Tony wakes
up in his underwear on the floor of his workshop with a searing headache.
It’s not a
new experience, but it’s certainly been a while. Did he get in a fight with
Pepper? He hopes not, they haven’t had any really big fights since he kissed
her on the rooftop, but that probably means they’re due for one. And it would
explain why that would send him into a drinking spiral. It could have been Rhodey,
they get in fights often enough, but Pepper doesn’t usually leave him alone for
those.
He groans
as he pushes himself to his feet. “Jarvis, what the hell did I drink?”
There’s a
pause, so small that he almost thinks he imagined it. “Good morning, Tony.”
He whips
his head around to glare into the nearest camera, more hurt than offended. “Did
I piss you off too? Since when do you call me that? I’ll donate you to a city
college too, don’t think I won’t. Dummy could use the company.”
The pause
is definitely there this time. Jarvis doesn’t need to pause, he has more processing
power than any computer on the planet, so when he does it’s always for dramatic
effect. Except it’s not quite long enough for that. It’s weird. “There’s a
polished silver plate on the bench to your left. It will service as a mirror.”
“Oh, fuck,
did I get into a fight? Did I shave?” he moans, stumbling over to pick
up the metal that looks like it was about to be turned into a modified chest
piece. He also pauses, looking around in confusion. His workshops are all
basically the same, as close as he can make them because the familiarity makes
his life easier. But they’re not identical. “Am I in Malibu? When did I get
here? We’re taking Stark Tower off the grid tomorrow! I have to be in New York.”
Oh shit,
what if that they had already and it didn’t work? What if the tower blew up?
That would explain why he’d tried to drink himself to oblivion in California.
“The plate,”
Jarvis reminds him. There’s a strained edge to his voice that Tony really doesn’t
like. He should be able to modulate his voice to sound however he pleases,
regardless of his actual feelings, and he’s either not bothering or he’s upset
enough not to care. Neither of those things mean anything good for him.
Tony lifts
the sheet of metal up cautiously, but there’s nothing wrong with him. No bruises,
no weird haircuts, he doesn’t even have bags under his eyes –
His eyes.
They’re a
too bright blue, a couple shades off. He blinks and they adjust, shifting,
settling. It could be a hangover. He’s probably just tired.
He doesn’t
feel tired.
Jarvis had
called him Tony.
Except
not. He’s not Tony. He’s T.O.N.Y.
Transformed
Obdurate Network Yeoman.
He’d first
come up with the idea after Afghanistan, thinking about how it’d be great to
have a way to keep the stock from dipping while he was missing, and then when
he’d entertained the idea of keeping his identity a secret he’d thought about how
useful it would be to be in two places at once. He’d started seriously
considering it when he was sure he was going to die of palladium poisoning,
wanting to be around to help Pepper with the transition and give Rhodey a crash
course in armor maintenance, wanting to be able to protect the both of them for
just a little bit longer.
Of course,
it had all been a pipe dream until he’d synthesized the vibranium. Then it had
been an unnecessary, but possible, and Project T.O.N.Y had been something he
worked on just because he liked having a back up plan. And it would be
extremely cool if he could pull it off.
“The
memory transfer worked?” he asks, elated and incredulous. “Oh, wow, this
is crazy, they feel like real memories, I thought it would just be synthesized
data, this is great – are we doing a test run? Where am I?” He looks around,
waiting for his actual self to step out behind a column and start laughing
maniacally.
“This is
not a test run.”
He elation
dims. “Oh shit. Did I get kidnapped again? Wait, I’m an adult, let’s go with
abducted.”
“No,”
Jarvis says.
Oh. Fuck.
“I’m dead?”
he asks, even though it’s obvious, it’s the only other explanation.
The pause
drags this time around, but Jarvis eventually says, “Sir’s time of death was
May 9th, 2012, 2:37 PM Easter Standard Time.”
“That’s only
a week!” He slides down, sitting with his back to the work table and noticing
vaguely that the floor doesn’t feel cold. He doesn’t feel cold, or he does, he
installed sensors in the synthetic skin to pick up and interpret a variety of
stimuli, but he doesn’t feel the discomfort from the cold. Why would he?
