Night Mistress

Chapter 05

It was barely morning when Dad agreed to work with them.

They had come in, armed to the teeth. It had been panicking, as they stormed in just after Dad woke up. I'd had trouble sleeping, so I wasn't too startled when the Ten Rings came.

Sleep was the furthest thing from my mind last night. After realizing I had been calling him that, I kept forcing myself from the sudden habit. There was this impulse in my head, pulling me towards calling him Dad. I couldn't get attached again. It always hurt when I got attached. Why was I letting myself get attached?

I mean, after all this, if we ever manage to kill Obadiah, I wouldn't mind spending a couple of extra months with a fath-

No. No! That's exactly the kind of thing I am trying not to do! I didn't need a father! None of the others I had ever worked out! Most of them hated me, died, or think my jumping reality powers as 'ungodly'. The great Tony Stark, if I let myself care, would be another in a string of disappointments.

So why was my subconscious pushing me the other way? Have we not suffered enough?

The three of us were starting up the production of the Arc Reactor. They had me carrying Tony's (Dad's) car battery. It was just on the edge of what I. Hold handle, I pushed through because I did not want to see Tony (Dad!) like that again.

Storyline dammit, all these pronoun changes are giving me a headache.

"If this is gonna be my workstation, I want it well lit, I want all of these tools." Dad (TONY) gave the terrorists a list of his tools.

Some of them were wild ones, that Dad (T-O-N-Y!) put on just to delay them. I had told him this morning that if we went through with this, I guessed we had three months before completion. We have to give the Ten Rings what they wanted for three months.

"Welding gear, I don't care if it's acetylene or propane." He listed, as Yinsen rushed to translate. "I need a soldering station, I need helmets, I need goggles, I would like a smelting cup. I need two sets of precision tools."

I had to fight the growing need to call Tony Stark my father for three months.

==NM==

The night everything went wrong was the night that we 'celebrated' a month of capture.

They gave Stark (Ton-DAD) the tools he needed. While he was working on the Arc Reactor, I continued working on his Iron Man suit plans. It gave me as little contact with Dad as possible.

There had been no improvement the past month with my mental state. My mind kept going back and forth, like a bad game of Pong. I started to call him Stark in my mind, trying to keep farther distant.

Aside from that, the Iron Man plans were going well. I was still working out how much metal we would need for the suit. The thirteen missiles we were breaking down for palladium would have enough (but only for brief usage).

Stark was arm's deep inside it, prying it apart for the piece that mattered. I was keeping the missile steady. We didn't want any accidents right now. Yinsen stood beside the table, simply watching the father and daughter work together.

That sentence made me want to smile.

"How many languages do you speak?" Stark asked Yinsen, trying to start up a conversation.

"A lot. But apparently not enough for this place." Yinsen admitted. "They speak Arabic, Urdu, Dari, Pashto, Mongolian, Farsi, Russian."

"Arabic, Japanese, Esperanto, and Afrikaans." I commented, keeping my eyes locked on the missile.