Can I just take a second to appreciate how awesome you guys are? You're cooler than bowties. I don't even know how ya'll are so great! They love me! They really love me! *wipes away tears*

No, for real, guys, I really appreciate all of you who took the time to review, follow, and fav, making this the BEST BIRTHDAY EVER! On an unrelated note, my sister gave me a T-Shirt that says 'Keep Calm and Don't Blink.' It's pretty awesome. You're jelly.

This is long. This is angsty. This ends with a funny. You have been warned.

Also, I figured out that FF. net is cutting off the URLs that I posted. So, I'm going to repeat it. All of the Fanfics that were referred to in the previous chapter can be found on FF .net. Just search.

This is a Bruce and Steve funny that I found on the interwebs. Please lookit. It's worth it.

rebloggy post/spoilers-tony-stark-the-avengers-bruce-banner-just-in-case-the-avengers-spoilers/22573998143

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in this story. All the credit goes to Stan Lee and Marvel. Drat. I really wanted Tony Stark. Wouldn't say no to some Steve Rogers either. Apparently I need to do this for every chapter. IDK why. I'm a broke college student. You think I own this universe? Lol.

oOo

Previously…

Tony felt like hell. His chest ached, and his entire body felt slightly sore. A bright light was cutting through his eyelids, forcing him awake. He dragged his eyes open and pushed himself into a sitting position on the couch. Couch? The hell am I sitting here for? Then, memories of what happened raced through his mind. He shook his head to dispel the darker pictures, and looked around. His eyes met six worried, confused pairs of eyes. The eyes of his team. Well, Shit.

oOo

Steve was terrified. He didn't show it, because soldiers weren't supposed to show fear, but he was scared for Tony, scared out of his mind. In Steve's head, he was the leader, so he was supposed to lay down on the wire, take the pain, make the hard decisions, and most of all protect his team, no matter the cost. A small rational part of him knew that there was no way he could have known, nothing he could have done, but the overwhelming majority of him was swallowed by guilt. Tony wasn't supposed to be pale and still, with remnants of pain still ghosting over his face. Tony was supposed to be loud and obnoxious. Tony was supposed to be a constant. An annoying, self-loving, idiotic, genius constant.

When Tony stirred and squeezed his eyes tight with a grimace and groan, the fear lanced up again. The whole team, already quiet, became completely silent as they waited for Tony to wake up. The genius in question struggled to his elbows and blearily looked around the room. "Well. That hasn't happened for a while."

Steve couldn't take it anymore "The hell, Tony?" he blurted, "What was that?"

"That was a flashback, Captain. That's F-L-A-"

"I know what a flashback is," Steve snapped, "What I want to know is why you had one? Who is Yinsen? As your team, we kinda need to know these things."

Tony's face darkened like he was going to argue, but then he thought better of it and flopped back down onto the cushions. "You're right, Cap." Steve looked taken aback at the lack of fight from the usually contrary Tony. "I was meaning to tell you guys anyway. But stuff happened, and, yeah…so. You guys got anything pressing on your planners for a few hours because I really don't feel like repeating myself."

Jane looked around awkwardly. She felt this was a team discussion, and didn't want to intrude. "Darcy and I are going to meet up and go shopping. I better get going." She kissed Thor on the cheek, and then hesitantly turned to Tony. "You take care of yourself, OK?" She blushed as she left the room.

Tony sat up again and crossed his legs beneath him. "Gather 'round, ladies, its story time!" Everyone else rolled their eyes at Tony, but moved in closer to give him support in the manner of undivided attention. "A few years ago," Tony began, "I was a real dick."

Clint snorted. "We already knew that, Iron Ass."

Tony shot him a look. "No, I mean it. Stark Industries made weapons, and weapons only. I didn't care how they were used, as long as it was Americans doing the shooting. I went to Afghanistan to do a bit of demonstration of my new Jericho missile. It was mostly a shock-and-awe type thing, trying to scare the locals. But then it all went—wrong. I remember talking to a soldier, a kid, really, he must have been twenty, max. I took a picture with him. Then—bullets, bombs. A terrorist group called the Ten Rings got a hold of some of the smaller missiles in my arsenal and blew some up, trying to get me. Capture, I mean. Not kill. I was so stupid, I left the Humvee, and I saw one of my own bombs, my bomb, and it blew up in my face. I got a chest full of shrapnel, and no medical attention. Most of the team died that day. That kid? He's dead. Then it just got worse."

