Chapter Text
PART I: ASGARD
Toni’s ears were ringing.
Just a moment ago, she had been sitting in a jeep with three other soldiers, drinking whiskey and cracking jokes. She had been bored out of her mind, already daydreaming about the hotel food she was going to order and how she would manage to coax Rhodey into abandoning duty and joining her with a bottle of illegally obtained whiskey.
And now here she was, trying to not get killed, ears ringing, sand getting everywhere in her clothes and hair.
“Fuck,” she said, keeping herself as close to the ground as possible, not looking back at the dead soldiers around her. She hadn’t seen it coming - none of them had seen it coming. They had just been chatting and driving, talking about models, for god's sake. She hadn't seen the ambush coming; none of them had.
And now they were dead.
She reached for one of the dropped weapons, forcing herself to not glance or recognise the soldier who had been holding onto it (she did anyway)(he was the young one, the one who had wanted to get the picture with her with the not so silly peace sign thrown up), but she immediately dropped it, hissing in pain at the scalding temperature.
Just great, she thought, part of her mind making a note of ensuring this temperature issue was solved by the next launch (... if there was a next launch, after all this was said and done) (no, she could not think like this). Clearly, things were not planning on getting any easier any time soon.
She should not have come here. She had not really needed to, and she had not originally planned on coming to Afghanistan. She had planned on having a general demonstration via a powerpoint in the States with Rhodey present, and then they would have gone back to Afghanistan and showcased it. That had been the plan.
But Stane had insisted, saying that she needed to pay more attention to the company and whatnot.
And because of that her convoy had been blown to kingdom come and she and the other soldiers were still taking fire.
If she died, she was going to haunt her godfather till the rest of his days, and then he’d know.
Seriously, how many weapons manufacturers were actually expected to go to where the presentations were taking place? None, that’s how many. Toni really hoped she managed to go home, if only so that she got to wring Obie’s neck with her bare hands.
This had to be an ambush, she thought, startling at the sound of another explosion and throwing herself behind a rock. Someone had known they were coming, and they had prepared appropriately to greet them at the door.
Did they know she was coming? Was this just an attack on American forces or had they known Toni was around? She did not want to sound conceited or self-obsessed, but she had grown up in and out of kidnappings. It would not be far fetched to think that the terrorist wanted to rehash some of her old childhood traditions.
She pulled herself further behind a rock, pushing her hair out of her face with a sandy sleeve, and grimaced slightly - both at the action and the lack of protection. She doubted that a rock would protect her all that much from the missiles and the weapons being thrown at her, but right now it was better than being a sitting duck.
And the weapons...
She pressed her lips together as she chanced a glance back at the blown up jeep, fingers retrieving her StarkPhone and typing on it. She had heard reports about the terrorists' weapons becoming much deadlier in the past few years, but that was far more than what she had expected. Whatever had been thrown at them had blown up the roof of the jeep and burned most of the seats and... occupants.
Those poor soldiers.
Toni forced herself to look back at her phone, swearing in her head as the lack of cell towers around made itself known. Not even Starkphone were yet able to work without a phone connection - a flaw that she promised herself she would fix if she was able to get back home.
When she got home, come on Toni. Optimism and full glasses all around.
She did have international roaming because she was not a caveman and her JARVIS had separation issues that he refused to address, it was still unsurprisingly impossible to have decent internet connection in the middle of the desert. Toni was as shocked and appalled as anyone else, she’d assure you.
“Come on,” she tried, and that was when a second trilling noise managed to make itself known over the ringing in her ears and the sound of gunshots and explosions all around her.
She decided that someone up in the heavens had a really fucked up sense of humour, when she turned to her left and saw a familiar looking bomb sitting not too far from her, a glossy ‘Stark Industries’ written on the back of it.
She had been called inappropriate and unfunny plenty of times (mostly by Pepper and Rhodey), but seriously?!
Toni allowed herself a fraction of a second to stare at it. To stare at her bomb, and to think about the poetics of being killed by a weapon sporting her name and made by her company.
Was that how Achilles had felt when Apollo had guided Paris' arrow to his heel?
Then the second passed, and Toni decided she had never been one for poetry or for metaphors.
Toni had not built this weapon herself. Despite some popular belief of the masses, Toni did not hand create every single weapon that Stark Industries manufactured. She designed a high percentage of them, but that was about it.
