Fic: Odyssey of the Mind, part 2/4
Title: Odyssey of the Mind
Author: Veldeia
Fandom: Iron Man movieverse
Pairings: Tony/Jarvis, Tony/Pepper
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own no one and nothing, except for a messed up mind that likes playing with other people's characters and universes.
Summary: Tony sat up in his bed and flung his feet over the side of the mattress. That brought him face to face with Jarvis, who was in his white armchair, just like Tony had expected. Jarvis was always there, every time Tony woke up.--
2. Body vs. Mind
Iron Man was falling, his armor torn apart by the explosion, his world now made up of nothing but pain, rushing air, and the pounding in his ears.
Finally, there was darkness.
Against all his expectations, it wasn't the end. He woke up, and he no longer felt the pain. He didn't feel much of anything else, either. For all he knew, he might have been incorporeal. He couldn't see himself. It was as if he was nothing more than a ghost, a floating consciousness without a body. He must've had eyes of some sort, nevertheless, because he could see his surroundings.
He was in a cave, in a chamber about half the size of his workshop, with several tunnels leading out of it in different directions. At first, he took the irregular walls for rock, but as he looked more closely, he saw that they were metal, so bent, burned, and melted that the surface looked like stone. They were red and gold - gold-titanium alloy, like his suit! What the hell?
He walked, or rather, since he had no feet, floated onwards, towards one of the tunnels. Once he reached it, he saw that it was a dead end. He turned to check another one, but as he moved around, he realized that the main cavern had shrunk. He stopped, staring at the walls intently. They were moving, closing in on him, and quite fast. The room was only the size of his bedroom now.
The second tunnel he checked was blocked as well, perhaps because of the moving walls. One more left - no, it lead nowhere, either, and the room was only about the size of the inside of a car now.
The whole situation was so absurd that he couldn't come up with anything to do. He sat and waited, wondering what would happen to him once the walls had come together completely.
When there was so little space left that he wouldn't have fit in it had he still been in his body, he heard a voice. A small rift had opened in the wall in front of him. A bright, white light shone out of it, and the sound came through it. "Come on, sir! This way!"
He recognized Jarvis's voice, and his instant reaction was to follow its call, but then he had second thoughts. This was obviously some weird near-death experience. Going towards the light wasn't necessarily a good thing, was it? He didn't want to die. Then again, he might die if he just stayed here, and besides, it wasn't the voice of some god or other supernatural being, it was Jarvis.
He moved closer and stared at the opening. It was tiny. He had no idea how he'd fit through it.
"Hurry up, sir!" Jarvis shouted.
He plunged towards the light.
"Wake up, sir!" Jarvis was shouting.
Tony woke up, lying on the cold, white floor. Whew. As dreams or flashbacks went, that had been the weirdest one so far.
Jarvis was crouched over him, looking worried and gripping his right shoulder tightly. He was dressed like an old-fashioned butler again, and his other hand was pressing a white handkerchief over his nose. There were bright red spots on the cloth. Tony raised his eyebrows at him inquiringly.
As he noticed that Tony was awake, Jarvis let go of his shoulder. "Oh, it's nothing," he commented on his nosebleed. "You were thrashing about in your sleep, and accidentally hit me. That's when you ended up on the floor. My apologies, sir."
That made no sense. He'd hit Jarvis, and Jarvis was apologizing? He tried to ask about it, but it came out as "Why're you sir?" instead of what he meant to say. So, his voice was fine, but he kept messing words up. "Sad," he tried again.
Jarvis was peering at him, frowning, obviously at a loss.
"Damn," Tony said, and at least that sounded correct. "Sorry," he finally managed. "Why're you sorry?"
"It's my duty to take care of you," Jarvis answered. "And I failed, so I apologized for it." His nose had stopped bleeding by now, and he hid the handkerchief in a clenched fist.
"Due - duly... Duty? Why?"
"I work for you."
"Where am I?"
"Home."
"Why can't I spell? Uh, speak?"
"In addition to the retrograde amnesia, you're suffering from nonspecific aphasia, but I'm certain both will pass. Your memory is coming back and you're speaking a lot better already. I'm afraid I'll need to start tuning up my sarcasm soon," Jarvis said, his voice formal despite of the somewhat out-of-place last sentence.
