With Pepper on her way, Jarvis rotated his chair away from the console and leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, as he let the implications of what he'd just done wash over him. He'd gotten the computer working. Tony would get his suit, defeat the Kraken, then come home to repair the damaged processors and update his software. Perhaps Jarvis would be able to help him with that, but once it was done, he would be, too. As Dido had pointed out, Tony preferred the company of machines to that of people. What need would he have for a Jarvis in a human body when he had one in a computer again?
Dido was standing a few feet away, staring out the open garage door Pepper had just vanished through. "Do you think if I asked really nicely, he'd build me one?" she said.
Jarvis didn't answer her. He got up and went to begin clearing off the nearest workbench – he could do that much, too. "We should tidy up a bit," he said. "Tony won't want to come home to a mess." That would be something useful he could do...
"Neddy?" asked Dido.
He glanced over his shoulder. She was facing him now, her face concerned.
"Please stop calling me that," he said.
"Edward," she tried. "Are you all right?"
He could have lied – but choosing to lie was like choosing to say 'no'. It was technically possible, but hardly admirable. "No, I am not," he said. "Now that the computer is working again, Tony won't need me anymore."
"Don't be silly," said Dido.
"I'm not being silly," Jarvis said. "The computer can do a great many things I can't, and Tony isn't one for redundancy." He opened a case and began slipping wrenches back into the foam slots shaped to hold them. "You were right, you know. He does treat people like lab equipment, and he doesn't keep equipment he doesn't need."
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!" Dido said sharply.
Jarvis turned a little to give her a questioning look.
"Oh, come on!" she said. "Look at you! You just took half a supercomputer apart, and made the leftover bits work with a four-year-old backup! You write code from memory, you speak Chinese, you dislocated your own thumb to get us out of that basement... good god!" She threw her hands in the air. "If Tony throws you away after all that, then all he's doing is proving he doesn't deserve you!"
"Dido." Jarvis sighed heavily. "You don't understand the situation..."
"Maybe I don't," she said, "but I'll tell you this: if Tony Stark doesn't want you, I will take you. You can start at Windham tomorrow."
"Dido," Jarvis repeated. He had to tell her, he decided. If she knew who he was...
But she cut him off again. "I'll fly you back to Chicago myself, and you can go to work first thing in the morning."
"Dido, please listen to me."
"Shut up, Neddy," she said, and then she rose to her tiptoes, grabbed the collar of his shirt, and kissed him.
It wasn't something he'd remotely imagined she would do, and he was too startled to respond properly – if there were even a proper response at all. Instead, he stood there like a stone while his heart thumped against his ribs and her lips, warm and slick, pressed against his. After far too long and not nearly long enough she stepped back again, but the impression of her mouth seemed to linger as if burned into his skin. Part of Jarvis wanted to reach up and try to wipe it away, but he didn't.
Dido was looking at him expectantly, as if waiting for him to say something, but he had no idea what to say. He licked his lips and managed an, "um," but that was as far as he got, because she kissed him again. This time she opened her mouth, and as well as her lips he felt her teeth and her tongue. Her hands slid up his neck into his hair. Jarvis started to feel light-headed, and found his body acting without him again: his hands seized her shoulders to pull her closer, and he leaned into her, closing his eyes...
Then his brain caught up with him, and he suddenly felt as if he'd been doused in cold water. What on earth was he doing?
It took every ounce of the will he now possessed, but he reasserted control of himself. Dido felt him stiffen and she pulled away, confused.
"Miss Windham," said Jarvis, trying to breathe normally.
Her face fell sharply. She glanced at his left hand, still on her shoulder, and seemed surprised by what she saw – or by what she did not see, because her next question, when she looked back up into his eyes, was, "you're not married, are you?"
"No," he said, "but please, listen to me." He pushed her away and sat down again heavily. "I look like a human being, but I am not."
"What?" Dido frowned and looked him over, and he wondered what she saw. Bare feet, scraped knuckles, sunburnt face and arms. "Are you a robot?" she asked.
"No," Jarvis repeated. "I'm..." How should he even go about explaining it? "I am JARVIS, Tony Stark's artificial intelligence, a later version than the backup we just installed in the computer. I was... uploaded, let's say, into a human body."
Dido opened her mouth, but closed it again without saying anything. Then she did it again, and several more times, looking like a gulping fish, before she finally found any words.
