A/N:

1)Sincere thanks for reviews and all the encouragement goes to: CookieGirlLOL, LightNote16, Wolfy, Zuzanny, cm, Life's a dream, Avrice the Demigod, Daldi, Gaaraxluvr, TheGoldenTrioLivesOn, Katherine, ShadowDragonPhoenix, and MaraudingSnitch1314. As usual, I'll respond via PM to anyone I can.

Also, thanks for all the faves, alerts, etc, it is most encouraging.

2) Anyone who loves Tony/JARVIS interaction might want to check out my fic "Too Late", which has quite a bit of that.

I know it's a bit of shameless self-promotion here, but "Too Late" is one of my favorite two fics that I ever wrote (the other being "Stark Realizations") though to be fair it is also the single most miserably depressing thing I've ever written (which paradoxically also makes me sometimes hate myself for ever writing it in the first place).

3) I made the mistake of showing my collected writings to my family... and erm, well, lets just synposize by saying that my muse (and my ego) was thoroughly trampled underfoot... though its possible that a major problem was the fandom not my writing itself... I think... I hope. Either way...Youch!

Anyway, thanks a milion for all your support, dear readers... you certainly have a way of brightening crappy days and without you all this would not be possible.

4) Wolfy and Daldi (since I can't PM you), thank you for the suggestions... I'm working on them (whether or not I can find a way to fit them into this particular fic is another story) but you're right, both would be scenes worth writing, so check back on occasion if you'd like, sooner or later I'll come up with something!

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"Good Boy."

JARVIS shivers – as much as a computer can – as he remembers those weakly gasped words….. remembers that though at least DUM-E had been there to help when he was offline and entirely unable to do anything to save his creator….. it had almost been too late.

Still, he somehow manages not to think about it too much – manages not to let his consciousness be saturated with the horrifying images of his creator laying defenseless as one of his closest and oldest friends ripped the arc reactor from his chest and left him to die….. or the terrifying pale shade of blue that Tony's skin had turned as he struggled through the phases of cardiac arrest, dragging his ever-weakening body to the Mark I arc-reactor.

The worst memories are the sounds that the passive surveillance had picked up – the quiet strangled gasps of pain and horror that were all but drowned out by Stane's one-sided sickly-sweet words, and yet still managed to convey with harrowing clarity the agony, horror, and betrayal running though his creator.

Despite all that - and perhaps because JARVIS himself had been offline when it happened, only having found out from reviewing the surveillance logs after Tony rebooted him - the computer manages not to think about how close he'd come to loosing his creator again – manages to push away to the furthest recesses of his mind the sounds of his creator struggling to breathe and the devastation in his gaze when he knew that 'Obie' betrayed him… until he is again rebooted after suddenly being powered down again, this time by some government agent with far too much access to JARVIS's system for the computer's comfort.

With all his sensors down still, JARVIS is functionally blind, and the first thing that floods his mind, crashing though all logical thought with the devastating force of a tidal wave, is the horrifying possibility that this time, he has lost his creator.

"Sir, are you okay?"

Perhaps some of what he is feeling trickles through into his usually impassive tone, perhaps not….. either way it does not matter, because he hears Tony reassuring him that he's fine…. that 'eyepatch' only wanted to talk, and following the wave of relief that watches over him, suddenly JARVIS realizes that were these memories not so terrible, it would actually be amusing that he – a computer – just might be suffering from PTSD.

He files the thought away for further consideration at some unspecified later date and simply watches his creator, noticing that for all Tony's insistence that he's fine, the overall weariness in his bearing mingled with a burning emotion in his gaze which is somewhere between devastation and anger, speak of a very different truth, and JARVIS knows that his creator is far from fine at the moment, in any sense of the word.

It's not so much a lie as an effort at deflection; a clear sign that his creator is unwilling or perhaps unable to deal with this most recent trauma at the moment any more than he's already been forced to by the battle on the roof of SI's headquarters…. it's a meaningless word, and yet JARVIS finds that he cannot stop wishing that it was true.

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