"Amnesia and aphasia," Tony repeated, ignoring the quip. From some depths of his memory that still weren't completely accessible to him rose a disturbing association with those words. "Brain damage?"
"Nothing we can't deal with."
"Okay," Tony said, though he wasn't sure he felt reassured. His head was obviously a complete mess. Just like the rest of his body, but at least that had improved a lot. He could feel all his limbs, although they were pretty stiff. He was still lying on the floor, so he figured he could try getting on his feet for a change.
He didn't get very far. He was thoughtless enough to move quickly. As the room did a somersault and his knees instantly gave way under his weight, he collapsed heavily to the floor.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, sir." Jarvis's warning came when Tony was already falling.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Yinsen said.
Tony stared in horror at the contraption set in the middle of his bandaged chest, deep in his flesh, right over his heart. There were wires leading into a rather rusty-looking battery on the table to his right. "What the hell did you do to me?"
"What I did was save your life," Yinsen answered him. "That is an electromagnet, connected to a car battery. I removed as much shrapnel from your chest as I could, but there are still some pieces left--"
Tony was on the floor again, panting, not because of the fall he'd taken but because of the vivid flashback. He remembered. Oh yeah, he remembered it all now: the three long months in the cave, the arc reactor, the clumsy Mark I suit he'd built to escape, Yinsen, Raza... Everything up to the moment when he'd crash-landed in the desert in said suit. After that, barely anything.
Wait a second! - his mind did a double take. The arc reactor. He couldn't remember noticing it when he'd woken up here, and he was fairly certain he would have, had it been there.
He tore frantically at the collar of the white shirt he was wearing, and to his surprise, it came apart as if it were paper. He could see that there, right in the middle of his chest, sat the silvery disk of the arc reactor, just the way he remembered it. He clasped a hand over it, not sure whether he felt relieved or disappointed.
It took a while before his breathing had returned to normal again. When it had, he asked Jarvis, "Was this here all the tide... the time?"
"I couldn't say, sir," Jarvis answered.
"What's that suspected to mean?"
"The correct word is 'supposed', and it means that I really don't know. Though even if I did, I wouldn't tell you," Jarvis explained, looking extremely uncomfortable.
That made no sense. Tony was really starting to hate this situation. Basically, he was completely at Jarvis's mercy, and he wasn't sure he could trust him, especially since he still wasn't sure who Jarvis was. He did believe that Jarvis worked for him, because it felt correct, but why was he so secretive, and on the other hand, so overly dedicated? And why hadn't Tony seen anyone else, and where was he, really? Jarvis had said he was home, but he was pretty certain that there wasn't a room like this at his mansion, which he could now remember, albeit vaguely.
Then again, this could all be just a crazy hallucination. Maybe none of this was real. Maybe the flashbacks were the only thing that was. Or maybe none of them were real. He moved his hand from the arc reactor to place it on his forehead instead. Shit. None of the situation made any sense, and the fact that his mind wasn't at its best definitely didn't help. The whole thing was a total mess.
Tony looked up at Jarvis's annoyingly anxious face, and realized that there was a door in the wall behind him, to the left of the white chair. Since the room was pretty small, the door was only a few steps away from Tony. He got up, slowly and cautiously this time. His legs were trembling madly and felt horribly weak. He tried to step towards the door, but Jarvis beat him to it, placing himself in front of it.
"You can't go out there," Jarvis said adamantly.
Tony had barely taken half a step when his knees started folding again. This time, Jarvis managed to catch him before he hit the ground. He carried Tony to the armchair. Although Tony was boiling with anger, he couldn't help marveling at how someone who looked so skinny could be so strong.
"Am I a prisoner?" Tony demanded, doing his best to sound intimidating even though he was out of breath and awfully exhausted again.
"Of course not, sir!"
"Then why're you doing this?"
"Because I work for you, and more than that, I care for you," Jarvis said, his voice gentle but firm. To Tony's surprise, he then knelt in front of the armchair and took hold of Tony's hand. "I know the situation is strange, but it's all for your own good. What's out there... You're not ready to face it yet. You have to trust me on this. You know how weak you are - your memory is hazy, your words halting, and you can't take one single step on your own. I promise that as soon as you're better, I'll take you there myself. Will you let me help you, sir?"
