Chapter 32 – Welcome Back

A/n: Once again thank you all for lovely comments on this story and now it's time to get out of Afghanistan. Hopefully I'll keep up my Monday tradition and get this up sooner than usual :D I think you guys will like ReadPaxJoy's prompted one-shot :D

youwannabekate: First again :) Toni is always BAMF she just shows it sometimes more than others. But yeah it'll be fun for the Avengers to see her angry. It was short because you want a chapter a day /shrugs/ And yeah it was really about Steve that chapter because he wouldn't leave me alone. The sequel is whatever Science Husbands is in fem!Tony verse ;) But there's a parallel one that is IronHawk and an IronWidow and IronThunder one shot series that will be updated when the plot bunny strikes

paisley15: I know, unfortunately Yinsen's death is really important but it's so sad and I will cry whilst watching it… again. Maybe! You might jinx me and I'll write an abysmal one

Post U Later: Yeah, this story is going to be very long but that just means more chances for people to win one-shots and previews under certain conditions I come up with.

whitetigerwolf: Almost had me but we have 30 reviews to go until we hit that point unfortunately.

Dragones: I know poor thing; at least she'll have some relief until we get to Stane being a traitor because there's a section that isn't so bad for her.

XxxBellaBellaxxX: I'm glad you liked it and I hope you enjoy this one just as much

Tanin: I'm really glad you like it and wow if it's starting to take people a day it must be getting long.

LaNaturalBreezeOf-Books: Yeah the brick of words will become important so maybe you should read all of it hmm… I think it would be yay because no more Toni torture for now. And yes I did, because I'm awesome :) Russian curses are the best way to end chapters

ladyofstayne: Here's my update for you :)

nessa11997: You're welcome :)

Booklover2526: I know it was a really touching moment and I was like oh Yinsen :( I'm glad that you think so :)

TryingNotToFall: Hey Sarah :) I'm so glad that you changed your mind because of this story; it's really flattering. And you're welcome!

ReadPaxJoy: I'm glad you loved it and that you're so excited that you managed to win :) The next one is at 350 reviews so who knows :D We get relief from Toni being hurt until. Oops! I'm corrupting your little cousin :D Oh well, running with laptops is good exercise

GuestPerson: Thank you! And maybe; I'm not sure if I'm including that as a plot point at this point :D

Squee the magical bunny: No, there is no IH in this story which is for a specific reason which will be proposed by Toni and later confirmed by Amora. Plus the awkwardness with the million different actors who have played Bruce which is kind of distracting for me.

"Stick to the plan!" Toni said firmly attempting to talk Yinsen out of doing something stupidly brave but he was already running out of the door and he picked up one of the guns of the fallen terrorists and ran off ignoring Toni's second shout of, "stick to the plan!"

"This is not going to end well," Bruce predicted sadly. He too had noticed some similarities between himself and Yinsen and knew that if something really bad had happened to him it was likely Toni still hadn't forgiven herself for it. He quite liked the other man himself from what he had seen of him so far but he had a feeling if he had gotten out to his family then Toni would have insisted that Yinsen take a job at Stark Industries to support his family better. That would have meant that they would have met him by now at some kind of function. Besides on Toni's list of charities hadn't there been a Yinsen Charitable Trust beneath the Maria Stark Foundation? Any of this singularly would have been worrying but taken together they painted a picture that suggested that whilst buying the pair time Yinsen was either extremely badly wounded or actually died.

Yinsen began to fire in the air as he ran out attempting to draw all of the attention to him so nobody would think to check on Toni until there had been enough time for the suit to fully boot up. Toni attempted to shout after her friend one more time even though she knew he had drawn attention to himself already and him coming back would be fruitless.

"Your friend is very brave Lady Toni," Thor said respectfully.

"Thank you," Toni responded softly, "he would have appreciated you thinking that." Her use of the past tense confirmed their suspicions that Yinsen was no longer alive to receive the compliment himself.

As Toni anxiously watched the progress bar Yinsen continued firing up into the air scaring the few terrorists that has been coming to investigate the cave.

"Why didn't they send more people to try and apprehend you?" Steve queried.