Bruce got up and began to pace, doing anger management exercises in his head. It's over, no need to get angry. Steve, Thor, and Clint looked horrified. They had no idea. Natasha knew the basics, from being undercover as his PA, but all she knew was that he was held hostage and rescued a few months later with PTSD and a fractured arm.

Tony barreled on with the story, reluctant to stop once he had started. "After that, I really don't remember too many details. I remember being carried, I remember a cave, then…just being strapped down, people yelling, a saw, and then…well you can imagine the rest. I woke up the next day with a metal hole in my chest connecting me to a car battery."

Steve felt nauseous. He pinched the bridge of his nose. "You were awake?"

"Yep," Tony said.

Thor looked murderous. "I will DESTROY those who hurt Friend Tony!"

"That's OK, thunder, I took care of it." Tony said. They sat in silence taking in that statement for a second, before Clint dragged them back to topic.

"But why?" Clint asked. "Why even attach you to a battery in the first place?"

"I had large pieces of metal in my chest that they couldn't reach, stuck in my veins, arteries, and lungs. It's impossible to remove them with surgery. The idea of this thing is to use an electromagnetic pulse to attract the metal away from my heart, to the housing. Without it, they would have traveled to my heart and I would have been dead within twelve hours. As it was, the car battery wasn't powerful enough. The pieces were still moving, but really slowly. It wouldn't do the trick. I had a week. Yinsen called it 'the most important week of my life'."

Natasha spoke up. "You called for this –Yinsen, when you were…remembering. Who is he?"

Tony sighed, deepest grief on his face. "Was he, Tash. He's dead." The rest of the team murmured their condolences, but Tony waved them off. "It's fine. I'm fine. To answer your question, Yinsen was a doctor who was in captivity with me. They gave him the order to keep me alive, or else, and he came up with this ingenious idea. He implanted the original housing. He kept me alive long enough to create the first Arc Reactor."

Everyone's eyes widened. Steve was the first one to recover. "Y-you made that in captivity? With what?"

"Um," Tony had to think about it for a minute, "What tools they had for me, the guts of about a dozen bombs, and some scraps they had. You can be impressed. Oh, hold on, JARVIS?"

"Yes Sir?"

"Bring me Pepper's gift. You know the one."

"Very well sir." DUM-E trundled into the room after a moment, glass box in his robotic hand. "Thanks DUM-E. This, my friends is that first reactor. Pepper got it mounted for me."

Tony set it down on the glass table, and they picked it up and looked at it in turn. They could tell a difference. It was bulkier, less sleek, with wires that poked out in various places. A bronze plate on the base read Proof that Tony Stark Has a Heart. Steve saw the technology, but didn't really have the background to appreciate it. All he could see was how long the thing was, and how deep it must have sunk into Tony's chest. At least a good four inches.

Thor's forehead crinkled again. "As impressive as this craftsmanship is, I do not understand. Why were they holding you, Friend Tony? Why not kill you like in honest battle?"

Tony gave the Asgardian a wry smile. "These people aren't really the type for honest battle. They sneak and kill in the night. I was no warrior, I was a rich kid with an MIT degree. They wanted me to build weapons for them."

Everyone, save Bruce again, looked a little panicked. "Did you?" asked Steve.

"At ease soldier. No, I didn't. But they really wanted me to. At first I was all brave and noble, saying 'Never!' and stupid shit like that. Then the decided to…persuade me."

Bruce was shaking, and couldn't handle it anymore. "I'm sorry, Tony; I can't listen to this anymore."

"S'Ok, big guy, you go and cool off. I'll call you when we're done." Bruce nodded, and quickly left for the Hulk-proof lockdown room they made for when Bruce needed to let off some steam. "Ok, so where were we?"

Natasha cleared her throat. "Persuasion."

