EDITED: 6/3/2013 - THE ENDING OF THIS CHAPTER HAS CHANGED!

"Talking"

'Thinking'

"JARVIS talking in Jack's head"

This fanfiction is rated M for strong language, hints at adult situations and fighting.

Iron Man, Avengers nor any other Marvel identities belong to me. Any songs/song titles used are not owned by me either. I only own Jack Rowen, her family and any other fan OC that may show up in this fic unless stated otherwise. I am making no profit on this fanfiction.

Song used for title by Redlight King

Chapter Three: "Comeback"

Two days had past since the incident in the alleyway, Jack had let Tony have the blood sample the morning after as well as let them know of her hacker name, Techno. She had to control her nano-machines to go with her blood, they were programmed not to, which she had to explain to Tony when he became startled at her emerald glowing eyes. Her blood and nanites had him occupied since.

Jack was at this point was standing behind the couch in the living room, at the windows that over looked the ocean, which she had to note felt like an unsafe decision in her opinion. She was reflecting on her stay so far, which had surprised her. These people were always to close to bringing out the emotions she had locked down on for so long now and she knew it was her own fault. She would keep them behind her mask when they would appear but they were still there. 'It's only been two days and I'm starting feel like a did with him...' Her eyes suddenly met with Tony's as he walked up behind her, a huge smile on his face. 'Yet...it's different somehow.'

"So, I guess it about time we started talking about that upgrade, Tech." He announced, making Jack turn to him fully before stepping around the curved sofa. "How do you suggest going about this? Put the software in a hard drive? A CD?" He stopped to snicker to himself a little, "A floppy?"

Jack study him for what was the fiftieth time before a small, ghost of a smirk appeared on her face, she had realized he had been trying to get her to lighten up. "Anything metal would work, even a suit similar to yours would do" She paused to roll her eyes, 'I doubt that would ever happen' "So no, floppy disks are out of the question. I may not have upgraded for fifteen years but that doesn't mean anything." She didn't notice the look in his eyes when she said suit and even if she had she would guessed he was ridiculing her.

"That would be perfect!" Was her only warning before he ran off down the stairs to his 'lab', he almost ran into Pepper on the way.

"What's got him so excited?" Pepper laughed as she walked up to the other woman in the house, taking a mental note that Jack looked adorable in Tony's casual clothing which was way to big for the girl. She was wearing a pair of his sweatpants, the draw string pulled to hang low and the legs covered her feet. She also wore one of Tony's band t-shirts, the sleeves gathered at her elbows and the shirt itself ended after her hips. A second note was made that the girl needed her own clothes...

Jack just rubbed the back of her head and shrugged, "Beats me, we were talking about my upgrade when he ran off. It think he wants to make a metal floppy disk as a joke..." Her voice held a neutral, calm, emotionless tone, she had did her best to drop the robotic tone, she trailed off as she noticed Pepper holding something.

Pepper smiled at the shorter woman before clearing her throat, "I know that you don't like crowds but the Stark Expo opening is coming up. In two day actually and I would like to invite you, you won't be on stage or anything." She shifted the gift wrapped object in her hand, it was rectangular and had a small bow on it. "Oh, and this is for you Jack!"

Jack took the box carefully, she blinked at it slowly before looking at Pepper, "What's this for?" she said it so softly she was sure she might have to repeat it, which would be a problem because the second time would not hold the awe that the first did. It had been a long time since she got a present that she felt her chest constrict in an emotion that she was sure of, it felt like a mixed up version of happiness but then why did she feel like sobbing? She pushed the feeling down forcefully.

"A Thank You gift, for saving me" Was her reply, which almost brought the emotion back but she stomped down on the feeling again. Jack's eyes went to the almost healed cut in Pepper's neck and felt guilt, she had promised she wouldn't get hurt... "Open it already" Pepper laughed before pushing the box closer to Jack.

Doing as she was told, Jack carefully unwrapped the present. She opened it by removing the bow and unsticking the tape, she didn't want to ruin the wrapping. The box had nothing on it so Jack opened it to find new aviators, a small smile reflected back at her before it was directed at Pepper before it was gone completely. "Thank you..." Tears were in her eyes now, she could feel them, so she quickly put on the sunglasses. Sunglasses had always been a sort of security blanket for the red headed woman, if an emotion did slip from her iron clad mask, the glasses would block it from the world. The last two days had been hard.

Pepper smiled back, her smile a lot bigger than the other woman's had been. "Your quite welcome, I remembered yours had broke in the fight so..." She gestured to the new pair, "Now, about the Expo?"

