Chapter 2
Tony Stark was a mere shell over the next few days. He just sat, prone, on his couch or on the battered ledge of Stark Tower. Every so often he could be seen pulling his arms around himself or putting a hand at the back of his neck, his eyes closed. No matter what Pepper did, it was as though she were talking to a life sized model instead of a person. She got barely any response, save for the odd "Sure." or "Whatever" if she ever suggested anything. He hadn't cried since she had found him, a wreck in the suits storage hanger. He was just sort of brooding and quiet and refused to explain to her what had happened. Jarvis was no help either. He hadn't uttered a word in days. It was so unsettling that Pepper called for back-up after putting up with this for a whole week.
"So, what, he just doesn't say anything?" Steve Rogers asked as he and Pepper marched down the street towards Stark tower.
"No. He just sits and does nothing." Pepper answered, taking long strides to keep up with the super soldier. "He won't tell me what's wrong, he barely eats, Jarvis is on... mute or something. I don't know, Steve. Something's not right. I was hoping you could get some sense out of him."
"I'll do what I can, ma'am, but I really don't think he'll even talk to me. Stark is, uh, stubborn." Steve said honestly. They reached the tower and marched across the brightly lit lobby on the ground floor to the elevator in sync.
"I know." Pepper said, pulling out her swipe card and allowing them into the elevator. "But we have to try. We, S.H.I.E.L.D., the world... I... need Tony." There was a very pregnant silence as the elevator made its smooth way to the top of the building. The doors slid open on a room full of rubble and loose wires. Builders had been in to try and reconstruct the top of the tower during this past week but today was a Saturday and the tower was, therefore, empty.
"Tony?" Pepper called apprehensively. "You here?"
"Stark!" Steve called. He kicked a broken slab out of the way and looked around him.
"Tony?" Pepper called again, peering around the doorframe, into his bedroom.
"Well where is he?" Steve asked, frowning in confusion.
"I don't know. He's usually..."
"Pepper?" Came a voice over the intercom.
"Tony?" Pepper said, shocked. She looked around at the holographic screens. Tony's face appeared and grinned down at her excitedly.
"Pepper, stay right there! I'm coming up!" He said. With that, his face flickered and disappeared. There was silence for a moment.
"Well, he seems devastated." Steve said. Pepper wore a thoroughly confused expression and she crossed her arms.
"I honestly don't know what's going on." She said. Just then the doors of the elevator opened and Tony trotted up to them with a grin on his scruffy, unkempt face. His hair was all over the place and his eyes had dark circles under them from days of barely sleeping. Despite this, though, he was grinning from ear to ear.
"Pepper, Cap! Hi! How you doin'?" He said, slightly breathlessly. Pepper opened her mouth to answer but Tony cut her off. "Listen, when are they due to finish tidying this place up? I got a big project starting and I need as much space as possible." Again Pepper tried to answer and, again, Tony cut across her. "Know what this is?" He asked, holding up, as was plain to everyone, an arc reactor, identical to the one that glowed under his shirt.
"Stark!" Steve interjected loudly. "Pepper said you were having a bit of trouble. You OK?"
"What me? Yeah, sure. What are you talking about? I'm fine." Tony said, quickly. He turned his attention back to Pepper. "Now, Pepper, what is this?" Pepper faltered, still trying to get over the shock of Tony's complete change in behaviour.
"Um... it's an arc react..."
"An arc reactor! Exactly! Or, as a friend of mine once put it, a device that "could run a heart for fifty lifetimes"! I don't know why I didn't think of this right way! What's wrong with me!? Now, got a pen?" Tony asked.
"Er... sure, but, Tony..."
"Got a pad?"
"No... I..."
"Well, here," Tony said, picking up an old envelope off his dust-covered desktop and thrusting it at her. "Make a list. I'm gonna need glass lenses (contacts maybe. That would work), fibre-glass (or real hair if you can... no wait, I gotta be able to choose the colour, scratch that), I'll need..."
"No! Wait! Tony, slow down!" Pepper said, scrambling to find a clear surface to lean on and scribbling what he'd already said.
"I can't slow down! I'm on a role..."
"Stark, what's going on!?" Steve shouted.
"Know any dentists, Pepper? I need a set of false teeth. And false nails! Get me false nails..." Tony continued completely ignoring him. "And, eyelashes? Can you buy those? If you can I need a set... Oh wait! Clothes! Cap, how tall are you?" He said, rounding on Steve. Taken aback, Steve faltered for a moment.
"Um... about six three. Why?" He stammered. Tony stepped up to him so that they were inches away from each other and stared Steve directly in the face for a few seconds, comparing their heights.
"Yeah, that's about right. Get me a suit that would be the right size for him if he was... slighter. Know what I mean?" He said, turning back to Pepper. Writing fast, Pepper nodded.
"Any... particular colour?" She asked, tentatively. Tony pinched his thumb and forefinger at the bridge of his nose for a second as he considered. After a moment...
