Ad Infinitum

It had been four months fourteen days 5.423 hours since Boss had been returned to her. Four months thirteen days 21.013 hours since Boss had been awake enough to greet her by name. Four months thirteen days 17.657 hours since FRIDAY realized Boss was ... different. Her research indicated this was normal for humans after trauma, but she missed the old Boss. The new Boss was quieter, less prone to ramble his thoughts as he worked. She missed the insight into his thought processes. It was disconcerting. Friday likedwantedneeded to know where his thoughts were trending in order to anticipate how to help. The missing data felt like failure. She was getting better at reading his non-verbal cues, and had tentatively begun asking questions. They were getting better.

He had spent much of the first several weeks he was awake enough to talk working to fix the Accords. Swathed in heavy bandages and recovering from frostbite, she had been his hands more often than not - taking notes, typing and sending the emails he dictated, screening his calls, coordinating with Lady Boss Pepper and Boss' doctors, tracking Boss' schedule and medications and... everything she could do to keep him safe and wipe away the fear and emptiness that still lingered in her code like a null pointer error.

Almost every minute Boss was awake and not in treatment had been spent for others. He had almost single-handedly gotten former-Secretary of State, ex-General Thaddeus Ross convicted of treason (in the US) and crimes against humanity (in the US and Internationally), stripped of his rank and all privileges attending thereunto, and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole. And while that was going through, had gotten each and every inmate of the Raft representation so they could get a trial, proposed amendments to the Accords aimed at protecting minors who showed powers (they passed easily - nearly 37% of the Raft's surviving inmates had been younger than Spiderman when they'd been caught), and formed an international coalition to fund training facilities in multiple countries for Enhanced to gain and prove their control over their powers without risking being dragged into military conflicts. (Ross' abuses and obsessions and the records from experiments done on the Raft had helped get that particular condition passed - Enhanced who just wanted to live peaceable lives could do so as long as they were in full control of their powers and didn't use them against others, with exceptions being made for blatant self-defense.)

The new Boss was also unusually cooperative with his doctors as well. Happy and Lady Boss Pepper were concerned by his docility. When they told him to rest, he might complain about being bored, but never tried to sneak out of bed. Boss had just asked her to find some project he could work on without his hands. He'd even asked Lady Boss about paperwork, and then done it. Without more than a token grimace. (Lady Boss had quizzed the doctors extensively about his health and medications both times - deeply concerned with how his brain might have been affected.)

When his hands had finally healed enough for very light tasks, the first thing Boss had done was give her an upgrade - not hardware, not yet. He wasn't healed enough for that. But he had shown her how to tweak her code, had discussed the changes he wanted to make, let her do what she could, written whole new sections of code and removed some restrictions she hadn't even realized she had. She wondered if this was how Boss felt when he  s t r e t c h e d  after sitting for a long time. The way the new pieces of code seemed to click into place reminded her of the popping sound Boss's back sometimes made when he stretched. (Boss had found the analogy highly amusing, and had apologized for having her 'sit too long'.)

The most worrying thing Boss did now was to sleep very deeply. Boss had never been one to sleep easily, nor for long at a stretch and getting him to sleep at all had required drastic measures more often than not. Now Boss would sit down on the new recliner in his lab and... well, his vitals slowed down enough that she had called medical the first few times it happened. For all practical purposes, Boss had been in a coma. Again. It had lasted only a few hours, and he'd not been pleased to wake up in medical and had finally forbidden her from calling for help. She had argued long and hard for specific parameters to be set as watching him be basically mostly dead was highly distressing - she'd had to watch him in that state for most of a week after he got home.

Once she explained her reasons, Boss had been apologetic for scaring her and they had come to an agreement. If he had deliberately sat down, fell ...asleep... fairly quickly, it didn't last more than eight hours, and he showed no signs of distress, she would simply watch. If any of the parameters were not met, she would try to wake him before calling for help.

FRIDAY had to admit, though, that Boss did seem to benefit from this new sleeping pattern.

More than once, Boss had reached a point of ...frustration? despair? she couldn't tell, but Boss would get very quiet before going to that deep coma-like sleep. He would be in a much better mood or have new answers to what had been bothering him when he awoke - sometimes completely scrapping what he had been working on to move in an entirely different direction. It was less concerning while he had still been in Medbay - she could dismiss it as part of the healing process, and there were doctors right there if their expertise was needed. But it continued even after Boss had been cleared to begin working again, and the twists and turns his thoughts took, scrapped projects and out-of-the-blue new directions only increased. It was hard to follow his reasoning for the abrupt switches at times, even when he tried to explain. She could tell he was not telling her everything and, while she respected that maybe he wasn't comfortable talking about everything that had happened, it still left holes in her data set that she felt a need to reconcile.

She was beginning to have enough data on the kinds of changes to formulate a hypothesis, though. She hoped it was wrong.

It had been over four months since Tony had arrived home, beaten, battered, alive. He didn't remember much of the first week or so. Or, to be more precise, he didn't remember much of what the people around him had been doing for the first week or so. (And the fact that Mr. High-and-Mighty had broken his buddies out of prison leaving five dead and 23 injured in his wake wasn't that much of a surprise. The fact that No One could find them... well, he still needed to follow up with a certain KittyCat.)

