Disclaimer: I do not own Iron Man. He's got Marvel stamped on the bottom of his foot. I also don't own The Dead South. I have no idea what's on the bottom of their feet. Either way I stapled them together and left them in a closet. It would probably be wise of me to hire someone skilled in masonry to brick that door over.

Chapter 8: Alone

The Dead South- Into the Valley

"You can't stay," Angela reasoned. "It's been three weeks."

"Three weeks with my sister who came very close to death," Mike pointed out.

Angela felt the increasingly familiar pang of guilt, followed by a lighter dart of disgust aimed at herself. She'd come that close to death through circumstances that were driven by a chain of her own choices. And it seemed her decisions were still suspect. All around the base, personnel who saw her stared.

It was difficult not to internalize their reactions, even if she didn't outwardly show them. Her previous ability to distance herself from her emotions was shot. She and Mike had briefly discussed her seeing a therapist, but Angela was finding herself hesitant to be seen by new people.

"Molly and the kids need you at home," She opined.

Mike sighed, but didn't dispute it. They both knew how difficult it was for Molly to take care of two young children by herself. It didn't help that the children were becoming more upset the longer their father was gone.

"I can't begin to tell you how much I love you for rushing out here and going to bat for me. But the really uncertain part is over now," Angela reminded him. "Plus, I'm working at all hours trying to make a Mark II version and you're bored out of your skull," she lightly teased.

Her brother raised a thick red eyebrow at her. "Well, that's the truth." He leaned back against the wall in the lab and crossed his arms. "You sure you want to stay here? You could come home with me," he offered.

Angela nixed that idea right away. "Unless you're hiding one behind your refrigerator of craft beer in the garage, you don't have a lab."

"If you pull out the right bottle there's a secret trap door." He smirked at her.

She gave a gusty chuckle and rubbed at the thin skin below her eyes. "Seriously though, I'm in the best place I can be right now." It wasn't the most pleasant, but it had what she needed. Angela glanced around the lab and firmed her lips. "I will find an answer for this," she declared, gesturing to the cables running from her chest.

Mike dropped his arms, stepped forward, and hugged her. As always since her final surgery, he was careful of the hand that held the battery and the connections in her chest. "I know you will."

She was touched by the certainty in his voice. For a moment she luxuriated in the safety of her brother's embrace.

"Well," he sighed, pulling back. "I suppose I should start looking for a flight." He released her altogether and moved over to a nearby computer.

"Let me pay your way back?" Angela offered.

Mike shook his head in mock despair. "You're just excited to have all your incidentals back in order."

Angela waggled her head, because yeah, she was. Her purse had been transferred from Stark's private plane awhile ago, but her ID and phone had been stuffed into her flak jacket at the time of the attack. They'd been ruined by her blood.

After she had her purse, she'd gotten a phone. Then she had spent a few days setting up her apartment for long term closure through Pepper. Once that was settled, Angela had begun the process of seeking premises for her new lab via the recommended realtor. She'd run into some problems with city ordinances, so had focused her search outside of LA and Santa Monica.

Meanwhile, it had taken the better part of three weeks to get a new passport and ID.

"You don't need to pay my way. I can afford it," Mike joked.

Not quite willing to play along, Angela pressed, "It'd make me feel better for scaring you to death and dragging you to Italy."

Her brother gave her an amused look. "You realize how strange it sounds to have you apologize for dragging me to Italy?"

"Out of context," she rebutted.

"I pay my way back, you get something else for the kids?" He bargained.

"After the horse and the airplane? You want me to spoil them?" She asked lifting a brow. If he did Molly would have his head.

Mike grunted ruefully. "On second thought, you can pay my way back." Angela smiled in triumph. "The minute you decide to come home though, I want to know. Even if it's back to Malibu and not Cleveland," he demanded, suddenly stern.

