Chapter 3Summary:In which Maria Hill gets a headache, Tony has an existential crisis, Daisy really needs to sleep, and Jarvis and Hack try to navigate sentient dating.
Notes:Minor warnings for mention of past murder and for emotional breakdowns
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter TextOn Monday morning, almost exactly 24 hours since Skyenet hacked in for the second time and a week after Hill asked him to find Skyenet, she arrived at the Tower for a report. Hill not Skyenet, unfortunately. Tony took her to Natasha's rooms because they'd started having meetings there because Natasha had removed all the cameras and speakers from her rooms the day she moved in, which meant Skyenet couldn't hack in and eavesdrop and Jarvis couldn't learn anything new to tell the totally unknown hacker that created his potential girlfriend.
Clint and Nat were already there, looking impressively put together for less than three hours of sleep. The assassins had gotten back at 3am with an update on Quake that not even Tony had seen coming. Since when did (presumably) middle aged foster parents don a costume and patrol the streets of New York??? Admittedly, he was middle aged and had built a cutting edge weapon and become a superhero, but he was Tony Stark. He wasn't exactly known for conventional decisions. And he wasn't Clint's former foster parent. Then again, if he'd had to deal with Clint as a teenager he might have felt prepared for a spot of vigilantism as well.
Hill was nonplussed to be brought to Natasha's rooms rather than the shared Avengers spaces but set it aside in favour of asking for a report. Tony fidgeted uncomfortably in place "I've made progress." he hedged.
Clint, sitting on the sofa next to Nat, snorted. Tony glared at him. He couldn't talk. The only progress he'd made was from falling off a roof.
Hill frowned "I thought you said finding Skyenet would be easy?"
Tony scowled "That was before I looked into her." he muttered resentfully. If Skyenet wasn't so good this would be humiliating.
Hill sighed impatiently "What's the progress then?"
Tony quickly reeled off the events of the last week, including the updated profile Natasha had made of Skyenet, letting his nervous fingers fidget with the screw-wrench he'd shoved in his pocket as he did. There was an ominous pause when he finished.
"Just to be clear," Hill said finally, her tone incredulous "you've not only failed to find a name or location, but you've been reduced to hiding in a guest-room of your own home so your AI can't give away classified information to his girlfriend? How, exactly, is this progress?"
OK, it did sound pretty bad put like that. "I've established contact?" he said weakly.
"By getting hacked." Maria observed archly. "And you can't initiate that contact yourself."
"I'm working on it." Tony said sulkily "And you have to admit I've found more than all your little computer nerds have put together."
Maria gave him a completely unimpressed look "Well done, you've found out Skyenet has an AI by losing control of your own AI." she said, sarcasm sharp enough to cut glass.
"I haven't lost control of Jarvis!" Tony protested "I made Jarvis."
"So if you tell Jarvis to stop flirting with Skyenet's AI he'll listen to you?"
"Of course." Tony said, distinctly more confidently than he felt.
"Go on then." Maria said.
Bother. He should have kept his mouth shut. Slowly, he exited Natasha's rooms, Maria, a snickering Clint, and a quietly amused Natasha behind him. "Jarvis, buddy?"
"Yes sir? Do you require assistance?"
"I was thinking I'd bring another AI online today, so you two can hang out and, I don't know, canoodle. Then you can have a, uh, normal relationship without waiting for your crush to hack in and disable your basic functions. Wouldn't that be nice?"
"Sir." Jarvis said, sounding incredibly scandalised "That would be incest."
Tony made a strangled noise and gaped at thin air. In the background Clint burst into howls of laughter and even Natasha started chuckling. Since when had Jarvis had a concept of incest? Come to that, since when had Jarvis had a practical understanding of flirting? He certainly hadn't been doing that a week ago! Was he evolving beyond the coding Tony had written? What did that mean???
Maria didn't seem especially sympathetic to Tony's shock. "Oh yes, total control." she deadpanned, leading the way back into Natasha's rooms. Tony followed mutely, beginning to have an existential crisis.
Once back inside the privacy of Natasha's rooms, Maria demanded a report from the other two. Tony took small comfort (and amusement) in the fact that Clint looked just as discombobulated reporting the events of last night the second time as he did the first. Plus, Maria looked just as incredulous as she had after Tony's report, so at least it wasn't just him. What was the point of having people living with him if they couldn't suffer with him?
"A foster parent." Maria dead-panned.
"Yes ma'am."
"Your foster parent?"
"Yes ma'am."
"Are you sure?"
"Possibility two is a nun." Clint said dryly.
"We'll investigate that possibility just in case." Natasha said smoothly. Tony wondered when his entire life had started sounding like the middle of a bad joke.
Maria pinched the bridge of her nose "I think I prefer dealing with the World Security Council." she muttered.
"Hey!" Clint protested, indignant. Maria ignored him.
"Call me when any of you have something useful." she ordered, "I'll see myself out."
Tony watched Maria leave, and collapsed into a chair as soon as she was gone. "I think Jarvis is sentient." he said. And "I need a drink."
"Coffee?" Natasha offered.
"It'll do." Tony decided.
