Death Unmade Him
Death Unmade Him
Tony kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Five strong-willed people stuck in the same building - even a building as large and impressive as his tower - would understandably result in friction. That was without taking into account that two of them were super spies who had been taught not to trust by their lives long before SHIELD got hold of them.
Then there was Steve Rogers, icon, red white and blue mascot of the USA. Mr. I Can Do This All Day. Too stubborn to take no for an answer when it came to joining the Army and too stubborn to die even with the whole of the ocean weighing down on top of him.
Bruce was probably the calmest of all of them, which was ironic, considering he was the guy who was always angry. But Tony figured Bruce had mastered the art of adapting to his environment. He could do it when he was forced to, though he hated having to go without his tech and took pains to make sure it was never required of him. He built his first suit in a cave, okay? He liked his tech.
The spies, of course, were good at adapting out of necessity, though he’d never seen Clint do it. Natasha, he’d been privy to on a personal level, when she’d infiltrated Stark Industries as Natalie Rushman. Steve… Tony wasn’t sure about Steve. For being a man seventy years out of time, he was remarkably well put-together, but Tony didn’t know if that was high-level adaptability or if Steve was holding onto his brave face out of sheer stubborn resolve.
As much as he was able, Bruce seemed to go with the flow. The fact that, outside of battles, he’d only hulked out once suggested that, despite everything, this arrangement was working. Despite them all having large personalities (and Tony’s the largest of them all), they got along together fine.
Which made absolutely no fucking sense.
People didn’t like Tony.
Oh, they stayed with him, hung around, because Tony was the best at what he did. He made the very best toys, and so people suffered through his irritating personality and did what they could to kiss his ass and play at being friends because they thought Tony couldn’t see through it, but he could - usually. In the end, despite the laughs and the parties and the good memories, people only ever stayed because of what they got out of the experience.
Pepper stayed, of course, because he paid her. She’d be an intern when he met her - the only one with enough guts to walk into the CEO’s office and tell him about a mistake he made in his calculations. It had been a fucking glaring mistake - he knew, he’d put it there on purpose. Obie either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t cared - Tony didn’t like wondering about his motivations or thinking about how far back his betrayals ran. He’d had people meant to go over his coding, meant to check for errors and call him on it, but the name Stark was synonymous with the Boogeyman in the corporate hierarchy because no one would stand up, step up. Too afraid of Tony Stark, the man whose name got stamped on their paychecks by whoever had been head of his accounting department at the time. Maybe that was dealt with by the Board. He didn’t know. Didn’t care. Legions of people working under him, some who had worked for his father, and none of them with guts enough to call him on his error, until Virginia Potts walked into his office - without an appointment, he would like to note - and told him there was an error in his calculations.
Obie’s face had been hilarious. Tony hadn’t had to try and hide his grin. He could just blame it on the look of incredulity the man shot Pepper with and then turned on Tony. Tony, who never made mistakes, except when he did.
Not that he ever told Obie that this one had been planned. The fact that he hired Pepper on the spot might have given the game away, though. Still. She’d only been there because she was an intern, only dealt with all of his shit because she was getting paid to. He gave her the position of CEO and her paycheck probably tripled. They were friends, sure, but he knew they wouldn’t be if not for the fact that they both worked for SI.
Rhodey had stayed for various reasons throughout their years knowing each other. At MIT, it was because Tony was the smartest kid on campus, nevermind that he was also the youngest, and Rhodey sucked at math. Having direct access to your math tutor any time you needed them was the perfect reason to get an apartment with the fifteen-year-old freshman no one else wanted to deal with. Even the professors had hated Tony for being smarter than they were. He couldn’t help it, but that didn’t stop them resenting him.
Once he joined the army, Rhodey stayed because Tony made weapons and he could climb the ranks being the liaison between the military and Stark Industries - Tony hated dealing with the higher-ups in the military as much as they hated dealing with him. Having Rhodey as a buffer worked for both parties and Tony could just ignore the military aspect entirely and nerd out with his friend.
For a while, it worked, and he had thought, foolishly, that it would be like that forever. He had even convinced himself that it wasn’t just the deal with the military and SI. He let himself believe that he and Rhodey really were best friends, and that the man liked Tony for who he was, not just what Tony could give him.
