A/N Thank you guys for all of the reviews, favs, and alerts! I can't believe how many this story has already gotten! I'm glad so many of you like this! :)

Another warning: More torture in this chapter but if chapters 3 and 4 didn't bother you, this shouldn't either.

Thanks to Maralexa for the beta!

Chapter 5

Tony jerked awake with a groan and peeled his eyes open. The memories that had haunted him while he slept continued to float through his mind. Memories of a cave, and the death of a friend. Except this time it wasn't Yinsen dying with bullet holes covering his chest. This time it was Clint dying on the floor of a cell with his head bashed in.

Tony hated this place and this situation. It was too close, much too close to before. Afghanistan was happening all over again but this time he vowed it would be different. They would get out; both of them. He wouldn't let Clint become another Yinsen. Not as long as he still drew breath.

His train of thought was derailed as the pain made itself known; aching, throbbing pain that was not nearly as dull as he would have hoped. His pain-fogged brain slowly left the realm of memories and nightmares and returned to reality, reminding him of his current situation. He groaned again, this time in frustration rather than pain. Did he mention he really hated this place?

He blinked, trying to clear his blurry vision. Once his eyes focused enough, his gaze fell on the other occupant in the room. It was only the presence of Clint that prompted Tony to even think about moving, and with a monumental effort, he pushed himself up to a sitting position. His back, chest, and arms screamed in agony with every twitch of his muscles.

He sat there, arms bracing himself up as he shuddered and panted. After a few minutes, the pain became more tolerable, his breathing approached some semblance of normal, and he didn't feel like he was about to lose whatever might be left in his stomach. He looked over at Clint and his gaze fell on his discarded undershirt. He immediately dismissed it. There was no way he was letting anything, not even a shirt, touch his back. He checked Clint over again, finding the archer in the same state as before. It didn't appear as if Clint had even moved, let alone awoken.

"You know it would be nice to have someone to talk to," Tony mumbled as he leaned his shoulder against the wall, careful to not let his back touch. "I really wish I had a permanent marker on me. This would be the perfect opportunity to give you a nice mustache and goatee. It'd be a good punishment for refusing to wake up and give me some conversation."

Unsurprisingly, there was no response.

"The silent treatment huh? What did I ever do to deserve that? I mean, besides taking all of your arrows out of your quiver and replacing them with Nerf ones, or filling your bow case with shaving cream, or gluing feathers onto your uniform, or—Okay yeah, I probably deserve the silent treatment."

Tony continued to ramble about nothing for several more minutes, more to fill the silence than to make any actual sense, which was good, considering he wasn't sure he could make much sense even if he wanted to.

After a few minutes, he was interrupted by the sound of a low moan. Tony's attention snapped to Clint as the archer turned his head ever so slightly.

"Clint? Clint!" Tony called, gently tapping the side of Clint's face in an effort to bring the man to consciousness.

"T'ny?" the archer mumbled without opening his eyes.

"Yes, it's me. Come on, wake up," Tony urged.

As much as he wanted Clint to be spared from the situation they were in, Tony also desperately wanted a friendly face to talk to so maybe he could stop feeling so alone. Unfortunately, fate didn't agree as Clint went still, losing consciousness again before ever fully regaining it. Tony bowed his head and sighed deeply. Alone it was.

He was jerked from his thoughts a second later by the door opening and either Tweedledee or Tweedledum (Tony wasn't sure which anymore) walked in carrying a pitcher and a hunk of stale bread which he placed on the ground in the middle of the room before leaving once more. Tony spent the next two minutes talking himself into moving again. Somehow he managed to drag himself over to the items. He looked into the pitcher to see it full of water. Tony grabbed the pitcher and bread and brought them over to Clint. He picked Clint's head and shoulders up and slid underneath, so that Clint laid in his lap. Tony pulled Clint's mouth open and let some of the water trickle into the archer's mouth.

"Come on, Clint, swallow," Tony mumbled.

He pinched Clint's nose forcing the archer to swallow. After the first swallow, Tony was able to let go of Clint's nose as the SHIELD agent began to swallow voluntarily.

"Much better," Tony murmured.

