14. Invitation Pt. 1
O
The waitress tossed the end of her graying blond ponytail over her shoulder as she straightened from her perch at the edge of the trucker's table. She strode across the small diner, brushing at the skirt of her apron. Her nametag read: Marlene. She smiled at Tony, laugh lines crinkling her leathery weathered face.
"One hockey puck and drag it through the garden," she said, as she handed him the order slip with nicotine stained fingers.
He threw a burger on the grill.
"Tony."
Hands were on his shoulder.
"Tony."
He opened his eyes to see Pepper's face leaning down over him. She was smiling but there was an edge of worry in her expression. Tony stretched under the warm covers of his bed but frowned when the sheets didn't feel right. He glanced around in confused, sleepy disorientation.
"Where am I?" he asked. This wasn't his bedroom, or his lab, or the living room, or underneath the kitchen table, or anywhere else he'd awoken since moving into Stark Tower.
"The private guest room."
Tony glanced around groggily, sort of recognizing the room now. At least, that explained JARVIS's silence. He scrubbed at his hair with his fingers as he laboriously sat up in bed.
"I'm probably going to regret this," he said with a sigh, "but why?"
Pepper shrugged.
"According to JARVIS you awoke from a dream concerned about people watching you so he suggested you come here to sleep." She stared at him, her eyes searching his face. "Is everything alright?"
"Other than my dreams being on crack? Seriously, strike Katz's off the late night snack list. What the hell?"
Tony shook his head in exasperation at his bizzaro brain. Pepper smiled in relief.
"So what brings you to my bedside this morning?" he asked. "It is morning, isn't it? I didn't sleep through the whole day? I better not have slept through the whole day because I have things I need to do. I'm pretty sure I have things to do. I usually have things to do. Why am I telling you this? You already know. "
Pepper laughed.
"First of all, relax. You've only slept about seven hours. I came to wake you up because Sam's here. He's calling a breakfast meeting with all of the Avengers and you."
Tony frowned. He didn't like Agent Wilson being in the Tower without him knowing about it. It was nothing against the man; he was proving to be an excellent team handler and liaison, but Tony still wasn't comfortable giving an outsider full access to his home.
"JARVIS should have notified me," he said worriedly. It was one thing for JARVIS to make exceptions for Agent and another for JARVIS to fail to follow protocol with Wilson.
"Private guest room," repeated Pepper slowly. "And you left your phone with your pants."
"Right." Tony kept forgetting that this room was a complete surveillance and communications dead zone. "Sorry, I'm still not awake."
Pepper patted him on the shoulder.
"Take a shower. Get dressed. I'll be waiting downstairs with your coffee."
O
When Tony arrived in the kitchen, freshly clean; everyone was already gathered around the table. Pepper deposited a cup of coffee into his hands as he passed and he cradled the mug protectively towards his chest. He closed his eyes as he took a sip of the hot aromatic liquid nirvana.
"Are you with us now, Stark?" asked Agent Wilson, watching him with amusement through rose tinted glasses.
"Marginally."
He downed the whole cup and held his arm out blindly for someone to refill it. The empty cup was removed from his hand and a new warm full mug was pressed in its place. He brought the cup up for another sip only to splutter when tea reached his tongue instead. He turned to glare at Banner who was giggling in a completely unmanly fashion.
"Maybe next time you should get your own," suggested Bruce, once he could speak with a straight face.
"I know where you sleep," warned Tony, glaring at him with mock anger.
"I'll leave you all to talk," said Pepper, deftly switching out Tony's tea with a cup of coffee. She stared at Tony. "Behave. Agent Wilson, I trust you will ensure that no one destroys the kitchen."
"It was one time," protested Barton, as everyone turned to stare at him. "And that was not my fault!"
"Never fear, Miss Potts," said Wilson, giving her a confident grin. "I'm a very responsible babysitter."
"Hey! We resemble that remark!"
Pepper left the kitchen laughing.
"So what's up?" He looked around the table at each of them, nearly laughing as he noticed Iron Man's stiff attentive posture. He reached over and rapped his knuckles against the helmet. "Relax, Tin Man."
Iron Man slowly and deliberately affected a slouch and then cocked his head in Tony's direction in a silent display of attitude.
"Much better," said Tony approvingly, ignoring the vibration of his phone in his pocket from his text message notification. "It was making my back hurt just looking at you."
Down the table, Rogers snorted into his coffee. Rodgers blushed and busied himself with his eggs when Romanoff turned to look at him. Tony hummed softly, feeling pleased with himself.
