Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The LMD project came into being after one of Tony’s…extended nights out.

It started off innocently enough. Obadiah insisted that he attend a memorial dinner to mark the day Howard Stark officially launched Stark Industries. To the best of Tony’s recollection, the evening took a sharp downturn when the speeches in his father’s honour began. It only spiralled further downwards when a member of the board decided to pronounce him the living embodiment of his father’s legacy. A harmless enough comment in hindsight, certainly one he’d heard before, but it did push him to trade in the dry wine they’d been serving for something a little stronger.

He remembered striking up conversation with the date of one of his major competitors (not that he could for the life of him remember either of their names). At some point, they staggered out through the fire exit and made their way into a night club she favoured. He couldn’t remember at what point she left, but he knew others took her place. Vague memories of a hotel and passable champagne drifted through his head, though he couldn’t be sure if they were from the first night or the second. Things got especially hazy after day three, and he’d retained only a vague sense that there was a day four. His next distinct memory consisted of Rhodey hauling him to his feet (did he fall or pass out this time?) and shoving him into the backseat of a car.

“Hey, Happy,” he slurred, jerking back before Rhodey could slam the car door in his face (was it his imagination, or did he use a little more force than necessary?).

“Morning, rough night?” Happy asked, resentment seeping into his voice despite his best effort. As much as he wanted to remain professional, he definitely didn't enjoy being called in at three in the morning to pick up his intoxicated boss.

Tony passed out again before he could even consider the question. He tried his best to block the hangover he woke up with out of his memory, and Rhodey certainly wasn’t offering him any sympathy. Pepper at least had the decency to wait until the splitting pain in his head subsided before yelling at him for disappearing for days on end without so much as a text. After a forty minute lecture, a phone call from the finance offices distracted her long enough for Tony to escape to the lab.

It took all of three seconds for Dum-E to trip him up, whirring and spinning in excitement as if oblivious to Tony’s curses.

“Hey, JARVIS? Do we still have coffee down here?”

“A fresh pot is brewing as we speak, sir.”

Tony collapsed into his desk chair with a sigh of relief. “What would I do without you, J?”

“I’m sure you’d come up with something.”

He sobered up as his thoughts wandered back to the real Jarvis. For the first time since his days at MIT, Tony wondered what the old Stark family butler would have had to say about having the most advanced AI in history named after him.

Perhaps the memorial dinner cut him deeper than he’d been willing to admit.

A part of him wanted to blame the whole ordeal on the lingering effects of the drugs and the persistent hangover which made it rather difficult to think things through properly. Maybe it was the desperate need for a decent distraction that drove him to sketch out the vague concepts and designs floating through his head, but it soon became clear it wouldn’t be enough.

He knew he’d get another lecture from Pepper, but he found himself passing the coffee pot in favour of the minibar he kept fully stocked for emergencies such as this one. He normally avoided drinking in the lab, but he didn’t see the harm so long as he stuck to sketching.

Another hazy night of dreams laced with gin. Another morning spent nursing a hangover. He had the house to himself, at least. He supposed Pepper must have gone home at some point because he saw no sign of her when he staggered upstairs. It was another day before it occurred to him to assess the damage of his drunken experimentations, but what he found made him pause.

With JARVIS’s help, he put together a fairly coherent timeline of everything he’d gotten his hands on in his inebriated state. He’d made a handful of minor alterations to existing projects, nothing too extreme or damaging. A few could even be called improvements.

JARVIS led him forward to a file which had apparently demanded the majority of his attention, inside he found 3D renditions adapted from one of his side projects. Advanced prosthetics for injured soldiers, one of the few non-lethal projects he’d dabbled in over the last few years. Even the prototypes were more advanced than anything else on the market, Obadiah planned to produce and donate a handful of them as part of their very public fundraiser supporting ex-soldiers.

For reasons Tony couldn’t quite recall, he’d chosen to continue working on an already completed design for a prosthetic arm.

Tony sent the design to the holotable for closer inspection, brow furrowing as he took in the designs for what looked like the better part of a human torso. The work wasn’t bad considering Tony couldn’t even remember designing it. He made a motion with his hand, and the holotable generated a colour-coded rendition of the sketch. Artificial tendons lit up before his eyes, fusing artificial muscles to artificial bones. Where the first design had been created to respond to a human amputee, this appeared to be something else entirely. It continued well beyond where the original design ended at the elbow, the intricate interface designed to respond to muscle movements had been cast aside in favour of creating a complete and independent limb.

The design grew less detailed as it progressed, as if Tony had been so desperate to give it physical form that he’d forgone the intricacies in favour of documenting as much of it as possible. He’d made it to the shoulder blade before either the alcohol or the fatigue halted his progress. The lines were wonky where the shoulder blade should have ended, jagged edges where there should be smooth curves.

Tony didn’t make a conscious decision to correct the mistake, but all the same he immersed himself in the project once again as if he couldn’t comprehend the idea of leaving the design unfinished. It had no immediate purpose that he could see yet, but the methodical process was exactly what he needed to ease him out of his latest self-destructive episode. He finished the shoulder and backtracked to fill in the details he’d missed out the night before, stopping only to compare materials for his design. He structured the delicate tendons and tissues of the rotator cuff, manoeuvring the rendering to finish off the artificial clavicle. The other arm was more or less a mirror image of the first, allowing Tony to skip straight to the spine.

He didn’t follow any particular structure in his designing, allowing himself to go off on tangents and explore the design as he pleased. He could fill in the gaps when he found the time, the project was as good as useless anyway.

JARVIS limited interruptions as much as possible. He ensured Tony had consistent access to a source of caffeine and drank plenty of water, steering him clear of the mini bar where possible (he didn’t need much convincing now; with his mind focused on the project he rather preferred his thinking clear.)

The hours flitted by without his notice, so immersed in the delicate strands and intricate mechanisms. In the end, he exhausted his emergency coffee supply and was forced to retreat from his lab. Since he was upstairs anyway, he popped a few more Advil to chase away the last remnants of his hangover. He tried to remember to drink the glasses of water Dummy brought him and JARVIS returned the favour by keeping the criticisms on his caffeine intake to a minimum.

It was easy to lose your sense of time down in the lab. No natural light of any kind, no clocks placed in plain view, privacy settings to filter out all non-essential contact with the outside world. The perfect refuge, if not for one tiny detail.

“Sir, Colonel Rhodes is upstairs.”

Oh yeah, a handful of people outside of the lab had his address.

“Let him know I’m down here,” Tony said without looking up. With any luck, Rhodey would leave him be once he saw him working on a project instead of drinking himself to an early grave.

Immersing himself in the careful stitching of artificial tendons, he almost missed the swish of the automatic door. What he recognised as the opening line of another lecture forced him back to reality.

“You told me you’d call as soon as you got up, Tony.”

“I was getting around to it,” Tony said with a wince. “Just-ah got side-tracked.”

“It’s been two days, Tony.”

That was news.

“JARVIS?” he asked with a frown.

“It’s currently 4:22pm on Thursday, sir.”

…Huh, what do you know.

“I’ve been busy,” he shrugged, frown deepening when he reached for his coffee cup and found it empty. That simply wouldn’t do.

“Busy,” Rhodey repeated.

“Is that scepticism I detect? Are you questioning my work ethic?”

“Yes.”

“…Okay, that’s fair.”

Tony crossed the lab to fill the empty coffee cup, not trusting Dummy to do it after the mess he made of the last mug. Now he looked at it, he should really clean out his coffee pot at some point.

“What is this?” Rhodey called out from the holotable. He craned his neck to examine the hologram without stepping in range of the controls. He learned the hard way that holotables were nowhere near as easy to operate as Tony made it seem.

“Knee joint, trickier than you may think.”

“For the wounded veterans project?” Rhodey asked with a hint of approval. Tony shrugged and held up an empty mug in offering. Call it a peace offering, if you will.

“I’ll pass, last time I let you make me coffee it took a full three days for the jitters to stop.”

So much for his peace offering.

“I was experimenting,” Tony defended, pointedly returning the proffered mug.

“So is this what you’ve been working on since you got back?” Rhodey asked, waving to the holographic rendering.

“In part.” Tony stepped into range of the table and made a pinch gesture, bringing the rest of the model into view. Rhodey’s eyes widened as he took in the image of what, on first glance, looked like the kind of diagram you might expect to find in a medical school. Closer inspection revealed the same absurd level of detail he’d seen on the blown up renditioning of the knee joint.

“Holy shit, Tony. How long have you been working on this?”

“Since you dropped me off,” he said with a shrug and shuffled back to the coffee machine. Rhodes didn’t respond. “What?”

“You did all this in a couple of days.”

Again, Tony shrugged.

“Would it work?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you built it, would it work?”

“Work for what? It’s not designed to do anything; I was just screwing around.”

Rhodey stared at him.

“Tony," he said slowly, "you’re building an android.”

Tony snorted. “Dum-E’s one thing, that is quite another. Besides, what the hell am I going to do with an android? I build weapons, as Obadiah is so keen to remind me. Speaking of, I have real work to do.”

“So…you’re not finishing this?”

“Well…It might be good to get it out of my system first. I’m most the way there, anyway.”

“And you’re seriously telling me you’re not going to try building it after all the work you’ve put in?”

Tony stared at the image hanging in the air above his holotable. How long had it been since he got his hands dirty? Not just working on cars, not just small scale projects or designing blueprints. How long since he got his hands on a challenge?

He already knew the answer to his question; when he custom built the hardware for JARVIS to operate the Malibu house. JARVIS had already evolved a great deal since he built him, he knew he’d need to create something adaptable, something he could expand if he needed to. Co-ordinating with the designers and construction teams was an absolute nightmare, as was physically wiring him into the house, but the servers under the house were a source of great pride for Tony. If you asked Obadiah what Tony’s greatest accomplishment in this world would be, no doubt he would point to the arsenal of weaponry designed under his watchful eye. Stark men were always best at creating things to destroy, but Tony wouldn’t hesitate in answering JARVIS. Not for a second.

“Well,” he said slowly. “I wouldn’t say that.”

xxx

“You told me I could take the rest of the day off,” Tony reminded Obadiah.

“I figured you could use the fresh air. I didn’t mean you should spend the whole day in the lab and slack off work.” His jovial tone did a fine job of concealing his irritation, but Tony knew better.

“I’m working on a side project. And before you asked, no, it doesn’t have any military applications.”

Irritation lanced across Obadiah’s expression, cutting through the fleeting look of interest. “We’re a weapons manufacturer, Tony. If you’re not making weapons, what’s the point?”

Tony shrugged and went back to work unboxing the new materials. “I’m making it on my dime and on my time, that’s all that should matter.”

Obadiah changed tactics, switching from a company interest to a concerned father-figure as easily as Tony would change clothes. “Can I look at your plans, at least? It must be something big to demand this much of your attention.”

Tony waved to the holotable, already lining up tools on his workbench. He couldn’t remember the last time he'd even used this workbench. Obie quietened as he browsed through the schematics. Already Tony had all but forgotten he was even there.

“I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself, Tones,” he commented as he skimmed the designs. “How realistic do you imagine this turning out?”

For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, Tony felt oddly queasy. “Hard to say. Why? What are you thinking, Obie?”

“Well, sure, we couldn’t mass produce it, but if you’re willing to take it on yourself…Well, sometimes it doesn’t hurt to show off just what we’re capable of. We build it claiming it could work as a decoy in high risk situations, something the enemy could mistake for a soldier in a pinch. Maybe we could even use it for bomb defusal. It may not be a sustainable product, but if it works at all, Stark Industries would be celebrated for revolutionising the field of robotics…”

Trust Obadiah to put a price tag on a side project.

“Your call, once I’m finished with it you can tell the investors what you like,” Tony said, making shooing motions with his hands to indicate he wanted to get on with it.

Obadiah stayed where he was a moment longer, Tony felt his eyes fixed on his back.

“This is good work, Tones,” he said before he left.

Obadiah didn’t interrupt the next time he took a day off.

xxx

“So…what is this thing called again?” Pepper asked as she watched Tony work from the desk.

“A Life Model Decoy. LMD for sure.”

“And it’s…a robot.”

“Automated humanoid,” he corrected.

“But it’s a robot.”

“…Yes.”

“I need you to sign this.”

Tony sighed, but stepped away from the workbench to accept the tablet and stylus she offered him all the same. She explained the reason behind the mountain of paperwork not twenty minutes ago, but already he found himself struggling to recall what he was signing off on.

Oh well, if Pepper thought it looked right, who was he to question her judgement?

“I’m still not sure I understand why you’re building it. Don’t you have deadlines coming up?”

“It’s just something I’m working on in my downtime,” Tony said with a shrug and returned to the ankle joint. He couldn’t remember the last time his designs came together so smoothly. “Obie approved it.”

She hummed and handed the tablet back to him with another document to sign.

“It looks pretty intricate.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Almost…fragile.”

Tony paused, unsure of exactly what she was insinuating there. Still, when he examined his handiwork through the magnifying attachment and saw the miniscule attachments, the way they interlocked and worked in perfect unison. Saw how the wrong amount of pressure in the wrong place would be all it would take to make it fall apart…Perhaps fragile wasn’t an inaccurate description.

“How many more of these things do I have to sign?”

“Tony! We just went over this!”

xxx

“It looks kind of creepy.”

“That’s because it’s not done yet.”

“Does it need to be hanging there right now?”

“This is my lab, Rhodey. Where else am I going to put it?”

“I don’t know dude, but you have a half assembled person hanging off the wall and it’s freaking me out!”

“It’s not a person, it’s an automated humanoid.”

“Why can’t you just call it a robot like any other rational human being?”

“Dum-E is a robot, that’s something else.”

“Android, then.”

“Makes me feel like I’m working on a smartphone.”

Rhodey sighed. “Fine, you win, you have a half-assembled automated humanoid hanging on your wall and it’s freaking me out.”

“Don’t look at it, then.”

“That’s worse because I know it’s behind me…watching me.”

"It can't watch you, Rhodey. It doesn't have eyes," Tony deadpanned while trying to keep a straight face.

"It's not stopping that thing. I'll say that right now."

Tony sighed and crossed the lab space, rotating the frame that would soon make up the robot's head 180 degrees until the mannequin-esque impression of a face was turned to face the wall.

"Better?"

Rhodey watched the movement with abject horror.

"Jesus Christ, Tony. No!"

xxx

"I still preferred it when you built robots that actually looked like robots," Rhodey established.

"I'm aware."

"This is weird, Tony."

He shrugged. "The military picked the faces, not me."

"Yeah, believe it or not, that wasn't what was bothering me."

"Care to explain how I'm supposed to develop a robot that appears human without giving it a face?"

"...It's still creepy."

"Would you prefer I use someone else's face?"

"Hmm, let me think about that one. No."

"Well, what do you suggest I do about it? This isn't exactly an obscure side project I can drop whenever I feel like it anymore, Obie's expecting these renditions."

"Since when do you jump into action to meet deadlines?"

"Since when do you discourage me from meeting deadlines?"

"...Alright," Rhodey sighed. "Show me the pictures."

Tony waved his hand and the display lit up. The algorithm scanned through the military supplied profiles of existing soldiers, noting patterns, compiling randomised computer renderings based on their individual features. The whole process only took a few seconds.

"Why do they all look so young?" Rhodey asked with a frown as the next batch of generated images appeared.

"Did you miss the part where I said the military supplied the pictures? I guess they decided to base the rendering on recruitment photos. Bring it up with Obie, he was the one they talked strategy with. I'm just the one being commissioned to build it."

Not that Tony minded. He had to admit, it made a refreshing change from constructing weapons of mass destruction.

"Here, what about this one?"

Rhodey made a face. " It looks so...fake."

"It's just a rendering, it'll look more real once I actually build it."

"Sir, I hate to interrupt but Miss Potts is requesting confirmation on your schedule for this week."

"Perfect!" Rhodey said, leaping at the chance to pass this bizarre responsibility onto someone else. "Ask for Pepper's opinion."

Tony opened his mouth to argue before reconsidering his stance. They weren't making a whole lot of progress on their own...

"I suppose it couldn't hurt. JARVIS, ask Pepper to join us down here, tell her I promise to help her out with the scheduling if she helps me out with this project first."

It didn't take more than a few minutes for Pepper to show up at the door, a wary expression on her face and armed with a tablet.

"What do you want, Tony?"

"Ouch, you almost sound suspicious of me."

"The last time you asked me to help you, you got engine grease on my best skirt."

He winced. "No engine grease this time, I promise. Pick a face."

The suspicion gave way to curiosity. "A face? For what?"

"The LMD, Obie got a selection of sample photos from the military and now we have to choose a computer generated rendering. Pick one."

She stepped closer to get a better look and wrinkled her nose. "This is creepy."

"SEE?"

Tony threw his hands in the air. "See what I get for trying to stick to a deadline?"

"Alright, fine. That one."

"See, Rhodes? Was that really so difficult?"

"I didn't even want to be involved in this in the first place."

"Helloooooo? I'm building this for the military."

"I'm a pilot, Tony," Rhodes deadpanned. "Unless this thing can fly, I really don't see how this affects me."

"Are we done?" Pepper asked. "Because I really wasn't kidding about needing to organise your schedule."

"Hold on a second, which one did you point to again?"

Rhodey leaned in closer to get a better look at her choice.

"Bit young looking, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh not that again."

"What? You called me in for my opinion, right? I'm just saying he looks young."

"He looks honest," Pepper decided. "The others all look too much like mugshots."

"You've got a point there," Tony said under his breath. Something about the rows of blank, expressionless faces did make it seem like they were flipping through suspect list. "Alright, we'll go with that one."

xxx

"It doesn't need to be THAT fancy, Tony. It's just supposed to be a prototype."

"I know that."

"What you've already accomplished is amazing, Tones. Beyond anything else on the market, that's for sure."

"I'm still on schedule, aren't I?"

"...Frankly, Tony, that's part of what's worrying me."

"You're worried that I'm not slacking off? You've never been one to support me skipping out on projects in the past."

"Of course I don't support it but...You're letting this take over your life, Tones. When's the last time you got out of here, huh? It seems like you've dedicated every spare second to this. Maybe it's time to hand it off to someone else, someone who's time is a little less valuable, huh? You've done the hard part, your designs have all been nothing short of immaculate. Maybe leave the construction work to the techies, what do you say, Tones?"

Tony stopped typing.

"You're saying I should...give up?" He asked in disbelief.

"God no. Tony, you're not listening. You've already won! Your models are revolutionary, they're going to work. I'm just saying...Maybe it's time to move on to the next thing. Know when it's time to leave well-enough alone."

This...wasn't a situation Tony ever expected to find himself in. Down in his lab, sober and on schedule. No dates, no parties, no arrests, no skipping out on board meetings to go skinny dipping in a public fountain with two girls he didn't know the names of (and wasn't that an interesting night to try and explain the next day. He never did find his tie). And yet, here Obie was discouraging his behaviour.

Had he really been spending that much time in the lab lately? He'd always lost himself in projects in the past...was this one really so different?

It must be if Obie felt the need to stage an intervention.

"I can finish the job, I'll just take it easy from here on out. Keep the bells and whistles to a minimum. You got it."

Obadiah breathed a sigh of relief, offering Tony an encouraging pat on the arm.

Tony didn't drop the project.

xxx

The project progressed easily, pieces fitting together where he'd normally expect complications.

As far as Obadiah was concerned, Tony continued to build the framework for his new creation at a steady pace, but one that indicated he'd fallen back into old routines. Days spent off the grid, gaps in his journal logs where he was timetables to do repairs (though he always, always made up the time later).

Instead of spending these off days in clubs and drunk tanks, he used them to refine the LMD's programming.

If all went according to plan, Obie wouldn't have to know the LMD was capable of anything outside the most basic parameters. Coordination, mobility, maybe a few tricks thrown in to impress an audience. That's all he wanted from this, really. Something to impress.

Their investors had low expectations compared to Tony's standards.

Fortunately, Tony had a fair bit of experience designing AIs by now. He used the same model he applied when building JARVIS; flexible programming that would learn as it progressed. He planted the seeds of a personality there, just enough to allow for the development some day. A little nudge to allow for a sense of humour, a flavour of character that could evolve with time. He had no patience for bland AIs. The body wasn't ready to inhabit yet, but JARVIS had more than enough room in his servers to share.

"Now all we need is a name," Tony sighed.

"And here I thought LMD_test had such a nice ring to it."

"No one likes a smart ass, J."

"Of course not, sir."

Tony rubbed his temples to alleviate a pressure not quite intense enough to be called a headache. Yet.

God, he needed a drink.

"Why am I still bothering with this project?"

JARVIS took his time responding, already a sorry indication given his computational capacity.

"It doesn't seem unusual for you to become overly invested in projects when you want to take your mind off something, sir." 

On second thought, Tony didn’t really feel like self-reflecting anymore.

Of course, luck would have it that Pepper walked into the lab just as he broke the seal on a bottle of bourbon he couldn’t remember buying. Perhaps it had been a gift from one of the stuffy board members – or from an event maybe? It looked like the kind of thing he handed off to his assistants. Still, it looked a hell of a lot more appealing than the bottled soda that always seemed to magically appear in the lab fridge.

Perhaps it was a ploy to get him to drink something other than booze and coffee.

“I thought you were cutting back.”

The sudden noise startled him so badly he almost dropped the bottle.

(He didn’t have the shakes, though. He’d had substance abuse problems in the past, sure, but that was with harder stuff. The odd drink didn’t count, right?)

“What gave you that idea?” he asked, trying not to snap. It wasn’t Pepper’s fault she caught him at a bad time.

(Just one little drink to calm his nerves. Maybe Obie was right, maybe he needed to blow off a little steam.)

“I haven’t seen you drinking much lately. Not since you started that new project,” Pepper said with a nonchalance that didn’t fit with her hesitation. Standing by the door as if prepared to bolt – perhaps afraid of overstepping some invisible boundary in their relationship.

Sometimes Tony forgot he was Pepper’s boss.

"I've been keeping busy."

"With the LMD?"

"Obie told me to pull back on that."

"But you're still working on it." It wasn't a question.

He should have known better than to try and keep something from Pepper.

Tony turned over the bottle in his hand, studying the label as an excuse to avoid meeting her eye.

"I can't give up on this one, Pep. I just can't." He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it wasn't for her to reach out as if to comfort him. Her fingertips reached out to skim his forearm. The edges of her fake nails - a deep pink today – dragged at his skin as her fingers traced a gentle swirl that ended on the inside of his wrist. Not quite enough courage to take his hand, but enough to let Tony know she wanted to.

“This is important to you,” she observed. He let out a harsh laugh in way of reply, not trusting himself to speak.

“When was the last time you got some sleep?”

In truth, he wasn’t sure. He had a tendency to bury himself in his projects, he wouldn’t deny it, but this time it was different. The neglect ran deeper than could be reasonably excused as being distracted. The pulsing in his head – most likely caused by dehydration – didn’t drive away the nagging feeling that something was missing. Something important, forgotten in the rush.

He needed that drink.

He needed to finish the LMD.

And yet, when those long pink nails closed around the neck of the bottle, he offered no resistance. They clicked together again as she prised it from his unresisting fingers, and for a moment he wondered why it seemed so loud. Only then did he realise she’d turned off his music.

Immediately he missed the cold tang of the chilled glass against his skin. The inexplicable urge to raise his fingers to his lips and taste the water droplets the glass left behind gripped him, but he allowed Pepper to take hold of his wrist and guide him up out of his chair instead.

“It doesn’t have a name yet,” Tony said. As soon as he said it, he couldn’t put into words why it seemed so vital that she know this.

“The LMD?” she asked with a frown. He didn’t reply, couldn't offer any more resistance when she guided him up the stairs and away from the lab. JARVIS turned off the lights after they left, he could see the glow of the monitor through the glass doors as he saved Tony’s work and ran standard shut down procedures.

It felt wrong to leave the LMD unfinished, but Tony couldn’t find the will power to break free of Pepper’s grasp. Everything seemed murky. Undefined.

In searching for a solution, he reached for caffeine rather than sleep, but he knew better than to question Pepper’s judgement.

He couldn’t remember if he dreamt at all that night, but he slept until well past noon the next day. To his surprise, he found all of his morning appointments had been rescheduled or handed off.

When he staggered back into the lab, he found a takeaway bag containing the Sunday breakfast from one of the better diners in the nearest town, a thermos filled with coffee which was still miraculously warm, and a sticky note written in Pepper’s careful cursive.

I asked Happy to make the trip
– don’t throw it away without eating it.
JARVIS is watching.

P.S. Ask for the list.

Tony frowned. “J? What’s the postscript supposed to mean?”

In response, JARVIS activated one of the monitors. Tony squinted through bleary eyes, taking a sip of the cooling coffee as he crossed the room. Not as strong as he normally took it, but still pretty good.

It took him a few seconds longer than he’d care to admit to put together what he was saying.

It was a list of names.

A smile spread across his face as the details of last night blossomed in his mind.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

He leaned forward to skim the list, noting the ones he thought had potential.

“Peter,” he murmured aloud. It was one of the more common names on the list, but if Pepper thought it worked…

“I believe Miss Potts said that was one of her favourites.”

“Is that so?”

xxx

A few weeks went by without incident. Tony continued to work on the LMD, though he made more of an effort to balance it with his other projects. He didn’t bring up that night and neither did Pepper.

Everything seemed to have gone back to normal…or so she thought.

In all honesty, she should have paid more attention. It didn’t occur to her to ask about the specifics of how the LMD was progressing, though she’d known Tony long enough to know he rarely thought to mention things that any reasonable human being would.

She entered the lab on a perfectly ordinary Tuesday, running through their weekly list of orders. They had standard items that always needed restocked, as well as resources Tony asked JARVIS to add that she wouldn’t even attempt to pronounce, let alone investigate the use of. Tony needed them and for once they were all perfectly legal to obtain – she didn’t want to know anything more than that. Still, Pepper needed him to sign off on any additions she made, and they really needed to update their grocery order.

Pepper pushed open the lab door, nose buried in her tablet as she responded to an email confirming Tony’s donation for a charity gala later that week. At least this way the cause wouldn’t lose out if he didn’t show up.

On a different day, one that allowed for more sleep and less paperwork, she may have paid more attention instead of dismissing the movement in her peripheral vision as being Tony.

“I know you said you’d be busy today, but I need you to-“

There was no other way to put it, Pepper screamed.

Tony swore from across the lab as he bashed his head on the underside of the car he was working on, tools clattering to the floor as he scrambled out from underneath it.

