.

Klank. Tony raised his arm and brought the hammer down on metal. Klank. Despite the arc reactor’s gentle warmth, the cold still clung to his bones, still flowed through his veins like ice. Heat from the iron warmed his face, and sweat dripped off the tip of his nose and ran down the sides of his forehead. A miniscule aid - if he were to feel his head, it would be cool to the touch.

Klank. Klank. Klank.

The metal bent under the force of the hammer, slowly shaping into the panels and covers he needed them to be. The iron was cooling, he’d have to set it back in the flames to reheat. Instead, Tony focused on the metal, and reached in to that cold hole in his chest, grasping desperately for any dregs of golden light left. Pain shot through his heart, but he didn’t jerk back. Tony kept reaching inward, searching for any last kernel of flame that still rested in his core, against his body’s screaming protests.

Then he found it. One last tendril of energy, flickering against the cold and pain. Tony left it there, withdrawing to find himself trembling hard enough that his teeth began to clatter.

He gritted his teeth as he brought the hammer down again, and then again, and again. Klank. Klank. Klank. A steady rhythm, like a heartbeat born in the fire and molten metal.

The metal was to become something new, something stronger and something that wouldn’t be turned on any innocent souls. He struck the metal again. Klank. A new purpose, a new form being reforged into something better in that Afghan cave. Klank. A promise.

Maybe he was reforging something within himself, too.

Tony leaned back in his chair, looking over the backgammon board on the small table between him and Yinsen. There were no actual pieces they could use to play, so they’d used harmless machine bits pulled from the missile in their place. This was one of their short breaks, a lull in the buzz of activity when they worked. He’d taken to tapping on the reactor over the past few days, finding the action something of a comfort.

“You still haven’t told me where you’re from,” he mentioned casually. Yinsen looked up from the board and scrap metal pieces.

The other man seemed to pause for a moment before answering. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, as though he were lost, reliving some memory. “I’m from a small town called Gulmira. It’s actually a nice place.”

“Got a family?” Tony asked.

“Yes, and I will see them when I leave here.”

Tony frowned at the choice of words, but went back to looking at the backgammon board. He rolled the dice and moved his pieces, then handed the dice and shaking cup to Yinsen.

“And you, Stark?” Yinsen asked after a moment.

“No,” he murmured. He had people he cared about, but not very many, and could friends be considered a family? He got the impression Yinsen was referring to a partner, kids. That sort of thing. Tony only had friends; Rhodey, Pepper, and Happy. Three friends. He didn’t want to think about how they must feel now, wondering where he was or if he was alive. A twinge of guilt poked his heart.

“No?” Yinsen looked up at him, and again, that unreadable face, that had to be something akin to sadness or pity, graced the doctor’s face. “Then you are a man who has everything, and nothing.”

Tony looked down, back at the board and pieces and the dice cup. Everything and nothing - how true that was. But even if they got out of the cave, out of Afghanistan, it was better if it remained that way. Nothing good could come of him having an actual family, not with his powers, not with the prophecies, and certainly not with his stupid, reckless, arrogant personality and tendencies to revert back to alcoholism when things were too stressful. No, it would be better if he remained a man with everything and nothing.

They went back to playing backgammon, finishing their game in a companionable silence and heating up two cups of cheap tea they’d been given several days ago. They slept, though Tony wasn’t sure for how long, or if it was even night. He hadn’t seen the sun in days, weeks… maybe even months. He missed the sunlight.

Soon. Soon, he could feel the warmth of the sun on his skin again.

“Back to work,” he stated, once they’d eaten their breakfast - lunch, dinner? - and started grabbing for the metal and the hammer.

Angry shouts suddenly rang from behind the door, as it always did whenever their captors would come to check on their progress or bring down food and water. The people here were never calm, always so full of aggression and lust for power over others, Tony thought. But this wasn’t one of the normal, routine checks. The shouts were more vicious, more demanding, even if he couldn’t understand the words. And he knew why.

Yinsen had helped him test the mechanisms in the leg of the suit just hours ago, and hiding it from the view of the cameras just hadn’t been possible. Raza or Abu or one of the others would have seen it, would have noticed.

Tony and Yinsen raised their arms up when the iron door was flung open, and a storm of men entered the room bearing rifles, pointed at their hearts. Abu, at the head of the crowd, sidestepped, and Raza emerged from the crowd, looking calm and collected and maybe just a little bit pissed off. He walked into the room slow, deliberate, absentmindedly twisting a ring on his finger.

“Relax,” he eventually said, voice absurdly casual, but still fixing them both with a cold gaze that sent a shudder running down Tony’s spine. He and Yinsen warrily lowered their arms.

Raza stepped toward Tony, practically oozing intimidation and power. Control. The collar of Tony’s roughspun shirt was pulled back, revealing the arc reactor’s blue glow and filling the cave with a cold light and highlighting the panes of Raza’s face.

“The bow and arrow once was the pinnacle of weapons technology,” Raza began, seemingly passing off the arc reactor as nothing more than a curiosity. He wandered about the cave, past the improvised backgammon board pieces, past the forge, past the strewn about tools - taking in every little detail with vigilant eyes, though it was impossible to tell if he would be smart enough to know what the parts were all used for. “It allowed the great Genghis Khan to rule from the Pacific to the Ukraine. An empire twice the size of Alexander the Great and four times the size of the Roman empire.”

Tony couldn’t hide the slightest hint of a scowl as he pieced together the beginning of Raza’s monologue. Raza desired that sense of power, power over more people than anyone else had ever controlled. The man had latched his desire to an unattainable goal, painted by history as something to be strived for. But everybody forgets the most obvious part - it’s history for a reason. It couldn’t last, it couldn’t work that way.

“But today, whoever holds the latest Stark weapons rules these lands.”

Raza hard eyes drifted to the slightly scattered tracing paper - the paper with the plans on them. Tony’s heart skipped a beat. Yinsen made a gesture with his hand, so subtle only Tony would notice it. Stay calm.

“And soon, it will be my turn.” Raza fixes him with a sneer, staring directly back into his eyes. As if he could see past the deception, see past the mask. There was no change in his expression as he started speaking in a different language.

Yinsen answered back, but Tony had no way of knowing what he was saying. It must not have been convincing, since Raza finally ripped his glare away from Tony, and stalked toward Yinsen instead.

Tony swallowed back the rising panic in his throat as Raza spoke again, this time with a hint of menace dripping from his voice. Yinsen talked again, but Raza was no longer focused on Yinsen. He barked a command at on of his men, and the man stepped forward and pushed Yinsen onto his knees with a bandaged hand. Tony’s hands bunched up into fists. Sweat coated his palms.

He wanted to interject, argue, do something. Helplessness held strong to his heart and kept him standing rigidly in place.

Fear spiked in his chest again as Raza poked at the dying fire in the forge, grabbing a glowing coal out with a pair of tongs, and Yinsen’s head was forced onto the metal of the anvil. Raza brought the tongs close to Yinsen’s face, held just close enough that the embers reflected in Yinsen’s scared eyes.

“What does he want?” Tony found himself asking, looking desperately between the faces - Raza’s cold glare, Abu’s hard nonchalance, Yinsen’s terror. Nobody offered a translation. “What’s going on?” he tried, and even he could hear the fear in his voice. Raza spoke again to Yinsen. The burning coal was dangerously close. Panic clawed frantically at Tony’s head, nearly shrieking in his ears.

He took a step forward, and the coal - and Raza - were shoved backwards into the wall of the cave.

The guns of the surrounding men were pointed at him within mere moments, the mark of fear shifting their faces as they held the guns with trembling hands. Raza stared back him, not gaping, but his eyes were blown wide. Tony snarled at him when he dropped the tongs and made for the door, and he knew by the way the men recoiled that it didn’t sound human in the least.

Raza looked shaken, even as he tried to stand tall, tried to keep his voice even as he said, “You have until tomorrow to assemble my missle.”

The men were rushing from the room in a heartbeat. They rushed for the door, unable to leave fast enough, scrambling over each other, desperately trying to retreat to what they thought was a safe distance. Tony growled again. The noise sent them packing in a scurry.

Tony turned back to Yinsen when the door slammed shut. The dark part of him that fought and clawed its way to the surface retreated back to the void in his chest, leaving behind only a trace of hoarfrost on the rock around Tony’s feet and a frigid chill in his veins.

“Are you okay?” he asked, kneeling beside Yinsen. The older man nodded, but Tony could see him tremble. He offered a hand. Yinsen took it, and he dragged him to his feet.

“You’re cold,” Yinsen murmured, taking his hand back and rubbing at his fingers.

