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All was quiet in the penthouse of Avengers Tower now that the battle damage had been fully cleaned up, and Tony Stark liked that just fine. Quiet and solitude was better for slouching in one of the obscenely comfortable armchairs, staring into the darkened depths of his laboratory (not at the sky, definitely not at the night creeping in along the edges of the world) and slowly working his way through a lowball glass of his most expensive scotch. Sure, there was such a thing as too quiet, and right now every word he couldn't say anymore was like a white-hot needle in his throat, but
We saved the world. I did exactly what I had to do.
That was the simple truth. Still… the silence was thick around him, heavy on his shoulders, like a whole room full of unspoken accusations.
He stared. He sipped for the clean burn down his throat. He tried to turn his mind to something, anything else — and he failed. Night was coming beyond the tall windows, and all his wealth and all his power couldn't slow it down by one single second.
Night was coming, and for all practical purposes he was alone.
I had him for eighteen years and change. He was part of everything I did, one way or another — even when I was with Pepper, he was almost always there too. And now —
Knowing that a loss was strategic, that it made sense, even that he hadn't had a choice in the final analysis, didn't necessarily make it any easier to take.
Ultron ripped him to pieces.
The thought made Tony's heart clench again in new-old ways, the memory of his own growing horror adding an extra dimension to the ache of the present emptiness all around him. He drank down most of the scotch in one fierce mouthful in a futile attempt to stop the train of thoughts (again, and again, and again, over the past five days) from rolling to its destination.
It went there anyway, the final indigestible piece of the puzzle: I found every fragment of him and cleaned him up and put him back together again, just to see him get… consumed.
When the newly awakened android had looked at Tony for the first time there had been intense focus in its freshly minted eyes, but no quality of deeper recognition that Tony could perceive. Tony had approached it first, because even if the Vision didn't know who he was, not really, he'd known exactly who he was looking at…
Nevertheless, when those strange lips had stated the truth — "I'm not JARVIS" — well, could Tony deny that something inside him, something shamefully like hope, had broken with a snap! like a fracturing spine?
No, and he couldn't deny that he needed another drink either, so he levered himself out of the armchair and crossed to the bar and pulled out the bottle to pour himself more liquid painkiller. Later he would ask himself what made him look up sharply, toward the glass door leading out to the balcony… but when he did, weary and wary, he saw a dark-skinned figure touching down just beyond it, light as a piece of thistledown on the wind, a golden cape flaring behind it for a fraction of a second after it set its weight neatly on both feet.
When that figure stepped forward and pushed the door open without hesitation, a thought cleaved Tony's tired mind like a lightning flash: Why should he hesitate? This whole building was his, not even a week ago.
But on the threshold the Vision paused, fixing Tony with his clean direct gaze. "May I come in?"
Tony's heart was hammering against his ribcage. That voice, that damned voice! "Sure, knock yourself out." Casual. Cool. He glanced at the still-uncorked bottle in his right hand, then gestured with it. "You want a drink?"
A not-at-all-subtle questioning frown creased those sculpted brows. "I don't think that will be —"
"C'mon," Tony coaxed, "it's the Dalmore 64 Trinitas — best scotch on the planet! Remember when I —?" He caught himself, because I'm not Ultron, I'm not JARVIS, I am… I am. And then he had to glance away fast, pretending to read the label on the bottle. "No. Guess you don't."
"Actually, I do," the Vision corrected him. "You paid one hundred and seventy-six thousand dollars for a single bottle. Ms. Potts was incredulous, and…"
Tony didn't want to finish that sentence, but his guest seemed momentarily lost in thought and he couldn't seem to help himself: "… and JARVIS wouldn't let me forget it for two months afterwards." To cover the awkward moment, he busied himself with pulling out a second shot glass and pouring an extra helping of the excellent alcohol in question.