Jack blinked behind her new sunglasses, suddenly getting the feeling of being scanned by JARVIS, which wasn't a new feeling so she shook it off. JARVIS apparently liked to make sure she wasn't trying to hack him again, on Tony's order Jack wasn't sure. "I'm sorry Pepper, I'm not ready for that. I have never been in a crowded area in my life and I'm still worried someone will come after me." Was this guilt that she was feeling now? It's been a while since the last she felt guilt. "You can have the sunglasses back if you want." She was taking them off to hand them back when Pepper stopped her.

"Keep them. It's fine, really, I just figure I ask. It'll just be you and JARVIS here then that night so if you want anything to have for dinner, let me know." Pepper sighed, she had raised a hand to stop Jack from taking off her aviators so she put it back at her side.

"I'm sorry," Jack gave Pepper an awkward smile because she knew her voice did not show the guilt that she felt, "Thanks for thinking about me..." 'You and Tony have done so much and I can't do much...'

Pepper beamed down at Jack as she placed a hand on her shoulder, "Don't be sorry Jack. How about tomorrow we go out and get you a wardrobe? Tony's paying of coarse." She said this before giving Jack a closed eyed smile.

Before Jack could reply JARVIS called, "Miss Rowen, Mr Stark would like to see you, he says it important." his proper British voice coming from everywhere.

Jack smiled at Pepper, "I can try." She said before heading to where Tony had gone, marveling for the millionth time at the water falling between the glass. When she came to the bottom of the stairs, JARVIS opened the door to the lab, she didn't have a code just yet. What she saw made her stop right inside the doorway. Tony was working on a hologram of a suit with what looked to be over a hologram of herself. "What is this?" She was honestly confused, she didn't really mean it when she talked about a suit.

That was when he looked up at her, the smile on his face was like a kid at a candy store. He motioned her over before spinning the model. "Do you like it? It will be complete with the software you need, fire power, flight and of coarse, JARVIS." Oh yeah, Tony was excited.

"That's all well and good Stark, but I thought you would be against this. I was joking about the whole suit thing. You're handing me a weapon here which from what I heard you stopped doing..." Her unsure look on what could be seen of her face compensated for the lack of it in her tone and this made Tony pout. She walked closer to the table the was projecting the hologram.

Tony glared at her for a moment more before his face lit up again. "Well, I want to do this! If your nano-machines can do everything you say they do, then you can remake the suit after its absorbed and that in itself would be worth it. Besides, once you get the software update, you can just bypass JARVIS unnoticed and take the tech anyway so I'm saving you the trouble." He grinned in triumph when he noticed the slight turn of her head as she looked away. "That's not the point, the point is that with this you can really help those people. Not just remove their whereabouts, or handout false information. You will also have the protection that would allow you to feel safe around people." After he finished gesturing with his hands, they ended up on his hips and his triumph had become ten fold.

'He really thought about this, maybe even before I said anything, not just ran with an off-handed comment.' Jack looked the design over, it was a female version of his suit complete with the red and gold and lacking the arc reactor window. She took control of the hologram and zoomed in on the helm. She began to reconstruct the helmet, not wanting it to look like Tony's, she made the part over the mouth open up by splitting in the middle then slide into the helmet itself. Jack then made the area from just below the eyes slide back like normal but smooth the eyes to give off more of a neutral look instead of Iron Man's angry one. Smiling, she finished the helm by adding elf ear looking antenna around the ears. With that done she zoomed out once more.

Tony studied the new helmet with a hand on his chin, humming as he did so. He then took control of the hologram, zooming into below the collar bone area and created a small circular area the size of a half dollar coin that would now glow blue lightly. A homage to Tony's arc reacter. Before he could move done to the chest area, Jack resumed control. She zoomed back out and smiled faintly at it. "No other changes then?" He asked her looking over the armor before looking at her.

Shaking her head no she replied, "I don't see anything worth changing now besides the colors. Red and gold doesn't suit the stealth I require Stark." She spoke softly before nodding, "How about mainly black, secondary forest green and with the slightest of gold accents? Though leave your little blue circle blue?"

Tony nodded. "And make the eyes glow green instead of the white-blue?" He asked rhetorically, changing the colors of the model before nodding again. "It should be done by tomorrow night."

"Thank you, for everything Stark." Jack stated, the pure emotion of happiness safe behind her aviators, though that was the only place it slipped passed her mask.