Only the finishing touches remained to be built. Tony hammered away at the metal he was working on, each reverberation sending a strum of iron chords down into his heart. Reaching again, slowly, into that core in his chest, he found that small tendril of flame and gripped it tight, despite the screaming pain. It was warmer, if only slightly. He let a sliver of heat flow down his arms and into his fingertips, keeping the metal warm and pliable. It ached like a poison.

“You know that Raza doesn’t believe for a moment that we are making the Jericho,” Yinsen said, connecting a wire to a motherboard where he worked at their small table. Tony nodded and gritted his teeth as he struck the metal again, pulling a scrap of heat from his chest and into the metal as the hammer connected with the iron.

“I wonder, sometimes,” Tony said, letting go of the fire and placing the hammer down, “Why don’t they just put a bullet in my head? I’m nothing but trouble for them, and I’m clearly not making the missile. Wouldn’t it be simpler, a bullet through the brain?”

Yinsen connected another wire and scratched at his chin. “They’re scared of you. One of them called you a demigod when you tossed Raza back.”

“Really?” Tony asked. “That would be nice.”

“I’m sure it would. I wouldn’t know,” Yinsen commented, looking pointedly at the still glowing metal. Tony chuckled, and went back to hammering it into shape. And they went back to working in silence, save for the clang of metal on metal the slow typing of keys on a laptop. Yinsen was the first to break it.

**“My people have a tale,” said Yinsen slowly, distantly, as if he were speaking from a place far in the future, “about a prince, much hated by his king, who was banished to the underworld and jailed there. The evil king gave him the most difficult labor, working in the iron pits.”

Tony didn’t turn his attention away from his work, but his gaze flickered over to Yinsen just enough to convey that he was listening.

Yinsen went on. “Year after year the prince mined the heavy ore, becoming so strong he could crush pieces of it together with his bare hands. Too late, the king realized his mistake. When he struck at the prince with his finest sword, it broke in two. The prince himself had become as strong as iron.”

Tony held up the metal that he’d been working on. A crude iron mask stared back at him. He lay it down on the table next to Yinsen, where the doctor stared at it.

A man as strong as iron. An iron man.

He liked the sound of that. He liked it a lot.**

“I’m gonna go buy you some time,” Yinsen said, determination lacing his words.

“Stick to the plan!” Tony called, but Yinsen was already running for the burst open doorway, snatching a gun from on of the men killed in the blast. “Yinsen! Stick to the plan!”

Yinsen was gone, firing off warning shots to send the scouts scuttling back the way they came. Tony’s hands clenched into fists, even as the lights of the room dimmed, drawing in that extra power for the arc reactor in his chest, until only the reactor’s light and the glow of the laptop filled the room.

The escape was a haze in his eyes and a ghost in his mind. Gunshots rang through the cave. Men screamed. Running somewhere in the background like a mantra were the steps he needed to take, the time he had left.

“Watch out!” Yinsen's shout was hoarse. He was rocked back on his heels as an RPG whizzed right by his head and crashed into the rock wall behind him in a fiery cloud. Tony barely registered his own movements, as he pulled open a compartment on the arm of the suit and launched another RPG back at Raza. Rocks flew.

There was Yinsen, lying prone atop a stack of sacks holding gravel or sand or whatever they had in them - Tony didn't focus on the bags, not when blood leaked out of the side of Yinsen's mouth and his eyes seemed to be growing duller with each second. He flipped up the iron mask.

“Come on, you’re gonna go see your family. Get up,” he said, still breathless from guiding the suit out through the maze of cave tunnels. But Yinsen just weakly shook his head as his eyes started to droop closed.

“My family is dead,” he rasped. Tony had never heard the voice of a dying man before - an almost outlandish notion, considering how many weapons he made, how many he sold, considering that people called him the Merchant of Death, that he had so much blood on his hands. And yet, as Yinsen lay dying in front of him, it was the very first time he’d ever heard it. The pain, the finality. But also relief. “I’m going to see them now.”

Yinsen was looking at something far off, something Tony couldn't see. “It’s okay, I want this,” he murmured. Blood was bubbling up in his throat.

Here in front of him was a man who had endured an eternity longer in those caves, who had risked his own skin just to keep Tony alive. A man with a broken heart who’d endured, so that the end of his journey would mark the beginning of Tony’s, so that the both of them wouldn’t leave the world together and cut short the reign of the wonder child of America. So that he could have a chance, to fix the broken and corrupted branch of his company. Only one thing came to mind that he could possible say to Yinsen. “Thank you for saving me.”

“Don’t waste it,” Yinsen gasped with the last of his breath, “don’t waste your life.”

He wouldn’t.

And when the man of iron emerged from the cave, when the fire and the dust had settled and the stolen weapons were no more, he was remade.

Scorching sand stretched on for miles and miles, nothing but too-steep dunes and blinding, burning sunlight for as far as the eye could see. A handful of sand granules had gotten into his shoes by the time he’d walked a mile - at least, what Tony thought had been a mile, it may have been ten feet or twenty miles, he couldn’t tell anymore - so he’d abandoned the shoes a long while back. Sand sifted between his bare toes, it burned the bottom of his feet, but the pain was wonderful.

All of it, it hurt so much but his power, it was absorbing the heat like a sponge, soaking it up until it burned hotter than he’d ever burned before. The blaze drowned out the ache in his muscles, and the throb in his shoulder where blood spilled down his arm from a bullet that had slipped through a crack in the armor, and it dulled the stings of the blisters growing on the balls of his feet. He turned his face to the sun and smiled, laughed until he sobbed. Flames danced under his skin.

Tony revelled in the bursting fire that had finally smothered that awful, aching cold. Everything around him was hazy, the horizon melding the sky and ground into one. Wind kissed his skin, bringing only more blessed, wonderful heat to carry his soul away. Sweat had ceased to fall from his skin hours ago, but what need did he have of water when there was such heat and fire?

It sang to him, a sweet, melodic sound that flitted along his ears, urging him over the edge. Keep burning, it sang, burn with the sun, burn from the inside out, blessed child of fire, our Fireheart. Keep burning.

So he burned, and burned, and burned.

Try, try, try to burn us out, our Fireheart. Tony let the heat rise and burst in his heart like fireworks, and the song grew louder, louder, louder. No, no, no, you can’t burn us out, our Fireheart. Keep burning, burn with the sun. He could hear his heartbeat in his head.

We will be here always, our Fireheart. No, no, no, you can’t burn us out, our Fireheart.

Tony shook and fell to his knees in the burning sands, lost somewhere in that sickeningly sweet melody. A dark shape was blurred somewhere in the hazy mess between the land and sky.

Keep burning, keep burning, burn with the sun, burn from the inside out, blessed child of fire, our Fireheart.

The song commanded him to burn, and he burned brighter, hotter. The dark shape turned into two, and three.

Try, try, try to burn us out, our Fireheart. No, no, no, you can’t burn us out, our Fireheart.

The blurred shapes came closer, closer. I don’t want to keep burning, he cried.

Keep burning, burn with the sun.

Stop burning, stop burning, please stop burning.

We will be here always, our Fireheart.

Stop burning!

No, no, no, you can’t burn us out, our Fireheart.

One of those dark shapes finally reached him. Familiar, Tony thought. It was familiar.

He fell.

There was only that wonderful, terrible burning left. It invaded the forgotten corners of his mind, it leaked through the crevices of a cold heart and surged like a great firestorm in his lungs. He could see nothing beyond the raging, bright orange and yellow and red; he could hear nothing beyond the crackling of fire and burning things. That dark shape that had approached was haloed in white light, and it held him.

Time was irrelevant. It might have been seconds, it might have been an eternity that he stayed like that, leaning into the embrace of an angel. It felt safe. And then he was moving - he couldn’t tell by sight, or by sound, but rather by the dizzying tumble of the world around him, and that he could feel the strain in what might have been his legs.

“...Tony..?” Sound, however faint and muffled, cut through the roar. Was that his name?

Burn him, Fireheart. It was nothing more than an echo of a whisper in his ears.

No. His name was Fireheart. But he couldn’t burn his angel, not this angel of light keeping him safe from… From something.

Incinerate him, our Fireheart.

No. He wouldn’t.

There was shrieking, somewhere in a dark place that even his fire could not reach.

Everything after that was a blur, a haze, a fever dream. The doors of a metal thing closed around him. Somehow he was flying, in the air, but he could only tell from the dropping of his heart into his stomach. A lifetime had passed by the time he was dragged away, back onto land. More muffled shouts burst in his ears.

“Get him inside!”

“His temperature is still rising.”

