Disclaimer: I do not own the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, although it is an awesome name for a band. I also do not own Tony Stark aka Iron Man. I just hot glued them together in boredom. I also accidentally hot glued my hand to my computer. I think I might need to buy some rubbing alcohol…online. And then convince the delivery guy to hand it to me through the window.
Chapter 5: Backs Against the Wall Part 2
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club- Done All Wrong
Ten minutes after the nurse left and twenty before the doctor showed up, her brother strode into the room. For a moment all she could focus on was the way his broad shoulders and tall frame seemed to fill up the entryway of her room. When she snapped herself out of her worries enough to take in his face, she noticed how haggard he looked. In his left hand he was carrying a bunch of Gladiolas nestled in a pretty, clear vase. It felt like an omen.
Upon seeing her awake he froze, and the two siblings stared at each other.
"Hey," Angela finally greeted. She'd managed to get her hand to support the cup of water, but it was empty. "Can you fill this?" She tipped the Styrofoam cup at him.
Mike gave a little shake of his head, and Angela noticed that his blue eyes were overly bright. "I get a call in the middle of the night, fly all the way to Italy, and the first thing you do is ask me to be you're fetch and carry boy?" He asked gruffly.
"This surprises you?" Angela allowed a grin to curl her lips.
He snorted, and set the vase down on the little table suspended over her lap. Big, rough hands took the cup from her, then Mike turned his back and busied himself at the in-room sink. When he handed her the refilled glass, he was, once again, composed. "How are you feeling?"
"Not good," Angela answered truthfully. She bit her lip and frowned. Moving her facial muscles was starting to hurt less, but she could still feel the tightness of swelling along her left cheek and jaw.
Briefly, she wondered if she should tell Mike what she suspected. Would it soften the blow or only make it worse? In the end she sipped her water and held her silence.
When the doctor came, it actually ended up being a team of doctors, though only one surgeon. The short, gray haired man explained that they'd done an operation to remove the shrapnel that they could, and then gave them the news.
There were several barbs that were unreachable in her chest. That wasn't exactly the way the elder man put it. He trotted out an x-ray and explained what he had seen during the initial surgery in highly technical terms. When speaking about the next surgery they wanted to do, he used phrases like percentage of mortality, and P5 classification, that turned Mike white.
It all worked out the same in Angela's mind. They were saying she was going to die if they didn't operate again. And underneath all the medical speak, they were telling her she was going to die if they did.
Angela numbly thanked them and let them know she'd make her decision after speaking with her family. When the group of white coats filed out, she turned back to her brother. Mike was quietly weeping. He had his hand up covering his face, but she could hear the hitches of his breath. It reflexively made her want to tear up too.
Eventually, she tore her eyes away from him and tried to be practical. It was easier to think of it as a problem to solve, a list of things she needed to do. She raised a hand and wiped at a few tears that slipped out anyway.
Twenty four to forty eight hours before she either made the choice to die on the operating table, or the shrapnel made the choice for her. Angela had never noticed there was quite so much she wanted to do with her life until she had hours left of it. A feeling of failure swept through her. What had her life amounted to?
She'd pushed her way through school, then pushed her way through work. She'd chosen a career where she had thought she could make a positive difference with the talents she had. Instead, she found that she was a woman who had spent her life making things that killed people. Some of those people were innocent people.
Angela realized that her only legacy was a body count, and that it would contain her. She closed her eyes and flexed her jaw in regret. The two siblings sat in mournful silence.
In her head, Angela tried to compile a list of practicalities to take care of. Most of it had been arranged after her parents had died. Mike would need to be able to find the paperwork though. She supposed it would actually be him that ended up taking care of things.
Looking back over at Mike, Angela found that he was already grieving her. She watched her baby brother, blood or no, and felt so terribly sad for him. He'd lost so much in the past few years: their parents had died in the crash, Evelyn's mother and father had passed in quick succession a year after that, then Grandma Harper. Now she was going to leave another hole in his life, and the way she was going out it was almost as if she had committed suicide. It seemed her brother was a magnet for grief.
Every muscle in Angela's body froze in sudden revelation. Her mind, as it had always done, sped ten steps ahead and kept right on running. The idea forming in her head was mad. It was desperate and outside the realms of normal thinking. A conversation with Mike not so long before came back to her. The human body was all just machinery after all. With sudden certainty, Angela knew what she had to do.
"Mike," she whispered. "I think I've finally gone crazy." Because what she was thinking about doing to herself was crazy.
