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The JARVIS-and-Tony-are-crazy-scary-badasses fic. *grins faintly* To warn, this may have exposed more of my insanity than was probably wise. Heh. Silver Linings, the Annotated Version:
Silver Linings (Annotated)
[Right. I've been wanting a JARVIS-is-a-badass fic, and a don't-screw-with-Tony's-babies fic, and a getting-a-better-feel-for-Clint fic for a while now. So ... three for the price of one? *grins sheepishly*]
There were hostiles in the Tower.
It ran as a dull chant in the back of Clint’s head, a steady, metronome beat, matching rhythm with his heartbeat, his breathing, the flex of his arms as he drew down. It hummed through him, unobtrusive, undemanding, a simple, rational summary of the situation. [It took me a bit to settle into Clint's voice, and I'm not altogether sure how good a voice that is ...]
There were hostiles in the Tower.
Steve and Thor were two floors above, Thor basically on Hulk-containment duty [for reasons of, among other things, structural damage, having the Hulk fight an incursion situation inside a building strikes me as a bad plan], Steve at the conn (fucking Stark, the man was paranoid like you wouldn’t believe, the whole Tower was fed into a surveillance console in his penthouse) relaying positions to Clint and Natasha. Natasha … Clint had no idea, but there wasn’t a lot of time between the targets Steve was shooting her, so he was guessing she was wherever most of the enemy were, and they were getting significantly less in number the longer that situation continued. [IM2. Natasha is good at incursion situations. From either side of it]
And Tony himself … well. That was where Clint came in. Because apparently Stark had gotten himself pinned down in one of his workshops. Not one of the ones containing armours. Also apparently, the remote controlled armour was several floors and a not-inconsiderable amount of structural damage away from said workshop. [*grins faintly* Getting-Tony-away-from-the-armour-for-fic-purposes 101. I favour structural damage, myself (see also 'Covered' for the collapsing stairwell)] And, to round the evening out, apparently the hostiles had somehow managed to deliberately arrange for this to be the case, because Stark’s pet AI had informed Steve in rapid order that, based on the clustering, he believed that the bulk of the enemy forces were to distract the other Avengers long enough for a surgical extraction, of Stark, from said workshop. [A bunch of rather stupid hostiles, then, but the idea does have a certain practical merit. Up until you actually reach the Avengers, Tony, or JARVIS, at least]
All of which pointed to something Clint was carefully not thinking about, something Clint shoved clinically under the steady metronome chant in his head, something he wasn’t going to think about until after the situation was contained.
Someone had given them that information. Someone had let them in. Someone, somewhere, in Stark/Avengers Tower, had opened the door to the enemy. [Stark/Avengers Tower has people in. People who work for Tony. Usually. Though SIs background checks for hiring must rival SHIELDs, by this stage]
Someone, he thought, who had better make sure they were also surgically extracted before this night was out, or they would have a small infinity of time over which to regret it.
“Clint, what’s your ETA?” Steve’s voice came through, strained and aggravated. Steve had wanted to be hunting, too. JARVIS, for some reason none of them were sure of, had informed them that he would be incapable of adequately maintaining the conn, and advised that someone should stay at the helm. Steve, reluctantly, had agreed. But he obviously wasn’t happy about it. [As someone pointed out in the comments, what JARVIS is planning to do involves a lot of moving machine parts, very close to very fragile human bodies, not all of which he wants to rip apart. JARVIS is the most advanced AI you're ever going to meet, but even he needs to focus, under the circumstances]
“Two minutes away,” Clint said back, busy unclipping himself from harness. Elevator shafts were handy for quick floor access, but the Tower ventilation, in credit to Stark’s paranoia, wasn’t near big enough to support entry. He’d have to go in the hard way. “Something wrong?” [As a random aside, I kind of love Tony's casual paranoia. SI + Obie + Afghanistan + SHIELD + Natasha + a childhood as the son of a billionaire weapons engineer ... though I think he surprised even Obie, with how on-the-ball he can be (also, he out-paranoia'd Fury on the Helicarrier, which says any number of rather worrying things about him)]
“JARVIS has cut off contact,” Steve said. Clipped and brief, rigidly controlled, but Clint felt the stagger in his gut regardless. “Something’s happening in that workshop, Clint. You need to be there yesterday.” [I'm not sure how much the Avengers are aware of JARVIS' capabilities, at this point. I mean, Tony's casual enough about mentioning him on the Helicarrier, but only as a seek-and-discover programme, and a communications tool, not as an AI capable of making tactical decisions on the spot, pre-empting orders, and understanding emotional connections. So ... *muses*]
“No kidding,” Clint murmured. A little raggedly around the edges, his hands already in motion, his mind dropping back to that cold, clean beat. Scanning the environment, plotting arcs and trajectories and equipment deployment. He was trotting along the corridor, short bow at the ready and bolt in hand, before Steve had even finished talking.
If JARVIS was out, then someone was in. Someone with Stark, someone holding him, armourless and defenceless, not half a floor and some reinforced walls away from Clint.
Fine then. Showtime, boys and girls. [ ... My, but Clint is rather awesome in action, isn't he? *grins faintly*]
The workshop, which was actually still a floor below him, had an overlook balcony accessed from this floor. This was one of the main testing floors, and Stark had installed a number of glass-fronted (‘glass’ being something of a misnomer, but Stark had flat-out refused to call it ‘transparent aluminum’ when it had nothing to do with aluminum at all, keep your crappy sci-fi references to yourself, Barton) viewing galleries above some of the labs. At Clint and Natasha’s insistence, he’d also added in hatches, concealed at various places along the lengths, from which viewers (ie teammates) could access the testing floors from the galleries. [I'm not actually sure if this layout is structurally feasible based on what we see of the Tower. But, you know, fanfic. I'ma gonna take some liberties with the laws of physics, yes?]
And it was from one of those galleries that he got his first look at the situation down in the workshop.