"Yeah, yeah, don't get all mushy on me Tech. You'll lose your image." Tony joked, removing her hat to mess with her hair before turning the hat and walking away, telling JARVIS to start production. He began to scold a robot that she had been told was named Dummy.

"My image?" Jack asked quietly to herself as she watched the man that has done more than he knew for her. Even if she was not expecting a reply, she received one from JARVIS.

"Of being an emotionless robot, Miss Rowen." He said this as she about to move after Tony, his reply made her stop before she began. "Though only Mr Hogan thinks this I believe, he has not been around to see that you have dropped your robotic tone."

This hit Jack hard, she knew she had trouble with her emotions but she was trying now to at least let up on being the rumored robot that the internet world had deemed her. Sometimes it gets hard for her to even understand them, so at times she had to shut them down. It's been thirteen years since she felt any of the good emotions besides that of being calm. All the bad emotions came easy and was understood just as easy but the others were hard for her. With that in mind, she left to the room that Tony gave her, mumbling her thanks to JARVIS.

The morning had come faster than Jack had expected, she had also not expected to be woken up by Pepper instead of JARVIS. Once Pepper saw that Jack's eyes were open, she began to talk about what they had to do within the next two hours before she had to get to work. She tried to keep up with the talking woman but she eventually gave up and left the main part of the bedroom to her bathroom.

Pepper was waiting on her bed when she was done, a look of impatience on her face. She grabbed Jack's hand quickly before dragging her out of the room without a word. Jack had just enough time to grab her Aviators but not her hat. "Must we rush?" Jack asked with her calm, neutral voice.

"I have work in only an hour now. You take to long in the shower!" Pepper almost growled at the other woman as she dragged the smaller of the two towards the door and the car Happy would be driving. Pepper didn't seem to care that Jack kept tripping on the baggy sweatpants she was wearing.

It turned out that Jack could only handle being in the store for a few minutes before she had to rush out of the damned place. The whole time she took to leave the store, which wasn't that long, Pepper learned that her new friend knew more curses then she could imagine. In the end, they didn't buy a thing and had went home early. The small story had brought Tony to tears.

That night, Jack suit was done just like Tony had said and right now Jack was marveling at it openly. It was sleek and beautiful, a marvelous piece of art and right about now Jack hoped that her nanites would be able to remake it. "It's wonderful Tony!" She held to much excitement that it held seeped into the sentence, which went unnoticed by herself. Everyone had noticed her trying to put great effort into putting emotions into everything she said but this was genuine.

"I'm glad you like it, now get in it." Tony put bluntly, "You have been staring at it for a full hour now. Now, I think you should get in it without your clothes."

Jack glared at him from his remark, though he could not see this from behind her sunglasses before she realized what he meant. "Then get out!"

"I jus-"

"OUT!" Jack didn't need to put effort into that, as she was uncomfortable with herself as it was but once he ran out of the lab she sighed. "JARVIS, make sure he doesn't try anything."

"Already working on that Miss Rowen." came the reply.

Quickly stripping, she stood in place to allow JARVIS to assemble the suit around her. She tried to not move as he did so but the suit touching bare skin was weird. Once every piece was in place, the HUD in her helmet came alive in the same green that her eyes glew and everything started to boot up. Once she saw that everything was in order, as well as JARVIS stating that it was so, Jack's eyes started to glow. She took control of every nanite in her body that could absorb the material that now surrounded her and had to hold back the gagging sensation as it began. She started on the helm and as the last of it joined her body, she began to dry heave as the rest of the suit became one with her. Counting down from ten, she calmed her body before she walked to her clothes, the suit now completely part of her. Once her underwear and bra were on though, she fell into unconsciousness, her head hitting the floor.

Jack woke up the next morning in her room, glaring at the ceiling. She didn't dare move just yet as her body did a self check and boot up, which was weird for her. That had only happened the day after the accident but she figured this would have to happen. Taking note of the obvious differences, she noticed the HUD from the suit's helmet now was permanent in her version, annoying but her could get used to it. Her mind had full access to JARVIS now, which she decided to try. "Hey, JARVIS, answer in my head if you hear this, who found me and brought me here?"

"I alerted Miss Potts first to allow her to make you decent before alerting Mr Stark, whom brought you to your room. Would that be all Miss Rowen?" JARVIS spoke in her head, clearly as if he spoke to her from the speakers in the room.

"That would be all, thank you." Jack replied with a big smile on her face, acknowledging JARVIS' welcome before getting out of the bed to get ready for the day.

