Okay, I have a cover, but the offer still stands.

Word Count: 2,012

Scrap Metal

At one point, something similar to normality returned to their lives.

It was routine and if he was honest, that was something Tony needed more than anything after he found out the truth.

Even the meetings with the Board of Directors were a strange sort of comfort.

Apart from that, the only major thing that happened in that year was that Tony decided to connect himself to the Internet. Not the company's servers—that would be too obvious—but his private ones.

It was a very interesting experience, being connected to people from all over the world, discussing so many things at the same time.

And if he joined a couple of websites for the sole reason that he was still able to beat the captcha codes—when they were used to confirm that it was indeed a human trying to create an account—then it was purely for the satisfaction of it.

Just because he wasn't human that did not mean that Afghanistan had not hurt. Quite the opposite, in fact.

He needed the ARC reactor to survive, because even terrorists were not dumb enough to mistake wires and metal for organic material once it was openly presented for them.

So they never gave him food. Why waste it on someone—quite possibly even, something in their minds—who didn't need it, right?

The problem was that he did, actually, require food for some reason, so he needed to rethink.

He remembered the ARC reactor back home and decided that trying something insane was better than, what dying? Would it really be dying if he could just be turned back on later?

Tony shook his head. He could deal with the philosophical questions later. He had more important things to do right now, namely ensuring his continued existence.

And, together with Yinsen, he did produce an ARC reactor.

The good news were that palladium wasn't poisonous for androids—at least not for him, but as far as he knew there was no one else like him out there—and it worked even better than food did as an energy source.

And the bad news?

It was now obvious to anyone whose eyes worked properly that he was not human.

Then again, they would be more likely suspect him of being a cyborg than an android.

That, however, did not mean that he had to like it.

Something big for fifteen minutes, alright.

"If you do not mind me asking, my friend," Yinsen—who else could possibly call him 'friend' here?—said one day, not quite two weeks into Tony's capture, "how do you—or more precisely how does your body—work? I mean, why do you require food? I apologize, but it has been bugging me for days on end."

Tony paused. "You know," he replied as he laid the pencil he was working on to the side, "I don't actually know. Somehow it has never occurred to me to figure it out. It just kind of does. I can only guess that Howard designed me to be as humanoid as possible." He laughed drily. "I even believed it myself until a couple of years ago."

"That must have been quite the revelation," the human observed.

Tony snorted.

"It was devastating. Yet it explained so much."

"For example?" Yinsen prompted.

"Howard reprogrammed me whenever a human child hit a major stage of development. And since he died when I was seventeen, I am, essentially, still a teenager."

Yinsen's face turned into a horrible grimace as he stepped closer to Tony.

"You poor soul," he whispered, putting his arms around Tony. "Being expected to act older than you are. Not to forget being stuck her. It is bad enough for me, but you, my friend, are for all intents and purposes still a child. You should not have to do this."

And, just for a moment, Tony allowed himself to be comforted, like the kid he was. For a few seconds, he was not in a cave in Afghanistan, he was at home with his family.

"I have a plan for both of us to escape," Tony stated confidently as he laid out the plans on the very next day. "Watch."

"...I see," Yinsen commented. He made sure that his body blocked the view on the overlaying transparencies. The human was reasonably certain that nothing could be seen either way, but making sure could not hurt them. "So, we will be building one for you?"

"No," Tony shook his head. "We're building one for you. If I get hit while we escape, we can repair this body or, in the absolute worst case, we destroy it completely and you take a copy of my programming with you. I am not leaving you behind." The android crossed his arms and glared at Yinsen.

The human gave him a weak smile. "Alright." It was more of a whisper than anything, but it was more than enough of a confirmation for Tony.

"Then let's get started."

It took them quite a while, but eventually, they got the suit finished.

Tony had been here three months and he hadn't dared to ask how long the human had been imprisoned here.

"Looking forward to returning to your family?" the android questioned as he assembled the suit.

"They died," Yinsen confessed.

Just for a second, Tony froze, before he gave his very best to work twice as fast as before.

"You can share mine. We're a jolly bunch."

Yinsen angled his head slightly. "I didn't know you had a family."

"Well, I do," Tony replied as he put the front plate in its proper place. "There's Happy, Pepper, and Rhodey. They started out as friends, but they're my siblings in all but blood. Then there's Aunt Peggy. You shouldn't anger her, she as an entire spy network at her disposal. And then there are my kids. DUM-E, U, Butterfingers, and JARVIS. The first three are robots and the latter's an AI largely based on my own code. You'll fit right in with our madness."

Their escape was as successful as they could have hoped for.

Both of them survived and Tony's body only had three bullet holes and one or two burns. Yinsen was almost completely uninjured.

