I have run out of things to say...enjoy!


Chapter Twelve

Tony and Yinsen had taken a break from their hard work, trying to keep the pieces strewn about so that no one watching them could possibly put together in their mind what they were trying to accomplish. It was impossible to believe that they had been here for almost three months. It felt like so much longer than that.

They were playing a game of dice on a small table. "You know...we met once. At a technical conference in Bern." Yinsen said quietly.

So that's where Tony had seen him. "I think I remember that. Some of it, at least."

Yinsen smiled, "Yes, you seemed quite distracted. There was a very beautiful woman with strawberry hair sitting next to you." He smiled, "Is that your girlfriend? Wife?" He asked innocently.

Tony smiled too, 'I wish.' He thought. "Uh no...we've been friends for a long, long time..." He said, reminiscing.

Tony lifted his head and looked at Yinsen, "You still haven't told me where you're from."

"I'm from a small town called Gulmira. It's actually a nice place." He responded.

Tony nodded, "Got a family?"

Yinsen smiled slightly, "Yes, and I will see them when I leave here." He paused from the game and looked up at Tony. "And you, Stark?"

Tony pressed his lips together in a fine line, thinking. He could say Jarvis. Ha! Ya right. Pepper...

"No." He said quietly, shaking his head.

"No?" Yinsen sighed, "So you're a man who has everything...and nothing." His eyebrows raised as he looked back at Tony.

Tony didn't have the chance to respond. They heard a loud voice, signaling the approach of someone to visit them.

The doors were pushed open and in came a rather large group of men.

Arash walked through to the front of the group, "Relax." He said in english. Tony and Yinsen lowered their arms from above their heads.

Arash walked around their workshop, inspecting different tools. "The bow and arrow once was the pinnacle of weapons technology." He paused as he picked up Tony's sketches.

Tony's eyes grew wide and he felt as though his heart was about to stop. If he just flattened them out, or looked closer, he would know the secret to their escape. He looked to Yinsen frantically, but he saw him raise his hand slightly from his side and just barely shook his head, signaling him not to do anything.

Finally, Arash set the pages down, "It allowed the great Genghis Khan to rule from the Pacific to the Ukraine. An empire twice the size of Alexander the Great, and four times the size of the Roman Empire."

Tony felt like he was getting a history lesson.

"And Gene Kahn. A man with the power to rule the entire earth, but the Rings destroyed him...We call ourselves the Ten Rings in his honor." He paused, "And today, whoever holds the latest Stark weapons rules these lands. And soon, it will be my turn."

As he talked, he picked up some tongs and stuck them into the furnace. He motioned to his men to grab Yinsen.

Tony barely registered what was happening before it was too late. They were speaking in a different language, and had Yinsen's head on a cement slab.

"What does he want?" Tony yelled, "What do you want? A delivery date?" He asked, stepping forward toward Arash, who was demanding Yinsen to open his mouth. The men all shouted at him and cocked their guns, pointing them at him.

Tony raised his hands, "I need him." He paused, trying to think of a good reason to them. "Good assistant." He spit out.

The small ball of molten rock was dropped to the cement slab, and Arash threw the pair of tongs to the floor.

"You have till tomorrow to assemble my missile." He stated as he left, his men followed behind him.

Tony took a deep breath and let out a long sigh.

They worked through the night, perfecting their plans and doing their best to get everything done. Tony could not shut off his mind. That little history lesson was being repeated in his mind. Genghis Khan = Gene Kahn. If the rings of power hadn't killed him, he would have had the biggest empire of any of the previous rulers.

Not sure if he really would have liked that...

Tony hammered away on the face piece. Sticking it into the molten flames, hammering it into shape, and then sticking it into the water, getting rid of the impurities within the metal, making it stronger.

After hammering away for almost an hour, he placed it on Yinsen's table. They only had hours until morning arrived.

"We have about four hours." Yinsen said as he inspected the face plate.

Tony nodded and kept working.

An hour and a half later, they had set up a steel platform for Tony to get into the suit without it collapsing on him.

"Okay, can you move?" Yinsen asked. Tony tested his wrists and knees, elbows and neck.

"Okay, say it again."

Tony rambled off what he remembered when they had dragged him from the caves after his 'near-drowning' experience and recited it, "41 steps straight ahead. Then 16 steps, that's from the door, fork right, 33 steps, turn right."

