Having someone behind you, it was uncomfortable. Even when that person was a friend, was family, was a perfectly known quantity, there was always going to be that lizard brain instinct that said watch out. Keep your eyes on the other person, because now your back’s unprotected and it would be so, so easy for something to go wrong where you can’t see it, behind where the hairs on the back of your neck were already standing up in anticipation of something nameless and instinctively awful.
Jarvis tried to clamp down on it but still ended up twisting around, watching Tony sag over the back of his chair like he needed something to keep him upright in the face of too much; not an excess of drink, not a sudden expenditure of energy, but the weight of a conversation he was forcing himself to participate in instead of blowing off. Jarvis knew it would’ve been easier for both (for either) to walk away and ignore this, but that would be prolonging the inevitable.
Though, the inevitable what was the question.
“They,” Jarvis persisted, following Tony’s original assertion. “They have them, but you designed them. You designed them, you have access to them, and there’s nothing to say you couldn’t take action.” He didn’t want that, not right away, but it was a viable option and angle to explore. Those were Tony’s weapons, by and large. He knew every piece inside and out, and that was an advantage that stood to be explored. Or, at least acknowledged, because this was treason and war and self-destruction, and if he was going to have this discussion, he was going to put it all out there. Doing less would be backing down again, and Jarvis had spent his whole life doing that already. It hadn’t exactly gotten him far.
Reaching up but not even coming close to making contact, he splayed a hand in the direction of Tony’s chest, guarded by the back of the chair and slumped posture alike. “You’re dying whether we do anything or not. I don’t want that. I hate it.” They didn’t talk about it. Tony’s health, the medicine that was nothing but leverage and prolonged misery, it was nothing they discussed no matter how bad it got, and sometimes it was bad in ways that left Jarvis panicky and horrified and unable to do a single thing to actually help the one person in the world he cared about. “It could go on for years or it could stop on a whim, and at least this is taking action instead of dying by inches, always waiting for the next blow.” If they were dead either way, and they could be, Jarvis wanted to try. That decision had already been made, obvious in the way he’d straightened, eyes fixed and steady on Tony’s face, the line of his mouth firm in spite of how that ridiculous part of his hindbrain was still insisting on gibbering in fear.