NOTE: Some of you may notice that my story 'Don't Read the Last Page' is missing. This is because FFN's content guidelines prohibit 'you' framework stories, and possibly all second person stories entirely. Despite the fact that this rule was probably created in 1995, it's a rule, and a 'helpful' commenter took it upon themselves to police my story (despite not being an admin. It's their pastime, you see. Instead of writing or reading.), threatening to report it if I didn't rewrite it all. Part of why I didn't push back and simply deleted it is because THIS story has an entire song that I wrote myself in one of the chapters. FFN also prohibits song lyrics, and I am genuinely uncertain that I would be able to prove that the song I included is one of my own making, but I also would hate to have my account banned or this story removed because I wrote a song and they can't tell the difference.
If you would like to read that story, head over to Archive Of Our Own (AO3) and look for user 'Darsynia.' I have that account name on FFN as well, but started using it as a username after one of my most popular stories was already posted under this account. I saw no reason to swap over! If at any point I stop posting updates or this account disappears, I'll be over there (I believe I have marked some stories under the pseud 'Ssergit' if you forget my alternate name). Sorry for the inconvenience.
Chapter Eleven: د لمر وړانګې
Now that Emory has clearly manifested some potentially powerful abilities, Tony spends more time being worried about her safety than he expected he would. Part of it is that he isn't sure whether their captors have seen anything unusual while monitoring them via their surveillance camera. He doesn't think they have recording capabilities, because that would require someone to spend time playing the video back to search for anomalies, and Tony thinks they're too lazy for that. It still worries him, though, because in the week and a half since her vortex of particles, the view port on the metal door has been used multiple times a day. They're het up about something, and nothing about that fact can be good.
His armor isn't finished, but it's close, and even that fact worries Tony. It's too heavy for Emory, it's powered by something embedded in his chest, and he doesn't have time to make her a version even if she could figure out how to use her powers to help bear the weight so she could wear it. He can't figure out how to protect her, and that's completely unacceptable.
Tony's taken to waking up in the early, early morning. The sounds of snoring from Yinsen have come to be an odd indicator of normalcy for him, but he looks forward to the musical noises that Emory lets out at around this time without fail. He's come to accept that he has strong romantic feelings for her, feelings that will probably make their escape attempt a terrifying experience no matter what the outcome will ultimately be. Every night, when he wakes up and waits to hear the signs that she's singing in her dreams, Tony thinks about the story that Yinsen told them about falling in love with his wife. Every night, his conclusions about that swing wildly from pole to pole, as he reconciles his life before this cave to what his life could look like once he gets back home.
Half the time, Yinsen's story is a get out of jail free card of sorts. Developing feelings for someone you're trapped with is human nature, the story implies, so the durability of those feelings are allowed to be questioned. If Yinsen and his wife had chosen to reject their newfound attachment, Tony sometimes reasons, they likely would have succeeded, because it was formed in extreme, somewhat negative circumstances. It's only because they decided to be weak and acquiescent that they chose to remain attached.
The other half of the time, Yinsen's story is a warranty, a promise that such a rocky start doesn't have to mean an impossible, obstacle-laden path forward. Yinsen clearly adores his wife, and Tony's not ignorant to the idea of trauma bonding. He knows he's taken part in that, and not just because he finds Emory's body attractive. She's quick witted, deeply caring, and hard working, even to her own detriment. In many ways her struggles are the opposite of his own, and as he's seen himself move along the path towards being less inwardly-focused, he's watched her become more so. It might even be true that his overabundance of confidence has helped her recover from her own drought.
This morning is the first time he's woken up thinking about home, longing for home, in a long time. Tony's kept himself from those thoughts, firstly as a self-defense mechanism because there's no point in wanting something there's no hope in attaining. Later, he'd pushed those thoughts away out of a sense of confusion; he couldn't align his newfound sense of guilt about his past behavior with the idea of going back home and picking his life back up. How can he manufacture weapons knowing the kinds of people who can get their hands on them? How can he tell Emory that she needs to turn her back on Rory Fall and her manipulative behavior when he's been a similarly selfish friend to Rhodey and Happy at various points in his life?
