Chapter Text
Tony came awake with a jolt.
For a moment – a single pure moment – all there’d been was the darkness and the distant, fading sensation of pressure. The black had come to swallow him whole, the pain had stopped. They had all been safe, all of them. Free and alive and well. He’d been drowning in blissful, rapturous relief.
But then?
But then the flash. And the jolting awake.
Searing agony, burning up and down his arms, centred in his chest. Choking in his throat and-
Oh god.
Sensation had returned with a vengeance.
Pepper had said that he could rest now, but his heart was screaming and he couldn’t breathe. His ears were ringing, his lungs desperate, his sight stuttering in and out and oh god-
Desperately bucking up against the- the thing holding him down, Tony howled in miserable spasms and begged, begged, begged for the torment to end, for the black nothingness to come back. He just wanted it all to stop, he’d thought it would stop! The incinerating burning burning burning of the stones was supposed to stop!
Red flashed across his vision while he convulsed, a blood splattered scalpel and gore soaked gauze. Vibrant and violent against the dark haze beyond. And the voices. Shouting and yelling, harsh constants that made no sense, that rose and fell with the wavering of the light.
There was light?
Dim and orange – no, harsh and white too but still more shadow than illumination, a blinding glow that revealed almost nothing even as his eyes watered. And in it, blurs of motion that flitted about as he flailed upwards again, back arching and hands scrabbling uselessly.
Sweat trickled down his face as his head thrashed back and forth, the burning pressure on his torso increasing as he struggled. And then the light dimmed once more as something moved towards him. The flash of red again, the dull gleam of metal. And then his chest!
Scraping, clawing, stabbing anguish.
Tony screamed as his eyes rolled back into his head.
She’d promised him rest.
Tony came awake again.
Another jolt. An instant rush from nothing into awareness, his eyes snapping open and his muscles tensing.
His throat was dry as he held back a pitiful moan, and every one of his limbs was suffused with a dull ache. Blinking rapidly against the freezing air, he stared up into the darkness for a long second, his thoughts stuttering.
He knew that roof. That damp rocky expanse.
Coughing weakly as he tried to breath through the instinctual panic, he pawed feebly at his face, already knowing what he was going to find there. With clumsy fingers, he grasped the thin tube, desperately trying not to retch as he slowly pulled it up out of his nose. As soon as it was free, he took as deep a breath as he was able to around the casing he knew was once again embedded in his chest.
“Fuck,” he rasped lowly as he patted weakly at the wad of bandages he knew better than to tear open this time.
He found the wires quickly, careful not to pull them taut as he followed them up to the car battery he also knew was waiting for him.
“Fuck,” he repeated again, his voice a keening wail when he found the damned thing sitting innocuously on a low table next to him.
He was in hell, he realised, tears brimming in his eyes. He was in hell and hell was a cave in Afghanistan.
“S’an electromagnet right?” he asked tiredly as he pulled the thin ratty blanket off his cot and wrapped it around his shoulders. He’d forgotten how hellishly cold the cave had been, how damp and grimy and miserable. Icy water dripping down the slimy back wall, cloying dust and grit stirred up with every shuffled foot, and a never ending chill that seeped into your very bones and stayed there.
“Yes, very intuitive of you,” Yinsen smirked back as he continued stirring a pan of flavourless soupy bean mush. “I removed as much shrapnel as I could, but there’s a lot left and it’s headed for your atrial septum.”
“Sheer dumb luck that the old weapons division used magnetic metals in the inner shell cases before I shut it down,” Tony sighed quietly to himself, swiping a shaking hand down over his clammy face. “Yay for me.”
“I’ve seen many wounds like that in my village,” Yinsen continued on with a frown, turning to grab a small, filthy vial. Tony caught it with both hands when it was tossed gently to him, and held it up to one of the flickering floodlights. Just as he remembered, tiny shards of metal tumbled about inside it as he rotated it and he glared at them balefully before glancing back up at the doctor. “We call them the walking dead because it takes about a week for the barbs to reach the vital organs.”
“Am I Rick Grimes or Dayrl Dixon?” Tony quipped half-heartedly before he could think better of it.
“I take it that’s a reference I’m supposed to get?”
“They’re- never mind, hasn’t been filmed yet. Won’t start until 2010 and I never watched it anyway.”