“We need to cool him down, bring him to the bath.”

“Get me some ice!”

More shrieking rang through his head like the ringing of bells, filled with sick delight. No, no, not ice. No ice, no ice, no ice. Keep the cold away. Let him burn.

It is time to stop burning, Fireheart, our Fireheart, the voices sang to him. Stop burning now.

No, no, he couldn’t, the ice and the cold and the dark would come rushing back, but this time it would swallow him whole in a tidal wave of shadows and frost and frigid crystals would poke and stab at his soul, the heat would be gone again and he would be alone in the dark--

“Stop him thrashing!” Somebody yelled, but still he struggled, still he lashed out, clawing weakly at the arms holding him back. It was no good - Tony was plunged into water, it swallowed him up in an instant to suffocate his flames. No, no, no! Fire burst from under his skin, a beast to fight back the chill.

He faintly heard the sound of bubbles, and shouting, and he was lifted from the water by shaking hands.

Not good, his mind supplied, not good.

Whoever had grabbed him from the water left him on a cold tile floor, drenched, but engulfed in steam as the water evaporated from his very skin. Something cold brushed his skin, and he returned to thrashing, to struggling against the demons. How could he do such a thing, that angel that had come for him, how could he side with the demons, try to banish him back to that torturous cold?

It took him far too long to realize that the screaming he heard came from his own throat.

He lashed out again, throwing a weak hand out against the blurry figures around him, but it was so difficult. Exhaustion tugged at his limbs, tied them back against his will to fight.

More ice was tossed his way, but he was out before it hit his body.

Chapter Text

Colonel James Rhodes shifted in the stiff leather chair, trying to find a more comfortable position in a seat that couldn’t possibly be comfortable. He’d been there for an hour, waiting - impatiently - next to the bed in the medical ward for Tony to wake up. The man had been entirely out of it when he’d found him in the desert, dazed and focused on something far off that Rhodey couldn’t see. He could feel the burn of a fever even through the gloves and coat of his suit - or, he’d thought it had been an intense fever at first. But when they’d gotten Tony to the air base, and medical got a reading of 118 degrees and rising…

It was only when they tried to put him in the water that he’d noticed that the fabric of his uniform was burnt to a crisp, and blisters were starting to form on his hands and arms.

But Rhodey couldn’t worry about that at the time, not when the water of the tub had started boiling, actually boiling, mere moments after they’d dropped Tony into it, clothes and all. The medics had burned their hands dragging him out, so the ice had been a relief for all of them.

Except Tony.

Tony’s screams had been harsh and raw and ear splitting, a blade that cut through to his heart like butter and made him wish he hadn’t even been there (and that brief thought would haunt him in the back of his mind forever, because how could he not be there for his best friend when he was suffering so much?). Never before had he witnessed such pain, such uncontrollable suffering in a human being, not even among the horrors of the battlefield. It had been clear that the heat was killing Tony, but where the ice should have been a balm, it only seemed to make him cry out louder and harder.

It had been only an hour and a half since the screaming stopped. An hour and several bags of ice since they’d gotten his body temperature back to normal.

God, how was Tony even alive?

There were too many unanswered questions - how did his temperature get that high, and not completely fry his brain; how did he burn Rhodey’s clothes and the doctors’ hands, even though his own clothes didn't have so much as a scorch mark; how did the water boil the moment he touched it; where the hell were his shoes; and what the fuck was the glowing circle in his chest?

What happened to him?

A black hole rested in Tony’s chest.

All the heat that had breathed life back into his core was gone, mercilessly swept away in the all enveloping darkness of sleep. There was nothing. No heat. No cold. Nothing. As if he’d… burnt himself out. Tony didn’t want to open his eyes. What was the point? It was all gone, it was empty. Soundless winds sweeping through a silent, lifeless desert, a limbo between all sense and reason. Any happiness or relief at being free, any grief that might have remained from Yinsen’s death, any hope at the prospect of going or being home, any fear that he was back in the hands of the Ten Rings - none of it existed in that moment.

When he blinked open his eyes, there was nothing but blank indifference in them.

The ceiling tiles were white, clinical; the bed sheets heavy and pale, and just a little bit itchy; a foot board of white-painted iron bars reached up from the foot of the bed, and the room was divided into sections by flimsy white curtains. But the walls were beige and worse for ware, and the door in the corner too sturdy to be that of a hospital. A medical ward, then. Tony shifted his head to get a better look around. His left arm was in a sling, and an IV line was hooked up to the other, dripping fluids and what he assumed to be a fairly large dose of morphine, judging by the numbness in his chest. Or maybe that was just the emptiness inside.

Rhodey - amazing, beautiful, blessed Rhodey - sat in a chair by his bedside, eyes closed and fingers steepled loosely under his chin. Something akin to relief bloomed in that black hole, but it was so awfully alone. Tony tried to talk, but his voice cracked and he descended into a bout of ragged coughs instead. Rhodey’s head snapped up at the sound, and he was out of the chair and kneeling by his bedside in an instant, offering out a plastic Dixie cup of water.

“Tones, don’t talk,” said Rhodey, urging him to drink the water instead. “Drink, you need it.”

Memories of water, and ice, and screaming flashed behind his eyes, and he tried shoving the cup away. But his throat felt like it’d gone through a cheese grater and was rubbed with salt rocks every time he swallowed. When Rhodey brought the cup back to his lips, he took a tentative sip. The pain was soothed as the water slid down his throat, but came right back once it disappeared.

“How’re you feeling?” Rhodey eventually asked, once Tony had downed the entire cup, and then another. Tony could see the questions swimming in his friends eyes, and that he was doing his best to hold them back. But Tony just… didn’t care about the concern and curiosity there. Did Rhodes think that, by not bombarding him with questions as soon as he awoke, that he was somehow being kind? Answers would be demanded of him sooner or later. Somewhere in that empty hole, a claw tapped. Poked.

“Ask,” Tony grumbled, “I can physically see you holding back questions. Just ask already.”

Rhodey stared at him, as if contemplating, wondering, weighing the risk of the questions he had to ask, as if Tony would crack and crumble under the weight of reliving whatever horrors he’d been forced to endure. As if asking would break a dam in in his mind and send him careening into a dark place with no way back and no hope of rescue, trapped in the prison of his own traumatized mind. Somewhere, a sing-song voice giggled, barely audible. And then bitterness grew in that hole in Tony’s chest, overshadowing what relief had sprung up until only a fraction remained.

“Just ask, damn it,” he growled, “Or do you think I can’t handle it? What is it, Rhodes?” Malice and contempt grew off the bitterness.

“Calm down, Tones,” Rhodey tried, but Tony barrelled over him.

“No. Don’t call me that, you don’t get to call me that,” he snarled, “You were the one who took me out of the heat, and you didn’t even ask! What if I didn’t want to leave? It made me stronger-- it made me-- I’m weaker here than I ever was out there! You think they broke me, out there, don’t you? I’m not broken, and I’m not wasting my life. Why do think I can’t do this and answer your questions, why do you think I--”

He ground to a halt, all of the ire fumbling and tripping in his mouth when Rhodey’s eyes met his own. Hurt and anguish was plastered on his face, unhidden, laid bare for him to see. Rhodey was slowly shaking his head, not accepting the words coming from Tony’s mouth. “This isn’t you…” he mumbled. That was all it took; one glance at the pain in his eyes. Rhodey was his best friend, he’d probably been looking for him the entire time without even knowing if Tony was alive or dead, and yet here he was, shouting at him as soon as he’d woken up.

That hidden voice huffed, a frustrated sound, but fell silent.

Guilt flooded Tony’s heart like a crashing wave, coming and receding, only to crash back down again when he caught sight of Rhodey’s bandaged hands and arms. Tony had burned him. “I’m sorry,” he gasped, desperately trying to get the words out with the little air in his lungs, “I didn’t mean any of that, I’m not angry at you - I’m sorry Rhodey, I’m sorry. I just-”

“It’s okay.”

Tony froze, halfway to another apology. But Rhodey just put a hand on his shoulder and gave a comforting squeeze, repeating, “It’s okay. I understand. You don’t have to talk about any of it if you don’t want to, Tones.”

But he did, though, didn’t he? America’s biggest weapons contractor, famous in his own right, gets captured and held by insurgents in Afghanistan for… he didn’t even know how long - and then the circumstances of it all are left in the dust of his memory, and his memory only? It wouldn’t sell, not with the government, not with the military, not with the media.

He found Rhodey’s gaze drifting down, to that glowing blue light peeking through the thin white tee shirt the medical staff had slipped him into when he was out, but thankfully Rhodey didn’t voice the question lingering in his eyes. Silence fell over the room as minutes ticked by.

