A/N: Well hello there everyone! Here is the next chapter for you all.
Ruby was clutching hold of Tony's good arm, helping him to stand up as they finally made their landing at Edward's Air Base. "Watch it coming up here." Rhodey warned, as they started to make their way down the ramp.
Both of them saw Pepper and Happy standing there beside the car, waiting for them both. "Are you kidding me with this?" Tony asked, noticing the ambulance that was waiting for both him and Ruby. "Get rid of them." Straight away Rhodey dismissed the medics with a wave of his hand, making them quickly retreat.
The moment they made it to the car, Pepper grabbed hold of Ruby and hugged her tightly. Her eyes were already red and blood shot, and Ruby was sure she was going to start crying some more. Ruby wrapped her arms around her as well, having missed the woman rather a lot. Pepper had been so good to her since she had moved to Malibu, she had helped her get settled in and always been there if she needed anything. Pepper could never replace her mother, but it was nice for her to have someone there for her.
Tony cleared his throat as he stood there and watched the pair reunite. "Your eyes are red. A few tears for your long lost boss?" He asked, trying to lighten the situation a little. Pepper didn't reply to him, instead she pulled Ruby to one side of her, and let her hand make contact with Tony's face. Ruby and Happy both flinched at the resounding noise that her hand had made, and Tony could only rub the spot where he had been hit. "Okay, so I guess I deserved that."
Pepper just glared at him. "That was nothing. Wait until Mr Roberts gets his hands on you." She told him, as Happy opened the car door and she dragged Ruby inside with her. For some reason, the woman was being a little protective of her. Tony actually paled a little at the prospect of having to face Liam after what had happened.
Ruby didn't know whether to laugh of cry at what had just happened or let the tears flow just like Pepper was doing. She was glad to be home, and she really did find it amusing that Pepper had in fact slapped Tony.
"Where to, sir?" Happy called from the drivers seat once now that Tony was in the car as well
"Take us to the hospital, please, Happy." Pepper answered, taking a look at the few lingering bruises on Ruby's face.
Tony squeezed Ruby's hand, he knew there was no way Ruby wanted to go to the hospital, and neither did her. They had both been treated already, there was no need to go to the hospital and have people fuss over them some more. "No." He ended up saying.
Pepper looked at him questioning. "No? Tony, you have to go to the hospital. Ruby needs to…"
"No is a complete answer." Tony informed her, cutting her off and wishing his PA would just leave it already.
"The doctor has to look at you both."
Tony shook his head a little. "We don't have to do anything. Ruby and I have been in captivity for three months. There are a few things I want to do. I want an American cheeseburger, I want to make sure my daughter eats something, and I want you to call for a press conference now."
"Call for a press conference?" Pepper asked him, watching as he tugged Ruby a little bit closer to him. She was noticing how he was refusing to let her go, even for just a second.
"Yeah."
"What on earth for?" Tony didn't answer her, he just closed his eyes and took a deep breath. All Pepper could do was what he had asked, and started to contact people to get everything in motion.
"Hogan, drive. Cheeseburger first."
There were so many things Pepper wanted to ask, and she wanted to make sure that Ruby really was okay. She wanted to get her home, fix her something decent to eat, and then make sure she went to bed. Pepper couldn't explain why, but she was certainly feeling protective of Ruby.
"Ruby, have you spoken to Liam at all?" Pepper finally asked her. Ruby just shook her head, she hadn't spoken to anyone apart from her fellow agents at SHIELD. "Maybe you should call him, yeah?" She added, passing her phone to her.
Ruby swallowed the lump in her throat as she began to dial the number for Liam. She knew that he was going to go into a rant, telling her that he was right, that she shouldn't have gone, that he was going to drag her ass back to Denver because Tony wasn't doing a good job at looking after her. She was dreading calling him, and she really wished that she didn't have to call him.
"Hello?" The familiar voice called down the phone, making Ruby even more nervous.
"Uh, hi, Liam." Ruby managed to whisper. Her throat felt dry and scratchy as she spoke.
"Christ, Ruby. You are in a lot of trouble, missy. And so is that father of yours." Liam yelled down the phone, making her pull it away from her ear. Even Tony had heard it and looked just a little scared. "You told me everything was going to be fine, that you could look after yourself and that your father wouldn't let anything happen. Well, guess what, Ruby? Something did happen! You were almost blown up by terrorist, kidnapped and held captive by them for three months. Three months, Ruby!"
Ruby could feel her chest tightening. Everything was saying was true, she had assured him that everything would be fine, that there would be people to look out for her. She had promised him that she would come home safe, with nothing going wrong at all. But she had been wrong, because everything did go wrong. "I'm… I'm sorry…"
"Is that all you can say? That you're sorry? Do you have any idea how worried I was? How worried all of us were? Val was frantic, she was a complete and utter state. We thought you were dead, Ruby."
