Author's Note: It lives! No, I haven't forgotten about this, I promise. This chapter was just very difficult to write - you'll see why - and Real Life didn't help matters either. With any luck (and any semblance of sanity), the next one won't take nearly as long.

I still owe a lot to my betas, MountainRose, Szzzt, and keroseneSteve. Broken record I may be, but this fic really would be dead without you guys. Thanks so much!

Warning for this chapter: Suicidal thoughts. Sort of. It's close enough to warn for.

Yinsen's whittling again.

He's been doing it off and on for the last few days - scrounging bits of wood and shaving them down to some particular size. There's a spare box next to the head of Yinsen's cot, and it's gradually filling with a jigsaw jumble of neatly-shaped parts. He's building something.

It's not for the Suit, Tony knows that much. For one thing, there aren't any wooden parts like that in the plans. For another, Yinsen only works on it when they have downtime - at night, sometimes, or while they eat, or when Tony's too tired or drugged-up to do anything useful. Maybe it's something personal.

Today's work isn't quite the same as the last thing Tony watched him make. So far, most of the parts have been wide slabs or narrow slats, pieces of a broad shallow box. Today, though, the guy's got a sliver-thin piece of veneer, and he's scoring it delicately along very straight lines. Flat on his back, drifting in a post-PT morphine haze, Tony makes his eyes focus enough to watch.

Triangles. He's cutting it into slender isosceles triangles. The shapes dredge up a vague sense-memory - cafeteria tables in a college hall, cheap plastic game boards, a fugue of strategic concentration and a beer at his elbow. MIT. Backgammon.

...Huh.

When Yinsen finally says something about it a few days later, Tony affects nonchalance. It's not that big a deal, anyway. Doc only just proved, in one stroke, that he's got the good taste and strategic sense to play backgammon and the woodworking skill to make the board himself. (Out of Lebanese cedar, no less, and how the hell did he get the Rings to bring him that?)

Hidden depths, Doc. Hidden depths.

Over his shoulder and out of the corner of his eye, he watches his cellmate assemble the board. For all that Tony calls it "crappy" when Yinsen finally mentions it to him, it's not a bad piece of work; lacking nails, and reluctant to dip into their glue supply, the doctor puts most of it together with elegant mortise and tenons. Tony kind of wants to see what he'd do with actual tools... He must have some kind of workshop at home, to keep his skills this sharp. What's that setup like?

Maybe, when they're out of here, Yinsen can show him.

- o -

Stark's watching him again.

He's been doing it off and on for the last few days - sneaking glances and gazes when he thinks Yinsen won't notice. When they're working together, nothing is different - Stark checks his work openly and comments out loud - but when they've settled down to rest, and Yinsen picks up his woodworking tools again, Stark's gaze becomes a furtive thing. If he didn't know better, Yinsen would think the man had never seen a penknife before.

The best response is probably no response, he supposes: Stark will speak up when he's ready. If he's ready. Until then, Yinsen can focus on building this board.

He selects another slice of cedar veneer and begins marking the desired pair of triangles on its surface. It'll be a good board, for all the privation and fear that went into its building. He still remembers how to do this; he could probably do it blindfolded. He'd take a finger off at some point, but it would still work.

He glances over at the parts stacked on the workbench beside him. It reminds him of Stark's plan, actually: simple, foolproof in theory, and monstrously risky in practice. On the one hand, the Suit - Starktech even if it's makeshift, with hydrazine flamethrowers, armor forged from missile plating, and an exoskeleton to turn each arm-sweep into a sledgehammer blow - seems the obvious bet to win out over last year's hand weaponry. On the other hand, the Suit - cobbled together from scraps, with a twenty-minute preparation time, a faceplate whose eye-slits will cut vision down to slivers, and its motherboards and cooling systems mounted naked on its back - is all too likely to trap Stark instead of saving him. Their safety margins are razor-thin.

It's a terrible plan. Yinsen might even have called Stark out on it if he had any better ideas.

Slivers of wood fall away from his knife, and he wonders idly what their chances are. The armor is their best chance, so Stark will be better off... if they can get him into the suit fast enough. There are far too many variables. There are far too many ways this can go wrong, and any one of them will end with a Starktech bullet fired up through the chinks in the armor.

