The Hamptons' House

2006: Part 1

It had been another busy three years for you between leaving Tony's place in the Hamptons and driving up again in late May of 2006. You were technically still on maternity leave, as a year ago you had given birth to identical twin girls. Antonia and Jaimie were conceived almost a year and a half after you were last in Long Island. They had arrived a little early and for a while, they stayed in the NICU and you and Kurt had spent a lot of sleepless nights worrying about them when you had been sent home without them.

They'd come home in the end, safe and sound and you were still having the odd sleepless night when one woke the other and they both wouldn't go back to sleep.

Rhodey had been good to his word and visited you in DC. Not just once, but several times over the three years. He'd visited the house and met Brody a couple of times. You'd given him a tour of your museum and gone to see the air and space museum with him and let him explain everything to you in fine detail. He had even brought Tony along to see you in the hospital when the twins were born, marking the second ever time you'd seen Tony outside of the Hamptons and the first time out of Long Island.

Tony's life seemed to be continuing the same trajectory. His business was booming. His personal life seemed to be circling. The media always likes to talk about his party lifestyle and the women he was seen with (though none ever seemed to make repeat performances) like it was something to be envied and desired. You'd witnessed it in person and at each event Tony was criticized for his bad behavior or not showing up, you knew he'd been drinking too much and trying to numb the pain. There was an incident where he'd driven a Ferrari into someone's pool and when you'd called him to check on him, he'd assured you he was just fine and it was just a one-off accident that could have happened to anyone.

You were beginning to really worry about him, but that was all outside the house in the Hamptons. Here it was different. Here it didn't matter what your lives were like outside, you were here for each other.

You parked the car amongst all the others gathered in the drive. Your Ford Focus rental looked out of place in the sea of expensive sports cars. It reminded you of the old escort you'd drive in from the city sitting next to his Lamborghini Countach. You grabbed your bag and headed to the house.

Happy was standing at the door and his eyes lit up when he saw you. "I was starting to think you weren't coming."

"My flight kept getting delayed," you said as he let you pass. "How are you, Happy?"

"Oh, you know? Working security at a drunken orgy," he joked. "You need to know, Tony has installed a new system. There's a control panel on the wall, put your hand on it and look up."

"Okay?" you said, looking at him confused. You weren't sure how it could possibly have any kind of biometric reading of you when you'd never put it in the system.

"Trust me," Happy said.

You nodded and made your way into the house, heading straight to the kitchen. The only people there were the caterers. You weaved your way through them and found the blue touchpad by the secret door. You put your hand on it and looked up like you'd been instructed.

"Why hello," a disembodied male voice said. "I'm Mister Stark's AI, JARVIS. I was wondering when I'd get to meet you."

The door slid open and you went through, heading upstairs, slightly in shock at the level of intelligence the AI Tony installed had. You weren't exactly a tech person, but it seemed well over anything else you'd ever seen. "Jarvis?" you asked. "Like Tony's old butler?"

"Yes, miss," JARVIS replied. Shocking you slightly that not only was the AI able to follow you, and not only did it have some kind of facial or biometric recognition, but it also had the level of intelligence to hold a conversation. "Though Mister Stark did create an acronym to make it fit. JARVIS stands for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System."