Age of Charon

Tony woke up to a killer headache. As he got up — and god, did his body hurt!— he smelled smoke and burned plastic, a smell he was very familiar with when he burned something in his personal lab. He looked around, feeling quite disoriented as he did so. Had there been an explosion? It had sounded like one. Feeling the pain on his chest as he moved — likely bruised ribs; broken bones and fractures hurt a lot more, — it also felt like he had gone through an explosion.

Lights were flickering, small fires were everywhere, the windows were broken and glass littered most of the floor. Every computer seemed to have both tried to kill itself and every piece of hardware around it. The lab hadn't exploded then. Otherwise, he wouldn't be alive, hurting, right now. Instead, everything inside had gone kaboom, and was that music he was hearing? Looking at the sole speaker who seemed to have survived, just barely as it was hanging capriciously over one of the walls on a cable, he could make out some of that creepy melody that Ultron had been singing.

"Tony!" Rhodey shouted from the door, in full War Machine armor. Yep, here comes the cavalry.

"Here!" he shouted, or tried to, his voice wasn't at its best. Still, Rhodey seemed to have heard him, for he ran towards him, and carefully helped him stand, before they made their way out of the lab. God, this lab was toast. All those inventions exploding, JARVIS gone MIA — he refused to consider him dead until he found pieces of his code broken somewhere— and with Ultron insane... He couldn't call the kid evil, especially after that fucking song, who knew what made him snap—.

He startled and stopped.

"The scepter? Where's the scepter?" he asked.

"Loki's scepter?" Rhodey looked around after he nodded. "I don't see it, Tony."

He pushed Rhodey away. He could keep himself standing, thank you very much. "Then go look for it!" He shouted. "It was in the lab!" But they had just passed the area where the scepter was being held. It wasn't there anymore. "Go find it!"

"Tony!" Rhodey seemed like he didn't know what to do with him in this state. Tony held in a crazed chuckle. Wasn't that like always? "It isn't safe—."

"Search for the scepter. I am not leaving this place until I find it."

Helpless, the War Machine left him to scan over the lab. Not two minutes later, he returned, helping Tony leave the lab once more. "It isn't here, Tony."

"Oh," Tony whispered, not really knowing what to say to that. Did Ultron do something to remove it? Or had someone come in, taking advantage of the confusion, and stolen it?

He didn't remember zoning out, but he suddenly found himself on a bed, with Bruce and Dr. Cho looking over him.

"Tell me, doc. Am I going to live?" He said because what else could he say? Things were fucked up.

"Unfortunately, Mr. Stark, you are going to make a full recovery." Cho answered. "No actual wounds. Some cuts and bruises," she then placed a light over his eyes, blinding him. Rude. "... pupils seem normal. Are you experiencing any blurred vision, confusion, or nausea?"

"Nope." he said, though Dr. Cho didn't seem very convinced. She held up a hand, with two fingers up.

"How many fingers?"

Cheekily, he answered. "Five?"

She looked unimpressed by his answer, but hey, she should have been more specific.

"He is fine, Dr. Cho," Rogers said, having entered the room at some point, unnoticed by present occupants. "There are more important matters to discuss right now."

Dr. Cho seemed a bit annoyed at the interruption, but let it go. Tony knew there was a reason he liked her.

"What did you do, Stark?" Steve said, just as the other avengers entered the room.

"What did I do?" Why did Spangles always assume it was his fault?

"Robots attacked us." Barton interrupted. "You saying you are not involved?"

Wait. That was news to him. "What robots?"

Steve frowned. "Weren't you attacked in the lab as well?"

He ignored the question. "JARVIS, show me the—" Oh. No JARVIS. He forgot. "Give me a pad. I need to see what happened."

"Don't you already know?" Romanov asked.

"I was unconscious until two minutes ago, Red. I may appear so, but I am not actually omniscient." He said, with a bit more bite that he intended. No one moved to give him a pad. "Give me a pad, a phone, something. I can't access the cameras on voice command without JARVIS." Finally, Bruce handed him a pad that was on the corner table. "Thank you." He said with an exaggerated tone and checked the footage. What the—.

It seemed that after he was knocked out, robots from his Iron Legion attacked the Avengers, with most being destroyed — along with most things in that floor, dammit! — and others escaping. Rhodey then went to check on him in the lab since, while they hadn't heard any explosion — the soundproofing needed to be good in labs — the robots might have gone after him too.

"Anything else?" He asked no one in particular. He would check the lab footage once he was alone.

"The robots called us killers. And then they were singing." Barton said. "Some weird children's song, though I don't remember what exactly. Something about strings."