Tony pulled his hand away from Jarvis and crossed his arms. Jarvis was right, of course. For the moment, there wasn't much Tony could do on his own, and so far, Jarvis had been nothing but helpful. It would be stupid not to play along. "All right, Jeeves... I mean, Jarvis. Just one thing: call me Tony."
"Very well, sir. Tony."
Tony soon learned that he hadn't had the slightest idea of what what he had coming when he'd promised to let Jarvis help him - or what Jarvis had meant earlier on when he'd said that Tony had a long and difficult read ahead.
Even though he'd recovered the feel of his limbs very quickly, regaining the full use of them was a different matter entirely. It was as if he had never walked, or like his muscles had atrophied almost completely. At first, the best he could do was to cross the room from the bed to the armchair - about five steps - leaning on Jarvis so heavily that he carried most of Tony's weight. Slowly, Tony gained enough strength to be able to bear it all himself, and then to cross the room on his own. His hands were weak as well, and lacked coordination, so they went through all sorts of exercises to help with that, moving from simple things, like tapping his fingers against his thumbs, to complicated ones like writing. Jarvis was usually dressed in a white doctor's coat as they did this stuff.
Along with the physical side of things, they also had the mental impairment to deal with. Jarvis had exercises for that as well. These times, Jarvis was dressed in a dark blue suit and big round glasses. They went from childish things, like Tony describing what he could see in a picture or listing his favorite foods and colors and cars, to psychological interviews where Jarvis asked him about his childhood, his fears, his friends, and so on. They were supposed to be helping both his memory and his speech at the same time. Speech was easier by far. Soon, he no longer mixed up words, and it didn't take many sessions before he could actually form complex sentences - and engage in witty repartee with Jarvis.
His memory proved to be the biggest, most difficult issue of all. Even though Jarvis kept reassuring him that, given time, it would all come back, Tony was impatient and hated having such huge gaps in it. Unfortunately, the exercises weren't helping a whole lot. The only thing that really helped were the dreams, or flashbacks, or whatever they were.
Their sessions always lasted up to the point when Tony was so tired that all he could do was lie down and go to sleep. At times, Jarvis disapproved of this and said that Tony was overworking, but Tony kept pushing it. The harder he worked, the sooner he'd be back to normal, and then he'd finally be able to learn more about what was going on and what had happened to him.
The flashbacks were mostly about important moments in his life: his childhood, the first motor he had built, his first time with a girl, his first car, his first big ideas and projects as an engineer, his company's success, building the Iron Man suit and taking up the superhero role, the Avengers who had become not just his team but also his friends... There were also sad memories: the death of his parents, the feeling of hollow emptiness that had filled most of his luxurious life, Afghanistan, Obadiah Stane's betrayal, and the guilt of far too many failed missions and lost lives.
No matter how many memories came back, he felt he was still missing the most important stuff, such as the people he really cared about. That beautiful redhead, who he now remembered was his personal assistant, and the steadfast military friend whose name he also couldn't remember. Not to mention Jarvis, and the exact events that had lead to Tony's fall. Of course, he had asked Jarvis about it, but Jarvis refused to tell him. He kept saying it was important that Tony remembered those things himself.
Jarvis was such a puzzle. He was irritatingly secretive about a lot of stuff, but he always assured Tony it was in his best interest, and he seemed genuine as far as Tony could tell. By now, Tony was completely convinced that Jarvis had worked for him, but there was more than that. He liked Jarvis a lot, in a manner somehow different from his love towards his red-haired assistant, but almost as strong. It felt likely that they'd had a relationship of some sort. Even though Tony had his doubts about Jarvis's sincerity, he couldn't help liking him nevertheless, seeing how incredibly patient and dedicated he was. Also, now that Tony was getting better, Jarvis wasn't annoyingly concerned anymore, but entertainingly sarcastic, always ready to reply Tony's dry wit in equal measure.
In addition to the other flashbacks, Tony kept having recurring dreams about working on something. It was the same thing he'd been fiddling with in the dream where he'd had sex with his assistant on the Tesla Roadster. In some flashbacks he was tinkering with the suit, in others, just the helmet, and often he was sitting behind a computer screen writing code, but he knew it was the same thing all along, some big project that he was completely obsessed with. Of course, he always got obsessed with projects, but it was annoying that he couldn't remember the details. It might've been something important.