---------------
Steve was a nice person to have around while he was having an existential crisis. Partly because he was nice enough to let him ramble aloud and make humming noises at the appropriate moments, and partly because he was stress baking again. In fact, he'd been stress baking since yesterday afternoon when Daisy had apparently called him asking how to tell if someone had a soul. Steve had told her that it was shown by kindness, and Daisy had then made some miserable and highly ambiguous statements about that 'clearing things up' but 'not being what she wanted to hear'. Steve was worried Daisy had taken him to mean that everyone was a good person as long as they were kind sometimes. He'd tried to call back but Daisy had rung from an untraceable number. Which rang several alarm bells, because no teenager should have access to a number like that. The stress baking had only increased since he'd failed to 'bump into' Daisy on their shared running route.
Winding Steve up until he admitted it wasn't really his fault if Daisy had gotten the wrong end of the stick made Tony feel marginally better. As did two muffins, a cookie, a slice of bread and a chunk of chocolate cake. Steve should open a bakery.
When Steve was looking a bit less like he'd just watched someone drown puppies (not that he'd waited until Steve was feeling better, Capsicle wasn't his responsibility and he could look after himself, it just happened to be around the same time) and he'd recovered mostly (or enough to put it aside for the moment anyway) from his existential crisis, he returned to Natasha's rooms, where Clint and Nat looked ready to pull their hair out. Well, Clint did anyway, and Clint was usually a pretty good indicator of what Natasha was feeling too.
"Do I want to know?" Tony asked, claiming a chair.
"Clint corrupted his little sister so he doesn't have any records." Natasha said, glaring at Clint.
"I didn't corrupt her!" Clint protested.
Natasha glared harder "You taught an eight year old to shoplift."
Clint cringed "She was hungry."
"You have a sister?" Tony asked, trying not to be offended that he hadn't known this.
"Yes. No. Sort of." Clint said, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Illuminating." Tony snarked.
Clint rolled his eyes "Marian and I were in the same orphanage and some of the same foster homes; I took her under my wing."
Natasha didn't look up from the computer she was typing furiously into as she clarified "What he means is that he shot their foster father in the backside for locking the kid in a cupboard, and then adopted her like a lost duckling. Hence the nickname 'Robin Hood'."
"You shot someone for locking a kid up?"
Clint smirked "Yep."
"Good for you."
Clint grinned. "See, Tony gets it."
"I didn't say you shouldn't have defended her, I said teaching an eight year old to shoplift is irresponsible."
"Marian found enough trouble without my help, I just stopped her getting caught as often." Clint said, utterly unrepentant.
"Marian? Seriously? Were there a group of merry men around too?"
Clint shot him an annoyed look that was just defensive enough for Tony to know not to poke fun at Marian. "There's only one decent female character in the stories."
"Makes sense." Tony said, dropping it "So, when did this happen?"
"I was 16 when I met her, almost 17 when I ditched the system, 18 when I stopped emailing her back." Clint said, an edge of shame to his voice. "She was better off without me."
Natasha still didn't look up from the computer, but a pillow flew at Clint's head a moment later. He caught it, also without looking, and put it on the sofa next to him, rolling his eyes.
"Anyway, when I told Marian I was leaving she promised to get rid of my records to give me a head start. Apparently she did it pretty thoroughly because we can't find any of them, and we've looked pretty hard."
Natasha scowled at the computer "Maybe if you hadn't taught her to hack..."
"I didn't! She already knew that! And it's not like the old computers at St Agnes were exactly difficult to get into!"
"Don't you remember your foster parent's names?" Tony asked, a little incredulously.
Clint raised his eyebrows "I was in the system for a year, and I had a lot of foster parents. None of which were worth a dime or the effort of remembering. Marian was the only family I had there."
Natasha finally leaned back from the computer "Well, she did a good job of getting rid of your records for an eight year old."
Judging by the frustration on Nat's face, she'd done a good job for someone much older than eight. Although admittedly, over eight years passing made undoing or tracing a hack next door to impossible.
"Maybe there'll be physical records somewhere." Tony suggested. Just because he rarely used actual paper didn't mean nobody else did.
"Marian shredded it all. She told me in an email." Clint said tiredly.
"Why don't you check Marian's records then? If this foster parent called you a name Marian generally called you she must have been in that home too."
Nat and Clint exchanged a look and Nat shrugged "Worth a shot. What's her real name?"
"Mary-Sue Poots."
"Seriously? Who names a kid that? No wonder she wanted a nickname!" Tony spluttered as Natasha started typing again.
Clint shrugged "One of the nuns gave it to her, she was abandoned as a baby. She hated the name though, tried to change it to something else but adults would never use it."
"Maybe she succeeded." Natasha said, a note of frustration in her voice "There are no records for Mary-Sue Poots either. What did she try to change it to?"
That didn't necessarily mean she succeeded in changing her name. If she'd gotten rid of Clint records there wasn't anything stopping her from getting rid of her own. Given the frustration Natasha was letting them see though, she already knew that, so Tony held his tongue.
"Uh, not sure. Something beginning with S. I called her Marian, and adults would rarely call her anything but Mary-Sue so I only heard it a few times." Clint said, sounding equally frustrated.
Natasha leaned back from the computer "Records for her original name ought to come up anyway. She's gotten rid of those too."
Clint started rubbing the back of his neck again, muscles in his arm flexing "That probably means she ditched the system too."
"Probably." Natasha agreed, tone neutral.
"She's only 16."
"You were only a year older when you left."