But now? Now, he wants to get back there. He knows he can do better, has some ideas on how to achieve that. He wants to introduce Emory to Rhodey, to Happy, to Pepper. He thinks they'd get along. He wants to be there when Emory stands up to Rory. He wants to see her face when she sees the view from his house in Malibu. He wants to see her face when she meets JARVIS for the first time. He wants to watch her hair blowing in the wind riding next to him in one of his convertibles. He wants to share a bed with her.
None of that can happen if they don't survive this place, though. He's been trying to come up with some kind of protective solution for her for days, but as Tony hears Yinsen stir in his cot and start the process of dressing himself, he thinks of something.
"Yinsen?" he whispers loudly, hoping not to wake Emory. It's a tossup whether she'll wake up early or not, usually depending on how late they spend talking the night before. Last night was one of the late ones.
As Tony had thought he might, the older man walks over to find out what Tony wants.
"Didn't they give Emory two outfits? The red one and another one? What happened to the second one?"
"Too revealing, she said. I laid it near the rags," Yinsen tells him.
After retrieving it, Tony sees what she meant. Where the red dress and trouser set is more of a traditional garment, this black garment is almost a caricature of the other one. It's made out of thick fabric just like its red cousin, but this one has a low, curved vee neckline, silver beadwork on the chest, shoulder cut-outs, form-fitting sleeves with a light-weight filmy fabric draping down from them, and a double skirt made up of a miniskirt/shorts covered by more of the filmy fabric that tapers down from the hips. Tony could imagine that the lightweight fabric of the skirt and sleeves would probably float if Emory wore it and used any of her air manipulation powers.
The design on the chest is made of alternating half-moon shapes that make an undulating sort of V shape leading up from the waistline. They remind Tony of the profile of the curved missile carapaces they have no use for.
Tony looks over at Emory's sleeping form and thinks for a while. He's got a pneumatic attachment for his drill that could punch holes in that thinner metal. Would it be possible to cannibalize this outfit as a base to mount a kind of layered armor made from half-moon shaped slices of the missile skin? Even if it only served to dampen the speed of incoming projectiles, it might be better than nothing, especially if she can further slow them with her powers.
He lays out the ridiculous outfit on the table and shoots another look over at her. She'd be upset, he thinks, if she knew he was thinking about doing this instead of making the helmet and the other final tweaks to his suit. Ever since their captors had started to watch them through the door slot more often, Emory has been anxious about how long he has left before he'll be finished. Tony had made the mistake of mentioning his habit of taking a break when he hits 90% on a project to work on something else, coming back a few days later with fresh eyes. He'd suggested to her that maybe they could come up with some kind of protective gear for her to wear during their escape, and Emory had been upset at the idea of any delay, even one to her benefit.
He'd be upset at the idea of her dying from something he could have protected her from.
Tony gets a pencil and a blank sheet of paper and starts sketching, using the garment on the table as his base.
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"What are you doing?" Emory asks him about six hours later, after they've eaten and she's finished using her broom to sweep up the metal shards from his current phase of work. Tony hadn't asked her to, but she'd come over and frowned deeply at the floor scattered with sharp pieces of metal. She'd frowned even more deeply when she found out he'd already gotten two stuck into his shoes.
Tony can't help it. He feels cared for, even though Emory is kind of berating him for letting the pieces get to the point where they could fuck up his shoes. It reminds him of Rhodey's brand of shit-talking kindness. Even though they're stuck in this damned cave, her actions make Tony feel at home. He doesn't want to tell her about his plan, though, because he knows her. She'll ask him if he's done with his suit, and if he isn't, she'll demand he finish it first. That's just the kind of person she is. So, Tony prevaricates. It's for her own good.
"Protection for the joints. Don't want to end up with a bullet to the elbow, that'll ruin my entire day," Tony tells her, not making eye contact. He's got too many of the slices for them to realistically be for the joints. They're in a small, ratty cardboard box, so he starts moving some of the materials on the table, coincidentally setting some of them on top of it to hide them from her. The move probably would have worked on Pepper (or at the very least, she wouldn't have revealed that she was onto him), but Emory is straight up suspicious.
"I thought you were working on the helmet today?"
"Well! I didn't realize I was being spoken to by the Assistant to the Assistant Manager," Tony teases, and Emory's furrowed brows ease. "Had an idea, maybe it won't pan out. Not everything can be about flamethrowers," he says, shooting her a defensive sidelong glance.