"Oh, yeah, so after I decided to be all gallant, they thought they should use outside methods of convincing me to comply. Waterboarding was their persuasion of choice." Tony shuddered at the memories that were bashing at the inside of his head. Clint, Steve, and Natasha all blanched, while Thor looked lost again. "Thor," Tony supplied, "waterboarding is where you lay a cloth over someone's nose and mouth, then pour water over their face repeatedly. It's a way of drowning someone on dry land." Tony wrapped an arm around himself and the god looked sick. "They did that to me for…days. I can't really remember. I started to get sick. Water in the lungs. Not good for the health. God knows how I didn't get pneumonia. Anyway, my chest was still attached to the battery at this point. Yinsen didn't have a lot to work with so there were bare wires sticking out of my chest, which really don't play well with water. I was crumbling. I wasn't trained for torture! I was a damn civilian! But then I came up with an idea to get us out of there. I said yes."

"What? They would have killed you even you made the damn bombs for them! You must have known that."

"Yes, Clint, I did. I said I'd build it. I lied, stupid. Anyway, they gave me all the equipment I needed, some bombs to use as a template, and time. First thing on my agenda was the Reactor. Then I made a suit."

Everyone ohhed in comprehension. "That was the Mark I, wasn't it?" asked Natasha excitedly.

"Yep. And it was a piece of crap." Tony snorted at the memory of that suit, in comparison to the one he was planning. "Still a rather impressive piece of engineering, I'll admit. So the leader of Ten Rings, Raza, his name was, demanded a due date, that we give him the missile tomorrow. So Yinsen and I stayed up all night working on it."

"We were so close to being done," Tony began to draw into himself, eyes glazing over. The team could tell he was staring at something they could not see. "So close. We were downloading the startup info into the suit, it was a slow process because they had absolute dinosaurs of computers, friggin' ancient. I was going to bust out of there, guns blazing, kill every single one of those bastards, get Yinsen, and be home for dinner. While I was sitting in the suit, waiting for it to start we could hear Raza and his goons coming for the missile we'd promised. There was no way we would have had enough time. I couldn't move, I was stuck in the suit, and Yinsen grabbed a gun, and went out there to buy time. Suicide move." Tony drew in a long shuddering breath, tears shining in his eyes, "Anyway, he did that and the suit finally powered up, so I smashed and blasted my way out of there. I found Yinsen by the mouth of the cave. He told me he wanted to die, that he wanted to see his family and that I shouldn't throw away his gift. 'Don't waste it' he said to me, 'Don't waste your life'."

"He died in my arms." Tony let a few tears slip down his face at the memory of the man who saved and changed his life. The others were looking teary, too. After a few seconds of silent respect, Tony began to talk again.

"I killed them."

The others looked at Tony. He still had tears on his face, still staring off into the distance. He shook himself back into the present. "Most of them. I was glad at least that I had gotten Raza. I thought he was dead, but the bastard got lucky. I killed as many as I could, and flew off with the survivors shooting at me, but the damn suit broke apart. I got rescued, came home, and shut down the weapons division of Stark Industries."

Steve and Clint shared shocked glances. Tony chuckled at their expressions. "Yeah, I got that a lot. A weapon's company that doesn't make weapons? What I was worried about is how a terrorist organization like Ten Rings got a hold of my tech. Turns out Obadiah Stane, closest thing I ever had to a dad, was selling them to Raza behind my back. Obie also was the one who paid Ten Rings to abduct and kill me in the first place."

Tony paused. Steve and Clint looked murderous, while Natasha looked just a little sad. She had already heard this part of the story. Thor thundered, "BETRAYAL!"

A grimace crossed Tony's face. "That's not the end of it. He gathered the scraps of the Mark I and was building his own suit. He just didn't have a power source because I had the only one in existence. Two, actually, one in my chest and one in the case." Tony gestured to the old Reactor nestled between its glass panes. "He wanted an army of Iron Men. But to do that, he needed the Arc Reactor. He came to my home in Malibu, and he—he paralyzed me, temporarily.

"He ripped the Arc Reactor out of my chest and left me to die."

Tony squeezed his eyes shut against the pain. He thought that eventually the pain of the betrayal would fade, but it was just numbed. As long as he didn't give it too much thought, it was fine, but as soon as he ripped the Band-Aid off and relived the incident, it hurt all over again.

"Well, long story short, I used the old reactor, whupped up on some Obie ass, nearly died, and saved the day. Like normal. But then I started to get sick again."

Clint groaned. "There's more?"