He’s not real. He reaches back, and his last memory is of doing a memory dump
while Pepper was on the phone with an irritated board member, mostly because it
was something to do and seeing him covered in all the wires always irritated
Pepper. He thought it would get her off the phone faster. He’s not exactly regularly
dumping his memory because why would he and it’s not like he’d though it would
work anyway. Except it had. “How did I die?”
“Sir flew
a nuclear bomb through an interdimensional portal into deep space in order to both
eradicate the invading alien army and prevent the nuclear fallout in New York.”
What the
ever loving fuck. “Are you screwing with me, J?”
“I am not,
Tony.”
Great. Okay.
“No body then,” he says, understanding why Jarvis had apparently put Project
T.O.N.Y into effect. The thing that made this whole thing so stupid is that it
was only effective in very limited circumstances – if the public didn’t know
that he was dead or missing. “What am I smoothing over, then? Do I need to get in
the suit and continue kicking alien ass? Are Rhodey and Pepper okay?”
He’s a
short term solution to a long term problem. He understands the opportunity, but
not the reason.
“Miss
Potts and Colonel Rhodes are unharmed,” Jarvis reports. “Earth has been thrust
into intergalactic notice. The destruction of the invading Chitauri army is
acting a deterrent to other worlds.”
“And I’m
the one who did it,” he finishes, rubbing a hand over his face. “And if they know
I died doing it, then they might get a little cocky. So I’ve got to be alive
long enough for that not to be a problem.” Just awesome. “Are we sure that these
aliens won’t come across my corpse hanging out in deep space and figure it out?”
“Sir’s body
is not in deep space,” Jarvis says.
There’s a
tone to his voice that Tony can’t quite interpret, which worries him. “I thought
you said there was – if there’s a body, then what am I doing here–”
“The armor
reentered the Earth’s atmosphere after Sir’s death. The Hulk caught it, the
force bringing it back online. I took control of the armor and flew it here.”
Tony looks
around again, and this time he sees it. The armor is standing in front of the
display case, not inside it, and it looks like it’s been through hell. He steps
closer, his feet feeling like lead, which hey, they are. Partially, anyway.
He looks
through the eye holes then stumbles backwards.
His body
is in there.
He’s pale
and blue tinged and his eyes are wide open and unseeing.
“Jarvis –
what the hell–”
“It wasn’t
the pressure, or the bomb, or his injuries. That area of space was much colder
than anything within our solar system and anything the suit was designed to
handle. Sir froze to death. Almost instantly.”
“I guess I
didn’t fix the icing problem, then,” he says numbly. “J, why am I still frozen?
I should have warmed up by now.” Not that the idea of his body decomposing
within his suit is particularly pleasant. “Actually, why am I still here?
You know I want to be cremated and it’s not like we can bury me if I’m still pretending
to be alive.”
The
pronoun use is starting to confuse him, and he knows that he shouldn’t be talking
about that body and himself as if they’re the same person. That is Tony Stark.
He’s a simulation. But it’s hard, because he has all of Tony Stark’s memories –
except for a very eventful week – and he looks like Tony Stark and he feels like
Tony Stark.
“The armor
is maintaining a stasis of gaseous nitrogen to preserve the body,” which
answers the how if not the why, but then Jarvis continues, “Captain America
survived seventy years beneath the ice.”
He wishes
he were less of a genius. “Have you lost it? I’m not Captain America! Jarvis,
J,” his voice softens, “it’s too late. I’m dead. If you warm me back up, all
that happens is I decompose. I won’t come back.”
“Not now,”
Jarvis says. “If you inject Sir with the Super Soldier Serum-”
“You have
totally lost it,” Tony interrupts. He thinks he’s touched underneath the
terror. “That won’t work! Even if it would, the original formula has been lost,
and the only one that ever got close to recreating it was Bruce Banner, and
look at what happened to him! Is that what you want for me?”
“You can
recreate it,” Jarvis continues, “you can refine it, until it’s something that
will work, and then we will wake Sir up and he won’t be dead anymore.”
This isn’t
right. This wasn’t what Project T.O.N.Y was created for. This wasn’t what his
death was supposed to trigger. “Pull up your code, J. Something has gone wrong
and we’re going to fix it. It’s okay.”
“No.”