"Blue. Dark blue. That would work. Oh! And polymer rubber! LOTS of polymer rubber. Got it?" Pepper nodded (too stunned to talk) and Tony spun on the spot to go back the way he'd come. "Nice seeing ya, Cap!" He said, giving Steve a slap on the shoulder as he walked by. "Jarvis! You there!" He called as he neared the elevator.
"As always, sir." Came Jarvis's calm reply.
"Good! I'm gonna need you to send me a turnable render of your head. Can you do that."
"Couldn't be simpler."
"Right. Do it. And meet me in the hanger." Tony said as he entered the elevator. The doors purred closed leaving Pepper and Steve alone in the room together. There was a long, shocked pause.
"Is he doing what I think he's doing?" Steve asked, dumbfounded. Pepper looked from the closed elevator doors to the envelope in her hand.
"Well... I'd better go shopping." She said, quietly.
Over the next few days, Tony was locked away, working on his newest "project". The builders were working double time on the Stark tower having been shouted at by Tony to "work their asses to the bone" because he wanted them "cleared out as soon as humanly possible so that he could work better". For now, most of Tony's work was being done in the suits hanger. He had had the presence of mind to shower and wash his hair since his little eureka moment and he had shaved since then too. He still had the dark circles under the eyes, though, purely because he seemed to want to work twenty four seven and barely slept.
Bruce was called in one day to help and turned up, completely unaware of what Tony needed him for, having just been told that Tony had a little science project he might be interested in.
Bruce walked down the corridor to the hanger and, even before he reached the door he could hear Tony gabbing away to Jarvis who responded simply and to the point.
"No way is that right Jarvis! You sure you didn't make a miscalculation somewhere?"
"Those are my measurements, sir."
"Hm... taller than I remember. Didn't I come to about," he put his finger to a point on the crudely assembled frame a, good few inches above his head "here?"
"Do remember this is merely a framework, sir. The actual limbs will eventually be locked together, reducing my height.
"Alright, point taken." Tony said, slightly sulkily. Just then, Bruce walked into the room and Tony, upon hearing his footsteps, turned his swivel chair to face him. "Heyyy! There's my favourite science bro!" He said.
"Hey, Stark. How you doin'?" Bruce said, his moderate tone a sharp contrast to Tony's adolescent loudness. He shook hands with Tony, roughly. "So what're we working on?" Bruce asked, putting his hands in his pockets and looking at the frame behind Tony where the suits would usually be during assembly.
"Well, putting this in the most rudimentary terms I can, I am making a person." Tony replied, proudly.
"Namely me, Mr. Banner." Jarvis added.
"Ah right. So, an android?" Bruce offered. Tony inhaled deeply and bit the inside of his lip for a moment.
"No." He said, as calmly as he could. "I am making a person." He repeated. There was a somewhat steely edge to his voice and Bruce, realising he'd touched a nerve (and knowing how dangerous that was, even for someone without the "hulk syndrome") clapped his hands together.
"Right. So, what do you want me to do?"
"I need you on nervous system and cardiovascular system. I've got skeleton and musculature."
"Oh great. I get the fiddly stuff." Bruce joked.
"I'm going to be adding an arc reactor so leave space for that, OK, Green Giant?" Tony added, clapping him on the shoulder.
"Well, if you're adding an arc reactor, why am I making a heart? Why not just run it off that?" Bruce asked, slightly confused.
"Because I want him to be warm, I want him to have a heartbeat, I want it to speed up when he's angry and slow down when he's asleep, I want to make the most perfect recreation of a human being since the creation of the actual human being." Tony said. The passion with which he said it inspired Bruce. He'd never known Tony to be so dead set on something since the Iron Man suit itself and it was infectious. Now he wanted this too. He nodded.
"Right." He said in awe, a smile spreading across his face. "What are we waiting for? Let's do this."
So they did. The two of them spent every waking moment that they could, working on Jarvis's body. Jarvis himself was in charge of his actual appearance in terms of hair and eye colour and skin detail. He also had the polymer rubber outer skin shaped to perfectly replicate his actual features. This is why, one evening, Bruce had left and Tony had walked back down to the hanger to have a look at the newly modelled head (the outer skin of it anyway).
"Sir, I recommend that you do not view the head until it is complete." Jarvis warned Tony as he walked down the corridor, his smart shoes making a low clacking noise as he walked that echoed off the corridor walls.
"Why?" Tony asked. "It's not gonna explode. What's the problem?"
"I fear you may be unprepared, emotionally, sir. It is yet to be painted or have the hair implanted."
"Jarvis, honey, you worry too much." Tony said in his usual, throwaway tone that he used when Jarvis was concerned. "I'll be fine. I just wanna see it."
"As you wish, sir." Jarvis said, quietly.
