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A direct sequel to Sky Iron. When I wrote it, someone commented on the funny image of Ursula the bear daemon trying to fit into an F-22. All these months later ... I figured I should do something with that -_-;
Title: If You Try Sometimes
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Iron Man Movieverse, His Dark Materials
Characters/Pairings: James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Tony Stark, Jarvis, Ursula (Rhodey's daemon). Tony & Rhodey, Tony & Jarvis, Rhodey & Ursula, Ursula & Jarvis
Summary: Direct sequel to Sky Iron. Rhodey and his daemon help put Tony and Jarvis back together in Afghanistan. After all, they know what he's going through.
Wordcount: 2187
Warnings/Notes: Alternate universe, IM/HDM fusion. Soul bonds (daemons), psychic violence (separation), alternate discrimation (against wrong daemons)
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: If You Try Sometimes
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Iron Man Movieverse, His Dark Materials
Characters/Pairings: James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Tony Stark, Jarvis, Ursula (Rhodey's daemon). Tony & Rhodey, Tony & Jarvis, Rhodey & Ursula, Ursula & Jarvis
Summary: Direct sequel to Sky Iron. Rhodey and his daemon help put Tony and Jarvis back together in Afghanistan. After all, they know what he's going through.
Wordcount: 2187
Warnings/Notes: Alternate universe, IM/HDM fusion. Soul bonds (daemons), psychic violence (separation), alternate discrimation (against wrong daemons)
Disclaimer: Not mine
If You Try Sometimes
"... It's not that bad, you know," Rhodey said quietly. "It gets easier. And it has a few advantages."
Tony looked at him, wry and crooked, from where he was leaning against the concrete wall of the base hangar. Jarvis was coiled desperately tight around his neck and shoulders, head curled under Tony's chin. The pair of them had been staring out at the desert for the past hour, the same dark, lidded expression on man and daemon both. Looking back, Rhodey thought. Or looking forward, into a suddenly uncertain future.
"You didn't separate the way we did," Ursula went on, taking over from Rhodey with gentle ease, her weight warm against Rhodey's leg, her fur thick and soothing beneath his fingers. She didn't flinch, even with the memories running through them both. The sacrifice they'd made, calmly and logically, so that they could have the life they wanted, and be the people they'd always wanted to be. "It was forced on you, we know that. But now that you have ... Well. It doesn't have to be bad. Not from here. You don't have to be afraid of it."
They didn't answer, for a while. Tony and Jarvis. They'd been silent for days now, the pair of them answering only to important questions and then as briefly and monosyllabically as possible. It was enough to be alarming even if you didn't know them, but if you did, if you knew how talkative the pair of them were normally, then it was really, really worrying.
Rhodey, maybe strangely, wasn't as worried as he should have been. Ursula neither. Oh, they weren't exactly calm about it, they were scared and angry and ready to dig up the charred remains of the damn Ten Rings in order to kill them all over again. They were all of that. But they weren't worried quite the way they should have been.
They understood this part, Rhodey thought. Watching Tony press Jarvis' coils into his chest with one hand, watching the pair try to fuse themselves back together by pressure and sheer force of will. This part, he and Ursula understood.
The Air Force didn't accept people with ground daemons over a certain size. Birds and insects, mostly, people with flight in their soul, people small enough and determined enough to take to the skies in little tin cans. Air Force didn't accept people like him, whose souls had settled, as much for survival as anything else, into things large enough and powerful enough to hold their own in a world that didn't like them very much.
Unless, of course, the size of the daemon was no longer an issue. Unless the bond you had would allow you to fling yourself thousands of miles distant from your daemon without a flinch. The Air Force wouldn't accept you ... unless you were separated.
So they'd decided, him and Ursula. Way back in MIT, way back when they'd fought free enough to build a new life, to make themselves into something they wanted to be, not just something they needed to be. James Rhodes and his she-bear of a daemon. They'd decided, with very few qualms and very little fuss, that they were willing to go that far to have what they'd always wanted. They were willing to do that much.
"After all," Ursula had said. "People with bird daemons do it all the time. I'll just be a daemon with a bird human, that's all."
Rhodey'd loved her for that, back then. And he loved her for that now, all over again. His daemon, the better part of his soul. He loved her with everything he had, and didn't bother to wonder if it could, as Tony'd said once, be construed as narcissism.
"... Did I ever apologise?" Tony asked, at last. Tired and pained, but also smiling. Just a little bit. Just a touch of wry humour, somewhere under there. "For being such a shit, back then?"