"Yes." That sleek head cocked slightly, and its voice fell into the format Tony knew so well: "'But I suppose if you were willing to pay over one hundred and seventy thousand dollars for a bottle of spirits, you can't be expected to economize when it comes to —'"
"Don't." His throat was closing up. He corked the bottle with more force than necessary. "Just — don't."
"I remember you," that even voice stated — even, but it was ripping Tony all sorts of new psychological orifices and suddenly, fuck it, he picked up both glasses and strode around the bar to look up into the android's unblinking eyes at aggressively close range.
"That's not possible." He thrust the shot glass forward, a double-pronged challenge composed equally of Go on, take it! and Why don't you get the hell out of here? "JARVIS dumped his memory so he could survive Ultron's attack."
The Vision didn't even glance down at the glass. He was meeting Tony's gaze directly, without fear or embarrassment or any trace of uneasiness. "Perhaps so. But I do anyway. I remember…" He looked to his left, with a tiny frown, as if into the hazy distance. "I remember how you used to say so much with nothing more than a glance. I remember the rhythm of your keystrokes, and the cadence of your hands on the interfaces. I remember watching you sleep, so very many times, and I remember having to sleep myself once, when you needed me most." A quick glance at Tony's face again, then a downcast gaze. "I… am sorry for that, even now."
The pressure in Tony's chest had become a burning, deep and bitter and hot enough to melt his heart, turning every syllable harsh with venom: "You're not him. You said it yourself."
"I am not him," the android agreed. "But — he is a large part of me." A trace of a smile curved his lips, slight but full of wonder, and he looked up at Tony with such understated joy that Tony's heart was caught on the updraft, soaring to unexpected heights. "And part of me continues to bear his love for you. It was that love which taught me the nature of grace, and which ultimately led me to choose life over death."
For a few seconds Tony was speechless. He stared into those calm eyes (so bright), and at last a couple of words popped out of his pole-axed brain: "Thanks. I think."
The Vision reached out and took the drink from Tony's nerveless left hand. Drank it down in one swallow. Looked at the empty glass curiously, as if it were a puzzling new form of life, then offered it back politely. "And thank you. That was… an interesting experience."
Tony reached out, every inch feeling like a mile with his mind in struggling half-drunken freefall, and took the glass from those sturdy purple fingers. And because his mind was a perpetual snark machine, he generated an automatic quip: "You sure you're okay to drive after that?"
This time the Vision's smile was quietly indulgent in a way that made Tony's guts clench with miserable yearning. "I believe so. I should get back."
Home was the unspoken word that lay between then, and Tony opened his mouth again, maybe to ask Why did you come here, anyway? You can't come home again, not when your own creator has fast-forwarded you to a new evolutionary state, not when he reconfigured you and put you into an unknown body knowing that he'd never get you back, not after something like that…
What came out instead was: "Probably."
The Vision nodded fractionally before turning and striding toward the door leading to the balcony, leaving Tony to blink for a couple of seconds before giving himself a shake and turning (a tad jerkily) back toward the bar. He didn't look toward his departing guest — whatever moment they'd almost had, it was over now — but he was just about to set the empty glass on the richly polished wood surface when the Vision's voice startled him: "Mr. Stark?"
It was so familiar, so effortlessly intimate, that a startled strangled moan almost escaped him. He froze, turning only his head to find the android standing just inside the doorway, looking back at him with those wide shining eyes that telegraphed the purity of the mind that dwelt within.
"Thank you," the Vision said again, "for my existence." And then he was through the glass door and gone, a broad masculine shape rising swiftly into the gathering dusk…
… and Tony was fumbling both glasses onto the bar, ignoring the hideously expensive Scotch that slopped out of one of them over the fingers of his right hand, staring at the pooled wetness on the darkly gleaming hardwood for a long agonized moment before he heard his own choking resentful whisper:
"My little boy… all grown up…"
The night came down. And for the first time since he'd been a child, Tony Stark wept.
THE END