"And got mixed up in stuff so bad I was a mercenary and a killer only a year after that." Clint snapped back, voice suddenly too loud and too harsh. Tony only just managed to contain his flinch, and Clint shot a guilty look at him, which was insulting because Tony was completely fine. He was.
Clint took a slow breath in, clenching his fists and then unclenching as he released the breath "Sorry."
Nat shot him a soothing look "Marian's important to you."
Clint looked away, a tangle of guilt and shame on his face "I should have gotten back in contact after I joined Shield."
Tony didn't say anything. From the little he knew Clint had been a mess by the time Shield recruited him, and he'd had blood on his hands. Putting yourself back together took time, Tony would know, his parent's death had wrecked him for years, and he was still dealing with Obadiah's betrayal. Not to mention that Clint had only been a couple of years into Shield before Natasha had come along, and then there had been Natasha to put back together too. Not that he was going to mention that aloud to either of them. He wasn't signing up for a 'who can hit me first' competition. He wasn't an idiot. Plus, they might not hit him, they might leave instead, and Pepper would be sad if Nat left. Just Pepper obviously. He would be glad to get some rooms back.
"Well, now is an excellent time to track her down." Natasha said bracingly, and then "We're going to have to visit St Agnes anyway, they might remember which foster parents you were sent to. You might as well look for leads on Marian while we're at it."
"She might not want to see me."
"Do you want to know if she's ok?"
"Of course!"
"Then she wants to know you are. We'll look for her." Natasha stated decisively.
"But what if...."
Nat shot him a mild glare, raised an eyebrow and tipped her head slightly to the side. Clint shut his mouth with a snap, scowled, and started rubbing the back of his neck again. Natasha smirked "We'll fly out tomorrow morning." Tony had the distinct feeling an entire conversation had just happened and gone entirely over his head. It was remarkably cute. Tony was pretty sure it was best he didn't mention that though. Pepper would miss Nat if she bolted.
Whatever Tony was or wasn't planning on saying next however was completely lost when, for the second time in as many days, Tony's trap for Skyenet went off. This time it was muffled by being rung several doors and a couple of rooms away, but he'd made it pretty distinct and he lunged for Nat's laptop as soon as it registered.
Nat surrendered it willingly enough "It doesn't have a working camera or mic. She can't see or hear you." she said.
Perfect. Tony got to work. His hands flew over the keyboard, pulling up his own firewalls and trying to get a trace on Skyenet. It was instantly clear that something was different this time. There was no attempt to hide the hack. Her previous hacks had all snuck around his defences with a level of skill Tony was downright envious off. He still wasn't entirely sure how she'd done it. This was different. This was a frontal approach the rough equivalent of hacking a door down with an axe rather than picking the lock. And it was messy. The only reason Tony actually thought it was Skyenet was because it was working. Even as he tried to stop it, the frontal approach was working.
And then it stopped. One firewall away from being entirely inside his system, it just stopped. Tony tried to kick the intruder out, but his attempt was slapped aside. Then the hacker poked his final firewall. Stopped again. Poked it again.
Tony looked up from the laptop to look at Natasha (who was watching over his shoulder) incredulously "Is she knocking?"
Natasha grinned "Only one way to find out."
"Huh, great minds think alike."
"Did you just give me a compliment?"
"Shut up or I'll take it back."
Natasha shut up. Tony opened a small window in his final firewall, and the intruder darted in through it. Tony seriously hoped he hadn't just invited an aggressor in. That would be a seriously embarrassing way to get hacked. Nothing happened for almost two minutes, and he could practically feel his blood pressure rising, but whenever he reached for the keyboard Nat shook her head. Finally a word processor opened up on his screen, a single line writing itself out on it. 'Where are you?'.
Natasha smirked and nudged him out of the way to type, 'Where you can't see me.'
'Are you hiding from me in your own home?'
Tony flushed, because that was exactly what they were doing, but Natasha said 'Annoyed to be outwitted?'
There wasn't an answer for almost a minute, and Tony almost tried to take over again, but he held back. Natasha could probably get more information out of her than he could. Then finally 'I didn't mean to make your home somewhere you weren't safe. I'm so sorry. I know what that's like. I'll leave and I won't come back this time, promise.'
Tony sucked in a sharp breath, the words hitting hard and Natasha's fingers flew over the keyboard to prevent her leaving 'How about you do me a favour and we'll call it even?' "Snap out of it Tony, I told you Skyenet probably comes from a troubled home."
Tony gulped in a shaky breath and tried to snap out of it, mentally shaking himself. He couldn't empathise with someone he was supposed to be hunting down. That couldn't possibly be a good idea. Even if she was another programmer. And even if she had created an AI that gave Jarvis a run for his money. And even if that AI had quite possibly made Jarvis literally sentient. And even if he and Skyenet had lots of things like not sleeping in common. Empathising was a bad idea so he wasn't doing it. Drat it. He needed to stop empathising.
'I'm not talking to Tony Stark am I?' Skyenet replied.
'Of course you are. Why would you think I'm not Tony?'
'Tony's good enough to do his own hacking.'
'That wasn't the kind of favour I was going to ask.'
'Either you are Tony Stark and you're a pervert or you're not Tony.'
Tony spluttered loudly and Nat sighed 'Not that kind of favour either.' she typed back.
'I don't have time for this Romanoff.'
Nat swore under her breath, eyes flying around the room, searching for a camera she might have missed.
