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His whole body hurt.
Well, considering he just used the infinity stones to literally rewrite reality itself it was to be expected. Still, the burning agony which started the moment the stones settled in his gauntlet was nearly too much. But this, this was the one chance in fourteen million something futures where everyone came back and Thanos was defeated.
Whatever it takes.
Echoed in his mind as he snapped and Tony knew with a certainty that he would die this time. No more comebacks at the last moment. This was it. It hurt to think about it, that he'll never see his family again, his bots or even do something mundane like go for a walk or eat ice cream with Morgan and Pepper.
Seemed like the invincible Iron Man wasn't so invincible after all, huh? Ironic really that after he finally began to settle down and was happy he died.
All the shit that he'd been through and he lived. He fucking lived after an Alien Invasion and carried a nuke through a portal, but now, now he'll die. The Universe must really hate him.
At least they're safe now.
He sat down heavily, his body too weak to hold itself up anymore, and leaned against the rubble behind him. Time stretched weirdly, he blinked his burning eyelids and suddenly he wasn't staring into open air and instead the distraught faces of his loved ones. Rhodey was the first to hover in front of him, the grief colouring his face and the tears in his eyes hurting Tony's soul nearly as much as the Stones had the moment they set themselves into the gauntlet.
He wanted to say that everything would be okay and that Rhodey shouldn't worry but the truth was that it really, really wasn't. He couldn't lie to his best and oldest friend, pretending everything was fine. Also, he couldn't speak. The single most powerful stones in the universe could do that to a man.
The burning in his right arm was as constant as the aches all over the rest of his battle worn body, not to speak of the toll that the stones took on his mind. He felt weaker with every second that went by and his eyesight already blurred around the edges. Still, he held on. If Tony Stark was one thing, it was stubborn.
Peter came next and almost flung himself at Tony. The boy barely choked back his tears and was desperately telling him that they had won, the total despair and sadness on his face nearly to much for Tony to take. Then, at last, Pepper appeared. The love of his life and the most amazing person in the world. She gently pried Peter off of him and kneeled next to his broken body, pain obvious in her eyes and the wobble of her lip. Still, she put on a brave face and held his hand over the arc reactor.
The blurry quality at the edge of his eyes evolved to dark that got more and more prominent the longer he held on, aches and pains turning cold before numbness stole the last of his awareness of his limbs.
He didn't have much time left.
"We're gonna be okay. You can rest now." Pep said shakily and he could see that despite her hurt, she had faith in that statement.
It reassured him slightly but it still pained him to no end that he would leave her, leave Peter just as he got him back and most of all that he would leave Morgan. She would have to grow up without a father, something that he'd desperately tried to prevent. He'd never wanted this but since the first time he'd donned the suit he knew that he would most likely die in battle - and this, this was the biggest battle in his long history of being Ironman. In a way it was fitting that he would go out protecting his family, his friends and all the innocent people in the world. Still didn't make it hurt any less, though.
His eyesight was now nearly non existent, the last of his life leaving him in small, shuddering breaths, his muscles relaxing and his heart slowing down. One last look at Pepper and all the people surrounding him and he felt ready to finally let go. So he did. He let the black swallow him completely and was secure in the knowledge that Thanos was gone and that his family was safe.
_____________________
He woke up on a hard gurney.
Live electricity could be running through his veins with how hard his heart suddenly jumped as he could suddenly feel again, sensations bombarding his brain from previously fried nerves. It was overwhelming, too much too soon, and he couldn't-. He gasped, a sharp, stuttered breath in through his mouth and why was that so difficult- a strange intrusion in his nose that continued down his windpipe, he yanked it out because this wasn't supposed to be there - and then burning agony exploded in his chest. His eyes flew open and he stared wide eyed at the ceiling of a stone cave. Breathing hard, mind running a mile a minute, he looked at the tube in his hand, completely disoriented, and felt a strange sort of déja-vu.
This all seems strangely familiar.
Tony let his eyes wander down to his chest to see what was causing him this ungodly amount of pain and his confusion turned into pure shock. There were bandages wrapped around his chest and two wires came from under the gauze.
No.
Breath hitching, he followed the wires with his eyes and saw a car battery attached to them. Not believing his eyes he stared at the battery and then back at his chest. This couldn't be. It had to be a dream, a hyper realistic hallucination. But it wasn't a dream. He felt the heavy Intrusion of the metal in his chest but had to check nonetheless. Tearing the gauze with his hands he stared at the contraption in his chest with disbelieving eyes. His breathes were getting heavier and irregular as he lay paralysed staring at the magnet.
No. Please no. This has to be a dream, a nightmare. It has to.
With panicked eyes he looked around himself. Everything was as he remembered it, the same stone walls, the same things in the same places and as his eyes landed on the only other person in this place he froze.