She favors him with a crooked grin. "It's a shame we can't risk firing them off in here. I really wonder if I can make fire-nadoes with them."
Tony looks over at her instead of at the box he's trying to keep her from seeing. Emory's got a look of devilish curiosity on her face that he completely recognizes. Maybe it's because his assistant is already on his mind, but a thought floats up: Pepper Potts would never get excited about such a thing. While he's distracted by that, though, Emory makes her move.
"Joints, hmm?" she says, holding up one of the half-moon slices of metal he'd been trying to hide from her. She'd snuck around behind him.
"Who are you, Anderson Cooper?" Tony asks, snatching it away, putting it back, and picking up the box to hold up where she can't reach. "What does it matter?"
"I freely admit I don't know you very well, at least the you that you are at home," Emory says, her grey eyes steady as she looks at him. "Maybe you're used to having multiple projects going at once… but it would make me worry less if you could finish the helmet, at least? If we need to hide it somewhere so they don't realize what it is, I'll sleep with the darned thing, I just-" Emory stops speaking and screws up her face as if she's said too much.
She looks really worried, and Tony wonders what he's missed by trying to stay away from her as much as possible while she tries to master her new abilities. The fact that his very presence nearby seems to generate the required energy is both gratifying and frustrating, but has it caused him to miss something important?
"What do you think I'm making instead?" Tony asks gently.
He can see that she's embarrassed, and he is too, because it seems like Emory has figured it out that he's making something protective for her, and she doesn't know how to tell him to stop. He doesn't want her to tell him to stop.
"You are a genius. You're rich. You're powerful. You're important, to the world, and to me. I want you to finish your suit, I want you to make it out of here. Can you do that for me?" Emory asks, her grey eyes fired with the same passion he can hear in her voice. She's practically shaking with the intensity of it.
"Hey, come here," he says, trying to pull her close. She holds her body rigid, looks up at him with real fear in her eyes.
"Tony, promise me."
"I'll finish it, I promise," he says. He holds her gaze for what feels like thirty seconds before she relaxes. Emory kisses his chest, over his heart.
"You'd better."
They stand like that for a while, until yet again, the viewing port on the door is opened, and the two of them startle back apart. Emory heads back toward her cot, and Tony walks over to where he's set up a decoy Jericho, a shell that hides some of the flamethrower and pneumatic parts that need to be affixed onto the suit soon. The suit will be large, and he won't be able to keep the pieces scattered and hidden throughout the room for long, but putting it together will take a while too. Yinsen's suggestion of creating a few 'walls' in the room that hide them from the surveillance camera has helped, but those only work when no one comes inside to peek behind them. The welded chest piece is under Tony's cot, and the leg pieces are stacked up as if they're old missile trash, complete with the 'jet propulsion' contingency he'd fitted them with.
Tony continues to try to look busy, but they're not sliding the view port closed again. He looks over at Yinsen, who winces.
"Well, someone just dialed up the difficulty level," Tony says.
There's no way to disguise what amounts to a cosplay sewing project as a weapon of mass casualties, so Tony does actually end up working on his suit. He finishes up with the arms, essentially hiding behind his fake Jericho until just around his normal meeting time with Emory. She comes over, and Tony almost changes his mind about pushing her away when he sees the open, honest affection she has on her face. With that viewing hatch open, though, they just can't risk their normal routine.
"Did you ever stay up past your bedtime working on stuff?" he asks her as he conceals the work he's done just in case their captors come nosing around in the middle of the night. "You know, clock radios, television sets, lawnmower engines?" Tony knows she probably didn't, that she'd likely have been up reading books or writing poetry, maybe practicing singing the same way she does now. He's trying to set her up to forgive him for skipping out on their stolen evening time together, though, so he's gotta pour on the charm.
"Oh, of course. Didn't everyone try to build their own nuclear reactor with household products?" she says, waving her hand in the air dismissively.
"Exactly. You get me," Tony smiles. "That's my evening plan. Need to put some shit together under the blankets using my handmade flashlight-" he taps his chest "-now that they're giving us less privacy."
"Oh," Emory says. There's a wealth of disappointment but also understanding in that one word. She reaches up and kisses his shoulder. Without saying anything else, she starts back toward her area of the cave- but she stops just once, and looks at the box he'd tried to hide from her earlier. She doesn't even have to look back for Tony to get the message.