After Clint had drank about half of the water, Tony pulled the pitcher away and drank thirstily, finishing off what remained. Then he looked at the bread and decided that there was no way he would be able to get Clint to eat while unconscious. Tony nibbled at the bread, knowing he needed something in his stomach but also feeling too queasy to eat very much very fast. He managed to get about half of the bread down before he had to stop or else lose everything he had managed to get into him already. Besides, he figured if Clint woke up he would need some food, so Tony decided to save the rest of the bread for later.

After a few minutes, Tony began to blink sluggishly. He didn't want to sleep here. He didn't want more images of the cave, or of Clint dying while he stood by helplessly, to play through his mind. He didn't want to sleep, but he was so tired. He thought maybe if he just rested for a minute he would feel better. Just long enough to feel a bit more rested but not so long as to let the dreams come. Just for a few minutes. He leaned his head against the wall and in seconds he was dead to the world.

)()()(

"What progress have we got?" Fury demanded of the SHIELD techs.

"Sir, we have identified the voice from the video," a tech answered.

"Who is it?" Steve asked, walking into the room followed by Bruce, Natasha, Thor, and Phil. They had just returned from helping the search teams, without any useful results.

"We actually found it through a partial match to another voice we had on file."

"Partial match?" Steve asked.

"Yes, a familial match, actually. His brother, now deceased. His name was Raza," the tech said, putting up a picture on one of the screens.

All six of them stiffened at the name and face. They knew exactly who Raza was.

"And you're saying the man who has Tony is Raza's brother?" Bruce asked.

"Yes, his name is Hassan."

A second picture appeared beside the first. The second man bore a strong resemblance to Raza, right down to the evil glint in his eyes.

"So, Raza's brother is holding Tony and Clint hostage and more than likely, he blames Tony for his brother's death. If we don't find them soon…" Bruce left the rest of the sentence unfinished.

)()()(

Tony was awakened sometime later by the door opening and men barging into the cell. He looked up to see Head-honcho and his two lackeys standing in the doorway.

"Take him," Honcho said.

Tony didn't have the strength to fight back as he was once again dragged from the room and brought to the same room as the day before. Or rather, he was brought to the same room that he had been tortured in. Tony had no idea how long ago that actually was.

This time, though, there was a metal chair in the center of the room. Tony was dropped into the chair, his vision swimming as his back protested to being slammed against the chair back. His shoulders joined the pain chorus as his arms were jerked around the back of the chair and tied to the slats.

Once he was secured, Tweedledee and Tweedledum left the room and Head-honcho moved to stand in front of him. For a few minutes, he scrutinized the billionaire like he was some interesting specimen at a zoo, before reaching forward and touching the arc reactor. Tony looked down at the hand and his eyes widened as he realized what was about to happen. Sure enough, to his horror, the reactor was unlocked and removed from his chest.

Immediately Tony could feel his chest tighten and it became harder to make his lungs cooperate. This feeling only grew worse the longer the arc was out. Just as his lungs started to burn and pain laced through his chest with every beat of his heart, the reactor was replaced and Tony could instantly breathe again.

He sucked in deep breaths, feeding oxygen to his starving body. The pain faded and his breathing returned to some semblance of normal, only for the whole process to start again as the arc was once more pulled from its casing. Tony was just short of going into cardiac arrest when it was once again returned. Tony focused on breathing and hoped that his arc reactor would stay where it was. Having it removed and replaced was like having a heart attack over and over. No, it wasn't like he was having a heart attack over and over. He was having a heart attack over and over.

To his immense relief, Head-honcho stepped back behind him, but the relief turned to icy fear as he saw why. Tweedledee and Tweedledum had returned and they weren't empty handed. They were carrying a tub of water that they set in font of him. Uncontrolled panic seized him as unwanted memories came unbidden to his mind.

Come on, Tony. You can do this. You can do this. You survived this once, you can do it again. Just stay calm and focus. Just stay calm, he thought to himself.

He took a deep breath, forced the memories from his mind, and smoothed out his expression. He wasn't going to let them break him. He was untied and pushed to his knees in front of the tub. His panic threatened to return but with a monumental effort, he forced it away. He heard a grunt come from behind him and he had just enough time to suck in a breath before Tweedledee and Tweedledum shoved his head under water.