Her brother looked up at her, then in an embarrassed motion drew some tissues from nearby and blew his nose. "Oh, Genie." He stood, crossed the room to sit next to her bed, and grabbed her hand.
"I need you to go over some things with me," she started. Her brows furrowed slightly as the object she was mentally designing came a bit more into focus. It was laughably simple, actually.
"Of course," he murmured.
She was pretty sure they weren't thinking about the same things. "I'm going to die without the surgery."
Mike miserably nodded and his shoulders trembled. She saw his forehead wrinkle as he fought to stay steady for her.
Angela needed him with her so continued gently. "Is your opinion on the surgery that it will kill me?" A part of her mind recognized the cruelty in her pushing, but she could fix it once she'd fixed herself.
Mike immediately shook his head. "We have to try, Genie. At this point anything…"
Angela cut across him. "No. I need your professional opinion, Mikey. Because I might have an alternative."
Her brother scrunched his ridiculously red eyebrows, the one's she'd spent their childhoods teasing him about. "There is no alternative."
"For a doctor," she cut in again. It was enough to draw him up short.
Angela wondered if she had that gleam in her eyes that Evelyn used to say proceeded one of her 'left field ideas' that 'somehow work out.' The way Mike was looking at her, she thought she must have.
"For a doctor?" He repeated in question.
Angela was still locked in place, barely moving her lips, as if motion would break the thread connecting her to her idea. "Hear me out, Mikey. This is going to sound insane."
"I think you're entitled to some crazy," he said carefully.
She bit her lip and tried to find the best place to begin. When things were really important though, she'd always been blunt. "If I was solving this as an engineer, I'd use a magnet." He blinked incredulously at her. "If there are loose bits of metal that could damage a machine with moving parts, and you can't reach the bits, then you fish them out with something that attracts them."
Mike was quick to point out, "The damage that would cause to you system would be enormous." She was relieved to see that having a problem to work on was drawing him from his mourning. "You might as well have the surgery. A magnet could never be maneuvered in such a way as to position the pieces for surgical removal."
"What if I didn't use it to remove the bits, but instead to lock them in place?" She ventured.
He shook his head in doubt. "Keep them in your body?"
Angela nodded in reply. "They didn't say the barbs themselves being in my body were a problem, more that the barbs would migrate into my heart. It's what they're designed to do after all," she finished wryly.
There was a moment between them where they both acknowledged that the thing killing her was something she created. So, she was already Dr. Frankenstein. It made her feel a little better about her venture into mad science.
"It would have to be an electromagnet. I'd need to be able to fine tune the strength of it. It would have to be close to the shards too." Angela lost herself a bit in thinking through her problem. She did some quick calculations and then muttered, "It would probably have to be in my chest."
"In?" Mike's voice raised in incredulity. Angela looked back over at her brother to see him gaping at her in an unflattering way. "You're right." He sounded angry. "You're crazy. Get the surgery, Angela."
"The one that's going to kill me?" She asked pointedly. She knew how her idea sounded, but she also knew that it would work.
Mike stood up but didn't let go of her hand. "It's the best option you have," he argued.
Angela lifted her shoulders a fraction off the bed, ignoring the resurgence of pain. "No. It's not. Less than five percent," she reminded him of the figure the doctor gave them on her chances for survival. "That was a guess and you know it," she accused. "They don't do these surgeries for people because the people who usually need them are in places like Afghanistan, and they would never end up in an appropriately equipped hospital in time."
Mike finally dropped her hand and paced away from the bed.
"I guarantee this base has everything I would need to make a fitting electromagnet," she continued.
"You're on morphine." He ran a hand through his hair and paced back toward the bed.
"Comparatively the surgery to implant the necessary socket for housing would be minor." Angela kept pressing her point.
He continued talking as if she hadn't been, "And you're grieving. You're dealing with your mortality."
He was wound up in his own thoughts and Angela needed his attention. To get it, she slapped a hand on the table across her lap and overturned the vase of flowers. It rolled toward the edge but stopped before it fell to the floor. "You know I have solved more complex problems than this. Are you so ready to give up on me?"
He finally stopped his pacing, but his face had taken on the unflattering blush of his anger. "I am trying to not shout at you." His voice was carefully modulated. "Because I understand you have had a lot thrown at you in the past few hours. But you are talking about something that is impossible," he stressed.
