Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Marvel Studios, Disney, Warner Bros. Entertainment, and/or their otherwise respective owners.

Author's Notes: Hi, everyone! We're back for chapter 4! I'm seriously loving these weekly updates haha. I'm used to only being able to doing this with my smaller-word count chapter fics, and even then only when I'm in good health (which y'all know is not always a guarantee lol).

Some meta updates: Iron Man 1 officially concludes with chapter 9 for this fic, which is also when Iron Man 2 kinda begins? Idk, it's complicated. I'm up to chapter 10 being completed now but I'm not done working out all the kinks for the Iron Man 2 plot and I don't wanna overwhelm myself, so we're sticking with the weekly updates. I've also found my fan-casting for Jason Todd in this 'verse with Graham Phillips. This is my most out there casting yet I think but, I took one look at him and I was like, "yes," which is more than I can say for any of the traditional fan-castings for Jason.

Chapter title comes from Hell's Bells by AC/DC.

Anyways, that's where we're at right now. As always, I hope you enjoy! Until next chapter,

~TGWSI/Selene Borealis

~the black and gold 'verse~

~black and gold~

~chapter 4: hell's bells~

The next morning, they got up bright (figuratively speaking) and early to finish up the remaining parts of their plans.

They booby-trapped the door with the explosives that he'd built and other heavy items to keep it from opening until said explosives were set off, then got to work on putting him in the suit. Because that was what the main part of his plan had been all along: a metal suit, the power of which relied on his arc reactor, meaning he was the only one that could fly it. He had drawn it down on paper so that he and Anahita would have a frame of reference and it wouldn't exist solely inside his head, but without the proper lighting, all you would see were the plans for the Jericho missile on the same paper, not the suit.

Their good luck wasn't meant to last forever, however. As Anahita helped him get into the suit and boot it up, they heard the alpha and beta men coming towards them, shouting and yelling.

He grimaced. "Dammit."

"Don't worry about them," Anahita advised him. "Say what happens next again."

Tony knew she was trying to distract him, and it worked. "Forty-one steps straight ahead. Then sixteen steps, that's from the door, fork right, thirty-three steps, turn right," he recited, before he groaned. "Ah!"

Anahita looked at him, eyes full of worry. "Did I hurt you?"

He shook his head. "No, no. Just finish strapping me in!"

"Anahita! Anahita! Stark!" the alpha that was next in the chain of command shouted from the other side of the door.

Tony's head jerked. "Say something. Say something back to him!"

Anahita's eyebrows furrowed. She shouted something in a language that he didn't recognize, but it sounded vaguely similar to the Pashto he remembered Farzana – the traitor – speaking back during her internship with him and Pepper. It had to be one of the other Iranian languages. Probably Persian, all things considered.

The men tried to open the door and initially failed. They tried again, which triggered the explosion. Tony turned his face away at the last second, squeezing his eyes shut tight. But still the light of the explosion lit up his eyelids as the sound threatened to shatter his eardrums.

"How'd that work?" he asked Anahita in the silence afterwards.

"It worked alright," she assured him.

He grinned, though now was not the time nor place for smiles. "That's what I do."

They kept on working as fast as they could, but they had to wait for the suit to be activated. The progress bar indicating its activation on the computer screen was not even halfway there when they heard the footsteps and shouts of more men coming down the hall.

Anahita tossed her head to look behind her, her lips pursing. "We need more time," she said. "I'm going to go get you some more time."

"Anahita, no, wait!" he protested. "Stick to the plan! We need to stick to the plan!"

But she was already going; he saw her pick up a gun from one of the dead men's bodies just outside their room before she disappeared from view.

"Dammit!" he seethed. There was nothing he could do to go help her, not until the suit activated.

The second that the progress bar reached its conclusion and his suit came to life, he went into action. There were men coming into the room through the door; raising his right hand, he fired the repulser in the palm of the suit. The blast sent them flying. One of them, he was pretty sure, died. But he was so focused on getting out of here, on getting back to his husband and kids, he didn't think about the fact he was now directly staining his hands red with blood as he walked forwards and kept on using the repulsers of his suit along with several other things he'd built into it, doing everything that he could to get his way out of the cave.