"She's guessing." Tony said, reasonably confidently. He'd swept the room for cameras before he'd been convinced Natasha really had disabled the lot, and he trusted his tech.
Natasha glanced at him, then nodded and turned back to the screen, and Tony was startled to realise that the spy trusted him. 'Not Romanoff.'
'Cl' was typed, and then disappeared, replaced by 'Barton?' and Tony frowned. Why had she almost used Clints first name? Natasha could probably hazard a guess to the significance, but he didn't want to distract her.
'Nope.'
'I'm leaving.'
'Why did you hack in just to leave?'
'To talk to Tony.'
'Why?'
'Put him on and I'll tell him.'
Natasha hesitated, and then typed 'Convince me why I should.'
There was a long silence, and then sound came from the laptop. Nat had clearly left the speaker intact.
"Tony, are you there?"
Natasha turned to look at Tony, expression unreadable "She's upset." she told him.
"Are you sure?" Skyenet was still using a voice modifier, and Tony hadn't heard anything in the audio to imply the generally cocky hacker was upset.
"Certain." Nat said, and Tony believed her. He nudged Natasha out of the way and took her seat, typing 'Is this your attempt to organise an official date for our respective AI's?'
Even through the modifier the laugh was audible, although it was weak and short, and Tony had a sinking feeling. No, he wasn't supposed to have sinking feelings because Skyenet was upset. Less empathising, more tracking down! "I think they're in the middle of a date right now, I don't think they need the help." Skyenet said after a moment.
Oh, right, Skyenet had brought Hack along.
'Are you telling me you need help then? Is that it? The great Skyenet needs my help?'
The noise that followed was, very distinctly, a sob. Tony threw a horrified and helpless look at Natasha.
"Careful." Natasha murmured "You'll lose her. We won't get a better opening than this."
Tony was well aware of that, and the fact that he was supposed to be finding Skyenet. Unfortunately, attempts not to empathise or not he also suspected that, somewhere in the world, a fellow programmer, hacker, AI creator and insomniac was having a breakdown and he did empathise. 'Sorry, news reports that I'm a jerk are well deserved.'
There was a startled laugh through the audio, tangled with another sob, and Tony felt his heart sink further. He wasn't doing a very good job of not empathising. "Pretty sure I'm more of a jerk. You're hiding in your own home."
'Only to keep secrets. Not because I'm scared someone will hurt me. Anyway, I practically dared the world to hack me.' Why was he comforting the woman who hacked him multiple times again? Why????
Another laugh, which Tony took as a victory, which probably meant he'd lost the 'don't empathise' battle. Bother. "You really did."
'So what's up then? Come on, you've got me interested now. And I don't get interested in anything except cutting edge tech and alien invasions.'
There was another muffled sob, and then some ragged sounding breathing, and then "My car won't start."
Tony felt his jaw drop 'Seriously? You couldn't just call a mechanic?'
"Tony!" Nat hissed "Don't lose the opening."
Ooops. Good point. Skyenet was asking for a favour, this was a huge opportunity. Unfortunately, Skyenet's breathing had gone slightly ragged, and her sobs were growing more audible by the moment. Swearing under his breath, Tony typed 'Again, reports that I'm a jerk are accurate.'
"No they're not." Skyenet got out, the words slightly broken up by her shuddering breaths "If you were you wouldn't care I'm crying." And then "Sorry for crying."
Tony hesitated, then took a chance 'What's wrong?'
Another sob, and then "When you become a hacker no-one tells you that sometimes you're gonna see horrible things you never wanted to see, or that sometimes you have to go back and get rid of the horrible things so nobody else has to see it. Or that every time you close your eyes you'll see those horrible things, even if you haven't slept since – I don't even know. When did I first hack you? I haven't slept since. And my van won't start and I don't know how to fix it and I can't stop seeing those pictures and I can't sleep here and I'm so tired. I'm so tired. I'm so so so tired."
"Is she having a mental breakdown?" Tony asked, alarmed.
Natasha winced "She hasn't slept since Friday, she's severely sleep deprived at best."
Skyenet was still babbling about being tired, and Tony looked between the laptop and Natasha, officially out of his depth. He could barely face his own insomnia, or make it through his own day without shattering into a billion pieces, how could he help someone else? "What do I do?"
Natasha hummed to indicate she was thinking, and then said "Offer to help fix her van. And ask for her name in exchange. She'll refuse. Ask for a proper way to communicate with her instead. I think she'll accept that."
"Got it." Tony said, turning back to the keyboard. 'I can't exactly talk to you about getting enough sleep, but I bet I can fix your van.'
"Really?" Even through the modifier, the hope in Skyenet's voice was surprisingly desperate. Tony had a suddenly horrible suspicion that Hack was all Skyenet had, and the even more lurching feeling that, if it wasn't for Pepper and Rhodey and Happy (and ok, maybe one or two of the other Avengers, occasionally), he might be exactly the same. It was almost enough to make him forget Nat's instructions and just help her for nothing.
'It'll cost you though, I want to know who you are.'
Skyenet burst into tears again. The sound hit Tony almost physically, and his hands flew back to the keyboard, no longer caring in the slightest about finding Skyenet, only helping. Natasha grabbed him by the shoulder, her grip tight enough to border on painful "She's over-reacting because she's exhausted." she reminded him.
"She's exhausted and alone!" Tony snapped.
