Cave Kisses

Title: Cave Kisses

Author: ExcentrykeMuse

Fandom(s): Avengers / Twilight Saga

Pairing(s): Tony Stark / Bella Swan, (past) Bella / Edward

Word Count: 2.5k

Rating: PG

Prompt: Roxanne Hall: Would love any of the following please… Bella with:-Tony Stark(Iron Man, beginning during capture)

Cave Kisses

Two days after Tony Stark woke up in a cave in Afghanistan, his heart plugged into a car battery, the door swung open and a girl was thrown inside.  Girl, though, was the wrong word, Tony thought to himself, when a young woman with long brown hair stood shakily to her feet and threw herself at the locked door and started banging at it.

“Hey!” she screamed, fists pounding.  “I’m a person!”  She shoved her shoulder against the door, hard, and threw her hair out of her face, showing deep brown eyes.  “You can’t just buy me!  That’s called slavery!”  She banged a few more times, her fist coming away bloody.

Picking up the battery, Tony ran towards her and hauled her into his arms. 

She flailed against him, all limbs and long hair, and he shushed her.

“Hey, now,” he hummed into her ear, brushing her hair away from her face.  “That door’s solid steel.  There’s no getting through there.”

The girl sobbed, sucking in a huge breath, her frame shuddering as she stopped fighting.

“There now,” Tony whispered into her ear.  “They can’t hurt you while I’m here.”—That was a lie, but she was so small and fragile in his arms, Tony couldn’t help the strong protective urge that was taking over him.  “What’s your name, beautiful?”

Tears running down her cheeks, she looked up at him as he continued to run his hands through her greasy hair, that clearly hadn’t been washed in days.  When she looked up at him, Tony could see a beautiful face of a young woman, no older than twenty, with big brown eyes and dark lashes, pale skin, and lips that were probably a deep red when they weren’t pale with fear and crying.

“Are—” she began before she licked her lips.  “Are you an American?”

“Yeah, beautiful,” he answered, smiling at her.  “I’m Tony.  Over there,” he tilted his head to the corner where his cellmate was standing, “is Yinsen.  We’re prisoners.”

She nodded shakily.  “I’m Bella,” she whispered.

Bella.  It suited her.  Beautiful, in Italian.  This girl was certainly that.

“What happened?” Tony asked her as he continued to run his hand through her hair.  He found it soothing and Bella, this gorgeous, frightened girl, was leaning into his touch.  “How did they get an American girl in Afghanistan?  “You’re too young to be a soldier.”

At the question, Bella swallowed convulsively.  “I was in Italy.  My boyfriend,” her eyes flitted down, then up, “ex-boyfriend—was being stupid—and, it happened so fast—they grabbed me—“ her eyes were now flitting back and forth “—everything was dark—and then there was a bag over my head—and people were speaking Italian—and I traded hands several times and then—“ her eyes flitted to the door “—here.”

Traffickers, Tony thought.  Bella was clearly had been in Italy and grabbed from the street.  The bit about the ex-boyfriend was a bit of a throw-away, but the rest was definitely human trafficking.

Tony only held her tighter and rested his chin on the top of her head.  “I’ve got people,” he promised her.  “If they get me out, I won’t leave without you.”

“How did they get you?” she asked, pulling away, her eyes searching his.  Clearly, then, she didn’t recognize him.

He grimaced.  “Political kidnapping.  I was here in Afghanistan giving a presentation to America’s finest when they attacked the convoy.” 

Her eyebrows rose at this.  “You’re a hostage?”

He nodded at this, and then pulled her closer to him once again.

Yinsen was strangely quiet through all of this.  He remained very still, his eyes tracking the two of them, and when Tony had finally gotten Bella to eat something and to lie down on his mat to sleep, Yinsen came over to him and said quietly: “They’ll want to marry her or—use her.  She’s young, fertile.”

Tony looked up sharply.  “They can’t have her,” his voice harsh.

Yinsen scoffed, “You think you can stop them?  They have guns and manpower.  You’re hooked up to a battery.”

Gazing over at Bella, Tony swore, “She’s my responsibility now.”  And it was true.  The moment they had thrown her into the cell, Tony had known that Bella was his responsibility and the idea had only cemented in his mind as he had held her.  “They can’t take her.”

“What are you going to do?” Yinsen asked.

“I’ll think of something.”

Tony then went over to lie down on the mat beside Bella, holding her close to the metal heart in his chest, the battery whirring where it sat above their heads. 