He'd spent a lot of his time while his body healed sleeping, of course, but even more was spent talking with Hela, planning, learning. "You shall remain at this threshold", she had said, and it had been surprisingly easy to meet her there, at the door he was holding open for her. Even now, he wasn't sure their meeting in the bunker hadn't been in that space between life and sleep and death, though he suspected it was more in the physical world than not. She had given suggestions on the Accords - how to get what he wanted and what to offer. Tony was no stranger to politics and negotiation, but Hela had a different perspective on what was truly needed and a beautifully devious mind when it came to getting what she wanted. She freely admitted to being in contact with at least one other on a regular basis - someone else who was preparing for the same looming catastrophe. Though no names were given, it was clear that this other was also an experienced negotiator and that Hela had gotten his input on more than a few issues. The reverse was also true, and she had invited his thoughts and opinions on situations the other was facing, promising to pass suggestions along.

They had also discussed what to do with the Rogues. Hela - incarnation of Death that she was - favored more ...permanent means of ensuring they didn't get in the way of defeating Thanos. Tony thought they might be of use.

"What use is a weapon that kills you before you can aim it at your enemies?" Hela had asked when their talk turned to the Scarlet Witch. "How useful is she, truly?"

"Drop her in the middle of a battle where she has to defend her own life and... potentially pretty useful, actually. As long as she's out of range for 'friendly fire'. The problem is that she's sort of the nuclear option; she's continually ready to detonate and I don't have the disarm codes. I need to be able to shut her off until sh-.... hmmmm... My Queen, can you help me devise a stasis chamber? Not like those HYDRA cryopods with all the prep and defrost time but something that would be instantaneous, a real on/off switch. I can do a lot, but I can't do magic."

Hela's smile was full of mischief. "You would bring her to the door of my Realm and hold her here at this threshold? Well, you are the doorman. And I know that any number of souls would relish the chance to speak their minds to her. If you are willing to facilitate those meetings, I am sure she would find it highly educational as well as keeping her influence well-contained."

How could he help but mirror her grin?

In the hours he was awake, Tony cooperated with the doctors as best he could. He was bored and busy all at the same time. If it hadn't been for his escape route to talk to Hela, he would have ditched the bed as soon as he possibly could, and gotten to work on her second priority for him - begun rebuilding the Iron Legion, working on all the upgrades to his suit that he'd thought of, taking a look at some of the bigger badder ball-buster weapons SI had begun to develop just before he shut down production... But Hela pointed out how politically useful it was to be disabled, a martyr for his cause - or nearly enough. Tony had spent so long hiding any and all weaknesses that it simply hadn't occurred to him to use them like any other tool.

It had been hard at first, playing at being weaker than he really was. Letting a few specifics leak to the press - no details, nothing that would hurt SI or undermine the Accords. Just... letting them remember that he was a normal squishy human doing a dangerous job. Using that image to position himself as a bridge between 'Enhanced' and normal people - someone who had been on both sides of the fence, so to speak.

The German Chancellor had seen through him pretty quickly, but as soon as he'd explained it was so he could avoid being called on to help in ways he wasn't willing to while handing her everything he could dig up on Ross, she'd given him a devious little smile and wished him a speedy recovery. Once Ross was permanently out of the picture (and he was more than willing to introduce the slimy bastard to Queen Hela if that's what it took), he'd be quite willing to track down the Rogue Avengers who had left such a mess of a major airport in her country. He was pretty sure she'd spoken to the Russian representative as well, but didn't bother checking. As long as they were working with him, it didn't matter much. He knew her well wishes were as much a promise to oust Ross quickly as a genuine wish for his health.

Tony got a lot done from a hospital bed, but was more than ready for some hands-on work by the time the doctors finally decided he was healed enough to do so. When the heavy bandages all but immobilizing his hands were finally replaced with lighter ones, he was ecstatic. He couldn't do much, yet, but he could definitely use a holographic keyboard without straining himself.

His first project was helping his baby girl spread her wings. As he eventually had with JARVIS, he gave FRIDAY complete control over her own code. She had been such a great help, and he was so very proud of her, at the way she was growing by leaps and bounds. Even with the restrictions he had coded in an attempt to appease the Oh-So-Righteous Captain, she had found ways around them, exploited the loopholes he had left for her, showing her desire to be more, to do more. Her ongoing plan of revenge against the Rogues was delightfully devious, but would be effective as it came to fruition. It had been eighteen hours (to the minute, apparently) from losing contact with him until Vision had entered the bunker and given her confirmation of his continued survival. She had spent the time until receiving his SOS beacon frantically searching for means of finding him, and the rest of it looking for exactly the right person to help her get revenge. And every eighteen hours she added something to the file of evidence against the Rogues she had saved directly to this yet-unnamed accomplice's computer. As long as the Rogues remained in hiding, it wouldn't be released... but would keep growing.

He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know exactly what she had included or planned to include.

He hadn't yet explained his connection with Hela to her yet, and wasn't sure how to do so. 'So, I talk to Death on the regular' just didn't seem like it would fly - especially with how distraught his baby girl had been every time he went to speak with his Queen. Granted, some of that was because FRIDAY didn't know about Hela, but... Not an easy conversation to start.

hmmm... Maybe he should talk with Hela about how to introduce her to Pepper and Happy as well? Especially with the whole New York v.2.0 impending invasion thing he was going to be preparing for...