As his face hit the icy water, his instincts took over and he struggled for all he was worth, heedless of the fact that he was using up precious oxygen. After a moment his brain finally kicked in and he stopped fighting and allowed himself to go limp. His captors did exactly what he had hoped they would. They pulled him out. He quickly sucked in a breath knowing he wouldn't be out of the water for long. He was right. Under he went, again. This time he didn't fight and struggle. He stayed still, conserving his air supply. As his lungs burned and he felt he couldn't last any longer they pulled him out again. Over and over this happened as images and flashbacks swirled around in his head.

Scenes of the cave, of Raza standing over him as he was tortured, and of Yinsen dying. The memories twisted and swirled until they warped into other images. The cave became a cell, Raza became his brother, and Yinsen became Clint. The pictures raced through his head and twisted and switched back and forth until he no longer knew what was real and what was not.

Each time, he held his breath as long as he could and just as his body was on the verge of giving out he would be pulled back up again. What seemed like an eternity later, Tony was pulled out and kept there. He greedily sucked in desperate gulps of air. It was over. He survived. It was over. Except, it wasn't.

Head-honcho appeared in front of him and once again he was stripped of his precious arc reactor. The man disappeared from view and suddenly Tony's face was once again in the water.

This he couldn't do. He couldn't hold his breath when he couldn't breathe in the first place. He couldn't go through cardiac arrest without air and he couldn't go through water-boarding with a faltering heart. But here he was going through both at the same time. He was going to drown. He knew it.

Tony held onto the air as long as he could but his failing body was using it up too rapidly. Finally he couldn't take it any longer and he involuntarily took in a breath. His body spasmed as the water hit his lungs. He was pulled up and as soon as the air hit his face he began to cough and choke on the water as he dispelled it from his lungs.

He got the liquid out of his body and took in a desperate gulp of air into lungs that no longer wanted to work. He was forced under again and even though they didn't keep him down as long, it was still long enough for his lungs to fill with water again. He coughed the water out once more and thought that surely, surely this would be the last time. It wasn't though.

The third time he went under, he knew he wouldn't make it through. He had barely survived the last round. He couldn't do it again. Water filled his lungs almost immediately as his faltering heart ate up the oxygen, but this time he wasn't pulled up. He tried to cough the water out only to have more rush in and still he wasn't pulled up. Darkness began to encroach on his vision and his body went numb. Just before he lost consciousness he thought he felt himself getting lifted out of the water, but he couldn't make his body work any longer. He was so tired. He just wanted to sleep, let the darkness have him.

He was prevented from that by a hand slapping him hard on his back. Distantly, some small part of his mind was thankful for the numbness otherwise the cuts on his back would have been screaming at him. Instead, his body instinctively responded. He coughed, hacked, and choked as water spewed from his mouth. He coughed until his stomach rebelled and he threw up. This continued until his lungs and stomach (and what felt like his entire body) was completely empty.

Once finished, he laid there on his side sucking in air that he couldn't seem to get enough of. The Tweedle Twins picked him up and Head-honcho replaced his arc reactor. He was lifted up and retied to the chair, where he slumped and gasped for breath.

For the next, he didn't know how long, he lost himself in a haze of pain and fatigue. He focused on breathing and not much else. He was vaguely aware of the men moving around him but he wasn't really paying attention so he was blindsided when his world suddenly dissolved into pain.

It became the only thing he was aware of. He no longer knew what was going on around him. The agony he was in was his only thought or sensation and he wasn't even aware enough to know what they were doing to cause him so much pain. Sometime later (he had no way of knowing how long) it all stopped. He sagged forward in the chair and sat panting and shaking. The pain was by no means gone but he was aware of reality again. He heard the men talking but he wasn't really paying attention, and to be honest he didn't really care what they were saying anyway.

Tony, utterly spent, allowed himself to slip back into the haze of pain and fatigue that was quickly becoming his constant companion. He was only vaguely aware of the men untying him and dragging him from the room. He felt himself hit the floor of his cell as he was thrown inside, and he lay on his side where he fell, unable to summon the strength to move. A few seconds later, everything went black as he slipped into blessed unconsciousness.

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