Unfinished Gems

Iron Maiden - 5

It was somewhat awkward, having to deal with the looks Rhodey kept giving her when he realized she had a far better grasp on how bad the situation Tony was in then Pepper did herself.

Jazz was under no illusions. Any chance of developing rose-tinted glasses about how the world worked had been taken from her long before she ever had a chance to be a child.

She knew Tony would be tortured and quite likely forced to build weapons like the Jericho missile so it could be used against American forces, or he would be killed. Since no ransom demands had been made, it was the only scenario that made the most sense about why they couldn't find his body with the rest.

Pepper was a civilian, but she had also grown up with a relatively normal childhood. She took it badly finding out what was being done to her boss...especially with how calm Jazz was about the whole thing.

Then again, Jazz knew that as long as Tony could pretend he was complying with their demands, he would be alive and therefore rescue was an option.

She had endured a curse that literally fried nerve endings all at once and would drive people catatonic, and she had come out more or less intact. Tony would need help from someone who knew better than most what being tortured was like, not some overpaid therapist.

He wouldn't be the same man he was before, but perhaps once they got him back he would learn to grow up a little bit.

Rhodey stuck around, rather than leave as he normally did.

Jazz didn't need to know why. Her reaction to the news Tony was in the hands of terrorists and what they would likely do to him did not fit the profile of a civilian, no matter how one looked at it.

"You know I'm British, right?"

"I know you spent a lot of time there."

Jazz looked at him flatly, before stating in a blunt voice, "Cut the crap. We both know that I'm from the English enclaves. Did you really think that the nonsense going on over there only started when the old bastard finally died? That hypocrite they have as a dark lord was active long before the 'government' finally had the balls to acknowledge it, and he had a particular interest in me."

Rhodey dropped all pretenses of being ignorant to what, or more specifically who, Jazz was.

"You're Jasmine Black," he stated.

"There's a reason I went by Jazz Evans. Knowing them, they have a taboo on the name to try and track me down because of some stupid prophecy that anyone with wit could tell was a self-fulfilling one."

Rhodey did not look happy, but there was little he could do about it. Jazz had entered the country legally and she was a US citizen the second it was confirmed Tony was her biological father. She might not have been born in the States, but she did hold a valid dual citizenship. Three, if one were to count the fact her mother was half Irish and hadn't renounced her roots to the country.

What pissed Rhodey off was the fact that he suspected, but didn't dare confirm, that the former 'leader of the light' had been deliberately raising Jazz as a child soldier.

Her reaction to the idea of someone close to her being tortured was telling enough about her upbringing. She had known from far too young an age that she would be forced into a war, whether she liked it or not, because the adults refused to do anything about it and were relying on her to save their skins again.

It was little wonder she had left the first chance she got.

Rhodey was silent, before he quietly asked... "If we can get him back...can you help him?"