"So what have we learned so far, class?" I ask the assembled heroes sitting around the room.

"Tony missed your birthday." Steve offers.

"Because he was missing." Bruce corrects.

"You spent one hundred and two days sitting at a ring of computers and not eating." Natasha adds.

"And now Tony's home and Obie's shifty." Clit concludes.

"Okay, you're right so far. Let's watch the next part, shall we?"

A~A~A

Tony and Taylor are shown working in the lab, rock blasting quietly.

"Well at least that's normal." Clint sighs, relieved.

"For now." I nod with a smirk.

"So," Taylor turns around in her chair to face Tony, who's looking at diagrams of parts of something unintelligible. "You go mysteriously missing for three months, are presumed dead, show up alive, and come home with a night light implanted in your chest."

Tony sighs and faces his daughter. "Well, let's start from the beginning. The convoy got attacked."

"I know."

"Innocent people died. I ended up next to a bomb…" Tony trails off, and Taylor's eyes widen in horror.

"What you said at the press conference….it was an SI, wasn't it?"

Tony nods. "The bomb exploded, and shrapnel got sent into my chest. They brought me to a cave, and there was another man. His name…his name was Yinsen, and apparently we had met before at a conference before you were born. Anyways, he was a doctor, and he made an electromagnet to keep the shrapnel away from my heart."

Taylor looks confused. "Um…why were you in the cave?"

Tony clenches his jaw. "They wanted a missile. I didn't want to give them anything."

"They?"

"The Ten Rings. Our 'loyal customers'."

Taylor winces. "Go on."

"I will not go into details of what they did-"

"Dad-"

"No." Tony stares at his daughter, using the tone he seldom uses, his stern, 'parent' voice.

"Okay." Taylor nods meekly. "So what did you do?"

"Instead of building a missile, I tricked them into thinking I was, but I was really building this." Tony points at his chest.

"A miniaturized arc reactor." Taylor's eyes widen. "How'd you get out?"

"I built this." Tony slides one of the holograms over to Taylor, one with a diagram showing the parts of Mark I.

Taylor's jaw drops as she stares at the diagram. "Wow. Holy…wow. This…this is amazing! You made this from scraps?"

Tony nods proudly. "I did."

"Are we going to go anywhere with this?" Taylor tilts her head.

"Maybe." Tony murmurs vaguely. "But, ah, first…how big are your hands?"

Taylor holds up a nimble hand, fingers splayed. "Small, I guess. Why?"

"I need you to help me change this out." Tony starts unbuttoning his shirt.

"Change the thing keeping you alive?" Taylor rolls over, her eyebrows raised. "With what?"

"We're changing out this," Tony motions towards the old reactor, "an antique, with this." He hands Taylor the new reactor, and she studies it with reverence. "And my hands are too big to do so. Plus, there's a little snag."

"What do I need to do?"

Tony pulls the old reactor out. "There's an exposed wire under this device. And it's contacting the socket wall and causing a little bit of a short." At Taylor's worried look, he rushes to finish. "It's' fine. Put this over there."

Taylor still looks worried, but she takes the reactor and sets in on her desk, behind them.

"No, I want you to reach in, and you're just gonna gently lift the wire out."

Taylor rolls back over, but hesitates. "Um, is this safe?"

"Yeah, it should be fine. It's' like Operation. You just don't let it touch the socket wall or it goes 'beep'."

Taylor stares at him incredulously. "Should be? Dad, I never played Operation!"

"Um…yeah, never mind. Just gently lift the wire, okay?"

Taylor reaches her fingers into the cavity in his chest, but hesitates again. "Um, shouldn't we get a doctor to do this?"

Tony sighs. "Taylor, look at me."

Taylor looks up.

"You'll do fine, okay? Don't second guess yourself. You're the most capable and trustworthy person I know. Besides, if I can't trust you, who can I trust?"

Taylor looks considerate. "Okay, I guess."

"Now, I'm kind of in a jam here…"

"Right." Taylor sticks her hand fully into the cavity. "Uh, is this pus?"

Tony shakes his head slightly. "It's not. It's' an inorganic plasmic discharge from the device, not from my body."

Taylor screws up her face. "Well, it smells."

"Yeah, it does. The copper wire. The copper wire, you got it?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, now, don't let it touch the sides... argh!" He flinches as some of the monitors beep frantically, "when you're coming out!"

Taylor whimpers. "Um, sorry?"

"That's what I was trying to tell you before. Okay, now make sure that when you pull it out, you don't... There's a magnet at the end of it!"

Taylor pulls the magnet out and raises an eyebrow at her dad.

"That was it. You just pulled it out."

"No duh."

"Okay, I was not expecting... Don't put it back in! Don't put it back in!"

"Okay, what now?" Taylor glances at the shrieking alarms. "Dad!"

"No big deal, I'm just going into cardiac arrest 'cause you yanked it out like a trout..."

Taylor stares at her dad. "You said this was safe!"

"We gotta hurry. Take this. Take this." He hands Taylor the new reactor. "You gotta switch it out really quick."

Taylor begins inserting the reactor. "Okay, alright." She pauses. "Dad?"

"Yeah, sweetheart?"

"Is it going to be okay? Are…are we going to be okay?"

