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In which there are a lot more AI musings, telepathy, and odd rambles. The second part of Space Electric, Touching in the Singing Void:
Touching in the Singing Void - Annotated Version
[I think I said at the time that this one was purely because I wanted Tony-JARVIS telepathy (well, the chance to focus on it), Tony taking over a spaceship in panic, and Steve-and-Clint as a first contact team. *smiles faintly* You see how spurious my reasons are? I write things on whims, to see small and bizarrely specific things. Heh. Mind you, the reason the things I want are so small and specific is because the stories keep shifting once I start them, and there's always a decent chance that I won't actually get to the bit I orginally wanted, if the story shifts on me mid-write. *shrugs* I promise, I don't do this stuff deliberately]
They were well into hyperspace by the time the shakes finally caught up with Tony. Three hours out from the Tannhauser cluster, with the ship fully under their control (the still-living members of the previous crew having been laboriously shifted down to the prison block to keep Obie company), and with the original AI partially back online. [I've actually no idea how big the crew complement was. At least in the dozens, though, and probably over a hundred, though Obie's probably running a skeleton crew on his ship, if only because he doesn't trust Hydra, or indeed anyone, enough to take crew he didn't hand pick. So they've been very busy for the past while, moving or at least checking a lot of bodies]
(Tony had taken to calling her Babs for a personal name, since her original name, buried under Obadiah's corruption, had been Barbara. As in Saint, as in the patron saint of artillerymen and engineers and other people prone to blowing shit up. He wasn't sure yet whose joke that had been, his, Obie's, or hers. They did sometimes take their own names, and she had been flying a ship named Iron Monger. And then one named Avenger. So there was that.)
[Someone asked about, if Barbara was a shout-out, say to Oracle over in DC Comics. Um. Not intentionally? That was mostly a happy bonus. The name I was aiming for was the saint of artillerymen and military engineers (you can blame M7 fanfic for my knowing that one). For some reason, before I checked, I thought that was St Catherine, so Babs was originally going to be Cathy (which you could take as a different shout-out, too). Then I actually looked it back up, and her name was Barbara, so. *grins sheepishly* This is what you get when your brain is full of random references and allusions and half-remembered details from thousands of sources -_-;]
Maybe that was why they hit him there. In the lull, when they'd done most of what they could do to prepare for the upcoming battle, when JARVIS had mostly taken Babs under his wing, leaving Tony a little superfluous. When the SHIELD crew had gathered warily back inside the bridge, their presence suddenly pressing after the busy few hours where he'd been more or less alone while they shifted bodies, and more or less sufficiently distracted.
From the knowledge of what had just happened. What had almost happened, what had actually happened, Obie's face. The hum of nanites under his skin, and the knowledge, the memory, of their original purpose. He'd been ... distracted, from that. More or less. And now ... not so much. [In his defense, he's been holding together really well, all things considered. He was about due a breakdown, and managed to hold it until it was relatively safe and he wasn't going to get anyone killed by having a freak out. He's doing really, really well]
JARVIS caught it first. The shaking under the armour, the tremors juddering though him that set the armour to sparking, to shifting fitfully around him. The black ball of ... something, in his head, in his mind, under his skin. The shaking that started, suddenly, and then just didn't stop. JARVIS saw it first.
{Sir!} The thought sounded in his head, thrown up through the shaking of his nets, and JARVIS plunged through him, spread himself shining through Tony's thoughts and curled Tony close. {Sir, what is it?} [... To reiterate, JARVIS is not well himself, right now. Between what was done to Barbara, and what was done to Tony, and then what was almost done to Tony again, JARVIS is on a bit of a hair trigger right now]
Tony shook his head mutely, distantly aware that he was backing up, that he'd bumped into something, probably a wall. Slid down it, into a huddle. Also that the armour was having a mild panic attack right along with him, flexing itself in and out in search of an invisible threat. That was probably alarming his guests, Tony thought distantly. That was probably not doing him any favours in the I-am-not-a-crazy-galactic-warlord stakes. [The nanites were reprogrammed to respond to signals from his neural nets, to raise or drop the armour as required whether or not JARVIS was there. In case he ended up needing it in an emergency. However, the reason Tony's relying on JARVIS to help put it up and down over the rest of these stories is because he basically doesn't trust his nets not to give a false signal because he's panicking. Because, yes, he's making something of a questionable impression on people, right now -_-;]
{Don't know,} he cast, shaking his head, wondering as his sight seemed to dim and fail. Mechanical failure. Well, biological, but same difference. {J-JARVIS ...} [... The line Tony doesn't really see between biological and mechanical will probably become important later]
{Scanning, sir,} JARVIS assured immediately, and yeah, Tony could feel him. Could feel the silver presence stripping through the layers of his implant, insinuating itself completely into his net, his brain, searching desperately for the flaw. Spreading beyond it, hijacking itself onto the new signals from the nanites seeded through his blood, pouring through him like a silver fire, down to the mechanical heart. Searching for failure, for flaw, seeking the cause of the distress. Wrapping him desperately in silver while he shook himself apart.
Probably not actually physical, Tony thought. Probably not. But with the nanites, with the torture and the armour and the fake heart ... Shit. Could use a scan anyway, maybe. Could afford to let JARVIS pull him a little bit apart, to make sure he was actually still ticking somewhere under there.