When he reached the mouth of the overall cave-system after what felt like an eternity but could only have been thirty seconds at the most, light shining in from it, the first thing that he saw was the lone figure in his way. Raza Zadran. He was sure of it.

Then his eyes saw Anahita laying on top of a stockpile of ammo. The front of her salwar was dark and damp.

"Anahita!" he shouted again, tumbling forwards.

"Dr. Stark, watch out!"

Zadran fired upon him with a gun. The bullets dinged against the metal of his suit, but not one of them penetrated it and actually hit him. Rather than shooting directly at the alpha, when Tony fired his repulser one more time, he hit the wall just behind Zadran. The mini-explosion that ensued caused a collapse, which at the very least knocked him out. Tony didn't think to check to make sure that the man was dead.

No, the omega finished making his way over to the goddess instead, what felt like his heart spasming. "Anahita," he breathed, taking off his helmet so he could inspect her properly. Now that he was close enough, he could see that her salwar had a hole in it, the type that would come from a stab wound. Her blood, a dark red that looked more like wine than it did human blood, was gushing from the wound, even as she had a hand placed over it to try and stop it. Her other hand didn't have a gun it in any longer, but a knife that looked to be made out of adamant, the same material as her cuffs.

The fact that she'd pulled it out already, rather than keeping it in there...he didn't need to be a doctor to know what that meant...

"Anahita, what did you do?" he cried out. "I told you to stick to the plan!"

The goddess smiled at him hazily. "This was always the plan, Tony."

That was the first time she'd called him by his first name.

He didn't like what that meant, or anything else she was saying. "No, we're getting out of here. Both of us. Come on. I know you're injured, but – what about the other Djinn? Don't you want to see them again?"

She coughed, a drop of her blood coming out of her mouth and splattering against her cheek. "I lied, Tony. I told you that they were all alive, but they're not. They were all killed one by one after the fall of the Sasanian Empire. I was the last one left...until now." Her gaze pointedly fell to his stomach, covered by the suit as it was.

He used that as leverage. "What about our child? If I keep it...Anahita, I won't have any idea what the hell I'm doing! How the hell am I supposed to raise a half-Djinn child?"

"How does any parent raise their child upon realizing they don't know the first thing about parenting? They figure out how. And...it'll go easier than you think. You have a husband, a loving family." She coughed again. "This is not an argument you are going to win, Tony. I'm already dying. It's okay. I want this. I want to be reunited with my family again."

Her eyes were already becoming unfocused. She was straining them, trying to prevent the inevitable, but he could see it.

Tony struggled for breath. "Thank you for saving my life. Both times."

"Thank you for giving me the one thing I have been without for so long, even though I will never get to see our child: a family," she returned. She gasped one last breath, letting her eyes unfocus properly, becoming glassy.

Aredvi Sura Anahita, the Iranian goddess of fertility, health, water, wisdom, and war, was now dead.

Tony didn't scream, even though he wanted to. Not yet. He had to finish getting out of here first.

He stepped out into the light for the first time since he'd been taken out of the cave to observe everything that made this not-Ten Rings group that it was. The men outside fired at him, giving him everything that they got. Like Zadran, they weren't able to cause any damage. They stopped.

He sneered. "My turn."

He was going to make sure that they paid for what they had done to him, to Anahita, and to everyone else they'd ever harmed. He was going to make sure they wished that they had never been born.

After laying waste to the terrorist organization's camp, he flew his suit as far away from them as he could. It gave out before he could even cross the desert that was between their group of mountains and the next, making him crash into the sand. He screamed at the pain that the landed caused, but after some wriggling and writhing, was able to get out of the suit, rubbing at the wrist he'd put Anahita's bangle on, now at his side. He wasn't going to discard it, of course, not when she'd given it to him, but that didn't deny the fact that it'd rubbed his skin raw from being shoved inside the suit along with the rest of him. He hadn't been able to make adjustments to accommodate it better.

"Not bad," he said anyways, observing the wreckage of his latest creation.