“Jesus, Pepper! What the hell happened?”

The thing sitting on his workbench inclined its head, regarding her through empty camera lenses in place of eyes. Once his heart stopped pounding, Tony allowed himself a moment to observe the scene and put together exactly what had happened.

“You knew about the LMD,” he said with a frown.

She found herself struggling to string words together as the thing continued to stare at her.

“That’s the LMD?!”

“It’s not finished yet.”

Pepper liked to think she was a rational sort of person. She understood the principal of personification perfectly well.

The thing perched on the work bench wasn’t human. It wasn’t even alive…but when she laid her eyes upon its oddly skeletal framework, her mind summoned words like disfigured and ill. Even without many identifying features, she could see the humanoid outline in the jumble of wires and mechanical parts she couldn’t even begin to put a name to.

Dark grey metal glinted under the harsh lab lights as the mechanical body turned its empty eyes towards Tony at the sound of his voice. She could see every tiny mechanism that went into the movement as it shifted, like muscles that should have been buried under a layer of skin. It didn’t have a face to speak of, but she could see the beginnings of one now that she knew to look. The curvatures in the blank framework that would eventually become cheek bones, the jutting angle of a jaw, the protrusion of a nose, and, of course, the camera lenses.

She bent down to retrieve her fallen tablet, only to freeze in place when it turned its head back to watch her.

“It can’t do much right now,” Tony said, as if completely unaware of how God damn terrifying the thing looked right now. “The AI is still in its infancy; I’m just letting it observe for now. This is something of a trial run. It’s been running in the background on my private servers for a while now, but it’s never interfaced with the LMD’s hardware before. I’m going to let JARVIS finish his diagnostics before I really get to work…You want me to introduce you?”

“Oh my God, Tony!”

“What?”

Genuine bemusement crossed his face, creasing his brow and tugging on the corners of his mouth. Pepper forced herself to take a deep breath and reminded herself that Tony had been working on this project for months. She could see the intricacy in its design, the work he’d put in. God, every piece made and positioned by hand.

She shouldn’t judge a half-finished project, especially not when she barged in unannounced.

“I just…didn’t realise you were so far along.”

Tony looked back at the LMD in surprise before shrugging. “I’ve been making steady progress, I guess. Hey, Peter, say hello to Miss Potts.”

Something inside that metal framework whirred to life. It seemed to reposition itself, tilting its head again as if in thought before raising one of its mechanical arms into the air. Metallic fingers clicked together as they flexed in an odd, spasming motion that she supposed was meant to be a wave.

“You…named it Peter?”

“Didn’t I mention it?” he asked as he took a step back to read JARVIS’s diagnostic reports off the nearest monitor. So far, everything seemed to be right on schedule.

Pepper couldn’t help but smile at that. She straightened up, trying to recover some of her professionalism. The LMD lowered its hand again with stuttering movements and returned to its original position.

“It’s nice to meet you, Peter,” she said, though it felt strange to address it so casually when it better resembled a mannequin than an actual person. It turned to look at her again, sightless eyes reflecting her own face back at her. She got the sense that, if it were able, it would be squinting.

Clearly it wasn’t programmed to do much beyond that, so Pepper did her best to continue where she left off. The edge of the tablet screen had fractured where she’d dropped it, but Tony didn’t comment as he signed the forms she waved under his face. He checked the diagnostic twice before returning back to his sports car with assurances from JARVIS that he would be informed if anything meaningful came of it.

When she turned to leave, she couldn’t help but hesitate before turning her back to the LMD. It still sat motionless on the workbench, legs dangling over the edge like it could jump down and take off at any moment. For all she knew about Tony’s progress, maybe it could.

She wouldn’t put it past him.

“Bye, Peter,” she said softly, too quiet for Tony to hear from across the lab. It turned to look at her again, this time it only took a second for it to raise its hand in a wave.

It may look a little creepy now, she decided, but she’d get used to it.

xxx

“Jesus, Tony. That’s a robot?”

“You saw me build it.”

“Well…Yeah but it’s different seeing you work on odd pieces and seeing…this. It looks human!”

“That’s kind of the point.”

“You know what I mean, Tones. This is big. Is there even anything else like it on the market? Hell, forget the market – in the world?”

“Probably not, progression’s been pretty slow in this area. You want me to introduce you, or do you want to continue standing there gawking at it?”

“Can it…understand me?”

“What kind of a hack do you take me for, Platypus?”

“Right, sorry. It’s just…a lot to take in.”

Tony shrugged and took a step forward. Recognising the cue, the LMD raised its head from its stationary position and smiled. Facial expressions still looked a little strained, Tony made a mental note to work on that.

“Hey, Peter. This is Rhodey.”

A beat passed before the LMD frowned, brow creasing as if they were deep in thought.

“Rhodey,” they repeated, tilting their head. “Did I hear that right?”

“Sure did.”

The LMD nodded and paused for another beat before their face lit up in an expression of sheer joy. “It’s nice to meet you, Rhodey!”

Rhodes gave Tony a look that might have been a plea for help, but his traitorous friend merely gave him an encouraging shove forward.

“Um, nice to meet you too…Peter,” he attempted, studying the proffered hand in the same way someone might consider a set mouse trap. The LMD waited longer than any person would have before letting the hand fall back to their side. They tilted their head again, studying Rhodey just as Rhodey studied him.

“Well,” Tony said, clapping his hands together. “That went about as well as I could have expected.”

xxx

The LMD became a staple in the lab, needing to spend most of its time connected to a charging point to keep functioning. Obie looked impressed when he saw it, though he didn’t interact with Peter enough to grasp the full extent of his capabilities. Despite his encouragement, he didn’t offer much more than a shrug when Tony explained that he couldn’t find a sustainable power source for him.

Yet, Tony thought but didn’t say when Obie clapped him on the back and told him not to fuss over a side project. There wasn’t a battery in the world that would allow Peter to walk freely – nothing short of strapping a nuclear reactor to his back. Still, he’d built the most sophisticated piece of robotics on the planet with a fully integrated AI that he hoped would someday outgrow even JARVIS.

It should have been enough.

Tony vowed to build a better battery.

xxx

“Good morning, Miss Potts,” Peter said brightly.

“Morning, Peter,” she greeted without missing a beat. “Is Tony around?”

“He asked JARVIS not to disturb him this morning.”

She hummed in acknowledgement. Her expression spoke of disapproval. “Does he have…company?”

Peter tilted his head the way Tony programmed him to when he interfaced with JARVIS (you said it was creepy when he just went blank faced and stared, Pep. I had to replace it with something). “We don’t have any visitors in the logs. I could ask?”

A small smile tugged at Pepper’s lips, though she’d never admit to feeling relieved.

“ That won’t be necessary, Peter. Were we expecting a delivery?” she asked. Asking JARVIS would have been just as easy, but Tony insisted that Peter wouldn’t learn unless people interacted with him. The fact that he no longer looked like a machine helped it seem more normal, but not by much.

“Several. I think the one that just arrived is the microwave.”

“Why did Tony order a microwave?”

“To replace the one in the lab’s kitchenette.”

“And what happened to the old microwave?” she asked with a sigh, already knowing she would regret posing the question.

“Dum-E broke it trying to put out the fire.”

Pepper opened her mouth to ask before shaking her head. No, she really didn’t want to know.

“If Tony asks, tell him I’ll have someone bring it down later.”

“Sure, Ms Potts. No problem.”

Pepper stared at the LMD as he swung his legs and stared off into space. How many teenagers had she seen on buses in the past that looked exactly like the machine before her did now? Would she be able to differentiate between them if she tried?

These were dilemmas she enjoyed mulling over in the safety of her own living room, with a bowl of popcorn perched on her knee and a second rate sci-fi horror playing on low volume.

They were not, however, questions she expected to be faced with in her place of work, where consequences were more than just distant hypotheticals.

“You’re not planning on taking over the world any time soon, are you Peter?”

Confusion flashed across his face and she wondered when Tony found the time to program that particular expression.

“I have nothing in the schedule, Miss Potts,” he replied, sounding confused. She couldn’t help but laugh.

“May I ask that you avoid giving our newest addition any bright ideas, Miss Potts.”

“Sorry, JARVIS.”

xxx

Tony continued to work on Peter long after Obie had the LMD project officially scrapped. Still without a mobile power supply, he dedicated a corner of the workshop to the prototype where he could sit and observe without leaving the power dock.

He designed the AI to be adaptable. Even without access to the outside world, it continued to learn and grow from the surrounding stimuli. JARVIS stayed in near constant communication with it, monitoring as it grew and evolved. Though always prone to voicing his thoughts aloud, Tony talked to himself in the lab a lot more now.

With Obie moving up the timetable, Tony found little time to make modifications to the LMD. Designing a new battery would have been all but impossible, so he threw himself into weapons manufacturing in the hopes that Obie would loosen the noose around his neck after they demonstrated the first prototype.

While most of the bots were unphased by Peter’s presence in the lab, Dum-E seemed fascinated. It didn’t matter how many time Tony shooed him away, he always crept back over to get a closer look. Though the first few times he elicited no response, on the fourth attempt he got close enough to trigger an automated response. Peter looked up in surprise and smiled at the bot, only to frown in concentration when he responded by shooting backwards across the lab and spinning in circles.

“Dum-E has a few quirks,” Tony said without looking away from the simulations.

“He is…broken?”

“Not at all. He’s the first bot I ever built. Unfortunately, I was not only an inexperienced teenager but also very drunk at the time. Miracle I got him working, if I’m being honest. I could have gone back and rewritten the code but…” Tony gave a noncommittal sort of shrug. “I think I like him the way he is.”

Peter blinked as he processed this information. It was a new function; it took Tony a while to get the timing of it just right.

“Dum-E has…sentimental value,” he clarified.

Tony paused, turning to watch the LMD this time. “Yeah, I suppose he does.”

Peter nodded. The movement came out a little too jerky and Tony made a mental note to fix it when he found the time. When he didn’t offer a follow-up question, Tony turned away.

“What are you doing?”

“Hm?”

“Right now. What are you doing?”

“Just running some simulations to test a weapon I’m designing.”

“Oh.”

Another beat passed.

“What kind of weapon?”

Perhaps the questions shouldn’t have caught Tony off-guard. After all, he didn’t build the LMD to fill a set role as he did with JARVIS. The bots were plenty curious when he first built them. They had to be for the AI to learn and evolve on its own.

So, while it would have been easy to dismiss the LMD’s questions, instead he rotated the display to face the LMD.

Peter’s brow furrowed as he processed the data.

“I don’t have access to these schematics,” he commented.

“That’s because you’re on my private server. This is a Stark Industries project.”

“Why am I restricted from accessing the Stark Industries servers?”

“You sure like to ask questions, don’t you?”

“I can stop if you want me to.”

“No, it’s alright. Certain…well placed people in the company don’t really like the idea of my untested AIs poking around secure files. It took a lot of trial and error before I was able to convince them to allow JARVIS control over company files.”

“And I am a prototype,” Peter said, nodding in understanding.

“You’d only be a prototype if I made more,” Tony corrected. “Seeing as how Obie scrapped the project, it looks like you might just be an original model.”

Peter stared at him with a blank expression.

With a sigh, Tony turned back to his designs.

“Tell you what, kiddo. Let me finish up with the preparations for this demonstration. I should have more time to review your progress after this is over. Then we’ll talk about expanding your access, yeah?”

xxx

It was amazing how quickly the LMD became a normal part of life.

He watched Tony work in the lab, free to interact with JARVIS and browse online to pass the time. Tony worked on him between projects, removing glitches and implementing subtle improvements as he saw fit. Every interaction seemed smoother than the last, every expression more genuine. Pauses in conversation grew shorter and laughter grew more frequent.

But without a sustainable power source, they could only progress so far before stalling.

They never stopped; it was important to say. Tony fixed problems as they arose, Peter continued to consume information at a rapid rate, but they fell into patterns. The LMD couldn’t be a priority, not with the complete lack of company interest. The power source shifted to the back burner and simmered there for the better part of a year, the LMD melting into the background until his presence became as fixed as any of Tony’s bots. He didn’t really need to leave anyway, did he? Without company backing, Peter had no set purpose. No place to go, no set things to learn. Tony focused his efforts on designing weapons and the issue fell to the back of his mind until it hardly occurred at all.

For over a year, they continued in this comfortable routine. Even Pepper adjusted to Peter’s presence. He got the sense that Obie didn’t really like him, but the man hardly spent much time in Tony’s lab to begin with.

Tony began the designs for the Jericho and his free time became all but non-existent.

His crowning achievement as Obie had taken to calling it. He’d be lying if he claimed not to feel even a small amount of pride.

Still, he wasn’t sure why he had to handle the investors for this one.

“I’ll be back in a day, maybe two,” he assured all of his bots as he switched off the monitors. “JARVIS, you’ll hold down the fort, won’t you?”

“Always, sir.”

Tony hummed, almost tripping over a fretting Dum-E as he made his way across the lab. Peter raised his head when Tony entered his response range.

“I’m going to have a lot more free time once this demonstration is done,” he vowed, more to himself than to the LMD. Peter’s face lit up in a way that made Tony’s heart ache, even if he knew damn well it was an automated response. “You’ll have JARVIS to keep you company, just don’t burn the place down.”

“I’ll keep watch of the lab while you’re gone,” the LMD vowed.

“That’s what I like to hear,” Tony said with a smile and ruffled Peter’s hair. It took a lot of effort to get the texture of it just right.

The LMD watched Tony go with a smile, waving as he left the lab even if the billionaire had his back turned. With nothing else to do, he returned to his default positioning and waited, unseeing eyes staring at the wall ahead of him.

And he waited.

And he waited.

And he waited.

(Tony wasn’t home in two days.)

Chapter Text

Pepper wasn’t sure what led her to the lab that night.

She got the call from Rhodey before the story even hit the news. A targeted attack on Tony’s car, four troops dead from his car, more from the one in front, no sign of Tony.

No sign of a body either, though it came as a cold sort of comfort.

He might still be alive, Pep…but there’s no way of telling what kind of state he’ll be in if we find him.

If.

That word stuck out to her above all else. Rhodey, who she knew would search day and night for as long as it took to find him...Rhodey the realist, the one with the experience in this field. The one who dealt with these kinds of situations all the time, the one who handled impossible situations for a living.

If.

She didn’t allow herself time to consider the long-term consequences, no matter how pressing questions of unemployment – of her future – seemed.

Tony would come back. He’d disappeared before, scared the hell out of all of them, but he always turned up eventually.

Rhodey always brought him home.

If.

She was rational on the phone. First with Rhodey, then with Obadiah. There were arrangements to be made, procedures to follow. She cancelled all of his immediate appointments, placed any perishable deliveries on hold, updated security at the house. Once her phone started ringing, it didn’t stop.

At some point in the mess, she got in her car and didn’t stop driving. She knew it probably wasn’t the best idea, that she was likely in shock. The destination didn’t seem important until she pulled into the driveway of the Malibu house, more on instinct than by conscious choice.

The house almost always seemed quiet, so far removed from outside distractions. Tonight, the silence pressed down on her, making the rooms seem too large and the air too thin. Even as JARVIS switched on the lights, it did nothing to combat the oppressive darkness outside the windows.

The house should be light, noisy. Most importantly, Tony should be in it.

With every right to be there, Pepper had no reason to sneak through the house like a thief. No reason to slip off her shoes because she couldn’t stand the sound of her own heels clicking on the hard floors.

She hated the silence, but when the house felt like a funeral parlour it seemed disrespectful to break it.

JARVIS didn’t question her presence in the house, not even when she descended the steps to Tony’s private lab.

It felt wrong not to be greeted by deafening heavy metal music, to be in the room without him working on one of his cars or mapping out designs at the holotable.

Dum-E rolled across the lab to greet her when he sensed the door opening, visibly wilting when he found her instead of Tony.

“You and me both,” she murmured before crouching down to regard the bot at what would be eye level if Dum-E had eyes to speak of. The bot perked up at the attention.

Could the bots comprehend the concept of Tony’s death? She hoped for everyone’s sake that Tony thought that far ahead, but he’d been so reluctant to draft his will…

“JARVIS?” she asked, her voice sounding hoarse all of a sudden. “Can I ask…Did Tony…If he…Did he have any…”

The words refused to form, the idea so incomprehensible.

Putting it into words, speaking it aloud in Tony’s own lab…that would make it real. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to make similar phone calls on Tony’s behalf – cancelling appointments, rescheduling deliveries, calling lawyers. She could almost convince herself he’d just gotten himself into yet another HR disaster. Maybe he’d relapsed, gotten caught with something stronger than alcohol. Maybe the tabloids would rip him to shreds like last time, maybe she’d be the one to handle a furious Obadiah when he showed up on their doorstep after Tony made bail.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

“I’m sorry, Miss Potts. I’m not sure what you’re asking me.”

She closed her eyes, forced herself to breathe and, “did Tony have a contingency plan for you and the bots?”

JARVIS paused and she prayed he would understand.

Please don’t make me say it out loud. Not here, not in front of Dum-E and U. Not yet.

“Yes, Miss Potts,” JARVIS replied after a moment. His electronic voice sounded strangely soft. “Tony updated his will and testament to contain very specific instructions regarding what should happen to his personally owned creations upon his death…And the bots in this lab, myself included, have protocols in place for when it happens. I believe he mentioned not wanting to leave the burden of trying to explain his passing on your shoulders.”

Despite holding it together so well up until this point, tears began to leak from her eyes. She hastily moved to wipe them away, succeeding only in drawing a great black smear of mascara across her hand.

“However,” JARVIS added with a note of hesitance. “His last will and testament was drafted a little over two years ago.”

Her head felt stuffy, her thoughts slow. “What does that mean, JARVIS?”

“It contains no reference to the LMD.”

At the mention of Tony’s most recent creation, her eyes gravitated to the rarely used corner of the lab now devoted to the project. Amazing how something that usually creeped her out could now be overlooked, forgotten.

The LMD sat slouched forward, eyes fixed on a spot on the floor.

If not for the unnatural stillness, she wouldn’t have guessed he was anything short of human.

Pepper tried to remember if she’d ever interacted the LMD without Tony in the room and felt an irrational spike of fear that she might break it somehow. Oh God, she didn’t know if she’d be able to handle that. Just the thought of breaking Tony’s greatest creation when he wasn’t around to fix it…

“Peter?” she whispered, half-hoping he wouldn’t respond. The LMD raised his head in a smooth motion, as natural as any person. She expected some sort of pause as he transitioned from stand-by to active, but he responded as if he’d been lost deep in thought.

“Miss Potts,” he said with a grin. “I wasn’t expecting to see you in the lab again so soon. Didn’t you say you’d be working from home while Mr Stark is away for the weapons demonstration in Afghanistan?”

God, he got more human every day.

She scrambled to her feet, offering Dum-E assurances when he startled at the sudden movement. Words failed her once again as she struggled to find an explanation.

“Miss Potts,” JARVIS interrupted. “If I may, I believe the news cycles have picked up a story that may be…relevant.”

Her mouth went dry.

“Turn it on, JARVIS.”

The monitors in the centre of the lab came alive.

“-ch parties for the missing billionaire are expected to continue straight through the night, but many officials are not optimistic about the outcome. All we can say for sure is we have confirmation that all of the deceased have been accounted and Stark is not among them. Tell us a little about the attack itself, John.”

Pepper moved closer; eyes fixed on the screens as the camera switched to an onsite reporter. Even in the darkness she could make out the helicopters overhead.

“Thank you, Lisa,” he said after a lengthy pause. “While there’s still a lot of uncertainty surrounding the whole thing, authorities are very clear on one thing in particular: this attack is believed to have been orchestrated specifically to target Tony Stark. It is thought that his security detail was ambushed following the Stark Industries weapons demonstration, the details of which are not currently public. We have confirmed reports of no less than eight dead at the scene, but that number may still change.”

“We received no reports of any wounded, though. Is that correct?”

“It looks like the foreign assailants returned after the initial attack, seemingly for the specific purpose of making sure there were no survivors at the scene. No one has come forth to take credit for the incident as of yet, but we have received word that the US is investigating a local terrorist cell in connection with the attack.”

“Do you think there’s any hope of them bringing Stark back home in one piece?”

Pepper stopped breathing as the journalist grimaced.

“We have been assured that this is currently a top priority and that every measure possible will be taken to ensure we get him home.”

“Thank you for that, John. I’m sure everyone is glad to hear that. For those interested, the president is expected to make a speech-”

But Pepper wasn’t interested. All she cared about was how uncomfortable the simple question made the reporter on the ground.

Will he come back home?

She hated him for ignoring the part about bringing him back in one piece.

JARVIS muted the broadcast when she let out a choked sob, leaving the headline Stark Industries CEO Missing in Afghanistan flashing in front of her eyes.

Something touched her shoulder and it took every ounce of her restraint not to scream.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

She turned to find the LMD standing behind her, hand half-raised as if unsure of quite what to do with it. Something artificial had no right to move as quietly as he did. In all the months Tony had been working on him down here, she’d never even seen him stand.

Now here he was, standing in front of her…the charging dock on the other side of the room.

“Miss Potts,” the LMD asked. “Are you alright?”

Heart still pounding, she forced herself to nod.

“But…you’re crying,” he pointed out, tilting his head with an expression of confusion on his face. So perfect, so human.

Tony made this.

Between ragged breaths she forced herself to smile. “I’ll be alright.”

The LMD’s brow furrowed, chocolate brown eyes leaving hers’ to examine the screens.

“Mr Stark is missing.”

“…Yes.”

“They don’t know if he’s alive.”

She closed her eyes, the words sinking in like a death sentence.

“Yes,” she said because it seemed like the easiest thing to say right now.

Peter tilted his head as he processed the information before offering a simple nod. No fussing, no follow up questions. His creator was missing in action, everything he’d ever known thrown into jeopardy, and he didn’t have a thing to say about it.

Looks human, Pepper reminded herself, but he’s still just a machine.

Peter’s eyes flickered back to the screens behind her and for a heart wrenching moment she expected a different headline. One that read Tony Stark found dead instead of missing.

Everything looked the same. Same journalists, same news being repeated over and over again. She didn’t need sound this time to know they were talking in circles.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Potts?”

Blinking back more unshed tears, she shook her head. Instead of taking this as his cue to leave, the LMD lingered.

“You’re still upset.”

Pepper tried not to snap, remembering everything Tony told her about developmental processes. Knowing that, if Tony were here, he’d answer every question the LMD put forward with a patience he scarcely offered to human beings. “Yes.”

“Because of the news?”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you watch it?”

She counted to ten in her head before replying. “Sometimes not knowing is worse. Watching it…watching it makes me sad, but at least I know. I know they haven’t found a body yet. I know Tony might still be out there…I know there’s hope.”

Peter frowned again, looking back and forth between Pepper and the screen.

“May I watch it with you?”

She blinked. “You want to…watch the news?”

He shrugged. She didn’t know he could shrug. God, what she wouldn’t give to know what Tony put in that mechanical brain. Was this just a learning experience? Did he ever watch TV with Tony during the long hours spent working in the lab?

“Okay,” the word slipped from numb lips. She couldn’t really remember coming to a decision; exhaustion kept her from caring.

Pepper pushed her chair back to make room for a second, but the LMD made no move to pull up a spare seat. It occurred to her that he probably didn’t need one. He couldn’t get tired or comfortable. Maybe Tony just left him sitting on the workbench out of habit.

Leaning back in her seat, she could see the thick power cords trailing along the floor towards the charging dock. If she leaned back further in her chair, she could see where they looped and disappeared under the hem of Peter’s shirt.

Still reliant on the charging dock, then; just with a longer leash.

“Do you like living in the lab?” The question slipped out without conscious reasoning or logic behind it. There were more important things to fixate on now, with Tony’s life hanging in the balance.

“I suppose,” Peter replied, a note of uncertainty lacing his words. “I’ve never known anything else.”

It was a more genuine response than Pepper ever expected to receive from a machine.

“Can you like things? I mean…did Tony design you to have preferences?”

“In a way.”

The LMD didn’t elaborate and Pepper didn’t pry. Upon request, JARVIS unmuted the monitors.

Expert after supposed expert offered their opinions on what might have happened. On potential motives for an attack, on reasons why they might have kidnapped him, on reasons why they might have killed him and moved the body elsewhere. She listened to them debate whether the American government could or should give in to ransom demands they may never receive. Pepper managed to hold back her tears this time.

The LMD didn’t leave.

xxx

The weeks that followed were without a doubt the worst of Pepper’s life. It rushed by in an endless cycle of answering calls and reapplying makeup in the hopes that it might hide her blotchy skin and bloodshot eyes. She received calls from government agencies asking all kinds of questions about Tony (if anybody has that kind of information, it’s Pepper. She handles all of Tony’s affairs). She answered the questions that seemed appropriate as best she could, only refusing when they went on to ask about current projects Tony was working on (not that she knew many details).

The calls she loathed above all others were the one she received from board members. The first few weren't overly concerning. Apologetic requests for status updates on incomplete projects that hadn't been backed up on the Stark Industries servers mostly. However, as days dragged into weeks with still no sign of Tony, other requests began to filter through. Private projects, unsubmitted concept designs, even personal files.

As time went on, her patience wore thin and she began to remind them that everything Tony wanted them to see was on the company servers. If they wanted the rest, they could come back with a warrant.

She answered calls from concerned exes (of which Tony had quite a few), and from dozens of media outlets seeking more information (on the kidnapping, on Tony, on whether his absence left a gap in the lives of his friends when he had no immediate family to speak of).

Then there were the other callers.

She didn’t know where half of them even found their contact information number (okay, so maybe he wasn’t as careful about handing it out as he could should have been).

There were the hoax calls about Tony being found safely. There were the hoax calls about Tony being found dead. The calls from supposed long lost relatives, curious about how long they’d have to wait before they read his will. The calls from people who felt it their moral obligation to rant at length about how he deserved everything those terrorists could possibly inflict upon him.

JARVIS blocked the numbers at her request, but she still refused to let him bring the full security measures back online.

Pepper wouldn’t risk missing something important, not now. Instead, she did her job.

Strange how the area of the house she associated with Tony most of all had become her safe haven. At least with the bots it didn’t feel so empty, she could almost convince herself Tony would emerge from the kitchenette at any moment with a coffee mug in his hand.

“Pepper,” Peter said, distracting her from her thoughts. “I finished filling out the forms you requested.”