It wasn’t pretty. Stark had apparently managed to disable two of his opponents, one with what looked like a heavy-duty machine wrench, the other with the partially-cannibalised repulsor gauntlet he’d apparently found the time to stick onto his left hand and clumsily wire into the reactor. He must have been behind cover doing it, because there were any number of bullet-holes and ricochet marks scattered around the workshop. [It occurs to me that an active workshop is really the last place, outside of the armour itself, where you'd want to try and take Tony Stark. It's like trying to take out Fury in the middle of a SHIELD armoury. Even before we get to the sentient-AI parts. Heh.]
There were also four other hostiles, all extremely angry looking, gathering in a loose, gun-pointing circle around where Stark was crouched, out in the fucking open, over the downed shape of one of his robots. The weird ones, with the arms, and the incredible kicked-puppy looks. [To be fair, Dummy is pretty weird-looking -and weird-acting- if you're not used to him] Stark, his face and the back of one shoulder peppered with small cuts, was crouching defensively over the robot, the arm with the gauntlet raised and shifting between the four hostiles in a vain attempt to ward them off.
“Shit, Stark, what the hell were you thinking,” Clint muttered, viciously. [That Dummy has been the one constant of his life since he was 17, and he just heard him give the robot version of a scream as he went down? And I strongly suspect that Dummy was trying to defend Tony when he got shot (although it could just be because the hostiles were twitchy and he moved at the wrong moment, either). Tony doesn't let that lie]
“Clint?” Steve responded, Natasha’s voice barely a half-second behind him, and Clint realised the comm was still on. “What’s the situation, soldier?”
Clint blinked, vaguely. Shit, Steve was worried, wasn’t he? [*smiles* I love Steve in Mama Bear mode. Heh]
“Stark’s gotten himself pinned down in the open,” he relayed, soft and to the point. “It’s stand-off for now, but he’ll only get one, maybe two once they move, and then they’ll have him.” He grunted, easing himself carefully along the gallery, which was too fucking transparent for him to risk fast movement, towards one of the hatches and a firing position. “I’ll need a minute to get into position, even the odds.” [Weirdly, most of what I was thinking here was that six people was way too few to be taking on an Avenger, even an unarmoured Tony. With Clint as back-up, sniping from above, and Tony with a repulsor, they would have been screwed. Especially if they had to take Tony alive]
“Do you have a minute?” Natasha asked, hard and near-angrily. Not at him. Clint knew that. At the situation.
“Should do,” Clint murmured, more than halfway into place. “Stark’s working the old silver tongue, looks like.” He frowned, suddenly, as whatever Stark said had them clustering together, moving closer. “Or not,” he started, and then: “What the …?” [Don't listen to Tony when he's in delay-and/or-lure the villain mode. Seriously, people. Are you trying to get yourselves killed? The guy booby-traps doorknobs with high explosives as a side-tactic]
He cut off, watching with something like liquid shock as panels opened noiselessly in the floor behind the now clustered group of hostiles. He watched, struck dumb, as Tony’s face hardened visibly, even from ten feet up and fifteen feet back, something black and cold and fucking deadly flowing over him, and then ... [... I don't know if I've said this often enough, or maybe too often, but I can never, ever get enough of Tony in dark, protective, gloves-just-came-off mode. The first half-hour of IM1 sort of made the most massive impact on me, seriously]
“Jesus,” Clint barked, reflexively recoiling, abandoning stealth altogether to hurl himself along the gallery, throwing himself down at the hatch. The hostiles didn’t notice. The two of them that were left to notice much of anything. “Jesus, fuck.” [And this just made one hell of an impact on Clint, funnily enough]
“Clint!” Steve barked, something crunching over the channel behind him. Clint vaguely hoped he hadn’t broken Stark’s console. “Clint, report!” [Steve hates being stuck in the rear while his people are on the front lines, yes?]
“I’m on my way,” Natasha came in, clipped on Steve’s heels. “Four minutes, Barton. I’m coming.” [As does Natasha. Especially, I suspect, when it's Clint, though she's worried about Tony, too]
“No!” Clint managed, swinging down through the hatch, struggling to … to not be sick, really. “No, no, we got it, it’s fine, shit. Hostiles down. I repeat. Hostiles down. Stark …” He swallowed. “Stark has the field.” [Stark very, very thoroughly has the field ...]
He hoped. He fucking hoped Stark had it, that someone had it, because if that thing was in free-firing mode, they were in deep shit.
Stark paid him no attention, didn’t even look at him as Clint carefully picked his way across the workshop floor. Skirting the peppered worktables, the splayed machine remains of whatever Stark had been working on. And then … some other splayed remains altogether. Keeping away, keeping well away, from the gleaming mechanical arms reaching up from the floor to cluster around Stark, waving a bloodied drill-bit almost tentatively about the engineer’s head. [*tilts head* For JARVIS, I'm pretty sure what he just did was purely a means to an end, like Natasha a couple of floors up. Nothing more or less than using the tools at his disposal to protect those he cared about. And those people, for him, are the important factors in the equation. Hence the hovering]
“Okay, buddy,” Stark was saying, his back to the slaughterhouse behind him, ignoring the evil tree of mechanical death hovering over his shoulder. He was focused on … on the fucking robot, the one he’d been crouched over, the one he’d gotten himself pinned trying to defend. “Easy, Dummy. Your sensors are out, okay, you’re running blind, but I’ve got you, okay? Me and JARVIS, we got you. You’re going to be a-okay, got it?”
[I'm flirting with the idea of a small, Dummy-POV companion piece, because ... all he knew was that there were enemies trying to hurt Tony, and then he got shot, and he couldn't see, and he couldn't move, and he had no idea where Tony was or what had happened to him, and the people who hurt him were still there, so all he was registering was 'threat', 'damage', 'possible damage to Tony', and he couldn't do anything. Until he feels Tony over him, and at least knows his creator is still alive, but ... Yeah, this was so not fun for Dummy. And I might ... I might write a little ficlet, for that. Heh.]