Rhodey laughed, a soft, warm chuckle as he moved to park himself against the wall next to the man, just out of range of Jarvis' coils. Ursula, leaning beside him, grinned a bearish grin in turn.
"You were seventeen," he pointed out, gently enough. "You were seventeen years old, and younger than everyone there, and I'm pretty sure you were working on being a professional shit, with the amount of effort you were putting into it." He grinned, and tried not to cheer at the tiny smirk Tony couldn't quite hide in return. "It's alright. We didn't feel singled out or anything."
"Thanks," Tony said, dryly. "Thanks, honey bear, that's real comforting." Jarvis, his head arching up to curl along Tony's ear, hissed a tiny laugh to himself.
"Yeah, well," Rhodey shrugged, elbowing the man's arm lightly. "We figured you out pretty quick, me and Ursula. You've just got to know which bit of asshattery to ignore, and which to actually get mad about. Pretty simple, once you get the hang of it."
"They have us there," Jarvis noted wryly, wrapping the end of his tail around Tony's wrist. Constant contact, since they'd been reunited. It would be a while yet before they managed anything else. "Though I think that particular bit of asshattery, as you call it, probably was worth some anger?"
He was looking at Ursula, as he said it. Jarvis looked down at the daemon who'd carried him through the agony of the initial separation, and done her damnedest to keep him sane long enough to rejoin his human afterwards. Jarvis looked down at Ursula, and his sibilant voice was soft around the opinion, and maybe a little shamed.
"Yeah," Rhodey agreed quietly. Catching Tony's eyes, catching the pained darkness there. "Which was why we did get mad." He shrugged. "I seem to remember a screaming row the night we told you? And then I'm pretty sure we ignored you for the next month, afterwards."
That had been a fun night, he remembered. That had been a fabulous evening. They'd geared themselves up, Ursula and he. They'd gotten more than a little drunk, and they'd gone over to Tony's dorm, and they'd tried to tell the one friend in the world they'd thought might understand what they meant to do.
Tony had stared at them, and Tony'd tried to bend his head around it, and Tony flipped out. Tony had listened just long enough to realise what they were talking about, and then he'd told them, in no uncertain terms, that he thought they were insane, that no job was worth that, that no academy or goddamn uniform could possibly be worth doing that to yourself. Tony'd taken just long enough to get it, and then he'd dismissed it, and them, out of hand.
It had hurt. It had more than hurt. It had gutted them, him and Ursula both. Everyone else they'd talked to had done the same, had told them exactly how stupid and insane and self-destructive and wrong they were. Everyone they knew, with the exception of Mom, had told them exactly what they were for considering it. They'd thought Tony would be different. They'd thought Tony and Jarvis, who had resolutely refused to be in any way normal, might understand.
And it had damn near broken them, when they realised he wouldn't.
They'd figured it out, later. They'd figured out about Tony, and Jarvis, and having one person in the world who wouldn't leave you, one person in all the world who could be part of you and stay part of you. They'd figured out what that meant to Tony, to have someone like that, and how genuinely horrified he'd been at the thought of willfully throwing it away. They'd figured out why the thought of separation had caused the then-kid to flip out like nobody's business.
It had been too late by then, though. Too late to say sorry, too late to change their minds, too late to do anything but go through with it, and try to pick up the pieces on the other side.
Much like now, really. Like right now, trying to pick up the pieces of the man that kid had become, that desperate, angry seventeen year old, after everything he'd been terrified of back then had come to pass.
God fucking damn it, Rhodey thought. It just figured, didn't it? It just fucking figured.
"... You helped," Ursula reminded them, softly. Looking up at Tony, at Jarvis. At him. Pressing her weight in close, to remind them all. "You helped, once you realised we'd done it. Once you knew it couldn't be taken back. You helped us."
Tony screwed his eyes shut, leaning back as though to push himself into the concrete, to dig himself back away from them. Jarvis slithered up around his shoulders, putting the bulk of his weight into the coils hanging forward across Tony's chest, letting Tony do it. Letting Tony have that much.
"We were stupid," Tony managed, not opening his eyes. "We figured that out. We were stupid, and we shouldn't have laughed at you, and we should have helped you sooner. We wanted ... we wanted to fix it. To say we were sorry."
He didn't open his eyes, even as Jarvis slithered forward, even as Jarvis slid free of him altogether, save for the tip of his tail still coiled around one wrist, and dropped down onto Ursula instead. Tony didn't blink, even as his daemon left him for the first time since his recovery, and coiled himself around Rhodey's instead.