He hopes that she'll forgive him when, in a few days, both projects will be finished.
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Emory finds it hard to sleep. Something's up with Tony, and he probably doesn't know that the blanket he's working beneath is thin enough for her to see a slight glow in the center of the room. It's not stationary, either. He works under there for long enough that Emory drifts off and wakes after a stint of fitful sleep only to see that he's still moving around.
The period of sleep might have been restful for her body, but it had unsettled her mind quite a bit. Even before falling asleep, Emory had been consumed with uncertainty. Now, lying in the dark watching the man she's fallen in love with work on a secret project he won't divulge to her, Emory's consumed with worry. She's anxious about whether she'll be able to protect herself and Yinsen while Tony takes the lead fighting their way out of the cave. After all, she's been limited in the ways she can practice her strange new abilities in the limited space. If they manage to get away, they have no idea how long it'll take for them to be rescued even once they get out of the terrorists' reach. Their food probably won't last very long, even though they'd started stockpiling bread and have been keeping the most edible dried beans in a separate container to carry with them when it's time. Those are just the most present of her worries; the longer-reaching ones are even more fraught.
She might have to kill. Tony almost certainly will.
Even if/once they're rescued, there are more considerations. She almost certainly doesn't have a job anymore, not that she'll be able to go home right away anyway. Emory's seen enough movies and read enough historical nonfiction books to know that the government won't be anxious to let them head home without a thorough accounting of their time, descriptions of their captors, and explanations of where exactly they'd been that whole time. Maybe she's not prominent enough to have people still searching for her, two plus months after she was taken, but Tony absolutely is.
At least that thought brings some hope with it. It's very possible that the US Military knows where they are, but can't afford the political and manpower implications of a rescue. After all, Tony's a weapons manufacturer. There could be arguments that spending blood and treasure (and risking international incident) to rescue him counts as preferential treatment. That might mean that the three of them just need to get far enough away from the terrorists to be picked up. If they don't exactly know where they are, thanks to Tony's prominence, there may at least be fly-overs looking for them just in case (though after two months, that's probably wishful thinking).
But, once the three of them are released from those obligations, what will 'going home' look like?
The faint blue glow subsides, and Emory sits up in her cot, straining her eyes to see if there's still detectable movement. She counts to sixty and doesn't see any. Tony's finally going to get some sleep, it seems. She should, too.
Her thoughts had already been trending toward what life might be like for her if all goes well and they return to the real world, and now that Emory knows Tony's lying still, she wonders what he's thinking about. Would it be giving herself false hope to imagine a life after rescue that has Tony Stark in it? Is there any chance he's picturing her as a part of his life, too? She almost chuckles to herself; thanks to profiles done on him in magazines she's seen, Emory knows what his house looks like, but she can't picture herself ever visiting it. Even though she's been 'celebrity adjacent' for over half a decade at least, she'd never reached his level.
"Go to sleep," she whispers to herself, eyes locked to the specific part of the darkness that Tony's cot is situated in, in case he hears her. There's still no movement, so she takes in a deep breath, holds it, and lets it out slowly, trying to use that as a reset of sorts. There are many steps left before she can find out where she stands in Tony Stark's life, and there's no point in pretending she won't enjoy the time she has left, even if it's brief.
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"All that's left is the helmet," Tony announces to her the following day, as they eat. "Well, and then I'll need to put the arms and legs onto the body, and hook up the wiring."
"I've built a winch to help get it onto you, but I think we'll need some lead time, because that will be difficult to conceal," Yinsen reminds him. "Screws cannot be hurried."
"One of my favorite sayings," Tony says, grinning.
Emory doesn't know whether to laugh or blush, and does both. To cover her reaction, she says, "Will you show me the schematic so I know where the screws are? In case you need me?"
"The two of you are just lobbing over the net here. I'd love to need you, sure," Tony says, leaning back and stretching his arms up. He seems relaxed and confident, as if the dirtier and more disconnected from his flashy former life, the more he discovers he doesn't need those trappings to be himself. Emory snorts inwardly at her rosy view, recognizing it for what it is: the distorted lens of infatuation. It doesn't help that his phrasing is basically her ideal situation. She's pretty sure she's well on her way to needing him.
