A/N - I don't have PTSD, or any sort of panic attacks. I have no clue what I've been talking about this entire time. I think most of you have been liking this story anyway, so I'm just apologizing to the people who like actually accurate depictions of this stuff. I can only spend so much time on research before I decide "Screw it, I just want to write this already."

Another thing: I've started yet another Tony Stark story, against all common sense, so if anyone likes those stereotypical "it's hard to keep a secret identity" things, that's up. And has 2 chapters already.

HAVE SOME TONY STARK, BECAUSE IN CASE YOU COULDN'T TELL, I ENJOY HIS PAIN.

This was very not good, and Tony didn't have the faintest clue what to do about it.

When the darkness had first descended, he had been fighting off yet another minor anxiety attack, and then suddenly he hadn't been able to see his hand in front of his face. Spiralling into a panic attack without so much as a firefly to drive away the horrific feeling of being back in that cave, or worse, back in space, falling forever…

Finally, after a handful of seconds that felt like hours, his brain had coughed up the obvious solution of the nightlight embedded in his chest. In an instant, his shirt was half off, and the blue light was flickering on Natasha's face, reassuring him that other people were there, that he wasn't trapped and alone, just trapped. You won't be trapped for long, he asserted, not with those two superspies here. He focused on the flickering blue light, ignoring everything else.

Until, for some reason it went dark again.

He yanked his shirt up again, only to find a small hand covering his wrist with an iron grip. A similar hand was tapping out code on his back, code he couldn't decipher because every part of his brain was screaming at the absence of the light.

No light means no heat means no air and suddenly he wasn't sitting on hard rock anymore but instead floating in a vast emptiness he couldn't quite comprehend, freezing and falling and suffocating all at once.

If he closed his eyes he would never open them again, he knew the end of the story, he knew what had happened. His heart had stopped beating. His lungs had no longer drawn in air. The reactor, dead in his chest - the reactor was out.

The reactor was out, so he was already dead. Dead like the man in the cave, dead like he was wishing to be as water flooded his lungs, and he didn't know if he was in space or drowning but he was cold and he couldn't breathe and there was no light and no air.

He would have screamed, but there was a rough, callused hand across his mouth, so tight that he couldn't even gasp frantically for air that wasn't there.

And then he couldn't tell that there was a hand, that there was rock underneath him, that someone was tapping on his back.

All he could see was black, black with a curtain of stars, and he just kept falling forever.

He jerked back with a cry that was muffled by the hand across his mouth. The hand was back, then. It probably hadn't gone away - it was Tony that had gone away, lost himself for who knew how long. So it was him who was back, just barely.

The hand mercifully disappeared, allowing him to gasp in as much air as his lungs could take (which wasn't as much as a normal person because of the reactor, but beggars can't be choosers, and he needed air). The hand tapping at his back hand disappeared, instead, two small hands were on his shoulders, gently but firmly holding him to the floor. He wondered how much he had been moving around if she felt that was necessary.

Tapping again, a calloused finger right on his cheek. It took him several repetitions until he even recognized that the tapping was his own name.

"Tony?"

He hesitantly reached out, found a face - the wrong face - reached out again, found a muscled arm that seemed to correspond to the hand, and started his own tapping. It took him two tries to remember how to form the word "Yes" in Morse Code.

Chatter over his head in a language that sounded more like parrot squawks than any human communication, and then from two different hands came the same word. "Sorry."

It took him a minute to remember anything about what had happened, and when he recalled slender hands forcing him to hide his only source of light, he recoiled.

Recoiled, and then immediately returned, because if he couldn't have light he could at least feel the grounding presence of other people. He sought out Natasha's hands, and asked her the simplest question he knew: "Why?"

The explanation he got, something about the color of the reactor's light and Clint having a panic attack, made a little more sense after he spent a few minutes actually getting the correct amount of oxygen. He had thought he was getting none at all, but really, it seemed like he had been getting a little too much. Clint's hand over his mouth had at least stopped him from inhaling until he seriously hurt his cramped lungs (and stopped him from screaming his head off).

"So blue light gives him panic attacks. Just so you know," he replied as soon as his fingers had enough dexterity, "having no light gives me panic attacks."