“Arc reactor,” Tony said quietly, then asked, ”How much do you know?” He looked back to his friend’s face. Rhodey shifted in his seat, buying time to think.

Eventually, he said, “I-- The medics didn’t want to risk do anything more than necessary, because when we found you…” Rhodey stopped, looking toward the wall instead. “When I found you, my clothes burnt when I touched you, and when we tried to cool you down, you boiled the water.”

Rhodey didn’t meet Tony’s gaze. He stayed staring at the wall, as if it were the most interesting thing in the world. Almost as if he were ashamed of whatever he was going to say.

“We had to throw ice chips on you from a distance. I didn’t want to, and you screamed every time we did, but it was the only thing that worked. Your screams, Tony… I didn’t even want to be there, I didn’t want to hear another moment of it,” Rhodey stopped again, and swallowed down whatever was rising in his throat. Tony reached out a hand to his friend’s arm, but pulled back just as his fingertips grazed the gauze on Rhodey’s forearms. “And I feel terrible, for wanting to leave you alone to more suffering, but it just - it was awful, Tones. Haunting.” Rhodey shook his head.

“I’m sorry.”

Rhodey turned back to him and almost barked out a harsh laugh. “Tony, you don’t have to apologize for that! You don’t have to apologize for being in pain, or being captured, or for whatever those bastards did to you.”

Tony wasn’t quite sure he believed him. Maybe he couldn’t apologize for being in pain, but he could apologize for being in so much pain, being so out of it, that his control slipped long enough to scorch his friend’s skin, or to boil that water. But Tony stayed silent, for long enough that Rhodey decided to try and set the conversation back on its original track.

“So… arc reactor?” he asked. And Tony answered.

The emptiness in his chest had filled up some by the time he walked up to that podium, with the need for justice, fueled by the grief that had seeped back in, shoving aside the guilt and the fear to do what needed to be done. Reporters gathered around, holding cameras and microphones in his face as they all shouted over each other, asking questions all at once in a wild bid for his focus. It took all his years of fake media smiles not to flinch under their onslaught.

He hadn’t told Rhodey or Pepper or the DOD or the FBI or the CIA very much more than what they absolutely needed to know, and when the reporter with the pen asked what happened, Tony told him even less. But he told him what was the most important - his eyes really had been opened for the first time over there. Among everything, all his pain, and grief, and the cold and the heat, his weapons in the hands of murderers had been a wake up call.

Pepper would yell at him later, and Rhodey would be disappointed, at least - because really, what was Rhodey but a cog in the greater war machine? And yes, Rhodey wasn’t quite like the others, but Stark weapons were the army’s bread and butter for winning wars. To not get any more would definitely put him on the military's bad side, he was sure.

But never again would he make the mistake of following the same path he’d started on. The path they all pushed him to walk, the road that his father had paved long before him. It was time to cut a new path. After all, Tony was not Howard. When Obadiah finally got the crowd settled, and he’d wandered off to the arc reactor building with Stane on his heels, Tony knew what would come. Chiding, reminders of the impending stock drop, attempts to make him reconsider. But his mind was made up.

The edge of suspicion came when Obadiah wanted to see it. Tony wasn’t quite sure why. He’d trusted the man his entire life, but… Something dark shone in Stane’s beady eyes, and shadowy wisps like gnats that weren’t really there danced around the older man’s head, leaping and falling to a tune he couldn’t hear. Something was brooding in him, waiting, testing its patience on the line that Tony had cut thin. The man had gazed at the smaller reactor in his chest and his eyes were hungry, ready to gobble it up for himself.

So when one of those little wisps darted out to him as Obadiah rebuttoned Tony’s shirt, glancing side to side like some kind of conspirator, and the thought invaded his mind that he might share the idea growing and blooming in his mind, Tony quickly stomped it down.

“Lets see them, show me your hands,” Tony said from his place in a chair. Pepper had confusion written across her face, but held her hands out. “Oh, wow, they are small. Very petite indeed. I need your help for a sec.”

“Oh my god, is that they thing keeping you alive?” Pepper asked as she drew closer, curious eyes settling on the glowing blue light in his chest.

“It was. It is now an antique,” Tony said, holding out the newly fabricated reactor to her, and explaining that she had to help him swap it out for the old one.

She didn’t like it all that much, and panicked when the magnet came out and all of Tony’s monitors started beeping, but she did it. With the reactor removed, his chest was nothing but a hollow cavity, a hole just as empty as the one directly behind it that nobody could see, and only he could feel. His heart raced in his chest, irregular, wrong. But then his hands were moving, and Pepper connected the wires of the new reactor into the socket, and the hollow space was filled.

“Don’t ever, ever, ever ask me to do anything like that ever again,” Pepper huffed, hands held out and fingers splayed, the gloopy plasmic discharge still coating her fingers. She wiped it off on the towel on his lap.

“I don’t have anyone but you,” Tony found himself saying. A man with everything, and nothing. Yinsen had been right. Pepper stiffened as she turned, halfway to grabbing the old reactor. Tony waited for a response, but none came, and she resumed moving. She picked up the old reactor and turned back to him.

“Anyway… What do you want me to do with this?”

“Destroy it,” Tony said, frowning. “Incinerate it.” Because the old arc reactor was just another reminder, proof of three torturous months in a cave, proof that Yinsen was still dead, proof that his hands were dripping red with much more blood than he’d ever known to be there. Let it burn into ashes. As he should have done.

Pepper looked disheartened. “You don’t wanna keep it?” she asked, turning it over in her hands.

“Pepper, I have been called many things. Nostalgic is not one of them.” So she left, and Tony went back to more important things than reminders of the not-so-distant past.

A spark flickered behind his heart.

He went to Rhodey, thinking that, maybe, he could help with his project. Help his new idea grow. And of course, who better to be the pilot than an Air Force Colonel? But when he got there, and Rhodey thought it was for the army, Tony knew.

His friend was not ready yet.

“You need time to get your mind right,” Rhodey had said to him. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t.

Tony turned around and went back home, utterly alone with his new goal, his new mission. But that was alright. When it came right down to it, he had always been alone. The new suit was just another flame to keep hidden, iron wings to fold away and out of sight whenever anybody got too close. The less people involved, the less he had to worry about their safety. It was better that way.

When he got back in to his workshop, he had JARVIS look up all of the soldiers that might have died at the hands of the Ten Rings, shot down with Stark weaponry. He recovered the names of the fallen soldiers in his caravan that day. Pulled out from the bottom of a dusty drawer was the leather bound journal he’d picked up when he was still at that awful old boarding school. The paper was dog eared from the amount of times he had opened it in the past and flipped through blank pages, some of the edges torn. The ink that the four names were written with was smudged and faded, but still readable. Picking up a pen from his desk, he sat down on a stool. JARVIS displayed the names of the soldiers - a list that went on, and on, and on.

Tony wrote down the names of every last soldier on that list, starting with the three in his car. The three that had died for him. Because of him.

Adam Pratt. He never did get to even click the button on the camera to snap the photograph.

Petra Ramirez. She’d barely made it a step out the vehicle's door.

James Ryan. Jimmy. He’d had such a young face, nothing more than a boy, fighting a fight too big for him.

Over half the pages were filled by the time Tony got to the end of the list.

And at the end? Ho Yinsen.

“JARVIS, you up?” Tony asked, fingers running over several custom keys on his keyboard to open up the schematics of his first suit of armor.

“For you, sir, always,” JARVIS replied. The holodeck flashed to life as Tony dragged the image of the suit over to it, watching it form a 3D model of the armor in blue light.

“Let’s open a new project file, index as Mark II.”

“Shall I store this on the Stark Industries Central Database?”

Tony thought about those little black wisps dancing around Stane’s head like some sort of dark halo, and the hunger in the older man’s eyes. “Actually, I don’t know who to trust right now. Till further notice, why don’t we just keep everything on my private server?”

“Working on a secret project, are we, sir?”

“I don’t want this ending up in the wrong hands,” Tony murmured, looking over the skeleton of the armor, and swiping away the old chest plating. “Maybe in mine, it can actually do some good.”

“I should hope so, sir,” JARVIS commented, then asked, “Will you be attempting to mix your magic with this technology again? Because you know how that went last time, sir. I need to know if I should ready DUM-E with a fire extinguisher this time.”

“No, no. Stop bringing up the last time, will ya?” Tony grumbled, scowling at JARVIS’s nearest camera. When he went back to examining the hologram, his face fell and his eyes took on a weary look. “Besides, I can’t anymore.”