"Got some cuts to practice this afternoon, but maybe I can start the helmet at sundown. I'll get the last of the welding out of the way first," Tony says. "I still think you should let me at least make you a faceplate," he says, directing his words toward Yinsen.
Yinsen shoots her a look as he shakes his head. "Don't waste your time. The two of you will protect me in your various ways."
Tony leans his head over to Emory's as if relaying a secret. "Did you see him being Peak Dad with the implied responsibilities? On top of subtly implying that it's you I should be building armor for, if there's time?"
"Yep," she says, turning his head her way so she can drop a quick kiss on his lips. "Don't you dare."
She stands up before he can stop her, but Tony doesn't give up easily. He never does.
"First of all, don't tell me what to do," Tony says. It sounds good natured, but she can hear the testy undercurrent. "Second of all, I can't stop bullets with that thing, and you're going to need to see who you're trying to airbend into pretzels, Auntie Anne. It only makes sense to protect you."
Tony gets up and follows her as she walks over to rinse the dishes before setting them up to soak as usual. They don't get hot water unless they boil it themselves. She doesn't know what to say to him that doesn't sound lovesick, but he keeps trying to persuade her to let him make her something until finally Emory can't take it anymore.
"Tony!" she says, spinning around and grabbing handfuls of his shirt to get his attention. "I am asking you to finish your own armor first! You're too important not to, too important to our escape not to," she amends, feeling her cheeks heat up with the slip.
Tony looks down at her and scoffs. "So, what, you've traded allegiances now? Swapped Rory out for a newer model? Same doormat act, same lack of care for your own needs?" She's so shocked she lets go and staggers back.
"No!"
"It's either that or naivete." Tony points at the door. "As soon as they can see what I've made, we're done. We'll be hit by overwhelming force, unless we have the element of surprise. I can't finish the suit without putting it together, and once I put it together, they're going to see it. I either make you something now, or I don't get the chance," he says, his voice harsh and angry. "And, not for nothing? But I thought we were both making progress on the 'spectrum of selfishness' thing. Looks like I was wrong. You're right back where you were, you just switched who you're doing all that self-sacrificing for!" He shakes his head in derision and pushes off from the table they're standing beside to go over to his fake Jericho, slamming around the pieces.
Emory's hand had flown to her throat when he'd referred to her behavior as naivete, but by the time he's done speaking, she's clawing at her chest to try to stop her heart's aching pain from obstructing her lungs any further.
"It's not the same," she chokes out. It's a pathetic refutation of his diatribe.
"Looks the same to me."
"Yeah, well, trust me, it's different. For one thing, I wasn'tin love with Rory!" she snaps back without thinking.
The thing that Tony had in his hand falls to the ground. Before she can take it back, before he can turn around and let her see what his reaction is, the door slams open, and a large group of armed men storm inside, followed by a clean-shaven man with a commanding demeanor. They order the three of them to stand back.
Emory puts her hands up, sees that Tony and Yinsen have done the same, but she feels exposed, the tears from her argument with Tony still streaked across her face. She's usually able to drape a blanket around herself when they have visitors, but there's no chance for that, now. Her shirt is one of the ones that had shrunk in the wash. It's small and tight, a concession to the hot temperature in the cave on days like today where Tony's got the fire stoked to be hotter than normal.
The man who walks in has a sardonic look on his face as he takes in the state of disarray in the room. He looks first at Yinsen, then at her, then at Tony. "Relax," he says. There's an upward lilt to his tone, as if it's a bit extreme of them to react with such fear to his sudden arrival.
Emory can see Tony and Yinsen from where she's standing (so close she could grab one of the men's guns, though she would have no idea what to do with it besides just die, if she reached out for one). She sees that Tony's trying to take his cues from Yinsen, who looks like he's going to be sick. The terrorist walks over and reaches out with a finger to pull Tony's open shirt collar down, to better see the ARC reactor.
"The bow and arrow once was the pinnacle of weapons technology," he says in a gruff, lightly accented voice, releasing Tony's shirt and walking toward her. "It allowed the great Genghis Khan to collect territory from the Pacific to the Ukraine. His strength and strategy placed many people under his absolute authority." He's speaking about weapons, and as she listens, Emory's own weapon starts to manifest itself in a light coating of power she can feel on her exposed skin.