With a wry twist of her lips, she solemnly promised, "The very moment. And before you ask, I will also keep you updated on this." She tapped a finger near her collar bone. "Of course the two will probably closely coincide," she added.

"Good." He looked around the lab again and frowned. "I don't like leaving you here by yourself."

Angela shrugged lightly. There was nothing either of them could do about it. It was just one more thing in her life that had slipped from her control, like her emotions, or her ability to sleep.

"I'll miss you," she admitted. "Especially since this is the longest we've been together in awhile. But you can't stay."

"And you won't go," he finished.

"Can't go," she corrected. "Unless you want to worry about your kids accidentally unplugging their aunt," she teased. It was only a tease in tone, by now both of them knew it was a serious complication.

"Yeah, I know," he grudgingly agreed.

Two days later they had a base escort to the airport for Mike's flight.

"Make sure you tell that Colonel I said thank you for saving my little sister," he reminded as he hugged her goodbye in the car.

"I'm two years older than you," she reminded, pulling back from the hug. Her battery companion was hidden in a tote bag but she couldn't risk entering a commercial airport.

Mike ruffled her hair and Angela glared. He opened the door and bent back in to grab his carry on. "Maybe, but I'm bigger than you are," he teased.

Angela allowed the complete lapse of maturity and stuck her tongue out at him.

"Bye Genie." Mike closed the door.

Angela watched him walk through the entrance of the airport. When she lost sight of him in the crowd, she drew in a deep breath through her nose and let it out in a sigh. She was alone in a country of strangers.

…...

After the bald man threatened Yinsen, Tony found a new level of inspiration to speed his work. He finished the final piece of the suit by the wee hours of the morning. Immediately he and Yinsen started to prep Tony for wearing it.

Tony wrapped his hands the best he could with the tape they had while Yinsen used the lift to move the armor into position. In between, the two of them rigged explosive charges on their cell door.

Part of Tony was thrumming in anticipation. They were finally going to get out of there. Another part of him was twisting in dread. There were still so many things that could go wrong.

He shrugged into the welding jacket, then held still as Yinsen belted a thick piece of leather around his neck. When his skin was as protected as their limited supplies allowed, Tony took his place in the armor. The elder man lowered the chest piece onto him and Tony's knees buckled slightly under the weight.

"Okay?" Yinsen asked. "Can you move?"

"Yeah," Tony replied, adjusting his shoulders under the armor and already sweating.

"Okay, say it again," Yinsen ordered.

Both men were talking softly and rushing. As soon as the guards realized what was going on they would have to start moving.

"Forty one steps straight ahead," Tony dutifully replied. "Then sixteen steps, that's from the door, fork right, thirty three steps, turn right."

From outside the door their names were suddenly yelled. 'Shit,' Tony thought. 'We're so close.'

"Say something," Tony urged Yinsen. The man was frantically working on the final connections of the suit. "Say something back to him." Outside of their cell the shouting continued.

"He's speaking Hungarian. I don't…" Yinsen trailed off, lowering the air impact wrench.

"Then speak Hungarian," Tony demanded tensely.

The elder man made a few frustrated gestures towards his head. "Okay, I know."

Tony willed calm into himself. "What do you know?" He asked evenly.

"Egy perc," Yinsen yelled toward the door, going back to buttoning the suit up with the wrench. The shouting continued and he once again yelled, "Egy perc!"

The men at the door were not placated, however. Tony heard the latch turn. He tried to brace himself for what he knew was coming. A sudden explosion vibrated the ground beneath him and blew debris passed his face. Ringing silence settled over the two men.

"How'd that work?" Tony wondered.

Yinsen leaned around him. "Oh my goodness. It worked alright."

"That's what I do," Tony proclaimed smugly.

The two men paused to listen as more yelling started up further off in the caverns.

"Let me finish this," Yinsen muttered.

"Initialize the power sequence," Tony ordered.

