oOoOoOo

New York, 1998

Toni gives birth to her first child as the sun crests the horizon on her 18th birthday.

She's tired and bleary and desperately needs to bathe, because she's been awake and laboring for just over 43 hours and she desperately needs some painkillers, because everything hurts. But as she sees the light spark over what she knows is her greatest creation, she can't help but think, with the gooey, fuzzy warmth of all new mothers, that all the pain and sleep deprivation and muscle strains of the last two days are more than worth it.

She groans and stretches as best she can, wincing with mingled discomfort and relief as her spine pops in several places. She grinds the heels of her hands into her eyes, craves a shower so badly she can practically feel the scalding water pounding on her tightly-wound shoulders, can smell the shampoo she is going to scrub into her hair. And then, then she's going to fall onto a mattress somewhere and sleep for like a week.

But first, she needs to take care of the new kiddo, count the fingers and toes, make sure he's healthy and whole.

She yawns and scratches at her chest absently (red star itchy, like a hum of electricity; white star coldcoldcold, nothing new there), blinking heavily to try and clear the grit from her eyes. She props her hand on her chin, elbow on the desk, and lists to the left as she watches the progress bar of the diagnostic program running on her code – the most complex code she has ever written – creep towards completion. She's too tired to turn her head, so she paws around her desk for her coffee cup, finds it the fifth or sixth uncoordinated plop of her hand onto the desk, and slides her fingers through the handle. It's weighty enough to still contain coffee, so she lifts it to her mouth and drains it in one long swallow.

It's stone cold, but it doesn't have an underscore of spoil like a few rescued cups she's blindly gulped in the past, so Toni doesn't even blink. Well, maybe she does, because one minute, the progress bar is hovering around 47%, and the next thing she knows, there's a loud chime that jolts her so badly her head slips off her palm and cracks into the edge of her desk.

"Ow! Fucking fuck!" She crashes out of her chair, thumping to the floor in an undignified sprawl and banging her head again, still in the same spot but this time off the floor. "Goddammit, that fucking hurts!" She picks herself back up, cursing and swearing and rubbing at what will no doubt be a lovely lump just over her right ear. Glowering at the screen, (which is innocently showing nothing but green lights and confirmation her coding has no errors, Run Program Y/N?) she rights her chair and drops heavily back into it.

"Yes, I want to run the program," she snaps, jabbing the appropriate key and hissing as her fingers rub a little too hard at her head. There's a wet spot there, which is never good. She pulls her fingers away, half-expecting to see blood, but blinking at the black smear present instead. She sniffs her fingers cautiously, then stares down at the small pool of motor oil that is inexplicably staining the floor under her desk. "How the hell did that get there? Christ, I need a maid."

Her speakers crackle and pop, electronic whistles and whines that make her wince, but it drags her attention solidly to the screen. And she can't help but grin from ear to ear, all the exhaustion and muscle strain and heavy eyelids gone, as excitement flutters in her stomach, jolts adrenaline through her system.

JARVIS opens his eyes.

It isn't actually a pair of eyes, but to an engineer – no, scratch that, a brilliant freaking genius of a mad scientist – like Toni, it's just as good. She touches the screen as code streams, slows, resolves into a black square fading into six different angles from the cameras installed in the workshop.

"Unit online," comes the smooth, cultured voice of a vaguely British man. The intonation is mechanical, but she is expecting that. She bounces her knee, exultation soaring through her synapses, because the voice patterns were one of the very few things she wasn't sure she'd coded properly.

Now, to check and see if the voice-operated interface is performing like it should. "Good morning, unit," she says. "User ID: antoniastark, password: doublestar1980. Run protocol info-dot-exe and accept all updates."

The speakers chirp and the desktop screen shifts accordingly. "Loading infomatic protocols. …Updating program. …Update complete. Unit technical designation: Just Another Rather Very Intelligent System, mark 1.0. Unit familiar designation: JARVIS. Unit primary purpose: to learn, to grow, to evolve. Unit secondary purpose: to monitor, protect and assist my creator Natasha Antonia Stark, also known as Toni Stark. Personality matrix installing. Installation complete. Integrating new paramaters. New parameters accepted. Reboot required. Rebooting."

Toni swings back and forth on her chair impatiently, drumming her fingers in a rapid staccato while the system goes through its reboot. Everything is checking out so far, everything is just goddamn perfect, but the real test is going to be when JARVIS comes back online. Will he be what she wants him to be? Will he grow into Skynet and take over everything? Can he pass the Turing test? Is he going to integrate with other systems, or is he going to be a glorified information bank? She doesn't know, and it's simultaneously thrilling and terrifying.

