This time when his eyes heavily fight open, the fog that has morphed his mind's nearly gone, and all that's happened lays out logically across his brain, a diagram for him to analyze like he's been given the blueprints for some new design and now he just has to build the facts together in his mind. Fingers left on autopilot yank out a breathing tube while the rest of his mind hunts for the answer to a missing formula, fumbling to piece together x, y, and z into something sensible and coherent.
Then his eyes snap open and they're richoting wildly in all directions as he jolts up, panic taking over like it's never before. The wires and the car battery and the man get filed away too because all he wants to see is Pepper because wasn't she with him when the bomb, or whatever it had been, had gone off? Except there's no curling auburn hair or bright azure eyes to meet his gaze, and Tony collapses back against the metal table with all the dignity of a homeless drunk.
The panic slips away through his fingers and the diagram pops back into place, except there's new factors that require immediate attention, foremost the car battery and the wires sticking out of his chest. But first his eyes land on the cup of water next to his makeshift bed, except his shaking hands drop it before he can even lift the metal can more than a few inches and when he leans forward to grasp at the falling, sweet salvation, pain fills his chest once again, tugging him backwards.
"I would not do that if I were you."
Slowly, Tony gazes at the man before his words sink in and the reason for his suddenly restricted movement clicks into place. The fear floods him again, but this time a little more diluted because he can handle stupid plugs and wires, even if they are sticking out of his chest. The bandages tear easily beneath tearing, jagged nails, but once they're gone he wishes that he could go back to not knowing what lay beneath.
Gulping at greedy grasps of air, he lies still while everything that has happened sinks into his brain, painting themselves into a reality that he thinks might be more at place with maybe some sort of demented horror film, the kind he used to watch as a kid and point out all the reasons why Frankenstein couldn't really be made of human body parts and why changing into a bat was just fucking dumb. Of course, even those images can't distract him for long and he knows he'll have to face the strange, humming man soon, so he might as well start with the most dire questions and work his way down.
"Where's Pepper?"
"Who? You were the only one brought; I don't believe any others were taken."
The man looks genuinely confused, and the panic swells again before he shoves it back down. That's good news, damn it, Pepper's not here in this stupid hole-in-the-wall cave with just him and the car battery that's taken over her job of running his life for company. The part of him conjuring forward images of dead Pepper, or Pepper with some hole in her chest too, or even worse, Pepper locked away and tortured promptly gets shut away before he can start to analyze the staccato beats of panic that fill his chest when he thinks about the red-haired sprite who's also his assistant and quite possibly one of the only people in the world he might actually be able to call a friend.
Next question, then.
"What the hell did you do to me?"
This time, the man just looks plain amused and Tony wonders why he sounds so god damn calm when they're sitting in a cave and he's got a car battery sticking out of his chest.
"What I did? What I did was to save your life. I removed all the shrapnel I could, but there's a lot left and it's headed into your atrial septum."
He's searching for something, only Tony can't quite see from his vantage point and lugging around a weight the size of his chest doesn't seem like a particularly great reward to see some old man hunt around boxes of what looks like scrap metal.
"Here, want to see? Have a souvenir," his voice sing-songs towards the end with a note just short of mocking and it's all Tony can do to sit still and patiently wait for the small, glass jar to come to him. "Take a look."
In the dim light of the cavern, the metal shards sparkle when he turns their container this way and that, a personal exhibit starring the missing pieces of the shrapnel that's currently floating around his bloodstream.
"I've seen many wounds like that in my village," he continued, acting for all the world as if they were making small talk at some gala or conference, "We call them the walking dead because it takes about a week for the shards to reach the vital organs-"
"What is this?"
The hand clamped around the glass bottle shakes, but he's sick of tip-toeing around the actual issues at hand, especially when those issue involve parts of his anatomy that according to this guy will be gone within a week.
"That is an electromagnet. Hooked up to a car battery. And it's keeping the shrapnel from entering your heart."
He'd allowed himself the albeit brief illusion of hoping that all his talk about the shrapnel had been just small talk, or maybe even shadowed threats, and that the wires and the battery and apparently the electromagnet's purpose lay in an incentive so he'd do whatever the hell they'd ask him to, but now even that sliver of light had been blacked out, crushed underneath mocking, weighted words from a man whose smiles had been sharpened to a razored edge and whose words fell just short of bitter despair.