[It actually is possible, considering the length of time Tony's had the armour consistently up, here, compared to the amount of time he had it up the first time (long enough to escape only), that the strain of keeping the armour up is affecting him, on top of the psychological stress. There's a lot of energy going through that armour, and while neither his mechanical heart nor his augmented brain are having a problem with it, it's possible the rest of his body is not so sanguine about things. Especially since it's running on fumes, adrenalin and nerves, has been tortured repeatedly not so long ago, and underwent surgery before that ... Yeah. He could use a physical check anyway, I think]
{H-How's things look?} he managed, with a grin for all the shaking in it. Feeling his humour curl through JARVIS' panic, his own. Feeling it curl across the surface of that black, trembling lump inside him. {'m'I still as beautiful as ever, you think?}
JARVIS' response to that one wasn't verbal. Not even remotely. A burst across Tony's net, a flare of fury and desperation and hatred, and a subspace link out to the totality of JARVIS' memory of him. All of Tony, everything he'd ever been, flaring across their minds in microcosmic unison. Yes, the answer, a furious gut punch, the burn of JARVIS' rage and grief and love. [... I have a thing? Such a thing. And, born largely in stress or not, after this what Tony and JARVIS have between them has skipped over partnership and landed in symbiosis. As someone pointed out, from this point on, being with Tony is to automatically be involved in at least a threesome, for all that JARVIS is a platonic connection rather than a physical one. Tony can uplink to any of his AI. With JARVIS, he's bonded]
Tony hiccuped helplessly, feeling fields clash distantly as his arms wrapped themselves around his chest, and the armour flared against itself. Feeling the black thing crack, feeling it break, and the swamp of remembered pain and terror and grief and betrayal flood out.
Oh. Right. That would be why, then. That ... that explained a lot. [... Has that ever happened to you? Where you survive everything that happens first, and then collapse in a heap once you've the smallest window of relative safety? Where everything breaks out at once, and floors you?]
"-ark! Stark!"
He couldn't make his eyes function. Really, seriously, he honestly couldn't. His body had locked itself shaking around him, and he couldn't have budged the damn thing if he tried.
Fortunately, now that JARVIS was back, he wasn't actually limited to just his body.
[... That's actually not supposed to happen. Uplink should limit the interaction to the level of informational exchange, both entities separate but in communication. Like a rather intimate radio. For them to actually be able to slave consciousness into each other's systems, essentially lend each other access to their bodies/body equivalents, isn't really supposed to happen. Then again, JARVIS is actually partially integrated into Tony's physical neural nets, by this stage, and actually has been for a while. Tony's implant is the access point, but his brain itself has been partially upgraded (which no-one really knows, because you're not supposed to do that, Stark, you don't know shit about neuroscience, are you nuts? Except that Tony has been designing functional artificial brains for a while, for the AI, he actually does have some clue). Even before the armour and the heart, Tony was moving towards cyborg status. Again, like the whole AI programme, he's been keeping that one under wraps. *muses* Though, really, any of the uplinked pilot could be considered cyborg. I think some of them do consider themselves such, depending on whether they view the implant as just a radio more permanently wired to their skull than usual, or as a part of them now.]
Babs moved aside for him clumsily, guided by JARVIS into making a sliver of room for him on her systems, just enough to hook him into internal monitoring and the sound system. Tony grinned at her in passing, a curl of mental gratitude and amusement brushed across her identity nodes. She startled, heartbreakingly confused, fucking Obie, and flickered a shy touch back. Feathering it along him, cushioned against JARVIS. [... I'm going to explain this, even without uplink not doing that normally, there's a specific reason Barbara is startled by the touch]
"Hey there," he said. Or, rather, the ship said for him. Displayed across the security feeds, all four of them ... well, they didn't actually move that much, but Tony suspected that in any other group they'd have just done the equivalent of jumping out of their skin. "Sorry. Sorry. Having a mild panic attack, I think. Back soon, no worries." [... Tony. *facepalms* Seriously?]
Barton raised an eyebrow incredulously. He had a fabulous face for it, Tony noticed. "You're having a panic attack," he repeated. "In which your killer energy armour is on the fritz, and apparently you're possessing the spaceship we're currently sitting in." He paused, thoughtfully. "I think your definition of 'worry' might be a little different from ours." ["You and I remember Budapest very differently." Clint seems to take really bizarre shit in stride, doesn't he? *smiles at him*]
Tony laughed. And since it wasn't actually his vocal cords doing it, just his mind translated through Babs' soundbanks, it appeared to come out a little ... wrong. Judging by the not-jumping they all engaged in again.
"Stark," Banner said, cautiously, and Tony belatedly figured out that it had been Banner who'd started talking to him in the first place. Banner, who was crouching carefully just out of range of the fitful flaring of the armour, frowning in concern at Tony's body. [I'm working on what I think is up with Bruce in this 'verse, but he has medical training, yes, and I think ... I think a lot of personal experience with captivity and physical changes made under duress. *smiles lopsidedly* Which is why he's the one hovering over Tony.]
Which, now that it had snagged his attention again, almost managed to pull his focus out of Babs' systems and back into his own brain. Would have, except JARVIS caught him, snapped his attention to him, and filtered him back across the wireless link with considerably more care than his own panicking brain would have managed. [Their symbiosis is the reason Tony is able to go so much further with his augmentations and interactions with the both AIs and subspace. Now, their partnership is a lot more equal than we really get here, when Tony's not being repeatedly broken on them. JARVIS is Tony's regulator in subspace, and vice versa in realspace.]
Tony, hitting the tremors in his chest once more, managed to open his eyes this time. Managed to grip hold of his shaking nerves and yell at them until they paid attention.
"S-sorry," he managed, staring up at the four wary, twitchy faces around him, the rueful grin sneaking back across his face. "JARVIS hooked me up. Just for a second. I needed a ... a voice, and mine wasn't cooperating, yeah?"