“Sir?”

Tony pinched his fingers to zoom in on the suit’s helmet. “Don’t worry about it, J.”

JARVIS didn’t ask.

The spark had grown into a candle flame.

The progress was slow, and that hole in his chest seemed like it wouldn’t ever fill up. Like it was endless, bottomless; an abyss to swallow up every good thing he felt. Happiness did not stay for more than a few moments. The joy of a creating a working repulsor lasted for less than an hour.

Candle light was growing, growing, growing.

But it felt as though one little nudge would blow it out entirely.

The half finished boot of the Mark II sat to the side on Tony’s desk, where U was watching it with a vigilant eye. Lens? DUM-E was position to Tony’s other side, a fire extinguisher gripped in his arm as an extra precaution. And in the center of the table, Tony’s soldering iron lay in it’s station, the metal cold. Tony stared down at it with narrowed eyes.

“Sir, may I recommend turning it on?” JARVIS asked politely.

Tony didn’t respond, instead focusing even harder on the metal tip, until the hum of the workshop lights and the sounds of the bots at his sides became little more than white noise in the background, and even harder still until he heard no noise at all, and saw only the gleaming metal tip of the soldering iron.

Spiraling down and down into that hole behind his heart, Tony searched for the flickering warmth of fire, the dancing light of candle flame hiding in his rib cage. It seemed to rush forward as he searched, delving in closer to his conscious; greeting him, after such a long period of cowering in the dark.

Tony grabbed it.

The pain was instant. It rocketed through his chest, buffeting his lungs and heart and surrounding the reactor’s metal casing. And then it surged up and down his spine, into his arms, his legs, his head. Agony coiled behind his skull. Pounding, thrashing, breaking, screaming. Maybe if he made the fire angry enough, it would burst into a bonfire.

Blood trickled out of his nose, his ears.

His eyes.

Tony barely heard JARVIS call out to him, or the bots’ concerned beeping, but he waved them both off even as he gritted his teeth to keep his mouth closed against the gnawing pain throbbing in his head. Metal coated his tongue, and bright red blood dribbled out of the corner of his mouth.

No! Tony yelled in his head. Screamed, commanded. But the power there kept thrashing. You will stop. Stop!

The tip of the soldering iron grew red hot and a flicker of gold flashed in Tony’s eyes.

His grip on the power slackened, and away the heat and power went, ripping itself out of Tony’s mental grasp and slingshotting itself back into the hole in his chest to cower, to hide.

Tony coughed, and blood splattered the papers on his desk.

“You should get medical attention, sir, I can-”

“I’m fine, JARVIS,” Tony snapped, cutting the AI off mid sentence. He had cleaned the blood and made new copies of the papers that had been drenched in it, and managed to flush his eyes at the sink until most of the red had been washed away, and his eyes looked bloodshot at most. Now, Tony was back to work on the boot at his second desk, soldering (he finally turned it on, this time) the last finishing touches on with some not-so-helpful assistance from DUM-E.

“This has never happened in the past when you’ve used your power, sir. May I ask why it is happening now?”

“I don’t know, J,” Tony sighed, tapping the soldering iron on a wet sponge to cool it off before putting it back on it’s holding station. “But I can’t exactly go ask about it. So for now, I’ll just pretend to be a normal human being.”

“Of course, sir,” JARVIS replied. “Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Okay, let’s do this right,” Tony said, standing from his chair and picking the boot up, walking over the the open floor space of the garage and setting it up with the other boot, then attaching it to the hand controls. The sprawling wires hooked into his chest made him grimace - too familiar.

U rolled over with a recorder in his clawed grip, DUM-E following closely on his heels and still gripping the fire extinguisher. Stepping into each boot was like attaching weights to his legs; Tony had a hard time lifting his feet off the ground to get himself into position. It was almost hard to imagine being able to fly in something so heavy and clunky. If only he could still use his wings…

“Start mark, half a meter, and back and center,” he said for the video log, arranging his feet in the center of the gridded platform. “DUM-E, ,look alive, you’re on standby for fire safety. U, roll it.”

U obligingly lifted the camera and refocused on Tony.

“Okay, activate hand controls,” Tony narrated to himself, casting a glance at the camera. “We’re gonna see if 10% thrust capacity achieves lift.”

“Three.”

“Two.”

“One.”

The wall hit him before he could take a breath to gasp.

Clearly, the next step was flight stabilizers. The lingering ache in his bones wouldn’t let him work on anything else until he had flight stabilizers. And the next test flight was definitely going to start with a much lower thrust percentage. Because even his abnormally fast healing wasn’t easing away the cracks in his ribs just yet, or the throbbing in his skull. So Tony spent the next several days designing, tinkering, and fixing new schematics for a stabilizer.

Pepper came into the lab just as he clicked closed the skeletal frame of the gauntlet around one arm, and hastily started up the power.

“I’ve been buzzing you. Didn’t you hear the intercom?” Pepper asked, coming towards him with a small stack in her arms, comprised mostly of a wrapped box and a mug of what smelled like coffee. She set them on one of his cluttered desks as she approached.

“Yeah, everything’s… what?” Tony asked absentmindedly, more focused on the tech engulfing his arm. In truth, he’d been so engrossed in his work that he hadn’t heard the intercom buzz at all.

“Obadiah’s upstairs,” she answered. Tony stiffened, but tugged the gauntlet, with his arm in it, off the perch it had been supported on and aimed it at a wall. “I thought you were done making weapons.”

“This is a flight stabilizer, it’s completely harmless,” Tony assured her, eager to test it’s capabilities. He started it up--

And flew backwards with a crash of scattering papers and machine bits.

“...I didn’t expect that,” he blurted, fumbling to stand.

After confirming that he was fine, Pepper left to head back upstairs and assure Obadiah that Tony was finally coming up to talk with him. Tony grabbed the nug of coffee, content to leave the package to be opened later, but stopped at the sight of a bright yellow sticky note and neat handwriting reading “from Pepper.”

Curious, he ripped the paper packaging off the box, finding a glass case with his old arc reactor inside, with “proof that Tony Stark has a heart” carved along the sides of it’s display in all capital letters. Tony wanted to smile at the sentiment, but it just felt… painful.

He couldn’t find it within himself to tell her that his heart had burnt itself up back in the Afghan desert.

Chapter Text

“It would have gone better if you were there,” Obadiah said, sitting up from the piano chair. The melody he’d been playing came to an abrupt stop. Finally. It wasn’t that it was a bad melody, but that it was Obadiah playing, and on one of his mother’s two old pianos no less. He’d never had an issue with Obie playing before, hell, Obie had been the one teaching him to play whenever his mother couldn’t. But those little black wisps still hung around Obadiah’s head, seemingly unseen by either him or Pepper. The trust that had once existed felt shaky at best - at least for Tony, but he couldn’t seem to find a reason for it. Obadiah seemed entirely oblivious to his inner turmoil.

“You told me to lay low. That’s what I’ve been doing,” Tony shrugged, trying for nonchalant, and swiping a slice of pizza from the box on the coffee table and taking a bite. Cold, but still good. Tony tried to look towards Obadiah as the older man stood to approach him, but each footstep down the stairs of the landing had Tony looking away, as if one glance at Obadiah’s face would betray the niggling suspicion lurking in his eyes that he couldn’t quite hide. “I lay low, and you take care of all the-”

“Hey, come on. In public, the press. This was a board of directors meeting.”

“This was-- This was a board of directors meeting?” Tony parroted back, gaping. Why hadn’t he been told? Obadiah seated himself on the chair next to Tony’s. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, but his discomfort was hidden by the disbelief on his face.

“The board is claiming you have post traumatic stress. They’re filing an injunction.”

“They what?” How the hell could the board file an injunction against the CEO of the company?

“They want to lock you out.” Obadiah’s face almost seemed smug. No, Tony told himself. He was jumping to conclusions. But his gut was screaming at him that this wasn’t right - there was something inherently wrong with the entire situation. Darkness floated about Obadiah’s head, a broken crown oozing wisps of all the bad things in the world, and Tony wanted nothing more than to run away from it.

But another part of him urged him to stay. Because he’d trusted Obadiah all his life; the older man had been his mentor in the place of Howard for years. Why would things be different now?

So he stayed. He talked, not that it got him anywhere.

Nothing really changed.

He was still alone with his project. More alone now, it would seem, if his company really was turning its back on him too. Irresponsible, they said he was. But they didn’t know what he knew, didn’t see what he saw. Being irresponsible would be to keep making weapons, empowering the terrorist bastards they’re supposed to be fighting against.