“...Stark?” Clint whispered, hoarsely. Swallowing hard as he crept around the back wall, in behind the man. “Tony? You with me, man?” [Nice and easy, do not startle the homicidal man with the killer AI, that's the ticket]
He almost swallowed his tongue, reflexively, as Stark, apparently only belatedly realising he was there, snapped his head up to look at him. That wouldn’t have been a problem, even if the black, cold snarl on the man’s face was somewhat alarming, except that the whole … assembly array, Clint knew what it was … behind him flexed aggressively towards Clint in the same moment. JARVIS was apparently as trigger-happy as Tony right now, and also, there were apparently more panels. Sliding open around Clint before JARVIS registered him properly. [You know the assembly array in IM1? The one that's 'not the worst thing Pepper has caught him doing'? And the one in Avengers, up on the Tower approach? Imagine, for a second, that those were not timed and programmed to within an inch of their lives. Imagine if one component went a little off. Imagine how much damage they could do, if Tony stumbled at the wrong moment. *smiles faintly* Now. Imagine them in the hands of someone who wants to do some damage. *hums* This is why you don't piss off the resident AI in the middle of a construction floor. Just sayin']
Clint did not wet himself. He blanched, throwing up a warding hand instinctively, but he didn’t wet himself.
And until you’d seen four men torn apart by machinery designed to remove something capable of standing up to tank shells without blinking, you had no idea how much of a triumph that was. [Something that can disassemble the Iron Man armour is not going to be kind to fragile human flesh]
“Whoa, whoa, it’s me!” he said, rapid-fire and escalating in tone. “Stark, Tony, it is me, do not deploy that thing!” [I like Clint. He's a man who knows when he has the right to panic. *grins faintly*]
Stark blinked at him, recognition, followed by blank confusion, as though wondering what the hell Clint had to be scared of, and then slow, blooming realisation, as JARVIS relaxed the mechanical arms around him. Almost sheepishly, and the idea that Stark’s AI could be sheepish was … honestly, not really helping the situation. Clint had watched ‘The Sphere’, thanks. [... I'm not sure how many people have even seen Sphere. *smiles sheepishly* Or why I think Clint has seen all the shitty movies. Heh. The important scene from that, one, though, is where the alien intelligence in the sphere informs them that it's 'happy', and Dustin Hoffman points out that this is not, in fact, a good thing, since anything with the capacity to be 'happy' probably also has the capacity to be, say, 'angry']
“Sorry,” Tony offered, a little blankly, still. “Shit. Right. Tower. You guys. Everyone okay?” [Dummy first, rest of the world later]
Clint stared at him. Distantly. In some mild form of horror, maybe.
“They’re fine,” he said. Mostly on autopilot. “Natasha’s on her way, Steve’s on the conn, Thor has Banner.” He stopped, blinked. Realising, distantly, that this was the reason JARVIS had given Steve the conn, that this was what had required the AI’s focus. Realising, also, that he had no idea what to do with that information.
Besides possibly gibber. [Give Clint credit, he's having an entirely reasonable reaction to what he's just seen. He's been living in a Tower with an AI he didn't know could do that. He's allowed to take a few moments to panic slightly]
Tony grinned in relief, waving a hand cheerfully at Clint from his crouch, the other arm, still dressed in the remains of the repulsor gauntlet, braced underneath the robot’s head … arm ... thing. Almost cradling it, while Tony straddled the main body defensively. [ ... Dummy hugs. Protective Tony. That is all]
“Awesome,” the man said. Utterly oblivious. “Sorry, got pinned down, JARVIS couldn’t get me the armour. And then, they shot Dummy, they fucking shot him, I got a little … distracted, yeah?” He shook his head, ruefully apology. “Sorry, yeah? I’ll fix it for next time, they will not catch me like that again. Okay?” [ *frowns* But burbled, there. Huh.]
Clint nodded, faintly. Not saying anything, until Tony looked up from the robot in concern, eyes crinkling into a worried frown as he brushed blood and hair out of his eyes to look at Clint.
“Hey man. You okay?” Tony shifted in his crouch, looking like he was trying to work out a way to catch Clint if he keeled over while still keeping hold of the robot. “You’re not hit or anything, are you?” [Give Tony a second, he does get back on track. He just doesn't like it when people get hurt in front of him]
“No,” Clint murmured. No. And then … “You realise your AI just ate them, right?” He couldn’t help himself. “I mean, you noticed that? The whole … the rending and tearing part? You know that happened?” [*smiles* That was kind of the line that started this. 'You realise your AI just ate them, right?' And, okay, let's be fair. JARVIS used what he had, to do what he needed to do. No worse than Natasha, or Clint, or Tony. Just ... slightly more intimidating since it's basically a giant mechanical spider climbing up from the floor to tear some people apart, which tends to make an adverse impression on people]
Tony blinked at him, for a second. And then cooled, suddenly and terrifyingly, went blank and emotionless as any machine (well, any normal machine), and Clint realised, for maybe the first time, that this was the man who’d carved his way out of a terrorist compound all those years ago, and burned their world down around their ears for having taken him.
[... It can be so easy to forget, when Tony is still all charming and quipping and vaguely clownish all the way down to the wire, when he's acting like a highly intelligent but slightly buffoonish showman to the last. It can be easy to forget, that he exploded, beat and burned a decent portion of a terrorist camp to death when they pushed him too far, that he set Obie up to be blasted to smithereens, that he invented a fairly devastating ranged weapon by accident while aiming for a flight stabiliser, and then used it. Tony smiles at you, nice and easy and casual, all the way to the line. And then he murders you. Thoroughly.
... And it probably says way, way too much about me that I sort of love that side of him, the sort of terrifying, lethal edge he has. *grins sheepishly*]
“They shot Dummy,” Stark answered, cold and remote, the assembly arms settling deliberately behind him under JARVIS’ control. “They came here, and they hurt my people, they assaulted my home, they put you guys in danger, and they shot Dummy.” He shook his head, free hand clenching into a fist. “I don’t give a fuck what happened to them. They earned it.” [Someone pointed out that he does, here, make a very clear distinction. 'His people', and then 'you guys'. I don't think the Avengers are quite his people yet, here. Bruce yes. Natasha possibly. The rest ... maybe not so much, just yet. Not like Dummy and JARVIS, anyway]
“They also threatened you, sir,” JARVIS murmured, his voice as cool and even-tempered as always. “They meant to remove you, I believe. This was meant to be an extraction.”