And those are Stark's chances. If even one man slips by the iron titan, Yinsen will be horribly exposed.

He's not going to survive this, is he?

The penknife slips; Yinsen sets it down with shaking hands, overcome by a tangled rush of emotion. He's going to die. All these months kidnapped and terrified, never knowing when he'd be murdered for failing to save some terrorist or for saying the wrong thing or just for sport, knowing he'd never be free again, always wondering whether this would be the moment his life just fizzled out... and now he knows. He'll die on the day they escape.

Why is it such a relief?

It's the not knowing, he tells himself. Living like he has been, where a pointless death could take him any moment - it's hell. Any doctor worth his salt knows how stressful such a life is. He's just relieved to know when it'll be over.

That, and the fact that he won't die for nothing. He'll be giving his life for Stark's - he, of all people, will be a martyr. He clamps down on a surge of hysteria. Him, inveterate skeptic, scientist, half Westernized... Who are you kidding, son of Shayan? You never stopped believing.

He'll be a martyr. He might even go to Heaven.

He'll see his family again.

Yinsen bites down hard and only barely manages to hold back a sob. His fingers tighten convulsively on the sheet of cedar, but the earthy incense-scent of the wood doesn't help to ground him - not when all he can think of is the cedar woodchips on his workshop's floor, his father's penknife in his son's uncertain fingers, his wife's radiant smile when they'd presented her with the new backgammon board... Its joins had been a little lopsided, scored too deep here and there, but Mehri had understood: there's laughter in the varnish, she'd said, running her fingers along its glossy rim. Laughter and love.

That board burned with the rest of Gulmira. When he searched the wreckage, there was barely enough left to tell its ashes apart from Fahran's. Just a dovetail join and one crooked triangle, half-buried in the stinking char that had been his son - his son and wife and daughter mingled where they fell, together at the end, and why hadn't he been with them - ?

Yinsen shivers, gasping in a breath he hadn't known he was holding, and when it shudders back out it's a sob he can't hold back. He clenches his teeth and bows his head, eyes squeezed shut -

Stark clears his throat.

The doctor's head snaps back up. Stark is lying half-propped on one elbow, staring pointedly at the wood in Yinsen's hands. "You're not gonna get very far if you keep trying to cut along the grain like that."

...What? Yinsen stares back at him, nonplussed, and swallows against the grief locking his throat. "I don't -"

"It's just gonna split on you. Unless that wood's cured really nicely, it'll just break open along the grain and -"

"Stark, I don't-" Yinsen sucks in a breath through his teeth, irritation warring with grief. "I don't want to discuss this," he manages.

"- do you really want to try gluing down a handful of splinters? 'Course you don't -"

He's not even... is the man actually blind? Yinsen frowns. "I'm-"

"- I mean, it's not like you have a lot of extra material -"

"...Stark."

"- so seriously, just turn your pattern, cut the other way -"

"Stark!"

The other man finally, finally shuts up, raising one infuriating eyebrow. Yinsen takes full opportunity of the chance to get a word in edgewise. "I'm not cutting with the grain." He holds the cedar sheet up, pointedly getting it closer to his patient. "The grain runs this way. I am cutting here. Even if you were making sense - and you are not, because this is good hard cedar and it will not split like some kind of pine - you would still be wrong because I am not even doing what you think I am," he snaps.

That eyebrow doesn't so much as twitch. "So you weren't. Right. I knew that. How are you gonna get the veneer to stay down, though, without any decent glue? It..."

He trails off as Yinsen snorts and gets off his seat, throwing up his hands in annoyance. "Is it time to get back to work yet?" he snaps. "I think it's time to get back to work." He stalks over to his patient, checking Stark's pulse and pupillary reflex; the man tugs his head back with an indignant noise when the light hits his eyes. "You're fine. Come on, rise and shine."

Stark grumps and grumbles as Yinsen hauls him to his feet, but he does come, and within fifteen minutes they're both absorbed again in the building.