Just as he was about to start going over the plans with Yinsen again, they heard yelling at the door. They were here too early!

"Yinsen! Yinsen! Stark!" They yelled.

"Say something. Say something back to him." Tony hissed.

"He's speaking Hungarian! I don't..."

"Then speak Hungarian!" Tony said, completely impatient.

"Okay. I know..." Yinsen said, wracking his brain to form a sentence in that language.

He tried calling something out in Hungarian, but it failed to keep them at bay. They opened the door, and a huge blinding flash and a loud bang sounded as their trap exploded, leaving the men on the other side of the door either dead, in shock, or unconscious.

"How'd that work?" Tony asked, he couldn't see what the situation was.

"Oh, oh my goodness. It worked all right." Yinsen said, looking out at the few bodies on the ground. "Let me finish this." He was starting to panic. Surely they had seen what had happened on their security cameras. They would be coming any minute now.

"Initialize the power sequence." Tony stated.

"Okay."

"Now!" Tony was also getting panicked. "Tell me. Tell me." He said as he watched Yinsen type at the computer. "Function 11. Tell me when you see a progress bar." There was a pause as Yinsen typed. "It should be up right now."

"Yes." Yinsen stated back.

They threw comments back and forth, Tony telling him what to do, while Yinsen executed the stages of the plan.

"Come over here and button me up." Tony said hastily.

"They're coming!" Yinsen said, a sheen of sweat appearing on his brow.

"Nothing pretty, just get it done." Tony stated. "Just get it done..." Tony repeated. He could see Yinsen thinking something. Something Tony might not agree with... "Make sure the checkpoints are clear before you follow me out, okay?" Tony said, breaking Yinsen's focused thinking.

"We need more time." Apparently it didn't work. Yinsen's mind was cooking a different plan that Tony was not aware of, and would not like.

"Hey..." Tony said cautiously.

"I'm gonna go buy you some time!" Yinsen yelled as he ran out of the cave with a large gun.

"Stick to the plan!" Tony yelled. "Stick to the plan!" He was getting frantic. "YINSEN!" He yelled as loud as he could. It was no use though, he had run off and left Tony there to wait for that progress bar to load on the computer screen.


(Half a month earlier at the Stark Mansion)

Pepper was literally counting the days. Rhodey called her every week to let her know that he wouldn't stop looking. Assuring her, that they would find him.

Pepper kept up her usual routine, when it had reached just after two months, she came to the point where she could hide her emotions so well, that people seemed to think she was cold hearted. That she hadn't really cared for Tony, and only wanted his position in the company. She despised them. They had no clue what she went through each and every day.

When the mark on the calendar noted two and a half months, Pepper finally wandered further away from the living room and kitchen area. Today, she stood right outside Tony's bedroom door.

She took a deep breath and reached for the door handle. She twisted it and pushed it open.

She stared into the dark room, reaching around the door frame and pushing the button for the lights. She walked in as the room illuminated. The bed was unmade and there was one shirt and tie on the floor. She stood only feet away from the doorway, terrified to move any further. She felt like she was intruding on something private.

She took a deep breath and moved forward, her bare feet padding on the soft carpet floor. She peered into the bathroom and looked around. His shaving cream was left uncapped, along with his toothpaste, and his toothbrush was nowhere to be found.

Pepper could barely contain the sadness that seemed to well up inside her. Where was her Tony?

She stepped backwards without thinking and stepped on his shirt. She let out a gasp as her foot touched the soft, colder fabric. She turned and stared down at it.

It was a light blue button-up shirt. She leaned over and picked it up, feeling the fabric and bringing it up to her nose to smell it. It smelled completely of Tony. She closed her eyes and could almost pretend that she was hugging her long lost friend. No, more than a friend.

Well, to her, anyways. She wasn't sure how Tony really felt about her. Now that he was gone, she was forced to realize her true feelings for her boss. She loved him, wholeheartedly, but she wasn't sure if she would admit it to him.

Or if she even could. What if he WAS gone? What if he never really would come back?

Tears cascaded down her cheeks. She stumbled to the bed and laid down, keeping the shirt tucked close to her.

She woke up sometime later and ran out of the room, still clutching his shirt in her fist. There was no way she could let go of it now. For a whole month more, she kept his shirt by her at all times.


