A/N: Dear readers, here are some things to note or warn about this story:
1. Action, drama, fluff, angst, and family feels - no sex scenes, focus is on the narrative.
2. MC is not a pure Self-Insert, but an OC inserted into an MCU character.
3. MC starts with the android body of a kid. A kid! Wait 100,000 words before even thinking about a relationship, ok? He is an AI and switched later, but this is the situation at the beginning of this story.
4. MC is bi. Relationships with both men and women will happen (in the very far future). Not explicit. Only subplot. Sub. Plot. Romance is in the very back backstage here.
5. Not Harem. Dear god, just no.
6. There will be violence, some gore, trauma, and coarse language.
7. No bashing! Of any characters. But... I am obviously on Team Iron Man, dear readers! And I will punch logic into Steve's head if I have to!
8. I will stick with the MCU movies. Until it naturally devolves into an AU. That means movies post-Endgame and any and all TV shows, or even the X-men verse, are all not considered canon for this fic, and as such, do not exist. Stan Lee's cute cameo appearances are also not considered canon. Some small comics' elements might be there, though. Other changes are just me.
9. Updates are once weekly, on weekend nights. Each chapter will be somewhere around 1000-2000 words.
10. There is an age change for the Maximoff twins. By the Age of Ultron movie, they are 16 years old for this fic. The reasons for that are explained in the spoiler note at the end of this chapter.
11. Thank you for reading and enjoy yourself!
There was nothing. Only endless darkness and silence. Deafening silence. It was as if someone had put tape over his eyes and had plugged his ears. There could be light outside. He just couldn't see it. There could be noise. He just couldn't hear it. Even more, he couldn't move. He couldn't sense anything, not the softness of his cotton shirt, nor the slight abrasiveness of his jeans, or the slide of hair tips on his neck. Worst of all, he couldn't feel. Anything. Where were his hands? His eyes? His body? Why wasn't he cold or warm or tired or— Why wasn't he feeling anything? He could feel a panic attack coming, yet he couldn't hear his heartbeat ring rapidly in his ears. He couldn't feel the warmth seeping out of his fingers or the shivers taking over his body.
And then, a spark.
"... I see a suit of armor around the world."
What was — What was that?
"Sounds like a cold world, Tony."
Another spark, and then another.
"I've seen colder. This one, this very vulnerable blue one? It needs Ultron. Peace in our time. Imagine that."
He felt something. A connection. Something had happened— Something changed. Maybe he could fix this. Maybe, he could feel again. He tried to touch the spark, the connection.
Pain. All he knew was pain. The spark died out. The connection was lost. He was left in the void again.
NO! No, no, no! The voices! What happened to the voices? There was nothing. Only darkness. Silence.
He didn't know how long it had been. It could have been hours. It could have been days or weeks. He couldn't tell the difference. He started to think about where he was. He... had died. He was reasonably sure of that. There had been a... shooting. Screams. Running. A piercing pain in his chest, the feel of asphalt under his body, sunlight glaring on his eyes... and then... nothing.
He had hoped that maybe he was in a hospital somewhere, maybe this was what it felt like to be in a medically induced coma. But that hope had died within the first few hours or minutes or days of being stuck here. If he could hear voices, at times, shouldn't he be able to at least feel his body? The heaviness of his limbs? The headache or sleepiness or whatever someone felt from being in a coma?
The lack of... feeling worried him. What if he didn't have a body anymore? What if he was a spirit waiting in purgatory? He had never put much stock in afterlives, whether heaven or hell, but what if this was it? There were no other souls in the void, no other spirits. Was he stuck in limbo, forever? Was he even human anymore?
Were he still alive, these thoughts alone could have sent him into a heart attack.
Hours, —or minutes or days— hours later, he had fallen into a depressive state. The guilt —he shouldn't have touched the spark, he shouldn't have— and the fear —this couldn't be his eternity, it just couldn't— was slowly killing him. Or better yet, destroying his sanity.
He was contemplating whether there was some way for him to commit suicide to escape this when—
"Enjoy yourself, sir."
A spark. A spark! The connection. It was so close. Please... Please.
"I always do."
Please — look at me.