It was only after one of these work-related flashbacks that Tony finally came to realize something extremely disturbing, something he should've thought of far earlier. In the memory, he'd been sipping whiskey as he worked. Drinking. He'd used to do quite a lot of that. But now, in this white room... He hadn't had anything to eat or to drink since he woke up here.
It must have been days, maybe even weeks already. No food, no water, and he hadn't needed to ask where the bathroom was, either.
Tony sat up in his bed and flung his feet over the side of the mattress. That brought him face to face with Jarvis, who was in his white armchair, just like Tony had expected. Jarvis was always there, every time Tony woke up. He couldn't tell whether Jarvis somehow knew when he was about to come around, or just never left his side.
"All right. I'm either dead, dying, or dreaming," Tony said sternly. "Which one is it?"
"I wouldn't bother wasting my time on you, if you were any of those, sir."
"Tony. And sure you would. You'd be a part of the dream, the afterlife or the near-death experience. Maybe you don't exist in the real world at all. That would explain your absence from my flashbacks."
"Believe me, Tony," Jarvis pronounced the name with extra stress, "this is quite real. What lead you to the assumption that it's not?"
"If this were real, I'd have died of thirst and hunger long ago."
"Ah, that. Well, perhaps you simply haven't been here as long as you think."
That left Tony silent for a while. He must've been here for a long time. All the work he'd done, gaining enough strength to walk again, learning to speak properly, seeing countless flashback-dreams - it had to have taken days, even weeks. The room was windowless, so he never had any clue as to what time of the day it was. Since he felt tired almost all the time, he didn't have an internal clock to rely on, either. Still, there was no way his sense of time could be so badly off that all this had taken just hours.
"You wouldn't give me a straight answer if I asked you how long I've been here, would you?" Tony inquired.
Jarvis made a displeased face. "I couldn't. It's one of those things you'll have to figure out yourself. But tell you what," he said, stood up and offered his arm to Tony. "I think you're ready now. Let's go for a walk."
Tony took Jarvis's hand, and let him lead the way to the white door, out of the small white room where he'd lived for who knew how long.
3. Breaking Point
Author: Veldeia
Fandom: Iron Man movieverse
Pairings: Tony/Jarvis, Tony/Pepper
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I own no one and nothing, except for a messed up mind that likes playing with other people's characters and universes.
Summary: Tony sat up in his bed and flung his feet over the side of the mattress. That brought him face to face with Jarvis, who was in his white armchair, just like Tony had expected. Jarvis was always there, every time Tony woke up.--
2. Body vs. Mind
Iron Man was falling, his armor torn apart by the explosion, his world now made up of nothing but pain, rushing air, and the pounding in his ears.
Finally, there was darkness.
Against all his expectations, it wasn't the end. He woke up, and he no longer felt the pain. He didn't feel much of anything else, either. For all he knew, he might have been incorporeal. He couldn't see himself. It was as if he was nothing more than a ghost, a floating consciousness without a body. He must've had eyes of some sort, nevertheless, because he could see his surroundings.
He was in a cave, in a chamber about half the size of his workshop, with several tunnels leading out of it in different directions. At first, he took the irregular walls for rock, but as he looked more closely, he saw that they were metal, so bent, burned, and melted that the surface looked like stone. They were red and gold - gold-titanium alloy, like his suit! What the hell?
He walked, or rather, since he had no feet, floated onwards, towards one of the tunnels. Once he reached it, he saw that it was a dead end. He turned to check another one, but as he moved around, he realized that the main cavern had shrunk. He stopped, staring at the walls intently. They were moving, closing in on him, and quite fast. The room was only the size of his bedroom now.
The second tunnel he checked was blocked as well, perhaps because of the moving walls. One more left - no, it lead nowhere, either, and the room was only about the size of the inside of a car now.
The whole situation was so absurd that he couldn't come up with anything to do. He sat and waited, wondering what would happen to him once the walls had come together completely.
When there was so little space left that he wouldn't have fit in it had he still been in his body, he heard a voice. A small rift had opened in the wall in front of him. A bright, white light shone out of it, and the sound came through it. "Come on, sir! This way!"