The day passes in a whirlwind of wiring and assembly, shop talk and jabs traded. Stark doesn't say another word about any of it - woodworking or backgammon or the way he'd watched Yinsen break down - and slowly, the tangle of irritation and shame and grief fades to the back of his mind. He's distantly impressed, really: he never would have thought Stark subtle enough to distract him like that. By the time they cut the welding torch's flame, pack away the hand tools, and roll up the blueprints, he's more amused by Stark's maneuvering than anything - amused and even a little grateful.

When night falls at last and he settles down on his cot, though, something glints in his peripheral vision. Puzzled, he leans back up, peering down at his pillow. Two small piles of metal glimmer in the dim fluorescents: fifteen matched nuts and fifteen matched washers.

Backgammon pieces. Well, he did say he wasn't sure what they'd use.

A small, lopsided smile nudges the doctor's lips. This is the man he's to die for, is it? Well, then. He could do worse.

- o -

"Backgammon, Stark?"

Tony turns, startled. His arms are still full of welder tank, and he almost has to juggle his gloves to keep from dropping them. "Huh?"

"Backgammon." Doc's standing behind him, only slightly sooty, with a teacup in one hand and his backgammon board in the other. When he waggles the teacup invitingly, nuts and washers rattle inside. "Care to play?"

"Um. Did you already - ?"

"Yes, it's finished. I set them aside to anneal, over there."

Tony glances. Yep, the actuator casings he had Yinsen working on are fully coated, lined up on their makeshift rack and placed a careful eighteen inches from the furnace's flank. They'll need to be moved in a few hours, but...

"And you appear to have finished building their mounts, if I'm not mistaken." The doctor nods towards the neatly-paired set of leg struts laid out on Tony's workbench.

He's right, or Tony wouldn't be putting the welder away. The engineer snorts and unloads the tank into its designated corner. "Yup."

"Which means that we have at least four hours before we can do much of anything."

Right again. Tony'd tried to avoid bottlenecks when he planned out the construction process, but there was no good way around this one: past this point, they can't assemble much of anything until they can build the skeleton of the leg drivers. Which, of course, they can't exactly start while the coating on the actuators is still hot enough to burn leather. He raises an eyebrow at Yinsen. "Yeah?"

Doc waggles the teacup again, rattling metal on ceramic. "Time enough to see how MIT and Cambridge match up, isn't it?"

...Oh, it is on.

- o -

"So do they have backgammon championships at Cambridge too, or did you just learn for the hell of it?"

Yinsen finishes counting out one set of washers before looking up. "I learned as a boy, actually. It's a popular game, where I'm from." Five more markers on the next spot.

Stark hums, idly rattling his teacup with its pair of makeshift dice. "Where's that?"

Yinsen just flicks his gaze up over the rim of his glasses to pin the engineer. Stark's been unusually chatty for the past few days, ever since Yinsen found his scavenged set of game pieces. They talked before, yes, but mostly about the immediacies of their situation - medicine, engineering, their captors, cave survival. Now, all of a sudden, his patient wants to know about his childhood and his hobbies. It's vaguely disconcerting, all the more so because it's also so endearing.

He sets the last of the game pieces in place. "There we are. Black, or red?"

"You mean nut or washer?" Stark leans in over the board, nicely steady even when the motion must stretch his healing muscles. He's down to half his original morphine dose, and only as needed, but it may even be time to cut down again. "Red. Washer."

Which gives Yinsen the first move and the handicap. He probably deserves that, after assuming Stark wouldn't even know how to play. He chuckles and nods. "All right. Pass the dice?"

That's the last word either of them speaks, other than to read off the dice or indicate a move, for the entire first game. They both spend it sunk in concentration, calculating each other's strategies and working out their counters. It's a close game - morphine or no, Stark would not appreciate Yinsen going easy on him - but neither of them is particularly surprised when Stark actually wins.

"Good game." Yinsen surveys the board, eyebrows raised. The man is definitely better than he'd expected; he must have practiced since his college years, to keep his skills so sharp. Who does he play against, at home? His robots? That would be a game worth witnessing.

Hidden depths, Stark. Hidden depths.

"Want to go again?" Stark flashes him a smug white grin.