And that, the AI seemed to say, the mechanical, tool-laden arms of his physical extension lax and calm around Tony’s crouched figure, would not be permitted. Not now. Not ever again. [Sometimes I wonder if I should write that fic. Like the Dummy one above. JARVIS' POV on the end of IM1, on Obadiah. Or before, on the three months Tony was simply gone, and no way to know if he was ever coming back. *shrugs, muses*]
“Ri-ight,” Clint murmured. His voice dropping automatically, and stupidly, into the calm-the-crazy-person tone that he hated when someone pointed it at him, or Natasha. Or Phil. Or, fuck, any of them. Anyone who had to look at the things they looked at, and do the things they did, and find some fucking way of coping with it at the end of the day. Clint heard his voice drop into that register and, suddenly, he wanted to slap himself. [SHIELD are not nice people. Good people, very probably. But not nice. Clint's an assassin too]
Tony smiled, instead. Casual, blank, the I’m-an-eccentric-billionaire, I-don’t-care-what-you-think grin that masked … oh, so many things. They were, all of them, far too intimately acquainted with that fucking smile. [Masks so many, many things, yes. Some of them deadly. Heh]
“I’m sorry,” Clint said, suddenly and earnestly, stepping forward from his defensive position by the wall. Stepping, with only a faint twinge of terror, into the reach of the assembly array, into JARVIS’ arms, and holding his hand out to Tony. “Caught me off guard, is all.” He grinned, let a little bit of the residual terror show. “Shit, Stark, something like a nightmare of HR Giger comes up out of the floor and kills some people, you gotta give a guy time to adjust, yeah?” [... Point. The man has a point. And guts.]
Tony blinked at him. Honestly shocked, staring up at Clint in surprise, blood dripping softly into his eye and the robot twitching worriedly in his arms, plucking agitatedly at Stark the way a child plucks at its mother. [Dummy, Dummy, Dummy, Dummy] Tony blinked at him, and then, cautiously, like he half expected this to be some sort of prank, reached up to grip Clint’s hand, firm and cautious, and smile carefully. [Tony really doesn't know what to do with sincerity, a lot of the time, does he?]
“Next time, I’ll have JARVIS page you a warning, huh?” he asked, tentatively, and Clint … just sort of grinned at him. At the fucking psychopath crouched like a papa wolf over his downed robot, covered in oil and blood and holding onto Clint’s hand like he hadn’t a clue what to do with it. [Gods, I love that image. I wanted that image. Tony and his babies, have I explained, yet, how much I love them? *grins faintly* All of IM1, with him, and them, and the building, and the apologising, and Dummy saving him, and JARVIS, and ... I've explained how I love them, right?]
“You do that,” he said, quietly, and for some reason, remembered Natasha. Remembered holding out his hand to her, cautious and deadly, and asking her to come with him, out of the cold. For some reason, looking down at Stark, he remembered her. [Clint is the man to deal with dangerous, paranoid people. He has an instinct, it seems] “Right. Anyway. I gotta go report up. Steve’s going to be frantic by now.” And Natasha had to be lurking somewhere close, too, but maybe he shouldn’t mention that yet. “You coming?”
Stark blinked, and shook his head, grinning ruefully. “Nah. Can you relay up for me? I gotta put Dummy back together.” He ducked his head, tucking the robot close to his chest. “He’s lost most of his sensors, except for some basic pressure registers, so he’s kinda panicking a bit. JARVIS is hooked in wirelessly, keeping him calm, but … I kinda need to get him back up and running, you know?” [I think JARVIS couldn't, so long as he was focused on the assembly array, which was why Dummy was panicking so much. JARVIS and Dummy ... I mean, on the one hand, Dummy is much, much older than JARVIS, and has known Tony longer. On the other, JARVIS is much smarter and more capable than Dummy, and has known Tony more intimately. Heh. They must have a fascinating relationship ...]
And it was on the tip of Clint’s tongue to point out that, you know, Tony was injured. The Tower was a mess. Steve was probably tearing his hair out. There were bodies to clear up. That Dummy was a machine, and probably didn’t rate above Tony’s own injuries, seriously.
It was on the tip of his tongue. And went no further. Because any man who would face down four gunmen while armourless for that machine, any man whose machines, in response, would casually tear four men to pieces to protect him … well. It probably wasn’t a good idea, to get between that man and them, was it? [The dividing line with Tony seems to be less human vs non-human, and more his vs not-his. Heh. Dummy is his. Tony doesn't give a crap what he's made of]
“You should probably show your face inside the hour,” he said instead, carefully not showing any of the previous thoughts. “Steve, and probably Bruce, will want to make sure you’re okay, you know?”
Tony blinked, and smiled. Softly, almost shyly, and shit. Knowing that the robots got their cute-adorable-puppy talents from their creator was right up there with AIs being sheepish in terms of things Clint hadn’t needed to know. Tony smiled up at him, and Clint decided that now, right now, was the time to make a strategic withdrawal. For the sake of his sanity, if nothing else. [Once you've seen Tony is his black, savage, last-living-thing-you'll-ever-see mode, having him switch to baffling-adorable-social-idiot mode can probably be a bit ... jarring?]
“See you up there,” he muttered, waving a hand at Tony’s already distracted back, muttering a farewell at the head already bowed back over the robot, and the machine arms that were carefully, very carefully, helping him to lift it. [Again, Dummy, also JARVIS, the little machine family, I love it so] “Talk later, Stark.”
Right. It was official. Sometime in the past few months, one of two things had happened. Either Clint had stepped, somehow, into the Twilight Zone, or the world had gotten one whole hell of a lot stranger on him. You know. One or the other.
Shit. He needed a drink. On the bright side, that was the one persistent silver lining to the great big cloud of Stark-shaped insanity he was currently living in.