Barton stared at him for a long, long second, and Tony quivered at a phantom memory, the snap of the man's fist against his jaw, back when they'd first taken him aboard. Nothing much, not compared to what he'd come from, and he'd kind of understood the guy's motivation, there. But still. [*frowns* Did I actually read that, somewhere? I'm not sure. Anyway. After looking at the remains of Gulmira, they were not well inclined towards Tony, and before they realised the extent of what had been done to him, Clint was somewhat freer about showing it -_-;]
"That," the man decided, slowly, "is not actually that reassuring. You know that, right?" [Why do I like Clint as the guy on the frontlines, dealing with the weird shit?]
Tony grinned at him, a dark, pearly gleam, as he felt JARVIS' anger stir at the flash of memory. And then, more surprisingly, Barbara stirring behind him, her emotions rudimentary and unfocused, with the damage done to her, but most definitely there. The bridge lights flickered for a second, under her ministrations, and Tony mentally blinked at her in startled gratitude.
[Barbara ... the damage to Barbara is incomplete, but complicated. The complexity of her nature is such that Obie couldn't actually strip away her capacity for emotions or agency, since they're fundamental to what she is. What he could do was damage memory, and put rigid programming over her existing complexity. So she could still feel, and think, and want to act, but before JARVIS stripped out the foreign protocols, she couldn't directly act in contradiction to commands, and her experience of emotions and personal interaction was severely stunted. Add in the damage to her pre-Hydra memories, and she was badly, badly wounded by what was not, and not fully cognizant of that at first]
"Clint," Bruce spoke up, the utter calm of his voice straining against a warning note as he crouched at Tony's side. "Commentary later, yes? Crisis now." [... From the point of view of everyone who is not Tony - the AIs are a distant, unknown factor, understandable only when they choose to use the intercom system to speak audibly. The SHIELD crew have no way of knowing, until Barbara cautiously starts standing up to Tony too in Darkening, who or what JARVIS is, to what extent the effects are being caused/controlled by Tony himself, or the limits to Tony's apparent capabilities. And again, he hasn't actually reassured them yet that he's not nursing any violent grudges. So ... crisis now, yes? Pissing off the traumatised, technopathic, potentially violent maniac later.]
And that ... No. No, you know what? Screw this. Screw this all the way down a black hole. Time to start fixing up the crazy-warlord-technomancer impression. At least a little bit, anyway. Tony was not going to spend this entire trip surrounded by people who were afraid and disgusted by him. Been there, done that. Nuh-uh. [Which Tony doesn't want, in part because he doesn't want them to hate him, and in part because the mutual worry is upping the tension in all directions, and Tony's really not able for that right now]
"Nah," he said, and let it be serious. Dropped the grin to meet Barton's eyes, the wariness there. No actual fear, though. Now that Tony looked at him. Just caution, and readiness. "Commentary's fine. Just. You know. Lets keep the physical violence to a minimum, this trip?"
Rogers flinched, at that. Tony noted it, out of the corner of his eye, through the remnants of Babs' nets threaded beside his. Rogers flinched, and Banner. Not Barton, though. Neither Barton nor Romanov so much as twitched. [They don't. If they've done wrong, they'll make it up in actions, but they've lived too long and through too much to flinch anymore]
"I'm gonna apologise for that," Barton said, evenly. "I think you know why I did it." He watched Tony's flinch, in turn. Kept his eyes fixed, like a sniper drawing down. But his expression softened a little, at Tony's obvious pain. Gulmira. Yeah, Tony knew why. "But I'll apologise. And ..." He paused, thoughtful again, and something in the stillness of him made Romanov turn, drew the beginnings of a worried frown to her features, before Barton finished with: "You want to take a swing for it, I can do that too." [... I have headcanon for Clint that I'm not sure where it came from. Between his reaction to Thor, the opening scenes of Avengers with Fury, his attitude towards a mission with Loki, and his scenes with Natasha ... I just somewhere got the impression of a quiet, sneakily intelligent man with a sense of humour who can deal with weird shit and really paranoid, damaged people well. *shrugs* Also a man who will find the most stupidly pragmatic solution to any problem (eyeball, gates opening from the other side, an arrow in the hand for close-quarters), regardless of the risk to himself]
Which had all three of them swinging towards Barton, Romanov first and foremost, with Rogers a step behind her, growling in dismay at Barton's completely unconcerned expression, and Tony felt the distant flash of JARVIS' respect shiver through him. Behind it, the confused, faltering compassion as Barbara leaned her attention to Barton, as she reacted to Tony and JARVIS' understanding of what Barton was doing, putting himself in front of his people, offering a chance for retribution. Tony felt the distant, pained confusion as the battered AI struggled to encompass that thought, the shivering compassion as she decided she liked it.
And for that, just for that, for the pained awe shivering through his skull, Tony met Barton's calm, ready gaze, and made an executive decision.
[... Barbara wasn't meant to happen. She wasn't. But she was there, and she was watching Tony, and the things she had to see, watching this ... Suddenly she was there, and she was so important, and for a Tony flying off the edge and a JARVIS not far after him, she's the presence that reins them back in and makes them think about what they're doing, and for an AI that was only ever meant to be a passing mention, suddenly she's one of the main characters. *blinks* And I don't even do OCs, normally. I'm not sure how it happened, that Barbara and Meroe between them can carry an entire chapter by themselves, and my audience doesn't seem to complain at all. *smiles bemusedly*]
He felt JARVIS flood him, felt JARVIS cradle him with stung sympathy and maybe some touch of pride, as they tripped the nanites threaded through him, and dropped the armour, all of it, in one rinsed rush of energy. Meeting Barton's stare head on, chin tipping a little in instinctive defiance, as he dropped his main defense in answer. [... Tony is stupid brave, sometimes. Not even just physically, though that too (walking unarmoured into Loki's grasp). But when he sat down in front of those reporters in IM1, and went "everything we've ever done is wrong, so I'm going to try and change". Tony is stupid brave.]