Nausea rising, Tony glanced away. His vision met with the blinking red light of a video camera, focused right in their direction. Disgust swarmed forward, mixing with shock at being recorded like some fucking zoo exhibit.
Tony Stark. Also known as the merchant of death, among other names. Activities include girls, booze, and mechanics. Currently being kept alive by a fucking car battery due to shrapnel from his own bomb, the snarky part of him murmured, tone as mocking as the man's.
"That's right. Smile."
He lifted his gaze towards the man once again, fairly sure now that it was only a matter of time before he emptied his guts, or at least tried to.
"We met once, you know. At a technical conference in Berlin," he continued, going back to tinkering among the scraps littering the cave. Tony scourged his memory, but he could no longer remember his face than he could recall the name of the last girl he'd slept with, some reporter from some magazine, one face in an assembly line of hundreds.
"I don't remember."
His words sound dead, no more than harsh, jarring noises that rock his aching scalp. A part of him wonders if the rest of his body's already begun to die down, pierced by metal and scathing truths and unrelenting fear in the face of the unknown, and he almost laughs at the irony of it all.
"Well, you wouldn't. If I had been that drunk, I wouldn't have been able to stand, much less give a lecture on integrated circuits-"
"Where are we?" he starts, cutting him off mid-sentence.
He can't, just can't listen to some stranger babble on about conferences he probably didn't even want to be at in places that he can't even remember. This is one issue he doesn't want to dance around, to avoid with cutting remarks and sarcastic quips, one he can't afford to dance around if he even wants to hold onto the slim hope he'll make it out of here without a coffin.
But apparently he's not the only one who doesn't want to listen to pointless babble.
Next thing he knows, the man's yanking him to his feet, panic shining through his every harried, fear-driven gesture.
"Stand up! Stand up! Do as I do. Come on, put your hands up!"
Waves of dizziness surge through his battered body once more, taking an iron will and molding rare complacency from a man who normally walks to his own tune. Swallowing, Tony stumbled forward just in time to watch three armed men stride into the room, his vision narrowing in on what felt like the proverbial shove down the rabbit hole, confusion and nausea fighting for dominance as he struggled to match what he was seeing with what he knew.
This isn't possible, he thought, Not fucking possible.
"Those are my guns, how did they get my guns?"
Ignoring the words of warning from his apparent companion, Tony lifted his focus to the bellows of what he assumed was the leader, his logical side keying in on his name paired with what sounded like a garbled attempt at America. Those facts were shuffled away to, only to be dumped in the junk bin when translations came instead.
"He says welcome Tony Stark. The most famous mass murderer in the history of America."
That one was new. Had he not been fighting with the nightmare that had become his reality, he might have even liked the nickname, joked about how much cooler that sounded than Merchant of Death before slinging out something wildly inappropriate about what else he'd like to be famous for and with who.
"He's honored."
Great. Maybe they just wanted some autographs? he quipped, fighting back fear.
But even he couldn't laugh inwardly at what ranked among his crappiest, worst-timed jokes, despite not having left the confines of his head, right up next to the drunken come-on he'd made to Pepper right after some relative had died about a year or two after she'd started working for him. Afterwards, he'd been surprised see hadn't quit then and there, though having to deal without her for a week had been fair come back.
"He wants you to build the missile. The Jericho missile that you demonstrated."
He stared at the picture, fairly certain that he had to wake up soon, that this couldn't be happening. How the hell had they gotten that picture, let alone his guns?
How the hell had they even gotten him here?
"This one."
For a few seconds, he wondered what would happen if he agreed. Would they let him go free? Was he even naïve enough to believe that load of bull if they even did say that? Sliding his gaze over the room, Tony Stark mustered up every ounce of courage he possessed before boldly claiming what could very well be his last, coherent words.
"I refuse."
--
"Get up."
This time, a solid kick to the stomach sends awareness jolting through her body, hot-wiring her from the tips of her fingers to her toes. Choking for air, Pepper wonders for a panic-filled moment why her eyes aren't opening until the realization that her surroundings are simply pitch black sinks in instead. Scanning what she can see in the dim light, all she can make out are the sharp edges of what she's fairly sure might be a wall and the heavy combat boots that have just become intimately acquainted with her vital organs.
