Age of Charon

"What... was that?"

It was past 2 or 3 a.m. when they finally managed to meet up on Avengers' Tower again. Tony had made sure the floor they were at was off the grid, by literally removing every piece of tech off it. He had even given each of the team members a new phone, saying he was replacing the old ones with a newer, better model. The lies came so easy, that he didn't even know what to think of himself anymore. After The Announcement —capital letters were necessary for that special insanity—, he should have come forward, should have said that the Tower was likely under surveillance, that Ultron had probably heard every word they had spoken in the farmhouse, that the AI tried to make Tony find JARVIS by pretending to go after the nuclear codes, that he prepared a body for JARVIS for reasons unknown, that he never took over Tony's newest Iron Man armors though he could, that he could have killed them anytime, by simply making the underground generators go 'kaboom'. That in the lab... when this whole mess started... he had saved Tony's life.

He could say all those things... but then, he would also have to voice his suspicions. Ultron —despite what JARVIS seemed to hope and believe— was not being controlled. JARVIS seemed sure that he was because he had seen Ultron devolving under the scepter's energy when he first activated, but some form of suicide on the AI's part or homicide on the scepter's part, was not evidence that Ultron's later actions were out of his control. They were only proof that he was in distress. Despite what the Maximoff girl said, Ultron's actions were not those of a man —a boy really— aiming to destroy the world and humanity with it. Those were the actions of a person convinced he could change it, if only... he was given a chance. And no one was about to give him that chance, so he would take it for himself. If Tony spoke of the distinctly 'good' things Ultron had done, or the distinctly 'bad' things he could have done but chose not to, Tony would have to also bring to light that Ultron chose both of those avenues of action. If the scepter was in control, it would have directed Ultron to have a clearer path, a more specific and direct goal to follow. But Ultron didn't have such a clear path or direct goal. He both actively went against them and gave them hints.

Ultron had good intentions, but the road to hell was paved with them. Ultron could have stayed low. Could have planned how to slowly gain influence over a period of months or years, but he chose to steal weaponry, chose to mentally torture a man —although he was a Nazi— through the mind-control witch, chose to have black market dealings for vibranium, to threaten the nuclear codes, to... unleash Hulk in Johannesburg. God, that last one... that was the fucking worst one. The kid had even told him to watch out for it. He had smiled as he did so. That wasn't... wasn't something a sane person did. That wasn't gray morality, that was black as black can be and... he hadn't known how to bring that up with the team or... with JARVIS. Either JARVIS was really, really sure that Ultron was being mind-controlled —which he doubted because JARVIS never claimed certainty, it was simple probability— or his older AI also didn't give a fuck that people died in that city. Well, that was a bit exaggerated, it would be far more accurate to say that JARVIS likely placed the life of his little brother over the fact that Ultron had an indirect role in the deaths of bystanders. Either way, that wasn't good news. When he first created JARVIS, Tony made his primary protocol be that he survive, grow and learn. The 'learn' part had been about learning to feel, to care for humans individually, like Tony and Rhodey and Pepper, and humanity in general, but maybe the second part hadn't really registered?

Realizing that he would fall even deeper down the rabbit hole of depression that such thinking threw him into, Tony had to mentally shake those thoughts about JARVIS away. There were more immediate problems abound. Like the fact that instead of taking the logical route, Ultron had hurried into acting out a facade for world peace and at some point had started to believe in it? He had had his doubts, but after The Announcement... Dear god, that fucking announcement.

"That was Ultron running rings around us." Romanov said. "He does not see us as a threat, and wants us to know that."

"Anything from SHIELD?" Rogers asked.

"Nothing." Barton replied. "As far as the intelligence and analysis teams are concerned, Ultron never stepped foot in California, let alone in the Woodside Villa."

Ah, that whole mess was to think about as well.

"But we know Ultron was there. He filmed himself and showed the tape to the whole world."

"Not a tape." Romanov intervened. "He gave that speech live. He was certain we wouldn't be able to corner him midway through. And he wasn't wrong."

It was things like these that made him wonder whether his Ultron-is-not-mind-controlled-but-needs-a-lot-of-fucking-therapy theory was wrong. Giving the speech live, only with a slight delay for audio translation in different regions across the world, with every single person on the planet watching, it was so stupidly reckless. What if the owner or a guest of the villa Ultron had been used recognized the room? What if they called the cops over it? Hiding his location and transmission online was not enough. There were too many things that could have gone wrong. He should have simply recorded himself and then placed that video in the evening news. No need to endanger his location and himself.

But he did. And in the end, the owner of the villa had recognized his own conference room in the video, but had only called the cops after he flew in the house and saw the weird Earth flags that shouldn't have been there. Those flags... they were meant to represent the planet Earth to outside entities. When did Ultron have the time to study flag design?