She looked up from the email she’d been attempting to write to Rhodey for the last ten minutes to skim the information on the nearest monitor. She knew most of Tony’s personal information off by heart (she had to as his personal assistant), but Peter volunteered. Having access to JARVIS made him more than qualified to fill out a few basic forms.

“Thanks, Peter,” she said with a forced smile. “Everything looks perfect, you mind submitting it for me?”

“Of course.”

She returned her attention to her phone, biting her lip as she tried to think of what to say. Ever since the day he went missing, Rhodey had made a point of sending her personal updates on the search and rescue efforts. He couldn’t include any specifics about their location or describe any details of the measures they were taking. The reports more or less amounted to “we still haven’t found him, but damn if we’re not giving it our all.”

It probably still violated all kinds of security protocols. Pepper didn’t know how she’d thank him for it when all this was over assuming this nightmare had an end. The right words continued to escape her, but she managed to cobble together a grateful response.

One email down. Just another…what? Hundred and ten to go?

Her stomach dropped when she looked up to find the lab empty.

“Peter?” she asked, trying to suppress full blown panic because what the actual fu-

“There is no need to be alarmed, Miss Potts. The LMD has not left the confines of the lab,” JARVIS assured her.

Frowning, she peered over the edge of the desk until she could see the cables dragging along the floor, leading off to the small kitchenette attached to the lab.

Making a mental note to find out what the LMD’s range was, Pepper set out to trace his footsteps.

“Hey, Peter? What are you doing?” she asked as she peered around the edge of the doorframe.

“Making tea.”

Over the last few days, Pepper noticed that Peter had a habit of answering questions without really explaining himself. In a human, she might describe the behaviour as evasive, but she suspected he didn’t always grasp that people couldn’t always follow his line of thinking.

“I can see that. Any reason why?”

“You said you don’t drink coffee. My research indicates that tea is a popular alternative. JARVIS told me you often drink it when you’re working long hours…unless you’d prefer something else?”

She blinked.

“I’d love some tea. That’s very…thoughtful, Peter,” she said and tried not to think too hard about the fact that Tony’s AI keeps records of her drink preferences.

“I added some cold water. Sources indicate that this is a good way of reducing the temperature to make it drinkable more quickly.” He took great care in placing the mug down on the counter in front of her and waited as if to gauge her response.

Pepper made a point of taking a sip.

“It’s peppermint,” she noted.

“I read that it can help to alleviate stress.” Peter inclined his head. “Do you not like peppermint? I can make you something else if you prefer.”

“It’s perfect,” she said and found it didn’t take as much of an effort as she’d grown to expect to force a smile.

Offerings began to show up around the lab on a near daily basis after that. Over the years, she’d added various varieties of tea to the grocery lists in the hopes that Tony might branch out and drink something other than coffee and alcohol. Needless to say, she found little success in this area.

However, while Tony never actually drank the tea, he’d apparently never made any effort to get rid of it either.

Cups containing varieties of tea she didn’t know existed, let alone remembered buying, found their way into her hands when she was distracted. Chilled glasses of water waited for her when she returned from running errands on days, reminding her she’d forgotten to drink anything all day.

On one especially stressful day, she missed lunch entirely and found a bewildered delivery man from Tony’s favourite pizza place on the doorstep.

She left him a sizeable tip and didn’t skip lunch again.

“You don’t have to take care of me,” she reminded the LMD one day as she accepted yet another mug of tea, taking a sip without hesitation. Apple and cinnamon this time, he’d been experimenting again.

“Continuous stress is bad for the human body,” he commented. “Studies indicate it increases risk of mental illness, elevates blood pressure, encourages addictive behaviours such as smoking and drinking, and may be linked to an increased risk of lung disease, cancer, cirrhosis of-“

“I’m not dying,” she deadpanned.

Peter halted, unused to being interrupted mid-sentence. It took him longer than usual to come up with a response.

“I know that,” he said at last before his brow furrowed in confusion. “Have you eaten anything today?”

Pepper sighed.

(She still came back to the lab the next day. And the next. And the next.)

xxx

“Hey, Dum-E. Can you pass the egg fried rice?”

The bot perked up at the sound of his name, whirring in excitement at being given a task. Under Peter’s advisement, he retrieved the box from the stack and dropped it on the counter in front of her like an over-excited Labrador.

“Thanks,” she said between mouthfuls. God, she hadn’t realised how hungry she was.

“Would you like me to play something from the archives?”

“Please.”

“Anything in particular?”

“Surprise me.”

She only half-listened to the movie, browsing her emails on her phone as she ate. Most of them went ignored, but she deleted a few emails from funeral homes and skimmed through the ones that actually looked important. Keeping busy was essential these days.

“Miss Potts,” JARVIS said with an urgency she’d never heard from the AI before, “I strongly recommend switching to a news network.”

The words sank in, making the world around her seem oh so very small.

This can’t be happening. The out-of-place thought flitted through her mind, along with images of headlines. Missing Billionaire Killed in Terrorist Attack, Weapons Developer Found Deceased, Stark Empire in Mourning as Son of Founder is Confirmed Dead.

“Switch it over,” she said in a voice little louder than a whisper.

“-issing billionaire was found wandering the desert after reports of an explosion. The details are still being confirmed, but the current reports suggest the weapons developer was able to escape his captors after building some sort of device. There are rumours circulating that he was injured when he was found, but the nature and extent of these injuries are yet to be verified by official sources.”

Pepper didn’t notice her phone ringing until Peter placed a hand on her shoulder, the light touch almost making her jump out of her skin whilst simultaneously grounding her in place.

“It’s Colonel Rhodes,” he said, holding out her phone.

Snapping out of her daze, she put the call on speaker.

“Rhodey,” she breathed.

“Pep, he’s alive. I don’t know how, but that stubborn son of a bitch made it out of there in one piece.”

Pepper had shed more tears in the last three months than she could remember shedding in the rest of her life put together. The way the situation dragged out, offered hope and snatched it away. The uncertainty, the waiting, the endless lists and pressuring phone calls; she wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.

She’d long since grown tired of crying, but fresh tears welled in her eyes at the sound of the words she’d been dreaming of hearing since that first day.

“He’s- he’s coming home? The news said…Is he okay?”

“There’s a lot to unpack,” Rhodey said grimly. “But yeah, he’s coming home, Pep.”

xxx

“Happy, I need you to get the car.”

“Ungh, Pepper what time is it?”

“About four, how soon can you be here to pick me up?”

“AM? You’re joking, Pep!”

“Haven’t you been following the news? Tony’s coming home. We need to pick him up from the airbase.”

A loud clatter followed by a series of curses told her that Happy had not been following the news since last night.

“He what?” Happy all but squawked when he retrieved his phone.

“It was a kidnapping after all. He managed to escape from his captors, God only knows how…Rhodey said he wouldn’t say all that much about it, just enough to get the military off his back.”

“Jesus.”

“It’s going to be a rough ride, Hap…We have to be there to pick him up when his plane gets in.”

“I’ll be there in half an hour. When’s his plane getting in?”

She let out a shaky laugh of what felt like relief. “We’ve got time, Happy…He’s coming home.”

xxx

“Few tears for your long lost boss?”

“Tears of joy. I hate job hunting.”

xxx

Everything looked the same.

Tony didn’t know what he’d been expecting. He was happy to hear that he hadn’t been declared dead in those three months. From time to time during those sweltering days in the cave or when the pain in his chest kept him up long into the night, he’d think about his house in Malibu.

Pretty much everything he owned would be left to Obadiah, he was the closest thing to family Tony had left. Would he sell it? Have it torn down? Turn it into a second home?

He ran his hand over the cabinet and found not so much as a speck of dust. Pepper must have asked the cleaners back, but was it before or after she found out Tony was still alive? Did his house sit empty the whole time he was gone?

No, not empty. Not quite.

“Miss me, Jar?”

“It’s wonderful to have you back, sir.”

He opened his mouth to make a joke about the AI being a sap, but the words died on his tongue. No, he rather preferred the sincerity for once. For three months, he wondered if he’d ever hear the AI’s voice again.

Three months in captivity, but in the mansion time stood still.

Maybe if he stepped out onto the balcony, he could convince himself no time had passed. Maybe the tangy taste of salt flavouring the air would wash away the memory of grit in his mouth and sand between his teeth. Maybe if he drove down to the water’s edge he could-

But no, he had no desire to feel the sand between his toes again. The thought of ocean water splashing against his face made him feel ill.

The last three months may not have touched the house, but they’d been an eternity to Tony.

“Are the bots still running?”

“The lab is as you left it, sir.”

Tony nodded, savouring every step. He’d never admit how surreal it felt to be back home after all this time. Not to Pepper, not to Rhodey, and certainly not to Obadiah.

If Dum-E had a tail, he would have been wagging it furiously when Tony entered the lab.

“Hey, bud. Long time, no see? What, MIT’s robotics lab return you when they found out I hadn’t snuffed it?”

The bot whirred, running laps around Tony in dizzying circles. U and Butterfingers approached with interest soon after, regarding Tony warily as if half expecting him to disappear.

“Mr Stark?”

Tony looked up to find the LMD standing in the doorway of the kitchenette. His face went slack for a moment before breaking into an easy grin. “You’re back!”

“Sure am, kid. How have you- oof!”

Before Tony could fully process what was happening, the LMD crossed the lab and trapped him in a very careful hug.

He gave the LMD an awkward pat on the back, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. “I don’t remember programming you to do this, you learn a few new tricks while I was gone?”

“Pepper told me you’d need a hug when you got back,” he said, sounding perfectly at ease as he pulled back to study him. Tony swallowed back the lump in his throat, fiddling with the cuff of his jacket.

“Well, a little warning next time. Alright, buddy?”

The LMD blinked. “Of course, Mr Stark.”

“You’ve been spending time with Pepper, then?” he asked as he smoothed out his shirt. The LMD’s head bobbed in a vigorous nod (maybe too vigorous, he should fix that when he found the time).

“She came down here most days while you were gone.”

That got his attention. “Is that so?”

“I made lots of tea,” the LMD said proudly.

“Uh huh.”

It took quite a bit to distract the LMD, but Tony could see it when he dismissed his line of thinking in favour of something new. Something that took priority.

His brow furrowed, face morphing into a familiar expression of concentration Tony thought he’d never live to see again. His eyes scanned Tony again, this time looking for something precise, before settling on his chest.

“I was wondering if you’d be able to pick up on this,” he commented, tapping the arc reactor through his shirt. “That’s what’s throwing you off, right? The magnets?”

Peter cocked his head like a bird. “What is it?”

“I’m glad you asked,” Tony said with a lopsided grin. “If I’m not mistaken, and I rarely am, this is the answer to your power problem.”

Chapter Text

When Tony asked Pepper to give him a hand with something in the lab, she definitely didn’t anticipate him asking her to remove the device keeping him alive. It was revolting and probably took at least a decade off her life, but at the very least she could say it didn’t take too long. Tony stood up, looking far too casual for a man who’d just gone into cardiac arrest a few moments.

Once her own heart stopped racing, it became harder to shake the sense that something was missing.

“Hey, Tony…why didn’t you just ask Peter to help with this instead of me?” A surge of dread struck her when he froze. “You didn’t…do something to him, did you?”

“He’ll be fine,” he assured her, wincing when he caught sight of her expression.

“Implying he’s not fine now.”

“He's...Alright, he's not entirely in one piece right now. I’m making a few modifications. He’ll be back up on his feet in no time.”

“You promise?”

“When did you get so attached?” he asked curiously. “I thought he freaked you out.”

“He surprised me,” she corrected. “He’s decent company now he doesn’t look like a terminator. Helped me get through the mountains of paperwork while you were…”

“Being held captive by terrorists?” he suggested, rolling his eyes when she winced. “You can say it, Pep. I’m not gonna lose it.”

Her lips pressed into a fine line, no doubt biting back a retort.

“You’ll get him up and running again?”

“I promise,” he vowed. “You’ll hardly be able to tell the difference.”

xxx

“How does it feel, kiddo?”

Peter flexed his fingers, a visual cue to indicate his internal sensors were running diagnostics.

“The new power source is stable,” he decided.

“You want to try standing?”

In one swift movement, he sat up and slid off the table. The arc reactor in his chest mirrored Tony’s own, the soft glow reflecting off his metal chest plate.

“Here,” he offered. The LMD didn’t hesitate to accept the plain black t-shirt (that was a good indication, no delays in his response time). The thick fabric did a decent job at hiding the bulky apparatus. If you knew to look, you could only just pick up on the faint blue glow through the black.

“Levels still holding steady?”

“All systems are operating well within the parameters.”

“Good, we’ve got work to do.”

“A new project?”

“Sort of. We’re not building weapons anymore, though. I put a stop to that.”

“So…what will you build now?”

“I’ve got a few ideas.”

xxx

“Hi, Miss Potts!”

Pepper didn’t like to think of herself as jumpy, but she’d be lying if she claimed she didn’t shriek. The voice was one she knew all-too well, but in three months of practically living out of the house, she’d never heard it outside of the lab.

Twisting around in a rather inelegant spin (thank you, high heels), she found the LMD taking stock in the kitchen.

“Would you like some tea?” he asked, oblivious to her state of complete shock.

“Peter,” she breathed. “How are you…What about your charging dock?”

Surprise flickered across his face, as if he never imagined she wouldn’t know.

“Mr Stark fixed me. I can walk around unimpeded now.”

“I can…see that.”

Pepper resisted the urge to massage her temples and forced a smile. “That’s wonderful, Peter. How are you enjoying life outside the lab?”

He blinked. “There are windows up here.”

“Is that so?”

He nodded before returning his attention to the kitchen, poking through the drawers as if fascinated by their contents. Pepper smiled fondly before something occurred that made her falter.

“Hey, Pete?”

“Mhm?”

“Where’s Tony?”

He tilted his head without straightening up, making him look strangely lopsided as he studied the food processor in one of the open cupboards. “He locked himself in the lab and asked that he not be disturbed until his takeout arrives, but JARVIS says Happy pulled into the driveway with his order a few minutes ago. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you interrupting.”

Pepper froze. “…Happy?”

“Hey, Pep!”

Happy jogged across the open expanse of the living room to greet her. “I’m not staying long, just came to drop something off with Tony…I know I’m not really in a place to say anything definitive, but he seems kind of like he’s doing better today, y’know?”

“Happy.”

“I know what you’re going to say, I know he’s been to hell and back. But maybe it’s a sign he’s beginning to recover? That he’s ready to heal? Maybe even reopen-”

“Happy!”

“What…? Oh.”

Peter stared at Happy with the unabashed curiosity of a scientist unearthing a fascinating new specimen.

“Um, hi?”

“Hi, Happy!” he said in a jovial tone that didn’t quite match the intensity of his expression.

Happy shifted, fixing Pepper with a desperate look.

“So, uh, who are you exactly?”

He blinked. “I’m Peter.”

“Nice to meet you, Peter, but that doesn’t really answer my question.”

Pepper resisted the urge to bury her face in her hands. “Happy…”

Before she could figure out how on Earth to finish that sentence, Peter spoke up.

“I’m the LMD,” he said, cocking his head as if waiting for a look of recognition. It seemed Pepper wasn’t the only one to assume Tony would have mentioned building a functioning android in his basement to his driver and close personal friend.

Happy’s frown deepened. “That some sort of intern?”

“Sure,” Tony piped in as he bypassed the awkward standoff and made a beeline for the coffee maker. “Why not? You put on a new pot, kid?”

“I was letting it brew,” he said, his attention leaving Happy the second Tony came into view. “You complained it wasn’t strong enough last time.”

Tony poured himself a cup and took a sip, humming in approval. “Perfect.”

“When did you get an intern?” Happy asked with a frown

“Before the abduction.” Tony shrugged and took another sip from his coffee cup. “He was working on something of a…trial basis, if you will. We only worked out all the finer details this morning.”

“Oh…” Happy said, shooting Peter a dubious look. “Well, uh. In that case, nice to meet you, kid.”

He held out a hand to shake.

Peter blinked twice and tilted his head, uncomprehending. Pepper suppressed a groan.

“Handshake, kid,” Tony theatre whispered, and the expression of confusion lifted into an easy grin.

“Nice to meet you too, Happy!” he said as he shook the drivers hand with a little too much enthusiasm.

The driver shot the trio strange looks over his shoulder as he left, shaking his head and muttering something about Tony’s recruitment standards.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’d say that went quite well.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Tony,” Pepper warned. “Why’d you lie?”

He shrugged. “Not my fault Happy stumbled into the perfect cover story.”

“Not your- Tony, why do you need a cover story?”

The smile faltered.

 Getting Tony to take anything seriously was a challenge. The almost grim expression looked out of place on his face. It made him look drawn…tired.

“Hey, Jar? Happy out of the house, yet?”

“Just leaving now, sir. Would you like me to ask him to come back?”

“No, that won’t be necessary. Peter, show Pepper your new modifications.”

Without hesitation, the LMD pulled his shirt over his head.

She’d seen his torso before, but it still served as an uncomfortable reminder of his true nature. The synthetic skin ended a little below his artificial collar bones, revealing the metal shielding of his torso. A new addition to the harsh metal was an arc reactor, almost identical to the one she now knew sat in a cavity in Tony’s sternum.

“That’s how you fixed the power problem,” she said, feeling stupid for not realising it before. “You…gave him the device you built to save your life.”

“Normally I would have drawn up some new specs first, but I got impatient. I already had to build this one,” he said, tapping the arc reactor in his own chest for emphasis. “I figured why not make one more?. Not much point in fiddling with mine too much since I’ve already got the apparatus built into my chest, but I could probably work out a way to make his a little more discrete."

“I like it,” she blurted out before she could stop herself. He raised an eyebrow, a teasing smile lifting the corners of his mouth.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It suits him…The LMD, that is.”                                                                                                            

“I’ll keep that in mind, Miss Potts.”

She’d waited three long months to see that lopsided grin again, it was almost enough to make her forget her original question.

Almost.

“So, how come you have to hide the fact that Peter has an arc reactor?”

Tony hesitated. “Do you trust me, Pep?”

The question caught her off guard. Again with the sudden shifts between humorous and serious. Dismissive of everything one minute and oh so genuine the next. Tony always had a one-track mind; she couldn’t help but wonder what might have grabbed his attention over the last few months.

She still didn’t have to consider her answer. “Of course.”

“Good, because you’re one of the only people left I know I can trust. I don’t understand a lot of it myself, but I know that if the arc reactor tech gets into the wrong hands…it could do a lot of damage, Pep. Maybe more than anything else I’ve ever built before. It won’t take a lot to put two and two together if I suddenly announce I got the LMD up and running. And, if I’m right…I don’t think the people I’m looking into would hesitate to dismantle him for it.”

Pepper bit her lip. “Are you sure it’s not just…Well, paranoia isn’t uncommon-“

“I’m not paranoid, Pepper,” he interrupted. “I know the symptoms, but it’s not the PTSD talking. The missile that hit me, the one that lodged the shrapnel in my chest, it had my name on it. Literally, I saw the Stark Industries logo on the side before it exploded. No, before you ask, I didn’t imagine it. I saw a lot of Stark Tech in that cave. It was one of mine.”

She didn’t insult him by trying to rationalise it. “What does that mean, exactly?”

“I don’t know…but for now at least, I’m playing my cards close to my chest.”

xxx

“3, 2, 1.”

“Lift off achieved. The new flight stabilisers seem to be holding up. Fluctuations have been reduced by another 15%,” Peter listed.

“Glad to hear it. Let’s try a slow ascension.”

“Increasing thrust capacity by forty percent.”

“Mind you bring it back down before I hit the ceiling this time. How’s the power-to-weight ratio?”

“Everything looks good, the modifications you made seem to be working with the new rig quite nicely." Peter's brow furrowed as he scanned the readouts. "I’d recommend redistributing your weight. You’re drifting to the left.”

“Right, I’ll work on that. Bring me back down to the ground and kill power.”

He barely staggered when he hit the ground this time.

“That marks the fourth successful flight check,” Peter said.

“Congratulations, sir.”

“Right,” Tony said, clapping his hands together as he stepped out of the rig. “I think that entitles me to a drink. Small one, just a nightcap. Don’t wait up for me.”

“Do you want me to return the rig for you?”

Tony only offered a dismissive wave as he left the room, his mind already elsewhere. Peter rolled his eyes, a feature he'd been abusing since his latest software patch.

“Should I take that as a yes?”

“It’s probably best not to leave sir’s top secret projects lying around,” JARVIS agreed with a pang of sympathy. They didn’t really need to speak aloud to communicate with one another, but JARVIS was a firm believer in the importance of practicing tone and intonation.

Peter lifted the rig with the utmost care, disentangling the straps that held it together. Tony was already building a new flight system into the Mark II, with any luck the project would be completed in a matter of weeks.

An alert chimed in Peter’s head, informing him that Pepper’s passcode had been used to unlock the lab door.

“Miss Potts,” he greeted as he replaced the rigging in the storage unit. “Mr Stark just went upstairs for the night. Would you like me to call him back down?”

“That won’t be necessary, Peter. I’m here to talk to you.”

Peter smiled but offered no other indication that he’d heard her. When she didn’t receive any sort of response, she cleared her throat and tried again. “Is that alright?”

“Of course. How can I help you?”

“Are you…allowed to talk about Tony? Without him knowing?”

“I have a concept of confidentiality, if that’s what you’re asking. I also have protocols in place which prevent me from discussing his private projects.”

“I’m not interested in whatever he’s working on down here,” she clarified. “It’s more of a personal issue. I’m worried about him.”

“Very well. What would you like to know?”

It became clear in the way Pepper faltered that she wasn’t entirely sure herself. “You knew him…before.”

“Before?”

“Before Afghanistan.”

“Ah.” Peter nodded but once again failed to respond.

Pepper backtracked, trying to find some semblance of coherency to her thoughts. Already doubts were developing in her mind, but backing out now didn’t seem like much of an option.

“You’ve noticed he’s been acting differently…right? Shutting down weapons development at Stark Industries, holing up in his lab, all these secret projects…”

“Mr Stane requested Mr Stark—“

“I know he told Tony to lie low,” Pepper interrupted. “I also remember the last time he told Tony to stay out of the public eye. Rhodey and Happy had to drag him off the stage of a New York strip club.”

She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead as if it would help to alleviate the building pressure there. “I just…I need to know if he’s alright.”

Peter observed her as he contemplated his answer. “Since Mr Stark returned from captivity, I have noticed a considerable decline in presentations of self-destructive behaviours. He appears to suffer periods of heightened anxiety, but for the most part has coped with this by focusing his energy on a project he believes will be for the betterment of humanity. Based on my research, this is a…good thing, correct?”

“I hope so. He wasn’t…I knew he had issues before the— Just...You’ll look out for him, won’t you? I’m not really sure what you’re actually programmed to do these days, but sometimes I think he lets his bots get closer to him than people. Even when he’s reaching out, he’s…” Pepper shook her head. “Just look out for him. Promise?”

No one had ever asked him to make a promise before. He tilted his head, mulling over the limited terms she’d outlined.

“Promise,” he agreed.

xxx

“More coffee?”

“In a minute. Here, try this on for me.”

Peter offered his arm without question, allowing Tony to fuss over the straps and make adjustments that would have been a nightmare to perform on himself.

“Are you sure this is safe?”

“What are you, my mother? Let me worry about my own safety for a change.”

“Sir, may I point out that you have an exceptionally long history of self-destructive behaviour.”

“Thanks. Definitely didn’t ask you.”

“I am merely stating facts that are a matter of public record.”

“No one likes a smartass, J.”

“I’ll keep that in mind in future, sir.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Butterfingers? Mind passing me the plate for the forearm instead of admiring your reflection in it?”

“What are you going to do with it?” Peter asked as he watched Tony work.

“Believe it or not, I’m going to secure it to your forearm.”

“Not the plate, the suit. You didn’t save it on the main servers, does that mean you’re not going to sell it?”

“Definitely not. Raise your right arm.”

Peter obeyed. “But if you’re not selling it, what’s the point?”

“I didn’t sell you, did I?”

“That was different. I’m an unfinished prototype,” Peter said with a casualness that didn’t quite fit the subject.

“Not unfinished anymore. You reckon I should mail you to an auction house?”

Peter rolled his eyes but otherwise didn’t respond to the joke. Good to see his learning interface was still hard at work.

“I know you’re designing this to your specifications, Mr Stark. Are you really going to pilot it?”

“Why not?”

“You haven’t filled out any of the necessary paperwork. I know you've broken the law before, but nothing JARVIS's files indicate a willingness to build and utilise illegal weaponry."

"Told you, kid. It's not a weapon."

"What is it then?"

"A suit." The pieces of the gauntlet clicked into place, fitting snugly around Peter's forearm.

"How's it feel?"

Peter flexed his fingers, taking a moment to account for the new resistance. "It seems...functional. Mobility is only limited by a margin of about 22%."

"Not bad. Not exactly good either, but it's a start."

"What if you get arrested?"

"Then I guess I'm going to jail."

Peter blinked. "You mean...you'll be gone again? Like before?"

Humour was a fine line to walk with the LMD. On the one hand, he could rival JARVIS in terms of sass and learned the art of sarcasm from interactions with Tony. On the other, he still didn't have a great concept of tone or timing. It still gave Tony whiplash sometimes.

Tony knew him well enough to understand when they’d crossed that line from joking around to dead serious.

"I don't plan on going anywhere any time soon, kid. They'll have a hard time catching me in this thing."

"What if they decide to shoot you out of the sky?"

Tony winced at his bluntness. "I'll make sure the suit will protect me from whatever they throw at me, alright?"

"But why do you need a suit at all?"

Knowing he wouldn't let the topic go, Tony triggered the release mechanism on the gauntlet. It slipped off Peter’s arm with ease.

"I made a lot of mistakes, Pete. I don't want my legacy to be defined by the weapons I built anymore. I'm done with arming criminals. If I want a shot at fixing some of my mistakes, I'm going to need to do something drastic. If these aren't desperate times…"

He shook his head. "I didn't build you for a battlefield, but if I'd found a solution to your power problem a year ago, that's where you would have wound up. Do you understand? I didn't take responsibility for my inventions then. I’m trying to now. That's why I have to be the one to pilot the suit."

Ethics and morals weren't areas Tony made a point of lecturing Peter on. In hindsight, maybe he should have put more emphasis on them before. The LMD stayed fixed in place, head tilted to the side to indicate he was still processing. After a good thirty seconds passed without any change, Tony sighed.

