Chapter Three, An Unexpected Surprise

After Toni had, finally given in, and said yes to the terrorists who had kidnapped her and were torturing her, she was led (dragged, after being beaten), to a different part of their mountainous hideout where Yinsen was waiting for her with a worried expression especially as both she and the reactor were soaking yet. He barely caught her when she was pushed roughly towards him as they whipped the bag off her head; the sun nearly blinded her.
"Where are we?" Toni whispered to her friend and saviour.
"It's not good." Yinsen replied grimly, slowly leading further outside to a horrifying sight; they had enough of the weapons she had laboured over tirelessly to start a war.

A man, on the shorter and chubbier side, who said his name was Bakaar, and who was at least the second in command, as he had a self important air about him, asked Yinsen to translate for him.
"He wants to know what you think." Yinsen informed Toni grimly.
"I think they have a lot of unauthorised weapons from my company." Toni muttered sarcastically. Yinsen wisely left out 'unauthorised' as he translated back.

"He says they have everything you need to build the Jericho missile." Yinsen translated. "He wants you to make a list of materials. He says.. err.. for you to start working immediately, and when you're done, he will set you free."
"No we won't." Toni whispered under breath so only Yinsen heard as she shook the man's hand holding back a shiver at the suggestive looks he and his men were giving her.
"No we won't." Yinsen agreed.

Bakaar beamed at them both. He was too arrogant and ignorant to know that he'd just doomed his entire camp to death. You never gave Toni Stark access to technology; especially not access to weapons. Bakaar glanced with a smug smile into the distance where a man (his leader perhaps) was watching them from the top of a rock, not noticing that Toni had followed his eye-line.
'They're all going to regret this.' Toni vowed to herself.

* * *

Later on, both Yinsen and Toni (who had just undergone another round of torture 'for good measure') were back in their cell, Toni staring melancholy into the fire.
"I'm sure they're looking for you, Toni." Yinsen tried to reassure her but he also had to warn her so she didn't get her hopes up too high (he didn't want to see that broken and defeated look in her eye to build any further). "But they may never find you in these mountains." When she didn't answer Yinsen crouched in front of Toni. "Look, what you just saw, that is your legacy, your father's legacy, Toni. Your life's work in the hands of those murderers. Is that how you want to go out? Is this the last act of defiance of the great Dr Toni Stark? Or are you going to do something about it?"

"Why should I do anything?" Toni interrupted, still staring at the fire with a hopeless tone to her voice, until she turned to Yinsen looking so vulnerable with her hopeless, listless Dow eyes that the man became even more protective of her and vowed to himself to carry on encouraging and supporting her.
"They're going to kill me, you...either way. And if they don't, I will probably be dead in a week." There's a lull in conversation until Yinsen grasps her hand offering it a comforting squeeze.
"Well then," Yinsen studied her as he rose to his feet. "This is a very important week for you, isn't it?" Toni's lips lifted in a wry, faint grin at the joke before her eyes find their way back to the fire, and then, as if a switch had been turned on, the hopelessness melted away and was replaced with pure determination.

* * *

The following two weeks were pure chaos. Toni was standing in the middle of her cavern cell ordering the terrorists around to set up a temporary workshop with Yinsen, looking rather amused, as her willing translator. It had to be the best part of her captivity to date.
"If this is going to be my workstation, I want it well-lit. I want these up. I need welding gear. I don't care if it's acetylene or propane." Toni didn't even need to fake her confidence that she practically oozed. She was a genius and knew what she wanted and needed.

While Yinsen struggled to keep up with her rapid fire instructions.
"I need helmets. I'm gonna need goggles. I would like a smelting cup, and I need two sets of precision tools." Yinsen gave her an incredulous look after her next demand. "And I need tampons, I am a woman after all. What?" She asked once the terrorists left to carry out the instructions. "They tortured me so I'm gonna be petty and make life difficult for them."
Yinsen just laughed and shook his head at her.

Time seemed to fly by rather quickly as Toni worked on tearing the missiles open once everything was where she requested, even several boxes of tampons had been dumped on her cot-like bed.
"How many languages do you speak?" Toni asked absently.
"A lot. But apparently not enough for this place. They speak Arabic, Urdu, Dari, Pashto, Mongolian, Farsi, and Russian." Yinsen replied, placing a tool on the desk beside Toni. He knew now she didn't like being handed things.

"Who are these people?" Toni asked as she pulled out the inner workings of the missile.
"They are your loyal customers."
"They are not my customers." Toni muttered harshly. "I know who everyone in my company has sold to, who has contracts, which is only the Air Force, Military, and Marines. So I can guess whose customers they are; the same person who betrayed me and why I'm here." Toni's hand clenched tightly around the wrench in her hand until Yinsen rested a hand on her shoulder, grounding and calming her as she let out a heavy sigh.

"They call themselves the Ten Rings." Yinsen replied, squeezing her shoulder once more but this time in apology. He could sense the hurt and anger from her words and the fire in her eyes. "You know, I could be of more help, and we might be more productive if you tell me the planning process." Yinsen asked only to receive a vague hum from Toni; she was too focused on knocking the head off the missile.
"Okay, we don't need this." She tossed a bit of metal over her shoulder, Yinsen gave her an incredulous look before he noticed the tiny strip of metal in her hands.

"What is that?" Yinsen asked.
"That's palladium." Toni held it up grinning. "0.15 grams. We need at the very least 1.6 grams, so could you break down the other eleven please? I'll instruct you how." Yinsen didn't look too thrilled by breaking down destructive items he knew next to nothing about; but he did offer his help. So he conceded and followed very one of Toni's instructions meticulously.