Tony looks at his daughter. "We should be. Okay, you're gonna attach that to the base plate. Make sure you..."

Taylor clicks the reactor in place and leans back with a relieved sigh.

"Was that so hard? That was fun, right? Here, I got it. I got it. Here. Nice."

"How you doing?"

Tony laughs lightly. "Yeah, I feel great. You okay?"

"Yeah." Taylor rubs her face. "I need to learn how to do that properly. With a little less false security."

Tony nods. "You should. I don't have anyone else."

Taylor reaches behind her and holds the old reactor. "What do you want me to do with this?"

Tony shrugs. "I don't care. Throw it away, study it, scrap it…"

"Don't you want it?"

"Taylor, I've been called many things, but nostalgic is not one of those."

Taylor shrugs and slips the reactor into one of her desk drawers.

.

The memory switches to show Rhodey standing in front of a bunch of cadets.

"The future of air combat. Is it manned or unmanned? I'll tell you, in my experience, no unmanned aerial vehicle will ever trump a pilot's instinct, his insight, that ability to look into a situation beyond the obvious and discern its outcome, or a pilot's judgment."

"This is a creepily ironic conversation." Clint points out.

"Foreshadowing." Bruce agrees with a nod.

"Colonel? Why not a pilot without the plane?"

"Foreshadowing indeed." Steve agrees.

Tony and Taylor walk in, with Taylor looking much healthier and brighter.

"Speaking of manned or unmanned, you gotta get him to tell you about the time he guessed wrong at spring break. Just remember that, spring break, 1987. That lovely lady you woke up with."

Rhodey groans. "Don't do that."

Taylor smirks. "What was his name?"

"Both of you. Don't do that."

Tony snickers. "Was it Ivan?"

"Don't do that. They'll believe it. Don't do that."

"Okay then."

"Don't do that."

Taylor turns to the cadets. "Pleasure to meet you."

Rhodey looks at the cadets. "Give us a couple minutes, you guys." He turns back to Taylor. "Well, you're looking better."

Taylor nods shyly. "I ate this morning. And slept in a bed last night."

Tony looks between them, confused. "What?"

Rhodey sighs as Taylor suddenly looks very interested in her shoes. "Guess what this numbskull was doing while you were…away?"

Tony looks suspicious. "What?"

"Not sleeping, barely eating, pale, bags under her eyes…"

Tony turns to her daughter, eyebrows raised. "Something you're not telling me?"

"Um…" she stutters. "No, nope, p-pretty sure Rhodey covered it all…"

Rhodey raises an eyebrow. "I didn't cover the part about Obie yet."

Panic explodes in Taylor's eyes. "And you don't need to!" she hisses quietly. "That was resolved."

"It was?" Steve looks at me. "It didn't seem like it was."

I shake my head. "It wasn't. But my dad still trusted Obie, so…"

"Anyways," Rhodey turns back to Tony. "I'm surprised."

"Why?"

Tony shifts his weight from foot to foot. "I'm doing a little better than walking."

"We are." Taylor corrects.

"Really?"

They both nod. "Yeah. Rhodey, we're working on something big. I came to talk to you."

"We want you to be a part of it." Taylor explains.

Rhodey grins. "You're about to make a whole lot of people around here real happy, 'cause that little stunt at the press conference, that was a doozy."

Taylor clears her throat. "Yeah, that still stands."

Tony coughs awkwardly. "This... is not for the military. I'm not... it's different."

Rhodey raises an eyebrow. "What? You're a humanitarian now or something?"

They both sigh, and Taylor looks up at Rhodey, almost pleading. "You need to listen to us."

Rhodey shakes his head. "No. What you two need is time to get your minds right. I'm serious. Both of you."

Tony and Taylor glance at each other, looking unconvinced. "Okay."

"It's nice seeing you, Tony. You too, Taylor."

"Thanks." The chorus, turning to walk back to the car.

Tony looks at Taylor. "Three months."

Taylor nods, keeping her eyes on her shoes. "One hundred and two days."

"Why?"

"I had to find you," Taylor whispers.

Tony shakes his head. "Taylor, I had the entire military looking for me, you didn't need to. Why?"

"I needed…" Taylor sighs. "I needed to help, maybe I would see something they missed, maybe…"

"Okay, I get that." Tony nods. "But working yourself to collapse?"

"You do the same thing!"

"For a week, maybe, not as long as you did!" Tony raises his voice slightly, and Taylor ducks her head.

"I'm sorry…"

Tony sighs and runs a hand through his hair, working to lower his voice. "I didn't mean to yell. But, if there's a next time, I need you to promise me you'll take care of yourself first."

Taylor nodes silently.

"Good. Now come on, I want to show you a new project."

A~A~A

"Does Rhodey still trust you two?" Clint looks at me, worried.

"Yeah," I nod, "he's just trying to look out for us. If your best friend spent that long in captivity, wouldn't you do the same?"

Clint blinks at me. "No."

I snort. "Well not you, you and Tasha hate shrinks. What about you Bruce?"

"Probably, if I couldn't treat them myself."

I nod, satisfied. "See? Proof."

Clint shrugs. "I guess. So he's on your side?"

"Yes."

"Good. You need him."