“That’s the second time now that you’ve spoken of the future as if it’s the past,” Yinsen commented mildly with a raised eyebrow. “Should I be concerned?”
“Well I sure am,” Tony snorted humourlessly, knuckling at his eye socket again. “Can’t quite decide if I’m dead or just back in time. Again.”
“…Again?”
“Yeah the first time was a little more voluntary though, and more Back to the Future than Groundhog Day.”
Yinsen was staring at him with obvious unease now, his eyes flicking up and down. Tony was fairly sure the doctor would lean over and check his temperature with the back of his palm soon, or demand to check the mass of stitched flesh and metal that made up his chest for infection.
Complaining about time travel probably did sound like raving fever dreams to someone from a world that hadn’t yet met Nordic gods, the Mystic Arts, and alien invaders.
“You know, I think I’ve met you once before actually,” he changed the subject quickly, resolving to keep his sci-fi musings to himself from now on. “Turn of the millennium right? That tech conference in Switzerland that I gatecrashed?”
“Well now I am impressed,” Yinsen huffed wryly, taking the bait. “I am surprised you remember anything of that night at all. If I had been that drunk I wouldn’t have been able to stand let alone give a lecture on integrated circuits. That you remember my face…”
“Something Yinsen yeah?” Tony shrugged with a wince. Damned electromagnet. “You tried to introduce me to that other person only I kept uh, making drunken jokes.”
“Jokes is perhaps a bit mild-”
Yinsen cut off as there was a loud bang from the door and then a clatter as the bolts were pulled back. The metal creaked open a second later, and Tony lurched to his feet and raised his hands without needing Yinsen’s prompting this time.
Time to face the music he guessed.
Damp and shivering, Tony glared at the retreating backs of the Ten Rings men. Waterboarding was just as unpleasant as he remembered.
Actually, he would say it was worse this time. As awful as it had been the first time round, it had at least been, you know, the first time. Which meant he hadn’t been having PTSD fuelled flashbacks of being repeatedly drowned by terrorists while… being repeatedly drowned by those exact same terrorists.
Plus before he’d also had the satisfaction of clinging to his defiance. No matter how long they had held him under, he’d been able to scream I refuse, I refuse at them both in his head and out loud. This time he’d lied straight off and told them okay, he’d build what they wanted, hoping to spare himself the torture.
They’d laughed and dragged him to the barrel of water anyway. Said that they wanted him to be sure of his decision before they let him get to work. It was pretty clear that actually, they just enjoyed torturing him and didn’t need an excuse or a reason.
Bastards.
Shifting on his cot to lie on his side, grimacing at how much filthy water was soaking into his scratchy blanket and misshapen rag pillow, he grimly recalled how long the initial round of Drown-the-Stark had lasted the first time. Three days – maybe – before they dragged him in front of that camcorder and slapped him round a bit. Another half a day before they hauled him outside and showed off their stash of illegal weaponry.
Three and a bit more days of waterboarding. And electrocution, given how much water and exposed electromagnets did not mix. With the occasional slap to the face or kick to the knee just to spice things up and keep things fresh.
Fuck it all.
Fuck it all to hell. (If he wasn’t there already.)
He really fucking-really should have taken up Wong on his offer that one time. Then he could have portalled out of here in an instant. Made himself one of those ring-sling things and just fucking left. Bye Felicia.
Yeah well, joke’s on himself.
Seriously, fuck it all. If he gets out of here again- when he gets out of here again, he’s going straight to the bloody New York Sanctuary (Sanctum?) and enrolling himself in Hogwarts. He won’t even laugh and ridicule the art this time (not much anyway).
And then he’s building all that space shit that he and Rocket had designed. Along with his nanite suit of course. Blow up the terrorists, save the world a few times. Perhaps dick-punch Thanos before he got any of the stones?
Marry the shit out of Pepper. Like, immediately. Well. He should probably court her again first. Properly this time, with less emotional constipation on his part. Oh! Build War Machine but better. Maybe drag Rhodey with him to wizard school?
“Hey Yinsen,” he rasped with a lopsided grin as he entertained a few more ridiculous fantasies where in he went mad with power. “You ever heard of the term Mary Sue?”
“The literary device? Or I suppose it is more of a trope.”
“Yeah well, think I might rename it to Tony Sue and patent it.”