"I will not ask again. Get up."
She manages to get up to a crouch using the sheer determination and strength of will she's built up over the years as Tony Stark's personal assistant before she and the foot rendezvous once again and then she's hit the wall with all the force of a truck colliding with concrete. The next thing she can tell, her body's been lifted several feet higher than before and the daze of her mind wryly comments that maybe after struggling with the impossible for so long, she's finally learned to fly too. For no particular reason, maybe from the shock or what's probably become a concussion or even sheer, stark terror, Pepper finds the thought hysterically funny and the giggle that leaks from her mouth bursts into a bubble of blood that lands on the probing face of the man with the cold, harsh eyes and unrelentingly firm voice.
He flashes her a calculating smile and suddenly, Pepper's pain-filled mind can no longer quite remember what was so funny.
"Now then, Miss Potts. It appears we're going to need your help after all."
With a confidence and anger that brews surely in her stomach, Pepper manages to give as scathing an answer as possible, one she's honed over the years into a fine-edged blade, except it comes out much too quiet and weak and not at all as defiant as she'd remembered sounding during what seems a lifetime ago.
"No."
In fact, once she starts to scream, she finds herself hard-pressed to remember anything at all past the blinding panic and mind-numbing aches as she connects with his fists and the wall until all that's left is the heady scent of blood and sweat and tears, and underneath it all, the last vestiges of scotch and grease and something that makes her think briefly of Tony Stark before everything goes dark.
--
Water fills his vision, again and again, submerging him into the azure haze that merges with crimson streaks, streaks that are his blood, swirling in the water that fills his vision until nothing makes sense except the blue and the red and the gasping, choking need for-
Air.
He greedily gulps in as much as he can, eyes wide and stark against the room's pitch darkness, but then relief disappears again, and he's submerged back into the blue, blue haze with the red streaks of blood.
The world stops making sense yet again, and he sees cold and feels crimson with blue and there are so many sights and sounds flashing before his eyes, images that blur into one picture and screams that become one endless gasp of terror.
That one damn memory lies just out of reach, walking away on stiletto heels that tap ominously in his ears, clicking farther and farther beyond his grasp. Time stopped making sense hours, days, minutes ago, and now all he can do is watch as the blue bleeds into red and the burning, choking need for air consumes him, blurring all together into curling, strawberry hair and eyes as clear and azure as the ocean that he thinks his house once crashed into, or did the ocean crash into his house?
Nothing fits anymore, except the pain and the haze and empty, burning feeling of his heart, or maybe his lungs from the lack of air, but why does he want to know where the burning comes from? He should try to fix it, fix that problem like he fixed-
What else has he fixed? He tries to remember, to focus, but all that comes are thoughts, brief and fleeting before they dance away, dance away to the sounds of his screams and the harsh, confusing words of his captors.
There were wires, long and curling and prodding, prodding like the pain underneath his skin until all that's left is fire, fire that feels so soft between his fingertips, wrapped around his callused knuckles and smelling distinctly feminine and dripping what might be blood.
For a moment, the red and the blue become one and he sees her face, though he can not say exactly who she is, except that she is someone special to him, more important than everything else that has held his attention until now, and a name rolls to his mind, sweet and spicy and all that he has underneath that chilling water.
For a moment, the screams and the gasps become a legible word, one that echoes through his ears and his heart until he wants the sheer, undiluted terror to stop, so he struggles more, fighting and tearing against the pain, hazy and cold and burning throughout his very core, just to put an end to that horror-filled shriek.
For a moment, he sees Pepper, not smirking or laughing or even leaning casually against his desk, voice mouthing off part of his endless schedule, but face frozen with fear, tears running hot and fast down her cheeks and her eyes pleading with him from a distance so far away he can not reach her even with his best efforts. His name rolls off her lips, but there is no sweet caress in her voice, just terror, stark and clear against the muffled sounds he has become used to between the confusion and the pain.
For a moment, he wants nothing more than to hold her in his arms, to keep her face in his mind's eye so he can forget about the darkness and fire and the blue that melts into red while his lungs burst from no air.
He holds onto her for a moment longer, and than the water fills his vision once more before the world goes black.