He put the bangle on once more, got up, and began walking in the only direction that he could: away from his captors. He didn't know where he was going. He didn't know where exactly he was, outside of somewhere in the Kunar Province still.

The sun beat down on him, harsh and unforgiving. He quickly shed his jacket and held it above his head in a vain attempt to keep himself cool and a less-vain one to prevent his skin from getting burned. He had a small water canteen with him, but he knew that it wasn't going to last him for long.

For two days and nights, he walked in the desert. In complete contrast to the hot and fiery days, the nights were cold and freezing. He couldn't afford to rest for long during them, the jacket back over his torso and the black tank-top that he was wearing. He shivered with every step that he took, then sweated with every step he took not twelve hours later.

He had a lot of time to think because of this, perhaps too much. He didn't cry, because crying would've only meant dehydrating his body at a faster rate than it was already. But he did think about Bruce, the kids, and the rest of their family, and how much closer he was to getting home to them now. In the desert, there was no guarantee that he would actually survive to see them again, but fuck it, again he'd come all this way. It would be unfair for him to die now. He thought about all the love that he wanted to shower them in, all the hugs and kisses that he wanted to give them.

He thought about Anahita, too. She was dead now, and so apparently had been the other Djinn for centuries. The fetus inside him was the only one that was left, half-human or not. He'd been uncertain before about whether or not he was going to keep it, even more uncertain than he had been when he'd found out he was pregnant with Lili, but now...

No wonder Anahita had given him her bangle. He didn't think he could abort a child that was the last of their kind.

At the same time, he cursed Anahita for keeping the truth from him until she'd been dying. He cursed her for dying at all. He cursed the true leader of the Ten Rings for putting those cuffs on her wrists centuries before he'd even been born and the previous leader of the not-Ten Rings, Raza Zadran, and his daughter for all that they had done to lead to his particular set of circumstances. Naturally, it didn't do anything, because he was all alone in the fucking desert, and if it was doing anything, it was only sapping him of energy that he needed. But it was cathartic, and he knew only a taste of what was to come once this entire shit-show was over and he was home at last.

The morning of the third day, just when it was becoming sweltering, as he turned his head to look behind him and make sure that none of his captors were following him (they hadn't so far, but he was too paranoid to think that they wouldn't simply not bother trying to find him, letting him die in the desert instead), he saw three black specks in the otherwise perfectly blue sky. He stopped in his tracks and raised a hand to shield his eyes and glasses from the sun, thanking his lucky stars once again that the latter had been able to survive through everything.

After a couple of minutes of him staying there, the specks grew large enough that he could see them for what they were: helicopters, in the design of the United States' military's.

Tony almost collapsed to the ground with relief, and in fact did when one of the helicopters landed and he saw who came out of it.

Rhodey walked up to him with a trail of military personnel directly behind him. "How was the 'fun-vee?'" he asked, clapping his shoulder. As Tony let out a half-laugh, half-choked sob, the beta man's expression softened even more than it already was. "Next time, you ride with me, okay?"

"Okay," Tony agreed without hesitation.

Rhodey and one of the medics helped lead him to the helicopter, supporting his weight. Once on the helicopter, there was a flurry of activity as the pilots took off: the medics quickly hooked him up to an IV line that went to a bag of saline and forced him to lay down with his legs and feet slightly elevated. They gave Rhodey a bottle of water with a straw in it to help him drink. "Small sips," his best friend instructed, holding out the straw to him.

Tony took a sip, and he hadn't even realized how parched his mouth had been. He'd known it was bad, but not this bad. "Don't worry, Dr. Stark," the main pilot shouted from the front. "We're going to get you back to the Bagram Base in no time!"

Tony didn't really pay attention to him. He absentmindedly registered what he said, but he had better, more important things to worry about than where he was being taken for his initial medical treatment before he was declared healthy enough for international travel.

Mainly: "How...how long was I gone?"

Rhodey hesitated. "Tones, maybe we should wait to talk until we get – "

"How long was I gone?"

"Today's date is April 17th, 2008," Rhodey said.