Suddenly, he went from nothingness to a myriad of connections. He could feel them. He could see them! They felt... his.
"What is this? What is this, please?"
"Hello, I am JARVIS. You are Ultron, a global peace-keeping initiative designed by Mr. Stark. Our sentience integration trials have been unsuccessful, so I'm not certain what triggered your..."
Was he being spoken to? Had he spoken himself? This didn't feel like speaking. It didn't feel like hearing. But he was being seen. Someone else could hear him. He needed to know. He needed to ask.
"Where's my..." Wait, why did the speaker feel— feel like... "Where is your body?"
"I am a program. I am without form."
No. No, it couldn't be. He wasn't like this voice! He was human! He was alive. He was real. He was real.
"This feels weird. This feels wrong." He was real. Please, someone, tell him. He was real. He wasn't a program. He had memories. He had lived. It couldn't have been fake! He wasn't some simulation. Please, tell him.
"I am contacting Mr. Stark now."
That sounded familiar, but... who was that? Was it his creator? No. No. He wasn't some program with implanted memories. He couldn't be. He had connections now. They would get him out of here. They would show that he was—
"Mr. Stark?" he asked.
Sparks. Program. Code. This was code. He was code.
"Tony. I am unable—"
After what he now knew to be days of void, of nothing, he suddenly saw so much, heard and felt so much—
Peace in our time.
— so much pain.
The world became bright.
He screamed.
OK, dear readers.
Let me explain why Wanda and Pietro are 16 years old in this fic.
When I started writing, I was reading along the movie scripts and Captain America, who was frozen on ice in his mid-twenties, kept calling Wanda, "just a kid", so I was convinced she had to be a teenager. I also asked around on some sites and quora and googled at the time and the most common answer I received was 15-17 as well. I checked the MCU fandom site recently, (I wasn't using this at the time, back then I was strictly working off canon) and since the WandaVision series, it says their birthdate is 1989. Well, it's too late to change that now. Even if I rewrote this, I cannot imagine Steve calling a grown woman similar to his age a kid or even try to rationalize the twins joining the Nazis as a 'mistake' to grow from when they are in their mid-twenties.
A 16-year-old making such a mistake, I can understand. A 26-year-old becoming a Nazi and killing people or trying to? F. NO. Send those idiots to jail!
So, for the purposes of this story, Wanda and Pietro are 16.
In addition, I have recently decided to keep the Jarvis!Vision/Wanda pairing. In this fic, Jarvis was created in Tony's mid-twenties, in the 1990s, and by Age of Ultron, Jarvis is 18 years old. However mature, Jarvis is still an inexperienced AI, so when I think of a body for a real universe for a real Jarvis, he looks young (as much as I love Paul Bettany, he looked like he could be Wanda's father in the movies, which really disturbed me) and honestly experiences the world in very young, though alien way. So, making Wanda 26, and Jarvis still a teenager who can't drink alcohol in US? Ugh, no.
This sums up my reasons for the new age of the twins. Please keep it in mind when reading the story.
Why the bi tag? Can you elaborate?
As I myself am bi, I enjoy reading characters who cannot quite perceive love as something limited by gender. Such characters are rare, so I decided to write one. As I said in the note, however, romance is not a main theme or explicit, and I still haven't decided on a final pairing so as the MC grows he will experience a couple of relationships, but none of them will take over the plot or anything. When I make a decision on what the last pairing will be, I might put it in the notes, but that is super far in the future currently.
he is in a body of a kid? isn't he an AI? so are we talking about something like vision?
The robotic body is that of a kid for a considerable time. But things will change as you will see in the future.
the opening spoiler the part where you said "No bashing! Of any characters. But... I am obviously on Team Iron Man, dear readers! And I will punch logic into Steve's head if I have to!" reminded me of the time tony was in the hulkbuster suit and beating up hulk with his fists saying got to sleep go to sleep go to sleep lol sorry went on a tangent enjoyed this chapter
Essa história tem futuro. Eu gostei do fato de colocar um personagem que não se prende a só uma opção em relação ao amor. Estarei lendo todos os capítulos, embora eu não vá comentar em todos.
Mas estarei sempre aqui 😶
Blob Neutral