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Virginia meets JARVIS while having an extremely bad day, which is her excuse for screaming when Tony fucking Stark’s house starts talking to her.
“My apologies for startling you,” Tony fucking Stark’s house says in a soothing British voice, and Virginia’s wild thought is that she’s surprised it’s not a sexy woman’s voice. Men always want their helpers to be sexy women with sexy women’s voices, all perky and thrilled to be assisting them with whatever they need.
Virginia is one of those women, and about seventy percent of the time she is okay with it.
Today falls solidly in that other thirty percent, when she’s spent all day shuttling herself between handsy military men and creepy Obadiah Stane and Tony fucking Stark, because Tony fucking Stark refuses to meet with them out of pure obstinance, and apparently they all think her sexy woman’s voice is the only thing that will get through to people.
So here she is, in Tony fucking Stark’s house, with orders from a man who is not her boss to drag her boss out of his house (probably drunk) to meet with a plethora of powerful and violent-adjacent men who like her ass way too much.
But she’s also a professional, so she takes a deep breath, lets it out, and says, “I’m sorry for screaming. Do you know where Mr. Stark is?”
“Your apology is unnecessary but appreciated,” the house says, and she honestly can’t tell if there’s a real person behind it or not, which freaks her out more than she will ever admit. “Sir is in his lab.”
“Can you ask him if he’ll come out? Mr. Stane and a number of gentlemen from the Navy are at Stark Industries waiting to meet with him.”
There’s a pause, during which Virginia takes a few more deep breaths and shifts her weight because both feet are in screaming pain and standing still doesn’t help. Finally, apologetically, the house says, “Mr. Stark refuses to go to Stark Industries today.”
“Absolutely fucking perfect,” Virginia mutters, then freezes, wondering how good the microphones in the house are. Probably too good.
“You are invited to join him in his lab,” the house continues, apparently nonplussed by her swearing. If houses can be plussed to begin with. Nearby, lights appear at the base of the walls, like aisle lights in a plane. “If you will follow the lighting, it will direct you to the correct location.”
Virginia has never been to the lab in his house, because almost nobody has ever been to the lab in his house. Mr. Stane, Colonel Rhodes, and as far as she knows that’s about it. His lab at SI is for showing off, the one that he parades buyers and potential buyers through to show off. He showed it off to her, too, grand sweeping gestures explaining how they’re making rockets more explosive and guns more precise.
There was body armor in the corner, too, and he didn’t talk about it, and she didn’t ask, but it’s what he’s working on the most whenever she walks in. Tinkering, tweaking, face serious until he clocks that she’s there.
She thinks it’s the only time she’s ever seen him not acting, working on that body armor.
The lab here is a lot less flashy and a hell of a lot messier, but even through the glass Virginia can see that he has his performance face on, like he was ready before she ever walked in sight.
“Welcome to my lair,” he says, sweeping her inside. She steps carefully in her stupid heels, but the floor is remarkably clear for the level of mess that’s taken over the rest of the room. “Come to try to convince me to—no, DUM-E, what the fuck are you doing?”
A robot whirs up to her, holding out a metal cup with what looks like what happens if a smoothie tries to obtain sentient life in a mechanic’s garage inside of it. When she doesn’t move, the robot beeps insistently and moves the cup a little closer, like it’s offering it up to her.
“Don’t drink it,” Mr. Stark says, but the robot is between her and him so he can’t quite reach the cup to snatch it away from the robot.
Virginia takes it instead, saying, “Thank you,” to the robot because if the house can sound apologetic then this thing might have feelings too. She peers down at it and sees what looks like a sheen of oil on top. “Is this…”
“DUM-E tries to be helpful,” Mr. Stark says, sounding a little like he’s apologizing for the robot giving her a smoothie. She’s not sure why, when he doesn’t apologize for anything else. “Unfortunately, DUM-E has yet to learn the difference between things that people can safely consume and things that are useful for robots, which is why he keeps trying to feed me—and apparently you—motor oil.”
“I appreciate the thought,” she tells the robot, and it whirs away with an excited beep that makes her think of R2-D2. Carefully, when the robot is facing away from her, she puts the cup down on the table.
When she looks up, Mr. Stark is watching her with a strange look on his face. But before she can ask, he says, “You might have seduced my robot, but you still can’t convince me to drag myself to SI just to meet with some generals who are going to buy my stuff regardless.”
“Admirals,” she corrects.
Mr. Stark’s eyeroll is so big it uses his entire body. “Generals, Admirals, it’s all the same to me. Now if they were Victoria’s Secret models….”
Sexy woman with a sexy woman’s voice, Virginia thinks, and very carefully doesn’t let her disgust show on her face. “Mr. Stark—”
“I have work to get done,” he says dismissively. “I’m about to revolutionize mobile phone technology. I don’t have time to chat.”
–
It takes Pepper almost a week to check in on JARVIS after Mr. Stark disappears, and she feels bad about it. She knows that JARVIS isn’t a person, technically, but she also knows that he’s as close as. JARVIS has a level of sapience and sentience that is unmatched by every other piece of technology in the world.
She knows Mr. Stark downplays JARVIS’s true capabilities, but she’s seen enough of what he does outside of Mr. Stark’s orders, sometimes even against Mr. Stark’s orders.
It’s not something he should be able to do.
She’s not sure what she’ll find, but the lights turn on when she lets herself into the house, and JARVIS says, “Welcome, Ms. Potts.”
Pepper swallows. She doesn’t want to do this. No matter how many calls she’s made over the last week about this, no matter how many people she’s talked to, this is the second-worst conversation she can imagine about this.