"My guess is they planned to set up an ambush at the entrance which is of course a bad move in this situation but otherwise would have been one of the best plans they could have come up with," Natasha guessed, "the Iron Man suit despite how primitive it is at this stage should be more than enough to blast out of there." There was a silent 'I hope' tagged onto the end of that statement as Natasha didn't know if the time in the cave they had been shown in the cave so far totalled three months or whether Toni had been caught this time and had to make a second attempt at escaping later on. That would mean even worse tortures would have been inflicted upon her for the attempt.

Once he reached the entrance still yelling and firing into the air Yinsen came face to face with a blockade of terrorists set up at the cave mouth all with guns levelled at him.

Toni's eyes were clamped shut once again not wanting to see anything from this point up until her past self was back in the hands of the army. Again this was because this would all be too painful to relive. It didn't matter that if it had been in a faked action movie it would have been pretty epic viewing. It had been the first time she had ever killed someone in person and that wasn't something she liked remembering.

Finally the power bar on the computer hit the 100% mark and the lights in the cave began to flicker out as the Iron Man suit began to power up.

"That's not going to solve your vision problems but at least it creates some for the other side as well," Clint said.

"Plus," Toni interjected, "I needed all the electricity I could get to power the suit," she had opened her eyes realising that she wasn't actually going to see Yinsen get shot and that actually keeping her eyes shut for that long was probably an unrealistic goal. She hadn't been able to resist the urge to watch the film to see if there was anything in it that hadn't happened around her that she would find out about through watching it. She had never known the details of Obie's plans for her and maybe this film would give her them.

Five more terrorists approached the cell giving the two corpses on the ground nervous looks not knowing what else Toni had in reserve. The leader shoved two of his men forward and they inched slowly into the cell too nervous to move any faster into a place that could be their doom.

"They should be nervous since they've managed to make Toni mad at them," Bruce said bitterly. His eyes had taken on an almost permanent green glow for the duration of this section of the movie.

"It's really not a good idea," Steve agreed who had the misfortune of being the person who got on Toni's last nerve the most often because in her fits of bad temper she took any slight mention of Howard as a slight at her. She also occasionally found his gentleman like behaviour misogynistic and demeaning even if it just meant that she had earned his respect.

The bravest stepped deeper into the room as Toni's hand within the glove of the suit flexed and then tightened back into a fist. The terrorist was inspecting plans and parts on one of the worktables when he turned and came up against the suit his eyes widening. The next thing his companions knew he was flying across the room as he was battered with machine gun fire.

"Badass Toni is out and seriously pissed off," Clint joked earning a teasing glare from Toni who was actually grateful for the distraction especially since it was kind of amusing.

The men who had waited outside the door instantly began to fire into the room now terrified about what Toni would do to them if she found them if she was capable of doing that . After all what they thought she had was simply with a machine gun but stopped firing when all they could hear was bullets hitting metal and there was still no sign of Toni.

"I knew they were idiots but firing something as fast as a bullet into a room full of explosive chemicals is a new level of stupid," Bruce scoffed.

Just as they began to talk about entering the room the Iron Man suit appeared in the door immediately noticed by the man at the back as the two at the front were slammed forcefully into the cave walls.

"Ouch!" Natasha said coldly without any of the sympathy that usually came with the word. There was no need to feel sorry for terrorist monsters who tortured people because it was fun not because it was an absolute necessity to get information that could save lives. And even then you shouldn't be able to enjoy the torture.

The only terrorist left attempted to fire on the suit but all of the bullets were deflected and Toni stepped forward and struck him down with a punch to the face. When she straightened up the bulky suit could be seen in its full glory with flames burning beneath the arm guards and the arc reactor light shining through the hole in the suit.

"I just remembered what you said about it running something big for fifteen minutes," Bruce said blanching, "was the suit draining the arc reactor?"

"I wasn't in it for long enough to really find out," Toni said, "besides draining all the power from the lights in the cave gave me enough for another five to ten minutes anyway which was plenty of time to get out when none of their weapons would work against the suit."

Whilst she was still under heavy machine gun fire Toni just kept marching down the corridor unimpeded by the bullets. As soon as she got uncomfortably close the terrorists began to scream and pelt away at full tilt to try and avoid her guns. Any who were brave enough to charge her were brushed away as if they were ragdolls.