For frantic moments they worked on closing the armor up while waiting on the power sequence to load. Their eyes watched the bar inch across the screen. It was moving far too slowly. Tony's willed it faster as his breathing picked up pace. "Make sure the checkpoints are clear before you follow me out, okay?" He reminded Yinsen nervously.

The slender, soft spoken man was still busy watching the loading bar. "We need more time," he muttered. Yinsen turned to Tony with an expression on his face that Tony couldn't read. "Hey, I'm gonna go buy you some time," he declared.

"Stick to the plan," Tony called, but Yinsen was already moving. "Stick to the plan," he yelled again. "Yinsen!"

…...

Angela was very tempted to throw the stupid notebook across the room. She had sketches for solar, kinetic motion, and thermoelectric powering structures. When she did the math however, none of them could reliably generate enough power on a small enough platform to be useful. She was reluctant to delve into nuclear types. They'd be too easy for the military to exploit.

She let out a long sigh and rubbed under her tired eyes. That motion was enough to remind her of her boss. He'd been missing for a month and a half already. Angela sucked on her lip and brought up the still clear memory of him being flung away from her in the blast. He'd looked right at her just before it happened. There had been such fear in his eyes. Sometimes she thought she saw blame.

Since Mike had left she had spent the majority of her time holed up in the lab. Without her brother there as a buffer, it was better for everyone involved if she kept to herself.

She'd felt his absence keenly during her second appointment with Dr. Lori. The doctor was determined to get her to be a case study. The man looked at her condition and saw plaudits for an article. It was better than what other people saw.

It had become general knowledge on base that she was the head of weapons development for Stark Industries. She'd over heard one airman comment to another that it was poetic justice she'd been blown up with her own bomb. The same man had openly hoped Stark was dead.

The rage that had sparked through her upon hearing those comments had been like lightning. She had come dangerously close to stalking across the street and punching an armed man in the face. Logically, Angela knew that the young man had probably been singing both their praises when he'd been using their weapons against other people. Having them used back at him had apparently changed his tune. His wasn't the only one either.

There'd been a few times, when she'd gone to the gate to pick up a delivery, that she'd gotten blatant looks of disgust. Some of those looks were because of the wires in her chest, some of them were because the insurgents in Afghanistan were making free with Stark weapons.

A part of her was starting to think she deserved the condemnation. Her life had been her work. It had defined a large piece of her. All the drive and creativity she'd put into it seemed wasted after what she'd seen in the desert. Angela wasn't sure what the life she was fighting for was worth anymore.

A knock sounded on her lab door and she spun toward it in her swivel chair. Her arm automatically reached out and caught the loop attached to her battery before she even stood up. Dull curiosity sparked in her mind at the interruption. No one came to visit her.

Opening the door, her stomach dropped when she was met with Jim's haggard face. A million thoughts swam through her mind. Had he found Tony? Had he found Tony's body?

"Hi," she breathed out.

Jim gave her a tired, lopsided grin as his eyes scanned over her. "I didn't think I'd see you again."

Because when he had left before he'd thought that she would die, she acknowledged. Angela didn't begrudge him going to look for his friend. Jim had known Stark far longer than her. He had the chance to actually help the man. She had been a lost cause.

"My brother wants me to thank you for saving my life." The words spilled out mostly on accident. It was becoming harder for her to keep a check on herself when days went by without her talking to another living soul. Angela shuffled her feet in discomfort. "I thank you too. I don't remember if I have before."

Jim chuckled and she remembered she was blocking the door. Angela backed up clumsily to let him into the lab. "You have, but it looks like you saved your own life."

She made an agreeing hum. Temporarily she had. Her continued survival seemed to be a mutating issue, however.

"I also heard you caused a ruckus doing it," he teased.

She tipped her head to the side, not sorry in the least. Her opinion on base command was made up. "Regretfully."

"And roped Pepper in," he continued in a lightly accusing tone.

Angela wasn't really sorry for that either, but she did offer, "That woman is a goddess."

