Chapter 31 – Time To Go

A/n: Congrats to ReadPaxJoy who was among many other numbers reviewer 300 so pick a prompt related to this story and I will write it as best I can. The next time this happens will be for my 350th reviewer.

youwannabekate: There will be split opinion on the first scene among the group. Some of them will be amused of course though. And there's more angst at the end remember :)

ReadPaxJoy: It's lovely here in this Avengers world; just stay here fulltime. I do! JARVIS uses technical terms and I don't have a Blu-ray player so… I come up with weird Scottish metaphors so I can't judge. What can I say? I like writing women who can kick ass :) It's one of the reasons Peggy is in so many of my headcanons. Everyone is upset with Piper /lol/ Phil always breaks the tension. Looking forward to hearing about what you want for your oneshot

XxxBellaBellaxxX: All the captivity is soon to be over which is good because it does get kind of hard to keep up the commentary. Enjoy this chapter!

writergirl85: I'm really glad that you really like this story

Dragones: To a lesser extent he manages to do that in the movie so I'll leave the next section of the dialogue mostly unchanged. And I'm glad you liked the languages that Toni speaks.

LaNaturalBreezeOf-Books: I updated at nearly 5am here and slept for an hour before getting up and starting work on this one before I had to go out so complaining to be kept to a minimum :D

whitetigerwolf: Yeah, that pairing is making me want to write it so you can just try and hit the next milestone and ask for it :D Glad you enjoyed the chapter

paisley15: Yes, it seems like a cliffie but it's still not one really :D But there's more suspense there than for the other chapters. I love Phil and the last chapter had more opportunities available to slot him in. And I'm glad the Clint part came across well :) And I know it's ridiculous; their captors were so stupid

nessa11997: Thank you and I'm glad :)

Harm Marie and MusicalLover17: I'm glad

TryingNotToFall: And I do so every day so here's today's :)

Post U Later: Toni is certainly awesome to do something like that which nobody else in the world could do.

"That's… that's…" Steve said apparently lost for words.

"That's the lengths these types of men are willing to go to. They want something from you and if you don't need a functioning tongue to do what they need you to then they'll happily hurt that part of you," Toni said darkly, "they don't care. That's what makes them so dangerous."

"People who are willing to torture you to get their goals don't hold back because something is particularly against the moral values of the rest of the world," Natasha chimed in.

"What does he want?" Toni asked to keep up appearances. Her dark look could be attributed to her seeing the hot coal so it didn't give away the fact that she was angry because she knew exactly what was going on.

"That must have been hard," Bruce said sympathetically. Clint who had been planning to compliment Toni on her acting at this point suddenly realised that might be a bad idea so he kept his comment to himself. He didn't want to upset Toni again because the image of a crying Toni Stark was one he could never get out of his head and he didn't want to subject anybody else to it. Not that he thought she'd let anyone else see it.

"You think I'm a fool?" Raza reiterated as he forced Yinsen's head down onto a nearby anvil, "what's going on? Tell me the truth."

Toni was still analysing the situation carefully trying to decide whether she should interfere yet but she appeared to know that it wasn't the right time yet. "She's building your Jericho," Yinsen insisted as the hot coal got closer to his mouth.

"Surely he wouldn't be able to get information out of Lady Toni's fellow captive if he could no longer speak due to burns to his tongue," Thor said puzzled.

"They were aiming to intimidate me enough that I would tell them what it was I was doing," Toni explained, "although in a way it would be idiotic because they couldn't do that to me or they'd never get a secret. So I'm assuming a second intention of it was to intimidate me into dropping the Iron Man project. They didn't know me of course so they didn't know that if they attempted to mess with me or someone I had started protecting that I would just work twice as hard on my own projects."

The two kept exchanging their last two statements as the hot coal drew closer and closer to Yinsen's mouth. Eventually Toni decided that it was time for her to intervene and she stepped forward interrupting, "What do you want? A delivery date?"

"I'm hoping that was a calculated risk Annie," Natasha said, "because they're not going to be at all happy with that especially since you moved forward towards their leader."

"It wasn't the most elegant way to do it but it was the most effective way of turning their attention to me," Toni said defensively, "I didn't really have the time to come up with anything subtle."

"She has a point," Phil pointed out.

The minute she stepped forward the guns turned to be aimed directly at her with only a few remaining on Yinsen as they called out in Arabic for her to stop moving.

"Successful distraction technique if a bit crude," Clint acknowledged, "given the time you had."

She held her hand up to show that she wasn't going to attempt to fight her way out and managed to get Raza's attention. She carefully thought through what she was going to say before speaking again feigning coldness, "I need him. Good assistant."

"By not making a big deal out of it Toni assured that they wouldn't hurt Yinsen anyway just because they knew it would affect her," Natasha said sensing Steve was about to protest against Toni's apparent coldness, "by making him necessary to her creation process she saved him from the torture."

"We haven't even seen if they did yet," Steve defended himself.

"Trust me Steve," Bruce said, "they will. It was the perfect way to say what she did."

Raza seemed to accept this explanation as satisfactory as he dropped the hot coal onto the anvil in front of Yinsen and signalled that his men should let go of him, "you have till tomorrow to assemble my missile," he informed Toni.