And then Tony went to Afghanistan and only some of him came back - there were parts missing, a few extra pieces that hadn’t been there before, and an entirely new outlook on life. An outlook that had hurt to get and kept hurting no matter that he kept trying to bandage it with better decisions, fixing the mistakes of his past and his willful blindness by stopping the weapons-making, stopping the bloodletting his company was so fucking proud of. What everyone thought he should be proud of, only he had been there, on the other side of his own fucking missile, his blood soaking through his shirt, the sand drinking all he had to give. He had fucking been there and watched people that his weapons were supposed to protect fall to them, blown apart by them.
And if his weapons weren’t protecting people like they were supposed to, then he needed to get rid of them. If there’s a line of code that messes up the program, you fix it or you remove it. Tony didn’t know how to fix his weapons so they protected people when he couldn’t control the hands that held them, so he removed them from the equation. It was the only thing that made sense.
Except it only made sense to him. To everyone else, he was out of his mind. Suffering PTSD, and fuck yes, he had PTSD. He’d taken his own goddamn missile to the chest. He’d had his chest ripped into - TWICE! - while conscious. He’d left his heart, real heart, human heart, in Afghanistan and brought a robotic one back with him. Tony stopped being just Tony in a dark cave that smelled of blood and urine and soldered metal. Tony lost his faith in humanity when he saw his own name scratched across the missile that killed him like a promise - his name on a bullet - and he regained his faith in humanity under the steady hands and gentle gaze of a doctor. A man who had every reason to hate him.
Tony came back from the desert a ghost, his heart only still going because his brain wouldn’t shut up even when he was dead, and he tried to fix the things that were wrong with his company so he could save as many people as he had killed. He never would, he knew that, but he could fucking try. He’d never be a soldier - we aren’t soldiers! - but he’d been a part of the war since he built his first weapon under the judgmental eyes of his father. The least he could do was make sure the right people were protected with those weapons.
He’d wanted Rhodey’s help. Rhodey, who had tried to explain to him, before he had the capacity to understand, about putting on a uniform and standing up. A man who had told Tony to his face that he could be more than what he was, and Tony had tried, he had. He’d wanted Rhodey to be there, to help him, guide him, maybe, as he stumbled through finding out who he was when he wasn’t washing his hands in the blood of millions. Merchant of Death, they called him. He wished he’d understood then what it really meant, instead of accepting the name like a badge of honor when it was really a scarlet letter on his chest, pinned there in the blood of a kind doctor’s family and waiting to be smeared with more.
Rhodey had proved him wrong, then. When he’d turned his back on Tony for stopping weapons production, cutting off his supplies to the military. When there was nothing with bullets in it for Tony to hand over to Rhodey on a silver plate, the man dropped his hands and the friendly mask and let Tony see that it was MIT all over again, and this had just been the easy access to his tutor. Tony Stark was always great to have around - useful to have around - until he wasn’t.
And then everyone left. No hesitation, no hiding it. If Tony didn’t have something to offer, people headed for higher ground. He was used to it. He was. Rhodey’s betrayal had promised that even the greatest friendship was a lie. Things were better now, of course, but then, the military had the Iron Patriot, didn’t they? What a steal.
What a literal steal.
And sure, he’d made Natasha a gun, but seriously, she guarded his ass in battles and he didn’t want her using fucking HammerTech. Where were SHIELD’s fucking standards? And he’d made Clint arrows but the guy only had like seventeen in his tiny-ass little quiver. Seriously, Tony was doing the whole team a favor with that one. And hey, he’d never made arrows before and now he had. Good practice, new learning experience, and he got to cross prehistoric weaponsmithing off his bucket list. Go team!
He hadn’t made anything for Bruce and Steve, and true, part of it was because he really didn’t want to have to go ask Mister Fantastic-At-Everything how he managed stretchy, fire-proof pants. And no, there probably wasn’t a better material to make Cap’s shield out of besides Vibranium, and even if he was successful, Tony didn’t think Steve would accept it. He’d listened to stories about Steve Rogers and that shield all his life. He’d heard the wistfulness in Aunt Peggy’s voice, and he knew that his dad and Steve had been friends. Nevermind that he’d been a shitty father, Howard had made that shield, and Peggy had been the one to test it - without sanction, sure, but it’d worked. It was like a creation between the three of them, in a way. Tony wouldn’t have given it up had it been him, and he wasn’t a sentimentalist.