He nodded in agreement and sat down on the green couch Mike had sourced from a nearby lounge. Angela waited for his eyes to trail down to her chest, like everyone else's eventually did. "How come you're still here?" He asked.

"Lab access," she answered succinctly. Angela fidgeted, and then lowered herself onto the couch beside him. She set her crutches to the side. When she sat her battery on the cement floor, it made a loud clunk that drew his attention. His eyes followed the wires from the battery to her chest.

"Any luck?" She truly wanted to know and it served as a good distraction. There was zero desire to explain her current condition again.

Jim's face went into a tight and disappointed look. "No," he breathed out heavily. "We're back for a rotation and re-supply. A new team is going out the day after tomorrow. I'm going with them."

"Short turn," Angela commented. At least he was out doing something. She felt like she was just spinning her wheels.

He nodded wearily. "How are you doing?"

Angela rubbed under her eyes again. "Frustrated and still working."

"Tired," he added.

"Yeah," she agreed. There was an answer, she reminded herself. There was always an answer.

He gave her a small smile but didn't comment. Together they sat on the stiff green couch in silence. Finally he asked, "How close was Tony?"

Angela let her eyes close for a long blink. She knew someone close to the man would ask eventually. Pepper hadn't. Happy hadn't when she'd talked to him. Of course it would be Jim.

She sucked on the inside of her bottom lip but tried to keep her expression still. "Do you really want me to answer that Col. Rhodes?" She knew, for a man like he seemed to be, that her question was probably answer enough.

"Jim," he insisted, "And yes."

Angela pursed her lips in consternation. "It was close," she whispered.

"Could you tell if he was alive?" He pressed.

Reliving the memory in her mind's eye, Angela clenched her teeth. There was definitely blame in Stark's eyes. "Yes. He was alive." She'd seen enough after she had fallen to recognize that.

Jim bobbed his upper body in a rocking nod. "You think he was alive when they dragged him off?"

Instead of answering directly she asked, "Why bother to drag off a dead man?" Angela shrugged and tried to get that glass window to go up between her and her feelings. Once again she failed. "If it was publicity, we would have seen something. If it was ransom, they need a live prisoner."

"That's what I thought too. But seven weeks and no demands," he trailed off. "Do you think he survived long enough for them to get him medical attention?"

"Yes," she nodded decisively. "Or we're back to publicity. They would have used it." Tony was too high profile for them not to. The image of his dead body would have brought national attention to any terrorist group.

Jim tapped a finger along his leg. "You think he's still alive?"

Angela made sure to meet his eyes before she answered. "Yes." And she almost wished that she did think Tony was dead, because alive he could only be a prisoner.

"Even with the," he gestured to her chest as if it addressed the thing that had put the shrapnel in it.

With a sigh, she searched for a way to explain her train of thought to the man. The dry facts felt safest. "The Reaper is a fragmenting missile. It's designed to do lethal damage in short to moderate range.

"I was about twelve meters away. Mr. Stark was closer than I was by about a meter. At that distance the payload should have killed us both," she admitted. Her chest tightened in remembered fear. "Part of that was mitigated by flak jackets, but I have a suspicion that the weapon didn't detonate properly."

Angela stopped to wet her lips. Jim was leaning toward her, recognizing a good source of information perhaps. She took a deep breath and forced out, "He was alive after he hit the ground. He was alive when he was taken away. I believe he is still alive."

"You seem pretty convinced," Jim observed.

"I did this," she gestured to her chest, "In a hospital. Tony Stark could do it in the dark, half dead." Her boss was a lot of things and genius was not an honorary title. "Do not let them make you stop looking for him," she entreated.

Jim nodded sharply. "I won't," he agreed. "Pepper said you'd be good for morale," he commented.

Angela shrugged fatalistically. "If I thought he was dead I would tell you." She tilted her head. "I probably wouldn't tell Pepper," she admitted.