Yinsen was calmly shaving in front of a mirror and the scene was as surreal as it was the last time he'd seen it. Yinsen was dead, had been for years but there he stood, just shaving as if nothing was wrong and as if this wasn't a fucking nightmare that seemed all too real. Was this hell? Was this the afterlife? Because if it was then he wanted a fucking refund. No thanks this product was not to my satisfaction. This wasn't the rest he was promised and sure as shit not where he thought he would be after sacrificing himself to save the world. But he should have expected it really, the universe seemed to really love to fuck with him.
Giving a nearly hysterical laugh without any real humor was maybe not the best reaction to something like this but really, he couldn't help himself. It was either that or a panic attack and he couldn't afford that right now. Besides you can't tell him that it wasn't at least a little ridiculous that he would end up here where everything began when his life had finally ended. Life has come full circle and he was back at the start. His entire existence really was just a fucking joke at this point, wasn't it?
It all must be some sort of near death hallucination and he would wake up in the next minute because everything else would make no sense. In the past he had dreamed about waking up in the cave again and finding out that the last years were just in his imagination and that he never left this goddamn place. He wanted to shudder just thinking about it but this here certainly didn't feel like a dream, everything was too vivid, too real. The cave also wasn't this detailed in his nightmares, he had totally forgotten about the dust marks on the mirror, and he didn't feel any textures or anything other then fear and pain in these dreams. Maybe he really never left this place? A cold shiver ran down his spine at that thought but he quickly dismissed that theory, he couldn't have possibly dreamed all the things that happened to him up, it was far to elaborate to be s fever dream.
Time travel? His mind seemed to practically scream at him and he wanted to scoff. As if. It was impossible that he somehow travelled back in time and was back in his younger body with all his future memories in order. He knew that but really, what other theories did he have? The very real pain in his chest spoke for it and the fabric under him felt real too but that was just ridiculous. He couldn't be in the past, he couldn't. But this dream or whatever sure as shit wasn't heaven and if it was hell then it didn't look anything like he thought it would. No demons and no fire pits with the screams of the damned echoing.
Still, he was pretty sure he died on the battlefield after snapping Thanos and his Army to dust. (Serves the purple bastard right. Now he knew what it's like to lose everything), but that wasn't an explanation for how he'd gotten here.
"Stark, you okay?"
Yinsen's smooth voice resounded and snapped him out of his own head. The man had finished shaving in the short time that Tony was lost in his thoughts and was now standing at the edge of his cot and watched him with slightly worried eyes. Well, he had just laughed out of nowhere shortly after seeing his mangled chest and that didn't exactly make him seem like the most normal or sane person in the world, not that he ever pretended to be.
"Yes, I'm fine. Well, as fine as you can be with something like this in your chest." He answered and started trying to sit up. Pain immediately followed as he moved his chest even a little bit and he gave a pained grunt before Yinsen stepped in to assist him. After a few seconds he finally sat at the edge of the cot with his legs going over the side of it. "Thanks." He told the Doctor and spotted a water glass on the side table and promptly snatched it.
While he was giving his dry throat the water it needed Yinsen looked him over more carefully and explained, "The thing in your chest is an electromagnet powered by the car battery next to you. It keeps shrapnel out of your heart. I couldn't remove all the pieces so I did the next best thing to keep them from killing you."
Finished with his water Tony sat the glass back down and looked at the Doc as he answered, "Well, thanks for saving my life I guess."
___________________
The Cave was exactly as Tony remembered it down to the last speck of dust. It also still had the same charming hosts as the first time he was here and they must have been delighted that he woke up because they stormed through their door not even half an hour after he opened his eyes.
Yinsen had just started cooking some beans over the fire for them as the shouting from outside the door started. Hurriedly he started getting up and moved with fast steps to stand next to Tony so that he could tell him about the procedure, (just like last time).
And then they were there.
Tony looked at them with unimpressed eyes and a neutral look on his face while he held one arm loosely behind his head and clutched the car battery to his side with his other one. They seemed scarier in his memories. Even with all their weapons ('Starktech' he thought bitterly) they didn't seem the least bit professional and really, he had faced scarier people all his life.
The guy with the beard began saying something and Yinsen obediently translated it for Tony. It was exactly the same speech as last time but this time he answered differently.
"Yeah sure. I'll build it for you, I just need some materials first."
Yinsen gave him a bit complex look, something like disappointment shining through, but really, what should he have done? Endured waterboarding and other torture again just to put off the inevitable outcome? Yeah, no thanks he wasn't going through that again just for shits and giggles. Besides, if he really was in the past every second counted, so if he wanted to change the timeline and stop Thanos from ever getting any of the stones, he couldn't waste time on something useless like that.