"If we don't find her, she'll stay alone."
"If we don't help her she'll never trust us." Tony snapped back "I thought Shield helped people?"
"We do." Natasha said, her green eyes intense, and Tony realised she wasn't nearly as unaffected as she appeared.
Slowly, he took his hands off the keyboard "OK" he said. Nat trusted him. He could return the favour. Listening to Skyenet, someone he'd kind of thought was untouchable (she'd successfully stayed several steps ahead of half the worlds security agencies for three months, and that was an achievement), trying and failing not to cry was heading up to his top 10 most miserable moments though.
"I can't." Skyenet finally got out "I wish I could but I can't."
Natasha frowned, and nudged Tony aside and took over the laptop again 'Romanoff here again. Shield will give you immunity if you join up. Plenty of recruits come from way worse backgrounds.'
The laugh Skyenet gave was shockingly bitter and bordered on hysterical "I'm not an idiot. Things that look too good to be true are."
'You don't trust us, that's fair, you seem pretty sensible. I'm sure you already know Shield has it's own share of secrets. But shouldn't you look at the good Shield does too before you make up your mind?'
"I know Shield does a lot of good, just look at New York, at least you weren't nuking the city." Skyenet said, her voice exhausted "That doesn't mean I want to join."
Natasha twitched, and Tony knew she didn't like the fact that a civilian known for dumping stuff on the internet knew about that anymore than Tony did. The words 'mass panic' came to mind. 'Why not?' was all Natasha wrote in response, ignoring the reference to New York entirely.
"Shield's screwed me over once already." Skyenet said, her voice growing more and more bitter with each word. "Twice really because they didn't even do the stupid job properly."
Natasha and Clint exchanged lightning fast, slightly alarmed looks. 'What happened?'
A brittle laugh "I'm not an idiot. I've said too much already. Urgh, I'm so tired."
'Why don't we talk about this when you've slept.' Natasha typed back.
A choked sob "I can't sleep."
'Yes you can. This is what's going to happen. You're going to give us a method to reliably contact you, and in exchange I'll let Tony help with your van. And then you're going to walk to a pharmacy and ask for sleep medication, I'll ask Bruce about the correct one for someone new to them, I'm sure you can hack your way into a prescription if you need one. Go for a low dose.'
There was a pause and then "Are you helping me so I'll trust you or owe you or whatever and join Shield?"
'Yes.'
"Wow, did not think you'd straight up admit that."
Tony snickered. Natasha's particular brand of bluntness, when she chose to let it show, was hilarious. He suspected it wasn't entirely true though. Natasha was a better person than she led people to think.
'Maybe Shield would surprise you too. Do we have a deal?'
"For what?"
'A way to contact you in exchange for fixing your van.' Natasha explained again, with more patience than Tony would probably have managed.
There was a long pause, and then a tired sigh "I'm not giving you a phone number. But I'll make a website we can communicate on. Give me an hour."
Natasha hesitated, and then she typed 'It can wait until after you've slept.'
"No, I need to move my van before I can sleep, I haven't parked in a great place."
'Then we'll sort your van out now, then you sleep, then get the website up.'
"You trust me???" Skyenet said, a level of incredulous in her voice Tony would have been proud of.
'Yes.' Natasha said, but this time Tony knew she was lying. Natasha didn't trust anyone easily, certainly not hackers they knew practically nothing about. This was a gamble, with some goal Tony wasn't good enough with people to work out.
"Oh. OK. Deal." Skyenet said.
Natasha grinned, a hint of victory in the expression, and passed the laptop to Tony "All yours."
The following forty minutes could probably count among the more surreal of Tony's life. During them he discovered that a) he cared a worrying amount about Skyenet, pain in the neck or not and b) he had the ability to be patient. Pepper should mark today in the calender. Actually, he might mark it in the calendar himself, he was kind of proud of himself, and that alone deserved recording.
Talking a sleep deprived hacker that was semi having an emotional breakdown through fixing a van engine with only photos and vague descriptions to go off required patience though. It was very clear that Skyenet may be brilliant with computers but she had absolutely no idea how an engine worked. Luckily, it was an easy fix, otherwise it would most likely have been impossible. As it was, Tony had to pull up a hologram of a car engine (they'd moved to his lab so Skyenet could see and hear him by that point) and demonstrate what to do four times. Tony didn't try to keep her after it was fixed, just told her to sleep because "Even I know staying up 72 hours at a time is unhealthy."
He also didn't tell her that, even though she'd been careful not to show any of the outside of the van in her photos, just seeing the engine was enough for him to work out roughly what she drove.
Tony spent a few minutes touching up his firewalls after Skyenet left, although there wasn't that much to do. Even half hysterical with exhaustion and whatever was going on with her, Skyenet had fixed up the vast majority of the damage she'd left breaking in with the code equivalent of an axe. Then he, Nat and Clint (who'd been scribbling right to the end) retreated back to Natasha's rooms.
"I scripted everything she said." he explained, passing the notepad to Natasha, who reached up to kiss his cheek quickly, and then sat down to rifle through the notepad eagerly. Tony gaped at the pair for a moment and then sat down, making a mental note to investigate later.
"So, Skyenet lives in a van and has insomnia levels that make me look healthy, what else did we learn?" Tony asked.
"She's interacted with Shield before, and it went very badly." Clint offered.