Rhodey did. Rhodey blinked, spat out a sudden curse at the shock of sensation through Ursula as Jarvis made contact, and hissed in angry, savage pain for Tony. For his friend. Rhodey flinched, and reached out to yank Tony close, to wrap his arms around the goddamned fucking idiot. Ursula growled beside him, low and heavy in her throat, and pressed her chin down onto Jarvis' coils, slamming her flank back into Rhodey, pressing back with all her weight and effectively joining the four of them together. Fusing them, by pressure and sheer force of will.
"You can't fix it," Rhodey growled, hard and tight while he gripped Tony's nape and felt Jarvis' weight against his daemon. "And we can't fix it, we can't go back and ride with you, we can't make it so it didn't happen. I wish we could. Shit, Tony, I wish we could. But we can't. So we just ..." He struggled, swallowed. "We just try to help you now. The way you tried then. Okay? We just try to make it better now. How about that?"
Tony didn't answer, not for a long second, shuddering against them, but when he did ... When he did, Rhodey thought there was a smile in it. Somewhere down under the thickness and the knot of emotion. He thought there was a smile.
"No offense, Rhodey, but I don't think either of you guys has the tech know-how to make up a snake-sized headset. Just saying."
Talking about their apology gift, way back when. Talking about the radio Tony'd made up, because you couldn't trust that government-issue crap, so that Rhodey could have Ursula's voice in his ear no matter how far and how fast he flew from her. So that, separated or not, Air Force or not, Rhodey would never truly be without his daemon.
Hell of an apology, Rhodey'd thought then. Distantly, around the angry, shaking hollowness in his chest where Ursula was only just reintegrating herself. It had been ... one hell of an apology, and one hell of a gift.
"Yeah, well," Ursula murmured now, a little thickly, lost in her own memories. The witch-daemon with her bird human, standing beside the Panzermensch and his serpent soul. "Jarvis couldn't pull it off near so well as me anyway. I think ... I think we'd have to come up with something different regardless."
Tony laughed, a strange, strangled thing, muffled against Rhodey's shoulder. "I'm sure you'll manage something," he managed thickly, his hands tight in the shirt at Rhodey's back, and Rhodey found himself meeting Jarvis' eyes. He found himself looking at Tony's soul where it lay curled so close around his own, and he found himself agreeing. Silently, vehemently, Rhodey found himself in complete agreement with his friend.
"Yeah," he said softly, holding Tony close. "You know what? I think we will."
If a man with a bear's soul could find a way to fly, and a man with a flying soul could build a bear's armour to survive, and two daemons could find a way to hold each other together no matter what the hell happened ... then between them, the four of them, they could damn well figure out how to fit these pieces back together, and make a life out of them. One way or another. They were gonna make it work, what they wanted as much as needed, and damn anyone who said different.
"... We're gonna make it," Rhodey whispered roughly, into Tony's ear. "You just watch. We're gonna be fine."
It wasn't like there was anyone good enough to prevent them, was it?
"... It's not that bad, you know," Rhodey said quietly. "It gets easier. And it has a few advantages."
Tony looked at him, wry and crooked, from where he was leaning against the concrete wall of the base hangar. Jarvis was coiled desperately tight around his neck and shoulders, head curled under Tony's chin. The pair of them had been staring out at the desert for the past hour, the same dark, lidded expression on man and daemon both. Looking back, Rhodey thought. Or looking forward, into a suddenly uncertain future.
"You didn't separate the way we did," Ursula went on, taking over from Rhodey with gentle ease, her weight warm against Rhodey's leg, her fur thick and soothing beneath his fingers. She didn't flinch, even with the memories running through them both. The sacrifice they'd made, calmly and logically, so that they could have the life they wanted, and be the people they'd always wanted to be. "It was forced on you, we know that. But now that you have ... Well. It doesn't have to be bad. Not from here. You don't have to be afraid of it."
They didn't answer, for a while. Tony and Jarvis. They'd been silent for days now, the pair of them answering only to important questions and then as briefly and monosyllabically as possible. It was enough to be alarming even if you didn't know them, but if you did, if you knew how talkative the pair of them were normally, then it was really, really worrying.
Rhodey, maybe strangely, wasn't as worried as he should have been. Ursula neither. Oh, they weren't exactly calm about it, they were scared and angry and ready to dig up the charred remains of the damn Ten Rings in order to kill them all over again. They were all of that. But they weren't worried quite the way they should have been.
