Hi. Its been a while. I'm really sorry. I know I said that Jarvis would be followed by Coulson but that didn't happen and I do have my reasons. One of them being that I write best when I need a distraction from studying.

Wanda's chapter, in fact, has been sitting idle on my phone while I messed around with it and continually rewrote it. I wasn't even sure if I would post it. But here we are and you can thank a reviewer on this site cos she politely asked for some more povs including Harley (the kid from iron man 3) whose chapter I am currently working on.

Anyway, I'm sorry, I really am, but this chapter is a feels fest. Its more to do with Tony after the events of AoU though. Probably would have fit better with the previous chapter, but, oh well.

Please don't hunt me down with a pitchfork.

Wanda still couldn't believe how drastically her life had changed. Only two months ago she and her brother were working for Hydra and trying to find ways to bring down Tony Stark.

Now, Pietro owed Tony his life and they lived in the Avengers' Tower. She had learnt that Tony wasn't entirely to blame for ruining her life, his weapons were used against his intentions and without his knowledge.

Her thoughts wandered to the first time she saw him in person. She figured him taking the sceptre would help her and Pietro destroy him and showed him his greatest fear in an effort to motivate him. Well, she wasn't wrong. It certainly helped in hurting him, just not the way she anticipated it would.

Out of all the visions she showed the Avengers, it was his that shook her to the core. Thor's fear for his people was understandable, after all, he was to be king one day and techically speaking, the guy had abandoned his planet. Steve's greatest wish made sense, a man out of time, he would miss what he had left behind. Natasha was shown the horrors of her past and considering what she had been through, Wanda would have been surprised had it been anything else.

But Tony, he saw a future in which his friends died because of his failure. For someone whom she had seen as a cold hearted killer for a decade of her life, it was... grounding to see how deeply he felt about those he cared about. It was also interesting for him to blame himself, especially considering his evident narcism.

It was only after she had got to know the man that she realised how hard she and Pietro had hit him with Ultron. He rarely went down to his lab, preferring his and Bruce's shared lab to his own. And even then, he didn't create anything, spending his time fixing old suits by hand or upgrading DUM-e.

She didn't know much about how Tony was before the mess that was Ultron, but even she knew there was something vital missing from who he was now.

Oh he was loud, sure. He would joke his way through most situations, never serious, the ever present smile on his face and a glass of scotch in his hands. He talked incessantly, sometimes she was sure even he didn't know what came out of his mouth. And she was never sure if she was the only one who noticed that most of those smiles were strained. That even as he joked, he sometimes sounded as if he would rather be crying.

He wouldn't meet her eyes for the first week or so, except for when he explained that he had little to do with the weapons that had killed her parents and changed her life forever. She couldn't help but feel bad when she heard the whole story.

It took her a while before she realised she had broken something within the man. He didn't build anthing new, not like he would before Ultron. The others had noticed that there was something intrinsic missing from how he was before,something that had been broken, they just couldn't put a label to whatever it was.

He had stopped nearly blowing up the tower with some experiment every other week. Stopped pushing Steve to learn more about the 'wonders of technology.' Didn't push Thor into letting him conduct random tests on Mjolnir as he used to.

He didn't stop building things, of course, that was so much of what made him him, but he didn't do much more than improve his suits and make new equipment for the team. Even then, he refused to do much more than upgrade their existing weapons.

After the nothing short of miraculous revival of Jarvis after months of working on his code, he improved a bit, but he was still missing whatever it was that made him Tony. And she was pretty sure she was the one to blame. Just one more problem to add to the growing pile of problems that was Tony Stark that she had no idea how to fix. Damn.

~line break~

Two months after Ultron, they entered Tony's lab for the first time since the AI developed sentience. He had disappeared inside about two weeks ago and the team was getting worried inspite of FRIDAY's assurance that he had both food and a comfortable couch inside. Jarvis had not yet been fixed, and everyone was missing his sarcastic british voice. Tony had backups, of course, but FRIDAY just wasn't the same. As a matter of fact, neither was Tony.