The good stuff was never in short supply. [One of the perks to dealing with Tony. It's horrible, but I suspect sometimes people need them]
[And, um. Not sure how much of my insanity that may have revealed, but ... *grins faintly* Voila. Finis]
[Right. I've been wanting a JARVIS-is-a-badass fic, and a don't-screw-with-Tony's-babies fic, and a getting-a-better-feel-for-Clint fic for a while now. So ... three for the price of one? *grins sheepishly*]
There were hostiles in the Tower.
It ran as a dull chant in the back of Clint’s head, a steady, metronome beat, matching rhythm with his heartbeat, his breathing, the flex of his arms as he drew down. It hummed through him, unobtrusive, undemanding, a simple, rational summary of the situation. [It took me a bit to settle into Clint's voice, and I'm not altogether sure how good a voice that is ...]
There were hostiles in the Tower.
Steve and Thor were two floors above, Thor basically on Hulk-containment duty [for reasons of, among other things, structural damage, having the Hulk fight an incursion situation inside a building strikes me as a bad plan], Steve at the conn (fucking Stark, the man was paranoid like you wouldn’t believe, the whole Tower was fed into a surveillance console in his penthouse) relaying positions to Clint and Natasha. Natasha … Clint had no idea, but there wasn’t a lot of time between the targets Steve was shooting her, so he was guessing she was wherever most of the enemy were, and they were getting significantly less in number the longer that situation continued. [IM2. Natasha is good at incursion situations. From either side of it]
And Tony himself … well. That was where Clint came in. Because apparently Stark had gotten himself pinned down in one of his workshops. Not one of the ones containing armours. Also apparently, the remote controlled armour was several floors and a not-inconsiderable amount of structural damage away from said workshop. [*grins faintly* Getting-Tony-away-from-the-armour-for-fic-purposes 101. I favour structural damage, myself (see also 'Covered' for the collapsing stairwell)] And, to round the evening out, apparently the hostiles had somehow managed to deliberately arrange for this to be the case, because Stark’s pet AI had informed Steve in rapid order that, based on the clustering, he believed that the bulk of the enemy forces were to distract the other Avengers long enough for a surgical extraction, of Stark, from said workshop. [A bunch of rather stupid hostiles, then, but the idea does have a certain practical merit. Up until you actually reach the Avengers, Tony, or JARVIS, at least]
All of which pointed to something Clint was carefully not thinking about, something Clint shoved clinically under the steady metronome chant in his head, something he wasn’t going to think about until after the situation was contained.
Someone had given them that information. Someone had let them in. Someone, somewhere, in Stark/Avengers Tower, had opened the door to the enemy. [Stark/Avengers Tower has people in. People who work for Tony. Usually. Though SIs background checks for hiring must rival SHIELDs, by this stage]
Someone, he thought, who had better make sure they were also surgically extracted before this night was out, or they would have a small infinity of time over which to regret it.
“Clint, what’s your ETA?” Steve’s voice came through, strained and aggravated. Steve had wanted to be hunting, too. JARVIS, for some reason none of them were sure of, had informed them that he would be incapable of adequately maintaining the conn, and advised that someone should stay at the helm. Steve, reluctantly, had agreed. But he obviously wasn’t happy about it. [As someone pointed out in the comments, what JARVIS is planning to do involves a lot of moving machine parts, very close to very fragile human bodies, not all of which he wants to rip apart. JARVIS is the most advanced AI you're ever going to meet, but even he needs to focus, under the circumstances]
“Two minutes away,” Clint said back, busy unclipping himself from harness. Elevator shafts were handy for quick floor access, but the Tower ventilation, in credit to Stark’s paranoia, wasn’t near big enough to support entry. He’d have to go in the hard way. “Something wrong?” [As a random aside, I kind of love Tony's casual paranoia. SI + Obie + Afghanistan + SHIELD + Natasha + a childhood as the son of a billionaire weapons engineer ... though I think he surprised even Obie, with how on-the-ball he can be (also, he out-paranoia'd Fury on the Helicarrier, which says any number of rather worrying things about him)]
“JARVIS has cut off contact,” Steve said. Clipped and brief, rigidly controlled, but Clint felt the stagger in his gut regardless. “Something’s happening in that workshop, Clint. You need to be there yesterday.” [I'm not sure how much the Avengers are aware of JARVIS' capabilities, at this point. I mean, Tony's casual enough about mentioning him on the Helicarrier, but only as a seek-and-discover programme, and a communications tool, not as an AI capable of making tactical decisions on the spot, pre-empting orders, and understanding emotional connections. So ... *muses*]
“No kidding,” Clint murmured. A little raggedly around the edges, his hands already in motion, his mind dropping back to that cold, clean beat. Scanning the environment, plotting arcs and trajectories and equipment deployment. He was trotting along the corridor, short bow at the ready and bolt in hand, before Steve had even finished talking.
If JARVIS was out, then someone was in. Someone with Stark, someone holding him, armourless and defenceless, not half a floor and some reinforced walls away from Clint.
Fine then. Showtime, boys and girls. [ ... My, but Clint is rather awesome in action, isn't he? *grins faintly*]
The workshop, which was actually still a floor below him, had an overlook balcony accessed from this floor. This was one of the main testing floors, and Stark had installed a number of glass-fronted (‘glass’ being something of a misnomer, but Stark had flat-out refused to call it ‘transparent aluminum’ when it had nothing to do with aluminum at all, keep your crappy sci-fi references to yourself, Barton) viewing galleries above some of the labs. At Clint and Natasha’s insistence, he’d also added in hatches, concealed at various places along the lengths, from which viewers (ie teammates) could access the testing floors from the galleries. [I'm not actually sure if this layout is structurally feasible based on what we see of the Tower. But, you know, fanfic. I'ma gonna take some liberties with the laws of physics, yes?]
And it was from one of those galleries that he got his first look at the situation down in the workshop.
