Battlefield ｡ Tony Stark

54 - MISSION: BREAKOUT!

"How long are you going to keep us tied up?"

Maya Hansen barely glanced away from the computer screen she was staring at, fingertips tapping away at the keyboard. Currently, my hands were tied behind my back as zip ties held me in place at a pillar that supported the basement we were waiting around in. Tony was zip tied to a standing bed frame, chest rising and falling with deep breaths. He had glared at me the entire as time Aldrich dragged me through the doorway with his thug goons. "Not too much longer." Maya replied.

"Good, because I really have to use the little ladies room." I added sourly, tugging against the plastic digging into the skin around my wrists. "I had a very long drive to get here."

Tony scoffed loudly. "You wouldn't need to pee if you had have stayed home. Were you were safe."

"Excuse me?" I jolted back with, staring at his face. Blood had dried on his flesh now and there were dark bags under his eyes which suggested he hadn't slept a wink since flying away from the mansion he had aided in burning down to the ground. "You actually wanted me to play the dutiful wife and sit by the fire and just pray you weren't dead in some gutter somewhere? I just watched Benjamin blow up in my face and you're angry because I came to find you?" 

Something unspoken flashed through Tony's eyes. "Well, firstly, you're not my wife, you've made that very clear." His words were like a kick to the stomach.

"Thank goodness for that!" I hissed towards him. Maya Hansen groaned from her chair. 

Tony sent me another familiar glare. "Secondly, if you weren't off galavanting around the country with wonder boy Benny and actually answered your damn phone, you would have known I wasn't dead in a gutter somewhere and actually sorting out the details of a plan to stop all this mess. So, really who's fault is it, that you're now stuck in a basement in the middle of Miami, when you could have been safe and far, far away?"

"And such a wonderful plan you worked out. Was this the entire mastermind idea? To get tied up and beaten by some goonies that apparently, are ticking bombs waiting to go off." My voice bounced off the brick walls, making the words double back to me. "All the while your ex-girlfriend is babysitting us for her super creepy boss that wants us all dead. Sounds like a really good plan, Tony." 

Maya groaned again. "Are you sure you both aren't married?"

Tony breathed out a sigh, eyes still pinned to me. "She's not my ex-girlfriend!"

"Yeah, okay." I snipped out. 

Maya was spinning around in her chair, facing us both. "I would also like to make a note, that they aren't all time bombs waiting to go off. Project Extremis is practically stable--"

"I'm telling you they're not," Tony interjected. "I'm out there, people are going bang. They're painting the walls in red."

Benjamin Perkins's explosion flashed into my mind. "Then help me, Tony." Maya pleaded with him, holding up a very old name sticker. On the back there was some kind of formula, maybe something Tony Stark had written down while drunk, all those years ago. 

Tony looked at the formula in his own writing. "Did I do that? Well, I don't remember and I can't help you, Maya. Is this what you've been chasing all these years?" Maya blinked back tears. "You used to have morals. You wanted to help people. Now look at you."

"My friend died today," I started quietly, my words directed at Maya. I could see it in her eyes, she was fighting her own battle against good and evil. "He was a crappy person once upon a time, but he didn't want to end up dying with blood on his hands. He didn't want to become more of a monster than he already was. He risked his life to bring me to Tony, to stop all this. He was a good guy when it mattered most. Are you a good person when it matters most, Maya?"