"We have done the impossible, and that makes us mighty."

-Malcom Reynolds; Serenity

"Do not move, Tony. Stay very still and do not move."

That is never a good thing to wake up to, but since it's Bruce saying it very close to his ear . . . well, Tony's going to pay attention just this once. He can do something spectacularly stupid later to make up for it.

"Good. That's good. Stay still."

"Facep'ate's gone," Tony muttered, and wow that hurt. It feels like the Hulk is sitting on his chest, and that is really, really unlikely considering that Bruce is behind and slightly to the left of his head.

"Thor ripped it off," Steve explains. "Where are those screwdrivers?"

For a moment, there's a disconnect. Steve doesn't drink often and he's a straightforward kind of man when he does. It takes a minute to realize that Steve is calling for a fairly archaic tool that Tony doesn't even have anymore-not since improving upon the basic concept seven months ago.

"I could easily divest him of the armor post haste," Thor intones mightily from not very far away. He has the air of someone who has repeated the very obvious several times now, and the mere implication makes Tony jerk.

And then give a highly undignified yelp of pain. He doesn't have the lungpower for more than that right now.

"Don't move," Bruce scolds softly. Louder, the good doctor addresses Thor: "No, Thor. The armor is layered pieces of metal wrapped around Tony. Removing the face plate is one thing, but we'd like to leave his limbs attached."

"What few still are," Natasha snorts in a highly unladylike fashion. "I found several approximations of electronic screwdrivers in his workshop, but Darcy had a more traditional toolbox."

"Do not give Thor a power tool," Tony insists tightly, and hey, full words in a complete sentence. That's progress.

"No worries, Mr. Stark," Darcy chirps from somewhere out of sight. "Thor and I are going to go find post-battle food. I'll bring an entire pizza back just for you, okay?"

"Someone needs to hire that girl," Tony mutters. "I want her on my payroll the way I want extra pepperoni on my pizza."

"I'm not fighting Jane Foster for her intern," Bruce refuses as he studies the tools available. "Do you want to be unconscious again? This is going to hurt, and we do have the good drugs."

Tony shakes his head very carefully, feeling the immovable metal digging into his neck on the right side.

"That knee looks pretty bad, Bruce," Natasha adds her own two-cents. "You should probably start there, and Steve on the breastplate. Even if the arc reactor took the EMP better than expected, it should be replaced quickly."

"What about me, Tasha?"

"Right hand, please, Clint. He has over a week of paperwork backlog to catch up on after all," Natasha smiles the very pretty, but very pointy smile that usually heralded pain. "He'll have plenty of time in recovery to get that out of the way won't you, Mr. Stark?"

Tony doesn't answer her, but that's because he lost a second to the sheer white silence of pain as his head is transferred from Bruce's lap to Natasha's. When Tony can formulate thought again, there is a very shiny silver tool poised over the broken neck-joint.

"Natasha, my friend, my teammate, my one-time PA, and second-best redhead, please do not-ow!" Tony made another pathetic noise which was meant to be a manly shout of indignation. "I'm very uncomfortable when you use sharp things on my neck," he mutters, after a few seconds of carefully calculated breathing.

"Quiet, please," she tells him sweetly as she lifts a jagged piece of metal out of the suit.

From Tony's vantage, he can see Bruce following the twisted form of metal surrounding his knee joint, and Natasha's right. Knees are not supposed to bend like that. Clint is cheerfully dismantling the entire hand of his armor to the right, and Steve is leaning over Tony from the left, using an old-fashioned screwdriver to remove each and every screw he comes across.

"Don't I have machines for this?" he asks groggily.

"Hulk may have . . . borrowed your landing pad," Bruce admits. "He threw it like a Frisbee at Doom."

"Acceptable loss," Tony decides upon reflection. "There's a back-up in my workshop."

"Moving you down there would be more painful than you think," Steve explains. "If they could even work around the damage you sustained going through the trash compactor twice."

"I went through the compactor a second time?" Tony tries to remember, but everything gets a bit fuzzy after stepping on the EMP landmine. "The compactor still works?" Tony blanches: "My workshop?"

"Only the top two floors were affected by the pulse," Natasha reassures him. "J.A.R.V.I.S. is really unhappy about being confined to the workshop though . . . And Dum-E tried to follow me back up."

"I have good 'bots," Tony agrees. "I should-air!"

Steve lifts the chest plate away, and Tony takes the first deep breath possible since he woke up. His ribs don't appreciate it, but everything else does. Clint eyes the dented interior of the plating with an impressed expression (the ring of the arc reactor is punched cleanly through the synthetic lining and imprinted on the metal).

"Even with reduced lung capacity, he never shuts up," is the archer's only comment as he hands Steve the new reactor and returns to freeing the rest of Tony's arm. Natasha is already working on the shoulder, and Steve carefully replaces the reactor before starting in on Tony's left arm.

"Brace yourself, Tony," comes from Bruce, and it's not so much Tony as it is Steve firmly pressing his torso against the ground with one hand. Natasha merely steadies his neck, while Clint pins down his arm. The weight of the suit is pretty much taking care of the bottom half, and Natasha jams something leather between his teeth just as Bruce pulls apart the metal.

Knees really should not look like that, Tony considers when the white recedes.

"No, they really shouldn't," Bruce shakes his head and Tony's never had a good grasp on internal narration vs. external commentary. The Avengers are pretty much used to it by now. "This is why you shouldn't step on EMP weapons in the suit."

"I'll remember that."

Bruce is cutting away his jeans, and dignity? Tony gave that up for Lent a few decades back. A functioning knee is much more important than dignity.

"Well, I think you four have got this, so I'm just going to pass out now," Tony decides. "Wake me up when the pizza gets here."

"Drug him," Bruce agrees, and then Natasha has a new pointy object pressed into his neck. Tony's okay with that this time; he can afford the very good drugs, Pepper can't pitch a fit since they're prescribed by a doctor, and his team can totally handle this.

There are actually four individuals willing to patiently extract him from his suit one screw at a time. And a fifth willing to dismantle it entirely in a pinch. It's a good team. They've got this.

Tony's probably overdue for his biweekly nap anyway.