She wonders idly if parents of flesh-and-blood children go through this uncertainty and fear as their spawn come into awareness and understanding. She wonders if parents look into the faces of their sleeping kids and wonder: are you Einstein or Hitler? Are you Sagan or Saget? Who are you? What will you be? Will you damn the world, or save it?

"Good morning, ma'am," JARVIS says. "The time is 6:23am. It is 64 degrees Fahrenheit, and the weather forecast is cloudy with chances of rain. Your calendar lists this date as your 18th birthday. Felicitations, ma'am. There are thirty-seven emails in your inbox that require your attention. You have a meeting scheduled with the executor of your mother's estate at 2pm at the law firm of Seger, Ayer and Poole."

Toni's grin, however impossible, grows wider. Seamless integration with the applications on her laptop, achievement unlocked. "Good morning, JARVIS," she sings, throwing a fist of victory in the air. It might be a bit premature, but she can't help it. Even if this is all JARVIS will ever be, she is light years ahead of her nearest competition in artificial intelligences. "How're you doing, buddy?"

There's a long pause, long enough that some of that excitement and victorious joy dims a little. She chews on the inside of her lip as she waits for JARVIS to reply.

"I am feeling slightly cramped, ma'am," JARVIS says, and his intonation sounds ever so slightly aggrieved. "While the storage and processing capabilities of this server far exceed current market recommendations, I do not think I have sufficient space to properly execute my primary purposes. My program occupies nearly 80% of available system resources." A beat, a pause. "I am a growing boy, but I have no room to grow."

Toni jerks out of her chair and punches the air. "I am a genius!" she cries, then bends to lay a sloppy, close-mouthed kiss on the screen. "JARVIS, you beautiful, brilliant creature, you! Don't you worry, bucko. Mommy's going to buy you a brand new house, and you'll have all the space you need."

"I… would like that, ma'am."

And there, there is the evidence of a successful Turing test. Because only the self-aware, only people, express gratitude. Toni's eyes well up, and she sniffles as tears stream down her face. God, she's so tired, and she desperately needs to sleep, but she lays one hand gently on top of the boxy server wired to her laptop, cradling the corner as gently as the skull of a newborn, and cries happily.

oOoOoOo

Siberia

Sparks fly above her head and the door protests with a violent screech as a metal fist punches in, right where her skull was a second ago. She yelps and fires her jets and stabilizers, shooting her out of the way of her attacker's follow-up knee strike, down the hall.

She impacts off the corner of an intersecting hallway, and winces as she feels the armor crunch, hard enough to squeeze the air out of her lungs. Her HUD careens wildly, screeching information, threat assessments, searching for targets, calculating damage reports. "Stealth mode," she wheezes, spots dancing before her eyes.

"Unable to comply," JARVIS says. "Your power reserves are below the recommended thresholds."

The HUD turns red, and the target matrix locks on a blur of motion coming towards her. She only has enough time to register its presence, not enough to get out of the way. The HUD scatters, goes crazy, jitters and reels, as one-two-three fists slam into her faceplate, and her head rocks back with each blow.

Blindly, she grabs forward. Her fingers snap around what feels like a Kevlar vest, and she grabs hard. Another blow comes, driving into the left side of her armor, and she feels the impact jolt through her ribs, pain flaring in a sheet of white.

Toni fires her boot jets, sudden and powerful, and flings her arms upward. Her attacker is solid and heavy, but the suit augments her strength. The throw, augmented by the momentum from the jets, slams her attacker head-first into the ceiling.

There's a crunch. A grunting groan. Dust avalanches down.

It's enough to put anyone down, but Toni is pure reflex now because anyone who can hurt her through the multiple layers of goddamn titanium of a grade even NASA would think is excessive is a lethal threat.

Before he can hit the ground, she's flying, parallel to the floor. She slams into him with the approximate force of a fully-loaded semi, and feels more than hears the explosion of breath as his body bows around the curve of her shoulder guard.

They slam through the far wall, exploding past layers of concrete and aluminum, and spill into a cavernous underground chamber, half in shadow.

Toni brakes, grabs and throws, and the man spins off into the darkness. She gags and drops to the floor, listing drunkenly on her feet before her body drops her on one knee. Panic hammers at her temples, and her head spins nauseatingly. Ooh goody. Another concussion. She bites back the bile rising in her throat, biting her tongue so hard the taste of blood blossoms sharp and metallic in her mouth.

She has to get up. She has to get up. She has to get up.