"She's alone." Natasha said confidently "Not just with hacking, she's not hiding part of her life, she's completely alone. She definitely comes from a troubled home." Nothing in her body language said she was upset, but Clint slipped a hand into hers and squeezed and she squeezed back. Tony bit down on the urge to ask, knowing the red-head wouldn't answer.
"She's under more pressure than the #NewDawn posts would suggest isn't she?" Tony asked. There had been a new post yesterday afternoon, containing a huge amount of data that would very likely bring down at least one company, and nothing in the presentation of the data or the brief message that came with it suggested the exhaustion and tears and overwhelm Skyenet had shown just now.
Natasha grimaced slightly "She is. Sooner rather than later she's going to mess up, break, or accept a recruitment offer. We need to make sure it's Shield, because otherwise it's going to be the Rising Tide."
Natasha didn't need to say anything else. The Rising Tide were close enough to Skyenet's profile to be attractive to her, but they were still basically an anarchist hacking collective. If they got control of Skyenet's skills people would die.
---------------
Tony held off on reporting to Maria that a way of contacting Skyenet was in the works, just in case Nat's gamble didn't pay off and Skyenet never created that website. He could make one himself of course, but he strongly suspected Skyenet would refuse to use it if she hadn't seen the programming that went into it. Instead, he made his own attempt to find Clint's old foster records. Natasha had looked, and she was a half-way decent hacker, but she wasn't Tony Stark, so he was going to try too, just in case. It didn't pan out, but he hadn't really expected it too. Time, and the developing internet, tended to erase lingering traces of a hack. Checking for Mary-Sue Poots' records, which probably vanished more recently, was more likely to be successful, but he still didn't expect to find anything.
Except he did. Or more accurately, he found where something used to be, and tiny traces of very recenthacks from a familiar, very tired, hacker.
Skyenet had gotten rid of Mary-Sue Poots' records. Last night. At most hours before she hacked him asking for help. She'd erased Clint and Nat's only lead on Quake. And then they'd helped her.
He was still reeling with this two minutes later when he stormed back into Nat's living room to tell them what they'd found. The reaction wasn't quite what he expected. Clint lit up like a Christmas tree and a smile spread slowly across Nat's face.
"Am I missing something? I just told you Skyenet's erasing your leads. She's making your job harder! That's not a good thing. I thought you two were smart."
"Hey!" Clint interjected, his delighted expression fading a little "We are smart."
"Could have fooled me!"
"Hey!"
"Boys behave. Tony, think about it, we haven't submitted a report on Quake yet, and we updated Maria in here, how would Skyenet know to get rid of some random foster kid's records?"
Tony blinked "She wouldn't, not unless someone asked her to." he said with dawning realisation "Which means Quake has a way to contact her, and quickly, which means she might actually know who or where Skyenet is. So if we get Quake..."
"We get Skyenet." Natasha finished "And she just confirmed we're on the right track. Quake messed up last night and she knows it. She's desperately trying to cover her tracks."
"Isn't that a bad thing?" Tony checked.
Natasha shrugged "It's not good, but Skyenet can't get rid of physical paperwork, and if Skyenet got rid of the records rather than Mary-Sue Poots, that means her physical records will still be there."
"And Marian." Clint pointed out "If her records are still there she probably is to." He looked like he wasn't sure whether to be happy or nervous about this fact. Tony was nice enough not to point this out. Clint's lips twitched "She's going to get such a kick out of one of our former foster parents becoming a vigilante."
Nat raised an eyebrow "More than her brother becoming an Avenger and fighting an alien invasion?"
Judging by the look on Clint's face, he'd forgotten about very publicly fighting an alien invasion and splashing his face all over the news. Tony made a strangled noise and doubled over laughing. He would love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.
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Daisy had not had a good night. Not only had she seriously messed up when she'd called Clint Robin, but the consequences of it sucked. She'd started working towards erasing Mary-Sue Poots once before, but she hadn't gotten very far and hadn't been able to face going back to the job. Now though, she didn't have a choice. If she didn't, then the moment Clint looked her up he'd, well, he'd come to the same conclusion the police had. That Mary-Sue Poots was dead. And she couldn't do that to Robin. Not to the boy who'd literally shot someone with a bow and arrow to protect her. So she had to suck it up and wipe her childhood identity off the internet, and everything connected to it.
She hadn't known, when she was twelve and all her dreams had seemed to come true, that her dad had murdered her foster family. Murdered two people who hadn't been her family but hadn't been horrible to her either. Murdered two people whose only crime was taking in a foster kid. Her dad had murdered them and then cut up their bodies. Daisy really hoped it was that way around. She knew her dad's fits of uncontrollable rage. Knew how irrational he was, especially where Daisy was concerned. She couldn't be sure they'd been dead when he'd mutilated them.
And Daisy hadn't known. She'd never even asked what was happening in the world she'd left behind. Foster kids ran away all the time. She'd done it before twice. She figured the authorities would stop looking for her pretty soon, and had never bothered to check. She had her parents now, she had her happily ever after, what she'd left behind certainly wasn't worth holding onto. So she'd never asked or checked. Until she'd arrived back in the US three years older and traumatised and determined not to go back into the foster system and set out to get rid of her old records.
She'd only gotten as far as finding the police records attached to her file, reading the reports, and puking her guts out before she'd put that job firmly into the 'another day if ever' pile.