The terrorist reaches out toward her, and for a frightening second, she wonders if he'll be able to feel the power that's gathering there. He seems not to, though, lifting her chin so she is forced to look up at him. In her peripheral vision, Emory sees Yinsen make a 'settle' gesture, and knows it's to Tony.
The man rests his thumb on her chin and turns her head towards Tony with an inexorable grip. Tony's eyes are fierce and angry, but the rest of his expression is neutral. In a way, she's proud of him; Tony's not mindlessly angry in response to this man's touch on her, he's focused on the end goal.
He is possessive though, and everyone in the room knows it.
That knowledge triples the power she's manifesting, and now Emory has a dilemma. She's going to start shedding power, soon, and there won't be a discernible reason for it. Is there a way she can send some of it to circle at her feet, splitting it off into the depths of the cave? She has no idea how long she has before she'll be forced to find out.
The terrorist leader releases her chin and dips his hand down toward her chest, pulling the unbuttoned collar down just as he'd done with Tony's, as if to check to see if she too has a glowing disc to observe.
Tony's hands both tighten into fists. His jaw bulges as he clenches his teeth, but he stays silent, his face impassive, eyes full of fury. Emory twitches her hand, meaning it to look like a motion borne of fear, but in reality, she sends a tiny burst of power over to Tony. It lightly moves the fabric of his pants before fluttering the hem of his shirt as it flies up along his back.
For a split second, Tony's eyes shut, and one corner of his lip turns up. It means the world to her.
The truth is that she had wanted to reassure him, but she also had wanted to know if she could send small, directed bursts like that to bleed off some of the energy she's suffused with. Emory can feel her hair start to lift at the back of her neck.
Having made his point, the terrorist moves over to Tony's worktable, speaking about the size of Khan's army as he reaches out and lifts some schematics. "These days, whoever holds the latest Stark weapons rules these lands. Soon, it will be my turn," he says, moving back over to stand tall and expectant in front of Tony. Emory's sent about six bursts off to the back of the cave. She wishes she could send another to Tony, but knows that would be a very bad idea.
Their tormentor's next words are in a foreign tongue. Yinsen responds, anxious and placating. At the beginning of the exchange, the terrorist glares at Tony, while Yinsen begs him with his eyes to remain calm. Halfway through, the man turns toward Yinsen, and the men trade roles, with Tony widening his eyes, looking around at the men whose guns are trained on them. Her heart in her throat, Emory starts to slowly sidestep toward Tony, hoping the movement will distract him from any foolish moves he might be considering making.
Suddenly, the terrorist barks a command, and two groups of men step forward. Tony reaches his arm out and pulls Emory over in front of him, clasping his hands at her chest. She realizes too late that her movement has achieved the opposite of her intention.
Three men have grabbed Yinsen to thrust him down to his knees. The other three hover near where Tony has her crushed against his chest, looking to their leader for guidance.
The terrorist actually smiles. It's chilling. He gestures to the others to fall back, and strolls casually to the fire, speaking that foreign language to Yinsen as he does so. Emory wishes she could turn and bury her chest against Tony's, but his grasp of her is tight and desperate. She doesn't dare draw attention back to them, even as tears form in her eyes again at the pleading note in Yinsen's voice. Tony's arms start to shake, and she can do nothing to comfort him, not with so many eyes on the two of them.
As the man comes back from the fire, Emory gasps. He's got a burning hot coal trapped in a pair of tongs.
"Don't," Tony whispers to her, the words barely more than a breath.
She understands why, even before she watches the terrorist blow on the coal in between his threatening words. The coal pulses hotter with every burst of air blown against it.
"What does he want?" Tony asks Yinsen. Emory lets out a small noise of protest, and Tony kisses the top of her head. She hadn't been prepared for that, and in her surprise, Emory releases her grip on her powers for just a second. When she realizes what's going to happen, she leans into it, directs the energy into as natural an occurrence as she can muster.
A gust of wind blows around the room, hitting the men and their automatic weapons over by the cave entrance first, fluttering everyone's clothing and hair, and sending Tony's schematics sailing off of the table and onto the floor, skidding out of sight into the back of the cave.
Tony coughs, a sharp stutter of utter shock and awe.