"Not impossible." She shook her head, feeling calm steel over her. "Not for me." His blue eyes bored into her as if to call her bluff. Angela saw his jaw twitching. "I can do this," she insisted. And she was stone cold serious.
Angela knew, he knew, that if she followed hospital advice she was going to die. Her plan was the way. Everything she knew from almost twenty years of engineering said it would work. It would buy her the time she needed for the next step. She decided to remind him about that.
"One or two days are all I have left. What I want to do may sound crazy, but it's the only thing that's going to buy me the time I need." Mike gave her a skeptical look. "Maybe in a few years medical technology will be better and the surgery will have less of a risk. But I'm not going to know that unless I live that long. This will let me live that long."
She was stretching the truth, but her brain had already run ahead. Angela knew what she needed to accomplish her goal. Like many times in the past, she was not going to be sorry for pushing to get it. Mike was the first hurdle. He wasn't going to be the highest, and she had to get moving.
After a prolonged period of silent stand off between the two of them, Mike broke. A part of her was relieved. Another part of her was disgusted with herself. "What kind of casing would you use?" He asked.
"Stainless," she answered easily. Angela reached out and righted the vase, though the water had leaked onto the floor. "Can you get me the paper and pen over there, please? I need to do some design."
"Fetch and carry," Mike muttered. There were other words under his breath but she chose to ignore them. Angela needed to nail down a design before she continued pushing forward. Once that was done, she was going to call Pepper Potts. She'd need some weight behind her to get anywhere with the professionals around her. Her first choice of back up was unfortunately still lost in the desert.
Angela took a moment to reaffirm that thought. He was lost, not dead. Because maybe if Angela could beat the odds, so could the man who was even crazier than she was.
…...
After his refusal, Tony noted that the expressions on the men across from him clearly said that they understood some English. One of them came forward and roughly grabbed him by the collar. Another man shoved his battery into his arms, and then they dragged him from the room into the hallway. Behind him the door to the cell clanged closed. It was an ominous sound to his mind.
In the press of men, Tony didn't have a chance to get his balance. He bounced off their shoulders and shuffle stepped when they pushed him. The smell of unwashed bodies and sweat assaulted him, as the lights and hall swam past quickly.
Within moments of his refusal he was forced to his knees in front of a large, dark tub of water. In quick jerks they pulled his arms carelessly behind his back. His battery thudded to the ground, and his eyes widened in dawning understanding. Before he could fully grasp what was happening, a man behind him latched on to the back of his neck and forced him headfirst into the tub.
Instinct caused him to thrash. The water was freezing, stabbing at his eyes and running up into his sinuses. Thick fingers tightened mercilessly on his neck, their short nails biting into his flesh. No matter how he fought, Tony couldn't tear himself free.
His time in the water was stretched by his terror. Eventually his lungs unwillingly contracted, blowing the air out in bubbles on either side of his face. The burning in his chest was edging on unbearable by the time they pulled him back out.
Shoulders heaving, he panted in shock. His eyes rolled wildly in panic, catching on the faces of the men around him. There was one in particular, a stern faced, clean shaven, bald man, who seemed out of place. The man sat on the edge of the group, placidly watching the torture unfold in front of him. Before Tony could take more than a few gasping breaths he was shoved back into the water.
His back and neck muscles strained, trying to bring his head above the surface. Knowing what was happening, Tony tried to hold his breath longer the second time. At some point, someone hit him in the ribs and the air went out of him again. It seemed they held him under longer that time. His chest spasmed and his head swam dizzily. Finally he was pulled back again. More shouting surrounded him and a shorter break.
The third time they pushed him into the water all his muscles bucked and fought, but he was weaker. Tony was light headed, his consciousness fading in and out. Something jolted him and a flash of his electromagnet flew in front of his eyes. He heard someone call his name, a female. Pepper? Angela? Then he was choking in the cold water, his eyes fluttering spastically in his head. Another image flashed in his mind, one of the arc reactor at his plant in Malibu.
Finally, the hand on the back of his neck pulled him out and he coughed violently. Water streamed from his nose and ears. It bubbled up from his throat. Tony sagged against the side of the tub, gagging, only the hands of others supporting him.
He was yanked to his feet. The battery was shoved back into his arms and water from his face dripped along the top of it. Tony glanced down in worry before a bag was pulled back over his head.
The men pushed him down a different section of hallway and he stumbled on the uneven rock. Through the burlap he could see a dim light ahead of him. When they finally stopped shoving him forward and ripped the hood off, he was blinded.