The next day the real work began.  Tony couldn’t have a car battery hooked up to his chest and their captors wanted weapons.  “I need the girl,” he told them outright when he made a list of materials.

The men looked at him, dumbfounded.

“She has small hands,” he explained.  “You’re not going to have the tools I need.  I’m going to need her small hands.”  Tony held up his hand and then walked over to Bella and lifted her hand and placed it beside his.  Turning his backward and forward to make a point and then place his behind hers to show just how much larger his hand was compared to her smaller, more graceful one.

The men talked between themselves and finally one said, “She should not have been put in the same cell.  She is woman.  She bleeds.”

Bella blushed beside Tony.

“A woman needs husband,” the man stated again.  “It is sinful for a woman to be with man and not married.”  His accent was thick, but Tony understood him perfectly.  “She cannot carry your burden if she is not your wife.”

Tony stared at him for a long moment and then glanced at Bella whose eyes were staring at the cell floor, which was nothing but rock.  She wasn’t giving him any sign, other than that she was embarrassed.

Taking a deep breath, Tony made a decision.  “I have not been blessed with a wife.  I would be honored for Bella to—bear my burden and I would be honored to bear her burden.”  There, that sounded about right, given what the men were saying.

Their captors, there were three of them, all with guns, started talking among themselves quickly in a language that Tony didn’t understand, and Tony glanced at Yinsen who was withdrawn from all of them. 

Then, touching Bella’s shoulder, he waited for her to look up at him.  When her large brown eyes finally turned toward him, he murmured, “I will never hurt you, Bella.”

“I know,” she whispered back.  Then, after a moment, “I trust you.”

The men then abruptly stopped talking and the leader said, “We will bring an imam and the supplies,” and then they left.

The imam arrived within a matter of hours.  In a cave, locked in a cell, with a Muslim imam who didn’t speak any English, Tony Stark was married to an eighteen-year-old Isabella Marie Swan sometime in May or June 2008.  There was no marriage certificate, the witnesses (apart from Yinsen) were all terrorists, but when Tony promised Bella that he would cover her with his tent, he knew that he meant every word of it.

That night he held her close and nuzzled her hair and realized he had never kissed his bride.  He didn’t even know if she still loved her ex-boyfriend, but Tony knew he had her all to himself and he would play dirty to win Bella’s heart.

The first order of business was building a mini arc reactor.  Along with that, Tony learned that Bella was quite adept at physics.  “I was taking AP Physics,” she told him as she did some math on the side of his calculations.  “Would this work?”

To Tony’s delight, the calculations would make the arc reactor slightly more energy efficient.

“Where are you going to college?”

“Somewhere warm,” she told him.  “Washington State is too rainy.  I hate it.—Honestly, I kind of zoned on college applications, and thought I’d take a year off and earn money before going next year.”

“Not a bad plan,” Tony agreed.  “Living a little can be beneficial and life skills can make you appreciate what you have.  I went to college before I was old enough to go to high school.  I had a horrible time.  All I did was party.”

At this Bella laughed a little.  “I can just imagine you.  Little Tony Stark.”  Her smile widened.

“I was always a ladies’ man,” he promised with a wink.

“Really?” she asked, teasing.  “Why haven’t you tried to kiss me?”

At this Yinsen looked up from where he was sitting inside the cell.  Tony didn’t pay him any attention.

“I was being a gentleman,” Tony told her after a pause.  He took her in, her blush, her red lips, her shining eyes.  Carefully, he put down his pencil, turned to her more fully, and cupped her cheek.  His thumb caressed her skin gently.  “Isabella Stark.”

“I like ‘Bella,’” she whispered.

He breathed out as he leaned in.  “Indulge me,” he murmured against her lips as he kissed her gently but fully, lifting her up to meet him as he leaned down.  She arched her back up and he wrapped his arm around her waist to support her, catching her sighs and swallowing her breaths.

Pulling away a moment later, he stared into her eyes and smiled.

The arc reactor, with her small hands, was easy to insert a few days later, and Tony was finally able to sleep with Bella in his arms without the horrible battery holding them in place.  Their bodies were always covered with dry sweat from the Afghani heat and from working with metals and wires, but Tony loved the dry, salty smell of his wife.  He would run his nose down the length of her arm when they lay together in the darkness, and she would run her fingers through his lengthening hair.

“When do you think we’ll get out?” she whispered one night after they had been breathing in each other’s souls until they lay as sweaty masses on their shared mat.  It must have been over a month and still Tony had yet to be ransomed and he was growing slightly worried.

