Work Text:
Foreign. Integration completed. Proceeding with the next implant…
The idea was always thee, just near the surface of his consciousness, but never quite reaching… Well no, that was wrong. Never quite allowed to transcend from the realm of possibility and into “things-to-do”. It was something on the level altogether different from the things Tony normally indulged in – because, contrary to popular belief, his self-perseverance instinct was not gone. Simply… Put on hold when Tony felt he had no need of it (Like when he was test-driving the suit. Jarvis did not count). But this – this was different. Tony was an engineer, a programmer. Give him tech – and he will work wonders with it. But human body? That was the sphere the genius never concerned himself with (at least, not at any meaningful level. Nothing beyond what was required to keep the Ark working)
Yet… Call him all shades of crazy, but he was considering it.
Hundreds of hours of research – beginning with the basic human nervous system to the latest research in the sphere of prosthesis-making to metal-human body interactions… Everything, anything that could pertain – even in the briefest of ways – to turning one’s body into a living computer. Hundreds of theories. And none of them fit. So he made his own.
Once done, even more time was spent on adapting the rough plans to his own body, and combining the results into one, semi-workable scheme that was likely to leave him alive. Likely, but not 100% certain. Still, he worked with worse odds before.
And then? Well, that was hardly the end of it. What followed was going to make Tony cringe for years to come. One of the biggest hitches in the plan was finding someone to help him put the idea to practice. Not that any humans needed to be involved – the operations themselves could’ve been carried out by specially built machines, but… Tony understood well enough that not every machine was like his bots. Certainly none of them compared to Jarvis – who was all but human, and even then, the only thing that separated him from being deemed a living human being (by the society’s standards, at least) was his lack of blood-and-flesh body. But that was it. There was no one else like the AI, and he was not pulling him into this. So… A human he had to find. Someone to account for everything that could go wrong in a way almost no machine could. And boy, did he have to screen them – he was not overly eager to place himself into some maniac’s hands (and Tony knew exactly how many of the interviewed were, indeed, such. Or SHIELD plants. He was yet to decide which was worse. Keeping it all ‘hush-hush’ from their prying eyes was irritating as it is)
Oh yeah, and the operations themselves. He certainly had to get some of that stuff the good surgeon doped him up with. Half the surgery he was way too woozy to even think about anything, and the second he spent marvelling at the fact that his arm was cut wide open, bone and muscle exposed, and was being stuffed with those wires and little metallic details he made himself. Freaky as hell, but Tony couldn’t tear his eyes off, because whatever that was in that syringe, it was good. Very good. The only thing he felt was pressure, and, maybe, temperature change, because he remembered very well that the metal felt like ice as it was hooked up to the major nerves in his arm. And even if the details were fuzzy, Tony would always remember this as one of the most gruesomely-fascinating things he had ever seen (The magnet being implanted did not count: the pain made sure he remembered next to nothing of the actual process)
The pain came later, long after the surgeon left and slightly earlier than the drugs wore off. But now, looking at the bandage that covered the healing, metallic-bright plug-in port, Tony couldn’t bring himself to regret starting something so foolhardy.
One done, at least four more to go.
(Finished 02 October 2012. Headcanon based off: RP. Partner in question: Jarvis – as portrayed by @jar-vis)