“When I was in Afghanistan, I made someone a promise.”

Peter blinked, pinched expression smoothing out. “Okay. Would you still like that coffee now that you’ve finished modifying the gauntlet?”

xxx

The suit came together faster than even Peter could have predicted.

Tony dedicated every waking moment to the project, allowing it to consume every aspect of his life. Obadiah didn’t seem to have a problem with his obsessive new work ethic, even if he still refused to design new weapons. Without Obie to chase him out for board meetings and press conferences, nothing prevented Tony from all but living out of the lab.

Peter noticed Pepper’s concern, even if Tony didn’t. He saw the texts from Rhodey that went unread. Even without the exact details of Tony’s trip to the airbase, he knew something had changed.

Despite isolating himself from the outside world, Tony left the news running almost 24/7. Both personal experience and JARVIS’s records indicated he’d never made a habit of doing this before. Even with the music drowning out the noise, he glanced up at regular intervals to check the headlines.

Waiting for the penny to drop.

Bit by bit, he allowed Peter to take on bigger projects. Coffee runs became returning tools, then cleaning and maintaining equipment, then using said equipment to handle some of the more mundane tasks around the lab. With every new responsibility, Tony watched from the corner of his eye. Waiting to see if he was ready for the next thing, curious to find out how far he could push the boundaries of his own creation. During Tony’s first ever test flight, Peter watched from the balcony and monitored for aircraft. During Tony’s first ever mission, he monitored Tony’s vitals and analysed the footage for inconsistencies and areas of improvement. Unprompted, he sent Tony a report the next day highlighting every attack that so much as scratched the armour. He wasn’t quite at the point of making his own designs yet, imagination was a tricky thing to capture, but he was getting there. Who knew where he’d be in a year or two.

Having an assistant in the lab wasn’t all bad either. In the past, Obie had tried to convince him to hire someone to spread the workload. Time is money, and Tony’s time was too valuable to waste doing odd jobs. The last argument they had on the subject ended with Tony building Butterfingers.

The bots were excellent assistants. Okay, oftentimes they made more messes than they cleaned. Sometimes they even seemed like more trouble than they were worth, but Tony wouldn’t trade them in for anything. He’d worked in labs with people before—that’s why he had a custom one built in his basement when he designed the house in Malibu, far away from prying eyes.

The bots got under his feet, and sometimes Dum-E would spend hours picking up nuts and bolts after dropping boxes from new shipments. Sometimes U would miss the cue to start rolling the camera and force Tony to patch together security footage in his reports instead. But people? People watched him while he worked and tried to make conversation when he was engrossed in a new project. The young Stark Industries employees got nervous around him. Nervous enough to make mistakes. They had it in their heads that they had something to prove, and they’d stumble over their own feet volunteering to bend to his every whim. The senior employees had their own objectives. Promises, promotions, bonuses; they were as predictable as they were transparent. Then there were the really old ones, the people who never wasted an opportunity to tell him how much he reminded them of his father.

He still couldn’t decide which was worse.

The bots didn’t make a fuss when he stayed in the lab until four am, nor were they making a sacrifice to stay and work with him. The bots didn’t operate on a calendar or hold it against him if he didn’t show up on time. They didn’t ask questions when he decided to work on a car instead of a missile, they didn’t discourage him from working on projects that would never make them any money. No fuss, no obligation, no traitorous politics. The perfect assistants.

Peter wasn’t like the other bots.

Aside from JARVIS, most of Tony’s inventions didn’t actually speak. They didn’t really ask before they did things, either. Peter’s behaviour evolved a lot over those three months Tony spent in captivity. Though the exact details were a little ambiguous, he knew the LMD must have spent a fair bit of time in Pepper’s company. It showed, and not just in his interactions with Pepper. It was there in his behaviour around the lab. In the glasses of water that appeared on the counter between cups of coffee, in the way food appeared at Tony’s elbow if he hadn’t eaten anything in a while. He never tried to convince him to go to bed at a reasonable hour, but he frowned if Tony returned to the lab after only a couple hours of sleep.

Tony couldn’t bring himself to mind, not really.

The LMD fit into the household with an ease they never could have imagined. With the constraints of a power cord gone, he took advantage of his new freedom and explored the house whenever he wasn’t needed in the lab. Tony saw no reason to switch him off at night, even with Pepper questioning his decision to let the LMD roam unsupervised (he has strict instructions not to leave the premises, Pep. He’s not going to fall off a cliff if I leave him on while I take a nap). The AI didn’t have much purpose now, other than to accumulate knowledge and evolve. He would wander the rooms, cataloguing all the odds and ends left behind in the drawers. In the mornings he’d sit in the living room with Pepper. They’d watch the news while she sipped her morning tea and flipped through the company reports.

Their routine couldn’t exactly be described as normal, especially not after Tony entered a no fly zone and took out a terrorist cell…but they made it work. He even started answering Rhodey’s calls again. From Peter’s perspective, things seemed to be looking up.

Until the day JARVIS shut down.

It happened without warning, without explanation. No error reports, no scheduled reboots in the logs. Only the perimeter alert and a report acknowledging the acceptance of access codes at one of the outside terminals.

Not once in Peter’s short life had the AI gone offline. The sudden absence of input from the network made him pause before he did the only logical thing an AI programmed to learn could do.

He went to investigate.

“You must be Peter,” Obadiah said with a shark-like smile when Peter found him lingering at the side door where the disturbance originated. “I heard he’d hired a new lab assistant.”

Peter tilted his head. Tony never gave him specific instructions regarding Obadiah. Never mentioned if he’d decided to keep him informed on the progression of the LMD project. He couldn’t access JARVIS’s logs with the network offline, but Peter still had his own memories to fall back on. Obadiah watching Tony work on him in the lab back when his AI was in its infancy, Obadiah losing interest in the project long before Peter even had a face to call his own.

“That’s right,” he said pleasantly. “Is there anything I can help you with, Mr Stane?”

“Oh I very much doubt that,” Obadiah chuckled. “Just here to collect something…Have you spoken to Tony at all today?”

“Not since this morning, I’m afraid. Mister Stark has been out most of the day.”

Something in Obadiah’s expression shifted, but even Peter wasn’t advanced enough to read the minute change.

“I didn’t beat him here by much,” he commented. “Tony should be back any minute now. Say, it’s getting late. He doesn’t normally make you work nights, does he?”

Peter blinked. “I work whatever hours Mister Stark requires.”

Obadiah’s smile grew strained. “Tell you what, Tony and I were talking about having a drink. Why don’t you take the night off? In fact, I’m sure Tony said he was going to call ahead and have you leave early tonight. You know how he is, brilliant mind but memory of a sieve.”

Someone else may have noticed the signs. The thinly veiled excuses and the strange tension in his words combined with JARVIS mysteriously going offline…But Peter wasn’t programmed for threat assessment. Though familiar with the concept, betrayal wasn’t something he’d yet been taught to detect, let alone to deal with. As far as he was concerned, a regular guest with security clearance second to only Tony himself had just presented him with clear instructions.

It wasn’t in the LMD’s nature to question it.

xxx

The stairs to the lab were in the same general direction as the front door. Obie had no reason to pursue or even doubt Peter as he slipped out of the room.

It seemed…quiet without JARVIS around to interface with. Even the bots grew subdued in his absence.

With no other tasks to carry out, Peter returned to his charging dock in the corner of the lab. He didn’t need it anymore, not with the brand new arc reactor sitting in his chest, but the designated workspace continued to act as the closest thing he had to a room of his own. Despite being accustomed to near constant stimuli, the LMD wasn’t physically capable of growing bored.

He took advantage of the down time to run his daily diagnostics check, but otherwise contented himself in sending continuous prompts to the still inactive JARVIS. Without the AI’s security logs, he didn’t even know if Tony was home yet. No doubt the inventor would fix whatever issue caused the AI to shut down. In the meantime, the LMD began shutting down non-essential systems to conserve resources.

He’d spent rather a lot of time on stand-by during Tony’s absence, even with Pepper making daily visits down to the lab. The procedure was hardly unfamiliar to him.

When it became clear Peter wouldn’t be entertaining them, Butterfingers returned to sorting through the clutter on one of the workbenches. Dum-E moved over to help but only succeeded in knocking a half-empty mug to the floor. The let out a sound like a squawk at the sight of the broken ceramic.

Another request to establish a remote connection with JARVIS’s server. Another unreceived response.

Under normal circumstances, JARVIS would have alerted him if someone in the building appeared distressed. The security footage would have shown him someone attempting to approach the lab.

As it was, he didn’t realise Tony needed help until he tumbled down the stairs and landed in a crumpled heap outside the lab door.

Peter blinked. “Mr Stark? Do you require medical attention?”

The billionaire didn’t respond, every ounce of his focus and energy invested in forcing his shaking limbs to co-operate. He forced himself off the ground, grasping for traction against the sheer glass doors. Even with JARVIS offline, the backup system still maintained their most fundamental security protocols. He managed to punch in the code for the door and it swung open, sending him sprawling across the floor once again.

Peter rushed forward, noting symptoms and researching causes as he approached.

Pallor skin, excessive sweating, laboured breathing, reduced co-ordination and balance, muscle tremors in the extremities, right hand clutching his chest (source of pain?)

The LMD’s brow furrowed as he researched appropriate courses of action. He wasn’t programmed to handle medical emergencies, not yet anyway. JARVIS should be the emergency responder in this kind of situation, but JARVIS remained silent. “Mr Stark, would you like me to phone an ambulance?”

This time, he received a response. Blood shot eyes focused in on him, pleading and hoping he would understand. Tony didn’t so much pull his hand away from his chest as let it drop uselessly to the floor. With the gaping hole in his chest where the arc reactor used to be – where it should be – on display, a more complete picture formed in Peter’s head.

Tony’s gaze flicked back and forth between the LMD and something on the desk behind him, pleading with him to understand when his lips refused to form words.

A sentence is all it would take, a single line of instruction and the LMD would leap into action and retrieve the Mark I arc reactor for him.

Peter didn’t need to turn to follow to his gaze. He knew every item on the lab bench behind him. Knew that on it sat an antiquated power source that would buy Tony enough time to build a new reactor.

It wasn’t in Peter’s programming to question Obadiah’s motives in entering the house. He’d been built to learn, adapted to act as an assistant, but security wasn’t an issue Tony designed him to concern himself with.

Security wasn’t a priority…but anticipating Tony’s needs? That was a different matter entirely.

Peter could perform billions of calculations in the time it took him to lift his hand to the apparatus in his chest. The likelihood that Tony’s reactor would have malfunctioned, the odds that a malfunction would have coincided with JARVIS shutting down by chance, the factors that would require JARVIS to shut down at the command of someone other than Tony himself, the chances that Tony’s current state was the result of anything other than malicious intent.

Peter didn’t know Obadiah. He didn’t need to know Obadiah. He knew Tony.

Mr Stark wouldn’t let his creation out of his hands without a fight, and an outdated power source wouldn’t stop him from pursuing it. Under the circumstances, the choice was obvious.

The inventor’s eyes widened in surprise as he watched the LMD reach under his shirt and remove the still glowing arc reactor.

Chapter Text

Tony never expected to dread coming home that night.

After everything he’d been through, surely that should have been something to look forward to? The comfort of his own home, sleeping off his injuries. After surviving a half dozen accounts of attempted murder, all orchestrated by someone he’d looked up to as a father figure ever since his own father’s passing…Surely he’d earned that luxury?

Then there was the added stress of dodging both Pepper and SHIELD’s attempts to coerce him into receiving medical treatment.

During those long months he spent slaving away in a sweltering cave, he would dream about his bed in the Malibu house. Sometimes Yinsen would convince him to lie down for a while, when the heat of the desert combined with the ever-burning furnace made it impossible to see through the sweat. Sometimes, when his brain all but cooked inside his skull, he would swear he could feel the silk sheets in place of scratchy cloth. He longed for his mattress and the foam that always stayed blissfully cool in the summer months. He could forget, if he allowed himself to slip far enough into delirium, that he was lying on a hard cot instead of soft foam, moulded over the course of years to fit his body shape.

There was another human-shaped indent in the bed; one moulded by dozens of bodies that now fit none of them. Tonight, more than ever, he longed to bring someone back with him. It wouldn’t be difficult to convince someone. If not a date to fill an empty bed, then perhaps a friend to quiet the echo in the empty house. He thought, just for a moment, about asking Pepper to join him.

Then he remembered she’d suffered almost as much as he had that night and deserved a good night’s sleep more than anyone. Bringing a stranger into the house was out of the question right now, so Tony forced himself to smile. He charmed the emergency responders under SHIELD’s thumb into letting him go after only a basic physical, answered the questions of any agent who pestered him enough.

He dreaded returning to the empty house, but he knew what he had to do.

For once, the driveway didn’t light up upon his arrival. The sun would be rising before long, but for the moment he’d have to handle a rare downside to living in such an isolated area: minimal light pollution.

Happy offered him a torch from the emergency kit in the back of the car which Tony accepted. He also offered his own assistance which Tony chose to decline. He did ask him to move the bag containing a good portion of his disassembled suit inside. With the help of SHIELD, he’d been able to scavenge some equipment from the wreckage of Obadiah’s workshop. Disassembly was a pain from the comfort of his state of the art lab, removing the armour by hand was a nightmare. A large portion of the torso still refused to budge without the proper tools. He’d designed it that way, in the hopes that it might offer him some protection should someone try to forcibly remove the armour.

He made a mental note to perfect the process with the Mark IV.

“You can just leave it in the entry way, Hap,” he said, waving off the bodyguard. The man let out a grunt which Tony chose to interpret as acknowledgement rather than exertion. He was sure the man would be fine.

Tony made a beeline for the nearest security panel and got to work undoing Obie’s attempts at sabotage. The damage wasn’t as bad as he’d feared, probably because he thought he could make a quick buck out of the system down the line. Tony spent a good deal of the time cursing himself for ever giving the man JARVIS’s access codes.

At least he could probably still recover the suit’s backup, even with all the damage it had sustained. A small reassurance that they’d be able to rebuild regardless of the damage.

He barely noticed when Happy approached him, waving off the bodyguard without really registering what he was saying. At some point he got back in the car, though Tony neither noticed his departure nor remembered where he said he was going. During his fourth attempt at rebooting the system, Tony noticed with some surprise that his hands were shaking.

After what felt like an eternity, the house came back to life. He switched off the torch as the sensors adjusted to the sudden time jump and illuminated the path in front of him.

“You with us, J?” he asked. A terrifying beat of silence followed, and Tony held his breath. If this didn’t work, if he’d miscalculated, if the diagnostic reading was wrong and Obadiah-

“Of course, sir. I do apologise for my unexpected absence.”

Tony couldn’t help it, he laughed.

“Don’t worry about it, Jar.”

The AI paused again. “Sir, need I remind you that you could have initiated a system reboot from inside?”

Tony’s smile dimmed. “Suppose I’ve put it off long enough.”

“Sir?”

Too exhausted to even make an attempt at an explanation, Tony dusted off his jeans and headed inside.

The low lighting normally looked so inviting, but tonight he would have preferred something harsher.

“Hey, JARVIS?” he asked, lowering his voice. “How long was the security system offline?”

“Approximately six hours, sir.”

Six hours with the doors unlocked, no way of knowing if anyone made their way in or out during that time.

Tony shook his head and pushed aside his paranoia. “Good to be home, J.”

“Good to have you home, sir.”

Instead of making a beeline for the lab, he took a detour through the kitchen to stop off at what Pepper called the “pantry”. Tony preferred to think of it as a liquor closet.

At parties, people tended to bring wine. Something about it being classy and expensive appealed to a great many of his business associates. The ones who preferred a bit of flare brought flashy champagne bottles, but the ones who knew him best bought the harder stuff.

Tony’s insides twisted as his gaze landed on the case of whiskey he received for his last birthday. The seal was still intact when he removed it, the last bottle in the set untouched since Obadiah gifted it to him. He turned it over in his hands, getting a feel for the weight of it. God knew how much it cost. Knowing Obie, no doubt a small fortune.

I’ve known Tony longer than he’s known himself. Though I've never admitted it to Tony sober, I’ve always thought of the Starks as family. As much as if they’d been my own blood.

The sound of it shattering didn’t drown out the memory of the speech Obadiah made that night, but it sure as hell didn’t hurt.

And after Howard died and Tony was left with the unimaginable burden of living up to his legacy, of inheriting his father’s company and all those expectations…I began to think of him as more of a son.

How had he been so blind? He knew he didn’t make Obie’s job easy, but how did he miss the hatred he’d seen in his eyes up on the roof? More than anything, he wished he could ask where the truth ended and the lies began. Did he ever  care? If not for Tony, then for Howard?  All those family dinners…

Did he dream of killing his parents the same way he so clearly dreamed of killing Tony?

He shook his head. These weren’t thoughts he wanted to ponder right now, but he couldn’t quite banish them from his mind. Every second spent in Obadiah’s company seemed to play on repeat in his head, as if he could glean some small insight into the motivations of the man he once thought knew him best. If he combed through every interaction, over-analysed every detail, would it seem obvious in hindsight? Could he pinpoint the moment everything changed? Could he trace it all back to one wrong decision? Could he have prevented this mess?

In truth, Tony wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

Fragments of glass crunched beneath his feet, though he couldn't remember making the decision to start walking. Pepper would give him shit for not cleaning up the mess, already the kitchen reeked of whiskey, but that was a problem for another time.

He had more important things to worry about now.

The living room looked more or less the same as he'd left it. He tried to ignore the shattered remains of the lamp and the overturned side table he'd knocked over trying to reach the lab.

Uncoordinated movements, limbs refusing follow the most basic instructions. Balance thrown to shit, reaching for anything to help him stay on his feet. Anything to keep him moving while over and over again he did the math. How long will it take for the paralysis to subside, how long will it take for the shrapnel to kill him, what’s the likelihood anyone will notice his absence before then, what are the odds that he’ll be able to make it to Pepper before Obadiah-

Tony descended the stairs to the lab at a relaxed pace. JARVIS switched on the lights when he reached the bottom, but otherwise remained silent. The bots didn’t respond to the change in lighting, didn’t budge an inch when he unlocked the lab door. They stooped at an odd angle, huddled close together as if in mourning.

“Hey there,” he called out softly. They stirred but offered little more than twitches in response.

Tony knew what to expect when he approached them, but the sight of the lifeless android still made him shudder.

When active, Peter managed convey a somewhat convincing imitation of life. His responses were still a little awkward at times, he had a tendency to stare off into space when he wasn't actively involved in a conversation. Sometimes he made choices that, while perfectly logical when he explained his thinking, seemed erratic by a human's standards. But, without any basis for an alternative, he could pass for human in the company of strangers.

Inactive, his imitation of death was flawless.

Glassy eyes fixed on the ceiling in an unseeing stare, legs bent under him from where he fell to his knees before collapsing backwards (and oh how desperately Tony wanted to catch him before he could fall). Dum-E nudged his open palm but didn't receive so much as a twitch in response.

Without thinking, Tony knelt beside the bots and brushed the hair out of Peter’s vacant eyes. Normally the motion would earn him a look of surprise or, more recently, a smile. Instead, the LMD's face remained fixed in a neutral expression that looked somehow out of place.

“I’ll fix him,” he vowed.

He received only silence in return.

xxx

“How’s it looking, JARVIS?”

“Very promising, sir. The new power source appears stable.”

“Alright, Peter. Let’s try the usual checks”

Peter opened his eyes, artificial pupils expanding and contracting. Thin fingers flexed, a beat passing before his artificial chest rose in imitation of breath. He blinked at the ceiling, then blinked again.

“You’ve made some modifications since I was last online.”

“Sure did. Everything look normal?”

“Internal sensors indicate that everything is working within normal parameters.”

“No corruption or lost data?”

Peter tilted his head, though the movement looked a little strange when he was lying down.

“My last records are from…approximately thirty-six hours ago.”

“So you remember what happened?”

"You entered the lab in a state of distress, the Mark II reactor missing from your chest apparatus. I removed my own power source as it should have, in theory, acted as a reasonable substitute for the Mark II.”

“Without running any of your standard shut-down procedures,” Tony huffed. “You do know you’re a prototype, right? Redundant power supplies weren’t exactly a priority when I built you. Hell, I couldn’t find a suitable primary power source when I built you.”

Peter tilted his head again.

“The updated logs indicate you have since installed a backup."

Tony shrugged. “I already had to rebuild the Mark II reactor and replace the one I borrowed from you after it got a little banged up in the fight with Obie. Didn’t take much to build one more.”

Peter hesitated. “You were unable to retrieve the Mark II, then?”

The LMD raised his head to meet Tony’s eyes, facial expression relaxing for a split second before he attempted a look of concern. Tony considered re-establishing the LMD’s connection with JARVIS. With any luck, he’d avoid having this conversation all together. The surveillance and debriefings would be more detailed than his summary of events ever could be…but Tony found himself dragging his desk chair over to the workbench.

“Obadiah stole my reactor to power a suit,” he admitted. “I had to destroy it…All of it. The suit, the reactor. I talked Pepper through detonating the prototype reactor in the factory and…”

When the words trailed off, he mimed an explosion with his hands.

“A suit? Like yours?” Peter asked.

“Yup, I guess they managed to dig up enough of the Mark I from the crash site in Afghanistan. Only thing missing was this,” he tapped the arc reactor in his chest for emphasis.

“He tried to kill you for it.”

Tony tried not to wince at his bluntness. The betrayal stung; he didn’t know if it would ever stop stinging. “It’s a good thing you were there to help, then.”

Peter frowned. Not out of concentration or confusion, but genuine discontent. Despite the circumstances, Tony felt a pang of pride at the advancement.

“I didn’t stop him,” the LMD refuted. “I could have, I spoke with him before it happened…but I didn’t.”

“That’s not on you, kid.”

“You could have died,” Peter said stubbornly.

“But I didn’t, you saved my life. Pretty sure that more than makes up for a tiny mistake, wouldn’t you say?”

The LMD spent far too long calculating for Tony’s taste.

“Look, kid, I trusted him too. For decades, in fact. If I didn’t see this coming, I’m sure as hell not holding it against you. I didn’t program you with paranoia, you had no reason to distrust him.”

The LMD still didn’t reply.

Tony sighed. “C’mon, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

xxx

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”

Pepper fixed him with an unimpressed stare. “You just outed your secret identity to the world’s press, the news outlets are playing your speech on repeat, it’s only a matter of time before the military demand you turn over your suit and, oh yeah, SHIELD are demanding we each fill out a mountain of paperwork.”

Tony waved her off. “We can worry about later. Right now, we’re celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?”

“Not dying isn’t a good enough reason to celebrate? Happy, pull in here.”

Pepper frowned when she caught sight of the sign. “A diner? Really?”

“You did tell me to lay low,” he reminded her. “A diner is about as inconspicuous as we’re going to get.”

“…I’m never going to talk you out of this, am I?”

“Not a chance.”

She sighed. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”

Tony beamed. “Get the door for the kid, would you Happy?”

“Why can’t the kid get his own door?”

“Because I asked you nicely?”

Grumbling under his breath, Happy walked around the car to open the rear door.

“Thank you!” Peter said, all but bouncing out of the car, undeterred when he stumbled a little on the way down. He'd never been in a car before, but Tony was confident he'd get used to it.

“Easy, kid,” Tony warned him. “Just take it slow, you’re still adjusting.”

Happy gave the pair a strange look before shaking his head, evidently deciding it would be too much trouble to ask. “Give me a call when you want picked up.”

“We won’t be long,” Pepper interjected before Tony could respond. “Thank you, Happy.”

“There are birds here,” Peter said before the billionaire could protest. He turned around to find the LMD watching a pigeon with an expression of sheer delight.

“Sure are,” he replied, ignoring Happy’s blatant stares. “C’mon, kid. We’re going inside now. Don’t give me that look, I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities to admire the pigeons later.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Pepper asked when they moved out of earshot. “Has he even been outside before?”

"I programmed the LMD to learn from experience. He won’t adapt until we throw him in the deep end. Relax, Pep, it’ll be fine.”

Pepper didn't bother replying, knowing nothing she said would make him budge. She shivered as they stepped inside the diner. The air conditioning was turned up a little high for her personal taste, but at least it was quiet.

“Black coffee,” Tony said without prompting. Either the man behind the till didn’t recognise him or didn't really care.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“I’ll take a tea.”

The man waited to see if Peter would speak up, but the LMD hardly seemed to notice he was there. After a moment, he shrugged, calling out for them to take a seat anywhere before he wandered off through the kitchen door.

“Peter?” Pepper asked with a frown. It wasn’t like the android to be so inattentive.

“It’s you, Mr Stark.”

Pepper raised an eyebrow before she took a step back and followed his gaze. She’d missed the clunky television set in her cursory glance of the room, but the story seemed to have captured Peter’s interest. He watched with rapt attention as yet another rerun of Tony’s now infamous “I am Ironman” speech played on mute.

“Trying to keep a low profile, kid,” Tony reminded him.

“Sorry.”

They took a seat at a booth rather than a table and fell into a comfortable if awkward silence. For lack of anything better to do, Pepper browsed the selection of milkshakes on their drinks menu.

“A black coffee and a tea. You want milk with that?”

“I think we’re fine,” Pepper said politely when Tony failed to acknowledge the question.

“Well, we’ve got sugar packets up by the till…Sure I can’t get anything for the kid?”

“No, I’m fine. Thank you for asking, though,” Peter replied, taking Pepper by surprise. The man shrugged.

“Shout if that changes.”

Tony squinted at Peter as their waiter retreated. “When did you get so polite?”

“He didn’t get it from you, that’s for sure.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know that’s...probably accurate,” he conceded with a shrug.

“Seriously, Tony. What are we doing here?”

“Call it a test run.”

“A test run for what?”

“Him,” he nodded to Peter. The LMD didn’t seem to notice, his attention captured by a jogger with a Jack Russell terrier across the street. “This seemed like a good place to start. Quiet environment, familiar people. We can limit his interactions with strangers while allowing plenty of opportunities to observe human behaviour. It’s perfect.”

Peter’s head whipped round when the bell above the door chimed to indicate the arrival of a new customer. They seemed to be a regular based on the way they greeted their waiter. He watched their interaction with interest, noting the relaxed body language and occasional hand gestures to aid in conveying their point. Pepper’s brow furrowed.

“A test run implies you’re planning something bigger. What happened to seeing how he evolves naturally?”

