This takes place while Tony is in Afghanistan.
If asked how old he was, Tony will lie.
Damian Ibn al Xu'ffasch is currently at the ripe old age of six. He's only just started going out and about with his mother occasionally. He has another two years before he get's dropped off in Gotham.
Also, mild warning for Tony's mouth. (Even though it is internal.) I censor him and it still comes out like that.

I do not own Iron Man. I definetly do not place any claim on the al Ghuls. I like my head where it is thank you very much.


Tony is awakened by shouting and the sounds of the door to the cave being opened. He barely has time to sit up and exchange worried glances with Yinsen before the door bursts open and they go through the now familiar (but no less nerve wracking) procedure of hands-in-the-air-guns-to-their-heads. There are no yells and insistence for Yinsen to translate though, just a silent stillness. Tony notices that the Ten Ringers (as he's taken to calling them in his head) are interspersed with…ninjas?

Tony looks around the room, confused. The men, Ringers and ninjas alike are just standing there. Waiting.

But for what?

There is movement in the doorway and in steps the last thing Tony expected to see out here.

A beautiful woman.

One of the most beautiful women that Tony has ever seen. (And he has seen a lot) She is tall and elegant, wearing a long, flowing black dress that emphasizes her figure, her hair falling loose down her back to her hips, covered only by a simple scarf.

Her features are…proud is the best word Tony can think of, and her large, brown eyes scan him from head to toe as she walks straight up to him.

Normally, Tony would flirt, but that'll have to wait for some time when he isn't terrified out of his mind. She grabs his chin (and there is nothing gentle about her grip, he'll bruise, he just knows it) and turns his head from side to side, before releasing him with a scornful sneer. She turns to talk with the leader of the Ten Rings as if Tony was nothing more than another of the many pieces of hardware in the cave.

He tries not to sigh in relief.

The two talk for several minutes. Tony hears his name and "Jericho" every so often. Nervous, he glances over to the table where the plans and first pieces of the reactor and Iron Man suit are and freezes.

There is a preschooler dressed as a desert ninja (including a miniature katana strapped to his back) rifling systematically through everything.

His first thought is an indignant "Some kid is touching my stuff!" (Which is one of the first Tony-like thoughts to break through his shock since his capture.) The second is "at least some punk kid won't understand that the plans or the parts assembled will not build a Jericho missile." The third is "Oh crap," when the kid glances up and eyes that are an incongruous light blue in the baby Arabian face meet Tony's and he knows that the brat, preschooler or not, understands exactly what it is he is building.

He distantly thinks he might be marginally less freaked out by this realization if the kid showed some kind of emotion about it. Smugness, glee, anger, something, anything. Instead he remains blank-faced, except for a brief flicker of what might be…curiosity?

The woman says something in a sharp tone and sweeps from the cave as dramatically as she had entered, the kid following her without a second glance at Tony or the contents of the work table. The ninjas and Ten Ringers follow quickly (and silently in the ninjas' cases) leaving Tony and Yinsen once more alone.

Tony takes a moment to bring his heart-rate back to semi-normal, before lugging his car battery over to the work table. "What," he pants, dropping the battery to the tabletop rather harder than he probably should, considering it is the only think keeping him alive at the moment. "The hell was that about?" He can't quite bring himself to glare at Yinsen, who almost looks scared for real for the first time since Tony met him.

"I am not sure," He answers in a low tone, not taking his eyes off of the door. "But they called the woman 'The Demon's Head,'" He seems almost to tear his gaze away from the door. "The leader of the most dangerous assassins the world has ever known. A myth."

"What about the kid?" Tony asks, deciding that he'll come back to the possibility of some mythical organization of assassins being involved in his imprisonment later. "Who's he?"

Yinsen frowns. "I'm not sure. They only talked about him once, and they called him Ibn al Xu'ffasch."

There is a moment of silence.

"Which means?" Tony prompts impatiently.

Yinsen just looks confused. "It means 'Son of the Bat.'"

Whoever the kid is, he must not have told anyone about the suit, because the plan goes off. Not well, but it goes and Tony thinks, as he sits beside Rhodey on the airplane, a twisting pain in his gut because of Yinsen, that maybe he'd just dreamed the whole thing.


A/N: So, due to Tony not speaking Arabic and whatever other languages the Ten Rings organization used, it was another English-only chapter.
Apparently, it is very difficult for me to write Damian from before his entrance into Dick Grayson's sphere of influence. Oh well. It wasn't originally going to be this long, and than Damian, being the mechanics geek that he is, decided to peek at the table.
I do actually have an entire back-story for why Talia was there, short version is that she was checking up on one of their puppet organizations. Due to what she and Damian found there, they decided to leave the cleaning up to Tony and, eventually, Stane. She has bigger fish to fry.