She said, "Sorry," but all three of them knew she would make the same choice again if she had to, as many times as necessary. And it might be necessary, because their captors must have heard his muffled cry, and they would probably turn off the lights again.

So, without the Iron Man suit or any possible variation, and unable to be used as a flashlight, the arc reactor was just a glorified car battery. What a heap of useless junk.

When his brain caught up to his train of thought, he nearly laughed aloud. Reaching out for a hand, he found Clint's first, and tapped so frantically that the archer ended up grabbing Tony's fingers and making him start over, more slowly.

"Arc reactor."

The tension that rippled through Clint's arm startled him. After a couple of seconds, Tony realized that his friend thought he was still talking about the blue light, and he huffed out a silent sigh before he resumed painstakingly forming letters.

"Not for light. Useless. Pile of junk." He was trying to make himself understood, but a few words were still eluding him as he tried to stay grounded in the present moment. "Junk. Junk."

After he repeated the word three more times, Clint grabbed his fingers, and he stilled. Slowly, the question came back: "Junk equals wire?"

"Yes!" That was the word he had been looking from, and immediately the parrot-squawks started up again as Clint relayed the information to Natasha.

And it was Natasha who rapped out questions against Tony's shoulder, a conversation that was frustratingly slow for all parties. "How long to get the wire out?"

"Eight minutes." He hesitated, and the following messages was tapped out much more slowly than necessary as his hands trembled. "Three for you."

His hands were large, fingers shaking from the constant anxiety he was trying to press back, and nails worn. Her hands were slender, steady, and her nails were sharp enough to pry open latches.

And, for a very good reason (whose name was Stane), he had a huge problem with anyone else touching the reactor.

She either didn't understand his trepidation or was still considering the options, because she moved on to the next question. "Will it still work?"

He knew what she meant. Nobody could expect the arc reactor to lose parts and still power the Iron Man suit, but she was asking about its more vital function: keeping the shrapnel out of Tony's heart. And that same heart was heavy as he tapped back, "Not for long. An hour before it cuts out - and then it's all a game of how long it takes the shrapnel to kill me."

The word she typed back wasn't exactly appropriate, but it fit his mood pretty well. He heard Clint squawk a word that he suspected meant much the same thing.

"It's the only idea I have," he admitted.

"It's a good last resort," Natasha responded. The conversation was helping, at least, the past had mostly stopped trying to force its way into the present. "How long a wire?"

He snorted in his head. "Plenty long to pick the lock." Slowly, he placed one finger at her wrist and another halfway between her elbow and shoulder. She tapped back an instant approval.

Was it possible, he wondered, for Morse Code to sound excited?

It was only one of the three items they had insisted he had to find, but it was at least something. And if he found another source of wire, so much the better.

One down. Two to go.

"What should I do with the concussion, anyway?"

"Well, there aren't many symptoms you can add without going into a coma," Clint mused. "I like the whole throwing-up-passing-out thing you've got going on, though."

He winced, and Natasha felt him wince, and suddenly even in the darkness he could feel her eyes on him. Slowly, he took her hands, stopped her fingers from tapping on his skin, stopped her from asking the question he knew was coming.

Eventually, Clint connected the dots as well, and the question came from a direction he wasn't expected, the letters tapped into his back like a brand.

"Is that from the fucking panic attacks?"

He sighed and tapped his answer guiltily into Clint's palm, glad neither of them could see him blush. "I forced the first one. I hoped it wouldn't get this bad."

One quick conversation in some dead language later, and Natasha and Clint's fingers were strangely still. Tony was still embarrassed. He really hadn't expected things to get this bad, he thought he could handle it, keep the attacks under control. So, he'd been stupid enough to force one for the express purpose of 'playing sick,' and now it might mess up their whole plan, because he'd accidentally actually incapacitated himself while trying to fake being incapacitated.

For a genius, he really was an idiot, he berated himself.

Strangely, though, his teammates didn't seem to agree. When Clint finally answered his admission, he simply tapped out, "Pretty badass."

Natasha decided to stay more focused. "How long can you keep it up?"

He didn't even hesitate.

"As long as the lights stay on."

A/N - Thanks for the bazillion reviews last chapter. I liked that. Can we do that again?