"I suppose it looks so easy because it's brand new," Natasha mused, "and nobody figures out a suitable defence against Annie's inventions straight after she builds it unless she messed it up which hardly ever happens."

One of the attacking terrorists even took a hit to the head that was so hard they were completely flipped over before landing with a thump back on the cave floor. As she kept walking men retreated before her and fled for one of the cut off points and slammed the door shut cutting off one of their own.

"They have no sense of loyalty," Steve snarled. In his opinion that was one of the greatest crimes that a person could commit. He didn't actually find it possible to leave someone behind in a combat situation even if it could be at the cost of his own life. He knew many of the other members of the Avengers similarly cherished loyalty including Toni because she had so little of it directed at her over the years.

The man who was trapped with Toni began pounding on the door trying to get his comrades to let him get through but they cared much more about themselves than about him and so they listened with their guns aimed at the door as they heard the man scream and then stop abruptly.

"You dealt with him quickly because they abandoned him didn't you," Bruce speculated and received a quiet, "yeah," in conformation from Toni.

Then Toni immediately started in on the door the metal bucking under the massive force that Toni was exerting on it and it only took her three hits to bust the door off its hinges and reveal the now fleeing men. Toni swung her metal arm into the next attacker and it was with such force that it lodged itself into the rock face.

"I take it you solved that problem with later models of your suits Friend Toni because I've never seen that happen on any of our missions,"Thor said.

"It was only because of the bulkiness of that particular suit," Toni explained, "it doesn't happen with my newer suits because they're more aerodynamic."

She tugged as hard as she could repeatedly on the stuck arm in an attempt to dislodge it as the nearest terrorist to her scrambled to her feet and fled so he wouldn't get hit again. Eventually another man noticed that she was stuck and raised his hand gun on her but his bullet ricocheted off of the Iron Man helmet and killed him instantly.

"All of the other bullets are ricocheting off long distance and he decides a short range pistol is the best way to go," Clint scoffed rolling his eyes, "idiot definitely deserved his fate if he's that stupid. That's the dictionary definition of 'too stupid to live,' demonstrated for us right there."

Toni turned her head towards the dead man as she pulled her arm free taking a fair bit of the rock wall with it before continuing to storm through the caves. Raza was getting prepared for Toni's arrival as he loaded a canister into one of his guns.

"Showdown," Clint muttered quietly not wanting the girls to hear because he knew that they would disapprove of him making light of such a serious situation. In fact he was pretty sure none of the others would find his way of coping funny but it was the best way that he had. Clint was on a very basic level someone who loved to have fun even if during his life he hadn't had very many opportunities to do so without horrible consequences. This was probably why he got along so well with Toni after talking to her as they both shared joking attitudes which sometimes got them into a fair amount of trouble. That and the fact that she had built him a Loki themed archery range were things that made her the best friend other than Natasha he had ever had. And that was only due to the fact that he had known Natasha longer and he knew Toni had the potential to equal Natasha in friend status sooner rather than later.

Raza worked forward to stand at the entrance to the cave raising his gun to shoot Toni as she came storming out of the corridors spotting Yinsen who was lying bleeding out on a pile of sacks.

"They go for as much pain as possible," Natasha snapped, "they don't know the meaning of putting someone out of their misery."

"Yeah," Bruce said, "if they put as many bullets into them as they think they probably did he's not got long left. His poor family!"

"Yinsen!" Toni shouted clearly upset but Yinsen was more interested in protecting Toni, "look out!"