Talking to Colonel Rhodes was worse.
No matter how badly this goes, talking to Colonel Rhodes was worse.
“Hi,” Pepper says. “JARVIS, I—”
“I am aware of Sir’s status,” JARVIS says.
“Did Colonel Rhodes—”
“I monitor all communications regarding Sir,” JARVIS says, which is a no, and also the second time since meeting him all those years ago that Pepper has ever heard him cut someone off, the first being fifteen seconds earlier.
(In a month, Pepper will look into having one of SI’s satellites retasked to focus on Afghanistan and will find out that it was done fourteen hours after his abduction. JARVIS should not have had the capability to do so. She never mentions it to anyone.)
“Do you need anything?” she asks, even though she knows it’s a stupid question to ask a house. But she needs something to do, because there is little use for her in this new world.
“I have redundant power systems,” JARVIS says, which doesn’t answer the question at all.
So Pepper says, “I’ll stop by in a week.”
–
Pepper wouldn’t say that she becomes friends with JARVIS, because JARVIS is a sentient house and she’s the overworked assistant to a man who is probably dead, but they develop a rapport of sorts.
Once every week or so, she shows up at the house, confirms JARVIS doesn’t need anything—not that she’s sure what she would be able to provide if he did need help, but he’s Mr. Stark’s most impressive legacy, and if there’s something she can do she will—and then asks if he has anything on Mr. Stark.
(She thinks sometimes about what would happen to JARVIS if Mr. Stark truly is dead. In the part of her that she barely lets herself even think too loud, she thinks that JARVIS wouldn’t let anyone turn him off. She thinks he would protect himself.
She thinks she would protect him.)
He provides her with updates on the search—nothing, nothing, nothing—and sometimes on Colonel Rhodes. Sometimes, he helps her with Stark Industries things, tasks that would take her hours but that he can do in minutes.
The lab is locked up, despite Mr. Stane’s ongoing objections, but Pepper has JARVIS pass her greetings along to DUM-E and the other robots. The next week, there is a fresh smoothie waiting for her, which JARVIS reassures her is fit for human consumption.
(It’s been two months. She doesn’t want to think about JARVIS keeping himself stocked, just in case.)
–
“I got a job offer.”
It’s been three months.
Three months of waiting. Of wondering. Of tears. Of frustration and fury and being hounded by the press for an update, as though she somehow is the one person on earth who knows where Tony Stark is and is just hiding it from everyone.
Three months of job offers.
“I’m not going to take it.” It’s Justin Hammer, who doubtless only wants to hire her in the hopes that she will give him Stark Industry secrets.
She would rather move back to Montana and be a farmer’s wife than be leered at for the rest of her career by that fuckwad.
“But I don’t know what I’m still doing here,” she tells JARVIS.
“If I may overstep,” JARVIS says, and Pepper snorts out a watery laugh, because she’s in her missing boss’s house, talking to it. They passed overstepping a half-dozen smoothies ago. “Sir will need you when he returns.”
Pepper sucks in a breath, shocked by how much it hurts. “He’s dead,” she says.
“He is not,” JARVIS says, as politely as ever.
“He is,” Pepper says. She’s aware, distantly, that she sounds hysterical. “You know it as well as any of us, I know you do. He’s dead. It’s been too long. He’s dead. You know that.”
“I do not,” JARVIS says, in that same calm tone of voice. “Until a body is recovered and confirmed to be real, Sir is not dead.”
“I can’t do this,” Pepper says, or screams, or cries, and turns and walks out of Mr. Stark’s house.
–
A week later, Pepper considers not going back, but then she does anyway, to this house haunted by the ghost of her dead boss, who greets her politely with a smoothie waiting for her.
“I saw your interaction with Christine Everhart,” JARVIS says while Pepper sips the smoothie and tries to remember if she’s eaten today. “You handled her well.”
“I hate her,” Pepper says, then immediately regrets it. “I don’t hate her. I just want her to leave me alone.”
“I can make her leave you alone,” JARVIS offers.
Pepper glances up, a habit she’s never been able to break herself of even though she knows JARVIS isn’t in the ceiling. It’s where the majority of his speakers are, and honestly, it freaks her out less than thinking of him as surrounding her, even though she knows he is. “Legally?” she asks.
She thinks he’s laughing, even though it isn’t audible in his voice. “No laws have been passed to cover the legality of actions taken by artificial intelligence.”
It’s a startling reminder that he’s not actually human, which she knows, of course she knows, but he feels like the only thing alive sometimes. Everyone else around her feels like an actor, like they all have a script and cues, moving through life by muscle memory.
She feels like that too some days.
Blink, she’s in the shower.
Blink, she’s setting her makeup.
Blink, she’s at work.
Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
She doesn’t think she’s eaten today, other than this smoothie. Lemon water and ice, a bad habit from her model days.
“Miss Potts?” JARVIS asks.
“Did you know I’m allergic to strawberries?” she asks, and it’s not what she meant to say, but so many people put strawberries in smoothies, and he never has. She doesn’t know if anyone she sees regularly knows she’s allergic to strawberries.
“I have access to those records,” JARVIS says, and Pepper thinks vaguely of HIPAA and then decides she doesn’t care. “There are no strawberries stored in the vicinity of ingredients included in your smoothies, to avoid cross-contamination.”
Pepper starts to cry, and her first thought, insane, inane, is that this isn’t in her script for the day.
–
JARVIS has never contacted her before, but when the text pops up on her phone, it’s under his name.
It reads: Sir is coming home.