By now the tears were falling freely down her cheeks. She knew that Liam was angry, and that he was just venting out all of his frustration, he would soon calm down and understand exactly what had happened. She couldn't explain everything to him while sitting in the car with her father and Pepper. "I… I just…" She managed to choke out, trying not to just break down completely. She was only just about managing to keep it all together.
Suddenly the phone was snatched from her hand. She looked over to see that her father had taken it away from her and was now about to speak to Liam instead. "Mr Roberts, I'd appreciate it if you did not speak to my daughter like that." Tony growled down the phone. "None of this was her fault, do you understand that? Blame me all you like, but you have absolutely no right to speak to her like that."
"Oh, believe me, Mr Stark, I do blame you."
"Then shout at me, scream in my ear. Miss Potts has already hit me, I expect you want to do the same thing. But under no circumstance do you start yelling down the phone at my daughter. I don't care how angry and upset you are, Mr Roberts, you are supposed to be her best friend. So once you've cooled down, and had some time to think about how you just acted, then maybe you can speak to her." Tony told him, clearly very annoyed with what had happened. "Goodbye, Mr Roberts." He said, ending the call and holding the phone out for Pepper to take back.
She was just sitting there looking at him with wide eyes. She had never known him to defend anyone before, apart from himself on occasions, so to witness him standing up for his daughter against her best friend, it certainly shocked her. As soon as she had taken the phone back, Tony wrapped both of his arms around Ruby as she let the tears roll down her cheeks.
"Ignore him, Ruby." Tony whispered to her, trying to get her to calm down. "He's just angry. Once he's had time to calm down, things will be better. Just don't worry about it, okay? I'll sort it out, I'll sort all of it out." Ruby just nodded her head at him, to afraid to speak.
Ruby really hadn't expected Liam to fly off the handle like that. Yes, she expected him to lecture her, yes she expected him to put the blame on Tony, but she had never expected him to be so… hostile towards her.
A little while later, and Tony was finally about to get his cheeseburger. "What do you want to eat, Ruby?" He asked her, getting ready to order everything.
She shook her head at him a little. "Not hungry." She whispered, so quietly that he had only just managed to hear her.
"You have to eat something, honey. You haven't eaten in days, you're making yourself ill, Ruby." He said, hoping that she would listen to him and actually eat something, but once again she shook her head at him. "Ruby, you can't live off jelly beans and sugar in your coffee all the time."
All Ruby did was bury her head against him some more, trying her best to get out of having to eat a greasy burger while they drove to the main factory where the press conference was going to be held. "Ruby, you really do need to have something to eat." Pepper told her, gently placing her hand on Ruby's arm.
"Not hungry." Ruby mumbled. She just wanted them to leave her alone, to let her just pull herself together in her own way and in her own time. She didn't want them to keep pushing her, to keep trying to make her do things she didn't want to, she'd had enough of that when her mother had been ill.
Tony just let out a sigh, knowing that he was beat. There was no way Ruby was going to listen to him, at least not yet. He just had to hope that once they were back home, he could get her to eat something properly them.
He ended up just ordering several cheeseburgers and some fries, in the hopes that Ruby might decided that the smell was just too much for her and decide to eat. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Happy had to pull the car over so that Ruby could empty the contents of her stomach, not that there was much in there to empty.
She spent the rest of the drive half sleep and resting against her father, while Pepper whispered to Tony, trying to convince him to let her just take the poor girl home. But he was having none of it, he didn't want to let her out of his sight, he needed her to be there with him.
"Hey, honey, we're here." Tony told her softly, as the car finally pulled up at their destination. "Come on, time to wake up now." She let out a slight groan as she pushed herself away from him and rubbed her eyes. "You ready to go face the world?" Ruby just nodded at him slightly, not really wanting to face anyone, but knowing that she had to.
The door was quickly pulled open, and Tony stepped out, taking Ruby with him. "Look at you!" Obadiah called, hugging both Tony and Ruby at the same time. "We were going to meet at the hospital."
Tony shook his head at him and took a hold of Ruby once more. "No, I'm fine. We're both fine."
"Look at you! You had to have a burger, yeah?" The man said, noticing him pulling one out from his pocket. "Well, come on. You get me one of those?" He asked, sounding a little too cheerful. Ruby couldn't help but feel that something was going on. Thanks to her time with SHIELD, she was pretty good at reading people, and she was reading that he was nervous and hiding something.
