The young blonde woman nearly regretted coming down to find her friend in Tony's workshop when she caught the endings of a private conversation.
"You're all I have too, you know," Pepper said softly, and Isabeau nearly stopped what she was doing to go back upstairs, but the red head had already seen her.
"Miss Asmundor. Did you need Tony for something?" Pepper asked, the mask of professionalism stuck firmly in place once again.
"Um," she began, and cleared her throat, "yes. I was wondering if Mel had come into work yet?"
Tony looked up at Isabeau's concerned face, her nervousness clearly showing through her fidgeting fingers and her absently biting her bottom lip.
"No," he said after a moment, "She hasn't come in, yet. I'd figured she'd gotten wasted and was at home hung-over."
She just shook her head and sighed softly. Her brow creased as she realised that Mel must have just run off somewhere. She'd never been one to stick to a routine for long; perhaps she just felt caged and needed to get out. Mel would call if she would be gone long.
"Is Miss Lachly alright?" Pepper asked, concern slipping into her voice.
"Yes, I'm sure she's fine," Isabeau replied quickly and tried to shake off the uneasy feeling settling in her stomach.
"Pepper, take Miss Asmundor with you," Tony said dismissively, and went back to whatever he was doing. Pepper frowned but pushed Iz back up the stairs all the same.
Isabeau made sure to stay completely still and neutral as she saw the subtle changes in Pepper's body. The nearer they got to Tony's office, the more nervous she became and she gripped a black usb stick so hard that her knuckles went white. Her breathing became more rapid, and she even started perspiring across her forehead. Pepper looked up at her, surprised, when Iz placed a calming hand on her forearm, and tried to smile reassuringly.
Pepper nodded jerkily, and quickly led her to Tony's office, sitting down at his computer and began typing away.
"Keep a look out, won't you?" Pepper asked quickly, then added as an afterthought, "But don't look like you're keeping a look out."
Isabeau couldn't help the nervous giggle that slipped past her lips. She brought a hand up to her mouth the shut herself up and stood outside the room and leant against the frame, feeling very tired. She pulled her phone out, and frowned when Mel still hadn't messaged her. Iz herself had sent five text messages and 3 voicemails since she woke up this morning and noticed that even after Ben left Mel hadn't returned.
"Miss Asmundor," Obadiah said loudly, and she squeaked as he appeared out of nowhere.
"Mr Stane!" she nearly shouted, and blushed at his slow enigmatic smile. He chuckled at her embarrassment, and she finally noticed the way he looked over her body with a very pleased smile plastered firmly on his face. She felt a little creeped out.
Mel had been right.
Damn her.
"It's nice to see you again, Miss Asmundor. I hope Tony hasn't been keeping you and Pepper too busy?"
"Not any more than usual – well maybe a little more than usual," she smiled up at him, as she usually did, but now it felt very forced. Mel's warnings were ringing in her head with unsettling clarity.
"Is she in Tony's office?" he asked and gestured vaguely at the closed door. Iz nodded before she could stop herself, and he proceeded to open the door and step inside, just as Pepper was standing up to leave. She must have heard Iz's not so subtle shriek.
She stayed back as he began speaking with Pepper, and it was when he insinuated that Tony was crazy or had PTSD when the alarm bells really started screaming in her ears. She was suddenly paying rapt attention when he mentioned Mel.
"And I'm not sure if Miss Lachly is really helping, Pepper. She may even be encouraging this behaviour." He sounded sincere and concerned but Iz felt every vein in her body light up as he spoke about Mel like she was crazy enabler. He didn't say it in so many words, but both she and Pepper could read between the lines.
Both Pepper and Stane jumped slightly when the lamp across the room exploded and began to rain fire down onto the carpeted floor. Pepper quickly made her way out of the office, and waved a quick goodbye as she all but dragged Isabeau away and down the stairs where they ran into Agent Coulson of some really long name that Iz couldn't remember.
"You're getting the meeting of your life. Your office."
XXXxxXxXxxXXXx
Mel was vaguely aware of voices in the distance. They were mostly male, and they all sounded very nervous. She supposed that Obadiah Stane had that effect on people. She couldn't move that much, but she felt a sliver of warmth across her back that had managed to slip past all the chains around her.
Her head was throbbing and blood was drying under nose and over her mouth. The cuts and bruises would be gone in hours, however she had been so roughly manhandled over the last few hours that her left shoulder had popped from its socket and was kept like that by the way she was currently restrained.
The arm that was still mostly in piece was handcuffed to one of the chains. There was no weight on the arm, but she couldn't pull it towards her or push it away. The dislocated arm held up all her as he was handcuffed to a chain directly above her. The guards had gotten lazy and just used duct tape to stick her feet together. She really couldn't do anything in this position except aggravate her captors by spitting on their faces and laughing at them. One of them had even gone so far as to stick a crowbar into her gut and leave it there.
She could feel it slowly sliding out, and pain distracted her from the fact that she might actually die of blood loss. She couldn't help but laugh at the irony. The first time she tries to help out someone other than Iz, and she gets gutted like a fish. If she made it our here alive she knew that Iz would kill her. Well maybe she'd go easy on her if Mel could persuade Ben to ease her temper.
She laughed again at that, then hissed as the sagging crowbar moved with her laughter.
