"Tony, listen to me."
The voice is the only thing that stops him panicking, because of the bomb and the soldiers and the screaming and he can still hear himself screaming...
"Tony!"
His eyes snap open. All he can see is a red headed angel stood in front of him. He frowns in confusion. For a moment he's sure he's dead, because why else would there be an angel, and there was a bomb, he saw it, it had landed next to him and it had hurt so much...
"Listen to me," she says softly. "You're going to be okay. You're going to wake up in a minute, and it's going to hurt a lot. You need to stay calm. They're looking for you, Tony, stay calm."

Tony opens his mouth to ask what's going on, who she is, why she's here, but he can't talk and in a blink of an eye she's gone and he's waking up in a cave and there's an electromagnet in his chest and a car battery attached and a man named Yinsen explaining things to him that he'd rather not know. Tony looks around for his angel, but she isn't there. Instead he sees a camera watching him, and soldiers come in with guns (his guns, why do they have his guns?) and he thinks that this must be the way his life ends.

They're half drowning him now and it sparks pain deep in his chest and his lungs were already burning, but now it's worse, like a furnace, a wildfire of pain in his chest -
He's about to fall off the brink of consciousness. It would be easier, to die now, he thinks.
"Tony!" It's her voice again.
He holds on.
They drag him up, gasping for air and clutching his chest. Someone forces a rough bag over his head and Tony feels like he's going to suffocate, with the water in his lungs and the dust in his mouth. They pull him along and outside, and he sees crates and crates and never ending piles of his weapons, and he feels like he's going to be sick, because how did they get his weapons? But then his angel is there with him. She keeps him calm.
"Agree," she says quietly when Yinsen translates the offer from the terrorists - build the Jericho missile and he'll live. So Tony forces his business smile and nods, shakes the man's hand and feels dirty as he does so. His angel strokes a hand through his hair, pleased, a soft touch that makes Tony yearn for more. Then she disappears again.

It's only when Tony and Yinsen return to the cave that he realises what this means. He's the only one who can see her, he knows that instinctively, there's no need to ask the Afghan man. He's gone insane, he must have, his mind fractured from the pain or the trauma, creating a vision, creating her to help him cope. He knows the psychological possibilities and he wonders distractedly if there's a name for whatever is wrong with him, or if he's going to be some kind of new study, to be poked and prodded by shrinks across the globe.
He's sure he's insane, and Tony's dying already, what's the point of trying to survive if you're insane? His mind's always been his greatest tool after all, if that's broken, what does he have left? He thinks of what he'll say to Obie, and he's sure then that he'll only see the inside of four white walls for the rest of his life, if he even gets out of here.
Yinsen tries to goad him, guilt him into trying for survival. Tony's honestly surprised by the man's persistence; why does he care about saving a murderer, a broken man like him? Tony doesn't respond and eventually Yinsen gives up. Tony's left alone to stare into nothing, wishing death would hurry up and claim him.

That's when she appears again. He should have been expecting that.

"You're not insane, Tony," she tells him quietly, curling up next to him in front of the fire, her bright eyes piercing his. Their precise shade of blue reminds him of something but he can't think what.
"You're a figment of my imagination," Tony mutters back bitterly.
She shakes her head. "I'm just as real as you. Just, less corporeal."
The edge of Tony's mouth twitches as though he could smile at that. "Who are you then?"
"Virginia Potts."
Tony blinks. That was more of a solid answer than he was expecting. "Alright, you're not a figment of my imagination. I would never have named anyone Virginia."
"Hey!" she says indignantly, but she doesn't look offended.
"Pepper," Tony says suddenly.
"What?"
"Pepper Potts," he repeats, and hopes she doesn't ask where that came from because he really has no idea. It feels right though, like his life is aligning itself into the way it should be. And maybe he's insane, creating this vision of a woman, (she is beautiful though, and Tony wishes she was real because, damn) but he already feels better and she's barely been here a minute.
She tries the name out. "Pepper Potts." She nods and shrugs at the same time, and gives him a small, affectionate smile that warms him completely. "Alright."
Tony grins. He keeps calling her his angel in his head. From her slight smirk, he thinks she probably knows.