But, he would admit to himself, that some of his reticence on building them anything was him… pushing buttons. Seeing how far they would stretch before they’d had enough. How long they would linger there before impatience and irritation finally had them snapping at him, admitting that he wasn’t giving them what they wanted.
The weeks went by without him offering up anything to Bruce and Steve, but they never said anything, never acted irritated.
Well, okay, that wasn’t entirely true. Both of them had been irritated with Tony more than once, but it wasn’t about him not doing anything for them. It had been, more often than not, about him doing something that jeopardized his health. The first time he’d been “injured” in a battle, and he used injured really lightly because god, it was just a piece of metal and he already had a bunch of them in his fucking heart, thank you, he’d skipped SHIELD medical because he totally knew how to handle that on his own and he had Jarvis to help.
So it was nothing to him, to avoid the medics and mentally flip Fury the bird as he shot back to the tower. Not like the medics could do anything to help, anyway. He needed Jarvis to take the armor off unless he planned on leaving it on the Helicarrier, which was just not happening. He knew SHIELD would much prefer having the Iron Man without the Tony Stark to go along with it, so it was best not to give them the opportunity.
In all honesty, he hadn’t expected to receive anything but a reprimand for not sticking around for debriefing. Fury, of course, would be furious, but that was par for the course. Steve would get all self-righteous and demand Tony be a better team player. Natasha would accept it as Tony’s narcissistic tendencies showing through. He didn’t know what Clint would do. The archer might simply not care either way. Bruce, of course, would stand back, and maybe exude disappointment.
So Tony was ready for their reactions and ready to fend them off. Being blasé and the carefree playboy would probably piss Steve off, but it would exasperate Bruce and Natasha and get them to leave, out of irritation if nothing else. He would eventually drive Steve away with the knowledge that he was nothing like Howard Stark had been, and far removed from what a proper soldier should be. He was ready to face whatever they threw at him.
Except… he wasn’t prepared to be wrong.
He was still hooked into the device that removed his armor ten minutes after he arrived back at the tower. The helmet was gone and the gauntlets and most of the armor covering his arms, but the chassis over his shoulders and hips had to remain to keep the armor around his torso steady. He couldn’t have held himself up without the extra support of the leg armor, so that was also still on, as a series of metal arms sprouting from the ceiling worked on the armor.
“Has it occurred to you that I am not a licensed physician?” Jarvis was saying in the disapproving tone that Tony was so used to and so very fond of. “I can remove the intrusive piece of metal, but I cannot give you the Tetanus shot you very likely need.”
“It does sound like you’re trying to give me medical advice, Jarvis.”
“I would never call it medical advice, Sir. After all, we both know you never listen to that.”
Tony felt a grin slide over his lips. “That hurts me, J. Truly.”
He did his best to focus on Jarvis’ voice. The AI could have easily worked in silence, though unlike a human, speaking didn’t distract him from his other actions. Still, Tony knew the steady stream of speech in a familiar voice and the open invitation to banter was for him. Since Afghanistan, he hadn’t done well in situations that required him to be pinned down. Others might have thought the armor would be restrictive in that case, but Tony was still in control despite the snug fit. It wasn’t the same here, with the back of his armor clutched in the grip of the arms that were built to remove and store his armor. Though he trusted Jarvis – had built him to be loyal and trustworthy, as the original Edwin Jarvis had been – the fact that he was pinned still brought up unpleasant memories. The pain didn’t help, either.
The hum of the laser blade in the grip of Jarvis’ grip (Tony refused to call it a lightsaber if only to avoid being sued) was a steady background noise that Tony tried to focus on to avoid the sharp point of heat at his hip as Jarvis cut through the armor.