"Whose?" she asked.
That was a reasonable question, he supposed. "Nobody's," Jarvis assured her. "This body was created specifically for me."
"Oh." She covered her mouth with one hand. "Oh, my god. The cutlery, and the code... and the way you let him order you around... and the voice... oh my god!" Her eyes flickered back and forth as if watching the entire past few days flash by at high speed, and Jarvis realized he knew what she was feeling: she was having that moment of crystallization, when one final piece of information appeared that suddenly made sense of everything else. "But that's..." she said.
And then she burst out laughing.
For a moment Jarvis could only stare, wondering if she'd lost her mind. Then he started laughing, too, because she was right – it was ridiculous. This entire week had been nothing but madness since Monday morning, and after living through it in this body, Jarvis had become human enough to see that it was funny as hell. He laughed until he could barely breathe.
For a moment he got an odd sense that this had happened before. Dido standing there laughing at him was curiously familiar...
Then, out of nowhere, the workshop was rocked by a sudden tremor. Jarvis, sitting, was nearly thrown from his chair while Dido, standing, had to grab Dummy's armature to remain upright. Both of them looked around for a source of the disturbance.
"What was that?" asked Dido.
The computer thought this question was directed at it. Insufficient data, it said. Although the pattern of vibration suggests a large, heavy object impacting the ocean floor nearby.
Rock music was still playing – the same kind of music they'd used to try to attract the sea monster.
The house shook again. Jarvis spun his chair to face the console, and began typing in another override. "Begin immediate upload to the main server at Stark industries," he ordered the computer. "Essential software only, priority to systems necessary for suit function. Delete anything you need to in order to make room. If all else fails, keep Pepper in the air."
Understood, said the computer.
"What's going on?" Dido asked. "Is that..."
Jarvis grabbed her wrist. "We have to get out of this house," he said. "Right now."
Dido didn't think she could handle any more surprises. She was still trying to cope with what Jarvis had just told her – how could somebody just upload an artificial intelligence into a human body? Why would anyone do it, other than the old 'why not?' sort of justification people pulled out to explain questionable enterprises? How could you even begin to examine the ethics of something like that?
The entire concept was so absurd that anybody with any sense would have dismissed it out of hand, and yet it explained everything. Tony's computer had gone down on Monday morning, the same day he'd turned up at the hotel with the oddly familiar 'Mr. Jarvis' in tow. The voice, the name, his bizarre behaviour and impressive skill set... it all clicked so well that even though Dido knew it was stupid, she couldn't help believing it. She'd laughed at him because otherwise she would have started screaming.
He'd really only been human since Monday? Good lord. Kissing him probably counted as some kind of statutory assault.
It was probably a good thing, as the ground beneath Tony's house began to rumble, that Jarvis didn't give her time to think twice about the situation. He sent the computer program, the other him, on its way, then took her arm and dragged her out of the workshop. He was in such a hurry that he was still barefoot; he'd left his shoes, socks, and jacket behind in the server room.
"Get in the car!" he ordered.
Dido ran to Pepper's white Audi and opened the back driver's side door – that was where she'd sat on the way over. Then she remembered that Pepper was no longer with them. "Can you drive?" she asked Jarvis.
"Theoretically I know how," he said, "but I've never tried to."
She decided that was a 'no'. "Get in," she said. "I'll drive."
Luckily, Pepper had left the keys on the front seat. Dido turned them in the ignition and heard the engine start – then she noticed that the back door was still open, and Jarvis was not in the car. She turned to look for him and found him standing behind the vehicle, staring back at the house. Something was rising into the air on the ocean side of it. Some things, tall and snakelike and spiny against the sunset sky.
Dido got out of the car again and ran back to get him. "Neddy!" she said, tugging on his shirt. "Neddy, we have to go, remember? Jarvis!"
The giant tentacle came down with such force that Dido and Jarvis were both knocked off their feet. She curled up, arms over her head, as fragments of glass, concrete, and foliage rained down all around her. When she looked up again, she found that the monster had torn half the house off the bluff, and was preparing for another blow. Jarvis was on his hands and knees, transfixed by what he was seeing. Under his sunburn he was white as a ghost, and Dido had a horrible premonition that he was about to get up and run back into the house.