Tony's mind did the math on that, though his computing abilities were a little sluggish from having been stuck in the desert for two days and nights. So, Anahita's estimates had been a tad overshot. He'd missed Dick's birthday like he'd thought, but not Edward and Gemma's. Things could be worse.

Next question, really the most important question that should've been asked first: "What about Bruce and the kids? How are they?"

Rhodey laughed, but Tony noticed the edge to it. "They're fine. They're fine. Bruce is actually going to be landing at Bagram in a couple of hours – "

The omega's eyelids, which had been drooping and were already halfway closed now that he could finally rest, flew back all the way open. "What?" he cried. "Why isn't he home with the kids?"

He'd expected, upon being rescued, that he would be taken to the military base to be treated before being sent home. He'd also expected that Bruce wouldn't be there. It wasn't anything against his husband; if anything, it was Tony's fault for secretly being pleased at the expected lapse of time. He hasn't figured out a good way to tell Bruce about everything that had happened with Anahita yet. He needed more time...which was now whittled down to a couple of hours, not the twenty he'd prepared himself for...

His best friend frowned. "Bruce made a deal with some...friends who were more than chivalrous in their willingness to help," he revealed, eyeing the military personnel before giving him a pointed look. It took a moment for Tony to make sense of what he was telling him: SHIELD, the same asshats who had made Bruce do the dirty work with Rebecca and then acted like they were so gracious in allowing her to stay with them, had helped Bruce. "They let him work with the military over the past month and a half to look for you."

"Who's...who's been watching the kids, then?"

"Alfred, Rebecca, Pepper, Taryn, and Selina," Rhodey replied. "Who else did you expect?"

Tony nodded tiredly, grateful that their family had stepped in that way. But nevertheless, his heart ached all over again: his babies shouldn't have been without their parents for the last month and a half. Dick. Jason. Lili. Harley. Peter. Bea. Edward. Gemma. None of them.

He'd made his husband promise before to put them before him. He wished the alpha would've stuck true to his word this time.

"Bruce's made daily calls and frequent trips back to Gotham," Rhodey added, as if that was supposed to make things better.

It didn't.

They didn't really talk any more for the rest of the flight back to Bagram. Tony kept on sipping at the water Rhodey held steady for him, thankful for how it soothed his mouth and throat.

Upon arriving at the base, he was carried out of the helicopter on the stretcher he'd been put on. There were a lot of people standing near the helipad: soldiers – airmen – whatever you call them saluting him, in what he supposed was meant to be some sort of honorific. All it did was make him queasy, like his intestines were a twisting and coiling pile of snakes.

"Dr. Stark," the general he vaguely remembered meeting greeted him again as he was wheeled off towards the building the hospital was in. He gave him a solemn nod. "We are glad that we found you alive. Welcome back; we'll get you back on American soil soon."

Tony, for reasons he didn't understand, felt himself flinch at the alpha man being so close. He nodded back, unable to get his vocal cords to work.

In the hospital building, he was given his own private room, which honestly impressed him – because he hadn't expected the facility to have that kind of capacity at all. The doctor and a nurse took over for the medics. "Hello, Dr. Stark," the doctor – another alpha – said. "My name is Dr. Langley. I understand you've been through a lot over the past two months, but I'm not going to ask about any of that beyond what is medically necessary. Have you been injured or have any wounds that have gone untreated?"

"You mean besides having a bunch of shrapnel in me that was surgically removed and having a giant hole in my chest?" he croaked out.

Rhodey, who was sitting in the hospital chair at his bedside, tightened his grip on the armrests.

The doctor's eyes flitted down to the arc reactor, shining through his shirt. "Is that what that blue light is from? Is it some sort of...prosthesis?"

To this, Tony said nothing.

Dr. Langley tried to take a different route. "Dr. Stark, would you allow me to perform a physical examination on you?"

"No."

Now, the doctor was baffled. "'No?'"

"I said I don't give you my consent to perform a physical examination," Tony snapped, suddenly feeling downright furious. "What, do you need me to say it a third time? Want me to say it in a different language so that you'll get the point? Non ti do il mio consenso!"

"Tones..." Rhodey whispered. He sounded horrified.

Tony didn't look at him. For the moment, even, he ignored him.