“This is great,” Tony gritted his teeth as Obadiah continued to fight against his decision, urging him to rethink things. Tony got to his feet, determined to walk away, he had to get away before he said or did something stupid.

“Oh. come on, Tony. Tony!”

“I’ll be in the shop.”

“Hey, hey!” Obadiah tried again, and something pulled, a force grasping at his soul, trying to rip and tear to bring him to a stop, to bring him closer. Tony stiffened almost imperceptibly as his feet stopped on their own accord, and fingers brushed his shoulder to hold him in place. “Hey, Tony, listen. I’m trying to turn this thing around, but you gotta give me something. Something to pitch ‘em. Let me have the engineers analyze that. You know, draw up some specs.”

Alarm bells were going off in Tony’s head, and those little wisps of darkness around Obadiah’s head were buzzing, swarming, almost manic. As if trying to keep him there, trying to convince him further. Like he could see the state of the older man’s mind, laid bare by the wisps that only he seemed to be able to see.

“No. No, absolutely not.” The older man started to talk over him, but Tony barreled on. “This one stays with me. That’s it, Obie, forget it.”

Tony turned, tearing himself from the grasp of tension holding him in place, and headed back down towards his workshop. He wanted to believe that Obadiah was only worried about the company, and the stock; he wanted so badly to believe he was wrong, and the there was no deception in Obadiah’s words. But listening to them sounded like poison, and he’d been listening to those words for years.

As he walked down the stairs, it felt a little too much like fleeing.

“Day 11, test 37, configuration 2.0. For lack of a better option, DUM-E is still on fire safety,” Tony said into the camera U was holding with one claw. He turned to the second robot as he said, “If you douse me again, and I’m not on fire, I’m donating you to a city college.” It was an empty threat - he said it all the time, along with similar threats, though he would never actually follow through with it. It was just a way to try to get the robot to perform better.

Not that it worked; DUM-E and U were always making the same little flaws, but Tony wouldn’t have it any other way. It was why he’d never upgraded their circuit boards. He liked them just the way they were. The bot’s claw lowered, like a puppy being reprimanded and trying to hide his face - a quirk Tony had yet to figure out where the bot had learned it. Probably Rhodey.

The boots and gauntlets were secured tightly around Tony’s hands and feet, still just as clunky and heavy as the last time. Despite being launched into the wall on his last test run, he still didn’t quite believe he would really be able to fly. How could such a heavy metal suit compare to the wind flowing through his feathers and tickling his skin, the hard beats of his wings as he rode the clouds? Something in his heart ached - he never flew quite as much as he wanted to. And now he couldn’t, a bird with clipped wings and so little power in his veins he could scarcely light a candle.

He forced the bittersweet feel of a phantom breeze to the back of his mind, refocusing again on the camera U was holding. “Alright, nice and easy. Seriously, just gonna start off with 1% thrust capacity. And three, two, one.”

The jets on his feet and hands fired up, and for a sickening moment the world jerked around him and it was all he could do to keep his arms steady and pointed towards the floor - but then he leveled off, and the ground was a foot below him. Sparks flew off the jets on his hands, but he did it. A moment later he cut the power, landing haphazardly on his feet and having to take a few steps to steady himself. He let out a loose, shaky laugh, grinning to himself. Maybe he could fly again. Not with wings, per say, but he could fly.

A quick look around at his bots had DUM-E raising the fire extinguisher - never a good sign with that bot. “Please don’t follow me around with it either, ‘cause I feel like I’m gonna catch on fire spontaneously. Just stand down, if something happens, then come in.” The bot lowered his claw, if only a fraction. Tony turned away, facing the camera again, saying, “And again, let’s bring it up to 2.5.”

He was ready this time as the repulsors came to life, spitting more sparks and heaving him higher into the air. He started drifting in place, each movement of his arms sending him sailing away from the testing grid on the floor. He managed to avoid severe damage to his cars, though the blasts of air from the repulsors on his boots scattered a plethora of papers from one of his work desks. A minor inconvenience, and something that wouldn’t have to be taken care of immediately.

He carefully positioned his arms and legs ramrod straight once he was back over the grid on the floor, landing with a heavy thud as he cut power to the jets. Excitement was growing in the hole in his chest, blooming, spreading, until he could almost imagine that it swam in his eyes like lights.

“Yeah, I can fly.”

Robotic arms emerged from the ceiling and floor, swiftly bringing out the parts of his suit and securing them around his body in a whirl of bolts and screws and wires. Completely ensconced in metal. He’d thought it might feel suffocating and heavy, like his first model. But rather something like safety, determination, power swam in his veins. It wasn’t quite wings and feathers and flames, but… it would certainly do the trick.

“JARVIS, are you there?” he asked, even knowing that he would be.

“At your service, sir,” his AI replied.

JARVIS got himself uploaded into the suit, and tried to give him some sort of warning against flying before running tests, but Tony wasn’t exactly paying attention to the warnings. The anticipation of flight, the feeling of being above it all, seeing the world for miles and miles in all directions and being able to soar over it; it filled his blood with adrenaline just thinking about it.

“JARVIS,” he said, letting the tone of his voice tell the AI that nothing he could say would stop him from doing this. “Sometimes you gotta run before you can walk.”

And so he flew.

There was no wind on his face, but oh, he was flying again. He could hear it ripping past his suit as he hurdled forward through the sky, he could see the stars flashing by overhead through his HUD, and the ocean waves crashing and pushing and pulling below him, almost inconsequential as he gazed out over the vast lights of the city. It all seemed so small from so high up in the air. So vulnerable.

Pure, unfiltered joy rushed through his very bones.

He passed by trees and buildings and cliffs of the Malibu coastline, passed an amusement park full of people who would never know the thrill currently thrumming through his blood, passed the one child on a ferris wheel who was actually looking up to see a shining, silver blur cleaving the sky in half. How high above the world was he?

How much farther could he go?

The threat of any possible dangers didn’t even cross his mind as he angled himself upwards, the slightest micro movements of his hands or feet changing his trajectory, forcing it higher than the horizon, towards a blanket of distantly shining stars. He wondered briefly if he could reach them, one day, and fly above foreign planets. What possibilities awaited him?

The stars inched ever closer, the sky grew ever darker, and the ground grew ever farther away from beneath his feet. He wanted to see those burning balls of light in the sky, he needed to be closer, enough so that he could imagine feeling their heat. “What’s SR-71’s record?” he asked JARVIS, grinning behind his mask. He was willing to bet he could beat it.

“The altitude record for fixed wing flight is 85,000 feet, sir.”

“Records are made to be broken! Come on!” Tony’s grin grew wider as he flew, up, up, up. The sky grazed over his suit, the clouds already specks beneath him, stars growing brighter, closer. Euphoria jumped and pranced in his eyes.

“Sir, there is a potentially fatal buildup of ice occurring,” JARVIS warned, but it fell on deaf ears.

“Keep going! Higher!”

And the stars kept inching closer, the ground farther; higher, higher, higher. And then his HUD blinked out of existence, and all he could see were the two small holes in his mask and a very dark, very empty, very foreboding sky through them. It was… extremely cold.

His heart did a somersault to his stomach, then fell to his toes as the weight of gravity dragged him down again. He had one stark moment of clarity to call out to JARVIS for help, to deploy flats, start the suit, do something - but it was gone a moment later. Please don’t be my tomb, he pleaded, silent despite the fear. He was falling, falling, falling. The panic surged up and gripped his chest with icy, icy claws.

He came to an abrupt stop.

The suit floated, suspended in midair, limp and dark and coated in frigid ice. Rage crashed around with the fear in his heart, angrily tossing about like the harsh waves of a riptide, thrashing into the waters of panic and leaving him breathless as the conflict surged. He was angry at the suit for failing, angry at JARVIS for booting down, angry at the ice for forming, angry at the sky for lack of air and pressure. He gritted his teeth and growled, clenching his fists together to make it stop. Chips of ice fell away from the suit. Metal might’ve creaked.

Stop. Something small, something weak, whispered. And he wanted to be angry at that too. But the voice, as small as it sounded, sent thunder reverberating through his blood, lighting through his brain, explosions through his heart; the crashing waves of irrational hatred became small in the face of it. All that was left was a warm, almost comforting calm as the darkness ebbed away.

And then he was falling again and the world was spinning, but JARVIS was back, and the jets were restored mere moments before his metal body hit the asphalt, and he launched away from passing cars and terrified pedestrians, back into the sky. Tony wanted to smile, to feel something at knowing his life was saved, but he just… couldn’t. Weary exhaustion took it’s hold, rooting itself in his bones and under his skin, and it was all he could do to direct himself back to his home.