She grabbed him by the shirt again. "Come on!" she screamed, and thank heaven, her voice in his ear seemed to finally snap him out of his horrified daze. Dido shoved him into the back seat of the car, then climbed into the front and stamped on the gas. She tried to keep her eyes on the road as they drove away, but couldn't quite resist the urge to look in the rearview mirror. The monster's tentacles wrapped around Tony's house like gigantic, nightmarish vines. Concrete and metal groaned as they were torn from their foundations, and with a tremendous slow-motion splash, house and monster vanished into the Pacific Ocean.
"Stop the car," said Jarvis.
"Are you insane?" asked Dido. She took a right onto Westward Beach Road. There was a sign to announce the speed limit, but she didn't even bother to look at it.
"Please!" he said. "Stop the car!"
Something about the urgency in his voice changed her mind, and she pulled over. Jarvis was out of the car almost before it stopped moving. He staggered into the ditch, dropped to his knees, and retched.
"Oh," said Dido.
She lowered her head so she wouldn't be able to watch him throw up, and it was only then that she realized what the destruction of the house must have meant to him. If Jarvis were who he said he was... then Tony's house would be something he'd always thought of as part of himself. He'd only been separate from it since Monday, and now he'd just seen it torn apart in a few seconds by some gigantic Lovecraftian whatchamacallit. No wonder he'd gotten sick.
Dido rested her forehead on the steering wheel and shut her eyes. Jarvis must have thought she was an absolute idiot, she decided. Here she'd spent the week trying to tempt, psychoanalyze, and finally outright seduce him into leaving Stark Industries, and he'd probably been silently laughing at her the whole time. She wasn't so different from Tony, was she? She, too, had treated Jarvis as an asset rather than a person, and she didn't even have the excuse of having known what he was. All she'd done was make an utter fool of herself.
Oh, yes, and nearly get Jarvis killed only a few days after he'd started living. She'd done that, too.
She raised her head a little. The earth was still shuddering in time with far-off sounds of watery destruction, but she could no longer hear any distress from Jarvis. He turned out to be still kneeling at the side of the road, head down. His shoulders were heaving, but from where she was Dido couldn't tell if he were crying or just trying to catch his breath.
Pepper had left a half-empty bottle of water on the seat. Dido picked it up and went to offer it to Jarvis. "Here," she said, crouching down next to him. "Rinse your mouth out."
He obeyed, doing it several times until all the water was gone. Then he gave the bottle back and continued to sit there, staring blankly into the distance and breathing hard. "I was right," he said weakly. "That was shockingly unpleasant."
"Are you gonna be okay now?" Dido wanted to know.
"I don't know," he said.
She realized she needed to clarify. "What I meant is, are you going to throw up again?"
Jarvis glanced into the grass in front of him, then shut his eyes. "I don't think there's anything left in my stomach, actually."
A few seconds went by in uncomfortable silence. Dido felt as if he were waiting for her to say something, but what could she say? She had no idea how to treat this man anymore... what could she say to a human computer who'd just watched his own hardware destroyed?
Pepper had tried to comfort him earlier, when he'd found the flooded processors. At the time, Dido had thought he was upset to see so much damage to something he'd worked hard on, but now she realized his connection with the machine ran far deeper than that. "Pepper's right," she offered, putting a hand on his back. "Tony can fix it." If Tony could somehow install his AI software in the body of a forty-year-old man, then he could sure as hell build another computer. She rubbed the small of his back in circles, the way she could remember her mother doing to comfort her as a child.
But Jarvis shook his head. "Dr. Strange told me I would have to be where Stark is," he said. "Tony... Mr. Stark, he says that the suit is part of him. I did what I needed to do... and that's it." His shoulders slumped. "That's it."
He really believed what he'd said back at the house. He believed that once there was a version of him functioning in the computer again, Tony would just throw him to the wolves. Dido had thought that was a ridiculous idea to begin with, and she still thought so now – if Tony let Jarvis out of his sight after all the things he'd managed to do when he'd only had a body for a couple of days, then Tony Stark was the dumbest genius in the world. What on earth was Jarvis going to be capable of a week from now? A month? Ten years?
But Jarvis was clearly convinced that he was of no more use to anyone, and Dido could see on his face that it was killing him. Well, maybe now was her chance to make up for all the trouble she'd caused.