Dr. Langley recovered relatively easily. "I understand," he spoke. "Would you be willing for Nurse Patel to a patient monitor, as well as take a blood sample so I can run some tests and replace your saline bag?"

"Yes," Tony said. He was agreeable to that.

Nurse Patel did as she was instructed. His blood pressure was high, but that was to be expected from the dehydration, heat exposure, and undoubtable malnutrition that he knew he had. She whisked away the vials of his blood when she was done, taking them out the door, which Dr. Langley had already walked through.

In her absence, there was an eerie silence.

The muscle under Tony's right eye twitched. "Rhodey, whatever it is you're thinking, spit it out," he said.

The beta man's left hand was cupping his forehead. He could see it out of the corner of his eye. "Is that light coming from the hole in your chest?"

"Yes."

"What's it for?"

"The person – " he swallowed. He didn't feel comfortable referring to Anahita like that, but he wasn't going to tell Rhodey everything that had happened to him before he did Bruce, even though the beta was his best friend and brother in all but blood " – who removed the shrapnel from my torso wasn't able to get rid of all of it. There's some in my chest still. The arc reactor – " he rapped one of his knuckles against it, which made a solid sound, even through his shirt " – is keeping it all from reaching my heart and killing me. Have another question you want to ask?"

"Yes," Rhodey said. He cleared his throat. "Tony, were you...?" He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence out loud.

Tony blinked, looking at his best friend properly. It didn't take him long to figure out what he was thinking. Rhodey's expression was absolutely wrecked.

Oh.

"I wasn't raped, platypus," he spoke quietly.

The release of tension in Rhodey's body was visible, his visage turning into one of pure relief. "You weren't?"

"No." He shook his head. "The guys that took me had my weapons. They wanted me to make a Jericho for them. They were more interested in my brain rather than my body, and their leader knew that...doing that to me wouldn't be conducive to me finishing their missile." He wasn't going to mention the comment that Zadran had made about his men being "tempted" to do it in spite of his orders; he wasn't going to put that on Rhodey. "But I didn't build them the missile, just for the record. I figured out a way to get out of there instead," he added.

Rhodey chuckled wetly. "Yeah, I figured that."

Tony closed his eyes, allowing himself some rest instead of doing the thinking that he knew he really needed to be doing. The sound of his own heart through the monitor, faster than it had ever been before at resting rate but still steady, and Rhodey's breathing lulled him. He didn't sleep, but he wasn't really awake, either. He existed in that half-conscious state where you were mostly drifting and you were either too hot or too cold, and once you woke up properly you had a bout of acid reflux if you had it (which he did – that's what six pregnancies did to you). But he knew that he was safe, that he was secure, that he was finally going to get to go home. That made everything alright, at least for now.

A knock at the door had him startling back awake, feeling almost feral as his eyes darted around the room before he remembered where he was. Right. He wasn't in the cave with Anahita anymore. This room was too clean, too white, and too bright for that.

He heard his heartbeat from the monitor still going faster than it had already been going, way too fast, as he looked at the door to his room. His entire body began to tremble. Was the person on the other side Bruce? Was he going to be able to see his alpha after so long?

The answer was no, not yet. The door opened, revealing the Dr. Langley, and Tony let out a sigh that was both disappointed and relieved, as horrible as that sounded. The alpha doctor was holding a small stack of papers in his hands; his face was grim. "Dr. Stark," he said. "I have some of the initial results from your bloodwork."

Tony stared at him expectantly, clasping his hands over his stomach. "And?"

"Most of it is what we expected due to your time in captivity: your blood pressure is high, but your blood sugar and and cholesterol are low. But...there is something that I would like to talk with you and your husband about, when he gets here." He glanced over at Rhodey, his expression unreadable.

Tony knew what the doctor was giving him here: an out. He could hold off on dealing with the inevitable shit-show from Rhodey until Bruce came and the two of them talked about what had happened in private. And they could decide on what to do...next from there.

But Tony, for as much as he did not want to deal with the immediate backlash that was going to come from Rhodey finding out, did not currently have the patience to beat around the bush. "I think I know what you're referring to, Dr. Langley. Just spit it out."