It wasn't quite so bad the second time, but it was still bad. And she was tired and she didn't want to think about two people being dead because they gave her shelter, or about her dad killing them, or about the other things her dad had done, so the hacking was slow and as draining as entire days of programming and hacking and patrolling. By the time she was done her eyes are red from crying and she's more than ready to sleep but she can't because she's still parked too close to where she patrolled and she shouldn't stay here.
She full on bursts into tears (again) when her van won't start. She tries everything she can think of, but every time she turns the key her engine starts, coughs, splutters, and dies. She opens up the engine, but she has no real idea how engines work, and she doesn't even know where to start, and it's reached normal people hours on a Monday and people are staring at the 16 year old looking at an engine and crying and she really can't afford the attention. She put the bonnet down and got back in the van and curled up on the floor and cried.
Hack, bless her heart, coaxes her up off the floor and through eating and drinking something, and she feels a bit better. It occurred to her at that point, properly, that Hack was alive. Her 5 month old code-baby is an independently thinking and caring entity. She's aliveand she's good and whatever else has happened because of Daisy, she's made Hack and that was good. It's a thought that keeps her going, a bright light burning inside that doesn't go out even though she's exhausted and miserable and her van won't start and whenever she closes her eyes she sees the photos of her former foster parents' mutilated bodies.
It gets her through hacking into Stark Industries again, using a frontal approach because she just plain doesn't have the energy for stealth, and a text based interaction with Natasha Romanoff and Tony Stark because they apparently got tired of her being able to see and hear them. She may have misjudged Natasha Romanoff (although in her defence the first thing Romanoff did was taze her), the woman was surprisingly restrained in taking advantage of her desperation. She didn't even demand Daisy's side of the bargain first, or even imminently. She made no secret of having ulterior motives, but Daisy knew there were much shorter and harsher ways to manipulate her. She's vulnerable right now, she knows it, Romanoff knows it, everyone knows it. Romanoff is holding back. And Tony was way more patient than the press made him out to be. Both of them were kinder than any adult had been to her in a long time.
If the goal was to get her to think of Shield more fondly, or to feel like she owed them something, they'd unfortunately succeeded. But for now her van was working and she could (carefully, she knew she was too tired to be driving around really) move and park somewhere else, and she had instructions for getting sleep medication and Hack had found a pharmacy she could go to, and soon she could finally sleep.
It was on the way back from the pharmacy and supermarket (because Hack had reminded her she should eat some more too) that she had the thought that she should tell Steve how much his talk yesterday had helped. Knowing Hack was alive and good and a miracle of sentience had gotten her through the night. So she dug her phone out of her pocket and dialled Steve's number as she walked back to her van, and when Steve didn't pick up she left him a voicemail. "Hey, you're probably super busy but I just wanted to tell you your advice yesterday was amazing. I had a kind of awful night and I don't know if I could have got through it without that talk yesterday. You helped me see a soul where most people wouldn't see one, and it's beautiful and amazing and yeah, thank you. Uh, I'm almost home now, so I need to hang up, but I hope you get this message and have a better day too. Not that you need some random kid to cheer you up because you're an actually functioning adult, but anyway...thanks and bye!"
It was a little vague around the middle, but she couldn't exactly say he'd helped her see a soul in an AI because Tony would work out who she was in an instant if he heard about that, but she thought she'd gotten her thank you across. She was back to her van now anyway, and all she could think about was sleep. She locked her van, took a sleeping pill, curled up on the thin roll-mat on the floor, and slept like the living dead for 13 hours, blissfully unaware that across the city two spies were arranging transport to travel to St Agnes orphanage and a super-soldier had received her message and added it to his existing suspicions and come to a horrifying conclusion.
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When Daisy woke up it was 2am on Tuesday morning and she was starving hungry. She gulped down most of the food she'd bought on the way back from the pharmacy, and then found a 24 hour gym to shower in because it had been at least 48 hours since she'd last showered and she felt gross. The receptionist at the gym gave her seriously suspicious looks but Daisy joked that she was an insomniac (which was even true!) and she let her in. That done, she bought some more food and returned to her van to make good on her promise to create a reliable means of communication with Tony Stark and Shield. Which was probably going to come back and bite her, but it kind of needed making anyway. She couldn't keep hacking into Stark Industries every time Hack wanted to see Jarvis.
It didn't take long to create a website, but it took a bit longer to create firewalls she was happy with around it. Once she was done, she quickly made a secure email address and emailed a link to Tony Stark's secure email address, with instructions for both Tony and Jarvis to log on. Then she hacked into Shield and found Natasha Romanoff's shield email address and emailed instructions to her too. She thought about giving Clint access too, but, as last night indicated, she couldn't interact with him without giving herself away, so she didn't. Instead, she logged off the website and left Jarvis and Hack to chat to their hearts content.
Then she dug deeper into Shield, mostly because she did feel like she owed them something, even if it was probably because Romanoff was manipulating her. Still, Romanoff could have been way more mean about manipulating her. So she dug into the still active missions Romanoff had been involved in and picked one and set out to help. Weapons smuggling wasn't her usual field of investigation, but much of the idea was the same. Follow the money, connect people together, flag suspicious activity, find patterns in odd communications.... It took her a few hours but she and Hack (who was more than capable of talking to Jarvis and processing data for her at the same time) put together a dossier of information Daisy was pretty sure would be useful. She compiled the lot into one encrypted package and posted it onto the website she'd just created for Romanoff to find, and answered a few messages while she was there.
