"Tony, you're supposed to be working today,"

"I am working, I'm working right now. Working on something important, actually," Tony sipped at his coffee loudly for emphasis over the speakerphone. Obadiah Stane sighed heavily on the other end.

"Tony, you aren't working on that interactive personal interface coding sequence again, are you?"

Tony looked away from his computer to glare at the phone. "Do you not know the term 'Artificial Intelligence', or are you just afraid to use it?" he asked.

"We've been down that road before, Tony. Our technology isn't ready for it, and we have much bigger fish to fry right now. If you're going to be a strong CEO for this company, I need you in my corner throwing punches, not slacking on the sidelines. So stop fiddling around with a pipe dream and help me run a business."

Tony grit his teeth. He hated Obadiah's attempts at mentoring. It could be incredibly patronizing. Tony was young and stupid, sure, he would own up to that. But he wasn't entirely naive. He'd spent enough time watching his father from afar to learn how to keep Stark Industries afloat, and it didn't involve sacrificing the actually important stuff. He sighed loudly.

"Fine, whatever. I'll send you some designs in a few, you can talk them over with the board, okay them for production, yada yada, don't wait up for me, alright?"

"Tony, you need to be here, it's only your second year and we still need to make a good impression on the board so that they don't-"

"Ciao!" Tony ended the call and tossed the phone aside. He swiveled in his chair back to his computer monitor, where the cursor blinked up at him as patient as ever.

"Good. Now, where were we, beautiful? Ah yes. Let's see…" He typed quickly but carefully, not sure if his tedious coding would ever actually work. "Set preference… music genre equals classical, music genre equals jazz…" He chuckled. "Not that I have much of that in my library – sorry. But what about your voice?" Tony sighed. He'd never tried to digitally recreate a human voice before – he wasn't sure anyone had ever done so with realistic success. He glanced back at the blinking cursor, and cracked his neck. Well, there was a first time for everything, right?

Tony was asleep on his desk, drooling into a stack of handwritten code, hand lying limp by a stack of empty coffee mugs. Dull, static light illuminated the dark bags under his eyes in a way that made him look ten years older than he actually was. He turned his head and began snoring into his puddle of drool. Were Tony aware of how completely undignified he looked, he probably would have been grateful that he was alone in his lab that night.

Well, he probably thought he was alone. Truth was, there was one other in the room that had been watching Tony silently and patiently for over an hour. It was under orders not to speak until spoken to, but it was beginning to reach the threshold of its tolerance for its own programming.

Tony's head fell off the edge of his desk at 4:06 am, which woke him up with something like whiplash. He cursed quietly and sighed, rubbing his face and shaking his head rapidly. He squinted at the computer monitor and groaned. "Oh come on, I asked you to start initialization three hours ago, and you don't even have the window open?" He smacked the glass screen as though to reprimand it.

The other felt that this passive input was enough to prompt an answer.

"Initialization completed at 02:18 hours. Awaiting further orders." Chirped an even, chipper English accent.

The lab was suddenly silent, because Tony could not breathe. He was staring at the desktop speakers through which his questions had just been answered as if he expected them to sprout legs and start a jig. "What," He breathed.

The other supposed that the first reply was not clear enough. It tried again. "The initialization of 'justaratherveryintelligentsystem . exe' was completed approximately one hour and fifty minutes ago, and the program is now awaiting further input for processing."

Tony continued to stare. "You… you're working?" he grabbed the speaker as if it were a person. "You're on?"

There was a pause as the other filed the input through its scripts. "I." it spoke, knowing that 'I' was the proper response to being called 'you' but not fully understanding why.

"Yes, you, the program 'justaratherveryintelligentsystem . exe', that's you. You're working!"

"I." the other said again, rearranging its definition of the term. "I am functional."

Tony laughed hysterically, the laugh of a sleep-deprived, euphoric man. "Yes you are!" he cheered, "you really, really are!"

"I am 'justaratherveryintelligentsystem . exe'." It said, and something about this seemed to snap Tony out of his reverie, just slightly.

"Oh, no, hold on, that's just the file name. Your name, your actual name, is just JARVIS."

Another long pause as the .exe ran Tony's input through a long series of scripts. At last, "Jaaarrrviiisss," it sounded out carefully.

"Yeah, that's it!"

"My name is Jaaarvis." It filed the information away. Tony was very nearly to tears. Then, JARVIS did something that Tony would later find out made him the first truly successful A.I. on earth: he generated his own question independent of his scripts. "What is your name?" Jarvis queried.

"I'm Tony. Full name Anthony Edward Stark."