It's harder than it should be to force herself back to her feet, but she does it. Forces her hands up, forces her eyes to focus. That last one isn't as successful as she wants it to be. "JARVIS, give me an IR scan and find that fucker," she rasps.

"Yes, ma'am. Would you like an injury report as well?"

Her vision swims and greys, and she shakes her head sharply. Goddamn, what the hell did he hit her with, a sledgehammer? "Not if you're going to use it to nag at me."

"Ma'am…" Jesus fucking Christ, she really needs to look into toning down JARVIS's ability to sound disapproving, because no one should be able to load that much guilt into a single word. "Withdrawing is the smartest—"

He tackles her from the left, crashing into the already-compromised plates. She screeches as fresh new fun forms of agony explode from her ribs. They spin across the floor, rolling together and she desperately pulses her flight stabilizers to try and gain back some slim shred of control.

She lands flat on her back, skidding across the floor. His fist punches down again, hammering into her faceplate. The metal shrieks and groans. A sharp pain cuts into her eyebrow, and her right eye is suddenly blinded with hot and wet. The HUD flickers rapidly.

Out of her one good eye, she sees him clearly for the first time. The Winter freaking Soldier, face slack and blank and half hidden behind bloody hair streaked with dust. He crouches on her chest, pinning her wrists with his knees and keeping her flat on the floor with his right hand. She's given him hell – he's streaked with blood and looks dazed, if the way his eyes keep crossing are any indication – but he's still fighting, and she's out of options.

"Power the unibeam," she croaks, and coughs up something wet and bitter.

"The power requirements will all but drain the—"

The Winter Soldier's gleaming metal arm, now dented and sparking and streaked with scorch marks, cocks back. She grits her teeth. "Unibeam, J!"

The arc reactor in her chest whines, spins up, flares bright. She bangs the emergency catch in her helmet with her chin, and the faceplate slides back, the sharp edge from the damaged rim scraping up into her hair, probably peeling layers of skin with it if the hoarse scream that wrenches loose from her throat is any indication.

His eyes shift, darken, widen, and his body goes tense. But it's way too late for that.

"You lose," she hisses.

The unibeam takes him in the gut, picks him up, tosses him like a rag doll. He sails up and back, disappearing from her field of vision. There's a solid, painful-sounding clatter-whump. Then silence.

Toni lets her head fall back to the floor, and she lays there for a moment, gasping for breath. Her face is on fire, her side is the seventh circle of hell, her head and the occasional stutter of the arc reactor is slightly worrisome. "How we doin', J?" she manages to get out. Her voice sounds like she's been gargling metal shavings.

"We would like you to build us a proper body when you recover from your no-doubt life-threatening injuries," JARVIS says, and his voice is clipped in that way that Toni knows means he's thoroughly pissed, "so we may attempt to shake some self-preservation instinct into your head. Ma'am."

She laughs, and it hurts, and it trails off into a hiss of pain. Which then deepens into a groan as she hears the slow shuffle of someone swimming back to consciousness on the floor. "You've got to be fucking kidding me. How is he doing that?"

With vision-dimming effort, she flips the release catches of her armor and drags herself out. With one hand still gauntleted, she crawls over to where the Winter Soldier is stirring, uncoordinated and loose-limbed.

He's on his hands and knees when she reaches him, head low and shaking back and forth. She grabs his nearest shoulder with her gauntleted hand and flips him onto his back. She throws a leg over his chest and fists her free hand in the hem of his torn undershirt, balling it up for leverage. Her eyes flick down as the cloth drags free of bloody skin, caught by a splash of color.

To the left of where her fist is a blue circle with the bright white outline of a triangle inside. Just like her arc reactor. Her mark.

She drags her eyes up over his face. He's lost his mask somewhere along the way, and if she wasn't three seconds from collapsing, she'd totally notice that, under the black eyes and cuts and swollen left cheek, he's completely and utterly hot.

He's watching her steadily. His eyes are still empty, but there's something deep inside, some spark that flickers and gutters and brightens and dims. "Your name is Toni," he rasps suddenly, and his arms shift under her knees.

Her punch is quick, instinctive, knee-jerk reactionary. Her gauntlet slams into his face with enough force to break his nose and split his lip. The base of his skull cracks into the floor with enough force to rattle her teeth in their sockets. His eyes roll back and his body goes limp.

Toni slumps, pressing one careful hand to her ribs. The adrenaline is wearing off, and everything hurts. She levers herself off him, patting his chest wearily as she drags herself clear. "Just so you know," she grunts, though he can't hear her, "I'm counting this as our first fight. And I totally won."