“He’s still going to learn at his own pace,” Tony assured her. “I just…thought I might start letting him out of the lab more. He can’t learn everything from television.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re up to something.”

“Hey, no master plan here!”

“Tony…” she warned.

“Alright, fine. I’ve been thinking about giving him a…promotion, if you will. He’s been doing great in the lab, but he’s a hell of a lot more advanced than U and Dum-E, Pep. I built him to serve in a military capacity. It'd be a waste of his potential to keep him in the basement making coffee."

“What did you have in mind?”

“Well, Happy already thinks he’s an intern…”

Pepper pinched the bridge of her nose, probably thinking about the amount of paperwork involved in what he was suggesting.

“Now, hold on. Before you go dismissing th-“

“He doesn’t even have an identity, Tony,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice down. “How the hell are we supposed to go about hiring him?”

“I’m sure you’ll figure something out. Think about it, Pep. It’s perfect! You’re always saying how much work I generate; he’s been handling half my paperwork since I taught him to forge my signature anywa-“

“You what?!”

“Relax, he’s not going to commit identity theft anytime soon. Right, Pete?”

Pepper suddenly became aware that the LMD had been watching their unfolding argument with interest. He paused, tilting his head.

“I think I would enjoy assisting Miss Potts outside of the lab,” he decided. The pair stared.

“See? He agrees with me.”

Pepper sighed, resisting the urge to rub her temples. At least she wouldn’t be alone in trying to figure out this mess.

xxx

"Sir, that package isn't addressed to you."

Tony paused, his hands still outstretched towards the neat knot of twine holding the brown paper parcel together.

"It's on my desk," he countered with a frown.

"Might I suggest reading the note?"

"There's a note?"

Upon closer examination, he found the slip of paper in question folded under the strands of string. He reread the name twice more just to be sure his tired eyes weren't playing tricks on him.

"Hey, kid? Did you order something?"

"I'm not allowed to order things."

"Wait, what? Why?"

"Pepper told me I couldn't buy anything without her permission anymore because I kept ordering take out," he shrugged without looking up from his calculations. He was still reluctant to write anything by hand when he could interface with the system wirelessly, but Tony had convinced him to try.

He thought about asking a follow-up question but thought better of it. Easier to just ask Pepper the next time he saw her.

"Well, wherever it came from, this package has your name on it."

Peter closed his project to join Tony in investigating the mysterious box.

"Handwriting analysis indicates that Pepper wrote this note," he commented. Tony bit his tongue to keep from asking how else the package could have found its way to his desk if not through Pepper. Then again, with that Fury guy breaking through his security last week…

"JARVIS?"

"I can confirm that Pepper delivered the parcel personally," he said with a note of amusement. "I assure you, it's quite safe."

"Good enough for me, care to do the honours?"

Peter hesitated, hands hovering uncertainly. Only then did it occur to Tony that the LMD had never needed to untie a knot before.

After a few seconds of frantic internet searches, he tugged experimentally on the trail of twine and watched it unravel. Tony tried not to get impatient with him as he removed the brown paper, taking the utmost care not to tear it.

“Any day now, kid.”

The LMD frowned. “If I’m careful, the materials could be reused.”

“I’m a billionaire, we don’t have to reuse brown paper. Recycling bins exist for a reason.”

All the same, Peter managed to pull it off in a perfect sheet.

“It’s a box,” he commented.

“No shit, Sherlock. Open it.”

Peter took the lid off the shallow cardboard box and carefully folded back the tissue paper as if the contents were something precious. Tony would be lying if he said he wasn’t a little underwhelmed.

“Huh, I guess Pepper thought you needed something new to wear.”

Peter looked sceptical as he examined the folded up T-Shirt. “Should I try it on?”

“Why not?” Tony said, already losing interest. Mysterious package on his desk? Interesting. Clothes shopping for the android? Less so. He supposed they would have to expand Peter’s wardrobe if he would be spending more time outside. People were bound to notice him wearing the same shirt all the time after a while.

“Hey, JAR? Bring up the updated suit designs for me to play around with, would you? I've got some ideas for making it more…portable.”

“It’s a bit late to be making those kinds of adjustments to the Mark IV, wouldn’t you say, sir?”

“Let’s leave the Mark IV as it is. Open a new project folder entitled Mark V.”

“Is it a joke?” Peter interrupted.

“Hmm?”

Tony glanced back at the LMD and froze.

There was nothing immediately alarming about the shirt. It fit him rather well, actually, aside from being a little baggy around the shoulders. The thin fabric did nothing to disguise the blue light emanating from his chest.

As strange as it was to see the reactor on display, it was the words that captured Tony’s attention. Silver lettering arched around the reactor, acting as a border for that perfect circle of light.

Proof That Tony Stark Has A Heart

“I don’t get it,” Peter said, brow creasing as he stared at the words splashed across his chest. “I can’t find any reference to the phrase online. Does it have a personal meaning?”

Tony couldn’t help but laugh, the sound catching on the lump forming in his throat.

“Yeah, kid. Call it an inside joke.”

“Oh…” Peter looked down at the shirt again. “It must be a good joke if it made you laugh.”

“It’s a great joke,” he agreed. “You should go tell Pepper how much you like your gift.”

The frown vanished, replaced by a grin. “That’s a great idea!”

Tony shook his head as he watched him race up the stairs. And to think, a few months ago he couldn’t even leave the lab.

“Sir,” JARVIS cut in, his hesitance audible even through that singular word. Tony sighed.

“Might as well spit it out, J.”

“I have received a response from the lab. Would you like to review the results of your blood test now or later?”

The smile faltered. “Might as well get it over with. Give it to me straight, JAR.”

“It is…more or less in keeping with what you expected, sir.”

The air left Tony’s lungs, but he forced himself to remain composed. “That’s…unfortunate.”

“The new design has definitely slowed the progression, but the Mark I released a significant amount of palladium into your bloodstream over the course of the three months you spent in captivity.”

"Slowed,” Tony repeated. “But not stopped.”

“That is correct, sir.”

“Do I have…options?”

JARVIS hesitated. “I would recommend running additional tests before jumping to any conclusions, sir.”

Tony nodded. He couldn’t remember reaching for it, but he found himself gripping the edge of the workbench. It kept him steady, grounded. He inhaled deeply, hating the feeling of his chest expanding around the apparatus.

“I’m dying.” It felt strange to say it aloud after months of trying not to think about it. The words felt heavy on his tongue, but somehow made him want to laugh. He could appreciate the poetry in it. Three months slaving away in a cave in Afghanistan just to die from heavy metal poisoning. All caused by the thing he built to keep him alive; and people said the universe didn't have a sense of humour

“Looks like Obie got what he paid for after all.”

After a painful silence, JARVIS spoke up. “Would you like me to call on Miss Potts?”

“No.”

“Not even-“

“I said no, J…Just give me some time to process this.”

“Will you tell Peter at least? I don’t think it’s wise for you to spend too much time alone right now, sir.”

Tony watched Dum-E chase the sheet of brown paper around the lab, oblivious to the unfolding crisis.

“I’ll tell him,” he decided. “When he comes back from talking to Pepper.”

JARVIS paused.

“Would you like me to bring up the Mark V renderings for you to adjust while you wait, sir?”

Tony cracked a smile.

“Show me what you’ve got.”

Chapter Text

Peter took the news about as well as Tony could have hoped. It took him an entire half-minute to process the information – an eternity by the android’s standards. He hesitated over his follow-up questions as if afraid to overstep his bounds, no doubt frantically extracting information from every related source he could access online.

He’s a robot, Tony reminded himself. No matter how advanced, he still had certain…limitations in the emotions department. He couldn’t stress or fret or cry…He’d never let it change anything. Even if he altered his behaviours in response to the news, his perception of Tony would remain unchanged. The LMD also didn’t insult his intelligence by trying to convince him that there was still a chance he could be wrong. They may not have exhausted every possibility just yet, but Tony’s hopes weren’t high.

Peter neatly sidestepped every response he feared from Pepper. He supposed the LMD must have considered the possibility of his death during those months in Afghanistan and come to terms with what that would mean for him. Same outcome, different time frame.

“Are you sure you don’t want to tell Miss Potts?”

Tony resisted the urge to slam his head against the desk. Between the LMD and JARVIS, he’d lost count of the number of times he’d been asked that.

“Positive.”

Maybe the news should have come as more of a shock, but right now he just felt tired. Tomorrow he’d start running simulations, exhaust every possible alternative, but he already knew what the outcome would be. Palladium was his only viable option and palladium was killing him.

Peter let the topic drop that day, but he should have known it wouldn’t last long.

“Do you think you’ll ever tell anyone?” he asked as he retrieved a replacement core for the reactor only a few days after the news dropped.

“I don’t know, kid,” Tony replied, surprising himself with his own honesty.

“Won’t it be harder if they don’t know?”

“As opposed to watching me die slowly, wondering every time they leave the room if it’ll be the last time they ever see me?”

“It would give them time to prepare,” he insisted stubbornly. “People will find out eventually, won’t they? Wouldn’t it be better to announce it on your own terms?”

Tony sighed, focusing his attention on disengaging the reactor instead of answering the question. The acrid smell of burning metal was growing more familiar by the day.

“I can do that.”

The billionaire paused before shrugging. “Knock yourself out.”

Peter held the reactor like it was something precious, removing the still smoking core without considering the heat. A look of approval crossed Tony’s face as he supervised the unfaltering exchange.

“Here, good as new,” the LMD said as he offered up the reactor. “Would you like me to look into obtaining the necessary components to synthesise more cores? You seem to be running a little low.”

He’d already discussed the matter with JARVIS, of course. The reorder line for the materials he needed to create his reactor’s core had been carefully calculated to maintain a constant buffer, just in case they ran into any difficulties with the deliveries…but he’d run the numbers. Even if they assumed the best case scenario, he had enough cores to keep the reactor running until-

Well.

“That’s alright, JARVIS is on it,” he lied, hitting the reactor a little harder than necessary. Peter didn’t question the statement; not once did it seem to occur to him that Tony might be lying.

Then again, the kid had an active connection to JARVIS. Maybe the AI ratted him out and the LMD simply chose not to comment on it. That would be pretty typical, his AIs conspiring against him just as he was about to kick the bucket. Wouldn’t it be ironic if his work to establish Iron Man as a nuclear deterrent turned out to be for nought because his own creations decided to start a robot uprising?

God, he really needed to start sleeping more.

“How’s the Expo coming along?” he asked, in part to change the subject but also because he needed that distraction right now.

“Everything’s going according to schedule. Pepper’s still not happy about the whole thing.”

Tony laughed. “Yeah, she’s been making her opinions on this little side project pretty clear.”

Peter quietened, observing his reactions closely. “She asked me to handle some of the preparations for your grand entrance.”

“Oh yeah?”

“She said she didn’t trust you to oversee the construction of the stage. Something about you having a history of displaying poor time management skills.”

He snorted. “Probably for the best. Hell, you could probably build it by hand at this point.”

Peter lit up at the compliment. “Pepper is helping me vet construction teams to handle the disassembly line. It’s going to be tricky, but so long as you stick the landing just right-“

“Hey!” Tony protested. “I’ll have you know I have fantastic aim.”

“So long as you have JARVIS manning your targeting system,” he quipped.

“When the hell did you get so snarky?”

“Must be Pepper’s influence wearing off on me.”

xxx

The expo opening was a resounding success, but somehow Tony didn’t feel much like celebrating.

His death sentence had been delivered; every conceivable option exhausted. He might just live to see the new year if he took care of himself…if he stopped using the suit…

Yeah, like that was ever gonna happen.

“Would you like me to handle the arrangements?” Peter asked in a small voice, as if unsure if it was his place to ask.

“Arrangements?”

“It’s just…normally Pepper handles any legal issues, but if you don’t intend to tell her…”

The words snapped Tony out of his daze. Yes, practicality would be essential from here on out. He still had time. Maybe not enough to change the outcome, but enough to tie up loose ends. Maybe if he played his cards right…

“Arrangements,” he repeated. “Alright, JARVIS? Start a file and store it on the private server. Hide it in with my current projects. For now we’ll call it…”

He wracked his brains for an idea, but for once came up blank. He needed something…plain. Nondescript. Something that wouldn’t stand out if someone happened to stumble upon it. Names normally came easily to him, but somehow nothing seemed to fit this one quite right. “Let’s just stick with Plan B for now. I need you to start making a list of preparations that need to be made, I want the transition after I…I want things to be as straight forward as possible, understood?”

“I’m not sure things are ever going to be straight forward, sir,” JARVIS said gently.

“Anything to make it easier. No doubt everybody will be scrambling over ownership of the suits. At least if I make my wishes clear, it’ll look cleaner in court.”

“You should arrange a meeting with a lawyer,” Peter said.

“Agreed, someone discreet. See if Jennifer has anything on the books. At least appointing Pepper CEO should be straight forward enough…maybe I better take care of that one while I’m still kicking. It’ll make it harder for people to argue with my decision-making.”

“Do you think you’ll leave the suits to her as well?”

He hesitated, eyes flickering over to the display cases lining the walls. “Leave her the patents. I trust her with the decision making, the intellectual property side of it. She’ll be better with it than I ever was…The suits themselves go to Rhodey.”

“Sir, are you quite sure? Given his military ties-“

“I know the risks, JAR, but Pepper’s not a pilot. I’ll leave stipulations that Rhodey should be the sole pilot, throw in a few security protocols while I’m at it to hopefully foil any attempts to give someone else the controls.I guess, at the end of the day, if he wants to hand them over to the military after I’m dead, it’s his choice.”

After I’m dead.

The words slipped out without hesitation, but they were strange to hear aloud. He supposed he’d have to get used to it.

“What about hospitals?”

Tony wrinkled his nose. “I’ll avoid them for as long as I can.”

“If you’re meeting with a lawyer, you should probably start thinking about assigning someone power of attorney.”

He didn’t need to think about the answer for that one. “Pepper. Leave everything to Pepper.”

“Does that include funeral arrangements?”

For a moment he contemplated telling him to keep it simple. Rhodey, Pepper, Happy. Who else could I possibly need there?

“She’ll do a better job of it than I ever could,” he conceded. No doubt she’d make it something befitting of the life he’d lived. Tasteful, flashy, something suitably atheistic for the service…

“Just…tell her I asked to be buried in the same graveyard as my parents. It’s—” where they buried Jarvis. “—what’s expected. Keep it straight forward.”

“Understood.”

Planning eased the tightness in his chest a fraction. It gave him something to focus on, offered some fleeting reassurance that he had some degree of control over his life after death.

He leaned back in his chair and combed his fingers through his hair, uncaring that he was undoing his stylist’s hard work after the Expo.

“Alright, let’s get to work.”

xxx

“Kid, drop the tablet a minute and step up.”

“I’m researching.”

“You can multi-task.”

“I thought you told me not to multi-task.”

“I told you to start using a tablet to run your numbers when you’re tagging along to meetings,” Tony corrected. “It looks suspicious when you magically recite the exact figures someone mentioned on a dime without even pausing. There’s no need for that pretence here, c’mon.”

Peter sighed but left the tablet on the table and followed Tony over to the ring.

“Why so reluctant? I thought you wanted to expand your capabilities.”

“I still do, I just don’t like boxing.”

“You don’t like it?” Tony repeated, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s a perfectly suitable sport that I’m sure will help to improve your strength and cardiovascular health, but it seems like an…impractical choice in terms of self-defence. No amount of practice will increase my strength or improve my co-ordination. The exercise seems pointless.”

“Fair point. Try throwing a few punches anyway, I want to see if the new shoulder improves your form.”

He pressed a small, flat disk to the surface of one of the reinforced punching bags before gesturing for Peter to proceed.

“You know the drill.”

The updates seemed to do the trick if Tony’s hums of approval were any indication. Peter threw a few more practice punches before he started experimenting with applying force.

“May I ask you a question?”

“Knock yourself out, kid,” Tony replied, his focus already slipping from their conversation. JARVIS would review the footage and conduct a more thorough analysis, but already he could see a big improvement. The movement of his arms looked less stiff, the way he shifted his weight as he pulled back an arm so close to being human.

If not for the tell-tale solidity of the metal beneath his synthetic skin, Tony thought he might be able to fool Happy in a sparring match. Maybe with the boxing gloves to soften the impact…

“Why haven’t you replaced me yet?”

Tony froze, though Peter didn’t so much as miss a beat between punches.

“Why would I replace you, kid?”

The LMD shrugged, the movement throwing him off his rhythm.

“Stay focused. Try hitting a little harder, I want to see if the modifications reduce the impact of your punches at all.”

“Right, sorry.”

Tony took a deep breath, knowing full well that he’d be giving up the perfect opportunity to let the subject drop. One word from him, and Peter would never raise the subject again.

“What makes you think I’d have any reason to replace you?” he rephrased.

“Your behavioural profile.”

“Expand upon that?”

Peter sighed, sinking his fist into the bag. It swung on its chain, the stand straining to remain upright through the sudden shift in weight.

“I trust you’re familiar with the ship of Theseus paradox?”

Tony tried to follow the sudden shift in thinking. “Rings a bell. It’s a thought experiment.”

Peter nodded and threw another punch. “It’s one of the oldest in Western philosophy, with documentation existing that it was even discussed by-“

“I don’t need a history lesson,” Tony cut in. The LMD still tended to get side-tracked providing context he’d found on the internet. “Skip to the point.”

“Right. The experiment proposes that if someone were to periodically replace any rotting wood on a ship with fresh planks, it is conceivable that every single piece of the original ship may be replaced by new components over time. If the rot was somehow cured in all of the original pieces of the ship, and those pieces were used to form a complete reconstruction of the ship of Theseus the reconstruction would be indistinguishable from the ship still sailing. At this point, which ship is the true ship of Theseus? The one reconstructed, or the one replaced?”

“Again, your point?”

“My point,” Peter continued, “is that you’re replacing all of my component parts. My hardware needs to be upgraded, and yet you replace the individual components instead of taking the more practical route of designing an updated model from scratch as you have with the Iron Man suits. Either way, you ultimately create a new product, so what’s stopping you?”

Tony remained silent through the explanation, turning over the words in his head.

“That’s enough punching for now, JARVIS should have all the data he’ll need to compare your results.”

Peter stepped out of his stance, no trace of exertion in his face or form. Tony toyed with the idea of allowing him to simulate some of the symptoms of physical strain. It wouldn’t be difficult to imitate laboured breathing.

Once again, he forced aside the temptation to dodge the question altogether.

“I’ve never replaced Dum-E,” Tony pointed out as he pried the disk off the punching bag and slipped it into his pocket. “Same with U, same with Butterfingers. Taken apart? Yes. Switched out damaged components, upgraded outdated software, yes. But never replaced.”

“You didn’t design them to serve a purpose.”

“Of course I did, they’re lab assistants.”

“They became lab assistants. You could build better, more efficient ones in a heartbeat…but you never created the bots for the purpose of being efficient. The same way you didn’t create JARVIS just to be a butler.”

A chill ran up Tony’s spine as he listened to his own creation dissect his motivations.

“And you? I suppose you think I built you to be more than just a prototype for an abandoned military project?” he asked. He didn’t mean for the words to sound so biting, but he didn’t appreciate being cross-examined.

“Of course,” Peter said, brow furrowing as his lips twitched to form a slight frown. He looked…confused.

“Then what?” Tony asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. “What did I build you for?”

“Don’t you know?”

A retort sat on the tip of his tongue, but Tony found he didn’t really want to lash out. He had no reason to. There were no politics involved in conversations with the LMD. No smoke screens, no hidden double meanings and underlying motives. He could be blunt without worrying about how it would shape their opinions, he could be honest without fearing his words would find their way to print. Aside from JARVIS – and before him, Jarvis – Tony didn’t have a great many people in his life he could be so completely transparent with.

Sometimes he found it difficult to remember why the distinction was important

Tony shook his head. “Change the subject.”

Peter stiffened before his expression once again relaxed into an easy smile. “You might want to start warming up for your boxing lesson. Happy should be arriving soon.”

xxx

“Tony,” Pepper said, growing more exasperated by the second.

“Paperwork’s not even here yet. I’ve got time.”

She shook her head as he went back to his warmups. “Couldn’t have tried to look a little more professional…Handing over his company for God’s sake.”

Despite the muttering, Peter detected a note of fondness in her tone. He’d been working on that – distinguishing between Tony and Pepper’s usual, almost playful banter and the indicators that a more serious argument was brewing.

“He trusts you,” Peter said, earning an odd look from Pepper. “If it means anything, I think you’ll be a great CEO.”

Pepper didn’t reply at first. When at last she did, her voice dropped several registers as if afraid someone would overhear them from across the room.

“It means something.”

They watched in silence as Tony climbed into the ring with Happy, each side throwing a few experimental punches before they fell into an awkward rhythm. Pepper hadn’t been alone in voicing her concerns when Tony announced that Happy would be giving him lessons. The bodyguard’s stubborn refusal to admit how much time had passed since his boxing days suggested it was still something of a sore subject. Still, even if he spent most of their sessions scolding Tony for breaking one of the countless counterproductive rules he insisted on implementing, Happy made a decent teacher.

Pepper sighed, growing impatient watching the pair trade blows. “I better make a call. The notary should be here by now.”

Peter didn’t have any reason to protest, instead he watched Tony attempt to block one of Happy’s hits with his forearms.

“You’re not distributing your weight correctly,” Peter noted and Happy gave him a begrudging look of approval.

“Really? More like this?” Tony asked, reassuming the blocking position but this time placing his feet more evenly apart.

Peter tilted his head. “I think you’re still too squared, you should face him at more of an angle. And lean your weight more into your forward foot, your posture is affecting the stability of your stance.”

“Hey, who’s the teacher here again?”

“Sorry, Mr Hogan.”

Pepper looked distinctly unimpressed when she returned to Tony catching Happy in the nose with his elbow, a move that promptly kicked off an argument about the difference between MMA and dirty boxing.

“They’ll be here any minute,” she reminded him, rolling her eyes when Tony once again waved her off.

Peter continued to chime in with odd comments and suggestions to Happy’s growing bemusement. As the minutes ticked by, Pepper began to consult her wristwatch more and more frequently.

“Maybe I should call them back,” she said. Despite the situation, she maintained a calm demeanour.

Peter tilted his head as he interfaced with JARVIS, dropping his voice to ensure Happy wouldn’t overhear his reply. “I don’t think that will be necessary, there’s a car pulling up outside.”

“The notary?”

He took another moment, waiting for her to step in clear view of the CCTV cameras to consult the company’s employment records.

“It looks like it. I estimate she’ll enter in the next forty seconds or so.”

Pepper let out a sigh of relief.

The actual process didn’t take long. The paperwork itself had already been reviewed and revised to Pepper’s satisfaction. All that was left to do was sign.

Peter found the notary to be a difficult woman to read, but in fairness he still didn’t have much practice interacting with people outside of Tony and Pepper (although he supposed that list could be stretched to include Happy and Rhodey). She watched him with a look that couldn’t quite be described as surprise. A complex mix of emotions which he thought might include curiosity crossed her face as she approached them.

“Miss Potts,” she greeted with an inviting smile. Behind her, Happy landed a blow to the side of Tony’s head to get his attention. Tony retaliated with a high kick to the chest.

“Kicks are illegal in boxing, Mr Stark,” Peter reminded him, but Happy appeared to have given up on trying to convince Tony to stick to the many pointless rules.

Despite displaying no real interest in the legal process before this point, Tony appeared to take great interest in Miss Rushman. A mirrored look of resignation crossed both Happy and Pepper’s face as he requested she step into the ring, as if they’d already witnessed the scene far too many times to have retained any hope of stopping it.

“Who is she?” Tony asked the second he stepped away, leaving Happy to distract her with a “boxing lesson”.

“Natalie Rushman received her certification as a notary public two years ago. As of yet, this is her first time working with Stark Industries, with her primary employers in the past being government-based. She has an outstanding professional reputation with countless letters of recommendations included in her résumé, all singing her praises. She also has a long history of charity, along with modelling experience before she decided to retrain as a solicitor.”

“She’s been brought on for this job specifically, Tony. That means you only have to keep your blatant ogling to a minimum long enough to sign the papers, think you can manage that?”

Tony pouted. “I could use a new personal assistant, what with you running the company now and all. She certainly seems well quali-“

“If you really need an assistant, give Peter a promotion,” she deadpanned. “He already handles most of your paperwork.”

Instead of dismissing the idea offhand, Tony looked thoughtful. He was saved having to come up with a response by the deafening thud that rocked the room.

“Oh my God, Happy!” Pepper all but shrieked as Miss Rushman performed a flawless takedown that definitely wasn’t legal in boxing. She restrained the bodyguard in a perfect triangle choke just long enough to prove he was incapacitated, but not long enough to render him unconscious. It seemed Happy’s pride prevented him from tapping out – or maybe he’d just been too stunned by the display to react.

Pepper may have looked horrified, but Peter was fascinated. Boxing was limited. It had merit as a sport, but too many pointless rules to be a truly effective means of self-defence.

Tony’s experimentation with different styles had seemed more effective, but he lacked the experience still to do much more than borrow odd techniques from different disciplines. When taken by surprise, his hand instinctively raised open palmed as if to fire a repulsor rather than block. He’d improve with practice, but it was already abundantly clear that Miss Rushman had practice.

He consulted her files again as she stood up and brushed herself off. Karate, Judo, and of course boxing…but this display indicated far more experience than a smattering of introductory training courses would allow. He couldn’t find an exact match for the manoeuvre she’d performed, but it implied at least a passing familiarity with a grapple-based discipline. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu seemed most likely, even if her records gave no indication she’d ever studied it.

Happy may be out of practice, but he still held the advantage of both height and weight over her…Yet even distracted and with Happy making the first move, she took him down without fault or hesitation. When she rose to her feet, not a hair looked out of place.

Natalie Rushman was good.

“I need your impression,” she told Tony as she retrieved her folder, and he replied without missing a beat.

“You have a quiet reserve, an old soul-”

“I meant your fingerprint.” Natalie looked more amused than anything.

“Honestly,” Pepper muttered, too quiet for either of them to hear. Their conversation came to a rather abrupt end when she entered the scene, a pleasant smile replacing the disapproving glare she’d been sending Tony’s way just a moment before.

Rushman met his eye only once before she left, and again he failed to comprehend her expression. Had he been human, he may have had a better chance of recognising her cautious, calculating look as a mirror image of his own. Both, in their own way, attempting to appraise something completely unexpected and entirely unpredictable.