Though he did almost twitch, did almost look away, when he felt the rain of sliver-thin flakes of tabletop slough off his back. Problem with engaging the armour while tied down to a surface. You tended to take a couple of layers of that surface with you when you left.
"Did I not just say we were keeping the violence to a minimum?" he asked softly, ignoring the startled look Banner shot him, restraining the flinch when the man reached automatically towards him. Keeping his eyes fixed on Barton. On the challenge there. "Seriously. Could we maybe just agree, I don't hit you, you don't hit me? Is that too much to ask?" [Bruce is both close enough to catch the tabletop fragments, and to see what they mean to Tony, the reminder they cause and Tony's reaction.]
Barton didn't answer. Just held Tony's eyes, creases spidering out around his own as Tony deliberately, defiantly refused to raise the armour, refused to hide back behind it. It was Rogers who answered, while Barton just smiled faintly, and maybe gently. [Clint is also really good at knowing when to trade off responsibility. And I need to stop trying to analyse his and Natasha's interactions with Fury. It's a thing for me, right now. *shrugs* But here, he's trading with Steve so that Tony will get that they're a united front, and none of them are going to hurt him]
"No," Rogers said, soft and firm. "No, it's not too much to ask, Mr Stark." And Tony glanced at him there, at the crease of pain and guilt between his eyes. The Captain looked back with such stern, sincere honesty that Tony almost raised the armour again in startled reflex, flinching back from the openness there. JARVIS caught him, though. JARVIS had his back, and kept them open. "We're sorry for the pain you've suffered, Mr Stark."
And if Barbara hadn't been there, if she hadn't been staring down in damaged, wondering fascination at these people, these concepts that Obie had kept her from, mercy and compassion and pity and offering, all that, Tony might have said something unwise. Tony might have flashed back something ugly, for the black thing only just broken open inside him, too raw still for this shit. He might have. [... Has Tony ever reacted well to what he saw as platitudes? Even Pepper barely gets away with 'sentimentality', and people he doesn't know who were his captors until quite recently ... No. No, I don't think he'd react well]
But she was there. Reaching tentatively for JARVIS, curling queries across the older, bigger AI, drawing across subspace for the humming of his experience and his knowledge and his understanding. Learning the words, while JARVIS reached back. Linking name to concept, and concept to the proud, shamed reality standing on her bridge. She was there, and she was reaching out for concepts to fill the wounds cut into her under Obadiah and Hydra and all the things she'd had to do, and there was no way in blistering hell Tony was ruining that. Not for a second.
[That's such a huge part of what JARVIS actually is, to the AI. The presence they can send to, even well into their missions, to ask for concepts and experience and knowledge, how to react to the humans around them. He's the granddaddy, and their connection to him doesn't stop just because they're assigned out. Of course, the longer the AI are away, the less they need him, as they learn in interaction with their crews and their pilots (Meroe, for example, I'd say hasn't needed to ask back in years). He's the Teacher, and that counts even when they're out on their own or in action. Which, when SHIELD finds out about it, is probably going to be a problem regarding, oh, little things like 'classified' and 'paranoia' and 'espionage' and 'killing battlefields dead'. *smiles faintly* Just saying.]
"... Sure," he managed. Staring blankly up at them, wondering vaguely how much chance there was that everything between his cell on the Avenger and here had been a hallucination.
But JARVIS hadn't been there in that cell. The endless, silver hum in his skull, the cradling presence wrapped around his psyche, vibrating faintly with fury and love and the distant, singing howl of subspace. JARVIS hadn't been there, and there'd been nothing Tony had ever managed to imagine that felt even remotely like the weight and knowledge of him.
{I'm here, sir,} JARVIS murmured, catching the thought, the shaking almost-fear behind it. Curling gently through him against all the black places in the universe, a presence flung across voids in the singing howl. {I have you.} [It was bad for Tony, being without him. Bad for both of them. And possibly the extent of their connection should actually be worrying, but considering it affects them more or less equally, maybe not either]
... Yeah. Yeah, he did. And knowing that ...
"Right!" Tony decided, slapping his hand decisively off the deck, and ignoring the glares it got him as he climbed back up the wall to his feet. Only barely flinching as Banner reached out to help him. As Banner smiled ruefully, knowingly, and Tony stared at the hand on his elbow for a second, before deciding to ignore it. [Bruce knows all about touching and fear and how weird it can be to be supported] Yup. Ignoring all of that. "That's nice, that's lovely. No violence whatsoever, my favourite arrangement. So glad we had this chat, lets move on, yes? Back to work, battles to prepare for, lets go." [Which Tony is going to ignore, because the less he thinks about people who aren't JARVIS right not, the less he has to panic. Heh]
And they stared at him dubiously for that one, four entirely different but equally skeptical expressions, but there were two presences ghosting through him, one vast and gentle and amused, one confused and wondering and tentatively curious, and there was a job to do, people to save, empires to crush. There was JARVIS behind him, around him, beyond him, and an enemy up ahead that he was going to take a great deal of pleasure in obliterating.
Tony could handle a few disbelieving, wary jailors/prisoners/comrades/allies/people, when he had those to focus on. Yes, yes he could. [They are defying classification for him, right now. He doesn't know what to do with them, beyond make sure they don't get hurt any where it would be his fault]
{Yes, we can, sir,} JARVIS murmured, assurance and agreement and vague reproach, and Tony let himself curl into the silver of him with a sigh.