"There's only one left." Tony said, referring to the burger and offering it to Ruby. She quickly shook her head at him and tried to bury her face into his arm once more. "I need it." He told the man, knowing that Ruby wasn't going to eat it.
Obadiah led the pair into the building, not really bothering to notice how Ruby was clinging to Tony and how Tony was not letting her go either. Soon enough, they were once again in front of a bunch of reporters, all standing there, waiting to find out what Tony Stark had to say to them all. That was when Ruby noticed someone familiar standing at the back, walking towards Pepper.
"Hey, would it be all right if everyone sat down?" Tony asked the crowd, sitting himself down and once again dragging Ruby with him. "Why don't you just sit down? That way you can see me, and I can… a little less formal and…" He looked over at Ruby, once again clutching onto his arm. "You okay?" He whispered to her, getting a slight nod to answer him.
Tony had noticed that she was acting more and more distant, and it seriously worried him. He looked up at Obadiah Stane, his life long friend, the man who had been there for him. "Good to see you." He called up to him quietly.
The bald man smiled back. "Good to see you." He said, giving him a slight nod.
"I never got to say goodbye to my dad." Tony told him, before turning to face the crowd. "I never got to say goodbye to my father. There's questions that I would have asked him. I would have asked him how he felt about what this company did. If he was conflicted, if he ever had doubts. Or maybe he was every inch the man we all remember from the newsreels." He spoke to the hoard of reporters before him and his daughter. He looked down at her again, and she was still lost in her own little World. "I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I created to defend them and protect them. And I saw that I had become part of a system that is comfortable with zero accountability."
That was when one of the reporters took their chance and called out to get his attention. Straight away Tony recognised him, knowing most of the reporters there since they were the ones allowed within the walls of Stark Industries. "Hey, Ben."
He asked the one question that everyone wanted the answer to. "What happened over there?"
"I had my eyes opened. I came to realise that I have more to offer this world than just making things that blow up." Tony told them, tightening his grip on Ruby. "And that is why, effective immediately, I am shutting down the weapons manufacturing division until such a time as I can decide what the future of the company will be. What directing it should take, one that I'm comfortable with, and is consistent with the highest good for this country as well."
Straight after that remark, Tony was dragged out by Obadiah, meaning Ruby was dragged as well. Tony didn't even fight it, he wanted to get out of there, he had said what he wanted, and now he just wanted to get Ruby home.
"Ruby, you okay? You ready to go home?" He asked her, walking towards the car where Happy was waiting for them. She simply shrugged her shoulders at him, not really paying too much attention to anything. "Come on, Ruby. Come with me." The pair of them got in the car, and Ruby blocked out the world as they drove around the factory and to the other side.
They ended up in the building where the main arc reactor was held, powering the factory and powering the weapons making. "So, are there any other little projects you've been working on with this thing that I should know about?" Tony asked her, as they walked slowly towards it.
All Ruby could do was shrug at him, as she went up to the main control unit and started making a few adjustments. Since she had been away, someone had been playing with it, messing around with what was hers to play with. She didn't like that, it was her fathers factory and her project, no one should be changing things when there is no need to.
"Well, that… that went well." A voice called to them after they were in silence for a while. Ruby had just kept working with the arc reactor, making sure everything was okay, while Tony stood by and watched her silently working.
Tony let out a sigh as he turned to face the man. "Did I just pain a target on the back of my head?" He asked, knowing that things were going to be pretty bad for the whole company now because of what he had just done.
Obadiah looked at him. "Your head? What about my head? What do you think the over-under on the stock drop is gonna be tomorrow?" The man asked, clearly still not happy with what Tony had done.
"Optimistically, forty points." Tony answered him, still watching his daughter.
"Fifty six, or maybe fifty seven more likely." Ruby muttered. The silence and lack of people around them made it easy for both the men to hear her, even though she didn't realise that she had said it out loud.
"See, now that's more like it." Obadiah said, looking over a Ruby. "She's thinking realistically. Tony, we're a weapons manufacturer."
Tony knew that this conversation had been coming, he had seen it from the moment he had decided to shut down the weapons manufacturing. He had come to that conclusion the moment he had seen terrorists with his weapons, and the moment his daughter had been hurt. "Obie, I just don't want a body count to be our only legacy."
"That's what we do. We're iron mongers. We make weapons." Obadiah told him, focusing solely on Tony and not paying any attention to what Ruby was doing.
"It's mine and Ruby's name on the side of the building." Tony announced, making Ruby stop and look over at him. She hadn't expected him to take her into account in all of this, she had known what he was going to do, and she had told him that she would support him. But never did she imagine that Tony Stark would try to defend her reputation as a Stark as well.