Regardless, that sort of behavior... couldn't be explained as the behavior of a logic-focused AI. At times, he thought it was mind-control, simply because of idiotic things like these. If it wasn't mind-control and Ultron still took such unnecessary risks, still was so disorganized in how he was taking over the world, still hurried so much that it exposed possible flaws in his plans, Tony would be fucking disappointed.

"He even left us souvenirs, don't forget." Banner added, showing off the little Earth flag in his hand. Yep, Ultron had left a bunch of those lying around.

"So how sure are we that the twins were in on it?" Barton asked.

"They recommended that we get out of the country at the same time their alleged former employer gives a speech to the world." Romanov said. "That makes them pretty guilty in my eyes."

"It could have been a coincidence." Rogers said. "They seemed to be very enthusiastic about taking Ultron down."

"The girl with the power to alter our perception seemed pretty enthusiastic." the Widow corrected. "That in itself should make you wonder how much of that enthusiasm was real. As for her brother... he certainly didn't seem heartbroken that we failed to find Ultron."

"I agree with Nat." Barton said. "Something's definitely up with them. I don't trust anyone with the ability to mind-control others, especially those that used that power to make the Hulk go wild. And the boy... he isn't even trying to look anything but sympathetic to Ultron's cause once he saw the speech."

"Ultron forced Wanda to do it! She didn't have a choice!" Rogers argued.

The man really felt for the kids, but honestly, Tony was too tired to care about them at all. "She also didn't have a choice when she volunteered to join HYDRA? Seriously, Cap, you don't volunteer to join the Nazis, ever. Nazis=bad. That has been programmed into our minds, all over the globe, for 70 years. You don't just miss that memo and stumble into the local Nazis Anonymous meeting."

The silence that followed was soon interrupted by Romanov. "Why did Ultron make such a speech, Stark?"

"How am I supposed to know?"

"You created him. He hates you. Shouldn't that tell you something?"

"Something like what?" he asked, though he didn't really want an answer.

"That he seeks a permanent world peace when his creator is making a career out of privatizing said world peace. That his speech speaks to the poor to rise up against the rich, when his creator is one of the wealthiest men on the planet. That he—," she began to list, but Tony interrupted her.

"All right. All right. You've made your point." No need for everyone to hear what he and the Widow had both been thinking. Well, everyone but the twins, JARVIS, who was watching over said twins, and Thor, who had been in an uncharacteristic pensive mood and chosen to leave for a flight to clear his thoughts.

"So?" she continued.

"I think it's a coincidence," he said, and hurried his words along when he saw the disbelief into the faces of his teammates. "Hear me out. It is definitely a happy coincidence for Ultron. He hasn't made his disdain for me a secret, what with all the Pinocchio songs we've been forced to listen to." Except for that time when he saved Tony's life, but they didn't know about it and... well, as he had been reflecting throughout the meeting, Tony wasn't about to come clean anytime soon for many, many reasons. "However, that isn't his driving primary or even secondary reason. Whether because the Mind Stone controls him or because it simply convinced him so," he was thankful JARVIS wasn't there to hear that, "Ultron honestly believes that World Peace can only be achieved if the world were to be united."

"If under his control." Rogers said. "Pretty sure I've heard something like that before."

Tony had to actively stop himself from snarling. Was the Cap just comparing Ultron to Hitler?

"Currently, I think he sees himself as the fastest way to prevent more war." he said, pretending he didn't hear the comparison. "That doesn't include only the current wars, but all the future ones. Poverty, racism, crime... Ultron wants to fix the causes of war, not just treat its symptoms. That's why he made the speech. He wanted us, and the world, to know that. He wanted to ask if we would stand against this cause."

"Every time someone tries to win a war before it starts, innocent people die. Every time." Rogers said in return.

Even more innocent people died when wars actually started, but he didn't think Rogers would understand his point. It was surprising, actually, how the speech had made the righteous Cap even more against Ultron. Tony would have assumed that, as a decidedly working-class man with little to no education, who lived through the Great Depression, Rogers would have been a bit more influenced by Ultron's words. He, a billionaire, had been fucking influenced. The Announcement had reminded him of his time in MIT and how Rhodey had ended up becoming his best friend. How much he hated himself for his time as the Merchant of Death. How making Pepper his company's CEO had been met with plenty of fucking retarded remarks by the board that had nothing to do with her qualifications.

But maybe the anti-nationalism and anti-capitalism in the speech had been too much for a man who literally wore the American flag as a regular uniform?

"We won't figure out if the twins were a decoy by standing here." Romanov said, standing up, moving the topic away from the bubbling ideological conflict. "I'll see what I can find out from them."

Tony grinned and shouted. "Don't go breaking them now, Red!" Seeing her unimpressed stare, he continued. "I have some questions I wanna ask later, so leave them in one piece at least." He had to figure out how much influence the Mind Stone was actually exerting on Ultron, and the twins were one of the very few people to spend more than a few minutes with the kid.

"Don't tempt me, Stark." She said and left the room. Most of the Avengers followed after her to get some rest now that the meeting was not-so-officially adjourned.