{Yes,} he decided. {You know what, buddy? I think we can, at that.} [*smiles faintly* And, to reiterate, I have a thing about man-machine and Tony-JARVIS and the connection they have. I just ... I have a thing. Heh]
[Finis]
[I think I said at the time that this one was purely because I wanted Tony-JARVIS telepathy (well, the chance to focus on it), Tony taking over a spaceship in panic, and Steve-and-Clint as a first contact team. *smiles faintly* You see how spurious my reasons are? I write things on whims, to see small and bizarrely specific things. Heh. Mind you, the reason the things I want are so small and specific is because the stories keep shifting once I start them, and there's always a decent chance that I won't actually get to the bit I orginally wanted, if the story shifts on me mid-write. *shrugs* I promise, I don't do this stuff deliberately]
They were well into hyperspace by the time the shakes finally caught up with Tony. Three hours out from the Tannhauser cluster, with the ship fully under their control (the still-living members of the previous crew having been laboriously shifted down to the prison block to keep Obie company), and with the original AI partially back online. [I've actually no idea how big the crew complement was. At least in the dozens, though, and probably over a hundred, though Obie's probably running a skeleton crew on his ship, if only because he doesn't trust Hydra, or indeed anyone, enough to take crew he didn't hand pick. So they've been very busy for the past while, moving or at least checking a lot of bodies]
(Tony had taken to calling her Babs for a personal name, since her original name, buried under Obadiah's corruption, had been Barbara. As in Saint, as in the patron saint of artillerymen and engineers and other people prone to blowing shit up. He wasn't sure yet whose joke that had been, his, Obie's, or hers. They did sometimes take their own names, and she had been flying a ship named Iron Monger. And then one named Avenger. So there was that.)
[Someone asked about, if Barbara was a shout-out, say to Oracle over in DC Comics. Um. Not intentionally? That was mostly a happy bonus. The name I was aiming for was the saint of artillerymen and military engineers (you can blame M7 fanfic for my knowing that one). For some reason, before I checked, I thought that was St Catherine, so Babs was originally going to be Cathy (which you could take as a different shout-out, too). Then I actually looked it back up, and her name was Barbara, so. *grins sheepishly* This is what you get when your brain is full of random references and allusions and half-remembered details from thousands of sources -_-;]
Maybe that was why they hit him there. In the lull, when they'd done most of what they could do to prepare for the upcoming battle, when JARVIS had mostly taken Babs under his wing, leaving Tony a little superfluous. When the SHIELD crew had gathered warily back inside the bridge, their presence suddenly pressing after the busy few hours where he'd been more or less alone while they shifted bodies, and more or less sufficiently distracted.
From the knowledge of what had just happened. What had almost happened, what had actually happened, Obie's face. The hum of nanites under his skin, and the knowledge, the memory, of their original purpose. He'd been ... distracted, from that. More or less. And now ... not so much. [In his defense, he's been holding together really well, all things considered. He was about due a breakdown, and managed to hold it until it was relatively safe and he wasn't going to get anyone killed by having a freak out. He's doing really, really well]
JARVIS caught it first. The shaking under the armour, the tremors juddering though him that set the armour to sparking, to shifting fitfully around him. The black ball of ... something, in his head, in his mind, under his skin. The shaking that started, suddenly, and then just didn't stop. JARVIS saw it first.
{Sir!} The thought sounded in his head, thrown up through the shaking of his nets, and JARVIS plunged through him, spread himself shining through Tony's thoughts and curled Tony close. {Sir, what is it?} [... To reiterate, JARVIS is not well himself, right now. Between what was done to Barbara, and what was done to Tony, and then what was almost done to Tony again, JARVIS is on a bit of a hair trigger right now]
Tony shook his head mutely, distantly aware that he was backing up, that he'd bumped into something, probably a wall. Slid down it, into a huddle. Also that the armour was having a mild panic attack right along with him, flexing itself in and out in search of an invisible threat. That was probably alarming his guests, Tony thought distantly. That was probably not doing him any favours in the I-am-not-a-crazy-galactic-warlord stakes. [The nanites were reprogrammed to respond to signals from his neural nets, to raise or drop the armour as required whether or not JARVIS was there. In case he ended up needing it in an emergency. However, the reason Tony's relying on JARVIS to help put it up and down over the rest of these stories is because he basically doesn't trust his nets not to give a false signal because he's panicking. Because, yes, he's making something of a questionable impression on people, right now -_-;]
{Don't know,} he cast, shaking his head, wondering as his sight seemed to dim and fail. Mechanical failure. Well, biological, but same difference. {J-JARVIS ...} [... The line Tony doesn't really see between biological and mechanical will probably become important later]
{Scanning, sir,} JARVIS assured immediately, and yeah, Tony could feel him. Could feel the silver presence stripping through the layers of his implant, insinuating itself completely into his net, his brain, searching desperately for the flaw. Spreading beyond it, hijacking itself onto the new signals from the nanites seeded through his blood, pouring through him like a silver fire, down to the mechanical heart. Searching for failure, for flaw, seeking the cause of the distress. Wrapping him desperately in silver while he shook himself apart.
Probably not actually physical, Tony thought. Probably not. But with the nanites, with the torture and the armour and the fake heart ... Shit. Could use a scan anyway, maybe. Could afford to let JARVIS pull him a little bit apart, to make sure he was actually still ticking somewhere under there.