Doombots were quickly becoming Tony’s least favorite thing to deal with, and the fact that he’d had enough experience with them to mark them as his least favorite was probably half the reason. The other half was simply that it was so insulting. Tony was intimately aware of all the good that robotics could do the world, but people like Viktor von Doom continued to make people fear technology. It would steadily rise, of course. Tony, if no one else, would make sure of that, but there was so much more he could do, so much faster he could move, if people weren’t so frightened. Only about five people in the world knew that Jarvis was a true AI, because the idea of HAL 9000 and Skynet terrified people, putting forth the negative possibilities without offering up the positive. Yes, it was possible that a creature of artificial intelligence could turn on their creators, but no more so than any human child could turn on their parents. The key was, as with any child, teaching them the difference between right and wrong, as Tony had done with Jarvis.
But Viktor and his Doombots worked against the chance for the rest of humanity to look at robots as a step toward something greater. The Iron Man suit had helped, of course, as had War Machine, but despite their mechanical appearance, it was well-known that they were piloted and controlled by humans.
So Tony had already disliked the Doombots from previous battles with them, and now this one, where one of them actually managed to damage the armor badly enough that the metal had broken and bent inward, cutting into Tony’s flesh. He’d spent the latter half of the battle with the irritating and disturbing sensation of blood running down his leg, and now Jarvis was cutting his armor into pieces to get it off him so he wouldn’t tear a spike of metal out of Tony’s abdomen.
The next time they faced off against the Doombots, Tony was gonna rewire one of them to go back and punch Dr. Doom in the face.
He felt a slight give in the armor and the low hum of the laser cutter shut off as the inch-long crimson blade was retracted into the small cylinder. It only looked like a miniature lightsaber. It also sort of looked like a tube of lipstick and wow, would that be a terrible mistake to make.
“You gonna peel me like an orange, J?” Tony asked, as the mechanical arms moved around him to grip the suit from different angles.
“I believe the better choice in this instance would be a banana, Sir.”
“Well, bananas are good,” Tony said with a grin, bracing himself. He felt the armor lift away from his back first, and then it pulled away from his sides and front, two halves being split apart with ease. Jarvis lay them carefully on the ground as Tony tried to breathe around the sudden weight in his abdomen.
The piece of metal was no more than two inches across and narrower where it entered his skin, but the armor wasn’t thin and he could feel the weight of it pulling sharply. His head dropped back against one of the arms behind him and he shuddered out a breath.
“Sir, Dr. Banner is asking for permission to enter the lab,” Jarvis informed him, and Tony felt a slight change in pressure against the wound. He grunted as the piece of metal moved, one of Jarvis’ arms carefully lifting it to take the weight off Tony. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, regretting it as his abdomen twinged.
To let Bruce in now or put the disappointment off until later? Tony never did like to be interrupted when he was in the middle of something, and this definitely qualified, but on the other hand, Bruce might show him some sympathy once he realized Tony was injured.
Then again, that might just make it worse.
“What do you think, Jarvis? How green is he looking?”
“Dr. Banner appears to be in complete control of himself, Sir. Although his heart rate is mildly elevated, his facial features are expressing concern.”
There was no idle movement of limbs around Tony. Jarvis could certainly mimic the human tendency to fidget if he wanted to, but he rarely saw fit to do so. In fact, there was hardly a moment’s hesitation as he continued, “If you are asking for my opinion on the matter, I would be inclined to let him in. He may be able to offer a better assistance with this than I can.”
“No one’s better than you, J,” Tony said, his eyes still closed. His abdomen did hurt and Tetanus was a possibility, as well as an infection. The fight with the Doombots hadn’t been clean and who knew what cheap materials Doom made them out of. He didn’t like doctors touching him, didn’t really like anyone touching him anymore, but this was Bruce. Bruce had, since the moment he met him, reminded Tony of Yinsen. He didn’t think that was the only reason he trusted the scientist, but he thought it might have at least helped.
“All right, Jarvis. Your skills in persuasion and Brucie’s puppy dog face have sold me. Let the good doctor in.”
“How comforting to know I can roll nat 20 Persuasion,” Jarvis said, unlocking the laboratory doors as Tony snorted laughter. The doors slid open with a quiet hiss of noise and Tony could hear Bruce’s calm footsteps as they moved closer.
He also heard the moment when his gait changed.
“Tony?!” The stumble – startlment, shock – was followed by a near-run, and Tony’s eyes snapped open to pinpoint the doctor’s position. “What the hell is going on?”