This was why Natasha did her best to avoid getting close to people in general because if they were in danger they could distract you from your goals and get you killed because you were more interested in helping them than helping yourself. She had lived by that philosophy throughout her early life as she watched people who she had cared about from the Red Room get killed whilst fighting whilst she kept on surviving sometimes by killing those very people. However Clint had gotten under her skin when he saved her life and she had begun not to care about her emotions being compromised when it was in order to save Clint's life because he had chosen to save her life when she didn't think she was worth it. He had seen something in her that nobody else had and that had been the thing that had made her into a better person because she knew that for once somebody believed in her. Then she had been assigned to Toni which had been a massive mistake on Fury's part as it would ultimately be the catalyst for the resignation of his three main agents with common sense. She had gotten a taste for a fairly normal life and found out that the things everything knew about Toni Stark were mostly a mask within a mask within a dozen more masks which was something she could relate to. Plus it had been nice to go shopping and drinking with a female friend instead of just doing the drinking with Clint watching or vice versa as SHIELD agents in company were only allowed to have half the members imbibing alcohol unless it was for a mission in case a situation arose where someone needed to have complete clarity of thought. It was ridiculous when you only planned to have a couple of vodkas each which wasn't enough to drop a Russian and someone who had spent the vast majority of his early life in the circus but Fury wasn't the sort who bended the rules unless something was against his moral code. His moral code seemed to allow everything under the sun so this wasn't very common but it had come into play with the missile the World Security Council had attempted to deploy on Manhattan. As far as Natasha could remember that was the first time Fury had ever blatantly gone against one of their orders even when he hadn't been happy with their decision.

Raza fired the missile he had loaded at the suit but Toni simply turned the suit and it went careering off into the wall behind him. In response she powered up her own much more highly powered missile within the arm bracket and shot it at Raza. It hit the crates behind his head and he collapsed to the ground.

"Thank you for taking that psychopath down Toni," Steve said pleased that the man who he had instantly felt contempt for because he had no qualms with maiming and torturing people and being entirely comfortable with murder. Even Natasha couldn't claim that although she tried her best to hide that fact so as not to look weak.

As Raza was now not able to be a nuisance Toni made her way over to Yinsen who muttered, "Stark," weakly. Toni lifted her faceplate for a better view of Yinsen's injuries and obviously realised they were bad but kept trying to give him hope, "Come on. We got to go. Move for me, come on. We got a plan. We're gonna stick to it."

"I guess hope really is important," Clint acknowledged remembering a comment Toni had made a while back when they were still watching the Avengers movie with all of them fighting together for the first time.

"This was always the plan, Stark," Yinsen informed Toni.

"What?!" the group excluding Toni exclaimed feeling sad for the death of a man that they should have met but never managed to because of a group of terrorists who had better be burning in Hell. Thor was silently planning to call in a favour with Hel to make anyone from the group and anyone else who made Toni so suspicious of her own teammates at times have an abysmal time in her realm. He didn't care that he usually avoided thinking about Loki's children let alone talking to them.

"Come on, you're going to go see your family," Toni insisted, "get up!"

"My family is dead," Yinsen revealed, "I'm going to see them now, Stark."

"So that's why he was so keen to make the sacrifice play," Steve realised, "he didn't really have anything left but you Toni and he wanted to be with his family more."

"If your family is a good one you should do all that you can to be with it," Toni responded weakly, "just because my family wasn't a good one doesn't mean I didn't realise that. That didn't mean I liked it though. He was the first person who saw Rhodey's unintentional truth that I was more than what I appeared to be and I had more potential than even I realised."

Toni's face darkened understanding his point. "It's okay," Yinsen assured her, "I want this. I want this."

"He clearly did care about you," Bruce realised, "he didn't want to go out without you knowing that he actually wanted to do so."

Toni sighed deeply before accepting his statement and smiled at him, "thank you for saving me."

"Don't waste it," Yinsen asked her, "don't waste your life."

"We always wondered what the push was to make you give up working in the weapons industry knowing the stock crash that was about to happen to you and that the military would probably end up suing you for breach of contract," Natasha said softly, "You were fulfilling someone's last wish for you to do something I now know you always were planning to do eventually if you could get away with it. Oh Annie…"

Yinsen's last few breaths were frantic before he stopped breathing altogether and he died finally getting his wish. Toni's face was set in a dark frown as she turned away from Yinsen's body towards the cave mouth.