"Yeah," he agreed, seeming to acknowledge how awful that would be. He squinted his eyes at her. "In the dark, half dead, huh? You think he's smarter than you?"

Angela felt her lips pull up in a smile, and she gave out a series of the gusty chuckles that seemed the only humor she could dredge up in the past few weeks. "He is," she assured.

"That's a high compliment from you," Jim asserted.

She made a conceding noise in her throat. Her boss may be a horrible lab partner, but the engineering was strong with him.

…...

That night she dreamed of the attack again, but they weren't in the desert. They were in Cleveland.

She half jumped, half fell out of the open door of the humvee behind Stark. In the moment it took her to shake off her heels to run in the sand, he was far ahead of her. Angela chased him down familiar streets until she burst through the door of her brother's house. Stark was inside hiding behind the couch. Mike was standing in the living room.

"Hey Genie," Mike greeted. He was weeding a row of tomato plants growing on a table. "Drink all the wine in Italy yet?" He asked.

From one blink to the next he was suddenly dressed in his grandfather's World War Two uniform. She opened her mouth to warn them when the missile came through the front window, shattering the glass and overturning the table. It skidded to a halt next to Molly, who was holding Angie II.

"Horse," little Angie's voice called.

Tony's eyes were glaring at her in accusation.

Molly blew out an exasperated breath. "What have I told you about bringing your work home with you?" She asked.

Before Angela could move her dream world exploded. She screamed in pain and terror, fire rolling over her. When the dust from the blast settled, she had a long moment to see that everyone in the house was dead. Brandon's lumpy little body lay contorted near a remnant of the wall. She couldn't even recognize his face.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed, rolling over and trying to cover the hole in her chest.

"You're not," dead Mike rasped from the floor next to her. His blue eyes were streaked through with broken blood vessels. "You never are."

Angela jolted awake in the dark of the lab, her mouth twisted open in a soundless howl. Desperate to get away from the images in her own mind, she swept the blanket off her legs and rolled to her feet. The cables connected to her battery tugged on her chest sharply and Angela abruptly sat back down on the couch.

Her whole body shook as she tried to remind herself that it was just a dream, not reality. Everyone in Cleveland was fine and that could never happen. She swiped ineffectually at her tears before freezing in realization. Her eyes strayed down to her chest.

Angela had first hand proof that Stark Industries weapons, her weapons, were in the hands of terrorists. Her dream could happen. It had happened for some other family somewhere. Brandon's face had happened to some other child somewhere. Despair and self hatred rolled through her like a fog. She shivered in misery.

It was irrational to blame herself for the evil's in the world, but she still felt like she had blood on her hands. Her work had been fine when she'd thought she was defending soldiers, or helping them defend civilians. She'd never allowed herself to really stop and think.

Angela had been proud of the FGM-96 Reaper. She'd felt a fierce glee when she'd seen the reports on the weapon's lethality. It had been a good build, one of her firsts as a project leader. That hadn't been a thought that included the contemplation of pain, or the horrid long look into a death coming that you couldn't avoid. She hadn't considered herself the potential murderer of children. How could she not have seen that all as part of it? What kind of monster didn't think of things like that?

Had it really only been a few months ago that she was celebrating the completion of the Jericho? That thing was a city killer and she'd been proud at its demonstration. Leaning forward over her knees, she gagged and panted in distress.

Angela rocked herself slowly back and forth on the couch, her arms wrapped around her but careful. She always had to be careful now. She constantly had to watch so she didn't get tangled, so she didn't get out of range. Poetic justice, that airman had called it, karma.

God, she was so sorry. She shuddered as Mike's dead voice rasped through her mind. For the rest of the night she didn't dare go back to sleep.

…...

Notes:

Didn't want to post a downer chapter after watching Endgame, but this is what was in the hopper.

I'm just gonna pretend that everyone was Parzival in Ready Player One. We all need an archivist.