“I still want one,” Tony sighed as she left the room.

“No.”

xxx

SHIELD took great care in choosing the meeting point for their debrief. Meeting in person at all during an undercover mission was an immense risk, but when dealing with Tony Stark it would be an even greater one to try anything involving technology. Her mind immediately went to the old-school tactics she’d been taught to follow, but a brief message passed through an open dead drop simply wouldn’t cut it with this particular assignment. Besides, if Stark had reason to suspect her…

Let’s just say that, in this day and age, a hired car pulling up outside her apartment building drew a lot less attention than CCTV footage of her burying a USB stick in a park.

She climbed into the backseat of the limousine where the windows were tinted almost black with only the streetlights to provide illumination. The partition between the backseat and the driver remained closed, the car pulling away from the curb without a word.

“We have a problem,” she stated, doing away with unnecessary formalities.

“Did he make you?”

“Not as far as I could tell.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“He didn’t take the bait.”

“That is…unexpected.”

She kept her head turned to face the tinted glass, keeping an eye on the silhouette in the reflection. His body language didn’t reflect disappointment so much as surprise – maybe there were other factors at play after all.

“It may still be possible to position another agent to take the role,” he reflected. “You would have been ideal, but clearly we misread his situation. Perhaps we misjudged his relationship with Miss Potts.”

“There’s something else. Miss Potts had someone assisting her. By the sound of it, he may be well placed to assume her role as Stark’s personal assistant.”

“Someone new?”

“A boy. Couldn’t have been older than twenty.” But he looks a lot younger than that, she thought but didn’t say. Age could be a tricky thing to judge, even with her training.

“A boy,” he repeated. “Stark doesn’t just let anyone in off the street. What’s the connection?”

Natasha shook her head. “I don’t have much more than that, not even a surname.”

“But you caught a first name?”

“They called him Peter.”

The director shifted, meeting her eye for the first time since she’d entered the vehicle.

“This was supposed to be a straightforward assignment,” he sighed, and she quirked an eyebrow.

“Is anything ever straightforward where Stark’s involved?”

“Touché.”

“How would you like me to proceed?”

“You’re the best we have. If the PA job fell through, see if you can work another angle.”

“And if that fails?”

Director Fury stilled. “We’ll look into the boy.”

Chapter Text

For the sixth time in the last half hour, Happy turned in his seat to sneak a sideways glance at Peter. He tried to appear reassuring, offering a friendly smile in return before he went back to staring blankly at the digital map tracking the plane’s journey. Pepper preferred it when he carried out tasks like responding to emails by hand to avoid suspicion, but she’d made an exception while they were in the air and shielded from the public view.

Happy did not appear to be reassured.

“Maybe we could cut this trip short?” Tony suggested before the plane had even landed. “Two days is a bit much, don’t you think?”

“It’s called networking. This is our first public appearance since you resigned control of the company. Besides, you love race cars.”

“I love driving race cars,” Tony corrected.

“And designing them.”

“That too, but-“

“And taking them apart even though they already work perfectly.”

“Alright, fine. I like cars, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy watching other people drive them in circles.”

“It’s two hours, Tony.”

“The race is two hours. We’ll get there at least an hour before that, and we both know the organisers will try and guilt trip us into staying for another two after it ends.”

“And no doubt you’ll find an excuse to leave after half an hour.“

“And then we’ll have to get past the mobs outside—“

“We’re staying at the hotel where the event is being held, Tony.”

“—and for what? So we can repeat the whole mind-numbing process at the victory party the next day?”

“We don’t know for sure our car will win.”

“Of course it’ll win. I modified that car myself.”

“Two hours, Tony. Can you please just behave for two hours? Then we can see about making new plans for tomorrow.”

Tony didn’t look particularly happy with the agreement, but he relented. Happy, for his part, didn’t pay them any mind as he unbuckled his seat belt. The plane hadn’t come to a complete stop on the runway just yet, but it had slowed enough for him to keep his balance. For how much his job required him to travel, Happy didn’t seem overly fond of flying.

“Don’t bother, kid,” he said when Peter followed suit and reached for the overhead bin. “Someone else will handle the bags.”

“Actually, Mr Stark wants this particular case to remain close at hand during his trip.”

Happy frowned – not unusual for the security guard – and moved to help Peter retrieve the briefcase from the overhead. His frown only deepened when he registered the weight of it.

“In that case, maybe I should hold onto it.”

Peter didn’t release his hold on the handle. Happy in turn refused to break his gaze first.

“Stand down, Hap. Kid’s got this one,” Tony stepped in.

“You sure, Tones? He’s not exactly experienced with—”

“I’m sure, Happy. Give him the case.”

The security guard obeyed, albeit with some reluctance.

“Maybe we should tell him,” Pepper murmured as they stepped onto the tarmac.

“Nah,” Tony said with a shrug. “He’ll figure it out eventually.”

Pepper didn’t look convinced, but a glimmer of amusement slipped through her usually composed exterior.

It quickly became apparent that the event was everything Tony expected and nothing Peter could have anticipated.

“You don’t need to keep track of everything, Pete,” he muttered. The LMD’s eyes stopped darting around the room, his attention now fixed solely on Tony. “It’s a big party, even you can’t log every single interaction…Well, maybe if I’d given you 360 degree vision…Make some upgrades to your sensory interface…Anyway, point is, you have to learn to prioritise. If someone introduces themselves and wants to shake hands, go along with it. Otherwise don’t bother. Log names as they’re given and talk to whoever makes an effort to stand beside you. Everyone else is low priority.”

Peter nodded but otherwise gave no indication that he followed anything Tony said. The billionaire ploughed on regardless.

“When we’re sitting down you can monitor the crowds to your heart’s content, but people tend to get offended when you’re watching someone across the room while they’re trying to make conversation.”

“It makes it look like you’re not interested in them,” Pepper chimed in as she appeared with a pair of drinks. Peter nodded again.

People greeted Tony everywhere they went, some shouting greetings across the room while others approached him like old friends even as Pepper muttered their names in his ear. She rolled her eyes when he made faces behind their backs, throwing out promises to put something on the books over his shoulder. The first half dozen times it happened Peter followed up by asking if he should make any adjustments to the schedule before quickly learning his lesson. Tony seemed to forget the interactions almost as soon as they ended.

The system worked for a time. Peter conferred with Pepper regularly, both to provide damage reports on the conversations she’d missed and to confirm which of the many guests were considered a “priority”. All the while, Tony floated through the event without a care in the world. The glasses served to him all found their way back to the bar untouched, along with all of the appetisers Pepper convinced the wait staff to surround him with.

“You haven’t eaten anything today,” Peter said in a low voice when Pepper lagged behind, captured by a group of industry professionals who were all too eager to make a positive impression on the new CEO.

“I ate on the plane,” he replied through his teeth as he offered a passing party a charming smile, never once pausing to give them a chance to catch up. Had Pepper managed to escape her conversation sooner, she likely would have spotted the man fighting against the crowds in time to warn Tony before the hand clamped down on his shoulder.

“Anthony!” Justin Hammer exclaimed, sounding a little too out of breath to pull off the casual greeting. Tony refrained from flinching at the physical touch, refusing to shift his gaze away from Pepper until the last possible moment as if holding out hope that Hammer would be gone by the time he turned around.

No such luck.

“And— ah, who’s this?” Hammer asked, eyes flickering back and forth between Tony and Peter. “I don’t believe we’ve officially met, though I’m sure the name will ring a bell. Justin Hammer?”

His attempt at humour fell flat and Tony attempted to manoeuvre himself out of the man’s grip with limited success.

“Of course,” Pepper cut in smoothly, though her welcoming smile grew cold at the sight of him. “This is Peter. He’s one of Stark Industries’ best and brightest.”

Hammer’s brow creased as he gave Peter a second look. “Little on the young side, isn’t he?”

“He was brought on as an intern. You could say he’s a recent addition to our full-time staff. Don’t let his age fool you, he can give Tony a run for his money.”

“That so? Still, this place is a little fancy for errand boys, don’t you think?”

“Can’t be that fancy if you got an invite,” Tony muttered under his breath, but the comment either went unheard of purposefully ignored as Hammer looked over his shoulder, eyes darting around the room until he found who he was looking for. The forced niceties only deteriorated further when he called over the journalist, with Tony sending Pepper looks that spanned the spectrum from disinterested to desperate until she excused herself and left him with the sharks.

Tony’s sunglasses reappeared the second he caught sight of the camera, fighting winces as the flash went off. Peter wondered made a note to tentatively add light sensitivity to his growing list of symptoms.

A hand held the LMD back when he moved to follow Tony over to one of the tables (not, he noted, the one they had reserved).

“Let him handle this one,” Pepper murmured. “He’s bad with the PR side of things, but he knows how to deal with Hammer. Besides, the more distance we put between you and that journalist the better.”

Obediently, Peter shifted gear and followed Pepper’s lead. At no point did Tony so much as glance back at them, not even when he excused himself from the table.

Pepper frowned as she watched him retreat into the next room. While she wouldn’t argue that the more space put between Stark and Everhart the better, she couldn’t help but worry that he’d decide to cut his losses and ditch the event altogether. It was bound to happen eventually, but she’d hoped he would at least wait for the race to actually start first.

“Miss Potts?”

“Mmm?”

“Would you like me to show you to the table we had reserved, or would you rather wait for Mr Stark to come back first?”

“Might as well find our table, Peter. I learned a long time ago that you can never rely on Tony to make a timely appearance.

xxx

He’d known Peter would track him down eventually. Between the GPS in his phone and the building schematics he’d no doubt downloaded as soon as Tony got the invite, it was merely a question of how long Pepper would hold out before giving him the go-ahead.

The answer, as it turned out, was a little over twenty minutes.

“I’m not sure we’re meant to be in this room yet, sir.” Every step Peter took echoed in the too-empty ballroom. The stage was set, streamers hanging, tablecloths straightened and perfectly pressed. No doubt they had another equally dry and stuffy function scheduled for later that night.

Tony took a long sip from his glass and tried to guess. It lacked the personality of a birthday. A work party, perhaps? Maybe even a funeral. He was sick of funerals.

“Where’s Pepper?”

“I believe she’s discussing your hearing with the Senate Armed Forces Committee with one of the few reporters that were permitted inside. Should I let her know you’d like a word?”

“Don’t bother,” he sighed, though he wanted nothing more than to break up the meeting himself. Maybe even buy Pepper dinner at a real restaurant instead of eating here in the company of creeps like Hammer. “What am I doing here, Peter?”

A frown formed on the LMD’s face, brow furrowing in concern. “You were invited here to watch the Grand Prix De Monaco. Memory loss isn’t a symptom associated with your condition or medication in any of the texts I’ve consulted, Mr Stark. If you’re experiencing unexpected side effects of—”

“Memory’s just fine, kiddo. It was a question of the rhetorical kind.”

“Oh.”

Tony glanced back at the LMD to find him staring off into space. Apparently, he took “question I don’t expect an answer to” to mean “this conversation is now over”. He let out a sigh.

“I mean— I’m dying.”

Peter frowned. “I know that.”

“Based on the latest readings of the reactor’s output I have a few days. Tops.”

“I know that too.”

“So,” Tony reiterated, gesturing to the closed French doors behind him which effectively separated them from the rest of the party. “What the hell am I doing here?”

“…Is this another rhetorical question?”

Tony groaned, in part because he wasn’t sure of the answer himself. “Do you think this is normal? For people to just go about their lives until they stop? How do they do it?”

Peter’s eyes glazed over as he pieced together a response. “There doesn’t seem to be any one way to cope with the news that you are dying, Mr Stark. You have to decide that for yourself.”

“Doesn’t answer my question.”

“My research does indicate that certain decisions you’ve made do seem a little…atypical.”

“Elaborate.”

“Many seek the comfort of the people they love when they receive the news that they are dying, although some do choose to isolate themselves instead. You, on the other hand, seem to have chosen neither option. Outside of essential medical personnel and select members of your legal term, you haven’t confided in anyone.”

“I confided in you.”

“I don’t count as a person, Mr Stark.”

It sounded jarring to hear him say it so bluntly, but Tony couldn’t argue with him.

“If you told Miss Potts—”

“I’m not telling Pepper.”

Peter still took a little more time than an actual person would to recover from being interrupted mid-sentence, but he was getting better. “Don’t you think she deserves to say goodbye?”

The words caught him off-guard, somehow sounding so much more real than the regular updates on blood toxicity. He drained the rest of the chlorophyll in his glass. The benefits it offered would be superficial at best, but Tony liked to think it helped. Peter knew enough about the effectiveness of placebos to keep his mouth shut.

“I think it’s about time I found a fire exit to climb down. I’m not giving any more of my life to this dull brunch masquerading as a party.”

“Where will you go?”

Tony didn’t respond at first, contemplating his glass as if it might turn to scotch if he willed it hard enough. “Races always look so boring on TV. I never understood how they managed that. The speed, the thrill…it’s all there for the driver. Not much of a spectator sport, really.”

Peter blinked, thrown by the sudden change of topic. “Viewing statistics would indicate it’s actually a very popular spectator sport.”

Tony waved him off. “Popular among people who’ve never seen a track from behind a wheel. What do you say we get a closer look?”

xxx

The race went poorly. Not an unexpected outcome, although Peter doubted anyone could have predicted the attack on the track. Another attention seeking villain, another uncomfortable reminder to the world that there were emerging threats far beyond even the military’s control.

Another burned out palladium core.

“Mr Stark—"

“I’m not telling Pepper,” he said flatly. “Not yet.”

It took Peter a moment to recover from the interruption and reconstruct a new argument.

“Your life expectancy has dropped to—”

“I know the numbers, Peter. Drop it.”

Once again, Peter closed his mouth and attempted to formulate a new response. Tony was deviating from his usual behavioural patterns. A predictable side effect of being confronted with one’s own mortality, he supposed, but understanding a change would occur and adapting to compensate were two very different things.

There was a wealth of information available online, though much of it seemed to contradictory. Advice for offering comfort to parents, siblings, children, friends, co-workers, and everything in-between, but somehow Peter couldn’t make any of it quite fit. He blinked twice in quick succession, one of the indicators Tony had preprogramed to indicate he was struggling to process external stimuli.

Pepper would be better at this.

Experience told him that Tony preferred to avoid emotional matters rather than confront them head-on. He needed something to distract him. Something…inoffensive.

“I have generated a preliminary report for the Mark V. It performed remarkably well for a prototype, although your fight with Mr Vanko did highlight several vulnerabilities which should be addressed before we begin repairs.”

Tony closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the headrest of his chair. “We’re not going to repair the Mark V.”

Peter blinked.

Pause. Assess. Reformulate.

“The fight damaged several of its core systems. It seems unlikely it would be able to function for any significant length of time in its current state. Unless you intend to make larger structural changes to the design?” There were no new blueprints on any of the private servers, but that didn’t mean Tony didn’t have a new plan in mind. “In which case, would you like me to begin the deconstruction process to salvage as many useable parts from the Mark V as possible before we begin construction of a new model?”

“Sure. Have it ripped apart. Might as well. It’s only good for scrap now, anyway.”

The intonation sounded too flat and bitter to be a joke, but Peter couldn’t interpret what the underlying context behind the comment might be. It wouldn’t be unlike Tony to make a comment or reference he knew Peter wouldn’t understand, but usually that served as a source of amusement.

Tony did not look amused.

“I’ll get on that right away. I can get you a preliminary inventory list of useable components if you would like to review it before we order any new materials? I think we should start looking into making the newer models more conductive to defend against similar attacks in—”

“I said scrap it,” Tony snapped. “We’re not building a new suit.”

Peter had never seen him this irritated before. Not directed at him.

Pause. Assess. Reformulate.

“…Would you like me to get you your chlorophyll solution, sir?”

“No, Peter. Somehow I don’t think chlorophyll is going to cut it.”

Pause. Assess. Reformulate.

“Can I get you something else instead?”

Tony let out a bark of laughter that bordered on hysterical. Peter opened tabs on grief and trauma responses, processing all of the information he could find on the matter as efficiently as possible. It failed to offer a straightforward solution to his dilemma.

“A cure for heavy metal poisoning if you’ve got one handy. Failing that, I wouldn’t say no to a stiff bloody drink.”

Peter had social protocols dictating how long it should take him to formulate responses. How long to pause between statements, even when he could usually come up with a response to a question in a fraction of a second. It took him longer than it should have to construct an adequate response to this request, and he adjusted his processing power accordingly.

“You instructed me to remind you that your doctors have advised you to avoid alcohol in your current condition. You said that until you have found a satisfactory solution to your condition—”

“There is no solution!”

Tony was on his feet in an instant, advancing on him with a renewed intensity despite the bags under his eyes and exhaustion evident in every tired line of his face. All this recent travel had been a bad idea, although Peter supposed the flight to the racetrack would have been unavoidable either way given what happened.

“We’ve tried everything, Peter. Every conceivable combination of elements. Every experimental medical treatment. I need the arc reactor to live, the arc reactor needs palladium to function, and the palladium is slowly killing me. That’s a fact, and no amount of chlorophyll is going to change that. I’ve been—”

Tony stopped as if only just remembering the need to breath. Peter took detailed notes on his irregular respiration and heartrate, but concluded it was more likely the result of his emotional state than physical health. He blinked twice.

Pause. Assess. Reformulate.

“Mr Stark,” he said slowly, keeping his voice as neutral as possible until he could determine what had set Tony off. He would need to analyse this interaction carefully to highlight his missteps and assure they didn’t occur again. “My presence seems to be causing you some distress. Would you like me to engage shutdown procedures?”

This time it was Tony’s turn to blink in surprise. Immediately his body language changed, the tension leaving his frame. He’d been geared up for a fight, Peter realised.

“No,” he said. Despite his hesitation, he sounded confident in that. “No, I— Christ, Peter. That wasn’t about you, I just—”

He swore under his breath and collapsed back against the worktop, ignoring his chair for the time being. Peter folded his hands and awaited instructions instead of making suggestions this time, internally sending a notification to Pepper’s phone informing her that Tony would be late to the celebrations tonight. The guests would start arriving soon, but Peter doubted he would want to attend in this state.

“This is my last birthday,” Tony said, his voice strangely devoid of emotion after his outburst. Peter made a note but failed to determine the cause for the sudden redirection in the conversation.

“According to your current prognosis, yes,” he confirmed when it became clear he expected a response.

Tony closed his eyes again. “My father left so many plans behind when he died. All that talk of legacy…But where did it get him in the end? A cancelled expo everybody agreed was a colossal waste of money, a business partner who sold his company’s weapons on the black market, a son who flipped the family legacy on its head only to die before he could properly see it through.

“The military are going to seize my suits when I die, and Vanko has all but proved that the technology I created to protect people is going to be used to hurt more than I ever helped. I made the Iron Man suit to get out of the weapons business, but Obie was right. If Iron Man is my legacy, then I’m going down in history as the weapons manufacturer who gifted the world its greatest killing machine yet and kicked it before suffering any of the consequences.”

Peter paused. Processed.

“May I ask for clarification on a few of the points you’ve raised?”

“I’m venting, kid. I’m not expecting you to magically provide me with a solution. It’s okay if you don’t understand.”

“I would still appreciate your insight.”

Tony sighed. “Shoot.”

“You’ve never seemed concerned about this before,” he commented, hesitating only a moment to judge Tony’s reaction. Bewilderment seemed more promising than anger, so he kept going. “You’ve always been openly dismissive of the public’s opinion of you. Especially in the face of the backlash against your decision to suspend weapon’s manufacturing. Furthermore, all of the personal records I have on you indicate your stance as an atheist has not wavered in your adult life, and you claim to hold no hope for an afterlife. You care little for what people think of you while you’re still alive, and you believe whatever happens after your death will be of no consequence to you whatsoever. And yet, you seem extremely preoccupied with the concept of legacy.  Why?”

“That’s…a loaded question, kid.”

Peter waited. Tony sighed again.

“I spent most of my life designing weapons of mass destruction because that’s what I was supposed to do. And people told me I was a hero for it. Nothing is going to make up for the damage I caused, but I thought…I really thought Iron Man was a step in the right direction. That maybe I’d leave the world in slightly better shape than I found it. With the arc reactor, at least, I thought I might have created something good. Turns out, I just created something to kill me slower than the shrapnel.”

“The arc reactor will still be used as a source of clean energy after you’re gone,” Peter pointed out.

“It’s still in the early stages. The miniaturised reactor was a massive breakthrough, but we’re not ready to go ahead with larger implementations. It’ll take years for the R&D teams to make that kind of progress, even with the plans I’ve drafted. And that’s assuming they don’t decide to sell the plans on to—”

“I could finish the plans.”

Tony stared at him, apparently too stunned for words. Peter took his silence as permission to continue.

“Your designs have already laid the groundwork for its progression. Imagination has always been one of my shortcomings in assisting you, but I believe I could develop practical solutions for your proposals. I have already assisted in the construction of several reactors already and understand its inner workings better than any expert alive today, with the exception of yourself. I—”

“You’re serious,” Tony said, his voice thick with disbelief. Peter inclined his head.

“You’ve made no arrangements for me to be disassembled or placed in storage after your passing. If I am to continue functioning, I don’t see why I shouldn’t continue developing our ongoing projects.”

Tony just stared.

He waited, unsure of how to proceed, until Pepper saved them both the trouble of crafting an adequate response.

“There you are,” she hissed, letting the lab door slam shut behind her. “Tony, you’re not even dressed! This is your birthday party. You can’t just spend the whole time hiding down here in the lab.”

Tony’s gaze never left Peter.

“I’ll get right on that,” he said faintly. Pepper faltered at the lack of resistance.

“…Right,” she said, looking between the pair as if just now realising she’d interrupted something. Peter’s face lifted into an easy smiling without breaking eye contact with Tony.

“Will I be needed upstairs tonight?”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea—”

“Why not?” Tony interrupted, and just like that, the abnormalities stopped. He shot Pepper a grin, patting Peter on the shoulder as he strode past. “Let people get used to seeing my new assistant around. He’s getting better at working the crowds.”

“Tony, I’m not going to have time to watch him up there, and you don’t exactly have the best track record with birthdays.”

“This birthday’s different,” he said with a dismissive wave. “Come on, Peter. We’ve got guests to entertain.”

xxx

Tony lasted half an hour before he caved and had his first drink. It was longer than Peter expected, but nonetheless prompted him to start running calculations on how this would affect his current treatment plan and prognosis.

After an hour, Tony gave up on any pretences that he knew or liked any of the people in attendance tonight. Rhodey arrived to offer a brief reprieve from the endless conversations about the effect the recent headlines were having on stocks and giggly requests to see the Iron Man suit, but all too soon he disappeared back into the crowd.

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Rhodey asked, quiet enough that most of the partygoers around them wouldn’t hear over the steady beat. Those still sober enough to care, anyway.

“I can think of several sources of stress which might be affecting Mr Stark.”

“I don’t just mean the hearings. I’ve known him a long time. Seen him hit rock bottom more times than I can count. This is different, isn’t it?”

“My privacy policies prevent me from divulging information about Mr Stark’s personal life.”

Rhodey shot him a strange look. “Even to his friends?”

“My privacy policies do not discriminate.”

“You work on a lot of the same rules as JARVIS, right?”

“JARVIS has higher security clearance than I do. He’s been more rigorously field-tested than I have.”

“But you’ve got the emergency procedures, right? You can call for help if something’s wrong?”

“In theory.”

“Then call me.”

Peter blinked. “I’m sorry, Colonel Rhodes. You’re going to have to be more specific with the parameters of this request.”

Rhodey sighed. “If Tony needs help and insists he doesn’t want it, I want you to call me. You’ve got my personal number?”

“I can download your contact details off of Tony’s private server.”

“Good. Do it. Hell, I can give you my business card if you want it. Just promise me you’ll use it if ever looks like Tony’s stubbornness might get him killed.”

Peter consulted his policy procedures and compared it to the request. Rhodey patiently allowed him the time to consider the choice.

“Alright,” he agreed. “Provided Mr Stark doesn’t prevent it, I promise to call you if it looks like his stubbornness might get him killed.”

Then, to Rhodey’s evident amusement, he stuck out his hand to shake.

“Why are Tony’s bots always so much easier to handle than the man himself?”

Detecting the shift in tone, Peter cracked a grin. “We wouldn’t be very good assistants if we couldn’t compensate for his failings.”

Rhodey’s laughter drew Tony’s eye from the bar, observing the pair with a look of undisguised curiosity. Peter pretended not to notice when he made his way through the crowd towards them.

“Turning my assistant against me, Rhodes? That’s cold.”

His speech barely slurred at all—an impressive feat given his approximate blood alcohol content—but he leaned a little too much of his weight against Peter when he slung an arm around his shoulder.

“You mind if I steal him back for a minute?”

“By all means. I’ve got some networking to do, anyway. Just…try not to go overboard with this one, Tony. A lot of people have got their eye on you.”

“Me? Go overboard? What do you take me for?”

“You.”

Rhodey waved them off as he moved out of earshot. Already the once quiet corner of the party they’d been occupying was becoming steadily more crowded in Tony’s presence. He brushed off a half-dozen attempts at starting a conversation, and ignore a dozen more obvious flirtations before they managed to escape the thick of the crowd.

“Help me sneak out,” Tony said through his teeth, his smile never faltering as he returned a wave from across the room.

“Pepper will be disappointed if you leave this early.”

“The number of hours I have left in this world are down to double digits. I’m not wasting any more time on these people.”

“Very well. Should I ask Happy to collect you?”

“No need. We’re leaving through the garage.”

“Mr Stark, your blood alcohol level is above the legal limit.”

“Good thing I’m not driving, then. Come on, there’s still a few more skills you’ve gotta learn before I snuff it.”

xxx

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Of course it’s a good idea.”

“It’s illegal to drive without a license.”

“It’s illegal for people to drive without a license,” Tony corrected. “You’ll be fine. Now, start by adjusting the seat. I can’t even remember who drove this car last.”

Peter sighed in defeat and pulled the seat forward until his feet could comfortably reach the pedals.

“Mirrors.”

“How do I know if they’re in the correct position?”

“Can you see behind you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re golden. Now press the peddle on the left to the floor and try the ignition.”

“Isn’t it more dangerous for you to ride as a passenger? We haven’t tested my ability to control a complex vehicle before.”