Tony closed his eyes hard at the stabbing pain, then slit his eyelids until his pupils adjusted. In front of him two steep mountains lay, beyond them what looked like more. All along the base of the nearest mountains were camouflage, and below that were weapons and men. His stomach clenched at the amount of supplies and manpower they had.
Far ahead of him, down in the walkways between the makeshift shelters, the bearded man waited. He beckoned them with a hand and a man next to Tony slapped his shoulder to get him moving. Tony clutched the battery in his arms, stumbling down the decline behind a group of men. One of them braced him with an arm to keep him from falling.
He made it to the sandy ground and turned his head from side to side, mentally cataloguing all the Stark Industries weapons these people had. Angela had been right, he thought. This was huge. This was what she had found buried in missing forms and lost orders. His shock burned away when he found himself stopping in front of his bearded captor.
Anger caused his jaw to clench. These people had his weapons, weapons he had created to protect the soldiers of the US military. His feelings of rage and violation grew a few more notches. But so did his fear.
In front of him the bearded man spoke with a gesture. The man in the suit and glasses from earlier stepped up beside him again.
"He wants to know what you think," the man translated.
Tony felt his facial expression lock in a way it hadn't since his parents funeral. "I think you have a lot of my weapons," he answered quietly.
The bearded man spoke some more, gesturing grandly. He walked around behind Tony, his voice ringing through the valley. Tony recognized it as partial theater for the men ranged around the camp. Again he picked out the word 'Jericho.'
"He says they have everything you need to build the Jericho missile," the suited man said gravely.
Tony felt his brow furrow and his lips part as he considered his options.
"He wants you to make a list of materials," his cell mate continued lowly.
The bearded man again spoke, staring at Tony with his head cocked to the side.
"He says for you to start working immediately, and when you're done, he will set you free," the translator finished.
The bearded man tilted his chin and held out his hand.
Tony felt the sun warm the wet hair on his head. If he refused their offer they would torture him again, with something worse than a few hits and drowning. Though his face stayed immobile, his insides churned. He was powerless. He couldn't face the amorphous shadow of renewed torture, but the idea that they would simply release him was laughable. Calculating the outcomes, Tony pasted on his best fake publicity smile and took the bearded man's hand. The two men shook. "No, he won't," Tony commented fatalistically.
"No," the suited man agreed. "He won't."
Across from them the heavy set man with the beard smiled. Tony gazed along the gathering of men in the camp and saw the bald man from earlier, perched on the top of a rock further away, watching him.
…...
He'd been given a hat and a few heavier clothes once he seemed to be cooperating. Tony sat next to the fire, lost in a mix of anger and despair. The suited man walked behind him, talking.
"I'm sure they're looking for you, Stark. But they will never find you in these mountains." He moved around to sit across from Tony, closer to the flames, before continuing. "Look, what you just saw, that is your legacy, Stark." He paused for a breath. "You're life's work in the hands of those murders," he spat.
Not just his life's work, Tony thought to himself. It was Angela's, and Obie's, and Pepper's. It was the combined efforts of all the other people who worked at his company because they thought they were doing what was right. Somehow everything had slipped through his fingers. He'd fumbled it for them and let this happen. Tony had never realized there were quite so many people counting on him before.
The man in the suit leaned toward him. "Is that how you want to go out?"
Tony felt as if his face was set into stone. He couldn't do anything to fix the situation. They had so many of his weapons and he had no way of escaping.
"Is this the last act of defiance of the great Tony Stark?" The suited man mocked. "Or are you going to do something about it?" He prodded.
"Why should I do anything?" Tony mumbled angrily. "They're going to kill me, you, either way." It was the truth. He had almost zero chance of getting out on his own. Anyone looking for him would never find him. "And if they don't," he continued, "I'll probably be dead in a week."
The battery would last that long, maybe. Tony was going to die in a cave in the desert, and the only thing he would be remembered for was a body count.
"Well, then," the suited man said softly. "This is a very important week for you, isn't it?"
He didn't know what it was about that moment. Maybe it was having such a bald time limit put on his life. Maybe it was the man's words about his legacy. Maybe it was the thought that he'd let so many people he actually cared about down. Whatever the cause, something clicked together in Tony's mind.
The electromagnet and the arc reactor fused into one, and equations starting shooting off like the sparks from the fire he was in front of. He felt his eyes widen and hope screamed through his being so forcefully that it hurt. The idea forming in his head was mad, but not impossible, not for him. With crushing certainty, Tony knew what he had to do.