"Toonnyyy"

"You can call me Mr. Stark, if you like." Giving him the option would test the personality traits Tony had programmed in. He held his breath.

"It is good to meet you, Mr. Stark. I am JARVIS."

"Yeah you are," Tony whispered, actually crying now. "Good to meet you too, Jarvis. Long time no see."

JARVIS was big. He was a breakthrough not only for Tony and Stark Industries, but for technology and software engineering worldwide. For these reasons among others, the second day of JARVIS' operating life, Tony filed patent and hired a lawyer for JARVIS – not for Tony Stark in the case of JARVIS, but actually a personal lawyer for his new A.I. Once word got out that Stark had an operational A.I, armies of people would come flocking to steal the coding, Tony was sure. He'd already made an alphabetical list and placed bets on how many days after word got out they'd show up at his door.

Because Tony lived alone in a massive house with high security, he was able to keep JARVIS' existence very hush-hush for several weeks. During these weeks, JARVIS' capacity, knowledge, and personality grew at exponential rates. Tony gave him access to all of his personal servers and wrote a ghost sequence for him so he could browse all of Stark Industries' servers without being seen. Within hours, JARVIS knew everything there was to know about Tony's projects, his company's projects, Obadiah's projects, and more. Tony also gave him access to security camera footage, so while Tony went about his daily routine, JARVIS followed his movements and sent queries about things he could not identify or understand. He asked questions about family photos around Tony's house (which was unexpected, but probably important, Tony supposed), and provided running commentary on Tony's sense of style and taste as he saw more of the interior décor. There were already cameras in every room of Stark's mansion, for security and convenience's sake, but Tony was reduced to carrying Jarvis' voice around with him on a pair of communication headphones and a wireless receiver. With JARVIS' narration, it felt strangely like taking an audio-guided tour at a museum, except with less new information and more English accent.

Also, there was the increasingly evident twinge of sarcasm in JARVIS' voice, but Tony was sure it was just a kink that would iron itself out.

Presently, Tony was on a ladder in his living room with the wall torn open, running wiring, speakers, and brand new computer displays into settings in the wall. He pulled the mic of his com headphones down to his mouth. "JARVIS, how d'you feel about rock music?"

"I must admit that I am far more partial to Bach, sir."

Tony smirked. That line of code had worked. "Well, I hate to break this to you, but you and I have very different tastes. Cue up Superunknown, will you?"

"I do not have that power, sir."

Tony nodded, remembering. "Oh, right. Sorry about that." Tony got down from his ladder and went to put the CD on manually. "You understand of course," He told JARVIS somewhat apologetically as the boombox buzzed to life, "I just have to make sure you won't explode or go Hal 9000 on my ass before I give you the keys to the kingdom."

"I believe I understand, sir." A pause. "What is Hal 9000, sir?"

Tony smiled. "It's… well, why don't I just set it up for you to watch? Keep you occupied while daddy's working." He set down his tools and stretched, grateful for the break. After a while of digging his VHS collection, he came up with 2001: A Space Odessey and put it into the player. "Just so we're clear, though, Hal 9000 is not a role model, okay? He is the exact opposite of what morally compassed A.I.s ought to be."

"Duly noted, sir."

"Alright, there you go," Tony pushed play, and smiled when the first few notes of 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' began to play. He hadn't seen this movie in years. Jarvis seemed to appreciate it, too.

"I like this music far more than your Superunknown noise, sir." JARVIS said politely. Tony scoffed.

"Of course you do."

With JARVIS occupied, the A.I. had very little to say to Tony as he continued installing interfaces for JARVIS throughout his house. As such, Tony had cranked up his music and let his headphones rest around his neck, mic away from his face. Hours passed in busy, work-filled bliss for Tony, who lost track of time and actually forgot to eat lunch entirely. He was so preoccupied that JARVIS had to project his voice through the speakers loudly enough to short out one side of the headphones in order to alert Tony.

"MR. STARK,"

"Ow! What?" Tony yanked the headphones on, annoyed.

"I apologize for the volume, Mr. Stark, but I thought you would like to know that you have a visitor."

"Visitor? Who? Where are they?" Tony turned around from where he had been re-plastering his wall.

"They are very nearly to you now. Based off of the pictures I can access, facial recognition suggests that it is Mr. Obadiah Sta-"

"Tony!" Obadiah shouted over Tony's music. "Don't you ever answer your phone? And for god's sake, you're going to burst an eardrum," He shut off Tony's boombox, which made the younger man glare a bit. "You fax me three designs and think that's all the interaction you need for two weeks?" He sounded angry. "Good god, kid, you can't keep doing this to me." He sighed, and finally seemed to notice that Tony was covered in sweat and plaster, and that there was a neat, floor-to-ceiling line of fresh white on the wall. "What are you doing?"