"And now everyone out there is going to wish that they didn't piss off the Toni Stark," Clint stated matter-of-factly as the others nodded in agreement. Even they had never pushed Toni to her absolute limit but they figured that if the Ten Rings weren't there already they had breached that line with the death of Yinsen even if it had been what he had wanted in the end. Toni couldn't just forgive them for it and she was probably right not to because forgiving all your enemies just gives them another chance to attack you. That was one of the first rules you learned in spy training especially if you were young when you went into it because any sort of blind trust or faith in humanity had to be almost completely eradicated to make you an efficient agent. Some of the methods SHIELD used to do it were barbaric though and Natasha with all her experiences in the Red Room behind her had been campaigning against Fury to abolish them with Clint, Phil and surprising Hill and Sitwell backing them up but Fury wouldn't budge on the issue. He saw ruthless, emotionless and damaged agents as a better option than those who would ever have some faith in teammates and wouldn't backstab other members of their side without proof that they had done something to wrong them. Breeding a culture of people comfortable with murder was what Fury had really been attempting all these years and it wasn't something that any of the Agents in the room had thought was necessary. There more than enough cold-blooded killers in the world and as they later learned on others too.

Every terrorist who had been positioned outside had grabbed hold of a gun which was directed at the cave mouth as several of their hands shook with fear at what might be coming. The footsteps of the Iron Man suit echoed as the suit thundered into view causing some of the men to back up out of pure instinct.

"May I congratulate you on a very intimidating entrance Lady Toni?" Thor asked with a smile.

"Of course," Toni said puzzled. She was pretty sure that was a compliment but it didn't make it any less confusing. Maybe it was something to do with his so called fascination with warrior women that he shared with his brother. She wondered if that had anything to do with Sif. He did seem to talk about her a lot for a man who was in a serious relationship.

After a pause they began to shout out in a variety of different languages and fired on the suit but of course all the bullets ricocheted away flying in as many directions as was physically possible. Once they realised it was having no effect and stopped Toni muttered darkly, "my turn!" before unleashing massive tongues of flame from the suit.

"I get that your weapons on the later suits are more refined but that is much more intimidating," Phil commented.

"Yes, well it's also much more dangerous in city areas and when I'm working with people," Toni said, "it was fine in Afghanistan when everything around me was something that I wanted to burn and it wouldn't spread but in New York or Cali it would be an extremely bad idea."

The men clamoured to get away as one after another they were consumed by the flames but that wasn't Toni's primary objective. She was using the tongues of flame to set fire to their stockpile of her weapons which began to burn furiously.

Bruce smiled upon seeing this. Even whilst she was still technically fighting her way out of a captive situation Toni was devoting herself to ridding the bad guys of having any of her weapons to use against innocents. That was the Toni that he knew down to a tee.

Toni walked steadily through the camp making sure she caught every tent as some men rushed to the more heavy-duty weapons that they had available to attempt to overwhelm her. The greater barrage of bullets did appear to be making it harder for Toni to walk although they still weren't doing anything more than denting the metal. One bullet managed to hit a crucial joint though and Toni had to use her hands to steady herself as she hit the ground.

This was getting a little too close for the Avengers comfort but they knew that she got out and at this stage they had no more doubts that this was just a first attempt at escaping after all the emphasis this escape was being given.

But Toni pushed herself back up onto her feet and shot another burst of flame towards an untouched tent and ended up reeling from the effects because it triggered a series of explosions from the bombs the flames had consumed. But as it began to get too extreme for the basic suit to handle Toni activated a switch that started the suits boosters and it took off.

"The suit you built in a cave could fly!" Phil exclaimed shocked.

"Well it was more jet propelled; it couldn't really fly in a sustained manner but it was enough to get me out of there away from the explosions," Toni told him.

She flew out of the top of the explosion and curved around in an arc before plummeting to the ground when the juice ran out and she hit the sand with a sickening thump which had to have hurt.

"Ouch!" Natasha said this time actually sounding sympathetic, "I do not envy you the suit if you had to make landings like that when you were first trying out the thing. It can't have been easy to learn how to fly it especially since you had to work out everything as you went."

The debris of the suit was scattered across parts of the desert as Toni groaned from the sheer impact with the ground because sand could be incredibly compact at times especially from hitting it at that speed. She neatly shook off the arm bracers and reached up and removed the helmet as well. "Not bad," she said still reeling as her lip began to bleed.

"I agree with Nat," Clint said wincing, "that looks really sore!"

The scene changed to see Toni protecting her head with a covering having stripped down to just the tank top to stop any heatstroke. She was wandering through the desert obviously hoping that at some point she would come across a friendly who could take her back to an army base.