He crashed through the floor, rather than landed, and maybe DUM-E finally got his chance to spray Tony with his oh-so-beloved fire extinguisher; but Tony didn’t pick up on any of it, even as he lay his head back onto the dented metal of one of his cars, and maybe this heavy of a suit wasn’t such a great idea. Sleep tore at his eyes, at his limbs, urging him to stay down with more strength then he’d ever felt in his life. The couch looked like it was miles away, and he still had to remove himself from the suit, still had to stand--

The ice was crawling up his arms, filling the void in his chest with such deep shadow even the dark haze over his eyes seemed friendly. His heart thrummed an erratic beat behind his ribs, speeding up, panic near to the point of bursting. Thump thump, thump thump, thumpthump, thumpthump thu-thump thu-thumpthu-thumpthu-thump--

Yinsen’s dead eyes stared up at him, unblinking, face splattered with shining, bright white blood. So… pure. But his mouth moved where his eyes and body didn't, forming a word on his lips that Tony couldn't hear above the roaring silence assaulting his ears. The soundless word sent more chills rocketing up Tony’s spine, locking him in place over the body of yet another soul he couldn't save, another friend dead at the hands of some cruel, twisted fate with his timeline wrapped around its hands.

Was he ever your friend? No, no no no.

Suddenly the bags Yinsen’s body lay on melted away, fading into liquid shadows and melding into the dark crevices of the cave, taking Yinsen with them. But then the dark came back, crashing waves of it born of the cave’s rocky walls, threatening to swallow him whole, drown him in the blackest night. The iron ensconcing his body, once made to protect him, save him; it now tore him down, down, further down into the depths of a growing black ocean. The pitch haze poured unfiltered into his lungs, leaving him choking for even a minuscule breath of the light again.

Fly, he pleaded, to anything, anyone who might be listening. Fly.

But the wings at his back were laden with caliginous sludge, too heavy, too pushed down upon by the ocean of shadows he sank into. The rockets on his boots sputtered and died in the dark, hope-bearing lights lost to his own malignancy.

Tony was suffocating.

A hand darted out towards him and gripped his arm tight enough to make him wince. Yinsen, somehow clearly visible (of course, a light as pure as his is best observed in the dead of night) despite the murk, tendrils of his pure white blood reaching out like arms. His eyes were dead, so very dead. Lifeless. But he still whispered a word Tony just couldn't hear. The grip on his arm tightened, and then Yinsen was dragged away on dark waves, and Tony gasped for air in cave, clawing desperately at bandages on his chest.

I wouldn't do that if I were you.

Cave walls were closing in on all sides, dangerously sharp, claustrophobic, just as suffocating as sinking had been. He thrashed, lashed out at the rocks and found them recoiling, flying away into an open night sky, blocking the stars’ light in their path. The light did not reappear once the boulders had past, leaving dark trails through the painted galaxy on the sky's canvas, a defacement of the natural beauty of things.

He tumbled through the air and hit the ground hard, landing with a thud that sounded more like the crack of a thousand fragile bones. Loud, grating shouts fell on his ears like a never ending spray bullets, a barrage that he couldn't block that cut deep into his skin. Nevertheless, Tony wrapped his wings around himself in a desperate attempt to create a buffer zone between himself and the vicious pain. No red or yellow or gold existed in his feathers anymore - they were pitch black, oozing and dripping shadows.

The vocal bullets ripped gashes and tears in his wings, tore them to shreds until he was bleeding a terrible mixture of darkness and blood. Only then did the pain stop, only then did he rise to his feet and let his black blood turn from veiled panic to raw, unfiltered rage. Shadows flew from his hands in a maelstrom of wind and blades made of air and dust and darkness. Men of the Ten Rigs were torn into ten different pieces, limbs severing and and flying away in great spurts of crimson blood - the only color to decorate a barren, black and gray landscape.

But the men kept coming, closing in on all sides around him and looking more beastly than human. Wicked daggers of black ice formed in his hands as fast as he could throw them, embedding them in faces and chests and watching all the while with sick delight as their blood stained silver sands copper.

He lashed out with his broken wings to force the men away even as they swarmed his back and fired bullets into his skin. Clawed hands and feet fought back, ripping and tearing and slashing and slicing, sending out bursts of pure force and hardened darkness against his attackers. He twisted and ducked and lunged, a beautiful whirlwind dance of death set to a symphony of sin.

When it ended, Tony was left alone on a field of bodies, standing tall amongst a river of blood lapping at his ankles, dripping off his torn clothes, the tips of whatever shredded feathers he had left on his sagging wings. One body in the crowd stood, slow, silent, it's movements deliberate. Tony would recognize that white blood no matter how polluted with crimson it was.

And suddenly the words he had struggled so much to hear we're made painfully clear to him.

“Monster.”

You are a monster.

When Tony opened his eyes again, his HUD was shining numbers and data in his eyes and the suit was clearly still around him. A lingering sense of horror fled to the cobwebs of his brain, quickly forgotten as he woke. He sluggishly tried to rub sleep from his eyes before remembering that a mask and gauntlet sat in his way. JARVIS suddenly spoke up, too loud in his ears. “Sir, you’ve been asleep for nearly an hour and a half. U and DUM-E have cleaned up most of the mess from your crash, and I have moved the suit to an upright position to avoid complications with your spine.”

Sure enough, a closer examination told Tony that he was standing upright in the middle of his workshop. “Thanks, J,” he managed to say, groggily, but the words caused a strong pounding to erupt in his head, all at once alerting him to more pains; a soreness in his ribs. And arms. And legs. Never was he going to make the mistake of falling through three floors of concrete and a piano ever again. His mother’s piano… it was a good thing the other one, the one she used to use the most, was still in a storage vault. Still, perhaps he could repair the broken one. If there was enough left to repair.

“Let’s get this thing off,” he said, wincing a bit as he walked over to the grid in the floor so the hidden robotic arms could remove the suit. As the machines whirled around, unscrewing joints and disassembling metal plates, JARVIS spoke up again, switching from Tony’s earpiece to the workshop’s speakers as the helmet came off.

“Sir, if I may, what did you do to cause such exhaustion and lowered vitals while the suit lost power? As I was not able to monitor, I cannot determine a cause. I also calculated that, between the time the suit lost power, and the time it regained it, you did not fall as far as you should have without interference.” There was curiosity in the AI’s voice, but it hid something else. Apprehension, perhaps. Could an AI feel apprehension?

The suit was almost off when Tony sighed and said, “I- I don’t really want to talk about, J.” He didn’t want to think about the rage and fear that snarled in his chest, brooding in someplace cold.

JARVIS paused before he continued speaking, almost as if he were taking time to think. Time an AI wouldn’t necessarily need.

“I do recommend you tell me. Sir.”

It was Tony’s turn to stop, as the arms around him froze in their disassembling, part of the metal plates from his thigh and feet still encasing his limbs.

“JARVIS,” he started, brows furrowed. “What are you doing? Get this off.”

The whirs started up again, but slowly, working at half the pace as they had been before. “Sir, you promised when you created me that you would not withhold critical information about yourself from me.”

Tony sighed, not answering, waiting instead for the robotic arms to finish removing the suit. Moments ticked past, fleeting, and spanning centuries. Even as the last metal plate was withdrawn under the floor, Tony kept silent. Yes, he’d promised that, and he did trust JARVIS with his life and everything it entailed. But that… dark part of him, he didn’t even want to think about it, let alone voice it aloud. But he couldn’t exactly go along forever, hoping the problem would go away if he paid it no mind.

“I don’t know how to put it into words,” he eventually said, gritting his teeth. He walked away from the main workshop and plopped himself into a swivel chair in front of his main computer. “It-- you remember how I said the phoenixes told me that there was… a demon in me?”

“Of course.”

“Ever since…” Nausea churned in Tony’s stomach, the mere thought of his months in those caves, the cold and the pain that gnawed at his heart putting his senses on alert. “Ever since I got lost over there, it’s been… I don’t know. Stronger. There have been times where I was scared, and then-- suddenly I didn’t have control anymore. I was watching, but I wasn’t the one moving my limbs.”

JARVIS was quiet for a long time, and for a moment Tony thought he wasn’t going to answer. But just as he opened his mouth to speak, JARVIS barrelled over him.

“Am I to initiate the Arkel Valian Protocol, sir?” he asked, and for someone who wasn’t human and technically couldn’t feel true emotions, there was something akin to fear in his AI’s voice. Fear, and maybe, if he hoped to believe, an almost melancholy resignation.