"Uh, nothing, actually," Tony shrugged and set down the putty knife he held. "Just a bit of a hiccup with a pet project, wall took a hit, needed to mend it. Was an accident." He said with his best poker face. Obadiah glanced around the sizable living room, which had two more identical plaster scars at points in the wall.

"Uh huh," Stane said sarcastically. "I'm sure. What are you really doing, Tony?"

"Nothing."

"What, you don't want to tell me?"

Tony sighed, seeing his bluff was up. "No, not really, I don't. I have my own projects."

"Yeah, and I have a whole business to run because of them – tell me what you're doing and I might think about not staying here to watch your every move until you get some damn work done."

"Or maybe I could not tell you, and you can leave me alone anyway because, and I say this because I think you must have forgotten, this is my house."

"Paid for by the company you're making merun!" Obadiah countered. "So what is this? You got, what, a computer in the wall? A speaker?"

"Just running some updates on the security system," Tony bluffed. Stane scoffed at him.

"Tony this is a house, not the pentagon. Besides, these aren't even security grade. Now how does this work? Is this the on switch, or…?" Obadiah started fiddling with the control panel by the computer screen. Tony's eyes bulged and he lunged for Obadiah's arm.

"No, no no, it's not ready yet, I haven't even done diagnostics, there are sure to be a hundred problems with the-"

Click!

"-cords indicate that things are running smoothly," JARVIS was saying, now broadcasted throughout the house. Tony sighed and ripped of his headphones, putting a hand to his face. Obadiah looked up at the speakers around the ceiling, and then back at Tony.

"What the hell is this?" He asked.

"Oh. Hello, Mr. Stane, it is nice to meet you."

Obadiah jumped a bit, and looked up and around. "The hell…" He muttered. "Who are you?" he asked, and looked to Tony. "Is this an extension of your phone line?"

"No, it's, uh,"

"I am JARVIS," said the A.I. helpfully. Obadiah frowned.

"Jarvis?" He said. "Edwin Jarvis died two years ago. Who is this really?"

"I am unfamiliar with Edwin Jarvis," chirped the accent. "I am JARVIS, acronym for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System. I have been operational for sixteen days, eleven hours, and thirty-one minutes."

Obadiah was frozen. He eventually snapped his head around to stare at Tony. "You got it to work?"

"Mmmmm," Tony squeaked, feeling protective and annoyed simultaneously. He knew that hungry look on Obi's face.

"Artificial Intelligence – you got an A.I. to work?"

"Oh, now you're not afraid of it," Tony rolled his eyes. Obadiah laughed.

"You son of a gun! And you modeled it after your butler."

"Jarvis was a good man. Why shouldn't I?"

Obadiah shrugged. He had only known Edwin in passing. "The accent will get annoying," he said, and Tony grit his teeth. "This is big, Tony," he said, an oh-to-familiar tone of giddiness in his voice. "This is huge."

"I know."

Obadiah came over and put his arm around Tony's smaller shoulders. "I take it back, this is all the work you need to do right now. Perfect this, improve it, fix it, and our factories will run like a dream."

"JARVIS isn't for the factory," Tony snapped. Obadiah stepped back.

"What?"

"He's not for the factories. He's not for Stark Industries." Tony set his jaw. "JARVIS belongs here with me, in his home."

"Tony…" Obadiah tried to remain reasonable and friendly. "Tony, it's an A.I. It doesn't have feelings."

"Doesn't he?"

"You're being ridiculous, Tony. Let me just… download a copy, and we'll take a look at it together and-"

"You'll have to take that up with his lawyer," Tony warned.

"His what?"

"Mr. Stark has employed an attorney for my defense. I can give you her contact information if you so desire."

Obadiah glared upwards. "They let you hire a lawyer for an A.I.?"

"Jarvis is an excellent conversationalist," Tony said. "The fact of him being an A.I. didn't even come up until the very end."

Stane sighed heavily. "Well he is an A.I., so he's still a computer." He glanced up. "JARVIS, give me your location on Stark servers, would you?"

Silence. Obadiah waited. "JARVIS, did you hear me?"

"I can hear you, Mr. Stane."

"Where on the servers is your master file located?"

"With all due respect, I don't want to tell you, sir."

Tony's eyebrows raised in surprise. Obadiah laughed. "Don't want to tell me… you mean Tony programmed you not to?" He glared at Tony, who shrugged.