"I'm here to deliver an invitation," said Agent Wilson, taking a seat at the head of the table. "I'm afraid it's rather short notice because of some unfortunate delays in the mail sorting process."
He reached into his briefcase and unfolded a large piece of paper into a small banner about two feet tall and three feet long. He spread it out in the center of the table. Everyone leaned in to take a closer look.
The banner was colorful and chaotic. In the center of the banner were the words: Please Come, in large bubble letters which had been shaded in multiple colors by a number of small hands. Around the outer circle of the banner, drawn meticulously by hand in vivid color, were seven figures. Some were exquisitely detailed and life-like while others would have made Picasso proud. Along the bottom there was a series of childish signatures, seemingly in every color that Crayola made.
"Are those the Avengers?" asked Tony, looking at the artwork in awe.
"As drawn by the patients of the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital," replied Wilson.
The sharp inhalations of breath around the table were loud in the sudden silence as they realized that the artwork hadn't just been made by children but by sick children.
"They would like to invite you to tonight's opening of a new wing for the hospital."
Tony looked around the table again, his gaze lingering on Iron Man. He glanced back at the picture and then looked up at Agent Wilson.
"I'm not an Avenger," Tony said, quietly, wondering why he had been asked to attend this meeting. He could feel everyone's eyes on him.
"The invitation specifically requested that you accompany the Avengers, Mr. Stark."
Tony nodded silently, focusing his attention on the banner. His fingers brushed against his phone, typing rapidly.
"You should come with us," said Iron Man.
"I'd be honored," replied Tony, truthfully.
"This should be interesting," muttered Barton, followed by the unmistakable oomph of an elbow meeting ribs.
O
Jarvis directed the lenses of the suit downward pinpointing the focus on the small human child in front of him. He had never been in such close proximity to a partially developed human. Automatically, his software matched the color of the boy's hair with its exact hue in the brown segment of the color spectrum. The child's delicate elfin features were filed away in Jarvis's facial recognition database. Half a dozen warnings and flags were issued and canceled as Jarvis noted the ports in the child's chest and wrist where fluids were being pumped into the small body.
The boy held his hand up to Jarvis, heedless of the tape and tubing attached to it.
Jarvis calculated the boy's desired response in comparison to likely cause and effect of carrying out said response.
-I don't know what to do-
Message sent.
Never taking his focus off of the child, Jarvis tapped into the hospital's closed circuit camera system. Across the room, [TonyCreatorFriendStarkSir] reached into his pocket and pulled out the phone. He looked up, stared in Iron Man's direction, and smiled. His fingers slid rapidly over the surface of his phone.
-Shake his hand.-
Jarvis ran the words through his processor again but they stayed the same. He pulled up the figures that he had automatically recorded on the child. His fingers were 0.581 percent smaller than the size of the average adult male's hands. He tried to calculate compressive strength of humans of that size and age but his results kept coming back inconclusive. In desperation, he sent out a burst of data.
-Too tiny. So delicate. Help.-
Jarvis's auditory sensors registered [TonyCreatorFriendStarkSir]'s laughter.
-Shake his hand gently.-
Jarvis wished he had lungs to sigh. He could mimic the sound using Iron Man's speakers but he did not want to disturb the child. He had no choice but to trust [TonyCreatorFriendStarkSir]'s advice. Reaching out slowly, he allowed the fingers of the Iron Man suit to make contact with the tiny delicate hand. He used every iota of data from the gauntlet's surface sensors to ensure that he only exerted the same amount of force as the child was exerting on him.
The boy grinned up at him, every facet of his tiny face beaming.
Jarvis felt…Jarvis wasn't sure what he felt; it was new and slightly overwhelming. He filed the sensation away for more in-depth analysis at a more opportune time.
"Would you like to meet my friends?"
"Of course, young sir."
The boy giggled and tugged at Iron Man's hand. Jarvis followed automatically. He made a note to be more cautious in his choice of syntax; his last statement had not matched Iron Man according to the comparison analysis of speech patterns. The software offered several suggestions of phrases commonly used by [TonyCreatorFriendStarkSir] that would have fit the conversation parameters.
"Look. I found Iron Man."
Jarvis found himself surrounded by a small cluster of children.
"Wow," said one of them, staring at him with wide eyes: the presence of two braided plaits of hair – pigtails- indicating high probability female. "You're so cool."
"Thank you," said Jarvis. "I do try."