It wasn’t pretty. Stark had apparently managed to disable two of his opponents, one with what looked like a heavy-duty machine wrench, the other with the partially-cannibalised repulsor gauntlet he’d apparently found the time to stick onto his left hand and clumsily wire into the reactor. He must have been behind cover doing it, because there were any number of bullet-holes and ricochet marks scattered around the workshop. [It occurs to me that an active workshop is really the last place, outside of the armour itself, where you'd want to try and take Tony Stark. It's like trying to take out Fury in the middle of a SHIELD armoury. Even before we get to the sentient-AI parts. Heh.]
There were also four other hostiles, all extremely angry looking, gathering in a loose, gun-pointing circle around where Stark was crouched, out in the fucking open, over the downed shape of one of his robots. The weird ones, with the arms, and the incredible kicked-puppy looks. [To be fair, Dummy is pretty weird-looking -and weird-acting- if you're not used to him] Stark, his face and the back of one shoulder peppered with small cuts, was crouching defensively over the robot, the arm with the gauntlet raised and shifting between the four hostiles in a vain attempt to ward them off.
“Shit, Stark, what the hell were you thinking,” Clint muttered, viciously. [That Dummy has been the one constant of his life since he was 17, and he just heard him give the robot version of a scream as he went down? And I strongly suspect that Dummy was trying to defend Tony when he got shot (although it could just be because the hostiles were twitchy and he moved at the wrong moment, either). Tony doesn't let that lie]
“Clint?” Steve responded, Natasha’s voice barely a half-second behind him, and Clint realised the comm was still on. “What’s the situation, soldier?”
Clint blinked, vaguely. Shit, Steve was worried, wasn’t he? [*smiles* I love Steve in Mama Bear mode. Heh]
“Stark’s gotten himself pinned down in the open,” he relayed, soft and to the point. “It’s stand-off for now, but he’ll only get one, maybe two once they move, and then they’ll have him.” He grunted, easing himself carefully along the gallery, which was too fucking transparent for him to risk fast movement, towards one of the hatches and a firing position. “I’ll need a minute to get into position, even the odds.” [Weirdly, most of what I was thinking here was that six people was way too few to be taking on an Avenger, even an unarmoured Tony. With Clint as back-up, sniping from above, and Tony with a repulsor, they would have been screwed. Especially if they had to take Tony alive]
“Do you have a minute?” Natasha asked, hard and near-angrily. Not at him. Clint knew that. At the situation.
“Should do,” Clint murmured, more than halfway into place. “Stark’s working the old silver tongue, looks like.” He frowned, suddenly, as whatever Stark said had them clustering together, moving closer. “Or not,” he started, and then: “What the …?” [Don't listen to Tony when he's in delay-and/or-lure the villain mode. Seriously, people. Are you trying to get yourselves killed? The guy booby-traps doorknobs with high explosives as a side-tactic]
He cut off, watching with something like liquid shock as panels opened noiselessly in the floor behind the now clustered group of hostiles. He watched, struck dumb, as Tony’s face hardened visibly, even from ten feet up and fifteen feet back, something black and cold and fucking deadly flowing over him, and then ... [... I don't know if I've said this often enough, or maybe too often, but I can never, ever get enough of Tony in dark, protective, gloves-just-came-off mode. The first half-hour of IM1 sort of made the most massive impact on me, seriously]
“Jesus,” Clint barked, reflexively recoiling, abandoning stealth altogether to hurl himself along the gallery, throwing himself down at the hatch. The hostiles didn’t notice. The two of them that were left to notice much of anything. “Jesus, fuck.” [And this just made one hell of an impact on Clint, funnily enough]
“Clint!” Steve barked, something crunching over the channel behind him. Clint vaguely hoped he hadn’t broken Stark’s console. “Clint, report!” [Steve hates being stuck in the rear while his people are on the front lines, yes?]
“I’m on my way,” Natasha came in, clipped on Steve’s heels. “Four minutes, Barton. I’m coming.” [As does Natasha. Especially, I suspect, when it's Clint, though she's worried about Tony, too]
“No!” Clint managed, swinging down through the hatch, struggling to … to not be sick, really. “No, no, we got it, it’s fine, shit. Hostiles down. I repeat. Hostiles down. Stark …” He swallowed. “Stark has the field.” [Stark very, very thoroughly has the field ...]
He hoped. He fucking hoped Stark had it, that someone had it, because if that thing was in free-firing mode, they were in deep shit.
Stark paid him no attention, didn’t even look at him as Clint carefully picked his way across the workshop floor. Skirting the peppered worktables, the splayed machine remains of whatever Stark had been working on. And then … some other splayed remains altogether. Keeping away, keeping well away, from the gleaming mechanical arms reaching up from the floor to cluster around Stark, waving a bloodied drill-bit almost tentatively about the engineer’s head. [*tilts head* For JARVIS, I'm pretty sure what he just did was purely a means to an end, like Natasha a couple of floors up. Nothing more or less than using the tools at his disposal to protect those he cared about. And those people, for him, are the important factors in the equation. Hence the hovering]
“Okay, buddy,” Stark was saying, his back to the slaughterhouse behind him, ignoring the evil tree of mechanical death hovering over his shoulder. He was focused on … on the fucking robot, the one he’d been crouched over, the one he’d gotten himself pinned trying to defend. “Easy, Dummy. Your sensors are out, okay, you’re running blind, but I’ve got you, okay? Me and JARVIS, we got you. You’re going to be a-okay, got it?”
[I'm flirting with the idea of a small, Dummy-POV companion piece, because ... all he knew was that there were enemies trying to hurt Tony, and then he got shot, and he couldn't see, and he couldn't move, and he had no idea where Tony was or what had happened to him, and the people who hurt him were still there, so all he was registering was 'threat', 'damage', 'possible damage to Tony', and he couldn't do anything. Until he feels Tony over him, and at least knows his creator is still alive, but ... Yeah, this was so not fun for Dummy. And I might ... I might write a little ficlet, for that. Heh.]