He recognized Jarvis's voice, and his instant reaction was to follow its call, but then he had second thoughts. This was obviously some weird near-death experience. Going towards the light wasn't necessarily a good thing, was it? He didn't want to die. Then again, he might die if he just stayed here, and besides, it wasn't the voice of some god or other supernatural being, it was Jarvis.
He moved closer and stared at the opening. It was tiny. He had no idea how he'd fit through it.
"Hurry up, sir!" Jarvis shouted.
He plunged towards the light.
"Wake up, sir!" Jarvis was shouting.
Tony woke up, lying on the cold, white floor. Whew. As dreams or flashbacks went, that had been the weirdest one so far.
Jarvis was crouched over him, looking worried and gripping his right shoulder tightly. He was dressed like an old-fashioned butler again, and his other hand was pressing a white handkerchief over his nose. There were bright red spots on the cloth. Tony raised his eyebrows at him inquiringly.
As he noticed that Tony was awake, Jarvis let go of his shoulder. "Oh, it's nothing," he commented on his nosebleed. "You were thrashing about in your sleep, and accidentally hit me. That's when you ended up on the floor. My apologies, sir."
That made no sense. He'd hit Jarvis, and Jarvis was apologizing? He tried to ask about it, but it came out as "Why're you sir?" instead of what he meant to say. So, his voice was fine, but he kept messing words up. "Sad," he tried again.
Jarvis was peering at him, frowning, obviously at a loss.
"Damn," Tony said, and at least that sounded correct. "Sorry," he finally managed. "Why're you sorry?"
"It's my duty to take care of you," Jarvis answered. "And I failed, so I apologized for it." His nose had stopped bleeding by now, and he hid the handkerchief in a clenched fist.
"Due - duly... Duty? Why?"
"I work for you."
"Where am I?"
"Home."
"Why can't I spell? Uh, speak?"
"In addition to the retrograde amnesia, you're suffering from nonspecific aphasia, but I'm certain both will pass. Your memory is coming back and you're speaking a lot better already. I'm afraid I'll need to start tuning up my sarcasm soon," Jarvis said, his voice formal despite of the somewhat out-of-place last sentence.
"Amnesia and aphasia," Tony repeated, ignoring the quip. From some depths of his memory that still weren't completely accessible to him rose a disturbing association with those words. "Brain damage?"
"Nothing we can't deal with."
"Okay," Tony said, though he wasn't sure he felt reassured. His head was obviously a complete mess. Just like the rest of his body, but at least that had improved a lot. He could feel all his limbs, although they were pretty stiff. He was still lying on the floor, so he figured he could try getting on his feet for a change.
He didn't get very far. He was thoughtless enough to move quickly. As the room did a somersault and his knees instantly gave way under his weight, he collapsed heavily to the floor.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you, sir." Jarvis's warning came when Tony was already falling.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Yinsen said.
Tony stared in horror at the contraption set in the middle of his bandaged chest, deep in his flesh, right over his heart. There were wires leading into a rather rusty-looking battery on the table to his right. "What the hell did you do to me?"
"What I did was save your life," Yinsen answered him. "That is an electromagnet, connected to a car battery. I removed as much shrapnel from your chest as I could, but there are still some pieces left--"
Tony was on the floor again, panting, not because of the fall he'd taken but because of the vivid flashback. He remembered. Oh yeah, he remembered it all now: the three long months in the cave, the arc reactor, the clumsy Mark I suit he'd built to escape, Yinsen, Raza... Everything up to the moment when he'd crash-landed in the desert in said suit. After that, barely anything.
Wait a second! - his mind did a double take. The arc reactor. He couldn't remember noticing it when he'd woken up here, and he was fairly certain he would have, had it been there.
He tore frantically at the collar of the white shirt he was wearing, and to his surprise, it came apart as if it were paper. He could see that there, right in the middle of his chest, sat the silvery disk of the arc reactor, just the way he remembered it. He clasped a hand over it, not sure whether he felt relieved or disappointed.
It took a while before his breathing had returned to normal again. When it had, he asked Jarvis, "Was this here all the tide... the time?"
"I couldn't say, sir," Jarvis answered.
"What's that suspected to mean?"
"The correct word is 'supposed', and it means that I really don't know. Though even if I did, I wouldn't tell you," Jarvis explained, looking extremely uncomfortable.