"How did you manage to assemble something as complicated as the suit from the parts you had already within a day?" Clint said shocked.

"Necessity," Toni stated referring to one of her previous points and Clint realised that it had been the adrenaline that had kept them going during the day that was about to be shown on film.

He threw the tongs down on the floor as he stormed out giving Toni another dark look to show that he was still suspicious of what she was doing. The next shot showed Toni in a black tank top shaping a piece of metal.

"Wait how many changes of clothes did you have there?" Natasha asked seeing that this was only the third different outfit they had seen Toni in since she got there.

"Just the three you've seen," Toni admitted, "they weren't particularly looking for me to be comfortable. Just functional. I'm sure they stunk by the end of my captivity but I wasn't exactly focusing on that."

She lowered it into a barrel of steaming liquid and pulled out the finished Iron Man mask and placed it on Yinsen's table where he was working on some of the wiring.

Later on Toni was winding tape around her hands as Yinsen winched up the chest plate of the Iron Man suit behind her.

"You did say the first suit you created was a 'pile of junk' but I didn't think you meant it so literally Lady Toni," Thor said surprised.

"Yeah," Toni said with a slight smile, "It was one of the few times that I've ever been surprised that something actually worked purely because a lot of the materials that I had there were perfect for building bombs but not particularly for making a mechanical suit that's large enough to fit someone inside of it. I didn't know if it was actually possible but it was of course far too late to back out of it and it was our only decent shot."

"You should never doubt your work Toni if you had doubts about something that clearly got you out of there alive," Clint exclaimed.

"No," Toni said, "actually I should because then I double check and triple check everything which means if there's any chance that something dangerous has come loose on an invention - or anything has come loose in general really – that I catch it and nobody ends up getting killed. I gave up the weapons industry to cut down on the death toll after all."

Once the suit was in position Yinsen helped Toni into her jacket and gloves just to make the process faster.

"We knew we would be detected any minute," Toni muttered. It was loud enough for the others to hear… just. But they weren't sure if they were meant to so none of them responded. There wasn't much to say anyway.

The process continued with the breastplate of the suit being lowered onto Toni and clicking into place over the arc reactor in her chest which connected its power to the suit. "Okay? Can you move?" Yinsen said addressing one of the most important concerns they had.

"The most important thing in any captive situation is always if you can move to get out around any injuries or other handicaps. The suit just made it more important," Clint realised.

Toni clenched her fists to demonstrate that she could move as Yinsen told her, "okay, say it again."

"41 steps straight ahead," Toni reeled off as Yinsen connected up one of the gas containers, "then 16 steps, that's from the door, fork right, 33 steps, turn right."

"I have never been gladder of your memory Toni," Bruce chipped in knowing that anything small his friend could remember would have assisted her with her escape. Especially since the range of vision in that helmet had to be limited although the eyeholes would make sure she wasn't going into a dangerous situation totally blind. Yet any detailed work would have to be done with the helmet off unlike Toni's new suits which had JARVIS installed in them and were of course highly sophisticated.

Raza walked up to the screens displaying the image of the cell section of the cave where only Yinsen was visible because the view of Toni was blocked by the wood that the suit was propped up against to keep the suit a surprise for as long as possible. "Where's Stark?" Raza asked.

"She was here a minute ago," another man said confused and worried that something would happen to him for not noticing Toni's absence from the screen sooner.

"And now they finally figure out that you're up to something Annie," Natasha said, "took them long enough. I thought you were busted at least three times before this and even that is an extremely low amount considering just how long you were there."

Steve's theory that there had been a time skip of more than a day at one point or maybe more than that had just been confirmed but he really didn't like being right. That meant that Toni hadn't been missing for only a week or two. It had been far longer which meant that Toni had been subjected to torture over a long period of time and for some reason had been stubborn enough to refuse treatment because for a woman who was such a genius she was an idiot when it came to her personal health. He'd seen that for himself all of the times that Toni had ended up injured during battles after which she'd proceed to check herself out of the hospital prematurely because she disliked them with no regard to how safe it was for her to do so. In fact they really needed to talk to Toni about that at some point because while he could understand she might want to be treated at home the only Doctor she actually let near her was Bruce and some of the injuries were too much for him. Bruce wasn't actually a medical doctor after all. He now knew that it was probably due to these events seeing as he could see some startling similarities between Bruce and Yinsen and he wondered if that was another reason that Toni had trusted Bruce so quickly whilst the rest of them vilified him. It was entirely plausible that she hadn't told them about that particular reason because she had been hoping they would never find out about this. This just added to the list of things they needed to discuss with Toni. While Steve knew he hadn't explicitly told his team a lot of what had happened to him back in the forties it was in his file. Natasha and Clint didn't talk about Budapest as a general rule but anything that was pertinent to their work with the Avengers was in a file for them to see. It was the same with Bruce and the things that had happened in Harlem with the Hulk and Thor was always eager to tell them stories about what had happened on Asgard. Toni however wouldn't talk to you about her life so you would go for the failsafe of reading her file except she regularly wiped it so the only things you would find there were the facts that Toni had already told you. And it just couldn't fly for very much longer for while some of them had gotten a handle on Toni's ever-changing personality (them being Natasha, Bruce and Phil) the others hadn't and they had no explanation for her quirks until they saw these movies. But Steve didn't know how to broach the subject with Toni because she was still an enigma to him and he was never sure whether something he thought was perfectly tactful would send her into one of her fits of ill temper.

