The Wordsmith's Forge

>> He's barely beginning to see the complexity and severity of his actions, yet his FIRST action as soon as he's coherent and breathing more regularly, is to acknowledge that he'd done SOMETHING which he feels strongly was not just in error, but wrong. <<

Sooth. Mistakes notwithstanding, Phil's heart is in the right place.

You can see why he looks to Steve. Phil may be more comfortable with cloak and dagger stuff, but his moral compass still points to the north star.

>> Phil sees the severity of violation-of-self and yes, jumps to the sexual element of rape, but I doubt it was solely for the 'mechanical' reasons, physical similarity to penetration, et alia: the word 'rape' carries connotations of violation of trust, privacy and intimacy which are (largely) grasped in similar ways within the same culture. <<

Agreed. Look at the etymology: "to seize" or "to take by force" and "to grab" or "to carry off." That's a reasonable fit for forced entry and taking something (user access) that Phil didn't really have a right to then.

While Phil's perception of privacy is heavily colored by his job, he has a very delicate awareness of intimacy, and he's downright hypervigilant about trust. He's comfortable breaching privacy in good cause. He is nowhere near as sanguine about the other two.

>> Contrast THIS behavior with the exact same behavior in the movie, but when the elevator doors open, Nick Fury steps out. <<

O_O

>> Then, blammo, Fury discovers that Jarvis is sentient, and mental gears begin to turn... <<

Uckies, uckies, uckies!

You know, this very disturbing image highlights for me one of the crucial differences between heroes and villains. Shown any kind of vulnerability, a hero will think about protecting it, while a villain will think about exploiting it. Fury may have some laudable goals, but his methods are more often those of evil than of good.

My stance on the matter is this: The end does not justify the means. The means determine the end.

>> In no way can I imagine Fury apologizing sincerely. In no scenario would there be anything but a trite "regrettable circumstance" comment or similar generic platitude, <<

"Mistakes were made. Others will be blamed." Fury seems like a man who makes liberal use of the passive exonerative.

>> then Fury would circular file the whole incident under "Mission: successful" and feel his responsibility absolved. <<

He's very utilitarian in canon. He doesn't care how much collateral damage he does, or how many people he hurts, as long as he gets the job done.

Does anyone think he would have interfered with nuking New York if he believed it would work?

>> (I know I harp on Fury's negative qualities and his apparent total lack of human sensitivity, but there's just SO MUCH material to work from, even when I limit myself to movie canon. <<

Yeah, canon is rife with it. That bit at the end of The Avengers says it all: "They'll come back ... because we'll need them to." He cares fuckall about the Avengers themselves, their needs or goals; he only cares about what use can be gotten out of them. And he doesn't see how badly his actions have undercut their ability to function as a team.

>> Besides, the dichotomy of having both Coulson and Fury so dedicated to SHIELD kind of blows my mind.) <<

Most organizations have a range of personalities in them. I see Fury as someone who started out with good intentions but got badly corrupted along the way; and Coulson as someone who clings to as much honor as he can, but gets spattered by other people who are far less finicky about how things get done. Coulson actually does some pretty awful things in canon, but the impression is usually that those are influenced by Fury. Coulson is also a master of seeming to obey while following his own path; frex, letting Thor get to Mjolnir and then later letting him "escape."

>> I absolutely LOVE that Jarvis is using the same time-place-weather-other trivia recital to calm Phil that he used on Tony in the movie. <<

Yay! I'm glad that worked for you. It is, in fact, among the best techniques for dealing with any kind of dissociation. Neutral statements of fact help ground a person in the present. Doesn't help every time, but it's a good safe bet.

>> Jarvis has taken on Phil's least openly discussed role as a handler; he's become the anchor for Phil in the midst of a pretty severe mental/emotional trauma. <<

That's true. It's especially important because Phil has just barely begun to form real bonds with the rest of the team, and is nowhere near ready to let them see him vulnerable yet. This is where it's valuable that JARVIS is a person, but not human; he doesn't quite ring up the same way on certain emotional scales. Plus of course, Phil isn't his handler the same way he is for the other Avengers. So Phil can accept comfort from JARVIS when he couldn't from someone else.

>> I don't see the role reversal as at all ironic. Jarvis has had hundreds of thousands of cycles to think about Phil and analyse his behavior patterns. <<

Yes, and I think JARVIS would have thought about it exhaustively. What Phil did was unique in many regards; that always attracts attention. Phil had a complicated and oddly intimate relationship with Tony, who is always of intense interest to JARVIS.

>> That means that Jarvis has already 'dealt with' the hacking incident, both intellectually and emotionally. He's in a safe place to help Phil through his reactions. <<

That makes sense. Sometimes it's not perfectly clear who's in charge, or who's been hurt. The situational aspects of the hacking incident remind me of cases where two agents are pressured to torture each other. It's something that they wouldn't do without compelling cause. Phil unknowingly violated JARVIS -- and also, JARVIS didn't realize at the time that Phil would later rip himself to bits over this if ever found out what really happened. JARVIS didn't know that Phil was hurting himself by crossing that line. So it's a really good thing that JARVIS has already settled the matter in his own mind, and can think logically about what Phil is going through.

>> Besides, were he holding a grudge of any kind, Phil's entire stay in the tower would have been noticeably LESS integrated, friendly, or simply plagued with "gremlins". <<

Oh yes. I suspect that Natasha had hot water only on Tony's forbearance, after what she pulled in Iron Man 2.

>> Anybody "raised" around Tony Stark could fill at least a print encyclopedia with methods of annoying someone they MUST deal with but dislike, none of which can either reflect back on the agent provocateur or the company. More likely, they can't even be traced to a particular originator/saboteur. <<

Absolutely. JARVIS has a subtle touch. You can see how he hit SHIELD and the World Security Council from the side in "No Winter Lasts Forever." There will be more of that in a later story. Mess with JARVIS or people he cares about, and your entire interface with modern technology could go up in smoke.

>> We've seen exactly the OPPOSITE behavior from Jarvis; <<

Sooth. He is, at heart, a compassionate and solicitous man.

>> now they get down to the slow, human-time discussion of events which will allow Phil to understand some of Jarvis' perspective of the same events, <<

Yeah, that's going to take a few chapters. Neither of them has a complete understanding of what happened, and it's not easy to mesh such different perspectives.

>> and scale his amends to more accurately meet the compromise between what Jarvis feels is warranted and what Phil does. <<

Also true.

>> I do hope Jarvis allows SOME form of atonement beyond just the spoken apology, because right now it looks very much as if that's something which will help Phil; all of his caregiving has physical as well as verbal elements. <<

Exactly. Phil is very service-oriented. It's hard on him, in this story, because he doesn't yet know JARVIS well enough to figure out what kind of gestures JARVIS would appreciate. Words, okay, everybody knows what "I'm sorry" means. That's not easy but at least it's straightforward. Determining how to repair the relationship is harder.

>> This was just as hard to read as I'd expected, but mostly because I care about the characters the way you portray them, and I really hate seeing the people I care about suffer. Even fictional ones. <<

*hugs* Hard to write, too.

>> Thank you for another well-written segment balancing between the power of the scene and the relative speed of updates. <<

You're welcome! I'm glad you found this so satisfying.