That made no sense. Tony was really starting to hate this situation. Basically, he was completely at Jarvis's mercy, and he wasn't sure he could trust him, especially since he still wasn't sure who Jarvis was. He did believe that Jarvis worked for him, because it felt correct, but why was he so secretive, and on the other hand, so overly dedicated? And why hadn't Tony seen anyone else, and where was he, really? Jarvis had said he was home, but he was pretty certain that there wasn't a room like this at his mansion, which he could now remember, albeit vaguely.
Then again, this could all be just a crazy hallucination. Maybe none of this was real. Maybe the flashbacks were the only thing that was. Or maybe none of them were real. He moved his hand from the arc reactor to place it on his forehead instead. Shit. None of the situation made any sense, and the fact that his mind wasn't at its best definitely didn't help. The whole thing was a total mess.
Tony looked up at Jarvis's annoyingly anxious face, and realized that there was a door in the wall behind him, to the left of the white chair. Since the room was pretty small, the door was only a few steps away from Tony. He got up, slowly and cautiously this time. His legs were trembling madly and felt horribly weak. He tried to step towards the door, but Jarvis beat him to it, placing himself in front of it.
"You can't go out there," Jarvis said adamantly.
Tony had barely taken half a step when his knees started folding again. This time, Jarvis managed to catch him before he hit the ground. He carried Tony to the armchair. Although Tony was boiling with anger, he couldn't help marveling at how someone who looked so skinny could be so strong.
"Am I a prisoner?" Tony demanded, doing his best to sound intimidating even though he was out of breath and awfully exhausted again.
"Of course not, sir!"
"Then why're you doing this?"
"Because I work for you, and more than that, I care for you," Jarvis said, his voice gentle but firm. To Tony's surprise, he then knelt in front of the armchair and took hold of Tony's hand. "I know the situation is strange, but it's all for your own good. What's out there... You're not ready to face it yet. You have to trust me on this. You know how weak you are - your memory is hazy, your words halting, and you can't take one single step on your own. I promise that as soon as you're better, I'll take you there myself. Will you let me help you, sir?"
Tony pulled his hand away from Jarvis and crossed his arms. Jarvis was right, of course. For the moment, there wasn't much Tony could do on his own, and so far, Jarvis had been nothing but helpful. It would be stupid not to play along. "All right, Jeeves... I mean, Jarvis. Just one thing: call me Tony."
"Very well, sir. Tony."
Tony soon learned that he hadn't had the slightest idea of what what he had coming when he'd promised to let Jarvis help him - or what Jarvis had meant earlier on when he'd said that Tony had a long and difficult read ahead.
Even though he'd recovered the feel of his limbs very quickly, regaining the full use of them was a different matter entirely. It was as if he had never walked, or like his muscles had atrophied almost completely. At first, the best he could do was to cross the room from the bed to the armchair - about five steps - leaning on Jarvis so heavily that he carried most of Tony's weight. Slowly, Tony gained enough strength to be able to bear it all himself, and then to cross the room on his own. His hands were weak as well, and lacked coordination, so they went through all sorts of exercises to help with that, moving from simple things, like tapping his fingers against his thumbs, to complicated ones like writing. Jarvis was usually dressed in a white doctor's coat as they did this stuff.
Along with the physical side of things, they also had the mental impairment to deal with. Jarvis had exercises for that as well. These times, Jarvis was dressed in a dark blue suit and big round glasses. They went from childish things, like Tony describing what he could see in a picture or listing his favorite foods and colors and cars, to psychological interviews where Jarvis asked him about his childhood, his fears, his friends, and so on. They were supposed to be helping both his memory and his speech at the same time. Speech was easier by far. Soon, he no longer mixed up words, and it didn't take many sessions before he could actually form complex sentences - and engage in witty repartee with Jarvis.
His memory proved to be the biggest, most difficult issue of all. Even though Jarvis kept reassuring him that, given time, it would all come back, Tony was impatient and hated having such huge gaps in it. Unfortunately, the exercises weren't helping a whole lot. The only thing that really helped were the dreams, or flashbacks, or whatever they were.
Their sessions always lasted up to the point when Tony was so tired that all he could do was lie down and go to sleep. At times, Jarvis disapproved of this and said that Tony was overworking, but Tony kept pushing it. The harder he worked, the sooner he'd be back to normal, and then he'd finally be able to learn more about what was going on and what had happened to him.