However, she had been in the room when this particular missile had been born. Jim from Weapon Development had even brought it to her for advice on how to make it - ironically enough - more powerful, and Toni had helped him out.
She knew how powerful it was, knew the range of its power, knew what it could do.
And she did not fancy being its target.
She blamed the self preservation skills that JARVIS loved to say she lacked and the adrenaline from the situation, for the way she was moving a second later, grabbing the bomb in her bare hands and immediately chucking it the way she was pretty sure it came from.
There was a horrifying mix of Happy and Pepper's voices screaming at her in her head at the actions, and her hands hurt like a bitch, but Toni ignored it as best as she could, turning on her heels as soon as she launched the bomb (and thank any god who would listen for her occasional squash and tennis games) and making a dash for it.
Heels and desert sand did not mix well.
She only managed three steps before the thing exploded in the air, making her sensitive ears hurt even more than before and making her dive face first in the sand, with complimentary sand breakfast. Toni grunted, spitting the offending texture out of her mouth, but she refused to stay on the ground too long.
The most important thing: she had not been in the direct range of the explosion. Her leg hurt, and so did her ears, but she was able to move and stand up again, which indicated a promising lack of being blown up.
She did not look back at where the bomb had landed before exploding, and instead quickly inspected the area in front of her.
She was indeed in the middle of the desert, and just like one would expect, there was nothing familiar as far as her eyes could see. The only familiar trail Toni would somehow be able to recognise was the one littered with bodies, weapon pieces and blood, and she made the decision that she was not going back there.
She could only hope that the other convoys behind her had had better luck than hers (Rhodey was fine, he was fine), but Toni knew enough about how the military worked to know that trying to go that way would either mean she was going to die, or she was going to distract them.
Right now she was going to continue living under the belief certainty that Rhodey was alive and well, and fending off the attacks; she was not going to risk his life by running his way.
If only she had his soulmark on her skin, she'd be able to...
But no.
So instead she gave herself a second to pull herself back on her feet, and then she booked it straight ahead.
This was not ideal. Running in heels, on the sand, barely able to hear anything, while terrorists were shooting and bombing anything they could right behind her was in no way a clever idea.
But the other options were run towards the terrorists attacking or hurt the soldiers by going for them, and Toni was not doing either of those things.
Too many soldiers had died already.
Right now, all she could hope for was that the terrorists had staged this ambush because of her specifically. They might have tried to kill her by blowing up the envoy and giving her a present in the shape of a deadly SI missile, but you could not know for sure.
Surprisingly or not, this was not the first time Toni had been shot at - though usually there were more attempts at maiming and less at killing. Howard Stark was less likely to pay for his daughter if they brought her back to him in a body back, and he was plenty unwilling to pay for his daughter as it was.
Running this way put a target on her back, that was true; but it also took the terrorists' attention away from the soldiers, and that was what Toni and the soldiers needs. Unlike the terrorists, soldiers were trained for stuff like this, so the second they felt the terrorists' attention being captured by something else, they would be able to attack them and put them down.
Toni just had to survive until then.
Which was easier said than done, because trying to run zig-zag in the desert sand, uphill, in high heels, with sudden balance problems that made her feel concerned about a potentially bust eardrum, was all around not easy.
Taking off her heels was not an option either because she had no idea what animals or things existed hidden in the sand that would perforate her feet and render her incapable of moving at all.
“I am never going to the beach again,” she said, nearly losing her balance again as she continued to scale the dune. She was uncomfortably aware of how much of an easy target she was, right now, and she could hear Happy’s voice screaming at her for forgetting every single self defence tip she had ever learnt.
To be fair though, Happy had never taught her how to run away from terrorists trying to gun her down. He assumed he'd always be around to 'protect' her.
Though there had been a rather lack of gunning down, she realised, finally reaching the top of the dune. She had been running as fast as she could in her not desert friendly outfit, and unless her ears had completely given up on doing anything other than ring, she had not received the promised bullet in the head (she was not that sad about this, mind you).
So she allowed herself to glance backwards, and then immediately wished she hadn’t.
Apparently the terrorists had decided that there was no reason to rain down precious bullets on her when they could simply drive their big sand jeeps in her directions, multiple vehicles rushing towards her that had been silenced by her ears.