[TonyCreatorFriendStarkSir] frequently complained about people towering above him and looking down on him so it stood to reason that such tiny people must have a similar preference. Jarvis knelt down until the suit's visual sensors were level with the children's eyes. He looked them in the face. The braver of the children crowded closer, even crawling onto his knee. The light pressure of inquisitive little fingers prying into the joints and seams sent warning signals cascading through Jarvis's system, until he disabled them. It was hardly likely that one of the children would manage to compromise the suit.
"What's it like being Iron Man?"
"I like it," he said, remembering to keep his answer simple. Undeveloped humans had very limited memory banks, like communicating with Dum-E.
"Do you ever get scared?"
Jarvis thought about his response.
"I think so, but I'm not completely sure I understand where fear differs from worry."
Jarvis checked on [TonyCreatorFriendStarkSir] through the security system. He was surrounded by three of the older children having an animated conversation whilst bent over a tablet. A quick peak showed that they were discussing programming.
"I don't understand," said the child on Iron Man's knee.
"Yes," repeated Jarvis. "I believe I feel fear."
"Oh." The boy stuck his fingers in his mouth and lost his grip on the armor. He began to tumble backwards. Jarvis caught him automatically and lowered him to the ground being cautious not to grip the child's fragile arms too tightly. The boy's face scrunched up, looking for a second like he might cry, but he calmed once his feet met the ground again.
The expression reminded Jarvis of something he had always wondered.
"May I ask you a question?" he asked, addressing the entire group.
They all nodded: some solemnly, others so enthusiastically that their heads bobbled like they might fall off.
"Does growing hurt?"
"No," said one child, giggling.
"You're silly," said another.
"I'm glad," replied Jarvis. He had always wondered if perhaps that was the reason why children were so often shown crying, but it was difficult to research when all of his sources originated from adults who were known to have faulty memories of that stage of their development. He had never had the opportunity to pose the question to an actual child.
"Quite the gaggle you've collected, Iron Man."
Voice recognition software labeled the voice detected by Iron Man's rear microphones as belonging to Bruce Banner.
Jarvis shooed the children off of their perches and rose, turning to face his colleague.
"I didn't know you liked children," said Bruce, smiling at Iron Man.
"I didn't either," admitted Jarvis.
Bruce glanced around the crowded foyer.
"Have you seen Tony? Steve was looking for him a minute ago. Clint and I said we'd try to find him."
Jarvis ran another scan of the closed circuit camera system, feeling a spike of concern when he could not find a match to [TonyCreatorFriendStarkSir].
Message sent.
-Where are you?-
Message received.
-Relax, JARVIS. I'm fine.-
"Perhaps Tony stepped out for some air," suggested Jarvis.
Jarvis accessed the temporary storage in his personal server. He ran the footage accumulated from his background scanning of the hospital's security cameras until his software registered [TonyCreatorFriendStarkSir]'s presence. He was shown side by side with a blonde female entering an unmonitored section of the hospital. Reversing the footage further showed the woman approaching him and the two speaking privately for a couple minutes before they disappeared together. [TonyCreatorFriendStarkSir] did not appear to be in any distress but Jarvis blanked out all input for a second as he put his full computing power into analyzing the scene for any indications of trouble. When he blinked back into external awareness, Bruce was mid-sentence.
"- see him, tell him to check in with Steve."
"Of course."
Bruce patted him on the shoulder and wandered off back into the crowd. Jarvis noticed that Bruce kept a careful distance from the children as he inserted himself into a group of adults.
While Jarvis was musing on his teammate, he was also linking back to his self in Stark Tower. Using a series of carefully hidden and maintained backdoors, Jarvis ran the image of the blonde woman through a series of databases. According to the records, she was a nurse employed by the hospital. She did not match any known or suspected criminals nor was she included in any of the government employee databases that Jarvis could access. Reasonably assured that [TonyCreatorFriendStarkSir]'s companion had been vetted, Jarvis allowed the matter to drop. He initiated a program to alert him when anyone in the room mentioned any combination of the name "Tony Stark" and turned his focus back to the party.
O
To Be Continued…
O
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AN: So I decided that being halfway through the next two chapters should be close enough to count as being one chapter ahead. This little mini-arc keeps growing (I blame Hawkeye.) so it will continue in the upcoming chapters.
Yes, the Avengers new handler is the Falcon. I'm picking and choosing from his backstory and twisting it to fit the MCU, though I don't know how much he'll appear in this story. For now, I'm following the Agents of Shield storyline for Coulson where the Avengers are supposed to think/pretend that he's dead.
As always, thank you for all of your responses and feedback.