In about an hour, Tony and Pepper were to leave for the Expo, Pepper with Happy and Tony in his Iron Man suit. Jack had already thanked the two for helping her out and was at that moment watching Pepper help Tony with his tie. She was making a point to ignore Mr Hogan.

"Say, Jackie?" Tony called over Pepper's head as she fiddled with his tie. "I have a question for you, it's been rolling around in my head since you came to the house."

Jack looked to him and raised an eyebrow at him, he looked fine and she couldn't understand why Pepper was fussing. "That would be?"

"If you had been watching my back enough to screw those guys over, then what happened when I got taken?" He asked this casually, as if asking about the weather, which was perfect by the way.

Jack looked down at her feet for just a moment before looking at his eyes through her aviators. "At that point in time? I wasn't following you, like, at all. All you were, was a weapons manufacturer and nothing more. It was when you became Iron Man, that was when I began following you." It was true, all he had been was a rich somebody to the public but a rich nobody to her. "Now? Now I owe you my life Anthony Edward Stark, and I am deeply sorry about what happened to you in those cave but by no means do I regret it."

Everyone was staring at her now, if they hadn't been when she started speaking. Tony spoke first, "You owe me your life?" He said it slowly as if comprehending it.

"I would have died by the end of this week if I did not get the update. The nanites in my head would've destroyed my brain, make it explode in my head because they were not being occupied with a job. Now they can hack without leaving a trail and are doing so as we speak." Actual, genuine excitement full her voice as she spoke and a real smile was on her face. Emotions had become just slightly easier for her since the update.

"You would have died if he said no? You couldn't have gone to a computer store or something?!" Pepper sounded upset. "You said yourself that you would have left the moment he said no."

Taking off her glasses, Jack looked Pepper in the eyes and spoke softly, "I would have died alone." She then smiled sadly, "I said I was taking a risk, it was Stark Tech or nothing. I had come to terms with that before I travel so far from home. Now, enough of that, you all have an Expo to go to." And Jack had a suit to try out.

'JARVIS? Is the version of you installed within my nanites separate from the house and Iron Man?' Jack asked through thought as she washed her plates from dinner. She had leftovers from the night before, when she had past out. After the confirmation sounded in her mind, she continued, 'Good. I will be the one to determine what information will be transferred. All information gather must be kept within my personal memory.' This was needed for everyone's sake not just from paranoia. She finished with the dishes before cleaning her hands and placing her fedora and aviators on the table. "Now then, lets try out this suit."

Jack stood outside of the house at the helicopter pad, hear eyes were set on the night sky with a serene expression. She wore the clothing that she met Pepper in, a comfort that she needed for what she was about to do. A sigh left her mouth as she lowered her head before throwing out her arm and spreading her legs. "Begin." Was all she stated before metal began to shift and expand before every pour of her body. It was a new sensation, different and could not be explained. She could not decided if she liked it or not but she pushed such thoughts away. The metal seemed to almost crawl across her as it formed, coming out from behind her clothing to cover them as well. As the process completed, the HUD that glowed in her eyes transferred to the screen of her mask in front of her.

"Reconstruction complete. Systems boot up...50%...75%...92%...Systems boot up complete. Suit ready for use, My lady." JARVIS announced in his calming voice. What he had said had also shown up on her HUD.

A ghost of a true smile came to Jack's face as she made a small noise of acknowledgment before she booted up the jets that would have her flying. "We will finally be able to fly father. Just like you dreamed." The soft and enduring tone she used was barely audible. One last quick smile and Jack booted up the stabilizers in her hands and she was off into the night sky.

Jack flew for over an hour before finally landing in an empty area, she was tired, hungry and was sure that by tomorrow that her body would be aching all over. She had found that the suit was powered by calories and she did not eat enough, not thinking of this fact. She'd have to save enough energy for the flight back to Tony's house. 'Either I can become a black hole for food or I talk to Tony about an arc reactor...' Allowing the suit to become one with her again with a sigh, she only had moments before the screech of tires filled the silent streets. She turned swift only to have the world feel like it was standing still as the car that speed past her, carried someone she didn't expect to see.

Her mother.

Note: Edited to add more detail and some of Jack's thoughts. This one was abit more detailed than the others before the edit so it wasn't so bad.

AvengerSSB: You're quite welcome and Thank you, I'm trying to integrate Jack into what actually happened in the movie. It won't be stuff like replacing Rhodey or anything but it will hopefully be noticeable like that.