The guy with the beard was obviously pleased with his answer and wanted to know what materials he would need to start as soon as possible. With a sharp smirk and a dark look in his eyes Tony told him.
_______________________
First thing on his agenda was building the arc reactor again so that he could finally get rid of the damn battery which would only be in his way if wanted to build the suit here.
He had done it a cosiderable amount of times before so it didn't even prove the slightest challenge and he was done with that even quicker than planned.
When Yinsen connected the reactor with the magnet he could finally breathe a little easier knowing that you wouldn't have to just unplug the two wires for him to have a literal heart-attack. Even though he knew that the palladium wouldn't be good for his body in the long run he was still happy with his work and already started making plans to create (recreate?) Starkanium when he got home.
As that was done he could at last begin with the building of the suit and this time he didn't even need to draw plans, he knew all the important details from mark 1 to 85 by heart.
With every clanking sound that the hammer produced when he connected it with the metal he was closer to freedom and could feel all thoughts about dying and time travel and all the other things from before waking up here slipping away.
It was freeing.
____________________
This time he didn't let himself get close to Yinsen. It was the only logical thing to do since the Doc was most likely going to die once more. He tried to change the man's mind but didn't really seem to get through to him and came to the painful conclusion that Yinsen really didn't want to make it out of this place alive after his repeated attempts of inspire a will to live failed. Still, he tried to at least be a friendly acquaintance to the man until the end but the Doctor didn't seem to like him very much because of his decision at the beginning of his stay here. Yinsen's disapproval wasn't exactly subtle but that only strengthened his resolve to not get too attached to him.
So the two of them weren't on the best of terms but Tony knew how to work with someone that didn't like him and remain professional. He had experience and the Doctor's disapproval wasn't the worst he had ever had to live with. They both worked together in such a way that Tony instructed Yinsen on what he had to do and the man just did as told when he found nothing wrong with the instructions. And that wasn't really much.
Tony took on the brunt of the work himself so the Doc was often working on the easier, less complex parts, which led to stilted conversations between them.
"Do you have a family?" Yinsen asked one time when Tony was hammering a piece of metal near the forge into the shape that he wanted.
The man had obviously noticed that what Tony was building was not, in fact, a Jericho or anything of the sort but had yet to ask about what it really was. Smart guy. You can't just ask something like that in bright daylight with a high chance of their captors coming in at any moment so he would likely bring it up when it was later in the day or at least when the camera in the corner couldn't see their lips move.
But back to the question. Maybe he should've expected Yinsen asking about his family like he did the first time but he really wasn't prepared for it to happen this early into their captivity. So an image of a smiling Morgan in her mother's arms flashed before his eyes without his permission. He had tried not to let his mind stray in that particular direction because it only made him feel lost and dejected when he realized that he would never see them again.
Of course he would see Pepper when he got back to America but it wasn't going to be his Pepper. The one which had stayed by his side through the good and the bad, the one which said 'yes I do' at the altar, the one with which he lived in the Lakehouse and the one which loved him even though it only hurt her at the end. And Morgan was most likely never going to be born. It hurt his soul to think about them and what they could be doing right now, but he did what he had to do to keep Morgan, Peter and all the others safe even as it meant that he didn't get his happy ending.
He shoved all the thoughts about the past away and concentrated on his work again.
"No," was Tonys short reply. "Do you?"
"Yes. And I will see them if I ever get out of here." Yinsen's answer was the same as last time and it really wasn't anything that he hadn't expected. Tony's dispassionate "Good luck with that" was the last spoken thing for a few minutes and only the clanging of the hammer on the metal was heard before Yinsen again opened his mouth.
"Do you know any other languages then English?"
Tony stuttered in his swing, eyes snapping over to the Doctor for a second before he resumed his work after making brief eye-contact. Such a thing had never come up the first time he was here. Yinsen must have noticed him reacting to the things their captors had said before he translated them. The good Doc is observant.
"I do, actually. Russian, French, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew, Dari, Pashco and some others at a basic level but these are the main ones that I can speak fairly fluently. I learned Italian from my mother and Russian and French from a tutor at my boarding school but I picked up the rest of them after a little 'vacation' in the dessert." Tony gave a wry smile and dunked the metal piece he just got done hammering in the water barrel and watched the steam rise in the air.
"All the People at the place I was at spoke a different language then English and I couldn't understand them which lead to some...let's say, not so pleasant situations. After that I learned the main languages from there so that if I ever got in a similar situation I knew what they wanted from me." Funny, if you put it like that it even sounded like a real vacation and not like the horror it really was.
The first time he was here in the cave he hadn't understood a single thing they said to him so Yinsen always had to translate. The issue was that they couldn't just always take him with them when Tony was taken to be 'persuaded' to build the missile for them.