[It actually is possible, considering the length of time Tony's had the armour consistently up, here, compared to the amount of time he had it up the first time (long enough to escape only), that the strain of keeping the armour up is affecting him, on top of the psychological stress. There's a lot of energy going through that armour, and while neither his mechanical heart nor his augmented brain are having a problem with it, it's possible the rest of his body is not so sanguine about things. Especially since it's running on fumes, adrenalin and nerves, has been tortured repeatedly not so long ago, and underwent surgery before that ... Yeah. He could use a physical check anyway, I think]
{H-How's things look?} he managed, with a grin for all the shaking in it. Feeling his humour curl through JARVIS' panic, his own. Feeling it curl across the surface of that black, trembling lump inside him. {'m'I still as beautiful as ever, you think?}
JARVIS' response to that one wasn't verbal. Not even remotely. A burst across Tony's net, a flare of fury and desperation and hatred, and a subspace link out to the totality of JARVIS' memory of him. All of Tony, everything he'd ever been, flaring across their minds in microcosmic unison. Yes, the answer, a furious gut punch, the burn of JARVIS' rage and grief and love. [... I have a thing? Such a thing. And, born largely in stress or not, after this what Tony and JARVIS have between them has skipped over partnership and landed in symbiosis. As someone pointed out, from this point on, being with Tony is to automatically be involved in at least a threesome, for all that JARVIS is a platonic connection rather than a physical one. Tony can uplink to any of his AI. With JARVIS, he's bonded]
Tony hiccuped helplessly, feeling fields clash distantly as his arms wrapped themselves around his chest, and the armour flared against itself. Feeling the black thing crack, feeling it break, and the swamp of remembered pain and terror and grief and betrayal flood out.
Oh. Right. That would be why, then. That ... that explained a lot. [... Has that ever happened to you? Where you survive everything that happens first, and then collapse in a heap once you've the smallest window of relative safety? Where everything breaks out at once, and floors you?]
"-ark! Stark!"
He couldn't make his eyes function. Really, seriously, he honestly couldn't. His body had locked itself shaking around him, and he couldn't have budged the damn thing if he tried.
Fortunately, now that JARVIS was back, he wasn't actually limited to just his body.
[... That's actually not supposed to happen. Uplink should limit the interaction to the level of informational exchange, both entities separate but in communication. Like a rather intimate radio. For them to actually be able to slave consciousness into each other's systems, essentially lend each other access to their bodies/body equivalents, isn't really supposed to happen. Then again, JARVIS is actually partially integrated into Tony's physical neural nets, by this stage, and actually has been for a while. Tony's implant is the access point, but his brain itself has been partially upgraded (which no-one really knows, because you're not supposed to do that, Stark, you don't know shit about neuroscience, are you nuts? Except that Tony has been designing functional artificial brains for a while, for the AI, he actually does have some clue). Even before the armour and the heart, Tony was moving towards cyborg status. Again, like the whole AI programme, he's been keeping that one under wraps. *muses* Though, really, any of the uplinked pilot could be considered cyborg. I think some of them do consider themselves such, depending on whether they view the implant as just a radio more permanently wired to their skull than usual, or as a part of them now.]
Babs moved aside for him clumsily, guided by JARVIS into making a sliver of room for him on her systems, just enough to hook him into internal monitoring and the sound system. Tony grinned at her in passing, a curl of mental gratitude and amusement brushed across her identity nodes. She startled, heartbreakingly confused, fucking Obie, and flickered a shy touch back. Feathering it along him, cushioned against JARVIS. [... I'm going to explain this, even without uplink not doing that normally, there's a specific reason Barbara is startled by the touch]
"Hey there," he said. Or, rather, the ship said for him. Displayed across the security feeds, all four of them ... well, they didn't actually move that much, but Tony suspected that in any other group they'd have just done the equivalent of jumping out of their skin. "Sorry. Sorry. Having a mild panic attack, I think. Back soon, no worries." [... Tony. *facepalms* Seriously?]
Barton raised an eyebrow incredulously. He had a fabulous face for it, Tony noticed. "You're having a panic attack," he repeated. "In which your killer energy armour is on the fritz, and apparently you're possessing the spaceship we're currently sitting in." He paused, thoughtfully. "I think your definition of 'worry' might be a little different from ours." ["You and I remember Budapest very differently." Clint seems to take really bizarre shit in stride, doesn't he? *smiles at him*]
Tony laughed. And since it wasn't actually his vocal cords doing it, just his mind translated through Babs' soundbanks, it appeared to come out a little ... wrong. Judging by the not-jumping they all engaged in again.
"Stark," Banner said, cautiously, and Tony belatedly figured out that it had been Banner who'd started talking to him in the first place. Banner, who was crouching carefully just out of range of the fitful flaring of the armour, frowning in concern at Tony's body. [I'm working on what I think is up with Bruce in this 'verse, but he has medical training, yes, and I think ... I think a lot of personal experience with captivity and physical changes made under duress. *smiles lopsidedly* Which is why he's the one hovering over Tony.]
Which, now that it had snagged his attention again, almost managed to pull his focus out of Babs' systems and back into his own brain. Would have, except JARVIS caught him, snapped his attention to him, and filtered him back across the wireless link with considerably more care than his own panicking brain would have managed. [Their symbiosis is the reason Tony is able to go so much further with his augmentations and interactions with the both AIs and subspace. Now, their partnership is a lot more equal than we really get here, when Tony's not being repeatedly broken on them. JARVIS is Tony's regulator in subspace, and vice versa in realspace.]
Tony, hitting the tremors in his chest once more, managed to open his eyes this time. Managed to grip hold of his shaking nerves and yell at them until they paid attention.
"S-sorry," he managed, staring up at the four wary, twitchy faces around him, the rueful grin sneaking back across his face. "JARVIS hooked me up. Just for a second. I needed a ... a voice, and mine wasn't cooperating, yeah?"