Tony stiffened, not at the tone, but the words. Arkel valian. Words of the phoenix tongue. Words he hadn’t heard since a long several weeks of tutoring lessons Elios had given him on the language the last time he’d phased over to Flamma Tri’kel, years back, not long after he had officially inherited Stark Industries and took over as CEO. Tony swallowed hard against the lump forming in his throat - he’d hoped to never, ever have to hear that protocol’s name uttered since he’d made it.

“No,” he breathed, desperately shaking his head. “Not yet, not now. Not unless it gets extreme. Point-of-no-return extreme. You got that?”

“...As you wish, sir.”

It had taken him almost an hour to banish the thoughts of the Arkel Valian Protocol from his mind. And, even though Tony hoped he would never have to activate it, it was a relief, in a way, to know that, if anything should happen, JARVIS would be there and know exactly what to do. It took a weight off his shoulders, even if the burden removed was only a small one. He could physically feel the difference, in the way his heart beat just a little steadier and his breaths weren’t so tense.

“Main transducer feels sluggish at plus forty altitude. Hull pressurization is problematic. I’m thinking icing is the probable factor.” Tony rattled off the mental notes he’d taken from his first test flight - after, of course, trying his best with his memories and the footage JARVIS had recorded to piece together where things had gone wrong - now in complete concentration mode.

“A very astute observation, sir. Perhaps if you intend to visit other planets, we should improve the exosystems.”

Tony listed off a plethora of new specifications for the armor as he fiddled with the chrome face plate, drawing experimental marks with a metallic sharpie. He held it in front of his face, looking at the television playing quietly in the background through the eyes of the mask. He’d originally had JARVIS turn it on just for white noise while he worked, but the mention of his name amongst the clamor of reporters and the audience in the background caught his attention.

"Tonight's red-hot red carpet is right here at the Disney Concert Hall, where Tony Stark's third annual benefit for the Firefighter's Family Fund has become the place to be for L.A.'s high society," the reporter spoke animatedly at the camera, her voice nearly overtaken by the crowd behind her if not for the microphone held in her hands.

Normally there were invitations in his email for such things, even if he did technically run them. It was the only way he could keep up with all of the various meetings and galas and events he had to attend. “JARVIS, we get an invite for that?” he asked, knowing the AI would know exactly what he was talking about. Even if he’d accidentally deleted the invite from his inbox, there would be a record.

“I have no record of an invitation, sir,” JARVIS answered.

"... hasn't been seen in public since his bizarre and highly controversial press conference. Some claim he's suffering from post traumatic stress and has been bedridden for weeks. Whatever the case may be, no one expects an appearance from him tonight."

Post traumatic stress? Bedridden? He almost wanted to laugh out loud. Sure, there were nightmares, but he didn’t think it could really be serious enough to be called PTSD. At least, he never remembered enough for it to really be that bad, he thought. And really - bedridden? Oh, the irony. He was more… skyridden. It would also do wonders for the public to see his face again - he’d, admittedly, lost track of the time he spent on his project. The public had been running on rumors since the press conference he’d held when he first returned from Afghanistan.

“The render is complete,” JARVIS interrupted his thoughts. Tony looked over to the monitor to see a projection of the next version of the suit, shining a brilliant gold. Almost the exact color of his eyes when they shone with his power. It was a little… too much, even for his ostentatious facade. Tony thought of the phoenix feathers; Elios and Raela’k and Via’s wings, and how the tips of their primary feathers were yellow and gold accents to the crimson and burgundy that colored the better part of their wings. Via in particular had very sanguine feathers, with slightly darker secondaries and an almost shimmering gold alula.

“Tell you what. Throw a little fiery red in there,” Tony said.

“Yes. That should help you keep a low profile,” JARVIS snarked, then after a few moments, alerted him to the finished render. The suit on the screen stared back at him, in all its red and gold glory.

An iron phoenix.

“I like it,” he commented, eyes still running over the display as he took in the sight of his new wings (even if there technically weren’t any wings on the suit whatsoever) and set the old mask down on his desk. Leave it to Tony to show his phoenix colors while hiding behind a human face right under the noses of the entire world. “Fabricate it. Paint it.”

“Commencing automated assembly. Estimated completion time is five hours.”

And he had a Disney Concert Hall to get to.

“Don’t wait up for me, honey.”

“Is this what you call accountability?” Christine practically spat the words out, halting Tony in his vaguely panicked ramblings as she held out a stack of photos to him. “It’s a town called Gulmira. Ever heard of it?”

A cold bolt of terrible familiarity ricocheted through Tony’s skull.

I’m from a small town called Gulmira. It’s actually a nice place.

Yinsen’s hometown. The place where his family had been - where they’d died. Tony flipped through the photos Christine had thrust into his hands, noting with a growing sense of anger that those trucks bore the Ten Rings logo, that some of those men were the same men he had seen ordering him around and shoving guns in his face, that they were attacking innocent people, killing innocent people. He flipped to the last picture in the stack - to be met with a photo of the Jericho. The one they wanted him to make. The one he’d refused to make, because who knew what they could do with just one?

And now they have it.

“When were these taken?” he asked, trying his best not to grind his teeth. There were too many people around for him to make a scene, to appear out of the ordinary.

“Yesterday.” She sounded condescending, accusatory. As if he would actually send missiles to terrorists.

“I didn’t approve any shipment.” But they could have only been sent out if the shipment had been approved. And the person left to that task was-- It couldn’t be true. Because Tony didn’t want it to be true, he didn’t want to believe it and put faith in his fears. But he’s the only one who could send those missiles to them, the logical part of his brain seemed to say.

“Well, your company did.”

“I’m not my company,” he growled out, almost certain that his fear was taking hold again, making his sounds inhuman. But Christine still followed him as he turned on his heel to find the man he needed to confront, to know for certain, to have his hunch be proven right; and oh, how he wanted to be proven wrong. But in truth, he’d known since he saw those little dark wisps hanging about Obadiah’s head like a disease. Corruption.

He had to wonder how long he’d been blind to it.

“Have you seen these pictures?” he demanded when he found him - out front on the red carpet, in front of dozens of cameras and people. Far too public - but the concern for keeping a low profile had just about flown the coop the minute his eyes fell on the older man’s smug, greedy face and a feeling like acid clawed at his heart. “What’s going on in Gulmira?”

“Tony, Tony,” Obadiah started, using a voice that had once calmed him down, assuaged any anxiety he might have had. He wanted to rip out his vocal chords so he wouldn’t have to hear it anymore - woah, woah, calm yourself, don’t let the fear control you. Little wisps darted out towards Tony’s head like gnats, jumping to and from his head in time with the beats in the song of betrayal. “You can’t afford to be this naive.” Something dark flared up in the hole in his chest, and it took all he had to restrain it from going further than shimmering like enraged pearls in his eyes.

“You know what, I was naive before-” he spat, near to snarling- “when they said ‘here’s the line, we don’t cross it. This is how we do business.’ And if we’re dealing under the table-- Are we?” Tony didn’t know what he’d do if Obadiah said yes. He just hoped he wouldn’t lose it right then and there and murder him on the red carpet.

Just then, a particularly loud person in the crowd cried out, “Tony, your picture, please!” There could not have been a worse time to beg for pictures. But Obadiah took the chance, slipping an arm around Tony’s shoulders and turning them both to face the cameras pointed in their direction. He desperately wanted to recoil from the touch, but he didn’t even have the strength to spare to even attempt one of his patented fake media smiles - if he broke concentration from holding back the dark thing inside him for even a moment, there was no telling what he might do.

“Tony, who do you think locked you out?” Obadiah whispered in his ear, still flashing the cameras a confident smile. “I was the one who filed the injunction against you. It was the only way I could protect you.”

Letting go of his control felt like a very, very good idea as the older man walked away. But he couldn’t, because he still had names to write into his journal, and reaping the names of so many people around him now would not present any solution, and it would only make the burden of his heart that much heavier. So he reigned it in to the best of his ability as he stalked off the carpet, ignoring the shouts and cries of the onlookers as he tried to go find somewhere remotely quiet and empty.

He ended up in a relatively lonesome alley about ten blocks away, only held on his feet by the wall behind his back, trembling like a leaf against the ice coursing through his body in throbbing waves, threatening still to grab the wheel and do whatever it wanted to do. Ten minutes passed, and the trembles fell to a slight shaking.

Twenty minutes, and the ice seemed to thaw, even though the nighttime breeze was nipping at his skin.

After an hour, he felt like his head space was clear enough to think without straining to keep his eyes brown instead of glazed over black.

Two hours, and he finally, finally felt something akin to normalcy.