They stumbled away from the caves, into the desert, barely believing it themselves.

"We did it," Yinsen said once they were certain they were not being followed. "We actually did it. I can't believe that we actually left these caves."

"Yes, we did," Tony confirmed.

They smiled at each other for a few seconds, because neither of them wanted to ruin the moment.

"Now we just need to find something other than sand," Tony added eventually. They would have to face the truth sooner or later, after all. "Because otherwise this was all for naught."

"We have the hardest part behind us," Yinsen argued. "We've gotten this far, so surely we will be able to do the rest."

And they were indeed picked up by Rhodey not much later with a helicopter. The man—bless him—had never stopped looking for Tony.

"Rhodey, Yinsen, Yinsen, Rhodey," he introduced them. "Now, please tell me you have a way to reach the ki- Happy and Pepper," he corrected himself once he realized the presence of the other soldiers. "I'm sure they're worried out of their minds."

"Miller, please give Mr. Stark a phone. I know that there are at least three lying around in this thing somewhere."

Once back home, Tony began to truly study himself. He started to figure out how his body worked and what could be improved.

Because a lot of the tech was outdated and Tony couldn't stand that. He designed an entirely new body. It was more efficient, and resistant. It was stronger and there were twelve weapons hidden inside it.

After he was done with that and successfully transferred his consciousness over to the newer version, he moved on to designing more suits. Better ones than the one he had built in Afghanistan.

And these were for himself, because now that he had seen what his weapons were truly

doing, he could not possibly allow it to continue.

Just like Tony had predicted, Yinsen fit right into their weird family.

The bots absolutely adored him as soon as they met him.

DUM-E gave a series of happy beeps that Tony was forced to translate for the human.

"He wants to thank you for saving my life—on behalf of the others, too—and he called you his, well, his grandfather." It was very awkward and Tony had absolutely no idea how the human would react.

But Yinsen smiled, knelt down and patted DUM-E on his arm.

"Your father saved my life just as much. I would be happy to be a part of your family."

"And we would like to welcome you into it," JARVIS replied, a smile audible in his voice.

Happy, Pepper, and Rhodey all separately vetted and questioned the man to make sure that he had no intention whatsoever to harm any of them, but once he had passed all of their tests, they also gladly accepted him into their family.

"The more, the merrier," Rhodey laughed.

Tony had never quite trusted Stane. There had always been a sense of distrust between them that the human had remained oblivious of.

It had been caused by the fact that Stane had been friends with Howard.

After years and years of thinking it was simply paranoia, it was kind of nice to finally have some proof.

That did not mean that he didn't still feel betrayed and all other sorts of terrible things—because yes, he did have emotions, thank you very much—if anything, it made it worse.

With the help of his family and SHIELD Agent Phil Coulson—he knew of it and he knew that they had made that acronym on purpose, so why couldn't Agent Agent use it?—he eventually managed to destroy Stane.

The sense of satisfaction was nevertheless accompanied by a number of negative emotions.

The Proof That Tony Stark Has A Heart Pepper had engraved on the first reactor, knowing full well that he had not one in the biological sense.

Somehow, that only made it more touching.

And in the end, nostalgia had somehow, in a sense, saved his life. Or maybe not, because his code was now stored the same way J's was. He was everywhere, this body was simply a focus.

Peggy's 'Please Don't Get Kidnapped Ever Again' present was slightly different.

She showed up to his door one morning and pushed a small suitcase in his hands before he had even finished greeting her.

Her appearance alone was enough to trick anyone off that something was horribly wrong. A lot of hairs were out of place which never happened with Aunt Peggy. Never ever.

"Listen, Tony. We don't have a lot of time. I discovered something horrible and you're the one I trust most to do something against it. I can't be certain about the allegiance of any agent in SHIELD, but I know that you can't possibly be one of them. Take care, Tony."

She hugged him tight and then left as suddenly as she had come.

"What was that;" Yinsen questioned, just now arriving at the door, clad in an apron and a wooden spoon still in his hand.

Tony shook his head. "I have no idea."

He raised the suitcase and opened it ever so slightly. It contained several thick files and a number flash drives.

"But I intend to find out."

Not even a week later Tony got a message that his Aunt apparently suffered from dementia.

She had been fine when they had met, but when he visited her in the home she was placed in—by whom?—Aunt Peggy did not even recognize him.

Something was indeed terribly wrong here and discovering—and, more importantly, deciphering—the contents of the suitcase was now his top priority, pushing the task of tracking down and destroying his weapons on the second place.

He could do both at the same time, but he also planned in some time devoted purely to the suitcase.

Please tell me what you think!

~Marvelgeek42