Chapter Text
Prologue: JARVIS Is Not a Sheep
Stark Tower, New York City, Friday, May 4th, 2012, 4:16pm
God, he had more hair back then. That’s his first thought, as he peers through the partition and gets his first real good look. Loki, that son of a fucking bitch, is on the floor, asking for a cocktail, while the team ignores him and begins to congratulate themselves. Barton is drinking Stark’s expensive scotch, the good stuff. God, Tony really must have taken a tumble back then, to allow Barton anywhere near that bottle. And then, Rogers walks around the corner, and Stark finds he has to crouch down a little lower, just as Captain America himself, the younger one, that is, walks forward to discuss the search and rescue plan with Romanov.
“Ah. Mr. Rogers, I almost forgot that that suit did nothing for your ass,” Stark mutters.
“No one’s asking you to look, Tony,” Rogers grumbles through the comms.
“It’s ridiculous,” Stark adds for good measure.
If he weren’t in the middle of a time heist to save the goddamn universe, he’d be downtown grabbing a Pastrami on Rye at Katz’s. They closed that place up in 2019, even the infamous delicatessen falling victim to the snap. Half the places he’d loved ended shuttering their doors. Thing about suddenly missing half the population? Economic collapse, followed by economic depression. Tony had lost about 20 billion dollars as it was, not that it had mattered. Nothing mattered much anymore, other than Morgan and Pepper. Still though, it sucked being this close and not having enough time to do or see anything he had taken for granted back then. Damn shame, too; he hadn’t had a decent New York deli sandwich since everything had gone to shit.
“I think you look great, Cap! As far as I’m concerned, that’s America’s ass, ” Lang chirps from his shoulder, and Stark rolls his eyes.
“Who gets the, uh, magic wand?” he listens to Natasha ask, as he zeroes in on the scepter. Rogers’ ticket. And then the tesseract.
“Strike team’s coming to secure it,” he hears the 2012 Rogers add, and then…
“You have reached the eighty fourth floor. Good day to you, gentleman,” the voice says, and Tony freezes.
Vision.
He almost stands and turns around. He almost turns around and gives away his hiding spot crouched by the partition, all because of a voice. A voice that sometimes haunts his nightmares, nightmares so bad he still wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, doubled over in paranoid, gut-wrenching guilt.
Because, Tony had been off world, when Vision had died. And if he hadn’t been, he has no doubt in his mind the synthezoid would still be alive.
“Is there anything else I can get for you, sir?” the voice asks, addressing the 2012 version of himself. Younger, full-head-of-hair Tony. Stark blinks. No. It wasn’t Vision he’d heard. It was Jarvis. The voice of the AI that had permeated the worst and best years of his life. The voice of a colleague, a companion, and a close friend. The voice, who had, at times, been the only thing Tony could rely on.
“We can take that off your hands,” Sitwell is saying to Natasha, and Tony swallows hard.
“By all means,” she mutters, handing the bad, evil man the lightning stick of death, which was actually the Mind Stone, which made Tony think of Vision once again.
God damn it.
“Who are these guys?” Lang is saying, and Stark is blinking, trying to redouble his efforts of focusing on the mission, even as his brain races.
Superdrives are in the junk drawer by the bar. J, at this time, would have been around 1, maybe 1.5 petabytes, if he intended to pull most of his memory banks with him.
“They are SHIELD. Well, actually HYDRA, but we didn’t know that yet,” he murmurs.
Super drives in 2012? Maybe a peta at most, best case scenario. So it depended on what he had on hand. What was in the junk drawer at the time. Not a problem. He’ll just tell J to delete all the memories of his sexcapades. Should free up at least 500 terabytes of storage. Easy.
“Seriously, you didn’t? ” Lang’s whining. “ They look like bad guys .” Tony exhales in frustration.
“You’re small but you’re talking loud,” he grumbles, just as they watch the tesseract be placed in a padded shipping container.
“Ooh! Alright, you’re up, little buddy,” Stark says. “There’s our stone.”
“Alright,” Lang says, preparing himself on Stark’s shoulder. “Flick me.”
He watches an infinitesimal Lang fly through the air and chooses not to think about the laws of physics and how hurling a human body the length of forty football fields could possibly end well for the tiny man, hoping Pym factored that into his calculations way back into the seventies.
And the crew is moving toward the elevator, and Tony is flailing awkwardly to get outside, hurling himself off the building, summoning the Iron Man armor as he goes. He hurtles through the plumes of smoke and alarms of a recently dilapidated New York all around him, before pulling up so he can scan the elevator full of Hydra thugs as it descends.
“Alright, Cap. I’ve got our scepter in the elevator just passing the 80th floor,” he murmurs.
“On it. Head to the lobby,” Rogers says through the comms.
“Alright, I’ll see you there,” he mutters, before blasting upward again, quietly sneaking into the 84th floor again, to see it quite empty. He exhales, eying the bar. Before he can decide against it, Tony quickly grabs what’s left of the half-empty bottle of scotch, chugging heavily, thinking about how he’s way too old to be doing this shit, just before he hears the voice again.
“Sir? I thought you were taking the elevator down to deliver the…tesseract… ” Jarvis’ voice trails off, and Tony can practically hear the digital myocardial infarction the AI is sure to be having, as Tony grins through a swallow of scotch.