Tony watched in agonizing impatience as the progress bar slowly loaded. The lights started to flicker as the computer sucked out the energy from other appliances in the room.

It was finally loaded. He used the remaining energy in the arc reactor to power the suit, if he made it out of this place, he would have to find help within hours or else he wouldn't make it.

He could hear the whispers of men close by. He stomped toward them and took them out with one fatal swoop of his metal-clad arm, along with a couple shots from a gun.

He made his way through groups of gun-carrying men, pulverizing them, throwing them, anything he could, trying to remember which way to go. He finally saw the light of day coming from around the corner.

He spotted Yinsen, lying on the ground with bags filled with who-knows-what piled on top of him.

"Yinsen!" Tony yelled.

"Watch out!" Yinsen hollered, trying his best to warn Tony of Arash, who stood just at the mouth of the cave, ready to blow Tony to pieces.

Tony looked up just in time to dodge the blast and fired one of his own little missiles in that general direction. It hit the wall of rock behind Arash, blowing up a few boxes and crumbling rock around him.

Tony put his attention back to Yinsen and made his way over to him.

"Stark..." He choked out.

"Come on. We got to go. Move for me, come on. We have a plan. We're going to stick to it." Tony panted, lifting the face plate on the armor after throwing aside one of the bags on top of Yinsen.

"This was always the plan, Stark." Yinsen said hoarsely.

"Come on, you're going to go see your family. Get up." Tony said, pleading.

"My family is dead." Yinsen said quietly.

Tony's eyes widened, how could that be? He said he was going to see his family...

Then it hit him. He knew he wouldn't make it out of here from the very beginning.

"I'm going to see them now, Stark." Yinsen said, "It's okay." He swallowed and tried to get a breath, "I want this. I want this."

"Thank you for saving me." Tony said, he could feel a lump in his throat forming.

"Don't waste it. Don't...waste your life." Yinsen choked out, he exhaled slowly.

And then he was gone.

Tony sat there for a moment, taking in what had just happened. Those terrorists had just killed his only friend here in Afghanistan.

He stood with anger boiling in his eyes. The men outside could hear the stomping of the suit as Tony walked closer to the opening of the cave.

Once Tony stood in the light, it broke loose. The terrorists started shooting at him like mad men. Tony stood against it and waited.

"My turn." He said and unleashed a barrage of bullets and missiles, along with a flame thrower, lighting on fire every filled box of explosives. Everywhere around him was on fire, it seemed as though he were in the middle of an inferno. He could feel the bullets from the remaining men, hitting the various parts of his suit and creating some parts to short out.

"I've got to get out of here." He whispered to himself, it was getting extremely hot in the suit, he could feel it burning his shoulders.

He activated the built up energy within his boots and let it loose. He shot through the air just as the rest of the explosive-filled boxes blew up, also sending him further into the air.

He found himself yelling as he flew through the air. Unlike his suit back at home, he had no control over this one. He could feel himself decelerating and the gravity pulling him down.

There was a small BOOM and a giant puff of dust as Tony landed in a bed of sand.

Right out in the middle of the crater where Gene had died.


Pepper sat on the couch in the living room, Tony's shirt in her lap. She ran her fingers over it constantly, almost as though it were some kind of pet sleeping in her lap.

She wasn't sure how much longer she could handle this for. Tony either had to come home soon, or she would blow up with depression and sadness. She let out a shaky breath and brought the shirt up to her face to smell it again. The smell of Tony was slowly fading from it, but she chose not to pay attention to that. She had slept with his shirt every night since she had found it about two weeks earlier. It was the shirt he had worn the night before he left.

"Come home, Tony..." She whispered. Today was the three month mark. Three months. How had she lasted this long?

She leaned her head back on the sofa and dozed off with the shirt still in her arms.


Tony was able to slowly get himself out of the mess of metal he had created. The landing was not a nice one, but at least it hadn't killed him.

A few minutes later he was able to dig himself out of the sand. He looked around him, recognizing the crater he had landed in. "Wow... of all the places for me to land." He shook his head in disbelief and started walking in the direction where he knew a military base was. He couldn't help but think about the chance of him dying. They would find him out in this crater, and only Rhodey and Pepper would fully understand the irony in the situation. He wouldn't let that happen though. About an hour later of traversing across the giant crater, he finally started to reach the incline. He could do this. His thoughts were focused on home, and what waited for him there. Pepper would do one of two things, she would either slap him, or hug him. Maybe both. And possibly a small kiss? He wouldn't press his luck. He smiled at the thought of a kiss from Pepper.

