Ice and Defenders: The New Age// Book 4 of the Frostbite Series

Suit Up

I finished putting on my suit and found joined Tony in his lab, he was putting a new AI into his suit now that JARVIS was no longer available. On a monitor screen was a 3D layout of his Iron Man suit, in the corner of the screen read the name FRIDAY. A woman's voice came from the screen. 

"Good evening, boss."

I sat down on the table next to him, watching as he was finishing up the programming. Tony looked up at me, smiled lightly, then went back to his work.

"You gonna miss JARVIS?" I asked.

"First he was my butler, then he was the power of my company," Tony replied. "I think it was smart to set him free." 

I nodded, then adjusted the blade handles on my belt. I tapped my boot, making sure that the skates were fully functional. Tony shut down the computer and turned to face me. 

"Your skates sharpened?" He asked.

"I came in here to see to that, actually," I answered. 

I took off the boots and handed them over to Tony. He set the skates down on the table and got up to get a box that sat under another table surrounded by other boxes. He brought the box back to the table, opened it and pulled out a red machine that had a circular blade sticking out of the side. 

"Thought that we may need to sharpen those skates at some point, so I bought this beast of a blade sharpener," Tony said. He pressed a button and a loud, high-pitched noise came from the machine and I covered my ears. Tony looked at me as he took a skate and pressed it to the spinning circular blade. "It's really loud!"

"No shit, Sherlock!" I shouted back. 

"Careful, Steve might hear you!" 

"Over that?!" I pointed at the machine.

"Maybe!" Tony shrugged and began sharpening the second skate.

When he finished, I reached over and pressed the button to turn the machine off and began to put the boots back on. Once they were fully on, I passed my finger lightly over the blade, the metal felt smooth and clean. 

"Better?" Tony began putting the machine back into the box.

"Should be, thank you," I nodded, tapping my heel. The blades retracted into my boot and I got off of the table. Tony sat down in his chair and looked up at me, he looked tired but hopeful.  "What did you see?" 

"Huh?" 

"Wanda showed everyone their greatest fears, what did you see?" I asked. 

Tony wiped his nose, looked down, then to the side. "I saw you, Steve, Bruce, Nat, everyone. Dead. But I was alive, and I couldn't save you all. What did you see?" 

I gave an ironic, pitiful smile. "Practically the same thing, but... I killed you all."

Tony stared at me for a moment before he glanced down. "You wouldn't do that." 

It was a blunt statement, but coming from Tony it meant a lot. 

"Is that why you created Ultron?" I asked. "To at least try to save us?" 

"Uh, yeah," Tony nodded. "I thought it would be a way to protect you all and the world from whatever is up there." He pointed his finger towards the sky.

"Up there...?" I repeated, not understanding what he meant.

"When I carried that nuke up into that wormhole, I saw space, and it was scary, what else is going to come out of there?" He looked back at me.