"I wouldn't do much except breathe for now, Miss Lachly," she heard Obadiah say from in front of her. She opened her eyes and smiled a bloody, toothy grin before closing her eyes again and breathed in deeply causing the crowbar to move again.
"Don't go to sleep just yet, Miss Lachly, I want you to listen when I bring in your little friend, kicking and screaming, and make you watch me crush her skull. I'm pretty sure she's not nearly as tough as you, is she, Melody?" he sneered.
Mel felt adrenaline course through her like lightning and her eyes snapped open. She lunged forward as much as she could and snarled viciously at Obadiah, blood and spittle falling from her mouth. He just laughed at her struggles and made to leave when she did something he didn't expect.
She grit her teeth through the pain of her dislocated shoulder as she pulled her legs up to her stomach, finally dislodging the crowbar and ripping her feet apart from the duct tape. Stane let out a surprised cry when she suddenly brought his head forward with one foot behind his neck and brought the other to break his nose with the heel of her foot. He stumbled slightly, but she managed to kick him across the face before the guards ran in.
"You touch her and I'll kill you!" she shrieked even as one of the guards wrapped his arms around her legs to keep her from lashing out. She shook as violently as she could until someone else hit her hard on the back of her head, and everything went black.
The next time she woke up she could hear Iz's choked sobs.
"Oh my god, Mel," she whispered hoarsely.
Mel opened her eyes and watched fondly as Iz began delicately pulling the duct tape away from her feet and quickly jumped up to pull it off of her mouth as well.
"You should see the other guys," Mel said softly and managed to crack a smile through her pain. Iz let out a hysterical sound stuck somewhere between a laugh and a sob. Mel's feet still hung just above the ground, and the pain from her arm was a distant ache in the back of her mind. The adrenaline had long since worn off, but her body was being flooded with beloved endorphins as it began to heal itself.
She didn't realise she'd closed her eyes until she felt Iz pulling at the handcuffs on her wrists. She let out a long sound as she heard Iz slowly start to crumble under the stress of the situation.
"Calm down, Iz," Mel said softly and opened her eyes to look into the tear-stained face of her best friend.
"I can't, Mel," she hiccupped, "I can't – the handcuffs."
"Yes you can, Iz, you know can," Mel said soothingly, "Don't make me break my own wrists. I'll be fine, just do it."
Iz could only nod as more tears dripped down her pale cheeks. Mel closed her eyes and waited for inevitable.
Agent Sitwell watched silently from afar as Isabeau Asmundor wrapped a hand around each handcuff that had Melody Lachly restrained. She gripped unto the link that held the handcuffs together and then she did nothing.
Within seconds he heard Miss Lachly let out soft sobs of pain and the handcuffs began to glow red hot. He realised, with a raised eyebrow, that Miss Asmundor was in fact melting the metal with her bare hands. Very soon Miss Lachly began to drop to the ground and her friend barely had enough time to catch her.
"Agent Sitwell, did you find anything?" Agent Coulson asked as he made his way toward him. The senior agent's view was thus far obscured by the machinery in the area, but he would soon see the two women huddling together.
"Yes, Agent Coulson. You'll see it in my report," he said just as calmly, and the other agent stood to watch for a moment before nodding. They walked, and left the girls to their own devices knowing they were more than able to handle themselves.
"Mel, you have to get up," Iz whispered hoarsely and heaved Mel onto her shoulder as gently as possible. The latter hissed in pain all the same. The endorphins would kick in eventually and the burns would all but vanish by the morning. Or the afternoon at the very latest.
XXxxxxXXXXXxxX
Mel grunted every half hour or so to prove she was still alive until Iz had walked them both back to their apartment. It was about six hours and by then the sun was starting to rise. Iz dumped her friend rather unceremoniously onto floor, then after falling to her knees, dumped herself on top of her friend.
"I thought having that much sex would make you lighter," Mel wheezed as the wind was knocked out of her.
"One: Fuck off. Two: why are you mentioning sex now?" Iz mumbled into the floor. Mel was lying on her back and Iz lay across Mel's stomach with her face in the floor.
"Because I can smell your sex walking up the stairs," she replied simply.
There was a slight tapping on the door.
"Told you so," Mel said smugly.
"Hey, babe, did I just see you carrying Mel on your shoulders up here?" a very concerned sounding British accent floated through the door.
"Yes, Benny, she went out and got drunk and brought her home and please go away," Iz groaned loudly. She was madly infatuated with the man. And his hands. And his fingers. And his tongue. But right now she needed to lie down with her face in the carpet and not do anything.
"Um, yeah, sure, okay. But you left one of your mobile phones at my house yesterday morning and someone, um Pepper? She's been calling you for the last hour."
"Since when do you fuck at his house?" Mel asked. Iz just groaned as she got up, trudged to the door and stared up at Benedict's adorably hopeful face. Then it occurred to her that she might still have blood on her clothing from Mel, so she snatched the phone from his open hand and slammed the door on his face.
There was a definite awkward silence before anyone spoke.
"I'll just come back later then, darling?"
"I'll call you."
"Yeah. Alright. Bye."
Iz slid down the door and felt exhausted, both physically and emotionally.
"When did you start fucking at his house?"
XXXXxxxxxXXxXxXXXXX
Now, to give you a sneak peek into the minds of Agents Coulson and Sitwell, or not? Hm. You'll just have to wait, won't you?
Toodleszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz