A/N: Sorry for the long wait guys. Life got in the way, didn't really leave me much room for anything else, not even sleeping. But anyway, here is the next chapter, enjoy.
Tony and Yinsen had been working constantly to get the required amount of palladium from all of the weapons. The whole time they had been doing that, Ruby had been sitting down on the cold, dirty ground in the corner, her tools beside her as she took apart her ear bud. She had to be careful with it, one wrong move and it could be damaged beyond repair, which was the last thing that she wanted.
"Hey, how's it going, honey?" Tony asked, dropping himself down next to her and handing her a tin cup with some water in it.
She thanked him as she took the cup and took a few sips. "It's never going to work. And even if it does, how am I going to get it outside to get a signal and tell somewhere where the hell we are?" Ruby said, clearly frustrated as she ran a rather filthy hand over her face a little.
"You're not giving up already, are you? You're a Stark, you're brilliant, Ruby." He assured her. "I know you can do it."
Ruby turned to face him and give him a small smile. "Thanks. I hope you're right and that I can do it. So far it just feels like I'm going around in circles." She told him, before looking back down at the tiny think she was working on. She knew it was going to be hard work, and that even if she did get it to work, there was still the issue of getting it outside so that I could send out the signal. But what Ruby also knew was that her father was right, she was a Stark and she could do it.
"You're just stressed. Take a break and just calm down a little." Tony told her, dropping his arm over her shoulder and pulled her towards him. "We will get out of her, Ruby. I promise you, we will be home before you know it."
"Let's hope so. The room service in this place is awful, don't ever book this place again." She said, making him chuckle a little. He was glad to see that she still had that spunk of hers, that sense of humour had not been lost in the attack.
"Come on, you've been working nonstop, you need to get some rest." He told her, taking the tin cup from her and helping her up off the ground. "You look like you've been dragged through a hedge, and then thrown into a mud bath."
Ruby glared at him a little. "And you smell like you've been sleeping with the pigs again. Actually, pigs don't reek as bad as you do right now." She said, scrunching up her face as if disgusted by the stench coming from her father.
All Tony could do was roll his eyes at her, he knew she was only messing with him, but both of them really were starting to look a state. "Just go wash up a bit and then get some sleep, honey. You're going to need it." He told her, kissing the top of her greasy hair before letting her go.
Ruby simply smiled at him before heading over to the back of their cell. It was looking more and more like a workshop now, but it was still a cell, they were still kept in there and never allowed to see the light. She let out a sigh as she thought about the outside world that she missed so much, the heat of the sun, the cool breeze of the wind. Ruby missed it all.
She shook her head to clear her mind of all the distracting thoughts as she splashed the freezing cold water over her face, using a rag to scrub off some of the dirt. Her mind was still working, playing back the scenes of what had happened, and how it all went so badly wrong. Ruby was still angry, angry because Natasha and Clint hadn't been there, angry because her father had been badly hurt and they had been captured.
Once she was satisfied that she had managed to scrub off most of the dirt, she made her way over to one of the rickety beds, planning on curling up in it and sleeping for at least the next 4 hours. But Ruby doubted she would be that lucky, that she would get more than maybe an hour because her mind just would not shut off.
Her eyes widened as the Humvee in front of them suddenly burst into flames.
""No…" She whispered. "No, no, no." The Humvee quickly came to a stop. Her eyes were darting everywhere, trying to work out where the attackers were coming from, and what she could do about them.
The next thing she knew, the soldiers who had been in the vehicle with them were gone, and dead.
"Oh, hell no." Ruby shouted, reaching deep into her pockets. She should have known that it had been too easy, that everything had just gone too well. Ruby should have known better than to let herself be fooled into thinking that nothing bad was going to happen.
Her hands came out of her pockets, a gun in each one. "Ruby, what the hell are you doing?" She heard someone shouting at her, but she wasn't paying attention to them, she had a job to do now.
"Shut up, and stay down." She growled at him, in a voice that he had never heard before. Ruby was no longer herself, the sarcastic teenager who liked to have a battle of wits with her father, she was someone else entirely, someone she had hoped to never be again.
She flung open the door, keeping low to the ground, watching as the other service men and women all perished as well. There were rockets flying from all over, blow up all the vehicles and everyone else near them. "Get out. Now!" She shouted, reaching in and grabbing her father's arm, pulling him out just as a missile flew over them, exploding on the other side of the Humvee.
"Ruby!" Someone cried at her, before pulling she felt someone latch onto her and drag her behind them. "Behind me, Ruby. Stay behind me!" Her father called, before they were both knocked off their feet by a close explosion.
Ruby let out a groan as she rolled onto her back. Everywhere was aching, and blood was pouring out from her leg. She took a quick look at it, and realised she had actually been hit with a bullet. But her eyes widened when she saw her father, lying on the ground, blood quickly soaking his shredded shirt.
She clambered over to him, completely ignoring the pain in her leg. "Tony, come on, keep your eyes open." She ordered him, slapping his face as little as his eyes closed. "Seriously, you need to stay awake. Help's coming, I swear to you, help is coming, but you need to hang on." She said, before taking a better look at the damage.
A lump formed in her throat as she saw the blood seeping through his shirt. She knew what weapon would have done it, and she knew the survival rate of it as well. "No, come on, you're gonna be fine." She said, her eyes already starting to tear up. "Please, just hold on. You're all I got, come on, you're a damn Stark." Ruby shouted at him. "Please dad…" She whispered, as the tears rolled down her cheeks.
There was a noise behind her, and she quickly pulled up both her guns. The figures running towards her were not ones that she knew, and so she fired, taking a few of them down and making the others duck in a vain attempt to protect themselves. "We're gonna be just fine, dad. We're both Starks, right? We're stubborn, we don't go down without a fight. You got that?"
Ruby was out of ideas. Wherever her friends were, they weren't there, and she needed them. It seemed like her and Tony were the only ones left alive from the convoy, and whoever had been attacking them, was now coming for them. She didn't want to give up, but she was quickly running out of ammo and ideas.
It was hopeless, and she knew it. They were coming for them, and they would kill them. There was nothing left to do.
Ruby woke up sharply, her breathing ragged and sweat drenching her back and her neck. "Hey, it's okay, honey, you're okay. It was just a nightmare." She heard Tony telling her from beside her. "Here, drink." He said, forcing the tin mug with water into her hand.
She done as she was told and slowly sipped at the water, feeling herself calm down slightly. "Sorry." She mumbled, before taking another sip.
"Why are you sorry? You can't help it if you had a nightmare." Tony told her, sweeping some of her hair out of her face.
Her eyes focused on the water in the mug. "I… I didn't get violent, did I?" She asked, worried that she may have tried to hurt him again. She hadn't forgotten what had happened on the jet, and how both her father and Rhodey had to hold her down.
He shook his head at her. "No, you were mumbling and a little restless. Nothing bad happened, Ruby. Everything's okay." Tony told her, trying to assure her that no one was hurt and that everything would be fine. "Come on, get some more sleep. You were only out for about an hour, you need more than just that."
"Uh yeah, okay." Ruby whispered, passing the mug back to him before trying to settle back down again. She wasn't too sure she actually wanted to sleep again, not since she knew she was most likely going to keep on having nightmares. That was why she had been trying to hard not to fall asleep, to push herself to go as far as she could until she passed out from utter exhaustion.
She could hear her father and Yinsen talking in the background. They were trying to keep it quiet, she knew they were, but she could still hear them, because all her senses were still on high alert. "Your daughter is a fighter. And I do not just mean physically." She heard Yinsen say. "She learnt the hard way that fighting back is not the best thing to do."
"What happened?" Tony asked, clearly giving the man his full attention as Ruby heard the tools he had been using being put down on the workbench.
"From what I understand, every time they brought her food, she would try to escape. None of the men that ever entered left without some form of injury." Yinsen told him. "After a few days, the only person that was willing to go in there was myself. I tended to the fresh wounds from these fights and brought her food."
Ruby heard Tony let out a sigh. "I don't know what's gotten into her. I… I didn't know she could be so violent. It's a whole new side to her that I just didn't know about, and I don't think I like it." He admitted. "I mean sure, we've only been around each other for a few months, I don't really know everything I should about my daughter, but I'm trying."
"She is a very determined young woman. From what I have seen, when she sets her mind to something, she will do whatever it takes to see it through." Yinsen replied, a smile on his face. He recalled the first time he had seen her, the look in her eyes told him that she was ready to fight with him if she had to.
"I know, I know." Tony said, before letting out another sigh. "She never should have come here. I should have made her stay back home, where she would be safe. Pepper would be able to look after her, she wouldn't have to go through any of this. You know, I thought I was going to do pretty well at being a father, turns out I was wrong. I can't get anything right, she'd be better off without me."
Ruby closed her eyes tightly, the tears that had been building finally spilling out of her eye. She couldn't believe what he had just said, that she would be better off without him. If she hadn't bothered to find him, she knew what would have happened. She would have completely derailed, ending up with Director Fury hauling her backside back to SHIELD in a heartbeat. Ruby didn't want to go back to that life, and they didn't want her to either.
She always knew that she wasn't going to have a normal life, no matter how much her mother had wanted that for her. Ruby had made it difficult for herself when she started hacking into systems that she really shouldn't have. Unfortunately, that was what happened when she became bored and had nothing else to do, she would do something illegal. She made the mistake of hacking into a company that SHIELD had been monitoring, resulting with her mother almost grounding her for the rest of her life.
That was what led her to SHIELD, or them to her. She didn't have any friends, and she didn't care if she caused problems. She let her life spiral out of control, and if she didn't have Tony, that would happen once more.
"Do you honestly believe that, Stark? That she would be better off without her father?" Yinsen asked him, glancing at the form lying on the cot as he spoke. Something was telling him that she could hear the pair of them, and he didn't want her to get upset over something her father had said.
"I don't know. No, of course not. I guess I'm just struggling to deal with all this. She should be here, she should be back in Malibu, and safe." Tony said, before picking up his tools once more, signalling that the conversation was over.
After that, Ruby silently cried herself to sleep. Her mind was running over everything that had just been said, and everything that had happened. Yinsen had been right, she was determined, and she was going to get them all out of there, no matter what it took.
By the time she woke up, Yinsen was asleep, and her father was quickly falling asleep at the workbench. She let out a groan as she stretched out her arms and legs, before heading over to Tony. "Uh, you might want to go get some sleep. You look like a zombie." She told him, standing beside him at the desk.
"No, I need to get this finished." He said, rubbing his eyes and looking at the mass of materials he still had in front of him. "How you feeling now, anyway?"
"I'm good. Just needed some sleep. Now I'm ready to get this done with. The sooner we get out of here the better." She told him, grabbing a few of her tools from the workbench and pulling the other stool over. "How's the other project of mine going?" She asked, sitting down and starting to work on her ear piece.
Tony just looked at her. "I'm sorry, your project?" He asked, giving her a questioning look.
"Uh, yeah. My idea, my calculations, my project. I was working on this back home, I just never expected the prototype to be built in a stinking cave." Ruby replied, keeping her eyes focused on her work.
"I want to see these project files when we get him. I want proof that you were actually planning this." Tony warned her, making her simply smirk at him.
"Fine, I'll get SWAIN and JARVIS to send them all to you. Now, do you mind? I'm trying to work on getting us out of here." She said, trying to put all her attention into what she was doing. She hadn't forgotten what he had said earlier, about her being better off without him. She was going to prove him wrong, and she was going to get them out of there.
Tony just blinked at her, watching as she concentrated on the small device in front of her. He could completely understand what Yinsen had said about her being determined now, because he was seeing it first hand.
While they had been back in Malibu, he hadn't really watched her working, and maybe he should have. He was going to change that, he was going to watch her when she was working, get involved and just watch her be brilliant. When they got back, of they got back, there was a lot of things that Tony Stark was going to change.
"So, are you sure that this is going to work? I mean, you know, what with it being built in a cave." He asked her, trying to get her to at least talk to him while they worked. They hadn't really done much of that since they had been in there, just talk. Ruby had shouted at him, or snapped at him, but they hadn't just talked.
Ruby couldn't help but snort at little at his lack of faith in her abilities. "It's not going to be perfect, but it's better than a car battery, right?" She replied to him, still keeping her eyes on her work. "But hey, if you want to walk around with a car battery attached to your chest for the rest of your life, then who am I to stop you."
Ruby's words hit Tony and hurt him. "You're my daughter, Ruby. Don't say things like that. You mean everything to me, honey." He told her, reaching out and putting a hand on her arm.
Her hands stopped moving, but her eyes stayed focused on the same thing. "I heard you." Ruby whispered. "I heard what you said, about me being better off without you."
His eyes widened at that, because he never actually meant it. "Ruby, I didn't mean that. I was frustrated, okay? I never, ever meant that. I would do anything to get you out of here, you know that, don't you?" All Ruby could do was nod at him, unsure of if she really did believe him or not. "Ruby, I'm serious. I'm not doing all of this for me, I'm doing this for you. To keep you safe and get you the hell out of here."
"I know. Sorry. It's just… you really are all I have left now. You don't know all the things that have happened in my life. If I didn't have you, I'd be in a lot more trouble." She said, finally letting her eyes drift up and over to look at her father.
"More trouble than being tortured and then held in a cave by terrorists?" Tony asked her, an eyebrow raised.
All Ruby could do was look at him. "Yes." She told him simply. "I've been in tighter spots than this before. And if I was left on own, I'd be getting into worse."
"You know, some of the things you say worry me, Ruby. I don't know if you're joking or being serious." Tony admitted, a frown on his face as he tried to work it all out.
"I'm serious, just ask Liam. He knows the kind of things I got up to before, he had to deal with a lot of the cleaning up." That wasn't really something she had planned on telling her father, but she knew she needed to. The pair of them were still so far apart, there was still so much that they didn't know about each other.
He let out a sigh. "Okay. Well, come on, we should get back to work. You need to get that working, and I need to finish this." Tony told her, trying to get off the topic that was clearly not something she was ready to talk about.
"You should actually get some sleep." Ruby pointed out, picking up her tools and getting back to work without hesitation. "I've had some, now it's your turn."
Tony just shook his head at her. "No, we got too much to do. I'll catch a few hours later. You're right, the sooner we get out the better."
Ruby nodded a little. "Right, well let's get on with it. Show this idiots who we really are."
"That's my girl." He said, chuckling a little, giving his daughter a smile before getting on with his work. There was a lot still to do, but he had the determination to get on with it, just like Ruby was getting with her task as well.
Neither of them really knew how long they were sitting there working for. The only conversation that passed between them was when they were asking for tools or a little bit of help with something. Apart from that, they worked away in silence, both of them so deep in concentration that they failed to notice when Yinsen work up and joined them.
"I see you have both made progress." He said, looking at how much worked they seemed to have managed. "But have either of you slept?"
"Uh, yeah. I slept. Then I woke up. Then I started working. You saw me sleep." Ruby muttered, before cursing a little as she stabbed her finger.
"Hey, language." Tony called to her, making her grumble a little.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" Yinsen asked, understanding that they were still totally focused with their work.
"I'd like some silence." Ruby told him. "And a nice bottle of whiskey would be nice as well, and a burger. A nice, cheeseburger."
"I am afraid the best I can do is water and some…" He paused as he looked over at the pot that was on the stove. "Well, some form of nourishment."
"Not hungry." Tony muttered. "But you go ahead and eat. Maybe the lunch menu won't look like it was just thrown up by a camel."
"I did send them a memo." Ruby said casually. "For lunch I requested steak and chips, followed by a great big chocolate cake."
Tony kept his face serious as he replied, even though he really wanted to laugh. "What did you order for dinner?"
"A couple of roasted chickens, roast potatoes and some vegetables. Oh, and several tubs of ice cream for after. A whole range of flavours."
Tony couldn't help but let out a groan. "Chicken? Why couldn't you have asked for duck? I like duck. I want duck."
"I see the two of you are in rather good moods today. Is there a reason for this?" Yinsen asked after having seen their strange little display.
Ruby just smirked, putting the finishing touches on her slightly upgraded and modified earpiece. "Well, things are starting to get a little bit brighter."
"So, you got it working then?" Her father asked, glancing over at her.
She shrugged at him. "You know, there's only one way to find out."
He couldn't stop the smirk from forming on his face as he saw the glint in her eyes. "And I take it you have a plan to do this?" He asked, getting a slight nod from her. "Ruby, don't do anything stupid. You know what these people are capable of, it isn't worth something happening."
"Of course it is. This is our best chance. The best hope we have of getting out of here alive. And I'm going to do it, no matter what you or anyone else says." Ruby told him, that fire starting to grow in her eyes once more. "Yeah sure, we know what they're capable of, but they have no idea what I'm capable of. I have the element of surprise on my side." She defended.
Tony looked at her, knowing that she really was right. This was their best hope, and if anyone was going to be able to pull it off, it was his daughter. "Okay, you got me. You sure you know what you're doing, Ruby?"
She nodded at him, her greasy dark curls falling over her eyes a little as they finally made their way free of the elastic holding them back. "Oh, I'm sure. But I'm working on the backup plan as well." Ruby said, getting a strange look from both her father and Yinsen. "You're both going to have to wait to find out what that is. Now come on, we got work to do." She said, before stuffing her earpiece in her pocket and beginning to help her father with his work as well.
Ruby had more running through her mind now. Not just about getting out of there alive, but the things she was going to do to Tasha and Clint when she got her hands on them. She could just imagine the hell that Liam was putting them through already for letting this happen. It was that thought that made her let out a chuckle.
"Something amusing you, Ruby?" Her father asked her, giving her a curious look.
She nodded at him a little. "Oh yeah, I'm just imagining how much hell Liam is giving everyone right now. You know, I can see him calling Rhodey every five minuets, telling him what he should be doing." Ruby told him, making her chuckle a little more. She hadn't actually thought about that, but now that she had, she found that amusing as well.
"And how do you think Pepper is taking it all?" Tony wondered, having a small idea of what was probably happening while he was gone.
Ruby shrugged at him. "She hasn't got time to sit and worry. Pepper is helping to keep everything organised and running smoothly without you there. But I can tell you this one thing, she is going to be pretty angry with you when we get home."
Her father let out a groan, he had to agree with her there. He was going to get so much hell from Pepper Potts the moment she laid eyes on him. "You know, maybe we shouldn't go back. It's not really that bad here, is it?"
"Ha! I knew it!" Ruby cried, a smirk now residing on her face. "You're scared of Miss Potts."
"Uh, no, I'm not."
"Uh, yes, you are. Oh, this is too good. The great Tony Stark, afraid of Pepper Potts." Ruby told him, smirking just that little bit more. "Oh, I really hope she slaps you, because I so want to get that on film."
Tony just looked at her and blinked. "Well, that's nice. My own daughter wants to see my PA slap me. Really nice."
Ruby just rolled her eyes at him. "Oh, get over it, old man. You're only going to get a slap, I'm going to have Liam lecturing me for weeks on end. I'll happily trade with you if you want?"
Tony thought about it. He knew how pushing Liam could be, how he could make Ruby shrink in her chair and want to disappear. "Actually, you know what? I'm good with getting the slap, thanks."
She nodded her head at him a little as she glanced up from what she was doing. "That's what I thought. Now, I think that's enough chatter for today. Back to work."
A/N: Well, I hope you guys enjoyed it. Things start to get a little more interesting in the next chapter. I have plenty of ideas, I just need to get them out of my head and into the story.
Anyway a big thank you to everyone who has favourtied/followed. I also want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has taken the time to review after reading. You guys are awesome, and I really do love reading your reviews, so keep them rolling in.
Guess it's time to get cracking on with the next chapter, which hopefully won't be too long.
Pippa.