They understood this part, Rhodey thought. Watching Tony press Jarvis' coils into his chest with one hand, watching the pair try to fuse themselves back together by pressure and sheer force of will. This part, he and Ursula understood.
The Air Force didn't accept people with ground daemons over a certain size. Birds and insects, mostly, people with flight in their soul, people small enough and determined enough to take to the skies in little tin cans. Air Force didn't accept people like him, whose souls had settled, as much for survival as anything else, into things large enough and powerful enough to hold their own in a world that didn't like them very much.
Unless, of course, the size of the daemon was no longer an issue. Unless the bond you had would allow you to fling yourself thousands of miles distant from your daemon without a flinch. The Air Force wouldn't accept you ... unless you were separated.
So they'd decided, him and Ursula. Way back in MIT, way back when they'd fought free enough to build a new life, to make themselves into something they wanted to be, not just something they needed to be. James Rhodes and his she-bear of a daemon. They'd decided, with very few qualms and very little fuss, that they were willing to go that far to have what they'd always wanted. They were willing to do that much.
"After all," Ursula had said. "People with bird daemons do it all the time. I'll just be a daemon with a bird human, that's all."
Rhodey'd loved her for that, back then. And he loved her for that now, all over again. His daemon, the better part of his soul. He loved her with everything he had, and didn't bother to wonder if it could, as Tony'd said once, be construed as narcissism.
"... Did I ever apologise?" Tony asked, at last. Tired and pained, but also smiling. Just a little bit. Just a touch of wry humour, somewhere under there. "For being such a shit, back then?"
Rhodey laughed, a soft, warm chuckle as he moved to park himself against the wall next to the man, just out of range of Jarvis' coils. Ursula, leaning beside him, grinned a bearish grin in turn.
"You were seventeen," he pointed out, gently enough. "You were seventeen years old, and younger than everyone there, and I'm pretty sure you were working on being a professional shit, with the amount of effort you were putting into it." He grinned, and tried not to cheer at the tiny smirk Tony couldn't quite hide in return. "It's alright. We didn't feel singled out or anything."
"Thanks," Tony said, dryly. "Thanks, honey bear, that's real comforting." Jarvis, his head arching up to curl along Tony's ear, hissed a tiny laugh to himself.
"Yeah, well," Rhodey shrugged, elbowing the man's arm lightly. "We figured you out pretty quick, me and Ursula. You've just got to know which bit of asshattery to ignore, and which to actually get mad about. Pretty simple, once you get the hang of it."
"They have us there," Jarvis noted wryly, wrapping the end of his tail around Tony's wrist. Constant contact, since they'd been reunited. It would be a while yet before they managed anything else. "Though I think that particular bit of asshattery, as you call it, probably was worth some anger?"
He was looking at Ursula, as he said it. Jarvis looked down at the daemon who'd carried him through the agony of the initial separation, and done her damnedest to keep him sane long enough to rejoin his human afterwards. Jarvis looked down at Ursula, and his sibilant voice was soft around the opinion, and maybe a little shamed.
"Yeah," Rhodey agreed quietly. Catching Tony's eyes, catching the pained darkness there. "Which was why we did get mad." He shrugged. "I seem to remember a screaming row the night we told you? And then I'm pretty sure we ignored you for the next month, afterwards."
That had been a fun night, he remembered. That had been a fabulous evening. They'd geared themselves up, Ursula and he. They'd gotten more than a little drunk, and they'd gone over to Tony's dorm, and they'd tried to tell the one friend in the world they'd thought might understand what they meant to do.
Tony had stared at them, and Tony'd tried to bend his head around it, and Tony flipped out. Tony had listened just long enough to realise what they were talking about, and then he'd told them, in no uncertain terms, that he thought they were insane, that no job was worth that, that no academy or goddamn uniform could possibly be worth doing that to yourself. Tony'd taken just long enough to get it, and then he'd dismissed it, and them, out of hand.
It had hurt. It had more than hurt. It had gutted them, him and Ursula both. Everyone else they'd talked to had done the same, had told them exactly how stupid and insane and self-destructive and wrong they were. Everyone they knew, with the exception of Mom, had told them exactly what they were for considering it. They'd thought Tony would be different. They'd thought Tony and Jarvis, who had resolutely refused to be in any way normal, might understand.
And it had damn near broken them, when they realised he wouldn't.
They'd figured it out, later. They'd figured out about Tony, and Jarvis, and having one person in the world who wouldn't leave you, one person in all the world who could be part of you and stay part of you. They'd figured out what that meant to Tony, to have someone like that, and how genuinely horrified he'd been at the thought of willfully throwing it away. They'd figured out why the thought of separation had caused the then-kid to flip out like nobody's business.