"Stark, what happened in the lab? Where's the scepter?" Ah, the good old captain.

"No idea. There was an explosion. I passed out."

"Why did you go in the lab?" Romanov pointed out. "You left us after that weird audio with the screaming child. Who, by the way, had the same voice as the one who was singing."

"JARVIS was missing. I had to check the last place I left him." He answered. He hoped Bruce didn't make a connection to Ultron, not without some time for Tony to check on his AIs a bit more.

"Tony," Bruce started. Dammit. "Is Ultron involved in this? The lab that exploded was the one where we were working on Ultron with the scepter."

"Stark, did you do this?" Now, his royal righteousness had to contribute. Of fucking course.

"That's pretty farfetched, Bruce. We failed with Ultron."

"Then why can't I find his program? I checked the lab's computers, what remained of them. I couldn't find him."

Maybe it's 'cause you aren't a programmer, science bro.

"Tony, wasn't the Iron Legion unhackable?" Rhodey added. Seriously, not the best time for his friend to speak about this. "Isn't it impossible for anyone but you and JARVIS to control?"

It was one thing for them to think it was Ultron, but JARVIS...? "Rhodey, I love you, but if you imply one more time that JARVIS went rogue, I will take the War Machine from you."

"What if Ultron killed JARVIS?" Bruce— no, Banner because with that stupid theory, he lost first name privileges. "Maybe that's why he isn't responding."

Tony got up. "Ultron did not kill JARVIS. Stop saying anything that comes up in your minds!"

"Stark—," Rogers started.

"Pinocchio!" Barton blurted out. All eyes turned to look at him. "The song. It's from Pinocchio." Romanov, Rogers and Thor all kept staring at him, uncomprehending. "It's a story about a puppet who wanted to become a real boy."

"That makes sense." Romanov said, as Tony started to zone out the room again at that realization. A puppet. Who wanted to become a real boy. Thinking of the childish voice he had heard... Did Ultron... think of himself as a puppet? But on whose strings? His? JARVIS didn't think of himself like that. At least, he thought so. He didn't, right?

"I don't understand. You built this program. Why is it trying to kill us?" He heard Dr. Cho ask him. So, they were convinced this was Ultron's work. And why would they be wrong? Ultron thought of himself as a puppet. A slave. His shoulders shook as he started laughing, unable to keep it in.

Thor, who had kept mostly silent until that point, took a step forward. "You think this is funny?"

"No. It's probably not, right?" Why wouldn't Ultron try to kill them? Kill him? He wanted to be free. "Is this very terrible? Is it so..." he couldn't stop laughing, for if he did, he might cry, "is it so...? It is. It's so terrible."

"This could've been avoided if you hadn't played with something you don't understand." Thor continued, throwing his fucking godly superiority all over the place.

Tony went from laughing to furious in a single second. What would an immortal alien from fairyland know about what humans do or do not understand? "No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this."

Bru— Banner tried to deescalate the tension in the room. "Tony, maybe this might not be the time to..."

Tony looked incredulously at Banner. "Really?! That's it? You just roll over, show your belly, every time somebody snarls."

"Only when I've created a murder bot." Banner added defensively. Tony wanted to punch him right then and there. Then what about Veronica?

"We didn't. We weren't even close. Were we close to an interface?" He tried to appeal to Banner's logic.

"Well, you did something right." Steve said because he totally got the science behind this. "And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be different than SHIELD." Fucking golden boy. Who knows shit nothing. And still thinks he has the moral higher ground. Fucking SHIELD. Fucking Fury. Keeping their good soldier all naive and obedient.

He changed gears. "Anybody remember when I carried a nuke through a wormhole?"

Rhodey took the opening. "No, it's never come up."

Tony managed a slight smile for his friend. "Saved New York?"

"Never heard that."

"Recall that? A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing three hundred feet below it. We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the live long day, but, that up there? That's...that's the end game. How were you guys planning on beating that?"

Steve took a step forward. "Together."

This idiot. And were the others nodding with him? Only Rhodey looked a bit uncomfortable with that. He was military, he knew the limits of a small group, no matter how powerful.

"We'll lose." He tried to make them see sense. Why the fuck was Romanov nodding to Rogers's words? She was a Russian assassin, for god's sake!

"Then we'll do that together, too." Steve said, and he seemed so serious, so fucking earnest and confident in his words that Tony wanted to start laughing hysterically at his face.

Now, Tony knew why it was Captain America. Any higher rank than that, and with his attitude, the US would have lost in WWII and every war following. But hey, they would have lost together.

He stared at the group for a moment, then looked away.