“...Stark?” Clint whispered, hoarsely. Swallowing hard as he crept around the back wall, in behind the man. “Tony? You with me, man?” [Nice and easy, do not startle the homicidal man with the killer AI, that's the ticket]
He almost swallowed his tongue, reflexively, as Stark, apparently only belatedly realising he was there, snapped his head up to look at him. That wouldn’t have been a problem, even if the black, cold snarl on the man’s face was somewhat alarming, except that the whole … assembly array, Clint knew what it was … behind him flexed aggressively towards Clint in the same moment. JARVIS was apparently as trigger-happy as Tony right now, and also, there were apparently more panels. Sliding open around Clint before JARVIS registered him properly. [You know the assembly array in IM1? The one that's 'not the worst thing Pepper has caught him doing'? And the one in Avengers, up on the Tower approach? Imagine, for a second, that those were not timed and programmed to within an inch of their lives. Imagine if one component went a little off. Imagine how much damage they could do, if Tony stumbled at the wrong moment. *smiles faintly* Now. Imagine them in the hands of someone who wants to do some damage. *hums* This is why you don't piss off the resident AI in the middle of a construction floor. Just sayin']
Clint did not wet himself. He blanched, throwing up a warding hand instinctively, but he didn’t wet himself.
And until you’d seen four men torn apart by machinery designed to remove something capable of standing up to tank shells without blinking, you had no idea how much of a triumph that was. [Something that can disassemble the Iron Man armour is not going to be kind to fragile human flesh]
“Whoa, whoa, it’s me!” he said, rapid-fire and escalating in tone. “Stark, Tony, it is me, do not deploy that thing!” [I like Clint. He's a man who knows when he has the right to panic. *grins faintly*]
Stark blinked at him, recognition, followed by blank confusion, as though wondering what the hell Clint had to be scared of, and then slow, blooming realisation, as JARVIS relaxed the mechanical arms around him. Almost sheepishly, and the idea that Stark’s AI could be sheepish was … honestly, not really helping the situation. Clint had watched ‘The Sphere’, thanks. [... I'm not sure how many people have even seen Sphere. *smiles sheepishly* Or why I think Clint has seen all the shitty movies. Heh. The important scene from that, one, though, is where the alien intelligence in the sphere informs them that it's 'happy', and Dustin Hoffman points out that this is not, in fact, a good thing, since anything with the capacity to be 'happy' probably also has the capacity to be, say, 'angry']
“Sorry,” Tony offered, a little blankly, still. “Shit. Right. Tower. You guys. Everyone okay?” [Dummy first, rest of the world later]
Clint stared at him. Distantly. In some mild form of horror, maybe.
“They’re fine,” he said. Mostly on autopilot. “Natasha’s on her way, Steve’s on the conn, Thor has Banner.” He stopped, blinked. Realising, distantly, that this was the reason JARVIS had given Steve the conn, that this was what had required the AI’s focus. Realising, also, that he had no idea what to do with that information.
Besides possibly gibber. [Give Clint credit, he's having an entirely reasonable reaction to what he's just seen. He's been living in a Tower with an AI he didn't know could do that. He's allowed to take a few moments to panic slightly]
Tony grinned in relief, waving a hand cheerfully at Clint from his crouch, the other arm, still dressed in the remains of the repulsor gauntlet, braced underneath the robot’s head … arm ... thing. Almost cradling it, while Tony straddled the main body defensively. [ ... Dummy hugs. Protective Tony. That is all]
“Awesome,” the man said. Utterly oblivious. “Sorry, got pinned down, JARVIS couldn’t get me the armour. And then, they shot Dummy, they fucking shot him, I got a little … distracted, yeah?” He shook his head, ruefully apology. “Sorry, yeah? I’ll fix it for next time, they will not catch me like that again. Okay?” [ *frowns* But burbled, there. Huh.]
Clint nodded, faintly. Not saying anything, until Tony looked up from the robot in concern, eyes crinkling into a worried frown as he brushed blood and hair out of his eyes to look at Clint.
“Hey man. You okay?” Tony shifted in his crouch, looking like he was trying to work out a way to catch Clint if he keeled over while still keeping hold of the robot. “You’re not hit or anything, are you?” [Give Tony a second, he does get back on track. He just doesn't like it when people get hurt in front of him]
“No,” Clint murmured. No. And then … “You realise your AI just ate them, right?” He couldn’t help himself. “I mean, you noticed that? The whole … the rending and tearing part? You know that happened?” [*smiles* That was kind of the line that started this. 'You realise your AI just ate them, right?' And, okay, let's be fair. JARVIS used what he had, to do what he needed to do. No worse than Natasha, or Clint, or Tony. Just ... slightly more intimidating since it's basically a giant mechanical spider climbing up from the floor to tear some people apart, which tends to make an adverse impression on people]
Tony blinked at him, for a second. And then cooled, suddenly and terrifyingly, went blank and emotionless as any machine (well, any normal machine), and Clint realised, for maybe the first time, that this was the man who’d carved his way out of a terrorist compound all those years ago, and burned their world down around their ears for having taken him.
[... It can be so easy to forget, when Tony is still all charming and quipping and vaguely clownish all the way down to the wire, when he's acting like a highly intelligent but slightly buffoonish showman to the last. It can be easy to forget, that he exploded, beat and burned a decent portion of a terrorist camp to death when they pushed him too far, that he set Obie up to be blasted to smithereens, that he invented a fairly devastating ranged weapon by accident while aiming for a flight stabiliser, and then used it. Tony smiles at you, nice and easy and casual, all the way to the line. And then he murders you. Thoroughly.
... And it probably says way, way too much about me that I sort of love that side of him, the sort of terrifying, lethal edge he has. *grins sheepishly*]
“They shot Dummy,” Stark answered, cold and remote, the assembly arms settling deliberately behind him under JARVIS’ control. “They came here, and they hurt my people, they assaulted my home, they put you guys in danger, and they shot Dummy.” He shook his head, free hand clenching into a fist. “I don’t give a fuck what happened to them. They earned it.” [Someone pointed out that he does, here, make a very clear distinction. 'His people', and then 'you guys'. I don't think the Avengers are quite his people yet, here. Bruce yes. Natasha possibly. The rest ... maybe not so much, just yet. Not like Dummy and JARVIS, anyway]
“They also threatened you, sir,” JARVIS murmured, his voice as cool and even-tempered as always. “They meant to remove you, I believe. This was meant to be an extraction.”
