0.25%
First it's the panic, and it's white-hot. Desert sand searing skin and the blood of martyrs spilling. Tuck yourself away but there's no hiding from yourself- he scrambles for his cellphone- Oh God, Oh God, Oh God-
He's felt pain before, but not like this.
Tony Stark lays on his back and God- he doesn't even believe in God- he can't breathe. Everything is coated in a metallic sheen; from the yellow of the sand to the blue of the sky and the searing in his chest, but especially his tongue. Is he choking on his own blood? Is this what dying feels like? Everything burns, but from what? The scorching sand or the sun or the heated bits of metal- his metal- tearing through his every little seam?
It makes him miss those times when his father swayed into the room sporting a scowl, drunk out of his mind and spewing rhetoric about the Good Captain.
"My finest creation," he would say, bent at the waist with a fist full of his son's hair. So close that he's smelling the bourbon on the man's breath. "Is sitting at the bottom of the sea. And all that's left is you."
"I'll never have the pleasure of witnessing the rise of something so grand again."
Pain of the rhetoric was something he grew numb to, but now he could see his father's face and traces of himself spilling into the sand and he hopes to whatever being is out there watching over them all that this isn't all he's made of himself. That there's something more. Anything.
Then the stone walls bleed into him, and his mind works too fast to recognize the genius it took to strap this car battery to his chest. There's something about being taken apart and put back together that puts things in perspective, and being grateful for being alive sits at the bottom of the list.
Blood mixes with water and he's starved and beaten and his headache splits worse than the aching in his bones and the shrapnel in his chest. All that matters are results. Results, results, results.
Yinsen whispers encouragements that he doesn't deserve and works the arc reactor into his chest with remarkably steady hands. He pushes Tony's hair back and tells him it'll be okay. Part of him believes him because he has to; the other part will always wonder if this really happened at all, or if it was all just a fever induced dream.
Time doesn't exist here, and he quickly loses track of it. He's been awake for hours, days, weeks. Working until the skin of his hands wears to the wic and splits; watching the blood of young men he knew fleetingly mix with the desert sand every time he closes his eyes.
Yinsen lays in a heap against cool stone walls, "No, no, no- You're going to see your family again," and he doesn't regret his decisions at all. He stood behind him long enough to see him through, but never planned to see anything through himself.
"Yes, I am."
Tony Stark wants to just slump against the wall and bawl, however childish it might seem, because he's already lost himself and now he's losing him, too, but there's a knot in his throat and Yinsen is begging him to just go. So he does.
After that it's just heat and sand and metal. Heat from the fire that tears through the camp and heat from the unforgiving sun. For a moment he's soaring, then he's plummeting into the hot sand. His metal tomb scalds his hands as much as the sand pouring in as he claws his way out if it.
Then it's just him and vast nothingness. Fighting for God knows how long to come face to face with blue sky and neverending dunes.
He keeps walking; doesn't know how long, or how much progress he's made before Rhodey's face is in front of him.
"Tony, oh, God."
"Welcome home, Sir."
The metallic taste never leaves his tongue; imbedded in him like the shrapnel in his chest. He could shuffle into his workshop, sit at the bench and let the ache settle and stay there until he felt nothing at all anymore.
"Thank you kindly, JARVIS."
In the back of his mind, a kind old man tucks a young boy into bed and bids him a good night's rest. His face tilts downward as he unfastens his watch. A beat of one heart and the thrum of another passes.
"Based on news reports, I calculated your safe return at 0.25%."
Rhodey used to joke of JARVIS' sentience; that Tony Stark had been the first man to hand craft a soul, and he comes to realize that JARVIS is and always will be his finest creation. He's made himself a home. Someone to care for, someone to care for him.
Later he'll find a ghost in the AI's code. Weeks of unprompted searching, obsessive refreshing of the news, pinned articles and unanswered inquirues.
"Yeah," he says. "I missed you, too."
Tony Stark collapses in on himself.