He had a plan to get them out.  He was going to build an iron suit that could be powered by his arc reactor and blow his way out, Bella and Yinsen following behind him.  It was a crude plan, but it was the best he could do with his limited resources.

He ran his hand over her face lovingly, realizing how deeply he had come to care for his young wife, and he kissed her on the nose.  “Soon.  The suit only needs another week.”

She sighed and nodded her head.  “You won’t leave me, will you?  When we leave here?—Edward left.”

Tony’s heart clenched.  “Edward?”

“My ex-boyfriend.  He said I was only a game.  He took me out to the woods and just left me there.”  She sighed, looking away, and bit her lip.  “I was lost for hours and it got dark and they had to send a search party out.”  Her dark eyes then found him in the blackness.  “I would go after you, Tony, but please don’t make me.”

“Oh, Bella,” he whispered, kissing her hot and slow.  “It’s the other way around.  I’m not going to let them take you away from me.”

This caused her to smile.  “My dad will threaten to kill you.”

“I look forward to meeting Chief Swan,” he promised, pulling her closer.

At some point they must have drifted off to sleep because Tony was awakened to Bella stiffening in his arms. 

Gun shots.  That was definitely the sound of gun shots. 

Immediately they were standing and had their backs pressed against the far wall, Yinsen pressed beside them.  They all stood, breathless, as they heard a battle rage on somewhere in the camp until—finally—in what might have been minutes or what could have been hours, all was silent. 

Now, all that remained to be seen is if they were going to be discovered and then, what would be their fate.

With baited breath Tony waited, holding Bella’s hand tightly in his own, until finally their cell door began to open.  Immediately, Tony threw himself in front of Bella to protect her from whatever was on the other side, but nothing came.  There was only silence.  Then—

“Carlisle.”

It was Bella’s voice, relieved and startled.

Tony looked at his wife in question and she smiled at him, small but sure.

“It’s all right,” she told him, squeezing his hand.  “It’s Carlisle Cullen.  I know him.”

The man, for now Tony could see it was a man, stood in the doorway.  He was tall, pale, with bruises under his eyes, and unusually good looking.  He could be no older than twenty or twenty-five.  But if he was Carlisle Cullen, he was Bella’s ex-boyfriend’s adopted father and a medical man.

This Carlisle Cullen smiled and came further into the room.  “We came to get you out, Bella.  You and your fellow captives, of course.”

Another form appeared behind him, another man, larger, just as pale, with the same bruises under the eyes.  “Did you find her?” he asked, clearly looking about the cavern.

Cullen turned.  “Yes.  And others.”

Bella pushed at Tony who reluctantly removed himself from in front of her, though he did not relinquish her hand.  She pulled him forward to the two men, who looked so alike with their pale skin and bruised eyes—and yet so different in every other way.

“Carlisle,” Bella began, “this is my husband, Tony.”

Cullen looked between them quickly and then nodded, accepting the information.  “So nice to meet you, Tony.—Let’s get you out of here.”  Of course, Tony didn’t leave without stuffing the plans of his Iron Man suit into his pocket.

In the end, there were three of them.  Cullen, his wife Esme, and Emmett (the large one).  Emmett left with Yinsen to take him to a nearby village while Cullen escorted Tony and Bella to a nearby US Air Force outpost—at Tony’s insistence.

“It was Alice who told us what happened, dear,” Esme said, as they drove through the midnight sands.  “She and Edward are in Russia.  I’ll be sure to tell him of your wedding.”

Bella didn’t say anything to any of it.  She just asked that the Cullens leave them within walking distance of a base and hugged them goodbye before they left.

Tony and Bella stood in the sands, the base a twinkling in the distance, packs of water and food on their backs, with the sun rising in the East.

“How did they kill everyone?” Tony asked, bewildered by what had transpired.

Bella sighed out and turned to him, taking him in.  “They’re wealthy.  Trust me when I say they can afford weapons and that they were probably stashed in Emmett’s car.”

Tony thought Bella seemed to be taking this all in rather well (he was feeling slightly hysterical by their new found freedom, but she had known the Cullens for nearly two years.  Perhaps this sort of behavior—helicoptering into Afghanistan in the middle of the night and successfully pulling off a raid—was in character.  It was certainly the sort of thing he would try to do if Bella were in danger.

Holding out his hand, Tony waited for her to take it, and they turned together toward the air base.

They had their whole lives ahead of them.

THE END.