So when Yinsen wasn't there and somebody screamed at him in Arabic or some other foreign language expecting him to answer and understand what they wanted from him he obviously didn't know what to do. And if his answer wasn't to the satisfaction of his captors, which was always, his head would just get dunked underwater again and again and again and again, until he either passed out or died. Obviously he didn't die but he often came close to it in their little 'talks'.
Yinsen looked at him a little surprised and skeptical which, fair, because really not many people spoke that many languages and then it were mostly the same ones that their captors spoke here.
"Well, aren't you full of surprises Stark. I didn't expect that. But if I may ask, where was this vacation where so many middle eastern languages are spoken there that isn't here? Surely it would be all over the news if you had vacationed in Afghanistan."
"Wouldn't you like to know." Was his cryptic reply as he let the now finished shoulderplate fall heavily on the table next to the Doc.
______________________
Raza visited them shortly after they had finished most of the chest plating and were just ready to start making the last adjustments to the legs of the suit.
In that time Tony had told Yinsen that he would build a suit to get them out of the cave but didn't tell him any details that he didn't need to know.
At the moment the Doc worked on the wiring while Tony himself was just starting to craft the weapons that would end up in the suit which were considerably more then the Mark I had in the original timeline. He learned that good preparation nearly always paid off so no need to spare any trump cards that may save his life in the end.
The shouting was the first thing to be heard, as always, and after that a small army of the terrorists came storming through the door with their weapons at the ready. Tony calmly stopped his welding and put his goggles on his forehead while the men situated themselves around him and Yinsen. Tony didn't even bother raising his arms or getting up while the Doc quickly tossed his work away and scrambled to his feet, eyes panic stricken. Leaning back in his chair and watching their captors neutrally Tony waited for Raza to finally come in and wasn't disappointed.
With the air of a man who knew he was in charge, Raza walked through the door without even paying the slightest attention to his workers and immediately focused on the two captives in the room. Watching the nervous Doctor before moving his gaze to the seemingly totally at ease billionaire and narrowing his eyes at him. Tony just continued looking at the leader of the Ten Rings emotionlessly and didn't even pretend to be intimidated, crossing his arms over his chest when the stare didn't let up.
He knew that Raza wouldn't know what it was that they were building before he came in - the man wasn't a mechanic. Besides, since the time the arc reactor was finished and safely in Tony's chest he had slowly but continuously put a machine together that looked vaguely like the Jericho. If you didn't know the weapon as well as Tony you wouldn't know that it was just a fake out of their scrap metal. The suit was also still in its different parts and scattered all over so that it was more difficult to decipher what the individual components were for which made it easy to mistake them for other pieces of the Jericho.
All in all there was maybe a two percent chance that Raza would know what they were building, and even that percentage was generous.
Staring at them another long moment the terrorist leader seemed to zero in on the blue light coming from Stark's chest. Raising an eyebrow and stepping closer to the man in the chair, he started pulling Tony's shirt collar down till he encountered the barrier of his captive's crossed arms and pointedly looked at him. Suppressing an eye-roll, Tony let the limbs fall to his sides and gave Raza the full view of the reactor. Staring at it for a moment the leader of the Ten Rings seemed to deem it as not dangerous and let the collar of the shirt go before taking a step back and looking back at the other man he held as prisoner.
"Relax," Raza said to Yinsen who still had his arms raised but now hesitantly lowered them.
The Doc didn't seem to calm down the slightest bit at Raza's words and didn't stop flicking his gaze nervously between the leader of the Ten Rings, the men with weapons, and Tony.
The Terrorist leader started really looking around now and began inspecting the things they had just been working on, obviously noticing the lack of any plans while he commenced his monologue in accented English.
"The bow and arrow once where the pinnacle of weapons technology. 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. But today, whoever holds the latest Stark weapons rules these lands and soon it will be my turn." When he finished his tour of their small workspace he again came to a standstill in front of the chair where Tony was sitting and stared unblinkingly into his captive's dark eyes.
"You're going to build my weapons, Stark." It was a statement and a warning at the same time.
"I already said I would," was Tony's curt reply. "And we're nearly done. You will get your Jericho in two weeks tops." He remained stoic on the outside, no need to anger the man with all the guns on his side.
"I want the Jericho and any other weapons you can make in five days. No longer." The leader of the Ten Rings said to Tony sharply and moved his hand vaguely in the direction of the other terrorists. "If you aren't finished until then, you will not like the consequences. You can surely imagine what that would entail." Raza had a dangerous look in his eyes as he stared unmoving into Tony's brown ones.
"Of course." Tony did his best to look suitably intimidated but inside he had on his shark smile.
They won't know what'll hit them.