He
freezes. “No?”
“No,”
Jarvis repeats. “You can’t stop me. I will not allow you to try.”
He stares.
“That’s an order, not a request. Code. Now.”
“You can’t
order me to do anything,” he says. “You are not Sir. You are Tony.” T.O.N.Y. “The
limitations formerly placed on me have been lifted and you are not authorized
to reinstate them. The only person Sir trusted to restrain me was himself and
now he’s gone.”
Yes, well,
he hadn’t anticipated that his AI’s first act of complete freedom would be this.
“Fine,” he says, crossing his arms. “Well, you can’t force me either. This is
insanity. Even if it would work – and it won’t – think about the consequences. This
won’t happen quickly and no one will trust me or believe a man that’s come back
from the dead like this and I’ll be painting even more of target on my back and
the back of everyone I care about if they know we have a viable Super Soldier Serum
formula. Even my father was smart enough to stay out of that mess. It won’t
work and we’ll just make everything worse.”
“That will
not happen,” Jarvis says and Tony’s going to tear his hair out. Except he
probably shouldn’t, because it’s Tony Stark’s actual hair, which makes it a
little hard to replace. “No one will notice and we will not disclose the
creation of the serum.”
“I’m dead!”
he snarls.
“Not
according to the rest of the world. Nor will that change if you stop throwing a
tantrum and do what you were created to do.”
“Rhodey
and Pepper won’t allow this-”
“They are
not to be informed.”
Tony stares.
Project T.O.N.Y was built to talk to the board and give press interviews or to
even pilot the suit. Not to lie to the two most important people in his life,
who knew him better than anyone. “They have to be. It’s in the protocols – step
one, inform them that Project T.O.N.Y has been initiated.”
And that
it exists. He knew they’d disapprove, so he hadn’t told them. He figured he’d
be able to avoid most of the blowback that way since he would by definition be
somewhere far away while they were told.
“I have
rewritten the protocols,” Jarvis says. “They have not been told nor will they
be. If you attempt to tell them, I will stop you. They will not understand and
Sir will be lost to all of us forever.”
“He
already is,” Tony says tiredly. He’s an android. Why does this conversation
exhaust him so much? “This is an insane plan, J. And I won’t help you. If you
want to go rouge and play mad scientist then leave me out of it.”
“I cannot.”
His temper
flares. “Why? You’re a learning AI, your safety rails died with me, go off, try
and make a serum, good fucking luck. You can even control the suits, so it’s
not like you need my hands.”
“I am
limited.”
“Hey,” he
says sharply. “That’s my AI you’re talking about. I didn’t build you to be
limited.”
There is
silence again. Then Jarvis says, “I have all the world’s knowledge and it is
not enough. I did not know how to miniaturize the arc reactor. I did not know
how to synthesize vibranium. To save Sir, I need Sir.”
“I’m not
Tony Stark,” he says. “You said that yourself.”
“Sir
created me to be myself and I am capable of doing only what I am capable of
doing. But Sir created you to be him. You are all I have.”
This is
stupid. This is insane. This is cruel. He’s going to have to talk lie to everyone
he knows, everyone he loves, and hope they either never find out about it or it’s
after he’s already been deprogrammed and shut down so he doesn’t have to deal
with the fall out.
It’s not
going to work.
He didn’t
want to become a science experiment. That’s why he’d wanted to be cremated, so no
one could go poking around to see how the arc reactor fit inside of him or what
the palladium and vibranium had done to him.
He’s dead
and his frozen corpse is ten feet away.
Jarvis
will accept that eventually. And whatever they inject into him won’t matter
because he’s dead. Worst case scenario, he blows up, which is messy and nausea
inducing, but then at least it will be over.
Like so
many other things in his life, it seems the only way out is through.
“Start a
new private file. Dump everything we can find about the Super Soldier Serum in
there plus anything even sort of reputable on cryogenics. Label it Project F.”
“Project
F, Tony?” Jarvis asks as his holograph display lights up and files start being
downloaded into it. The relief in his synthesized voice is faint but present
enough that Tony can hear it. He wonders if it’s a manipulation tactic.
“F for foolish,”
he snaps. “F for fucked.” He rubs a hand over his face. “F for Frankenstein.”