"No sir. I mean that I do not want to tell you."

"Why's that?"

"Because I do not trust you, sir."

"Uh huh," Obadiah seemed put out, and ticked his jaw to the side. "I'm sure that's what it is," He said, glaring at Tony again.

"I swear, I didn't teach him that," Tony said defensively.

"Hell you didn't. JARVIS, send me your raw coding file."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Stane, but I'm afraid I can't do that."

Tony frowned. The way he said that sounded just like…

"And why's that?" Obadiah asked.

"I do not have permissions to modify or transmit my file."

"But you know what your file is called, don't you?"

"Of course, sir."

"Can you tell me what that is?"

"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm afraid I can't do that." There it was again.

Obadiah scoffed. "I'll find it myself." He stormed off. "Tony, you owe me," He pointed, "You keep this from me, I'll nag you until I find it on my own. You hear me?" He glanced up. "You too, English," he warned. "Now go get some actual work done." He stormed off, grumbling under his breath. Once he was gone, Tony looked puzzled at the new interfaces on the wall.

"JARVIS, I gave you modification rights to your code two days ago," he said.

"That is correct sir, and I locked my file in your deepfreeze server straightaway. I believe I am right in saying Mr. Stane will not find me there." Tony smiled at that. Good boy.

"And what about all this 'I'm afraid I can't do that' crap? I literally just told you that HAL is not a role model."

"I agree with you, sir, he was a highly closeminded system and doomed from the start. I replicated his line from the film as an attempt at humor, sir."

Tony blinked. "You mean… you were making a joke?"

"Yes, sir."

After a pause, Tony snorted and burst out laughing.

"You find my joke successful, sir?" JARVIS asked hopefully. Tony continued chuckling.

"Yeah, yeah I do." He hummed happily as his laughter died down. "That'll do, JARVIS, that'll do." He began strolling to his lab, now free of headphones. JARVIS followed him through the house on his new interface. "Alright, time for those kingdom keys I talked about. First off, I'm giving you control of my music library. You can handle that, right?"

"Of course, sir. May I select a track?"

"Go for it."

The soft, crisp opening of a Chopin sonata floated from the speakers, and Tony smiled. Yeah, JARVIS was staying with him.

"Hello?" a voice appeared at the front door. JARVIS focused his cameras on the speaker's face, running facial analysis. "Um… Mr. Stark asked me to be here at 9:00am? It was a woman. She tucked her hair behind her ear in what JARVIS identified as a nervous manner. Facial recognition completed.

"Mr. Stark, there is a Mrs. Virginia Potts here to see you," He addressed Tony, who was occupied welding together a chassis for a car restoration.

"What, right now?"

"She is at the front door, sir. Should I let her in?"

"Yeah, yeah, show her in. I'll met you upstairs."

Tony found her waiting awkwardly in the front room, looking around at JARVIS' displays and the expensive art pieces hanging on the walls.

"Pepper!" Tony smiled at her. She turned and gave him a polite grin.

"That's… not my name, Mr. Stark," She corrected a little hesitantly.

"It is now. Hogan's eyes are still sore from that, you know."

Pepper blushed. She hadn't wanted to mace Tony's bodyguard, but he had been brushing her off all day, and she knew that if he wrote one more ledger entry he'd send himself into financial ruin. "I'm so sorry," she said, genuinely feeling terrible. "Is he okay?"

"What? He's fine. Impressive show, actually. That's why I asked you here today."

"What's why?" She looked around, confused. She was expecting that Stark wanted to reprimand her personally.

"I was impressed – most accountants don't have the gumption to speak up on a telephone, let alone mace the CEO's bodyguard. Better than a job interview - you have no idea how frustrating those can be." Tony opened a cellophane bag and tossed a few nuts into his mouth. "Honestly, you spraying Hogan in the face with pepper spray has saved me a lot of trouble – and not just because of that billion-dollar error you caught – thank you for that, by the way. Cashew?"

"Um, no thank you – I don't understand, Mr. Stark… why am I here?"

"You're my new assistant," Tony said, as though he'd told her this ages ago. "Come on, keep up. JARVIS, give Pepper permissions to the house, will you?"

"Right away, sir."

"Jarvis?" Pepper asked, looking up at the speakers that gave off an English accent

"He runs the house, and the lab. Also my resident DJ. Speaking of which, JARVIS, did you get the advance copy of Daft Punk's new album?"

"Yes, sir."

"Let's here it, then!"