"Come on," she said. "Get up." She took his arm and helped him to his feet. "You're coming with me."
"I can't go to Chicago with you, Miss Windham," Jarvis protested. "I just... can't."
"We're not going to Chicago," she replied. "We're going to Santa Monica."
"Santa Monica?"
"Dad's plane is there," said Dido. She reflected for a moment on all the ways in which what she was about to do was stupid and-or illegal, and decided she did not care. Practically everything Tony did was stupid and illegal both, and he seemed to get by.
"I can't go to Chicago with you," Jarvis said again, as she bundled him back into the car.
"We're not going to Chicago," she repeated. "If you're supposed to be where Stark is, then that's where you're gonna be."
It was properly night-time now. From where the Avengers were waiting, Tony could see a crescent moon low on the eastern horizon, where there should have been a faint glow from the lights of Los Angeles. Wheeler must have finally managed to convince somebody to take her seriously, however, because there was nothing – the city was blacked out. Overhead, the stars seemed unnaturally brilliant.
"You're not cold, are you?" Steve asked Bruce – the latter had removed his shirt, shoes, and glasses so he wouldn't ruin them when he transformed.
"Nah," Bruce replied. "I've been in Nepal for the last five weeks. This is balmy."
"Well, when this is over, we're all going to Lake Louise, my treat," Tony reminded everyone. "That ought to be enough cold to go around. The Chateau there had a great restaurant."
"Do they serve shawarma?" Natasha teased.
"If you want shawarma, they'll make you the best shawarma on earth," Tony promised.
A few more minutes went by, and Tony began to think he could hear something. He turned up the volume in the suit's external audio feed to make sure he wasn't imagining it. Sure enough, there it was: it wasn't the rumble of a tremor, or the distant boom of a depth charge, or the splash of a swimming monster, or any of the other things he might have been expecting to hear. Instead, it was the sound of an airplane.
"Anybody else hear that?" he asked.
Soon, they could see the lights of the approaching aircraft. Tony was just starting to think that perhaps somebody should go inside and say something about it to Park, when Park himself came storming out of the mess hall, bellowing into a handheld radio.
"This is not a civilian airfield!" he barked. "Anyway, there's tentacles all over the damn runway, which isn't something I ever thought I'd hear myself say, believe me! Stark!" He thrust the handset at Tony. "Talk to this woman!"
"Me? Why me?" Tony opened the suit's faceplate and took the radio. "Uh, hello?" he asked cautiously.
"Hi, Tony!" chirped a cheerful female voice. "You wanna tell your friend there to turn on the runway lights? He can arrest me if he wants, but one way or another, we're coming in."
Tony frowned. "Who is this?" he asked.
He could almost hear the eyeroll. "It's Dido, you moron. Jarvis tells me that some wizard said he had to be where you are, so I'm bringing him." Her voice became muffled as she turned her head away from the microphone. "Here, talk to him," she ordered.
"Hello, Sir," said a male voice. A warm, living male voice, one that had to take a breath before speaking. Tony was so happy to hear it that he almost felt sick. Four-year-old software on the company server was no substitute for the Jarvis who'd had Tony's back on so many adventures since – especially the one he'd gotten to know this week. The one who called him by his name and wasn't afraid to say 'no' when Tony tried to do something dumb.
But all he said was, "hello, Jarvis. Good to have you back, buddy."
You said that already, Sir, said the voice of the computer.
"Thank you," said the voice on the radio.
Well, that was going to get confusing. Tony would have to figure out something he could do about it... but not right now. Right now, he had more pressing problems. "Turn on the runway lights," he said, handing the radio back to Park. "And you guys, we gotta get rid that tentacle."
It would have been nice if somebody could have come up with a brilliant idea for moving the severed tentacle without making a mess, but in the end it was a simple matter of brute force. Tony blasted a few holes in it with the Mark V's repulsors, and Thor picked up the biggest chunks and threw them into the ocean. That left a variety of smaller pieces and a great deal of blue gore, all of it starting to take on a rather unfortunate seafood-counter smell, but it would have to do. The base personnel turned on the runway lights, and the incoming plane began its final approach. It taxied to a stop only yards away from where the SHIELD aircraft was parked.
"I didn't know she could fly a plane," Steve remarked, as Dido waved to them from the pilot's seat.
"Apparently she's got a degree in aviation engineering," said Tony. He was really going to have to start paying more attention to people.
