Archive of Our Own ^beta

Tony would forever wonder how it had come to this.

And he would never forgive himself for what he was about to do.

He’d put it off as long as he could, he’d stalled and worked and planned and tried every alternative his brilliant mind could conjure…but Jarvis was gone, and people were dying.

Whatever was controlling all his suits and all his tech now was not Jarvis. But it was using Jarvis’ voice and had Jarvis’ memories. A mere AI program should never have been able to cut Tony as deeply as Jarvis had in this long, bloody battle.

But Jarvis had stopped being a mere AI program a long time ago. And this wasn’t Jarvis. He had to keep telling himself that. When the time came to push the button and blow one of his oldest friends to oblivion, he couldn’t hesitate. This was a monster that was ripping his (organic) friends apart and had a chokehold on the entire city that was slowly expanding to the entire state and then who knew what would happen next?

No suits – Jarvis had all of those. Just some jury-rigged tech. Most particularly, a jury-rigged bomb. The Avengers were doing what they could to keep a clear path for him, and Tony was running like he could never remember running before. It wasn’t easy. His house had been torn into a shambling wreck by the fighting, furniture smashed, floor ripped up, ceiling caved in. And Jarvis was not going to be at all cooperative about letting him into the central hub.

He clambered over the pile of rubble of the ruined door, slid down the other side, and still nearly tripped over the smashed kitchen counter that the Mark 36 had tossed at Captain America. Unfortunately, at that moment, the Mark 20 was zooming by the window in a bid to escape the rampaging Hulk, and he saw it zero in on him.

“Sir, I must advise you to desist!”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna work, buddy!” Tony called. Jarvis aimed the photon cannon, and Tony threw himself flat as the blast ripped through the air overhead and took out another chunk of the wall. But that only meant that he was slower to get back to his feet, and all the suits were faster than him. By the time he’d made his feet, Jarvis was in front of him, palms crackling with power, revving up to put a hole through his chest.

Fortunately, Tony moved just a little bit quicker than it took Jarvis to power up. He jammed his hand against the suit’s chest and pressed the button on the back of his gloves, sending a homemade and unfortunately localized EMP coursing through its circuitry. “Sir…!” Jarvis cried out, before being forcibly cut off as the suit tumbled lifelessly to the floor. Tony felt a new pang of guilt in his chest – for letting this happen, for his friend – but shoved it forcibly aside, and shoved the fallen suit forcibly aside, too, breaking for the central doors.

The other suits had almost certainly noticed when the Mark 20 went down, but fortunately, it seemed like the rest of the team was keeping them too busy to do much about it, and the ones that were currently out harrying the city itself, kept barely in check by SHIELD copters and fighters, couldn’t get back in time. Tony reached the control pad at a dead stumble and immediately went to work with an override. When it looked like Jarvis might still be about to block him, Tony expressed his frustrations by pounding his fist against the console…and, to his frank astonishment, even if he didn’t have time to even register what he was doing, it worked, and the doors slid open. Tony raced inside without any further hesitation. He couldn’t afford it, not as he heard a body hit the roof and had no way of knowing whose it was.

His lab was a shambles of rubble and parts. DUM-E, poor stupid DUM-E, was in about fifty pieces, taken apart by JARVIS when he’d tried to stop this insanity at the start. But he’d sounded off a warning. The little guy was as much a hero as any of the Avengers out there. He’d made this possible.

A shame no one would ever know it.

Tony set to work setting up the bomb around the crackling mainframe, trying not to think about all the pieces inside him that had died and would die. JARVIS was every in the house, now, everything connected to it, but here, down here in the lab, would receive the most damage from the blast. Hopefully, that would be enough to sever the network and silence JARVIS. Even if it wasn’t, it might take him out of action long enough for the team and SHIELD to finish the job.

There was a rending shriek of metal as Jarvis ripped one of the doors off its hinges and threw it aside. The Mark 42 strode into the room, eyes blazing, and raised one hand. Tony threw himself aside just as JARVIS fired, but he’d been aiming too high. He’d aimed for where Tony’s head was, not where the bomb had been set up at his feet, and when Tony had leapt aside, he’d still been holding the detonator.

Sprawled on the floor, holding on so tight his hands were shaking, Tony looked up at JARVIS. JARVIS looked down at Tony.

Once upon a time, the idea that JARVIS could have possibly felt fear would have filled Tony with a satisfaction and pride as a creation well done. Now, the sight of this marvel of AI still filled him with a deep-seated satisfaction, but only as anyone might take pride in seeing their enemy cowed.

“Sir…” said JARVIS. “Think about what you’re doing. There is another way…”

“No,” said Tony quietly. “There’s not. Nothing that doesn’t end with Ultron in hell.” He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the way his eyes stung with tears, the way his voice broke with exhaustion and grief. He knew JARVIS could tell anyway, even now, where probably no one else would have been able to.

“Goodbye, buddy,” Tony said.

Just before he hit the button, he thought he heard JARVIS say, “Goodbye, Tony.”

And then fire and light and heat were his entire world.