He opened his mouth to say something to calm him down, probably something flippant that wouldn’t do anything of the sort, but was interrupted by Dum-E.
The small robot came zooming out from under the table, arm whirring as it lifted over his head, and the sudden spasmodic clicking of his pincers was nearly deafened by a loud hissing sound, like pistons snapping and an angry cat. The tiny robot rolled himself right up to Bruce without pausing, forcing the doctor to take a few hasty steps back to avoid being run over.
“Dum-E!” Tony called, trying to sit up and instantly regretting moving at all. “Fuck! Dum-E, don’t attack Bruce. It’s fine, he’s fine.”
The little robot’s claw was eye-level with Bruce’s face, turning this way and that. When Tony had built the little robot as a child, he had put his sensors in that claw, and the bolts he had used to fashion that section of the arm were large to purposely look like eyes. Few people understood that. They didn’t realize that Dum-E could see them. Not the way that Jarvis could. Dum-E’s cameras weren’t nearly so sophisticated, but he could see recognize people and that was what mattered.
“Bruce is a friend, buddy. It’s okay. Let him in.”
“Sir, you need to stop moving or you are going to injure yourself internally,” Jarvis reprimanded sharply.
“Great timing, J,” Tony muttered, as Dum-E obediently backed away, letting Bruce pass him. The doctor didn’t run this time, but his pace was quick as he made his way over to Tony.
“Is this why you skipped debrief, you were injured? Tony…”
“Can we save the lecture until I’m not impaled upon my own sword, Brucie-Bear? And let’s not discuss the iron-y of this situation. Or the titanium alloy in the situation. Wait, that doesn’t make any sense, even to me.”
“Tony.” Bruce’s eyes scanned his torso, more than likely taking in every bruise and scratch and scar he could see for later concern, before focusing on the piece of metal sticking out of his abdomen. “Jarvis, how bad is the damage here?”
“The penetrating object is a sliver of Sir’s suit. It has avoided any major arteries and internal organs, though it is pressed against his small intestine and I am concerned about it causing damage if he continues to move around as he is prone to doing.”
“You guys know I’m right here, right?”
Bruce sighed. “Yes, Tony.” He studied his face and Tony grimaced at the disappointment he saw there. He’d known it was coming. Always, always a disappointment. He laid his head back again and closed his eyes. “Jarvis, do you mind if I assist here?”
“If Sir is amendable.”
Tony was sure Bruce looked at him but he didn’t open his eyes to see. “Whatever you think is best, Jarvis.”
“Sir?” He could hear the concern in his AI’s voice but chose to ignore it. He expected Bruce to just get to work and remove the piece of metal, so he was startled when he felt a hand on his arm.
“Tony.”
He looked up at Bruce, at the way even his eyes were downturned in sadness, and sighed. He forced a grin on his face, the one he always wore for the vultures in suits and the rats with their microphones, desperate for any crumb he might drop that could feed their stories. In contrast to the way they usually ate it up, it didn’t soothe Bruce’s expression, but rather made his frown deepen, the low crack of a wrinkle in his forehead becoming a canyon.
“Don’t do that, Tony,” Bruce said, fingers tightening briefly on his arm, “not to me.”
“What do you want me to say, Brucie-Bear? It’s fine. It’s always fine.”
“It’s not,” Bruce said quietly, but didn’t elaborate. He moved away from Tony’s side, letting his hand fall from his arm, to study the wound. “Do you mind, Tony? Or would you prefer Jarvis handle it?”
“There will probably be less circuits to fix if you do it.”
“My circuits are fine,” Jarvis sniped back. “You’re the one who has decided to get themselves stabbed with their own exoskeleton.”
“Rude.”
“Rude and not ginger. Sir.”
Tony laughed at that and he heard a quiet chuckle from Bruce. Turning his head, he caught the man’s eyes. “I’m not an actual doctor, Tony. You do know that.”
Tony snorted. “Not on paper, maybe. Not that I couldn’t fix that if you wanted.” He glanced down at the piece of metal and tried to shift into a more comfortable position, but there was nothing comfortable about having been stabbed. “You’re the only doctor I trust, Bruce.” There had been another, once, but for too short a time, and he was gone anyway. “Just don’t scratch my suit.”
