His Armored Heart

Chapter Seven

The next evening Jarvis was the only voice to break the silence that had fallen over the mansion in Tony's absence. "Miss Bree, Mr. Stark will return in five minutes." Jarvis announced, per Bree's request. "There is champagne on the wine rack." He added.

"Thank you Jarvis! I will meet him in the lab." Bree quickly turned off the tv show she'd been watching, jogged downstairs to the lab and quickly entered the key code to get inside. She poured out two flutes of champagne and took a sip of hers just as Tony landed on the landing pad, which made her smile until she saw the chipped paint and bullet holes. "Tony? What the hell happened!"

"I'm alright, I'm alright. Let me get this off and I will tell you everything." Tony replied, struggling with a couple of the damaged parts of the suit. He continued to try and remove it only to quickly realize that his robots were not being as helpful as he had hoped.

"Are you sure you're not hurt?" Bree questioned. "It looks like the suit is pretty damaged in places."

Tony grumbled to himself until he was finally free of the suit and stepped out of it with a sigh. "I might have a few bruises, but nothing serious." He assured Bree. After a moment to settle himself, he walked over to her and took her into his arms.

Bree squeezed him tightly around his waist, hearing him grunt in response. "Let me be the judge of that," she murmured. Bree pulled away to cradle his face in her hands, noting he had a cut on his eyebrow. "I don't know what I would do if something happened to you."

"I promise I'm fine." Tony muttered, then leaned in to kiss her softly.

She slowly kissed him back while caressing his cheeks. "You know I'll want to check you over later right?"

"You know I'm going to enjoy that more than I should, right?" Tony teased.

Bree chuckled and pecked his lips. "Yes, I do. What happened Tony?"

"I will keep my promise, but can we be relaxing with some beers when I explain?" Tony asked with a cute grin.

Bree sighed, but nodded. "Yes, we can."

~~~~~~~~

Once Tony had a few beers in him and he was relaxed on the couch with Bree, he finally felt ready to open up. "That camp I was held in, I destroyed it."

"You flew all the way to Afghanistan? Tony that's... that's impressive... and scary," Bree replied.

"It was harder than I thought it would be, to be back there. On the way back, I was shot at by friendly fire." Tony explained.

Bree's eyes widened with fear. "Tony... you could have been killed."

"I didn't want them to know it was me and know I had the suit. They were just doing their job." Tony assured Bree. "I'm sorry to have scared you like that though."

"I think scared is not the right word," Bree answered as she cuddled up against him and clung to the fabric of his shirt with her hands. Just as she got comfortable though, the phone began to ring.

"Sir, Colonel Rhoads is on the line," Jarvis stated.

"Put him through, on speaker." Tony told Jarvis.

"Tony? What the hell was that today?" Rhoady said, his voice filling the living room.

"It was a training exercise gone wrong." Tony said simply.

Rhoady sighed. "So the same BS others use then? Why didn't you tell me you were working on something?"

"It's just a prototype right now." Tony answered, sounding bored.