“Look, kid, I built you to handle warzones. Teaching you to drive can’t be more dangerous than my first time behind the wheel. Try navigating out of a Walmart parking lot when the only guidance you’ve got is the shouted instructions of the three wasted minors in the backseat.”

“You went to Walmart?” Peter asked curiously.

“God no. I waited in the car while my dorm mates bought snacks. First year at MIT. Why do you think they asked me to drive? Anyway, keep the clutch down and shift the gearstick into first. You know what the bite point is?”

Peter tilted his head. “I was under the impression that it varies from model to model. I could find out if you’d lift your restrictions on referencing outside sources.”

“As a concept, Pete. You’re doing just fine without the WikiHow articles. Okay, gradually lift the clutch until you can feel the engine rumbling…Little bit more…There, hold it.”

Peter froze in place.

“Okay, now you can let the handbrake off.”

“Happy always checks the mirrors before he does that.”

Tony gave him an incredulous look. “We’re in the garage, what are you gonna— You know what? Never mind. And stop analysing footage of Happy driving, it kind of defeats the purpose of getting lessons.”

Peter checked his mirrors and looked back over his right shoulder before nodding and pushing down the handbrake.

“Good, now you can let your foot off the clutch.”

Immediately the car jolted and spluttered. Tony cursed as Peter slammed the clutch back down to the floor.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he noted.

“We stalled. Happens when you let the clutch up too quickly. Maybe should have mentioned that.”

“Perhaps I should go back to consulting the manuals.”

Tony shot him a dirty look. “Never mind the manuals. Try again.”

This time, Peter managed to get the car started without issue.

“Okay, now try applying the gas.”

Peter hesitantly pressed down on the peddle, applying just enough pressure to get the car rolling.

“See? You’re doing great. Build up a little bit of speed and we can get up to second gear.”

“Shouldn’t you teach me how to stop before you teach me how to go faster?”

“The brake’s the peddle in the middle. Oh, and mind you hit the clutch if you’re coming to a complete stop. That’ll disengage the engine.”

“And if I don’t hit the clutch?”

“We’ll stall. Just hit the brake first and then the clutch before the car has a chance to stop completely. You’ll be fine. Here, start steering towards the exit. You can build up more speed once we get out of the garage.”

“Mr Stark?”

“Mm?”

“Why are you teaching me to drive like this?”

Tony faltered. “Driving’s an important skill for you to have. Adapting to new obstacles, problem-solving without just googling the answer. Might even give you a little independence, getting where you need to go without always calling Happy to give you a ride.”

He’d been introducing him to a number of new challenges since JARVIS gave him the final diagnosis. Peter supposed that made sense, in a way.

“But why like this,” he stated again, without taking his eyes off the road. “You could have arranged for Happy to pick us up from your party. His car seems like a more practical choice.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The majority of American cars, including several of the cars in your own personal collection, are automatics. It would make sense. Also it’d be less…conspicuous.”

Tony grinned. “Are you complaining? I didn’t think an automatic would be much of a challenge for you. Besides, my cars are more fun.”

Peter huffed and put his foot down on the clutch without prompting this time.. He fumbled a little with the gearstick, but the car didn’t protest this time when he took his foot off the peddle and reapplied the gas.

“Good job, kid. Now if only you’d stop driving like an old lady…”

Reading between the lines, Peter allowed the car to pick up speed.

“There you go. Once we get out on the open road you can knock it up to fourth.”

The lights lining the underground driveway blurred together as they picked up speed, before finally the concrete walls dropped away, and they followed the snaking road down a well-worn dirt track. Tony’s preferred route when he wanted to make a quick getaway without attracting attention. Peter caught a flash of the Malibu mansion in the rear-view mirror.

“Congratulations, you know how to drive.”

“Something tells me there’s a little more to it than that.”

“Of course. My mistake. Indicators on the left, wind screen wipers on the right. You can brush up on your highway code before we hit the populated roads. Apart from that, keep on the right side of the road and you’ll do fine. Here, take the left turn up here and you can…hey, why are you slowing down?”

“…because making a sharp turn on a dirt road overlooking a cliff-face at fifty miles per hour doesn’t sound like the safest idea?”

“God, why do my bots always wind up so safety conscious?”

“Maybe because you program us to learn from your mistakes?”

“Ouch, that hurt.”

“Sorry, it was supposed to be funny.”

“It was. I was kidding.”

“Oh.”

They turned the corner and the road levelled out, the lushness of the mansion estate petering out into sparse, rocky terrain. Peter squinted.

“Something the matter, kid?”

“I can’t see.”

Tony gave the LMD a concerned look before realising what the problem was. Reaching across him, he pulled down the visor, blocking out the last rays of the setting sun peeking out over the clifftops.

“Better?”

Peter gave him a look. “I could have figured that out myself if you’d let me consult outside sources.”

“You might find yourself in a situation where you don’t have internet access someday. I need to know you’re equipped to handle it…Also, remind me to look into updating your visual system when we get back to the lab. See if we can do something to prevent you getting lens flares in future.

“Is that really a priority, Mr Stark?”

“You don’t have to call me that.”

“It’s what the other interns call you. I’m supposed to be keeping up pretences, aren’t I?”

“Didn’t you get the memo? You’ve been promoted to my personal assistant.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Don’t you have more important things to be worrying about?”

“Like what?”

“Would you like me to recount your schedule for the upcoming week?”

“Point taken. Cancel all of my appointments.”

“Miss Potts won’t like that.”

“She’s only got a few days to be mad. I’m done wasting my time keeping up appearances. Time to get my priorities straight.”

“Is that what we’re doing now?”

“Yup. Eyes on the road, Peter. We’re going shopping for new hardware.”

Chapter Text

“Make a note to look into lighter weight alloys when we get back to the lab.”

“Are you planning on sleeping at all in the next two days? Your schedule’s getting pretty full.”

“I can sleep when I’m dead, Pete,” Tony remarked without skipping a beat, still picking at the doughnut on his plate. “Make the note.”

Obediently, Peter made the note on his tablet. With only the two of them present, he could have accomplished the same task without lifting a finger in only a fraction of the time, but Tony insisted it was good practice. Gotta keep up appearances.

Internally, he crunched the numbers on how long it would take to design, synthesise, and implement such a significant change to his skeletal structure. Even if Tony locked himself in the lab in one of his frenzied sprees and neglected to sleep until he saw the project completed, the process would take more time than he had left.

Without uttering a word, Peter labelled it low priority and went back to remotely running the clean-up operation for last night’s party, dismissing another threatening message from Pepper with a swipe of his thumb.

“The legal department has been in contact to confirm the last of the arrangements have been made.”

“Good. And the donations?”

“The last charity auction is still ongoing, but that should be the last of your art collection sold.”

“Hmm. See if you can flag down a waitress. With coffee this weak, they might as well just leave the pot.”

Peter tried out the look of disapproval he’d been practicing with Pepper. “You haven’t slept in more than 24 hours, and you deviated from your doctor’s advice by drinking last night. Don’t you think you should rehydrate before drinking more caffeine?”

“All in all, a good night by my standards,” Tony pointed out. Peter held the look, though it didn’t seem to be having the desired effect. He needed more feedback on his intimidation tactics.

“Fine,” he relented. “A pot of coffee, and a water. You happy now, kid?”

“Ecstatic.”

Peter slid out of the booth—a manoeuvre that had taken some practice to perfect—and approached the counter the way he’d observed Pepper and Happy a handful of times before. And waited. And waited. And waited.

The restaurant had been mostly empty when they entered, but at some point the quiet ambient noise filtered out until they were left in near perfect silence. Peter scanned the rows of empty booths, brow furrowing as if in confusion while he processed the scene, though there was no one around to appreciate the pretence.

A fresh brewed pot of coffee sat on the counter, faint whisps of steam still drifting from the spout. Menus sat untouched in front of a pair of vacant barstools. Somewhere behind the closed doors of the kitchen something started to burn.

Peter picked up the coffee pot and returned to the table. Tony barely spared him a second glance.

“The waitress is gone.”

“Hmm?”

“The waitress from earlier,” Peter pressed. “She’s gone.”

“Probably went into the back for something. Give her a minute.”

He nodded, sitting back patiently in the booth. A minute passed. Then two.

The waitress didn’t come back.

“Put in an order for more acrylic fibre.”

Peter frowned. “Is something wrong with my hair?”

“No, but it’s good to have options. You ever think about changing up your style?”

“I can’t say I’ve ever thought about it. Are there any particular aspects of my appearance you want to change?”

Tony shrugged. “Like I said. You should have options.”

You. You should have options.

Peter made another note, this time intended only for himself. Tony’s behavioural data was growing more skewed by the day.

The bell above the restaurant door chimed to announce the arrival of a new customer for the first time in twenty-six minutes. Heavyset footsteps allowed Peter to pinpoint their movements without looking up from his tablet, noting the way they ignored the counter to instead stroll leisurely in their direction.

Peripheral vision wasn’t really something he possessed. Either something was in his field of vision, or it wasn’t. His mechanical brain didn’t need to prioritise objects in his foreground at the expense of his surroundings, so it took little effort for Peter to answer a query from the clean-up crew on his tablet while simultaneously running the face through his private databanks. When that failed, he tried asking JARVIS about known associates matching the man’s rough description.

It wasn’t as though Tony had that many acquaintances who wore eyepatches.

“Director Fury of SHIELD is here to see you,” he said helpfully without looking up from his tablet. Tony uttered a string of curses under his breath.

The man’s eye never left him as he made his way leisurely across the restaurant. When Peter rose once more to his feet, a brief look of something resembling amusement flashed across his face.

“Hey, kid?”

“Yes, Mr Stark?”

“Mind telling me why you’re standing up?”

Peter blinked. “This booth is only designed to comfortably seat two people. Offering up my seat is the polite thing to do.”

“Well, clearly your assistant doesn’t get his manners from you,” Fury commented, placing a strange amount of emphasis on the title. Tony rolled his eyes.

“I thought I already told you I wasn’t interested in joining your super secret boyband?”

“I remember. You do everything yourself.” Despite the obvious dismissal, Fury took the now empty seat in the booth. “How’s that working out for you?”

“Just peachy,” Tony lied through his teeth. “Not that I don’t enjoy your company, but I’ve got enough on my plate right now without all of…whatever this is. Feel free to make an appointment with my assistant, though. I’m sure he’ll be able to squeeze you into my schedule somewhere down the line.”

“Been pretty busy lately, haven’t you, Stark?” Fury asked, sounding unperturbed as he helped himself to the pot of coffee. “Made your girl your CEO, giving away all your stuff. Hiring a legal non-entity as your personal assistant.”

Tony was good at lying, but Peter still picked up the change in muscle tension. His hand tightened almost imperceptibly around his mug before he deliberately relaxed back into his seat, raising an uncaring eyebrow as he took a sip.

“Do you always run background checks on my new hires?”

“Only the ones that pose security concerns,” a new voice put in. Peter didn’t need to turn his head to identify her from his memory banks.

“Miss Rushman,” he said politely. Cold eyes studied his face warily, perhaps hunting for some trace of the surprise clearly registering on Tony’s face. Should Peter appear surprised? He considered emulating it, but the delayed response would likely be more confusing than convincing. Instead, he returned his gaze to the tablet in his hand and resumed ordering the new lab materials Tony had requested.

“We’ve secured the perimeter, but I don’t think we should maintain it long,” she said, still not taking her eyes off Peter. Really, the changes in her demeanour were fascinating. Not just the aesthetic changes of the hair, the makeup, the clothes, but her stance and speech patterns as well. No longer soft spoken and slyly confident, she now moved with a militaristic precision and spoke as someone used to giving orders as easily as receiving them.

“Huh,” Tony said mildly.

“Meet Agent Natasha Romanoff,” Fury said, shifting over to let her squeeze into the booth beside him.

“Well, suddenly I’m glad Pepper talked me out of offering you a job.”

“Was she the one who talked you into hiring an intern to replace her? After only a few months on the job, too. Must have been your lucky break, kid. Fresh out of high school and working for one of the most powerful men in the country.”

“Stark Industries have always prioritised talent and dedication over formal qualification,” Peter chimed without looking up from his tablet.

“And what about faked qualifications?” Natasha pressed. “Because as far as we can tell, Peter Parker didn’t exist at all before six months ago. Your online presence has been well-forged, but on paper there’s no trace of you at any of the schools you supposedly attended. Your birth certificate, your social security number, your passport. They’re expensive enough to get you through customs, but a well-made forgery is a forgery nonetheless.”

Peter held her gaze while she talked, nodding along to show he understood. When she failed to offer any kind of follow-up question, he resumed sourcing an actual notary public to quietly reprocess the paperwork appointing Pepper CEO. It wouldn’t do for someone to challenge her position if word ever got out, especially not when Tony wouldn’t be around to amend the mistake.

Tony sighed. “Kid, I’m pretty sure they’re threatening you. Maybe put down the tablet for a second and at least pretend to be concerned?”

Peter tore his gaze away from his tablet and blinked twice. “I’m being threatened?”

“You already knew,” Fury noted, ignoring Peter entirely in favour of focusing on Tony.

“You’re not the only one who runs background checks on my staff. What do you want?”

Fury raised an eyebrow. “What we want is to help you. You’ve become a problem, Stark. A problem that’s somehow become my responsibility to fix.”

“Help me?” Tony echoed, but even to Peter’s ears his amusement sounded hollow. “Now what would I need your help with?”

“You’re dying.”

There was no question to it. No room for doubt. He stated it so matter-of-factly that Tony visibly winced. He didn’t look up when Natasha slipped out of her seat, eyes fixed on Fury. He didn’t see it when she slipped something from her belt, but Peter did.

Security really wasn’t a priority in his design and programming, but over the course of his brief life he’d been exposed to kidnapping plots, corporate espionage, betrayal, and murder attempts. When Natasha reached for Tony’s neck with a glint of metal in her hand, he didn’t hesitate to step forward and close a hand around her wrist.

The room went very, very still.

“Stark,” Fury said pleasantly. “I suggest you tell your assistant to let go of Miss Romanoff’s wrist before she dislocates his shoulder.”

“An injection device?” Tony guessed as he studied the device in her outstretched hand. “What, are you resorting to selling my kidneys to fund your government projects now?”

“It’s lithium dioxide,” Natasha said smoothly, her eyes never leaving Peter. He had no doubt that, if she put her mind to it, she’d be out of this hold in a second. He’d been built to act as a decoy, not an active combatant, and Miss Romanoff was definitely an active combatant.

“It should help take the edge off,” Fury explained, watching the exchange with mild interest.

“Trust me, there’s no helping me. I’ve tried everything. Every combination, every permutation of every known element. I’m done.”

“Not yet, you’re not.”

“Lithium dioxide may help to alleviate your symptoms, but it’s by no means a cure. We ruled out its usage due to the severity of the side effects of long-term usage, including but not limited to headaches, muscle weakness, vision impairment, loss of coordination, confusion, seizures, muscle convul—”

“Long-term usage,” Fury interrupted. “We both know you don’t have enough time left to worry about the effects of long-term usage. Especially not after that stunt you pulled at the racetrack.”

“If it’s not a cure then what’s the point? We both know you didn’t track me down just to give me a comfortable send off. What’s SHIELD’s angle here?”

“To get you back on your feet,” Fury said calmly. “So you can get back to work. ‘Cause you’re right about one thing, Tony. I wouldn’t be wasting my time here if I didn’t think you still had a chance.”

Natasha said nothing, still angled to throw off Peter’s grasp on her arm if she needed to. Tony could be a difficult man to read at times, but Peter knew his answer with near certainty before he made up his mind.

For a moment, Tony looked like he might reject on principal. It wouldn’t be entirely out of character for him. But, bit by bit, Peter watched his resolve diminish. He slumped a little in his seat, letting out a long sigh through his teeth. “Hell, what have I got to lose?”

Peter released her wrist and took a step back, watching with a hawk-like focus as she injected the solution into his neck. Almost at once the rash that had been slowly creeping out across his skin retreated back beneath his collar.

“Now,” Fury said with a hint of a smile, “the real work starts.”

xxx

“Is it conductive?”

“Sometimes.”

Peter’s brow furrowed.

“Is its conductivity impacted by its environmental conditions?”

Tony hummed. Peter noted that as a yes.

“Is it an ionic compound?”

“What’s going on here?”

“Hello, Agent Coulson,” Peter greeted warmly.

Coulson paused, apparently thrown by his unexpected politeness. Tony, for his part, didn’t even glance up from the box.

“You’re supposed to be on lockdown,” he said somewhat redundantly. “How’d your assistant even get in here?”

“I guess your agents didn’t do a very good job of securing the perimeter. Kind of concerning if you ask me. Doesn’t say much about the state of homeland security these days if a teenager can get around your guards.”

Coulson frowned. “Fury said—”

“Fury left me alone with a few decades worth of outdated research notes and personal journals without even telling me what I’m supposed to be looking for. Peter’s a quick study. It’ll go faster with him here.”

“It’s sodium bromide, isn’t it?”

“Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. Your turn. Animal, mineral, or vegetable?”

“Animal.”

“Are you playing twenty questions?” Coulson asked incredulously.

“I’m sorry, did you expect me to organise all of my dad’s old shit in mournful silence? Also, would it have killed your SHIELD buddies to label some of this stuff instead of just shoving it all in a storage locker and leaving it to gather dust for a few decades? I mean, look at this! What even is this?” he asked, holding up a twisted lump of greyish metal.

Before Coulson could reply, Peter interjected. “I suspect it’s shrapnel from a piece of The Valkyrie that broke off not long before Steve Rogers deliberately crashed it into the Atlantic. Your father’s personal journal from that period indicates he chose to keep the first recovered fragment as a token of what was lost, as well as to remind him there was still hope as he continued to search for the missing wreckage.”

“See? Useful,” Tony said, gesturing vaguely in Peter’s direction before tossing the lump of metal back in the box. “Unlike half the junk you’ve been hoarding in your secret underground bunker. Hey, Peter, you mind grabbing me a coffee?”

“You’ve used up all the coffee in the lab kitchen, Mr Stark.”

“What? How the hell did that happen?”

“You asked me to cancel your repeat orders three weeks ago. I didn’t account for your increased intake today when I ran my projections.”

He groaned. “Brew it in the kitchen upstairs. Just make it stronger than usual. That stuff Pepper buys for guests always comes out weak.”

“You’ve got it, boss.”

Tony pulled a face at that, and Peter altered his linguistic database accordingly.

“It was nice meeting you, Agent Coulson,” he said, pleased when Coulson accepted the silent offer to shake hands. He didn’t get the opportunity to practice very often, and already he was discovering that people varied wildly in their approach. Aside from looking slightly taken aback, Peter would rate the overall experience a success.

He left without additional comment but noted that someone used the override code to unlock the lab door only 136 seconds after he made his exit. He also noted that the motion sensor by the back door activated when one of the guards stationed there shifted their weight before going dormant again after the standard 20 second wait period.

Tony had taken great lengths to update their security after the incident with Obadiah, but SHIELD still had a way of getting into places they shouldn’t be. He’d taken to pinging JARVIS’s main server once every 2.5 seconds as a precaution. Not so frequent that it would affect network traffic, but often enough that he’d know almost immediately if SHIELD decided to take him offline again. Peter wasn’t programmed to be paranoid, but he was designed to learn from past experiences. They wouldn’t be caught off-guard the same way twice.

His added incentive to keep track of any SHIELD operatives with access to the house was probably the only reason Coulson didn’t surprise him when Peter turned around.

“Can I help you with something, Agent?”

He smiled; wry but not unfriendly. “Coulson’s fine.”

“Can I help you with something, Coulson?” Peter amended, and suddenly his smile registered as a little more genuine.

“I try to limit my caffeine intake for when I need it,” he said, gesturing to the pot in Peter’s hand. “I don’t suppose Tony keeps decaf in the house?”

“Not officially. One moment.” He crouched down in front of the cupboard containing mostly unused pots and pans and reached blindly into the back, systematically scouring the empty space until his hand closed around the bag.

“Miss Potts sometimes substitutes his coffee when he’s too fatigued to notice the difference. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t inform Mr Stark.”

“Seems like Pepper’s already taught you all the tricks of the trade. I can see why she chose you as her replacement.”

“Do you take milk in your coffee?”

“Skimmed, if you have it.”

They fell into a comfortable silence when the grinding of the coffee maker would have drowned out their speech. Peter had become well-versed in its workings over the past few months. When he handed over the mug of still-steaming coffee, he wrongly assumed that would signal the end of their interaction. Instead, Coulson took a seat at the bar.

“Have you known Tony long?”

An obvious dig for information, but Peter didn’t see any reason to refuse. Instead, he set about cleaning out the coffee pot to start on a new batch for Tony.

“A few years.”

Even in his peripheral view, Peter didn’t miss the way Coulson’s eyebrows raised.

“That long?”

“You already knew my employment records had been falsified. Surely you’ve concluded by now that we didn’t meet through the internship.”

Coulson took a sip of his coffee instead of replying. “Tony seems to trust you. Pretty impressive, even for someone who’s known him as long as you have.”

“Did he tell you he was dying?”

Peter stilled; one hand curled around Tony’s favourite mug. He knew how much coffee to use in Tony’s preferred blend by sight and weight, but he still made a point of measuring it out to keep up appearances.

 He blinked twice.

“That seems like a rather personal question, Agent Coulson,” he said carefully.

“I suppose it is. Especially since our intel indicates he hasn’t even told Miss Potts about it. And they’ve known each other for…Gosh, must be the better part of a decade now.”

Peter hummed in agreement as he went back to pouring coffee.

“We originally concluded that he hadn’t told anyone outside of his doctors and attorneys, but I suppose we’ll have to revise that assessment. I mean, if you know, he must have told Colonel Rhodes, right? Telling your assistant before one of your oldest and closest friends seems a bit cold, even for him, doesn’t it?”

“Different people process grief in different ways.”

“That’s what all the flyers tell me,” Coulson said cheerfully. “Tell me, did you lie about your age on your documentation too?”

“Why?”

“Just trying to do the math in my head. It’s funny, your ID says 21 but your face looks younger.”

“I get that a lot.”

Peter picked up the fresh mug and walked towards the door, forgoing his usual manners.

“Nice meeting you, Peter Parker,” Coulson remarked as he left. For once, Peter didn’t reply.

xxx

The marker flashed in the bottom of the screen to indicate the reel was reaching its end, but with no subsequent tapes to play in its place, Peter let it roll until the picture flickered out and the quiet tick, tick, tick of the tape catching on the sprocket filled the empty space left by Howard Stark’s absence.

“That’s the last reel in the Stark Expo collection. Would you like me to move on to the next batch of tapes?”

“No.”

Peter waited for further instructions that didn’t come.

“Do you intend to rewatch this one? Or should I return the reel to its case to prevent it from being damaged?”

“You can burn the damn thing for all I care.”

Ah. It was one of those moods.

“Did its contents upset you, Mr Stark?”

He let out a bark of laughter. “My old man really had some nerve. I’ll give him that.”

“You’ve made your way through the last of his project journals, but there are still several scrapped proposals for you to review. Would you like me to—”

“No, Peter,” he said sharply. “Just— I don’t know. I’m taking a break from the journals for a bit. I think I’m getting eyestrain from trying to read his handwriting. If he didn’t have such a crappy bedside manner, I’d say he missed his calling as a doctor.”

“Would you like me to generate transcripts for you to read instead?”

Tony hummed, staggering a little as he got out of his chair.

“Better yet, JARVIS can you bring up the new designs for Peter’s modified cooling system?”

“What’s wrong with my current cooling system?”

“Old hat.”

“You updated my designs four months ago.”

“Exactly. You’re practically an antique.”

Peter let out a sigh—still a little too theatrical to be read as anything other than passive aggressive but he’d been improving—and moved Tony’s glass over to his desk.

“You need to change out your reactor’s core.”

“I feel fine.”

“You’ve been injected with a drug cocktail designed to minimise your symptoms. Regardless of whether you feel it, the palladium core will burn out completely in the next hour which increases the likelihood of complete reactor failure by—”

“Never tell me the odds,” Tony cut off smoothly, even as he reached under his shirt to yank out the wasted core. The number of replacements in the box under his desk, once filled to the brim, had dwindled down to only twelve, all organised nice and neat.

Still more than he’d need for the remainder of his life.

“Mr Stark?”

“Hmm?”

“May I ask a personal question?”

A weary expression crossed Tony’s face, not unlike that of a parent dealing with a particularly trying infant. He took a long sip from his glass, savouring the contents as if it were whiskey instead of chlorophyll. “Depends. Is it about my relationship with my father?”

“No.”

“My relationship with Pepper?”

“No.”

“Are you going to ask me why I’m not telling everyone I’m dying again?”

“No.”

“Then shoot.”

“What are you hoping to find here?”

Tony took a longer drink this time. Peter wondered if it was just an attempt to buy himself time.

“Whatever great discovery my dad couldn’t finish in his lifetime, I guess.”

“And you think it will somehow help with your situation?”

“Fury seems to think so,” he shrugged. “Maybe it’s just the plans for that flying car he kept promising would be the future. Who knows what was going on in his head.”

“So you don’t think your father’s research will help save your life?”

“I don’t see how some decades old science project is going to accomplish what modern medicine can’t. Unless the Captain America serum includes palladium resistance.”

“Then why go to all this trouble? SHIELD?”

Tony looked almost amused at that. “Kid, do you think I’m downing a gallon of chlorophyll a day cause I’m trying to start a new trend? I do it because I don’t know what else to do. The doctor said it might help, so I take it. Now Fury’s telling me my dad’s research might hold solution to all my problems, so I’ll try that too. I know the odds of it working as well as you do, but at least this way there’s still…”

“Hope?” Peter asked curiously. “I was under the impression you needed to believe in a solution for it to provide that kind of relief.”

“I know none of this is going to improve my situation but working on it still beats lying in bed all day waiting to snuff it. If I give up now, I might as well put the old core back in and let this thing burn out,” he said, tapping the arc reactor for emphasis.

“And you’re…content with that? Spending the last days of your life working on a solution you believe will ultimately prove to be futile?”

“Christ, Pete. Anyone ever tell you you’re kind of a downer sometimes?”

“Sorry,” he said without inflection, monitoring his expression for indications that he’d pushed too far. “I can stop this line of questioning if it’s causing you distress.”

Bizarrely, Tony seemed more at ease than he had since the diner. He topped up his drink from the flask in the minibar and raised his glass in a silent toast.