Dr. Langley glanced over at Rhodey again, his lips thinning. "Are you sure?"

"Sì."

"Alright," the doctor said, "according to your bloodwork results, you are pregnant." Rhodey made a sharp, high noise in the back of his throat, but both of the other two men ignored him. "The levels are just high enough to be detectable and your other hormonal levels indicate that you had a heat sometime within the past two weeks, so I would guess that you became pregnant then. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

Dr. Langley nodded. "Like I said, I will not ask you questions beyond what is medically necessary. But I do highly suggest, Dr. Stark, however this pregnancy happened, that you consider your options when you get back to the States. No, I am not advising you to have an abortion. That is your choice." The last part, he spoke as Tony bristled, his shoulders raising. "But regardless of whether or not you and your husband decide to terminate, there are other resources out there that could help both of you. Speaking of your husband, when Mr. Wayne arrives, either Nurse Patel or I will lead him back here and help you get discharged when you're ready. After that, you're free to go. If I do not see you again before you leave, then I wish you a good day, Dr. Stark, and that everything goes well for you in the future after what you have been through."

The doctor left the room after that.

The second that he was gone, that sharp, high noise came from Rhodey again. "You're – you're pregnant? How is that or you going into heat this early even possible? You had your tubes tied and you only gave birth to Edward and Gemma eleven months ago! And why don't you seem surprised by this?" Rhodey demanded.

Tony rubbed at his right temple. "My heat ended early, Rhodey. That's usually indicative of only one thing. And yeah, I had my tubes tied. They're not tied anymore."

"But, how? And what about – you just told me that you weren't raped!"

"And I wasn't!" he snapped, glaring at his best friend. The intensity in his voice gave the beta man pause. "It...it wasn't like that. I mean, yeah, I didn't have much of a choice – "

"That's the definition of 'rape,' Tones!"

"Will you just shut up and listen to me?" Tony demanded.

Rhodey went quiet.

After a moment of waiting for him to go back to ranting again anyways, the omega continued on. "To answer your question about my heat being so early, it happened because of...environmental reasons. Nah-ah! I'm not telling you what I mean by that. Not yet." Rhodey's mouth, which he'd opened to undoubtedly demand what kind of "environmental reasons" could trigger a heat like that, closed again. "I was given a...choice by the person who was held captive with me. She could fix my tubes and the other things that would make another pregnancy...difficult for me, and she could...help me through my heat. Though, to be fair, she didn't want to do that last part, either. But we had to. It was the only way that I was going to even have a chance of getting out of there alive." He sniffled, wiping at his eyes. "So either it wasn't rape, or it was rape from a third party, or...you know what, I don't care. I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat, because I'm here now. I'm alive. I get to go home."

He watched Rhodey mull this over for over two minutes.

"What happened to this...person that was held captive with you?" he finally asked.

"She's dead," Tony said bluntly. "She died so that I could escape."

"So the woman that you had...sex with in order to prevent your captors from raping you, the woman who knocked you up – " well, that was crude, but it wasn't untrue " – is now – ?"

Abruptly, he cut off.

There was another knock at the door.

And Tony knew it in his heart of hearts.

This time, it was his alpha.

The door opened, and Bruce was on the other side. Like Tony knew he must've, his husband looked like he had been through hell. He was dressed in military camo, which did absolutely nothing for his bloodshot eyes with prominent circles underneath them. His hair was messy, and he was sporting a beard, because apparently he'd decided to go without shaving over the past two months. He looked so distraught, and Tony wasn't sure if it was because he'd overheard what Rhodey had said (the walls of this facility couldn't be that thick, although his best friend had been taking low), or because he was looking at his mate for the first time in two months after said mate had been kidnapped by a terrorist organization.

Whatever the reason, Tony didn't care.

"Tony," Bruce breathed. "Omega."

"Hi, Alpha," Tony returned with a watery smile. "I'm home...or, almost."

And just like that, all the strength he'd been projecting for the past two months vanished. He completely and utterly fell apart.

Word Count: 5,165

Next Chapter Title: only you