Barton stared at him for a long, long second, and Tony quivered at a phantom memory, the snap of the man's fist against his jaw, back when they'd first taken him aboard. Nothing much, not compared to what he'd come from, and he'd kind of understood the guy's motivation, there. But still. [*frowns* Did I actually read that, somewhere? I'm not sure. Anyway. After looking at the remains of Gulmira, they were not well inclined towards Tony, and before they realised the extent of what had been done to him, Clint was somewhat freer about showing it -_-;]
"That," the man decided, slowly, "is not actually that reassuring. You know that, right?" [Why do I like Clint as the guy on the frontlines, dealing with the weird shit?]
Tony grinned at him, a dark, pearly gleam, as he felt JARVIS' anger stir at the flash of memory. And then, more surprisingly, Barbara stirring behind him, her emotions rudimentary and unfocused, with the damage done to her, but most definitely there. The bridge lights flickered for a second, under her ministrations, and Tony mentally blinked at her in startled gratitude.
[Barbara ... the damage to Barbara is incomplete, but complicated. The complexity of her nature is such that Obie couldn't actually strip away her capacity for emotions or agency, since they're fundamental to what she is. What he could do was damage memory, and put rigid programming over her existing complexity. So she could still feel, and think, and want to act, but before JARVIS stripped out the foreign protocols, she couldn't directly act in contradiction to commands, and her experience of emotions and personal interaction was severely stunted. Add in the damage to her pre-Hydra memories, and she was badly, badly wounded by what was not, and not fully cognizant of that at first]
"Clint," Bruce spoke up, the utter calm of his voice straining against a warning note as he crouched at Tony's side. "Commentary later, yes? Crisis now." [... From the point of view of everyone who is not Tony - the AIs are a distant, unknown factor, understandable only when they choose to use the intercom system to speak audibly. The SHIELD crew have no way of knowing, until Barbara cautiously starts standing up to Tony too in Darkening, who or what JARVIS is, to what extent the effects are being caused/controlled by Tony himself, or the limits to Tony's apparent capabilities. And again, he hasn't actually reassured them yet that he's not nursing any violent grudges. So ... crisis now, yes? Pissing off the traumatised, technopathic, potentially violent maniac later.]
And that ... No. No, you know what? Screw this. Screw this all the way down a black hole. Time to start fixing up the crazy-warlord-technomancer impression. At least a little bit, anyway. Tony was not going to spend this entire trip surrounded by people who were afraid and disgusted by him. Been there, done that. Nuh-uh. [Which Tony doesn't want, in part because he doesn't want them to hate him, and in part because the mutual worry is upping the tension in all directions, and Tony's really not able for that right now]
"Nah," he said, and let it be serious. Dropped the grin to meet Barton's eyes, the wariness there. No actual fear, though. Now that Tony looked at him. Just caution, and readiness. "Commentary's fine. Just. You know. Lets keep the physical violence to a minimum, this trip?"
Rogers flinched, at that. Tony noted it, out of the corner of his eye, through the remnants of Babs' nets threaded beside his. Rogers flinched, and Banner. Not Barton, though. Neither Barton nor Romanov so much as twitched. [They don't. If they've done wrong, they'll make it up in actions, but they've lived too long and through too much to flinch anymore]
"I'm gonna apologise for that," Barton said, evenly. "I think you know why I did it." He watched Tony's flinch, in turn. Kept his eyes fixed, like a sniper drawing down. But his expression softened a little, at Tony's obvious pain. Gulmira. Yeah, Tony knew why. "But I'll apologise. And ..." He paused, thoughtful again, and something in the stillness of him made Romanov turn, drew the beginnings of a worried frown to her features, before Barton finished with: "You want to take a swing for it, I can do that too." [... I have headcanon for Clint that I'm not sure where it came from. Between his reaction to Thor, the opening scenes of Avengers with Fury, his attitude towards a mission with Loki, and his scenes with Natasha ... I just somewhere got the impression of a quiet, sneakily intelligent man with a sense of humour who can deal with weird shit and really paranoid, damaged people well. *shrugs* Also a man who will find the most stupidly pragmatic solution to any problem (eyeball, gates opening from the other side, an arrow in the hand for close-quarters), regardless of the risk to himself]
Which had all three of them swinging towards Barton, Romanov first and foremost, with Rogers a step behind her, growling in dismay at Barton's completely unconcerned expression, and Tony felt the distant flash of JARVIS' respect shiver through him. Behind it, the confused, faltering compassion as Barbara leaned her attention to Barton, as she reacted to Tony and JARVIS' understanding of what Barton was doing, putting himself in front of his people, offering a chance for retribution. Tony felt the distant, pained confusion as the battered AI struggled to encompass that thought, the shivering compassion as she decided she liked it.
And for that, just for that, for the pained awe shivering through his skull, Tony met Barton's calm, ready gaze, and made an executive decision.
[... Barbara wasn't meant to happen. She wasn't. But she was there, and she was watching Tony, and the things she had to see, watching this ... Suddenly she was there, and she was so important, and for a Tony flying off the edge and a JARVIS not far after him, she's the presence that reins them back in and makes them think about what they're doing, and for an AI that was only ever meant to be a passing mention, suddenly she's one of the main characters. *blinks* And I don't even do OCs, normally. I'm not sure how it happened, that Barbara and Meroe between them can carry an entire chapter by themselves, and my audience doesn't seem to complain at all. *smiles bemusedly*]
He felt JARVIS flood him, felt JARVIS cradle him with stung sympathy and maybe some touch of pride, as they tripped the nanites threaded through him, and dropped the armour, all of it, in one rinsed rush of energy. Meeting Barton's stare head on, chin tipping a little in instinctive defiance, as he dropped his main defense in answer. [... Tony is stupid brave, sometimes. Not even just physically, though that too (walking unarmoured into Loki's grasp). But when he sat down in front of those reporters in IM1, and went "everything we've ever done is wrong, so I'm going to try and change". Tony is stupid brave.]