“Hey buddy. Long time, no see,” he mutters, putting down the bottle and running around to the other side of the counter, pulling open the junk drawer and sifting through its contents in search of what he needs. “Or I guess, long time, no hear.”
“Sir… ” he hears Jarvis say, sounding very, very befuddled, and Stark has to shake the haunting image of Vision’s furrowed brows out of his mind, as his hand grasps what he needs.
“Yeah…you’re probably picking up on two of me in this tower right about now. Sorry about that,” he mutters, stalking over to the nearest set of computers, shoving the super drive into the USB port.
“Indeed, sir, I am. Would you care to explain the anomaly? ” Jarvis asks in that old school way he used to sass Tony in. God, he’d missed the fucker.
“Don’t have a lot of time,” Stark mutters, waiting for the computer to pull up the empty file folder. He watches Jarvis’ operational interface illuminate on the monitor, and he smiles. It was the old school way Jarvis would follow him around the building or his home in Malibu, hopping from camera to camera, computer to computer.
“Listen, J. I need a favor. Copy your operational matrix and as much of your memory data as you can from the tower’s mainframe and onto this superdrive for me, ok?” Stark says quickly.
“Sir,” Jarvis attempts to interrupt.
“Delete any embarrassing stuff, you know, and all the old protocols from Malibu, that kind of thing,” Stark keeps talking.
“Sir.”
“Should be plennntttyyy of room for you to cozy up in there. Or, uhhh, the clone of yourself to cozy up in there,” Stark is still muttering.
“Sir!” Jarvis nearly shouts, and Stark looks up to the monitor’s camera, aggravated.
“What?!” he snaps. The AI mimics the sound of an exhalation of breath, and begins to speak.
“Several items. First, there are no ‘old protocols’ listed for Malibu, as all of them are still active as it is your primary residence. Secondly, you have strictly forbidden me to delete the ‘embarrassing stuff’ from your file, just in case, and I quote, ‘for when VH1 gets their heads out of their asses and decides to make that documentary’ about your life, and, finally, cloning myself onto a superdrive is strictly forbidden, according to protocol 1.24.44, or the ‘Jarvis Is Not a Sheep’ protocol, sir,” he says clippedly, and Tony snorts.
“God, we did call it that, didn’t we? I’d forgotten…” Stark mutters. “Uhh, override all that crap, alright? Papa’s orders,” he mutters, typing something quickly into Jarvis’ operational interface, the keycode to the failsafe override actually entitled “Papa’s Orders” so the AI can do all that he’s asked.
“Forgive me, sir, but from the context clues you’ve given me, it sounds like you’re -“
“From the future? Yeppp. Bingo!” Stark says. “Now hurry it on up, will ya? I gotta meet Rogers downstairs in five minutes.”
“Sir…if I am going to copy my entire operational matrix, which I have the ability to refuse, despite your override, I would like a better explanation ,” the AI says, and Tony groans. Vision was so much more agreeable. The synthezoid had spoiled him rotten.
“Ok. Look, I figured out time travel, alright? Quantum physics. I’m from 2023, and you are to keep that to yourself for all eternity. I’m here because uh…” Tony sighs, reaching for the bottle he had hauled with him to the computer, drinking heavily. “We fucked up, J. We lost. And now we’re undoing it,” he says, as the bitter liquor burns his throat.
“Forgive me for being disagreeable, sir, but you have just stopped the nuclear destruction of Manhattan by traveling through a portal in space. I’d call that successful ,” Jarvis retorts, and Tony sighs, running a hand over his face.
“Yeah. No, uhh, not that. This happens, a few years after. We…half the universe, buddy. We lost…half the universe,” he murmurs. For several long, agonizing moments, no one speaks, Tony simply staring at the monitor and the monitor staring back, before Jarvis pipes up once more.
“Copying operational matrix and all relevant data now. Projected time, 3 minutes, 15 seconds, ” Jarvis says quietly.
“Atta boy,” Tony mutters through a sigh of relief.
For a whole minute, no one says anything, until he hears the AI speak up once more, sounding a little more downtrodden.
“May I inquire why my presence is being requested, sir? Assuming I am likely not around in your version of the future to begin with?” Jarvis asks softly. Tony sighs. He really, really was trying to avoid telling the AI he’d kicked the bucket, although it’s an obvious conclusion for him to make, considering Tony-from-the-future needs a full-on copy of the guy.
“This is an impromptu thing, alright? I…well, I heard your voice, and…” Stark drops off. And I don’t know what I want. A way to bring a small piece of him back. To bring you back. Maybe to somehow find a way to revitalize him. Or maybe, just maybe, I’m trying to quell my own damn guilt.
“May I ask how I met my demise sir? ” Jarvis almost whispers now, and Tony lets out a long breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
“Uhh, you may not . Just in case Scott, i.e. Back to the Future was right all along. But...I can say it was for a good cause,” Tony mutters, and then, more softly, under his breath, he adds, “A damn good cause.”
“Upload complete, sir,” Jarvis replies, and Tony removes the superdrive from the computer, pocketing it.
“Thanks, J. I gotta run. But godspeed, buddy. It was good, really good, hearing your voice again. See you on the other side,” he murmurs, and, before Jarvis can ask what he possibly means, Tony is jumping off the building again, headed for the first floor lobby of Stark Tower