A panicked Wanda informed them that something was wrong, immensely so, she just didn't know what. She did, however, know that it concerned their resident mechanic. So as they entered the workshop, the first thing they noticed was that it was completely trashed, with DUM-e and Butterfingers feebly attempting to clean a little but not putting in much effort. It was as if they hadn't any will to continue. Bruce had his own private lab which he had been working in, thinking it best to give Tony some space while he worked on trying to revive Jarvis. Evidently he was wrong.

They counted about three empty bottles of scotch and a Jack Daniels in plain sight around the lab, not including the broken glass that littered the floor. It wasn't the only thing lying around the workshop floor. Broken pieces of armour accompanied it, along with the scattered shards of repulsors and various dissambled guns. Oh and not to forget Tony calmly leaning back on a couch with his reactor in his hand and connected to his chest by a single wire.

Bruce warily stepped forward, his voice full of concern. "Tony? Could you please put your reactor back in your chest where it belongs?"

Tony just kept twisting the reactor in his hands as if searching for something in its pale blue light. When he spoke his voice was light, as if nothing was wrong and his very lifeline wasn't in his hands, literally hanging by a thread.

"You know, Stane referred to this as my last golden egg to give. Right before he ripped it out of my chest, I mean. That wasn't fun. Especially considering I was paralysed at the time and had a spare downstairs.

"I'm not sure if any of you have noticed, but my inventions keep being used against me. I make a weapon to help the army, it gets sold to some terrorist who destroys innocent lives. I build a missile and get shot at by my own guns so that I can be kidnapped and forced into building it for, what was it, Talibaans? Terrorists basically, right? I mean, talk about not doing right by one's weapons. Natasha, didn't you ever wonder what happened in Afghanistan? Except for me, everyone else who knew is dead. Isn't that funny? Not even Fury knows, if you can believe it. I like to think it bothers him, how little he really knows when it concerns me.

"My suit was copied twice, once by Stane and then again by Justin Hammer and Vanko. Oh and not to forget the palladium poisoning. Hmm I didn't like that. It was seriously annoying. Not to forget Loki using my tower as the place to bring in his army from.

"Then there was that whole AIM mess. I liked that even less than the paladium poisoning and Loki. At least Pepper wasn't in the direct line of fire two of those times." He sighed, evidently not noticing that the team was frozen in place, his eyes still fixated on the reactor. He looked up now, his voice darkening slightly but still retaining the cheery note that was scaring the crap out of his teamates.

"Here's my personal favourite though. Everyone's favourite freaking topic, Ultron. Real nice guy wasn't he? A lot like his old man. Sad he couldn't even stand to hear my name. Anyway, he was supposed to be my last 'golden egg.' Been planning him for a while now, the sceptre just helped kickstart the program. Is it just me or is it completely ironic that Ultron saw humans as the disease? Or can that be attributed to my habit of 'trying to rid the world of weapons' and instead 'giving it its greatest one?'" Tony parrotted the words his surrogate father said to him years ago. "I mean, at one point I had metal killing me, and it was the only thing keeping me alive while poisoning me at that the same time till I created a new element. Ever think about it like that? My life depends on a hunk of metal. Literally." He burst out laughing, as if it was the funniest thing in the world.

Steve was the first to break out of the horrified stupor the rest of the Avengers were in. He took a step forward, hand outstreched. "Tony, I know what you've been through is horrible but you're drunk right now-"

He was cut off by Tony whose voice had turned sombre. "Not drunk. Stone cold sober." Steve look confused and weakly gestured to the bottles on the table. Tony continued, shaking his head. "Haven't had a drop in a week. I owe Jarvis that much." His voice was tinged with sadness as he spoke about his butler. "I think the saddest part is no one ever knew Jarvis was a real person. Probably my fault, considering I tell whoever asks that it stands for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System. FYI, it doesn't. Not really."

Bruce spoke then, his voice soft as he asked who Jarvis was. Tony just smiled as he put the arc reactor back in his chest.

"One of the best men I ever had the priviledge of knowing." Was his only response.