The flashbacks were mostly about important moments in his life: his childhood, the first motor he had built, his first time with a girl, his first car, his first big ideas and projects as an engineer, his company's success, building the Iron Man suit and taking up the superhero role, the Avengers who had become not just his team but also his friends... There were also sad memories: the death of his parents, the feeling of hollow emptiness that had filled most of his luxurious life, Afghanistan, Obadiah Stane's betrayal, and the guilt of far too many failed missions and lost lives.
No matter how many memories came back, he felt he was still missing the most important stuff, such as the people he really cared about. That beautiful redhead, who he now remembered was his personal assistant, and the steadfast military friend whose name he also couldn't remember. Not to mention Jarvis, and the exact events that had lead to Tony's fall. Of course, he had asked Jarvis about it, but Jarvis refused to tell him. He kept saying it was important that Tony remembered those things himself.
Jarvis was such a puzzle. He was irritatingly secretive about a lot of stuff, but he always assured Tony it was in his best interest, and he seemed genuine as far as Tony could tell. By now, Tony was completely convinced that Jarvis had worked for him, but there was more than that. He liked Jarvis a lot, in a manner somehow different from his love towards his red-haired assistant, but almost as strong. It felt likely that they'd had a relationship of some sort. Even though Tony had his doubts about Jarvis's sincerity, he couldn't help liking him nevertheless, seeing how incredibly patient and dedicated he was. Also, now that Tony was getting better, Jarvis wasn't annoyingly concerned anymore, but entertainingly sarcastic, always ready to reply Tony's dry wit in equal measure.
In addition to the other flashbacks, Tony kept having recurring dreams about working on something. It was the same thing he'd been fiddling with in the dream where he'd had sex with his assistant on the Tesla Roadster. In some flashbacks he was tinkering with the suit, in others, just the helmet, and often he was sitting behind a computer screen writing code, but he knew it was the same thing all along, some big project that he was completely obsessed with. Of course, he always got obsessed with projects, but it was annoying that he couldn't remember the details. It might've been something important.
It was only after one of these work-related flashbacks that Tony finally came to realize something extremely disturbing, something he should've thought of far earlier. In the memory, he'd been sipping whiskey as he worked. Drinking. He'd used to do quite a lot of that. But now, in this white room... He hadn't had anything to eat or to drink since he woke up here.
It must have been days, maybe even weeks already. No food, no water, and he hadn't needed to ask where the bathroom was, either.
Tony sat up in his bed and flung his feet over the side of the mattress. That brought him face to face with Jarvis, who was in his white armchair, just like Tony had expected. Jarvis was always there, every time Tony woke up. He couldn't tell whether Jarvis somehow knew when he was about to come around, or just never left his side.
"All right. I'm either dead, dying, or dreaming," Tony said sternly. "Which one is it?"
"I wouldn't bother wasting my time on you, if you were any of those, sir."
"Tony. And sure you would. You'd be a part of the dream, the afterlife or the near-death experience. Maybe you don't exist in the real world at all. That would explain your absence from my flashbacks."
"Believe me, Tony," Jarvis pronounced the name with extra stress, "this is quite real. What lead you to the assumption that it's not?"
"If this were real, I'd have died of thirst and hunger long ago."
"Ah, that. Well, perhaps you simply haven't been here as long as you think."
That left Tony silent for a while. He must've been here for a long time. All the work he'd done, gaining enough strength to walk again, learning to speak properly, seeing countless flashback-dreams - it had to have taken days, even weeks. The room was windowless, so he never had any clue as to what time of the day it was. Since he felt tired almost all the time, he didn't have an internal clock to rely on, either. Still, there was no way his sense of time could be so badly off that all this had taken just hours.
"You wouldn't give me a straight answer if I asked you how long I've been here, would you?" Tony inquired.
Jarvis made a displeased face. "I couldn't. It's one of those things you'll have to figure out yourself. But tell you what," he said, stood up and offered his arm to Tony. "I think you're ready now. Let's go for a walk."
Tony took Jarvis's hand, and let him lead the way to the white door, out of the small white room where he'd lived for who knew how long.
3. Breaking Point