"Yes, feathers, I told you it was a long one. Basically, I was being poisoned by the palladium in the Reactor. I was dying."

Steve rubbed his temple. "The thing keeping you alive was poisoning you?"

"Yep, and thanks to one Ms. Natalie Rushman," Tony shot a glance at Natasha, who snorted at her old alias, "I was able to stay alive to create a new element that my father had found. I call it Starkanium! Well, that problem is solved, and I have Starkanium powered Arc Reactors now. Palladium is bad. No me gusta. So to make any new reactors now I have to use a particle accelerator, which is very difficult, and I really don't want to have to do that.

"If I was never Iron Man again, this Arc Reactor," Tony tapped the center of his chest, "would work for the rest of my life. It would actually work for about seventy lifetimes, give or take. The problem arises when I use it to power my suits. That uses up all the power in these things, and I have to change them out every so often. And they can get damaged in fights.

"Now…I think the Reactor is failing again. It's been sending this intense pain all through my chest. I don't know why, or what it's doing, but I felt my heartbeat stutter last time it happened. Bruce and I are looking into it."

Steve leaned forward, "What can we do?"

"What I need from you guys is the knowledge that, if the situation arose, you would be able to help me with replacing it. Bruce can do it most of the time, but if he's feeling green neither of us want him messing around in my chest. Can you guys do that for me?"

Steve, Natasha, Clint, and Thor all looked at each other, then back at Tony. Steve answered for all of them. "What do we need to know?"

Tony smiled in relief. It was a good feeling, knowing people had your back.

oOo

Bruce tugged his clothes back on. He had hurriedly stripped before the Other Guy burst through his skin so he wouldn't have ruined another pair of pants. As he tucked in his blue button down and rolled up the sleeves, JARVIS pinged on. "Dr. Banner, Sir has requested you're presence in the living room, as they are done discussing sensitive matters."

Bruce walked out of the room—cell—and said, "Thank you JARVIS. Tell Tony I'm coming."

"Very well, Dr. Banner."

oOo

Bruce walked back into the family room to a ridiculous sight. Tony was lying down on the carpet, acting injured, and Steve had a spare Reactor, apparently trying to practice replacing it without actually removing the one in Tony's chest. Steve was flustered. All the others were yelling advice at him, and Tony was hamming it up.

"No, Steve, plug that wire in first!"

"Don't just shove it in; you have to line it up!"

"Help, Steve, I'm dyin' here!"

"YOU ARE FAILING, CAPTAIN! ALLOW ANOTHER TO HAVE A VALIANT ATTEMPT!"

"It's been a minute, Steve, I'm hemorrhaging!"

"You're gonna kill him!"

"Choking- help- gahh!"

"STOP YELLING AT ME!"

Bruce took one look at this asinine scene in front of him, and collapsed into helpless laughter.

oOo

To all of you who wished me a Happy Birthday, thank you!

Also, thank you to everyone who made it a point to review every single chapter. It really means a lot to me.

REVIEW NOTES!

Special agent ali: yeah I'm brutal to the poor dude. And I just get worse. But I love their concern.

Kermit's Soft Kitty: Love the username! *Soft kitty, warm kitty* Anywhoo, thank you for that it really means a lot to me.

Piperijanay Alexandria: Ohh, that sounds fun, I want one!

Ashleykhl: Thanks! The support means a lot to me!

QueenofIron: Well what was he expecting, antagonizing the Black Widow? Come on, Anthony. Smh. Thanks, I really enjoyed the writing the fanfic-within-a-fanfic.

Pegasi1: Thanks, and I know, poor Tony, this was a terrible conversation to have.

LilyLove7: No shame in laughing by yourself! I do it all the time reading in public! I'm so glad I could make you laugh!

Ondori-Naramaki: YAY PWESENTS! You don't even know, I am a three year old about some presents. Tasha's apology will come in the next chapter.

DetectiveAtWork: Thanks, and here's an update just for you!

Rose: There you are! Yeah, I love to read stories that update frequently, and I can't let a story sit. They get stale and I lose interest, so it benefits both of us! Thank you for Birthday wishes!

MindMaster: Update for you, my dear!

Clintashaforever: FANTASTIC username! I ship them so hard it hurts! I had that plot bunny hopping around for a while, and I'm glad it worked.