While he was completely immersed in his thoughts, he barely started to register the loud hum of helicopter blades. He looked up, waving his hand and yelling.

"HEY!" He yelled, laughing with complete happiness. He was going to make it. He reached the top of the incline and as the helicopter landed, Tony fell to his knees, feeling the exhaustion hit. His right arm was still in the air, he formed a peace sign, leaving two fingers in the air. He thought of the soldier that had asked to take a picture with him and the lives that were taken by the terrorists that had kidnapped and tortured him and killed Yinsen.

Overwhelmed by the emotions of the day, tears started to form in his tired eyes. He was going home.

He could see Rhodey running straight for him. He knelt down in front of him, "How was the 'fun-vee'?" Rhodey asked rhetorically. Tony snorted and leaned forward, his head hitting Rhodey's shoulder.

Rhodey wrapped his arm around Tony, trying not to add too much pressure to his burned and bloody shoulders. "Next time, you ride with me, okay?" Rhodey said, closing his eyes. He had found his best friend. He knew he would.

Rhodey helped Tony into the chopper and sat him down and buckled him in. "Thank you mom." Tony said, joking.

Rhodey let out a shaky laugh, even at a time like this, Tony could still crack a joke.

"Pepper." Tony said as the chopper started to lift into the air, his face turning serious. "Where's a phone?" Tony was looking around.

Rhodey smiled, of course he wanted to get a hold of Pepper. Rhodey pulled out a phone and dialed the mansion's number.

Pepper was still sitting on that couch, holding that darn shirt when the phone rang. She looked at the Caller ID. Rhodey.

"Oh my word. I am not answering!" She knew exactly what he would say, "I'm so sorry Pepper, I still haven't found him." Rhodey had said that to her every week.

She let the phone ring and kept watching her TV show, turning up the volume.

The phone stopped ringing. And then started again. "Really Rhodey? Really?" Pepper squeezed her eyes shut. "I don't need to hear the bad news again this week."

Again this week. Rhodey had already called this week...so why would he call again?...

Her eyes widened in realization. She flew to the other end of the couch where the phone sat in its cradle on an end table. She grabbed it and pressed Call.

"Hello?" She practically yelled.

"Pepper! It's Rhodey, I-" Rhodey was cut off by someone talking.

"Give it to me!" She heard a muffled yell. "Dude! Just hang on, let me-"

"NO! Give it to me!" Was it? Was it Tony? She was holding her breath.

"Pepper." It was just that one word, her name, and the voice that said it that sent her heart pumping.

"Tony?" Pepper choked.

"It's me. How are you?" He asked.

"How am I? Are you kidding me? How are YOU?" Tears were running down her cheeks, she was grinning like the love-sick fool she knew she was, "Tony, don't ever scare me like that ever again! I've been able to do nothing, Tony. NOTHING. I couldn't focus, and now I STILL won't be able to focus, because all I'll be thinking about is when you get back. When do you get back, by the way? How long do I have to wait?" Pepper asked. She could hear Tony laughing in the background, a couple of raspy coughs in between.

"Pepper, Pep, calm down. I'll be home in...Rhodey, when will we be home?"

She heard the muffled voice of Rhodey, "We'll be back in the states in about seven hours, but then another three to get to Malibu, California."

"Did you hear Rhodey, Pep?" Tony asked.

"Yes, I did. I'll be waiting at the base for you." It was so good to hear him again.

There was a pause, "It's good to hear your voice again, Tony." Pepper said, her voice soft.

Tony could tell she was crying, "You have no idea how much I wanted to hear you again, Pepper. I can't even wait to see you."

Pepper was totally blushing. "Oh I don't know about that, I think I have an idea of what you're feeling."

"Really? Do you, now?" Tony chuckled.

"Quit the phone-flirting!" Rhodey yelled. Tony and Pepper both laughed. "I'll see you soon, Pepper." Tony said, quite reluctant to hang up the phone.

"Okay...see you soon." Pepper said, not wanting to hang up, ever.

Pepper set the phone in its cradle and sank back into the sofa. She felt like she was in a dream. Tony was coming home.


YAY! Tony comes HOME! :D Review please!