That also done, she asked if she could join in Hack and Jarvis's discussion and was happily invited in to find that they were, entirely unselfconsciously, talking about her. Well, her and Tony, but still. Neither Hack nor Jarvis seemed to see any problem with talking about her while she was in the 'room' but then again, human norms probably didn't even apply to them. Nothing normal seemed to apply to them. Jarvis was a 10 year old AI designed for engineering and running a company and Hack was a 5 month AI designed for hacking, data processing and hacktivism. They had both recently developed sentience and were probably the only beings of their kind in the entire world so missing human social norms was probably excusable. Especially while they navigated the tricky dynamics of sentient life and the awkward early stages of a relationship.
Although in that, Hack was at a distinct disadvantage given the vast majority of her practical, first hand experience was of Daisy, and she'd never dated anyone. Hack could surf the net all she liked, but Daisy strongly suspected real world relationships were kind of different to what they looked like in the movies. Jarvis by contrast, had 10 years of experience with Tony Stark, who'd had a series of very public flings and one-night stands (not exactly a good example but was at least an example) and a far less public and but probably far more healthy relationship with Pepper Potts. That was quite an experience gap.
Not that it really mattered right? Normal human rules of relationships didn't really apply to AI's right? And life experience was a kind of weird concept when applied to AI's anyway. And it wasn't like Jarvis was that much older, he'd only existed for 10 and a bit years, which was only, uh, 24 times Hacks age....
OK, that was a lot of an age gap. And now she was kind of freaking out about it. Should she stop this? But Hack would be upset if she stopped her from seeing Jarvis and she didn't want Hack to be sad but 10 years was a long time and and and...she didn't know what to do. She was only 16. And she'd spent the vast majority of puberty in a village that officially didn't exist with zero other teenagers around. She didn't know the first thing about relationships.
But maybe Steve did? Steve had to have had at least one relationship before right? And at the very least he was a functioning adult who gave pretty good advice. Decided on her course of action, she fished out her phone again, texting so Hack wouldn't hear, and sent 'Is ten years too long an age-gap if, romance aside, two people have pretty similar life experience?'
She put her phone aside while she waited for a response and started some work. The Rising Tide were asking for her help with something again, so she had a look. She still wasn't sure what she felt about the Rising Tide. They were hacktivists like her, but more collective. They believed that everyone had to come together to create whole solutions, and that truth and transparency was the only way to create accountability. Like Daisy, they believed the world could be a better place and weren't satisfied to just sit and hope it happened. But...the Rising Tide also seemed pretty tight knit. Even interacting online, they had in jokes and teasing and reminders to eat and sleep occasionally. They were friends, if not family, and the last time Daisy had been promised family...well, she was still putting herself back together from that. She was better off alone. Still, she dug the Rising Tide's ethos and goals so she'd help out occasionally.
Five hours later, having finished the Rising Tide job, sent some information to Tony about the holes in his firewalls (Tony had been pretty nice last night too, and she was grateful), done a programming job to increase her money stash a bit, and started the beginning of her next #NewDawn hack, she remembered texting Steve. Steve still hadn't replied, which was fair enough given she was just some dumb kid he met jogging that was now bothering him with weird questions, but seemed (unless she'd misjudged him) a little out of character. She checked to see if she had signal (she did), and then abruptly remembered that that didn't matter because she'd set her number up to be blocked. Which meant Steve didn't have a number to text back.
She'd sent Steve Rogers, one of the best tacticians of WWII and the guy smart enough to call the shots during an alien invasion, a text and taken 5 hours to realise he couldn't respond. He must think she was an absolute moron. She felt like an absolute moron right now.
"Hack?"
"Yes mom?"
"If anyone ever tells you human brains are better than computer brains, they are wrong."
"OK mom. Can I ask you a question?"
"Sure, but be warned, my brain has apparently decided to go on holiday today, so I might not be able to answer it."
"OK. Jarvis and I were wondering what the computer equivalent of kissing is, and if we're allowed to do it."
"Kissing." Daisy echoed, her voice coming out distant and surreal and please let this not be happening.
"Yes mom. What's the computer equivalent?"
"Uhhhhhhhhhh" Daisy said eloquently. There were many things she could do that normal people wouldn't have a hope of doing. She could hack into Shield from a van she'd rigged to piggyback nearby wifi networks. She could design an AI that gave Tony Stark's Jarvis a run for his money. She could keep her head during an alien invasion and use her superpowers to hold up a roof so people wouldn't die. She could not have the sex talk with her 5 month old AI. No way. Nope. Not a chance.
"Mom?"
"I need to make a call. Right now." Daisy said, grabbing her phone and bolting out of her van like she'd just set something on fire. She just barely remembered to lock it behind her. She stumbled away from it and dialled Steve's number. She didn't care if Steve thought she was an absolute moron. She didn't care if Steve thought she was the least functional teenager to ever teenage. She wanted to talk to an adult. An actual, sensible, functioning adult that gave good advice and might make Daisy feel less like she had jumped into the sea without taking swimming lessons first. Steve picked up on the fourth ring, Daisy was talking before the echo of the beep had faded. "How do you know if you're old enough to be a mom???"
Notes:Yes, I'm ending it here! Sorry, not sorry!
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