It had been too late by then, though. Too late to say sorry, too late to change their minds, too late to do anything but go through with it, and try to pick up the pieces on the other side.
Much like now, really. Like right now, trying to pick up the pieces of the man that kid had become, that desperate, angry seventeen year old, after everything he'd been terrified of back then had come to pass.
God fucking damn it, Rhodey thought. It just figured, didn't it? It just fucking figured.
"... You helped," Ursula reminded them, softly. Looking up at Tony, at Jarvis. At him. Pressing her weight in close, to remind them all. "You helped, once you realised we'd done it. Once you knew it couldn't be taken back. You helped us."
Tony screwed his eyes shut, leaning back as though to push himself into the concrete, to dig himself back away from them. Jarvis slithered up around his shoulders, putting the bulk of his weight into the coils hanging forward across Tony's chest, letting Tony do it. Letting Tony have that much.
"We were stupid," Tony managed, not opening his eyes. "We figured that out. We were stupid, and we shouldn't have laughed at you, and we should have helped you sooner. We wanted ... we wanted to fix it. To say we were sorry."
He didn't open his eyes, even as Jarvis slithered forward, even as Jarvis slid free of him altogether, save for the tip of his tail still coiled around one wrist, and dropped down onto Ursula instead. Tony didn't blink, even as his daemon left him for the first time since his recovery, and coiled himself around Rhodey's instead.
Rhodey did. Rhodey blinked, spat out a sudden curse at the shock of sensation through Ursula as Jarvis made contact, and hissed in angry, savage pain for Tony. For his friend. Rhodey flinched, and reached out to yank Tony close, to wrap his arms around the goddamned fucking idiot. Ursula growled beside him, low and heavy in her throat, and pressed her chin down onto Jarvis' coils, slamming her flank back into Rhodey, pressing back with all her weight and effectively joining the four of them together. Fusing them, by pressure and sheer force of will.
"You can't fix it," Rhodey growled, hard and tight while he gripped Tony's nape and felt Jarvis' weight against his daemon. "And we can't fix it, we can't go back and ride with you, we can't make it so it didn't happen. I wish we could. Shit, Tony, I wish we could. But we can't. So we just ..." He struggled, swallowed. "We just try to help you now. The way you tried then. Okay? We just try to make it better now. How about that?"
Tony didn't answer, not for a long second, shuddering against them, but when he did ... When he did, Rhodey thought there was a smile in it. Somewhere down under the thickness and the knot of emotion. He thought there was a smile.
"No offense, Rhodey, but I don't think either of you guys has the tech know-how to make up a snake-sized headset. Just saying."
Talking about their apology gift, way back when. Talking about the radio Tony'd made up, because you couldn't trust that government-issue crap, so that Rhodey could have Ursula's voice in his ear no matter how far and how fast he flew from her. So that, separated or not, Air Force or not, Rhodey would never truly be without his daemon.
Hell of an apology, Rhodey'd thought then. Distantly, around the angry, shaking hollowness in his chest where Ursula was only just reintegrating herself. It had been ... one hell of an apology, and one hell of a gift.
"Yeah, well," Ursula murmured now, a little thickly, lost in her own memories. The witch-daemon with her bird human, standing beside the Panzermensch and his serpent soul. "Jarvis couldn't pull it off near so well as me anyway. I think ... I think we'd have to come up with something different regardless."
Tony laughed, a strange, strangled thing, muffled against Rhodey's shoulder. "I'm sure you'll manage something," he managed thickly, his hands tight in the shirt at Rhodey's back, and Rhodey found himself meeting Jarvis' eyes. He found himself looking at Tony's soul where it lay curled so close around his own, and he found himself agreeing. Silently, vehemently, Rhodey found himself in complete agreement with his friend.
"Yeah," he said softly, holding Tony close. "You know what? I think we will."
If a man with a bear's soul could find a way to fly, and a man with a flying soul could build a bear's armour to survive, and two daemons could find a way to hold each other together no matter what the hell happened ... then between them, the four of them, they could damn well figure out how to fit these pieces back together, and make a life out of them. One way or another. They were gonna make it work, what they wanted as much as needed, and damn anyone who said different.
"... We're gonna make it," Rhodey whispered roughly, into Tony's ear. "You just watch. We're gonna be fine."
It wasn't like there was anyone good enough to prevent them, was it?
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