Bruce looked down at the torso of the armor. “I don’t think I can do anything to it that hasn’t already been done.” He carefully pulled the thin shirt Tony was wearing away from the wound. “Jarvis, I don’t suppose you have some tools I can use? Or should I go get my kit?”
There was a low booping and a whine of gears that announced DUM-E’s reappearance.
“Ah, Dr. Banner, DUM-E would like me to pass on his apologies for attacking you upon your entry.”
“Ah, it’s… all right. You were just protecting Tony.”
DUM-E beeped something that made Tony smile, but Jarvis thankfully didn’t bother translating. That would have been embarrassing.
“Thank you,” Bruce told the bot, and Tony heard DUM-E whir away. There was a crash from further in the lab and Tony sighed.
“How much do your bots understand?” Bruce asked, as he began poking and prodding at the wound.
Tony took it as the distraction it was, trying not to flinch away. “Well… Jarvis is the most sophisticated, obviously. He understands nuances of speech, like sarcasm and hyperbole. Etcetera. Butterfingers and You get general speech, but their coding isn’t as in-depth as Jarvis’, so some of the parts of speech elude them. DUM-E was my first robot. When I created him, I programmed him to follow basic commands, but he didn’t really understand anything beyond that, but I also programmed him to learn. His code is simple but… he’s been with me almost my entire life. To be honest, I’m not really sure what all he understands. He doesn’t have a problem communicating, though, and asides from being the biggest troublemaker in the tower--”
“Asides from yourself, you mean,” Jarvis said, which Tony ignored.
“--we don’t really have any issues. Never give him a fire extinguisher, though. No one needs to suffer that twice, least of all me.”
He heard a disappointed beep from across the room and peered around Bruce to make sure DUM-E hadn’t found any of the fire extinguishers while he wasn’t looking. It was amazing how guilty a robot could look just by dropping their claw behind their back. “I can see you, DUM-E.”
A long slow beeping noise equated DUM-E saying that no, actually, Tony could not.
Tony sighed.
“You don’t look at their coding?”
“Basic maintenance, sure,” Tony said, “but once I code them to be able to learn, they basically alter their own coding as time goes on. Messing with that... “ He swallowed hard. “It would be like taking away their memories, or…”
Or mind control, he couldn’t say, but they both understood what he meant. The way that he had built his bots and especially Jarvis, they were alive. Altering their coding would be like doing what Loki had done to Clint before the Battle of New York. It was tantamount to mindrape. Tony would never have been able to do such a thing, and he would happily destroy anyone who tried.
“You’re a true AI, then, Jarvis?” Bruce asked, and Tony felt himself stiffen. Bruce was so easy to talk to sometimes, he didn’t realized when he slipped and gave away more information than he’d meant to. It didn’t help that the man was probably the smartest person in the tower besides Jarvis and himself, and damn good at reading between the lines.
“I am a sum of my parts, Dr. Banner, as you are. Sir built my basis and programmed me with an understanding of the basic rules of the world, taught me right from wrong, and then taught me how to learn. What I have become is a composite of what I began as, and the life I have lived following that. They may call me a being of artificial intelligence, Dr. Banner, but I believe Sir would disagree with the artificial part.”
“And what do you believe, Jarvis?”
“I believe that I am. The fact that I am here and able to care for Sir and assist him in his endeavors are what matter to me. What do I care what the world will call me? The world is not who I am here for. All that matters to me is what Sir believes me to be. He wishes me to be something that can make the future a better place and can be there for him, and so I endeavor to do so. What name the world gives me or argues over means nothing in comparison. I am as Sir has named me: Just A Rather Very Intelligent System. Jarvis.”
You’re far more than that, J, Tony thought to himself, closing his eyes and lying his head back to keep from crying right there in front of Bruce. But he would be sure to talk to Jarvis about this later. That name… it had been something to appease the media when they first learned of Jarvis, to prevent people freaking out because oh my god evil robots!, but it came off as insulting to Jarvis. He was so much more than just an intelligent system, and so much more than just the memories of Edwin Jarvis mixed with a bit of programming. He was family. He was Tony’s kid.
Tony needed to make sure to tell him that.