Obadiah didn't really know what to say at first, he could see Ruby was as shocked as he was. "And what we do keeps the world from falling into chaos."
Ruby snorted a little. "Falling? The worlds been pushed." She mumbled, once again not really meaning for it to be heard.
All Tony could do was smile. He knew something was wrong with his daughter, she had been so quiet ever since they had been reunited. But now, he was starting to see a little bit of her old self again. "Not based on what we saw. We're not doing a good enough job. We can do better. We're gonna do something else." He said, looking over to Ruby, a big smile on his face. She really had changed him for the better, she had shown him just one way that he can make the world better already.
"Like what?" Obadiah asked him. "You want us to make baby bottles?" Of course, he was being sarcastic, just like Tony had been when he told the woman from Vanity Fair that he would make bricks and beams for baby hospitals.
"I think we should take another look into arc reactor technology." Tony told him, stepping over to Ruby and giving her one of his best smiles.
Obadiah just looked at the two of them. "Come on. The arc reactor, that's a publicity stunt." He protested. "Tony, come on. We built that thing to hut the hippies up."
Tony shook his head, knowing that it was so much more than that. "It works."
"Yeah, as a science project." The man replied, not missing the sound of Ruby chuckling a little. "The arc was never cost effective. We knew that before we built it. Arc reactor technology, that's a dead end, right?" Tony didn't really answer him, he just looked up at the arc reactor with his daughter. "Am I right? We haven't had a breakthrough in that in what? Thirty years?"
"That was before we had a second Stark working here." Tony said, before noticing the look on the older man's face. "Could you have a lousier poker face? Just tell me, who told you?"
"Never mind who told me. Show me."
"It's Rhodey or Pepper." Tony muttered, trying to work out who had told Obadiah about the new breakthrough.
Obadiah just pointed to Tony's chest. "I want to see it."
"Okay, Rhodey." He said, before starting to unbutton his shirt, revealing the circular blue light of the device that was keeping him alive.
As soon as Obadiah had seen it, he glanced around nervously and buttoned up Tony's shirt again. "Okay."
"Okay? It works." He replied, giving Ruby a quick glance. She had gone back into her own little world once more, and he knew that he really needed to get her home. He had promised her pizza and movies, and he wasn't going to break that promise.
"Listen to me, Tony. We're a team. Do you understand? There's nothing we can't do if we stick together, like your father and I."
Tony let out a slight sigh. "I'm sorry I didn't give you a heads-up, okay? I was just as surprised as you when Ruby came up with it." He said, making the older man's eyes widen slightly. He had just assumed it was Tony who had come up with it, not his 17 year old daughter. "But if I had…"
"Tony. Tony, no more of this 'ready, fire, aim' business. You understand me?" Obadiah told him, a frown on his face as he looked over to the younger Stark.
"That was dad's line."
"You gotta let me handle this. We're gonna have to play a whole different kind of ball now. We're going o have to take a lot of heat. I want you to promise me that you're gonna lay low." Obadiah said. "Now, you need to take your daughter home. Go and relax, spend some time with her."
Tony nodded at him, agreeing to what he had just said. "Yeah, okay. Come on, Ruby. Time to head home." He said, reaching out and wrapping an arm around her shoulder, bringing her back to reality before leading her outside and to the car. Happy was still standing there, waiting for them both so that he could take them home.
The drive back to the mansion of Tony Stark was a silent one. Tony's mind was racing through all the different things he could do with the arc reactor, and how much of it Ruby had already thought about or planned. He couldn't wait to see the work she had already done with it, because now he knew that she really had been on to something with her own research.
By the time they had finally arrived home, Ruby was fast asleep once more. Tony wasn't really surprised by how much his daughter was sleeping, after everything that had happened she was entitled to sleep as much as she wanted, but he was worried about her eating. When he picked her up and carried her out of the car and into their home, he noticed how light she felt. She had lost too much weight for his liking, but he just didn't have the heart to force her to eat.
Still not wanting to let her out of his sight, he settled her down on the couch, doing his best not to wake her. He knew there were things he needed to do, such as create a better arc reactor to keep him alive, and catch up on everything he had missed over the past three months. But he just didn't want to, not yet. He was content with sitting beside his sleeping daughter, cherishing the fact that they had both made it back alive.
A/N: I know this was slightly shorter than the other chapters have been, but I didn't want to throw too much into this one.
Yes. Pepper did slap Tony, but did any of you think Liam would be as angry as he was?
So, I want to thank all of you lovely people who have taken the time to review. I do read ALL your reviews, every single one of them. So thank you all. I also want to thank everyone who has favourtied/followed as well, I hope you keep enjoying the story.
Pippa.