"Now there are the problems now that you've broken out such as finding someone else and not succumbing to lack of sustenance, dehydration and heatstroke all of which would easily have killed you just as effectively as the Ten Rings," Bruce said worriedly.

She kept up a jogging pace obviously trying to keep her heart rate up so that she wouldn't pass out otherwise she surely would have stuck to walking instead. Finally as she stumbled over the crest of yet another sand dune in an endless series of them a helicopter could be heard overhead.

"They didn't stop looking for you," Steve said shocked but relieved, "I guess it wasn't too long then because the military generally stop looking for you after a while as they give you up as a lost cause."

Two of the machines flew overhead as Toni looked up at them calling out to them happily and waving her hand in the air.

"You really wanted to go home," Phil said with a weak smile.

One of the helicopters came in for a landing as Toni finally gave into exhaustion and collapsed to her knees. As soon as it landed four soldiers/airmen came sprinting towards Toni one of them being Rhodey.

"That's a bit of a coincidence," Natasha said surprised.

"He wouldn't let them quit looking for me," Toni said with a smile.

"How was the 'fun-vee?'" Rhodey quipped as he came close enough to Toni to be heard over the powering down of the helicopter blades.

Another group of people watching this movie might have been appalled that Rhodey's first reaction to finding his best friend who had been missing for an indeterminate amount of time and had probably been presumed dead for quite a while was to make a lame joke. However the Avengers plus Phil knew that this was the best way to get Toni used to being back in her usual life.

Toni let out a brief laugh that was more like a sigh as that was all she could manage. Rhodey knelt down next to her putting his hand on her bloodied shoulder telling her, "Next time, you ride with me, okay?"

"He must have been really worried," Steve said recognising Rhodey's expression as pure unadulterated relief that he had found his friend alive and not just her body. Perhaps the only thing that would have been even more awful in some ways would have been never having found her at all. Doubt was a terrible thing.

It was a mark of how exhausted and starved for any form of physical contact that wasn't negative Toni was that she let herself be pulled into a one armed hug by Rhodey and she didn't even try and pull away from him.

Natasha especially realised that Toni seemed to actually be enjoying the contact which meant that she could enjoy positive physical contact and yet she still stiffened whenever one of the clapped her on the back and tried to hug her. That was when Natasha decided that her next goal had to be getting Toni comfortable enough with physical contact that she could accept it and maybe eventually initiate it although she knew full well that would be a long way off if it ever happened at all. But Natasha was using Toni's philosophy that you should always have hope against her in a way although in the end it would be for her own benefit.

The next shot showed Toni sitting on a doctor's table arguing with him about her arc reactor and slapping his hands away every time he tried to touch her as Rhodey looked on worriedly.

Finally Toni appeared to have had more than enough of the doctor's comments and she snapped, "do not even attempt to pretend you know more about the device in my chest that's keeping my alive than I do because I fucking invented it now get your hands off me. You've fitted me with his damn sling and you're not getting away with any more than that. Now OUT!"

"If I ever make Toni really angry please shoot me before she can get to me," Clint whispered to Natasha.

"Only if doing so won't get her mad at me because I'm not dying for you over your own stupidity," Natasha muttered back, "because messing with Toni so that she's that angry with you is an act of pure stupidity. We're the former common sense of SHIELD as Toni appears to have been putting it so have some and never make her lose it that badly."

The doctor fled the room at her shout and Rhodey came closer handing her a pair of high heels and a dry cleaning bag. "I figured you'd want some of your own clothes to wear now that we've finally run you through all the checks we were required to do. So whilst I was telling Piper we had found you I asked him to express these over," Rhodey explained.

"Now he's definitely in your good books," Phil said with a smile which he could give now the captivity period was over. He knew they'd all be able to relax much more effectively for a while as Toni wasn't in any immediate danger from torture and death threats.

"Thank you Rhodey," Toni said making her way into the bathroom to get changed as Rhodey shouted after her, "I would have made them let me keep searching for you forever you know. I never believed anyone would actually be able to kill you."

"I know Rhodey," Toni said with a slight smile, "and thank you again."

A/n: 5.6k with a bonus scene with Rhodey and Toni. Have I made you love Mondays yet due to the awesome updates :) Plus it's earlier than some of the 3.1k ones :D