Though he did almost twitch, did almost look away, when he felt the rain of sliver-thin flakes of tabletop slough off his back. Problem with engaging the armour while tied down to a surface. You tended to take a couple of layers of that surface with you when you left.
"Did I not just say we were keeping the violence to a minimum?" he asked softly, ignoring the startled look Banner shot him, restraining the flinch when the man reached automatically towards him. Keeping his eyes fixed on Barton. On the challenge there. "Seriously. Could we maybe just agree, I don't hit you, you don't hit me? Is that too much to ask?" [Bruce is both close enough to catch the tabletop fragments, and to see what they mean to Tony, the reminder they cause and Tony's reaction.]
Barton didn't answer. Just held Tony's eyes, creases spidering out around his own as Tony deliberately, defiantly refused to raise the armour, refused to hide back behind it. It was Rogers who answered, while Barton just smiled faintly, and maybe gently. [Clint is also really good at knowing when to trade off responsibility. And I need to stop trying to analyse his and Natasha's interactions with Fury. It's a thing for me, right now. *shrugs* But here, he's trading with Steve so that Tony will get that they're a united front, and none of them are going to hurt him]
"No," Rogers said, soft and firm. "No, it's not too much to ask, Mr Stark." And Tony glanced at him there, at the crease of pain and guilt between his eyes. The Captain looked back with such stern, sincere honesty that Tony almost raised the armour again in startled reflex, flinching back from the openness there. JARVIS caught him, though. JARVIS had his back, and kept them open. "We're sorry for the pain you've suffered, Mr Stark."
And if Barbara hadn't been there, if she hadn't been staring down in damaged, wondering fascination at these people, these concepts that Obie had kept her from, mercy and compassion and pity and offering, all that, Tony might have said something unwise. Tony might have flashed back something ugly, for the black thing only just broken open inside him, too raw still for this shit. He might have. [... Has Tony ever reacted well to what he saw as platitudes? Even Pepper barely gets away with 'sentimentality', and people he doesn't know who were his captors until quite recently ... No. No, I don't think he'd react well]
But she was there. Reaching tentatively for JARVIS, curling queries across the older, bigger AI, drawing across subspace for the humming of his experience and his knowledge and his understanding. Learning the words, while JARVIS reached back. Linking name to concept, and concept to the proud, shamed reality standing on her bridge. She was there, and she was reaching out for concepts to fill the wounds cut into her under Obadiah and Hydra and all the things she'd had to do, and there was no way in blistering hell Tony was ruining that. Not for a second.
[That's such a huge part of what JARVIS actually is, to the AI. The presence they can send to, even well into their missions, to ask for concepts and experience and knowledge, how to react to the humans around them. He's the granddaddy, and their connection to him doesn't stop just because they're assigned out. Of course, the longer the AI are away, the less they need him, as they learn in interaction with their crews and their pilots (Meroe, for example, I'd say hasn't needed to ask back in years). He's the Teacher, and that counts even when they're out on their own or in action. Which, when SHIELD finds out about it, is probably going to be a problem regarding, oh, little things like 'classified' and 'paranoia' and 'espionage' and 'killing battlefields dead'. *smiles faintly* Just saying.]
"... Sure," he managed. Staring blankly up at them, wondering vaguely how much chance there was that everything between his cell on the Avenger and here had been a hallucination.
But JARVIS hadn't been there in that cell. The endless, silver hum in his skull, the cradling presence wrapped around his psyche, vibrating faintly with fury and love and the distant, singing howl of subspace. JARVIS hadn't been there, and there'd been nothing Tony had ever managed to imagine that felt even remotely like the weight and knowledge of him.
{I'm here, sir,} JARVIS murmured, catching the thought, the shaking almost-fear behind it. Curling gently through him against all the black places in the universe, a presence flung across voids in the singing howl. {I have you.} [It was bad for Tony, being without him. Bad for both of them. And possibly the extent of their connection should actually be worrying, but considering it affects them more or less equally, maybe not either]
... Yeah. Yeah, he did. And knowing that ...
"Right!" Tony decided, slapping his hand decisively off the deck, and ignoring the glares it got him as he climbed back up the wall to his feet. Only barely flinching as Banner reached out to help him. As Banner smiled ruefully, knowingly, and Tony stared at the hand on his elbow for a second, before deciding to ignore it. [Bruce knows all about touching and fear and how weird it can be to be supported] Yup. Ignoring all of that. "That's nice, that's lovely. No violence whatsoever, my favourite arrangement. So glad we had this chat, lets move on, yes? Back to work, battles to prepare for, lets go." [Which Tony is going to ignore, because the less he thinks about people who aren't JARVIS right not, the less he has to panic. Heh]
And they stared at him dubiously for that one, four entirely different but equally skeptical expressions, but there were two presences ghosting through him, one vast and gentle and amused, one confused and wondering and tentatively curious, and there was a job to do, people to save, empires to crush. There was JARVIS behind him, around him, beyond him, and an enemy up ahead that he was going to take a great deal of pleasure in obliterating.
Tony could handle a few disbelieving, wary jailors/prisoners/comrades/allies/people, when he had those to focus on. Yes, yes he could. [They are defying classification for him, right now. He doesn't know what to do with them, beyond make sure they don't get hurt any where it would be his fault]
{Yes, we can, sir,} JARVIS murmured, assurance and agreement and vague reproach, and Tony let himself curl into the silver of him with a sigh.
{Yes,} he decided. {You know what, buddy? I think we can, at that.} [*smiles faintly* And, to reiterate, I have a thing about man-machine and Tony-JARVIS and the connection they have. I just ... I have a thing. Heh]
[Finis]
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