"Go look for her," Raza ordered two more of his men who ran off to the cell cave. When they reached the door one of the shouted through the hatch over the buzzing of a drill, "Yinsen! Yinsen! Stark!"

"You need to say something back to him," Toni whispered as Yinsen was tightening the bolts on the suit.

"He's speaking Hungarian. I don't…" Yinsen began.

"Do you speak Hungarian Lady Toni?" Thor asked.

"Now, yes," Toni answered, "back then, no I didn't so we just had to wing it really."

"Then you'll have to speak Hungarian," Toni said quickly.

"Okay! I know…" Yinsen said thinking hard.

"What do you know?" Toni encouraged as Yinsen came up with something and began shouting back to the man at the door. The same door which had been set up with an explosive booby trap across the side that moved when it opened.

"You always have another plan Toni," Clint said impressed, "one that works as a failsafe in case they tried to break in and was a calculated risk for breaking out because it was much more likely that someone would try to break in. Especially once you vanished off their computer screens."

"I did the math," Toni agreed, "and there was a 99% chance that someone would come and open the door. Percentages were tight for how many so I made the bomb pretty powerful in case it ended up being one of the larger numbers."

Eventually the two terrorists tired of shouting through a door and one of them pulled the crank handle that opened it only to trigger the explosives and send the pair flying back due to a fiery ball hitting them head on.

"Effective," Natasha complimented.

The camera showing the cell faded to static as the dust from the explosion blew back into Toni's face. Raza quickly ordered everyone he had available to get to the cell and apprehend the pair.

"How'd that work?" Toni asked.

"Oh my goodness!" Yinsen exclaimed, "It worked alright!"

"That's what I do," Toni informed him.

"He was a little sceptical that the explosive compound on the door trick would work because it seemed like something they would be prepared for. But the thing is it's actually not very common for most captors are smart enough not to put an engineer and weapons developer in a room full of explosives and expect her to as she was told just because she was put through a little pain," Toni scoffed.

"Let me finish this," Yinsen said attempting to go back to bolting Toni in but she had realised that now there had been an explosion the others were coming so it would do them no good, "initialise power sequence."

"Probably not the best way to test completely new technology which is massively beyond anything that was on the market then or since," Bruce said wincing, "but all those comments you've been making about necessity certainly apply here."

"Okay," Yinsen agreed dropping the drill and heading over to the basic computer they had been provided with.

"Now!" Toni snapped beginning to get nervous about when more of the terrorists would get to their location. She had no idea how close the nearest group had been when the explosion had gone off but she hoped it was as far away as the camera room which she had guessed was near the entrance to the cave.

"Tell me. Tell me," Yinsen said quickly waiting for Toni's instructions.

"He was just a doctor of medicine so you had to do all the computer programming," Clint speculated and Toni confirmed it with a swift nod.

"Function 11," Toni instructed, "tell me when you see a progress bar. It should be up right now. Talk to me, tell me when you see it."

"Yes, I got it," Yinsen confirmed as soon as the bar popped up on the screen.

"At least that's gotten started," Natasha said although she was worried about how slow the bar was moving. The computer looked like a pile of old junk as well so there was no guarantee it would get the whole suit programmed fast enough to be of any use.

"Press Control 'I'," Toni continued.

"'I', got it," Yinsen said as soon as he had done it.

"'I'! 'Enter'!" Toni emphasised, "'I' and then 'Enter.' Come over here and button me up."

Yinsen quickly abandoned the computer and made his way back over to Toni as the terrorists' shouts could begin to be heard as they pelted through the corridors of the cave at full speed.

"Okay. All right," Yinsen muttered to himself as he did as Toni asked.

"Every other hex bolt," Toni informed him realising that cutting some corners to save them some time.

"They're coming!" Yinsen shouted.

"Nothing pretty just get it done," Toni said calmly.

"It must have been hard to keep your cool with all that bearing down on you," Bruce said sympathetically.

"You would know," Toni said with a bittersweet smile.

Yinsen reiterated his previous statement as the background noise grew louder but Toni kept telling him to focus on the task at hand.

The progress bar on the computer was about halfway across now as Toni reminded Yinsen of the plan, "Make sure the checkpoints are clear before you follow me out, okay?"

"We need more time," Yinsen realised suddenly whilst watching the progress bar and turned back to face Toni, "hey! I'm gonna go buy you some time."

"дерьмо," Natasha cursed saying what they all were thinking. It was clear in her tone what the word had meant even to those that didn't speak Russian.

A/n: Steve stop taking up all my commentary; had to rewrite bits of this because I made too much of it Cap orientated /lol/ And he still got the longest reflection so far in this story. The next chapter is the last part in Afghanistan! WHOO!