A couple of hours later, with all the palladium collected and melted down, Toni couldn't help but be extremely nervous.
"Careful. Careful, we only get one shot at this." She warned.
"Relax, I have steady hands. Why do you think you're still alive?" Toni let out a snort of laughter at Yinsen's morbid sense of humour.
"Oh I love that I've met someone with an equally morbid sense of humour." Toni laughed, Yinsen joining in as his hands were finally free as Toni took over to shape the mold. Continuing working Toni placed the now malleable palladium into the cuboid mold with a pair of tweezers.

Once in the mold, she continues to adjust and make changes to it until it is powered up with a bright blue glow. Toni couldn't stop the large grin from spreading across her lips even if she wanted to. A proud look of a parent adorning her face.
"That doesn't look like a Jericho missile." Yinsen noted, coming over for a closer look.
"That's because it's a miniaturised arc reactor." Toni explained with a prideful lilt to her voice. "I got a big one powering my factory at home." Her voice falters a little but she steeled herself and continued. "It should keep the shrapnel out of my heart."

"But what could it generate?" Yinsen asked curiously, his eyes still on the arc reactor on the table. He couldn't help the flicker of pride he felt for the woman before him.
"If my math is right, and it always is, three gigajoules per second."
"That could run your heart for fifty lifetimes." Yinsen muttered, impressed.
"Yeah," Toni stared down at the reactor, swallowing against the bout of nausea she'd been having recently, the blue light shining on her face and enhancing her beauty. "Or something big for fifteen minutes." As she stood from the table a wave washed over her causing her to stumble, Yinsen catching her, as she suddenly felt faint.

"Toni? Are you alright?" Yinsen asked her in concern.
"Yeah. Yeah, I suddenly just felt faint." Toni murmured.
"Here. Sit down, I'll get you some water and then I'll examine you and replace the battery with the reactor." Yinsen helped her sit back down before he rushed to get her some water. He had a feeling he knew what was wrong, and he just hoped he was mistaken. The last thing Toni needed, with them torturing her every other day and the lack of food and water (only getting both just as they were about to pass out), was to be pregnant and for it to zap up the last of her energy and resources.

He was right. Or at least, he guessed he was, as in their current environment there was no way to positively know for sure. But the signs were all there.
"We best get a move on then." Toni muttered grimly, not wanting to deal with the situation at hand in case something happened. "This is our ticket out of here." Toni laid the blueprints out, overlapping each other to show the full picture of what she was building.
"Impressive." Yinsen smiled a little.
"Yep." Toni scooped the designs up and threw them in the fire.
"What-?" Yinsen asked in shock.
"I've got them stored here." Toni tapped her temple. "We can't risk them seeing it." Yinsen conceded, nodding his head. They definitely don't want that.

* * *

If they had to hazard a guess they had been there for either a month and a half or two months, and morale was definitely at an all time low. Which is why Yinsen insisted they take a break, and taught Toni a game called Black Gamon, a game he used to play with his children.
"You still haven't told me where you're from Yinsen." Toni commented. She didn't like quiet, it's why she always blasted her lab with music.
"I'm from a small town called Gulmira." Yinsen explained. "It's actually a nice place."
"Do you have a family?" Toni queried casually.

"Yes. And I will see them when I leave here." Yinsen replied, taking his go. "And you Toni? Do you have a family?" Glancing at her wedding rings.
"Yes. I have twins, Peter and Katherine. They're two this year and are my whole world. They are much kinder and sweeter than I am and so smart. Kat is a Daddy's girl and Peter a Mummy's boy but they always want me to tell them a story in Italian over Daddy." Toni smiled sadly with her eyes shining with tears. She kissed her babies so much. "I have an amazing husband who was one of my best friends in M.I.T along with Colonel James Rhodes or Rhodey as I call him, Hope Van Dyne and...and Carol Danvers." Tony took in a fatted breath, looking down at the piece she fiddled with in her hands.

"They didn't care, they were saddled with a thirteen year old girl with Daddy issues and became the most important people in the world to me. They were there for me when my parents died, and then through my second parents deaths, they were there through everything. Rhodey even gave me away at my wedding. Both Rhodey and Carol joined the Air Force straight out of M.I.T, but Carol...she was presumed K.I.A nearly two years ago. Just before the twins were born. Then I have my robot babies, Dum-E who tries to put motor oil in any of the adults' drinks but he never puts it in Peter's or Kat's, Butterfingers, who is really sweet but she drops everything nearly as much as Dum-E.

U who likes throwing a ball with the twins and J.A.R.V.I.S my AI or Just A Rather Very Intelligent System who I named after my father's butler who was more my father than Howard was. My god-sister Sharon Carter, my godparents Nick Fury, and Peggy Carter-Sousa and her husband Daniel, and finally my friends/employees Harold 'Happy' Hogan and Pepper Potts-Hogan." Yinsen knew then that Toni didn't hold her self worth and vowed to show her that before they left this place.

"I'm sure they're doing everything they can to look for you, Toni." Yinsen reassured the twenty-one year old woman.
"Rhodey is. My family is, everyone else would've just given up after a week." Toni countered sadly.
"Tell me about him. Your husband." Yinsen clarified at Toni's confusion.
"His name is Stephen Strange." Toni informed, a smile appearing on her face.
"The Dr Stephen Strange?" Yinsen asked almost giddily, causing Toni to giggle. "The famous neurosurgeon that performs miracles with his hands?"

"The very same." Toni smiled, lighting up as she talked about her husband and children in a way Yinsen had only seen her do when they were working. It was then that he swore to himself that he would get Toni back home before these people chip any more of her away.

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Author's note: DO NOT ask me to update in any way shape or form. There are other ways of telling me what you thought of this.