Unfortunately, this new, frightening leader who has just made himself known to them is completely unphased by the unexpected display. He nods to the men who have their hands all over Yinsen, and they press the older man's head down onto the anvil that Tony had requested all those weeks ago. With the tongs mere inches away from Yinsen, the terrorist asks him something. Yinsen's answer has the word 'Jericho' in it. They repeat the question and answer, each becoming more heated.
Tony's grip on her has become very uncomfortable, and Emory can tell a split second before he acts that he's about to. He moves so swiftly and smoothly that she isn't quite sure how she has ended up behind him, her wrist held in his tight grip. Tony holds up his other hand just barely where she can see it, using a tone that's part desperate, part arrogant.
"What do you want, a delivery date? I can-"
Every single weapon lifts, and all of them are pointed at Tony.
If she wanted to, Emory is certain that she could sweep all the terrorists into a vortex that might even suck their breath away. That plan isn't as certain as Tony's ironmonger suit, though, so she maintains her tenuous grip on her powers, sending two more desperate skips of energy behind her into the back of the cave.
She hears her cot hop and realizes that she needs to adjust her percentages. Ten percent of two layers of power on her skin is small. Ten percent of ten layers of power on her skin is not.
"I need him," Tony says. It's not placating. It shouldn't work. But Tony Stark has a worldwide reputation, not just for genius, but for arrogance and conceit. Tony shrugs and mutters, "Good assistant."
It seems like this just enough of a nod to his own lack of agency. The terrorist drops the glowing coal onto the anvil two inches from where Yinsen's head is being pressed to the metal.
"Very well. You have until tomorrow to assemble my missle." With the tongs held aloft, he rests a heavy hand on Tony's shoulder, and steps around him.
"If you fail…" the terrorist dangles, looking at Tony before turning to face Emory. The man smiles, a creepy, threatening gesture, then nods to her as if to say 'hold still.'
"I have every confiden-" Tony starts to say, but as if to interrupt him, the terrorist reaches out and snags her shirt collar with the tongs.
The sizzle of singed fabric is very loud.
Tony groans, a low, agonized sound that hurts her to hear. Even though all eyes are on her and Tony, even though the terrorist himself is standing within a foot and a half of her, Emory sends another burst of energy to Tony, as small as she can slice off. She can see it ruffle his hair as it glides up; he must be sweating so much the shirt is clinging to his back, now.
"Please," Tony says quietly. Gone is the arrogance that had colored his voice earlier when intervening to save Yinsen.
"We gave her to you, and you haven't even fucked her," the terrorist says conversationally, turning his head to look at Tony. His hand does not stay steady without his gaze on the tongs, and Emory can hear her own heartbeat as fear being burned, being branded races through her veins. Her powers can't really help, even if they would cool the metal, as there would be no explanation for them except to give this ruthless, terrifying man another way to exploit them.
"Blame your spokesman," Tony says, with too much insolence in his voice. The terrorist turns his wrist without looking at her, and more of the shirt fabric comes into contact with the hot tongs. There's a hissing sound. Tony stops talking, his whole body going rigid.
"Go on."
"He- He suggested she might become pregnant, give you another hostage," Tony says.
Emory's hair starts to lift at the back of her head thanks to the sheer power she's clinging to with no possible outlet. If she were standing by herself, she could send it in chunks swirling around herself, but they'd collide with her captor and risk him discovering her abilities. Desperately, Emory sends some of it behind her, and seconds later the fire starts to crackle and spit.
Tony's still talking, his voice growing in strength, but not arrogance. "I didn't inherit my father's hard-earned money to father a child with a complete stranger, only for the kid to end up your pawn."
"So close to being a genius," the terrorist says, opening the tongs. He closes them with a click, then trails them down her shirt, across her breasts. The metal is still warm but nowhere near the level it had been just minutes before. Her collar is warmer, now that it's in contact with her skin. "You've lost your chance. Stay away from her until you deliver my missile tomorrow."
The man lifts his hand from Tony's shoulder and reaches into his clothing to pull out a pair of handcuffs. Before Emory can do anything, he's clasped one to her left arm, and is dragging her back to her cot. The amused nobleman demeanor he'd spoken to them with is gone, replaced with cold indifference as he shoves her down onto her side and fastens the handcuff to the right front leg of the cot.
"Twenty-four hours," he reiterates, before leading his retinue of armed henchmen out of the double metal doors, closing them with a clang.