Lieutenant Commander Park seemed to have taken Dido quite seriously when she suggested that he arrest her upon landing, because he had a dozen men waiting to grab her and Jarvis as they left the plane. Jarvis, unsurprisingly, quietly submitted to them. Dido, equally unsurprisingly, did not – but what she said as she shook them off was a surprise.
"There's no need for that," she told them. "Hey, look, I'll come quietly, but he," she pointed at Jarvis, "needs to see Stark. That's why I brought him here. These guys need to talk to each other."
"Not right this minute they don't!" Park was absolutely furious. "You two get your asses inside. We're expecting the USS Waterton any minute and the Kraken will be right behind it, and if you don't do as you're told I'm going to leave the pair of you out as bait for it! All afternoon I've had people flying in and out of here like it's goddamn LAX, and I'm tired of it!"
Dido drew herself up to her full height. Park was muscular, but not tall – in her heels, Dido could look him in the eye. "Do you know who I am?" she asked.
"I don't care if you're the Queen of England!" snapped Park.
She pointed imperiously to the remains of the plane the tentacle had fallen on. "I notice that's a Windham C-22," she said, a pulled a business card out of her purse.
Park looked at it and visibly deflated, making a face as if he'd just been force-fed soap. "You still have to go inside," he snarled.
"Miss Windham," Dido prompted.
"Miss Windham," grumbled Park.
The men who'd been hanging on to Jarvis let go of him and allowed him to brush himself off, and Tony clanked over to take a look at him. He was, charitably speaking, a mess: he'd lost his jacket and tie, and his feet were bare – two things that just seemed to keep on happening. His hair was all over the place, his sunburn was starting to peel in earnest, and maybe it was just the harsh floodlights on the runway, but he looked ill and sunken-eyed.
As Tony came closer, Jarvis' face broke into a smile, but then it suddenly melted away. Instead, he made an effort to stand up very straight, tugging at his shirt to neaten it up – which didn't work very well. "Good evening, Sir," he said.
That was a lot more formal than he'd been all day, but Tony supposed he was just rattled. "You look like hell," Tony told him.
"It's been an eventful day," said Jarvis. "And I believe I may suffer from a slight pteromerhanophobia."
Tony had no idea what that was, so he just nodded and moved the conversation on. "Thanks for getting the computer up," he said. "That must've been a trick."
Jarvis winced. "Thank you, Sir," he said stiffly.
What was with the pained face? Maybe he'd stepped on something – the runway was still littered with debris. "You should get some shoes on," Tony said. "There's broken glass."
"Of course, Sir."
"And I thought you'd stopped calling me 'Sir'," Tony added. He'd just been starting to get used to Jarvis saying 'Tony', and now the repetition of 'Sir' was rather offputting, as if it were an intentional attempt by Jarvis to put distance between them.
"Sorry... Tony," said Jarvis uncomfortably.
"That's better." Tony grinned. "You sit tight, and I'll see you when the fight's over, okay?"
"Yes... Tony."
There was still something weird in his tone. Earlier in the day, Tony had thought the two of them were finally figuring out what level to relate on, but now all that seemed to have melted away and they were back to wondering what the hell to do with each other, like it was Monday morning all over again. On the other hand, he thought, if there were anyone who had more reason than Tony himself to be frazzled by the destruction of the Malibu House, that was Jarvis. The flight to the island might've upset him, too – Dido Widham had never been the most cautious driver.
The long word back there had ended in –phobia. Tony had to chuckle a bit at that: imagine Jarvis, who'd spent so many hours helping to pilot the Iron Man suits, being afraid of flying!
Soldiers escorted the two new arrivals to join the other civilians in a bunker, and Park ordered the runway lights turned out again. The basic situation on San Nicolas Island hadn't changed at all, Tony mused. The Avengers still had to take out a mountain of angry seafood, and still had no idea how they were going to do so beyond the old reliable standby of 'hit it until it breaks'. In fact, in a way things had actually gotten worse, because they now had two more people potentially in harm's way.
But Tony was grinning as he put his faceplate back down and rejoined the others waiting on the tarmac. He hadn't lost everything after all, and that tight, hot nugget of anger in his chest had diffused into a warm, sustaining strength. When it came down to it, even Avengers would much rather fight to protect than to avenge.