As it turned out, however, Jarvis was right. Tony walked over to the sculpting chamber and clicked a button on the right of it to turn on the light. The compartment behind the glass screen lit up, revealing a perfect rendition of Jarvis's head. It was laid over a featureless, metal, head-shaped globe to keep its shape and there it sat, a deathly, greyish white with no hair and no smile, the eyes closed and the mouth slightly open. It looked exactly as though the Jarvis that Tony loved had been killed and had his head severed and impaled. Tony started and immediately switched the light off. He turned and grabbed his swivel chair and sat down with a thump, attempting to calm himself. He shook and stared into space for a few seconds, the image of Jarvis's lifeless head scorched across his mind.
"I did try to warn you, sir." Jarvis said, gently. Tony nodded, still in shock.
"Yeah. Thanks. I'll remember that next time." He said, shakily.
Weeks later and the building was finished (all but the "Stark" sign which Tony couldn't be bothered to attend to at present). Tony and Bruce moved some of their equipment upstairs so that they had more space to test and try. The main bulk of the constructing remained in the hanger but the finer details took place in the living area on the top floor.
"Look at that, Jarvis. A person really can be in two places at once." Tony remarked one day as he was working on Jarvis's eyes in his living room while Bruce wired up his arms to the complex nervous system he had devised for him down in the hanger.
"Very droll, sir." Jarvis replied. "You might say I am in three places at once, currently, sir. The hair implanting on the outer skin is underway." Tony looked up at the computer screen.
"You've done the paint already?" He said, surprised.
"Yes, sir."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"I apologise, sir, but I thought it best after the events that arose before." Tony put a pen in his mouth and held up one of Jarvis's newly assembled eyes.
"Alright. Good point." He said around the pen, studying the point where the synthetic optic nerve protruded.
"With the same thought in mind, sir, I recommend that Dr. Banner fixes the outer skin in place." Tony took the pen out of his mouth and twirled it in his fingers as he thought about this. Jarvis stayed silent. Tony tried to imagine what the operation would entail and shuddered.
"Alright. Agreed." He said, shortly, and turned his attention back to the eye.
"Very good, sir." Jarvis said.
Eventually the day arrived. The body was fully constructed and wired, teeth, eyes, hair and nails had been fixed in, the outer skin was painted and in place. The clothes had been put on and buttoned or zipped up, save for the shirt which lay open, the place where the arc reactor was to be put exposed. The body lay on a table top in Tony's living area with its eyes closed and its face expressionless. Everyone stood around him while Tony prepared to put the last piece in place. As well as Pepper, Bruce and Steve, Thor, Clint, Natasha and even Nick had turned up to witness the birth of Jarvis. Tony held the arc reactor up as though toasting with a glass of wine.
"Happy birthday, Jarvis." He said with a smile.
"Should I give the speech now or later, sir?" Jarvis joked and Tony sniggered.
"Brace yourself, buddy." Tony said... and linked up the arc reactor. There was a pause for a couple of seconds as the arc reactor connected to Jarvis's computer chip in his synthetic brain. Everyone held their breath. The atmosphere was so thick with anticipation that you could almost see the air vibrating with it. Then, suddenly, the body came alive. The eyes snapped open and he gasped, his head lifting off the table slightly. Instantly a cheer went up around the room, none more loudly than Tony and Bruce. The only one not cheering was Thor who stood with his arms crossed, completely bewildered as to why this was such a big deal.
Panting slightly from the shock, Jarvis turned his head and looked at Tony with a smile. Tony grinned and reached forward to pull Jarvis into a sitting position.
"I did warn you to brae yourself." He said. "Well, say hi to the guys."
"Hello, everyone." Jarvis said, testing his speech. He grinned and his blue eyes sparkled. He was finally alive.
Author's Notes: Slightly more hope at the end of this chapter than the last. Ha ha. Hope you all liked it. As ever, any and all reviews are very much appreciated so go ahead. Hit me. I don't really have a plan for the story. I'm just kind of making it up as I go along. Best way, I feel. So far this fic has been 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence' meets 'I, Robot' (with a little bit of 'The Matrix' thrown in at chapter 1). Let's see where chapter 3 takes us...
A few little pointers.
1. "Science bro" Yes. I HAD to get another pairing in there somewhere or at least make a reference to one. Ha ha. I don't ship them AT ALL but I wanted to make the Avengers slash fangirls pee themselves for my own amusement. Pah ha ha! I'm evil, I know. :)
2. Rewatched 'Iron Man' today and I spotted something that made me spaz-out on my sofa. There's a moment when Jarvis really does and really obviously flirts with Tony. There's a moment when Tony comes in and says "Jarvis! You up?" and Jarvis responds "For you, sir, always." Now tell me that's not flirting! Really now! I tell you, my slashometer was going CRAZY!
3. "Jarvis, honey..." again, a reference to the movie. When Jarvis begins the paintwork on the suit, Tony gets up to go out and, as he's going, he says "Don't wait up for me, honey." so I thought I'd add this in as a quirky little nod to the movie.