“You’ve got about a day and a half to interrogate your maker about all of life’s mysteries before you’re as clueless as all the rest of us. Knock yourself out.”

“Your health is declining rapidly, but for at least the next several hours you still have complete control of your faculties. You’ve already reprogrammed our emergency protocols to ensure we don’t request medical assistance or attempt resuscitation, so clearly you have no intention of dying in a hospital. You have access to a private plane in addition to a fleet of Iron Man suits which could take you anywhere in the world. Isn’t there something else you’d like to do while you still have the chance? Something new?”

“Have you been reading up on the concept of a bucket list by any chance?”

“Life is a collection of experiences. It makes sense that, when confronted with their own mortality, people would want to take the opportunity to experience life to its fullest extent.”

“I’ve had plenty of years of experiencing life to its fullest extent. Too many. Funny, the parties on exotic beaches and drunken stints jumping out of airplanes just felt like killing time.”

The thread of the conversation was getting away from him, so Peter paused. Reassessed. Reasserted.

“Are you happy down here, Mr Stark? Reviewing your father’s research?”

He paused too, perhaps running his own assessments. “Not particularly.”

“So, what would make you happy?”

Another pause. Another sip of his drink.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been told I was dying,” he said, almost nonchalantly. Peter didn’t need to scour his logs to register how rare it was for Tony to volunteer information about his time in captivity. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d brought it up, even in anecdotes. Most of those times he’d been drunk.

“I had a car battery in my chest before I build my first miniaturised arc reactor. Real meatball surgery. Rudimentary as it gets. They told me I had a week to live. Even after I built the reactor, my odds of getting out still seemed pretty slim. Gave me plenty of time to think about the things I wanted to do when I got out.”

Tony paused. Peter waited.

“This is when you ask me what I wanted to do when I got out.”

“Sorry, I didn’t want to interrupt in the middle of your recount.”

Tony snorted, waving him off. “I wanted to right my wrongs. The press conference was a good start, I thought. Maybe trivial, but I wanted a god damn cheeseburger after months of eating that crap in a cave. And I wanted to make things right with Pepper.”

Once again, Peter waited to see if he would finish his point before interrupting. Tony blinked at him.

“Shit.”

“Mr Stark?”

“Shit,” he sighed massaging the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “Are the men in black still covering all the entrances?”

Peter didn’t even need to check the footage to provide him an answer. “Everything except the underground garage, probably because you left it off the main blueprints to avoid the paparazzi. Their radius only covers roughly a mile and mainly seems to prioritise viewpoints. I suspect they assumed you’d make your exit using one of the Iron Man suits.”

“By car it is, then.”

“Do you want me to drive?”

“Nah. Stay here. Finish my design for the new cooling system.”

“It’s not broken,” Peter insisted.

“And I expect the new one to improve efficiency by at least fifteen percent. Chop, chop, kid. I’ve got an errand to run.”

Peter couldn’t decide if this newfound manic energy counted as a success, but he ranked it above the strange lethargy that had overtaken him only a few minutes ago. Tony wasn’t built for sitting still anymore than Peter had been built to fly.

He contemplated the design, then reached for a tablet instead of interfacing directly with the holotable.

“Alright, JARVIS. You heard the boss.”

“Indeed I did,” the AI toned with that dry amusement Peter had yet to perfect. “I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting a few areas of note.”

The garage sensor activated. A moment later, JARVIS logged the opening and closing of the underground exit tunnel.

Peter twisted his face into his best impression of a fond smile, even if the bots were the only ones around to appreciate it.

Chapter Text

Tony returned in a whirlwind of activity that even the combined computational power of JARVIS and Peter could barely decipher. Peter scoured first the Stark Industries databases, then the wider internet trying to follow his train of thought as he examined the hologram of his father’s expo. Stumbling in the wake of his leaps in logic and sudden turns to their strange and irrational conclusions.

The end result was a hypothesis. A proposed element that promised to revolutionise the energy industry, and no conceivable way of synthesising it. JARVIS did the math, and Peter followed every line of it. The results were conclusive: a death sentence.

Tony took a sledgehammer to the lab wall.

“The element is impossible to synthesise.”

“I heard. Mark it about six millimetres to the left.”

Peter attempted a huff and scratched out a faint x on the floor where Tony indicated. “You haven’t even uploaded your designs to the database.”

“Don’t need to. They’re all up here,” he said, tapping his temple.

“You can’t undertake a major reconstruction project without documentation.”

“Why not?”

“Because JARVIS can’t run any simulations without designs.”

“I don’t need simulations. I know what I’m doing. Besides, it’ll take too much time to draw them up.”

“JARVIS has already tried every conceivable permutation. The proposed new element cannot be synthesised.”

“It’ll take a few workarounds,” Tony conceded, wiping the sweat from his brow with a cloth that left a smear of grease in its place. He didn’t seem to notice.

Frustration wasn’t something Peter could truly experience, but this apparent standoff seemed a close approximation. He updated his own approximation of Tony’s plans, constantly recalculating the predicted fallout area should it go catastrophically wrong. He already had three contingencies in place to evacuate the SHIELD staff on site before it went critical.

“There isn’t a workaround for scientific fact. It’s impossible.”

“Stop saying that word. Gravity’s a scientific fact and I still have a flying suit, don’t I?”

“Is this another attempt at feeling productive?” Peter asked bluntly.

“I don’t think I’d call discovering a new element an attempt at feeling productive, Pete. Well, re-discovering technically. My old man did most of the math, but I think I should get credit for the heavy lifting.”

“It would be a significant achievement,” Peter agreed passively, catching a pair of pliers Dummy had carelessly knocked off the table before they could hit the ground. He placed them back on the table and patted the bot twice on the head, something which normally seemed to placate it. Instead, Dummy span in place and shot off towards the other end of the lab. Even studying its code couldn’t grant Peter a complete understanding of its idiosyncrasies.

“It will be a great achievement.”

“But it won’t work.”

“Have a little faith, will you?”

“You’re an atheist, Mr Stark,” Peter said bluntly. His creator merely shrugged.

“I’m thinking of an animal.”

It was a blatant redirect. Peter recognised that, even as he ran the subroutine he’d been developing for this little game Tony claimed would help to improve his deductive reasoning.

“A specific animal as opposed to an entire species?”

“Yes. You’ve learned from last time.”

“Is it fictional?”

“Nope.”

“Still alive?”

“Nada. Start attaching the flanges.”

And so they continued for a while, an easy back and forth broken by the occasional instruction. Peter continued to rerun his simulations, trying to see what Tony did, but in every instance the attempt ended in disaster. If he were capable of such a thing, he might be worried.

Tony barely batted an eye when Coulson arrived to chastise him for breaking the perimeter. It was the closest he’d seemed to normal in months, head buried too deep in a project to give an invader in his lab the time of day. Even when Coulson announced he’d been reassigned, Peter couldn’t detect even the faintest flicker of surprise on his face.

“Top secret?” he asked with a fleeting look of curiosity that soon disappeared when Coulson shut him down. They parted ways with a handshake while Peter silently observed the exchange across the lab.

“Goodbye, Mr Parker,” Coulson said almost as an afterthought. Perhaps that’s why he looked so surprised when Peter offered to walk him out.

Coulson broke the silence the moment they were out of earshot. “Was there something you wanted to discuss?”

“I’m walking you to the door.”

Coulson cracked a smile. “Afraid I’ll walk out with the silverware?”

“Miss Potts says it’s polite to show guests out.”

“I’m not a guest,” he pointed out. “I invited myself in.”

“Many of Mr Stark’s guests are uninvited. I find it easiest to judge based on how sorry he is to see them leave.”

Coulson looked struck by that, though he quickly schooled his expression back behind a wall of professionalism. “Stark can be difficult to read.”

“His actions always give him away,” Peter replied, attempting a wry smile of his own. Based on the surveillance footage, it came off more sheepish. “But you knew that. It’s how you figured out he was dying, right?”

“We look out for abnormal behaviour. It’s standard practice when dealing with people of his calibre.”

“Calibre?”

“Fire power,” Coulson clarified. “Weapons. Resources. Enhancements. We classify them all the same.”

“As potential candidates?”

Coulson gave him a sharp look. “That’s meant to be classified.”

Peter’s puzzled expression was flawless. He made a mental note that Tony’s advice on the concept of “plausible deniability” had been useful after all. “I’m sorry, Agent Coulson. I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”

“He really trusts you, doesn’t he?”

“I suppose.” Peter tipped his head to the side. “Does that surprise you?”

“It’s…unusual. Our behavioural profiles aren’t normally wrong.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” Peter chirped, unlocking the front door and taking a step back. “Goodbye, Agent Coulson.”

Coulson didn’t move.

“Can I ask you something before I leave?”

“Sure.”

“When did Tony tell you he was dying?”

Peter contemplated the question, pulling up every privacy restriction Tony had ever set in place. Since most of the recent measures were intended to prevent people from finding out he was dying in the first place…

“It’s a difficult question to answer. He didn’t need to voice his suspicions to me as metal poisoning was a concern from the start with his condition. I suppose he must have first suspected his condition would be fatal after the first round of bloodwork. I was with Miss Potts when JARVIS received the results, but he relayed them when I returned to the lab. It took three weeks for him to conclude his condition was incurable.”

“And how long did it take you to reach that conclusion?”

“About a minute and a half.” Technically it had been 82.4 seconds, but Tony told him not to use exact measurements like that in front of outside company unless he was running “feasible calculations”. So many rules, and every one with a half-dozen addendums attached.

“Pepper doesn’t know,” Coulson said. It wasn’t a question, so he didn’t answer. “Rhodes doesn’t know. Hogan doesn’t know. He told his doctors because he had to, but he’s dodged every therapy referral and recommendation not directly linked to improving his physical condition. The only person in this world he decided to confide in is an intern who doesn’t even legally exist. Why?”

“I can’t justify Tony’s decisions.”

“Do you agree with them?”

It was a…curious question. Peter took his time processing it.

“I’m not sure I understand some of his recent decisions.”

“Oh?”

“He’s investing all of his remaining time and effort into a project that will inevitably fail.”

“Fury seems to think he’s got a shot,” Coulson pointed out. “It’s not like he’s got a lot left to lose. Besides, I think he might surprise you.”

There it was again. That spark of not-quite-annoyance as he registered the energy wasted on reiterating the same statistics over and over. People usually trusted his calculations, even if they did occasionally require him to explain his workings. This was…different. An outright denial of what should have been scientific fact.

Peter wasn’t sure what to do with that.

“The simulations are conclusive. The element cannot be synthesised.”

“You should file a patent for that simulation. I know a great many people who would pay a small fortune to account for the everchanging variable that is Tony Stark. It was nice meeting you, Mr Parker.”

“You too, Agent Coulson.” Peter didn’t close the door until after he’d watched Coulson climb into his car and back out of his drive, trying to perfect a look that was both perplexed and contemplative.

When he returned to the lab, Tony was drilling into a section of the floor.

“Good timing. Help me carry the piping over.”

He still had grease smeared across his forehead, his brow furrowed in a look of utmost concentration. His sentences always got shorter when he worked. More clipped and to the point. Around other people, his words became a performance, but with his head buried in his work Tony acted only for himself.

The bots buzzed with excitement at the disruption, more animated than Peter had seen them in weeks. A fine layer of cement dust had settled over every surface in the lab, tinging everything a drab shade of grey. Everything was in a state of disorder, tossed aside to make room for this new project.

For the first time in months, Peter couldn’t detect the faintest trace of fear in Tony’s expression.

He moved the piping. He didn’t remind Tony that his last hope would fail him.

xxx

Peter redirected most of his mental processes to predicting Tony’s actions, but the attempt proved futile. The design plans just didn’t make sense. He could get the gist of what was being attempted, of how it would theoretically work, but the details didn’t align with any blueprint on record. Tony made the adjustments off the cuff, rarely giving an explanation  and often departing from the realm of reason. It was nonsensical, bordering on reckless, but still he ploughed onwards.

Tony began the start-up procedure, and everything went off without a hitch. Peter blinked, blinked, blinked, but the data refused to resolve itself into something comprehensible.

No, he had not been able to account for every design decision Tony made. No, he did not have reliable datasets to compare the experiment to, but even so. The results had been concrete. Absolute. He sent a barrage of requests to JARVIS, seeking out the exact point where their combined computational power failed.

The math added up. Math that hadn’t existed before Tony slapped together a makeshift particle accelerator in his basement and willed a new element into being, but it still added up.

“How did you know it would work?” Peter asked.

Tony’s grin never wavered, still riding the high of the recent discovery. “Just took a leap of faith.”

“But how did you know?”

The pieces still wouldn’t fit together, no matter how many times Peter reset the scenario. He rededicated all non-essential processes to combing through every frame of surveillance footage, every document, every microscopic detail he had access to. Anything that might contain the key to how Tony solved an unsolvable problem in the course of an afternoon.

“There was no information in your father’s research that directly related to the synthesisation of the element. I have access to all of the most up to date research papers on the subject. I downloaded schematics for existing prototypes and compared their capabilities with your theoretical requirements. The technology did not exist to perform the function you required.”

“That’s why we made something new.”

“But how did you know? You had no basis for the design. No pre-existing research to base your theory around. The new element wasn’t even conceptually known to the wider scientific field, and yet you managed to devise a method for synthesising it within a few hours of learning it even existed. How?”

“Kid, you’re going to bust a valve. You’re thinking about this too hard.”

That spark of not-quite-frustration once again reared its head. He made a note that the sporadic occurrences were growing more frequent. “You designed me to learn from my errors. How am I supposed to identify where I went wrong when I can’t understand where you went right?”

The grin was gone entirely now, replaced by brow-furrowing concern. “What error? You mean the simulations?”

“I agreed with JARVIS’s conclusion that synthesising the element would be impossible. I discouraged you from pursuing the solution that saved your life.”

Something in his expression softened. “You didn’t fail, Peter. You’re just…not wired for those kinds of leaps in logic. There’s more to it than just processing data and running simulations. Inventing takes…creativity. You’ll get there eventually.”

Peter tilted his head. “Eventually?”

“I didn’t build you to be perfect. I built you to learn. You’re not there yet, but you will be. Give it a year. Hell, give it a decade. What’s the rush? You’ve got all the time in the world to get it right.”

The answer wasn’t a neat solution, but he supposed that was part of the point. His thoughts may exist in a monochrome binary, but he existed in a world of colour. Not everything could be broken down into neatly parsed data packets.

Tony opened his mouth again, but whatever else he wanted to say was lost when the phone rang, and the voice of Ivan Vanko rang out through the lab. Peter ran the voice analysis twice just to be sure, even as JARVIS scrambled to isolate the phone signal. Another instance of the math not adding up as all the records declared him dead despite sounding very much alive.

Their conversation was brief, no doubt calculated to cut at the exact right time for the trace to drop, but once again Tony performed a leap in logic that held true.

“He’s going to hit the Expo,” Tony murmured as he studied the map.

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“Yeah, I do. I need to get down there.”

“The likelihood of you surviving another conflict in the Iron Man suit rests at around 26%.”

“With a palladium core, sure.”

Peter blinked twice. “The new element doesn’t even have a name, yet. JARVIS still needs to run a multitude of tests before you should consider using it as a replacement core.”

“Didn’t you hear JARVIS? Perfect substitute.”

“In theory,” he stressed. “It will take several hours to finish running the detailed simulations. That’s not even counting the lab tests on the element itself.”

“You can run your tests while I’m in the field,” Tony said with a shrug.

“It could kill you.”

“Or it could save my life. It could save Pepper’s life. Not to mention the countless other people who are standing around in the convention hall that I had constructed. If Vanko pulls something there? That’s on me.”

Peter made an aborted motion to catch Tony’s wrist when he reached for the new reactor core before reconsidering, his hand hovering awkwardly in the air between them. “You could contact the proper authorities.”

“The authorities weren’t much use in stopping Vanko the first time. This is my responsibility.”

“Why?”

In the time it took Tony to answer, Peter had scoured half the internet’s resources on the philosophy of ethics and criminal justice theory. Anything and everything that might make the pieces fit together in a way he could comprehend. It still didn’t make the answer any easier to process.

“Because I might be the only one who can stop him. Doesn’t that make it my responsibility to try?”

“You could let someone else pilot the suit,” Peter pointed out. “Someone who wouldn’t be poisoned by an incompatible reactor core.”

“And let them get all the credit? Nah, I think I’ll take my chances.”

It was a joke. He recognised that it was a joke, but the humour fell flat. Just like that, Tony switched out the smoking palladium core for a shiny new one and slotted the reactor back into his chest cavity. His vitals took a bump as the reactor glowed bright enough to throw up lens flares.

“Mr Stark,” Peter said, already preparing to dial emergency services when Tony laughed. Against all odds, the output levels stuttered then flattened out, his vitals returning to something resembling normal. The Iron Man suit assembled seamlessly, accepting the new power source as if it had been purpose-built with this in mind.

“You worry too much, kid,” Tony said before his faceplate went down. Peter met the glowing eyes of the suit, brow still furrowed in concern as he searched for abnormalities in his vitals. “And for the record, I think I’m going with starkadium.”

Peter blinked twice.

“A befitting choice, sir,” JARVIS commented with a note of amusement.

Tony laughed again, the sound coming out distorted through the suit’s speakers. Without another word he took off, leaving Peter behind in the wreckage of the lab.

For some reason he couldn’t fathom, DUM-E took this moment to gently bat at his arm before painstakingly picking up the pieces of a shattered coffee cup. It seemed a strange thing to fixate on when the back wall was still smouldering and chunks of concrete littered the floor, but he supposed they had to start somewhere.

He set a reasonable cycle for monitoring Tony’s vitals, pinging the suit for updates at 0.5 second intervals. An agonising delay by his standards, but with little else to do but watch…

Peter shifted all the debris he could lift without risking physical damage and set to work restoring something resembling order to the workstation. At the same time, he also sent an alert to Pepper’s phone advising her to exit the Expo area until the threat level could be confirmed and/or neutralised.

Tony made it several miles without dropping out of the sky or falling unconscious. The statistical likelihood of a rejection decreased significantly, though he was far from out of the danger zone. Peter sourced an adequate medical team and setup arrangements for them to be flown in and housed in case the worst should happen. Then there were the arrangements for the best case scenario. Long-term recovery treatment plans, potential trauma counselling (as if Tony would ever agree to it). He even researched appropriate contractors based on Pepper’s records of past performance and put in several orders for repairs to fix the mess left by Tony’s construction project.

Pepper didn’t check her phone. He could tell it was switched on, still transmitting inside the main hall, but it must have been loud enough to drown out the ringing when he tried to call her. When Tony touched down on the stage, he hijacked the HUB footage and located her in the crowd.

While Tony waved at a cheering crowd, Peter broke out a sweeping brush and set to work on the thick layer of concrete dust settling over every surface.

Four sets of eight drones lined the stage. Thirty two machines built and armed for active combat. At least two thousand civilians in the main exhibition stall, several hundred staff members present in the building, and countless more in the surrounding area. Based on Vanko’s previous attacks, it seemed likely he would use this to his advantage. Tony’s heartrate skipped as the reactor output levels fluctuated.

Less than an hour ago, he’d been actively dying. Less than an hour ago, the element powering the device imbedded in his chest hadn’t existed yet. The only living person to house an arc reactor in their body. The only person to live long-term with his unique cocktail of heavy metal poisoning. The only Iron Man. There were too many unknown factors involved for Peter to account for. Too many things that could go wrong.

Vanko had nearly killed him once before, and last time he didn’t have anything close to the resources available to Justin Hammer.

Peter dialled a different number, and this time he received an answer.

“Tony? What the hell are you doing?”

“Hi, Colonel Rhodes. This is Peter,” he said, picking up the sledgehammer Tony had so carelessly tossed aside after knocking a hole in the wall. “You instructed me to call you if it ever looked likely that Tony’s stubbornness might get him killed.”

“…I’m listening.”

xxx

Including the recent trip on Tony’s private plane, Peter’s flight in the Iron Man suit marked his third time flying in his short life. It only took 26 seconds for him to determine that travelling via the suit was objectively superior.

He compared his own flight plan to Tony’s, making minor adjustments to account for wind speed and cutting corners wherever possible. A constant stream of information flashed across the HUD, telling him everything from his power levels to the likelihood of rain. When Colonel Rhodes’ called his direct line, he answered it before the information could transfer to the screen.

“Please tell me you’re nearby.”

“ETA six minutes, approx.”

“Good, ‘cause we’ve got a situation here.”

“I’m monitoring it,” Peter assured him. The live feeds from the Stark Expo painted an incomplete picture, but it told him enough. Once again, Tony’s leaps in logic paid off.

“Are you injured?”

“We’re safe. Pepper’s with me. Tony’s drawing most of the heat away from the crowds.”

And onto himself.

As it turned out, it wasn’t difficult to gain entry to the Expo. The safety glass of the domed roof shattered exactly as it had been designed to, leaving gaping empty frames which were more than large enough for the Iron Man suit to manoeuvre through. Stealth hadn’t exactly been Tony’s priority when he designed the suit, but Peter made do.

Needless to say, in the chaos of the droid attacks it caused a bit of a stir when a silver Iron Man suit appeared overhead. He catalogued the injuries in plain view, making careful note of the small clusters of people still lingering in the building. They were lucky more people hadn’t been hurt in the stampede.

“I’m attempting to isolate your location based on your phone’s GPS. Please stand by.”

For his first stint in the suit, Peter thought he was performing rather well. Tony had his concerns about a suit operating completely on autopilot, but it would no doubt be useful if Tony ever needed a suit hand-delivered to him. He constructed a performance report as he adjusted his flight course, monitoring every minor disturbance and readjustment. It all went smoothly, right up until the moment it didn’t.

The scream drew his attention away from Rhodey’s phone signal. As he turned awkwardly to see behind him, he made note to install more sensor cameras on the suit to expand his range of vision.

It didn’t take long to zero in on the cause of the disturbance. The droid pushed through the crowd; robotic eyes fixed on the Iron Man suit it had no doubt been programmed to target. In his place, Tony would have had no issue dispatching this lone droid, but there was a good reason Peter intended to deliver the suit to Rhodey. Combat approval hadn’t even been a talking point since Tony gave up the pretence of the LMD military program. Active armed combat around civilians was a whole other league of unapproved.

The droids were smarter than Peter had initially assumed. The moment he turned to resume his original flight path its gun turret swivelled towards a collapsed civilian nearby. The man didn’t even twitch, and based on the blood pooling beneath his head, it seemed unlikely he’d be moving out of the line of fire anytime soon.

Peter paused, relaxed his stance, and let the thrusters splutter out. Concrete cracked beneath his feet where he landed, but the damage seemed acceptable in the face of the chaos around them. He blinked twice. Reassessed. When the droid didn’t stand down, he triggered the suit’s emergency disengagement procedures.

Tony always made stepping out of the suit look so easy, no different from stepping off an airplane, but Peter had to recalibrate his sensors to compensate for the sudden barrage of stimuli. Artificial pupils dilated to adjust the light levels. Noise filters activated to tune out the steady stream of talking and yelling from the background. Air filters adjusted to compensate for the increase of dust. Expression scripts ran to make his face mimic an appropriate emotional response for his situation, and all in the fraction of a second it took for the suit to retract around him.

In that same instance, he noted the minute adjustment in the droid’s lenses and made an educated guess about what must be going through its head. Had it been programmed with facial recognition software? Was it clever enough to realise Peter wasn’t the man it had been programmed to find?

The gun turret swivelled back round; the barrel perfectly aimed to hit the dead centre of his chest. He barely had the time to calculate how much damage a shot like that would deal when the droid’s head blew clean off its shoulders.

A pause followed, enough of its operating systems surviving to retain its balance and continue functioning. That changed when a second hole appeared, this one blown clean through its chest. It crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut, its metal body hitting the floor with enough force to crack the stone beneath it.

“Peter!” a voice barked, so clearly recognisable even through the suit filters.

“Hello, Mr Stark,” he said cheerfully. A pair of metal gauntlets closed around his shoulders before he could get another word out, shaking him with the force of his words.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Colonel Rhodes activated the Helping Hand protocol. I’m here to deliver his Iron Man suit.”

“He—?”

The face panel of the helmet flipped up, allowing Peter to run his own analysis on Tony’s bewildered expression.

“How did he even know about the Helping Hand protocol?”

“I told him.”

“You—? Jesus Christ, kid. You’re going to get yourself killed standing out here.”

“I wouldn’t die, Mr Stark. You designed my hardware to be easily replaced. You, on the other hand, would be much more difficult to reassemble.”

“Kid’s right, Tones,” another voice chimed in from behind them.  “Sorry, got tired of waiting on my ride.”

“You don’t have to do this, Rhodey,” Tony warned him, but Rhodey was already stepping up to the suit.

“You really think I’m going to take a back seat while you go out there and get yourself killed? No chance, Tony. Now, quit wasting time. Let’s go catch this son of a bitch.”

Tony muttered something under his breath about not holding him responsible when things went wrong before turning his attention back to Peter.

“We’re talking about this more when I get back,” he warned. It might have been intimidating if Peter were capable of experiencing such a thing.

“I’ll schedule a timeslot on your calendar,” he chimed, receiving both a dirty look from Tony and an amused look from Rhodey before he stepped into the suit.

“Try to keep up, platypus.”

“Oh, you can count on it.”

Peter watched them kick off from the ground and rapidly fade into streaks of light against the darkening sky, drawing away the majority of the droids with their flashy display. With his task complete, his mechanical mind raced to catalogue all the tasks which would need to be completed in the aftermath of the chaos. The insurance claims which would need to be filed, the statements to the press, the clean-up crews that would need to be vetted and hired.

Peter’s gaze fell back to the fallen civilian, head still bleeding sluggishly into a slowly swelling puddle of deep red.

He hadn’t technically been given any orders besides stay out of the way. Standard procedure said he should find Pepper in case she needed any help and await more specific instructions.

He tracked the GPS in her mobile to ensure she was still in the area, then flicked through surveillance feeds until he found her in the command room giving Hammer a piece of her mind. SHIELD agents to provide protection, no droids in sight, and no reason to believe she would be targeted in the attack.

These were the kinds of situations Tony had warned him he would someday deal with. Peter rarely struggled with decision-making in emergencies. The simple weighing of pros and cons, of what equipment would be most expendable. His work was done. His obligation fulfilled. He was done.

Peter blinked twice, then turned his attention back to the man bleeding on the ground and cycled through the first aid training programs on file.