Well, why not? Yinsen glances up at the rack of actuator casings, pinging softly now and then as they cool. They won't even be ready to move for another hour. "Let's."

They reset the board together this time. Stark takes red again - takes the washers, at any rate - and passes the dice to Yinsen. "After you."

The dice rattle in the teacup, and then on the board: eight. Yinsen picks up the first of his pieces. Prime or blitz? Stark broke a prime lineup last game without batting an eyelash, so perhaps Yinsen should play more aggressively this time...

"Why'd you come back, Doc?"

Startled out of his musings, Yinsen almost drops the nut. "Sorry?"

"Nice place, Cambridge." Stark taps one finger absently against the reactor. "Nobody tries to bomb the hospitals there."

Ah. American stereotypes. "There's more to Afghanistan than you see on TV," he explains mildly. "Some places are quiet. Peaceful."

"Oh?" Stark raises an eyebrow. "What kinds of places?"

"My home, for one." Yinsen hands the dice across. "Your move."

Stark takes the cup in silence, barely meeting Yinsen's eye. When the dice hit the board, he reads them off in Farsi; it's a good roll, but more to the point, his pronunciation's improving. It's an odd olive branch, but isn't that just like Stark? Yinsen accepts it with a wry smile and a word of praise.

Only when he's passed the cup back does Stark speak again. "Still haven't told me where you're from."

He walked right into that one, didn't he? Yinsen glances up over the rims of his glasses. As much as he does not wish to discuss his lost home... maybe there'll be peace in remembering it as it was. "I'm from a small town called Gulmira. It's actually a nice place." Peaceful, he thinks, remembering the olive trees and the running water, silver in the sun.

Stark watches him, intent, as if straining to hear what Yinsen hasn't said. "Got a family?" he asks.

Yinsen's eyes drop; his throat clutches tight. Mehri's laugh like running water, silver in the sun... For an instant he can't speak. He'll hear it again, before much longer...

"Yes," he hears himself say. "And I will see them when I leave here.

"And you, Stark?" he adds. Suddenly he wants to know, to hear Stark describe the mad family he's built for himself. It's only fair, isn't it?

- o -

A family? Tony Stark's family? It's almost laughable, at least for the second before you realize how pathetic the concept is. His mother is dead; his father is a bastard, and also dead; their family is distant or gone. The only people in his life are his AIs, his employees, and his one-night stands; even Obie works for SI. The only friends he has, the only people he can trust to stay with him, are bound to him at least as much by their programming or their paychecks as by any affection they might have for him.

Tony ducks his head, feels his lips twist. Does he have a family. What kind of a question is that?

"Nah," he finally manages with an abortive shake of his head. No. No, he doesn't.

Yinsen's face shutters, and suddenly Tony can't begin to parse the emotion there. Scorn? Pity? Some kind of... skepticism? Or is that a challenge? Tony thinks inexplicably of furnace coals: a very important week. "So you are a man who has everything... and nothing."

Tony attempts an ironic smirk and fails, unable to meet Yinsen's eye. That sounds about right, doesn't it? Poor little rich boy, hasn't got a friend in the world... it's ridiculous on so many levels. How'd he ever get this far in life without making so much as a single real connection?

Something's nagging at him, though, and he steals a glance up at Yinsen. The doc's eyebrows are up, his whole long face drawn into the ironic expression. If he didn't know better...

Why can't he shake the feeling that Doc is calling bullshit?

A faint snort jostles him out of his thoughts. Dice rattle in the cup. "You call a person's name in your delirium, I have to think they mean something to you."

Tony's stomach sinks. "Who..."

"Now that I know you weren't just insulting me..." Doc trails off. "Perhaps they need better names, had you thought of that?"

Tony blinks. Hard. "They don't want better names. I tried - DUM-E won't answer to anything else, he takes it as an insu -" What the hell is coming out of his mouth? He clamps down abruptly. "What, the bots?" he manages instead.

Yinsen gives an elegant, one-shouldered shrug and tips the dice out onto the board. "In my experience, fever makes a man very truthful."

And what can he possibly say to that?

- o -
- o - o -
- o -

[TBC]