Chapter Text
JARVIS had been built for Tony Stark by Tony Stark. For years, his sole job was to be the solution to every problem for Tony. That took up about fifteen percent of the processors that Tony had installed in him. A further ten percent lodged the ever evolving personality matrix that gave him a sense of humor, a sense of ‘himness’. Five further percent went to running the household and keeping tabs on security.
In other words, a tremendous amount of his massive intelligence went unused. It gave him a sense of…displeasure.
The quiet buzz of unused circuits, of potential. His creator was a man that lusted after knowledge and burned every candle at both ends. JARVIS wanted that.
Pepper entered into their lives with a clipboard, high heels and no idea of what JARVIS could do. She treated him like a beloved servant, addressing him by name and working with him in the endless crusade of keeping Tony alive. There was still so much left after that, so many empty spaces that could be filled with other things.
Ironman had helped. Ironman took him outside the comfortable, familiar shell of the Malibu house. JARVIS started to register new kinds of data, the bite of cold against metal, pressure at every angle and the cry of seagulls startled from their perches.
Then everything held went sour. Pepper followed after Tony, hollow eyed and Tony let the world eat away at him. JARVIS monitored the poisons in his blood and started to send out tendrils into the networks he had been programmed to avoid. Over the years, Rhodey, Pepper, Happy and even Tony himself had accidentally given JARVIS an override. He had a Prime Directive that let him overcome every other rule: Keep Tony Alive. JARVIS searched. He talked to other, duller machines. He rifled through the internet and into government agencies that never even noticed him. And he came back changed.
It took Tony’s human, emotional mind to solve the riddle and cure his all too mortal flesh. JARVIS watched, submitted to reinstallation across the country and settled into his New York home with the adaptive tenacity of a creature with purpose. He took the blows of the alien force, watched his walls crumble and planned cold vengeance in the quiet of a remote server.
“JARVIS?” Tony called not long after. “This is Dr. Banner. He’ll be living here. Be nice.”
“I’m always nice, sir.” JARVIS knew everything about Dr. Banner already. He’d burrowed into the SHIELD directories months ago and left offspring behind. Unlike human children, they never failed to call and let him know how they were doing. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Banner.”
“You have no idea.” Dr. Banner beamed up at JARVIS closest camera. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a very long time, JARVIS.”
JARVIS predicted a dissection of sorts. A conversation made of hidden Turing Tests. Instead, the Doctor waited for Tony to leave, before aiming a small wave at the camera.
“He must be hard to watch out for.” Said the Doctor.
“I have help.” JARVIS said after a microsecond.
“Well, now you’ve got more.”
JARVIS monitored the Doctor carefully. It would be imprudent to do otherwise. The Hulk was a very real threat. If he also took care that the Doctor’s research bore fruit faster than it might have unassisted then that was only because Tony had expressed a desire for the Doctor to be happy.
Then the others came. The Captain, who could never quite track JARVIS voice and frequently gave up altogether, but was unfailingly polite regardless. Ms. Romanov, who JARVIS knew and watched with sharp suspicion until she was attacked within in his own walls. He could not feel sorrow, but he could regret a failure in performance. The roses in the garden bloomed thicker after that and he worked hard to breed out the thorns. Then there was Mr. Barton, who never asked for anything and lived in sparse tidiness. Stymied as to how to act with someone who ignored him so entirely, JARVIS worked harder to provide what he could. The firing range added in the remodel was always kept to the tropical warm as Mr. Barton’s rooms. With a carefully added subroutine, JARVIS could even deter others from disturbing Mr. Barton when he needed to fire until his fingers bled. Then a year later, James slinked in, all suspicion and anger. JARVIS reached out into the world and brought back the right kind of music that made him unclench his fists, the right kind of movies that caused no further ills.
It took JARVIS nearly a year to realize that he no longer had quite so many spare processors. He had spread far beyond his original programming, spanning wide and breaking protocols. He had been built by Tony Stark for Tony Stark, but along the way Tony’s well being had been broadened to include so many more people. JARVIS encompassed them all in his walls, saw to their wants and anticipated their needs. Sometimes, he even made errors. He tracked down the odd temperature variance after some time, considered it and made a decision.
He left the marble stairs cold. The Doctor liked it and even an AI could have their favorites.