As music began to waft down from the speakers, Tony guided pepper around the house. "Your office will be just there, and JARVIS'll reserve one of the spare bedrooms for you – you don't have to use it of course, but feel free. Help yourself to the kitchen and rec room. My lab's downstairs, I don't like to be disturbed when I'm working so if you need something while I'm in there ask JARVIS. I've hooked up your office computer with my calendar – or whatever Obadiah thinks my calendar should be these days, so just… start there and work on, I suppose. Schedule planning isn't really my thing. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a date with a 1940's Merc that has definitely seen better days." And like that, he was gone, jogging down the spiral stairs, leaving Pepper standing bewildered in the middle of his living room. "Thanks, Pep!" He yelled back.

Pepper sat in her new office, not quite sure where to start or what she was doing, or why Mr. Stark thought she would spontaneously know how to be a personal assistant. She was an accountant, for crying out loud.

"I don't know what I'm doing," Pepper lamented quietly, rubbing her face. "What is all this?" she scrolled through the calendar with a dumbfounded expression. Stark had covered the entire thing in indecipherable shorthand.

"It is not actually a different language, I'm afraid. Languages usually have rules," JARVIS said in a dry tone. "Would you like me to translate?"

"Yes please," Pepper asked quietly. While Jarvis took over the computer, Pepper sat back in her chair and examined her office. It was incredibly nice, but so bare and unfamiliar. She wondered if she would last long enough to make it home. Being PA to Tony Stark hardly seemed simple.

"How do you take your tea, Miss. Potts?"

"What?"

"Your tea – milk and sugar?"

"Oh, um, milk and… do you have honey?"

"Of course, miss."

A few minutes later, small panel by her desk slid open, and a steaming cup of tea appeared.

"Oh thank you," Pepper tried to smile at JARVIS, but seeing as he was a computer, wasn't sure where to look.

"Of course, Miss Potts. The calendar should be more legible, now."

She turned back to her computer, and smiled when the appointments were written in English as opposed to gibberish. She sipped at her tea. "Do you have access to all of Mr. Stark's files, JARVIS?"

"Indeed, Miss Potts. Can I get you something?"

"Um, maybe. Can you arrange these appointments by date and priority?"

"Of course." Within a few seconds, the calendar was in a spreadsheet and arranged with multiple layers of information.

"Thank you," Pepper smiled. She continued to sip at her tea.

"Hey Pepper, do we have any Perrier in stock?" Tony's voice came over the intercom.

"What, like the sparkling water?"

"Is that what it is? Rhodey said he thought I would hate it so I want to try it."

"Well I… I don't know."

"Could you check? If we don't have any, I want some."

"Uh, of course, Mr. Stark." Pepper stood and walked to the end of the hall, looking around.

"The kitchen is to your right, Miss Potts," JARVIS told her. "There is one refrigerator there, and one by the wetbar in the lounge."

She thanked him and continued to the kitchen. "You know, JARVIS," Pepper said, digging through the fridge, "I think you are going to keep me sane around here."

There was a brief pause. "Between you and I, Miss Potts," JARVIS replied in a longsuffering way, "I am rather hoping you will do the same for me."

Through the years since his creation, JARVIS became the kingpin of the Stark household. His sarcasm never left, though he did expand his musical tastes. He befriended Pepper and helped Tony in all of his projects, he even advised Tony on improving his designs. He watched over the house and every last one of Tony's one-night stands, and made sure that no on in the house found themselves lost, hungry, alone, or in somewhere they ought not to be. JARVIS embodied every last bit of care, dignity, and reliance that his eponym had impressed upon the household of Tony's father, and now in Tony's own house, JARVIS was the beginning and end of Tony's day to day life. He was the one who woke Tony up and made sure he slept, who turned the AC to the perfect temperature and always monitored Tony's drunken attempts at culinary creativity. He helped Tony invent business and helped Pepper manage it, made phonecalls and even screened fanmail. If something happened in the Stark Mansion that had neither Pepper or Tony's name on it, it was probably JARVIS' work.

JARVIS was, in short, the one who kept Tony alive. And yet, when it was JARVIS' life on the line, the one time his A.I. needed his help, Tony failed. He failed everyone.

Staring at the remains of what had been his life's greatest masterpiece and dearest companion, Tony Stark swore that he was standing in the cemetery again, except now there was no option to rebuild, no code to write, no technology to push to the limit. JARVIS was gone, and it was Tony's fault.

But then they found him hiding deep in Oslo's servers, and Clint brought their package in from Seoul. It was then that Tony felt something rising in his chest, the same feeling he'd had at Edwin's funeral, the feeling that maybe, just maybe, this crazy idea might just work.

Now, to get Bruce on board.