st_arkintern | (no subject)

(no subject)

It is a clear, windless day when Peter Parker steps outside the Madonna Inn, a backpack slung over his shoulder. Peter is grateful for the good weather. It's still a little nippy out (his nose tickles from the cold), but it's nothing that Peter can handle after fifteen New York winters.

Peter quickens his pace afterwards and jogs over to where Tony Stark is already standing on the Madonna Inn's mostly-empty parking lot. "Hey! Ready to get started?"

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"Yeah." Tony brought his hand back, laying his pen down to rest on the table.

"Were you just... not used to people hugging you? Or was it just weird because it was me?" Peter pauses there, realizes how it might be interpreted, then quickly scrambles to clarify:

"I mean, I guess we didn't really know each other then."

"...What?" Not the smart nor cool response to give, but Tony could only squint. Whatever Peter was getting at, he was coming up blank with the recall.

"The car door thing," Peter says, embarrassed at being the only one who remembers it.

"Yeah...car door thing." Tony slowly nodded, his expression as blank as his recall. "Let's pretend I need a refresher. That day was a little hectic."

Understatement.

That embarrassment only grows. What felt like something so impactful to him was probably just another day of being Tony Stark to Tony.

"We were, uh -- we were in the car and we were talking about the Avengers. You gave this whole talk about how I shouldn't do anything you would do and shouldn't do anything you wouldn't do."

Peter pauses there, briefly. Those details aren't really relevant but he gives them out anyway. "Happy left the case outside my door and then you just leaned over to open the car door, but I thought you were coming in for a hug and it turned out you weren't."

"Ah." Awkward. "Yeah, I can see that."

"You don't remember it?" Maybe he shouldn't have brought it up.

Tony tossed his arms up uselessly. "I'd had a long day, Pete. I probably forgot what I said the second it left my mouth."

Peter doesn't say anything. He'd always assumed that it was because they weren't close enough (what Tony had said) or that Tony wasn't big on hugs (a definite possibility, too), but he never considered it might not have been a great day for Tony.

It probably should have. They were fighting Tony's former allies. That couldn't have been easy. But somehow, those details managed to slip his mind, lost in the excitement of a new suit, a new country, and a new fight with the Avengers.

"It's not important," Peter insists. "You need any help with that?" he gestures to what Tony's working on.

"Unimportant to bring up out of the blue?" Tony sighed inwardly, but gave Peter's hair another affectionate tousling. "Yeah. Mind if I leave the AI in charge while I hit up the little boy's room?"

"Sure," Peter says. The AI got mentioned a few times, but Peter never had the chance to actually talk to them.

Detaching his arc reactor from its nest in his sweater, Tony laid it on the surface of the table and gave it a tap. The armor was brought forth, and it quickly rose into a sit.

"The boy wants to meet you. You copy?" The armor merely nodded as it tapped its own helmet.

Peter gives the AI, now in their new body, an appraising look.

"What's your name?" he asks, extending a hand to them.

Edited 2019-02-03 04:55 (UTC)

The armor looked at Peter's offered hand, then up at his face proper. "Tony Stark." Relenting, he gave the boy a little slap across the hand, but he wasn't able to bring himself to give a shake like complete strangers.

Peter stumbles over his words unintelligibly for a moment at this proclamation. He turns to look at Tony, mouth still open, still incapable of producing anything other than a slight click as he draws out a breath.

"Play nice!" Tony speed-walked off, single-minded on his destination. He'd indulged in more than a few shots of coffee courtesy of Xavin and he'd meant to answer nature's call a full half hour prior until Peter started asking hard questions.

"Digital backup of Tony Stark's consciousness. That's all." The armor made a few placating motions the boy's way.

Peter looks at the Tony Stark AI uncertainly, clearly unsure what to make of him.

Peter doesn't ask why Tony would make a copy of himself. He's pretty sure he knows that answer.

"Does he plan on doing this with everyone?"

"No, I don't." The AI possessed the decency to poke at his forehead sheepishly. "Why? ...Did you want one, too?"

Peter considers the question carefully before he finally gives a response.

"Only if he had a body and May and Ned and everyone else believed he was me," he says.

There's a brief silence there before Peter speaks again.

"Would Dad consider an AI-me me?"

Edited 2019-02-03 06:19 (UTC)

"Define yourself." Not thirty seconds into their exchange and Peter was asking the existential questions. Oy vey.

"My consciousness," he says. "That's what you are, right? Dad's consciousness?"

"Not in a absolute sense." Though his faceplate was incapable of expressing anything, there was a noticeable trepidation to his body language--as much as it was. But it never occurred to the essence of Tony Stark to lie. "I'm a back-up. A copy. My language is still 1s and 0s."

"Does Dad believe that, too?" It hadn't gotten past Peter that the AI-Tony had avoided answering the question. He imagines Tony probably would have reacted the same way, too. It felt like whenever he asked some difficult question, Tony's reaction was to immediately find a reason to avoid giving an answer.

"Yes." He replied patiently. "Doesn't mean I'm lacking in thoughts, feelings, or agency. They're just contingent on the original's. Make of that what you will."