They were still a little far from her, and she could see several vehicles being attacked from behind by the military, but the fact remained that they were in cars and Toni was on foot on the sand.
She turned back to run down the other side of the dune, but of course that was when her heels caught a rock hidden under the sand, making her trip over her own feet with a scream and roll down the dune probably faster than she would have managed to do by just running.
Again, she was thankfully not hurt by the time she managed to stop rolling over the sand, but Toni was starting to get really sick of getting a facefulls of sand every time she moved.
“I am moving to New York as soon as I get back home,” she said, forcing herself back on her feet, and looking around. “Fuck sand, fuck the beach and fuck California too.”
She needed to find a place to find cover, because she did not like her chances if the terrorists managed to get to her. It was clear that they had probably been there for her since the beginning, and the military would cede to their demands if they had Toni Stark in their hands.
Not to brag, but she was a very expensive bargaining chip.
She looked around for a few seconds, scanning, and paused when she noticed a cave, not too far on her east.
It was a bad idea. It was a terrible idea because there was no way that the terrorists did not already know of the place, and the chances that they didn’t already have some sort of hold on the place was also very small.
But it was close quarters, and Toni liked her chances better in a dark and humid place with possibly many nooks and crannies to hide in, than on an open place with nowhere to hide and several vehicles coming for her.
The terrorists would most likely converge in there once they got to the top and Toni was mysteriously missing, but surprising potential kidnappers who ended up underestimating her was something she was very good at and had been practicing for years, at this point. Her chances were higher when they could not see her or weren’t sure where she was.
“Okay,” she said, as soon as she managed to rush inside the dark and unlit cave. “Think, Toni, think like your life depends on it because it does. All you need to do is stay alive and generally out of their hands long enough for Rhodey, who is of course alive and well, and his back-up dancers to beat them up. Just like chess, except you are both the King and the Queen.” She looked around, moving towards the right. “Think Shirov, think Meyer, think Final Destination.”
There was a high alcove, that would allow Toni a modicum of protection and the possibility to attack from above. Unfortunately, Toni did not have a gun on her.
She should have picked one of the ones on the ground before running, she thought, cursing in her own mind. Or brought one with her. Howard might be long dead, but she could still hear his disapproval ringing in her head.
Fuck him.
Normally Toni did have a gun always with her, because the years had not made her suddenly forget all the ‘forced vacations’ she had been a victim of in childhood. But she had been drinking with Rhodey on the plane, and she had taken it off her so that no one accidentally - or on purpose, some of those generals could be really annoying - got shot. And then she had ended up forgetting to put it back on.
She had exactly one and half weapon on her person, at the moment: one was a small knife that was stuck to her thigh that she was pretty sure she had managed to cut herself with during the explosion. The half was a can of pepper spray she had put in her coat pocket as a tease to Pepper, and had accidentally kept on.
Neither screamed ‘we can take out an entire group of terrorists’. Toni was scrappy, and she was decent at hand to hand combat, but she did not want to get close enough to those men that she had to demonstrate said skills.
She moved towards the right next, shooting quick looks towards the entry of the cave. She could not hear them coming yet, but she was pretty sure it had more to do with her blocked ears than with anything else.
There was an opening to the right, that took her further inside the cave, and Toni hesitated for a moment. That way did not lay freedom, but again, she had never been a particularly big fan of playing the sitting duck. It was either continue - and possibly fail - at finding another hiding place, or potentially going underground.
“I hate my life, and I hate Obie,” she muttered to herself, before going further down inside the cave.
It was even darker on the inside, but Toni continued clambering in, trying to make her heels make as little sound as she could. The walls were even tighter inside, and for once in her life Toni found herself thanking the stars for being... height handicapped (not short).
Especially so when she noted a small opening on the bottom of one wall, almost impossible to view by just glancing inside.
“If there is anyone looking down and listening, I thank you, but know that I am not happy about this,” said Toni, bending down. The opening was small, but not enough so that Toni’s dark past in ballet did not come very helpful.
“Thank you, Maria Stark,” she muttered, as she managed to squeeze herself into the small opening.