And that, the AI seemed to say, the mechanical, tool-laden arms of his physical extension lax and calm around Tony’s crouched figure, would not be permitted. Not now. Not ever again. [Sometimes I wonder if I should write that fic. Like the Dummy one above. JARVIS' POV on the end of IM1, on Obadiah. Or before, on the three months Tony was simply gone, and no way to know if he was ever coming back. *shrugs, muses*]
“Ri-ight,” Clint murmured. His voice dropping automatically, and stupidly, into the calm-the-crazy-person tone that he hated when someone pointed it at him, or Natasha. Or Phil. Or, fuck, any of them. Anyone who had to look at the things they looked at, and do the things they did, and find some fucking way of coping with it at the end of the day. Clint heard his voice drop into that register and, suddenly, he wanted to slap himself. [SHIELD are not nice people. Good people, very probably. But not nice. Clint's an assassin too]
Tony smiled, instead. Casual, blank, the I’m-an-eccentric-billionaire, I-don’t-care-what-you-think grin that masked … oh, so many things. They were, all of them, far too intimately acquainted with that fucking smile. [Masks so many, many things, yes. Some of them deadly. Heh]
“I’m sorry,” Clint said, suddenly and earnestly, stepping forward from his defensive position by the wall. Stepping, with only a faint twinge of terror, into the reach of the assembly array, into JARVIS’ arms, and holding his hand out to Tony. “Caught me off guard, is all.” He grinned, let a little bit of the residual terror show. “Shit, Stark, something like a nightmare of HR Giger comes up out of the floor and kills some people, you gotta give a guy time to adjust, yeah?” [... Point. The man has a point. And guts.]
Tony blinked at him. Honestly shocked, staring up at Clint in surprise, blood dripping softly into his eye and the robot twitching worriedly in his arms, plucking agitatedly at Stark the way a child plucks at its mother. [Dummy, Dummy, Dummy, Dummy] Tony blinked at him, and then, cautiously, like he half expected this to be some sort of prank, reached up to grip Clint’s hand, firm and cautious, and smile carefully. [Tony really doesn't know what to do with sincerity, a lot of the time, does he?]
“Next time, I’ll have JARVIS page you a warning, huh?” he asked, tentatively, and Clint … just sort of grinned at him. At the fucking psychopath crouched like a papa wolf over his downed robot, covered in oil and blood and holding onto Clint’s hand like he hadn’t a clue what to do with it. [Gods, I love that image. I wanted that image. Tony and his babies, have I explained, yet, how much I love them? *grins faintly* All of IM1, with him, and them, and the building, and the apologising, and Dummy saving him, and JARVIS, and ... I've explained how I love them, right?]
“You do that,” he said, quietly, and for some reason, remembered Natasha. Remembered holding out his hand to her, cautious and deadly, and asking her to come with him, out of the cold. For some reason, looking down at Stark, he remembered her. [Clint is the man to deal with dangerous, paranoid people. He has an instinct, it seems] “Right. Anyway. I gotta go report up. Steve’s going to be frantic by now.” And Natasha had to be lurking somewhere close, too, but maybe he shouldn’t mention that yet. “You coming?”
Stark blinked, and shook his head, grinning ruefully. “Nah. Can you relay up for me? I gotta put Dummy back together.” He ducked his head, tucking the robot close to his chest. “He’s lost most of his sensors, except for some basic pressure registers, so he’s kinda panicking a bit. JARVIS is hooked in wirelessly, keeping him calm, but … I kinda need to get him back up and running, you know?” [I think JARVIS couldn't, so long as he was focused on the assembly array, which was why Dummy was panicking so much. JARVIS and Dummy ... I mean, on the one hand, Dummy is much, much older than JARVIS, and has known Tony longer. On the other, JARVIS is much smarter and more capable than Dummy, and has known Tony more intimately. Heh. They must have a fascinating relationship ...]
And it was on the tip of Clint’s tongue to point out that, you know, Tony was injured. The Tower was a mess. Steve was probably tearing his hair out. There were bodies to clear up. That Dummy was a machine, and probably didn’t rate above Tony’s own injuries, seriously.
It was on the tip of his tongue. And went no further. Because any man who would face down four gunmen while armourless for that machine, any man whose machines, in response, would casually tear four men to pieces to protect him … well. It probably wasn’t a good idea, to get between that man and them, was it? [The dividing line with Tony seems to be less human vs non-human, and more his vs not-his. Heh. Dummy is his. Tony doesn't give a crap what he's made of]
“You should probably show your face inside the hour,” he said instead, carefully not showing any of the previous thoughts. “Steve, and probably Bruce, will want to make sure you’re okay, you know?”
Tony blinked, and smiled. Softly, almost shyly, and shit. Knowing that the robots got their cute-adorable-puppy talents from their creator was right up there with AIs being sheepish in terms of things Clint hadn’t needed to know. Tony smiled up at him, and Clint decided that now, right now, was the time to make a strategic withdrawal. For the sake of his sanity, if nothing else. [Once you've seen Tony is his black, savage, last-living-thing-you'll-ever-see mode, having him switch to baffling-adorable-social-idiot mode can probably be a bit ... jarring?]
“See you up there,” he muttered, waving a hand at Tony’s already distracted back, muttering a farewell at the head already bowed back over the robot, and the machine arms that were carefully, very carefully, helping him to lift it. [Again, Dummy, also JARVIS, the little machine family, I love it so] “Talk later, Stark.”
Right. It was official. Sometime in the past few months, one of two things had happened. Either Clint had stepped, somehow, into the Twilight Zone, or the world had gotten one whole hell of a lot stranger on him. You know. One or the other.
Shit. He needed a drink. On the bright side, that was the one persistent silver lining to the great big cloud of Stark-shaped insanity he was currently living in.
The good stuff was never in short supply. [One of the perks to dealing with Tony. It's horrible, but I suspect sometimes people need them]
[And, um. Not sure how much of my insanity that may have revealed, but ... *grins faintly* Voila. Finis]
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