She had not been sure what she was going to find on the other side, but she was a little surprised to find what looked like a completely different cave. This one was by far larger than the one Toni had been in, and there was a lovely - and weirdly, to be honest - lack of any type of sand. There was also a small current of water, probably two fingers high, trickling down, and Toni could see the sky above her head, which illuminated the entire place.
It looked more like the inside of a mountain that you’d find during a hike than a dark cave in the middle of the desert.
“Very weird,” muttered Toni, looking around herself warily. There was no exit that she could see other than the small one she had crawled through, and everything seemed completely quiet and non threatening.
As someone who watched horror movies and who had often been mistaken for quiet and non threatening, Toni was not sold.
She pulled herself back on her feet, looking around for a second before glancing down at the water. She had never been a girl scout, but where there was water there was usually civilization, right? Granted, the civilization in question could be very far away or worse, it could be the terrorists' holiday hangout, but so long as they didn’t see or hear her coming Toni had an advantage on them, right?
She bent down, grimacing at the feeling of water in her suit pants, and reached for her heels. She did not take off the shoe, because rocks were less appealing to be walked on barefoot than the sand, but she did take a hold of the heel itself and after a second of mourning for her Jimmy Choos, she snapped off the heel.
“Might not be a weapon, but I doubt anyone would thank me if I stick this in them hard enough,” she said, reaching for the other foot and doing the same.
Once that was done, she reached under her trousers and pulled out the knife, so that she could make the point where the heel had been as smooth as possible. It was still a little uncomfortable when she stood to her feet, but that was the best she knew she was going to get at the moment.
She put the broken heels in the inside band of her trousers and the knife back where she had taken it from, and then she proceeded alongside the small trickle of water, walking forward.
Now that she was no longer running for her life - at least physically - she allowed herself a moment of worry, trying to calm down her heartbeat and her breathing. Rhodey had to be all right, right? She had heard him screaming before her hearing had decided to give up on her completely, but it had not been screams of pain. He had been calling out for her name, and for some soldiers, but he had been fine. And he was still fine.
He had to be.
Rhodey would never let anything happen to her, and Toni refused to believe she had caused something to happen to him.
Most likely Rhodey was on the other side taking down all of the terrorist right then, trying to think like her and figure out what direction she must have taken.
She did not need a matching soulmark or for him to be her universe appointed soulmate to know this.
Perhaps she could have waited right near the hole for him to come from her. If she held her nose and blew it, maybe her ears would pop like on an airplane, and she would hear him when he started calling her name.
But Toni was bad at playing the damsel in distress, and equally so at just sitting there waiting for an attack.
Not that she looked much like a damsel in distress she thought, a little amused. She had sand all over her hair and face, and her trousers were covered in water and mud. Her heels were broken, and her shirt was dirty. Her blazer was probably covered in residue from the explosion, too.
She looked like a vagrant or something. A sharply dressed vagrant.
Pepper would probably scream-
The ringing in her ears had abated, but that was not why Toni came to a sudden and abrupt stop.
She was not sure why she had stopped, actually, but something had changed. The sun was still shining above, the water was still moving, and the rocky cave was still rocky and a cave, but something had shifted.
She could not figure out what, but she could feel it.
Toni swallowed, standing a little more firmly on the ground, and turning to look at where she had come from. She could not see or hear anything, but she was sure that something had just happened.
And she knew better than to not trust her instincts.
She put a hand on the ground, looking for any vibration or anything indicating an incoming attack, and that’s when she noticed it.
She had been following the direction of the water, when she had started walking, hoping to perhaps find her way to an oasis or a village that way. If the water had been coming from North, Toni had been walking towards South.
But the water was no longer going the way it had been when Toni had started following.
Instead, despite the clear downhill state of the path she had been following, it seemed as if the water was going backwards.
Which made no sense.
"What the fuck?" she asked, watching in confusion the way the water was flowing.
She was not imagining it. It was definitely going the opposite way it had when she had started following it.
Unless Toni had been going the wrong way...?
But that made no sense. Because the path she was following was a little in decline, which meant the water should be going down.
But the water was going up.
Which made no fucking sense.
What in the laws of physics-
Toni lifted her hand as she watched the water, a moment ago tranquil if nonsensical, start to grow in size and speed, still going backwards.
Uh-uh.
She did hear and turn around in time to see the huge wave building behind her.
She did not manage to stand or even swear before it crashed into her.