Cassie Lang sat at an operating table—no, it wasn’t an operating table.
Cassie Lang was sitting at a metal work desk in a makeshift, albeit impressive, lab that was in Vision’s (the actual Vision’s) basement.
As she looked at the scraps of Nate’s suit lying on the table, she knew what she was doing was stupid. Hell, every fiber of her more logical side was screaming out to tell her that this was stupid. But the more emotional side of her, the side that cried out when her father died, the one that decided to join Tony Stark’s stupid Resignation act, the one that still mourns her own death. That side told her to break open the armor and see if she could find anything, anything that was inside.
As selfish as it was, she wasn’t talking about Nate. That was a boy who deserved so much more of the world. Did Billy, Teddy and Eli even know how young he was? Did they understand how much of a tragedy he was? Did she herself understand?
It didn’t matter.
Nathaniel Richards would only ever get to be a boy she could love in another life. Maybe somewhere, sometime in the multiverse he would be loved by someone, but that’s not who she was here for. She was here for Jonas.
Her Jonas.
She saw bits and pieces of his interior inside that suit. An interior that she worked on hundreds of times in the short span of moments she got to love him. It made her feel like a child, she didn’t know how Nate got these pieces, but dammit she just wanted him back. It didn’t matter how insane she had to be to think that she could or how frustrating it was to be sitting in some basement doing tasks that at her core she knew meant nothing was. She just wanted him back.
It was like her father all over again. Except her father had a good life before he died, and you know came back. Neither of those things she suspected were true or could be true of Jonas.
He always wanted something more than what he was.Because what he was, wasn’t who he was. Sure, he had Vision’s powers, shape, and most people wouldn’t even know the difference between the two, but Cassie and Jonas knew. Jonas picked a new name because he knew he wasn’t the Vision.
Cassie promised him that one day, the two of them would rebuild him into what he wanted to be instead of just a shell of the Vision. They designed blueprints and everything of that version. The piece of paper with those designs sat neatly in the pocket of her Stature suit.
She thought that piece of paper had died with her that day.
But here she was, with the blueprints crumbled up and taped together in the pocket of her work jeans.
She saw the interior when she and Kristoff were cleaning up after their “date”. If he used pieces of Jonas in his suit, maybe that would mean that more of him could be in there. Maybe a hard drive.
She started with the chest of the suit earlier, nothing important was there, but now she knew that wasn’t the place to look. Where she needed to look was the head of the suit.
For something that seemed so easy to break in combat, peeling back the layers of Synthetic Alloy that the armor was made of took the longest. The worst part was seeing that the technology under those layers seemed like it was quickly cobbled together. Materials that were far before Cassie’s time and materials that seemed hundreds of years advanced just smashed together. She could have sworn she saw pieces of a fax machine in there.
No way she was going to be able to find anything in this mess of scrap metals.
She started disassembling everything. It didn’t matter, right? It wasn’t like Nate was ever going to be able to use this suit again and Jonas wasn’t going to use this either. She was going to build something that was better for him like she promised.
Gutting the helmet was, all things considered, simple enough. She was able to find more pieces of Jonas in there. Maybe Jonas was used as the suits internal operating system.
It would be nice to know what happened to him. After coming back no one was willing to tell her what exactly went down. Kate was the one to tell her that Eli quit, Billy had a mental breakdown, and that Tommy ran off. When she asked what happened with Nate, things got quiet.
Cassie wasn’t stupid. She knew that meant something happened. If Kate wasn’t willing to tell her, then fine. She went to Billy and Teddy; she was only able to get a bit more information from them. Jonas died in the same battle as herself in an argument with Nate. She tried to ask for more details.
“What parts of Jonas were given more damage?”
“How did the fight go down”?
“Why were they even fighting each other?”
She needed to know these things. She deserved to know what happened. But all she was met with was the blank face of dissociation Billy gave her and Teddy dragging her into another room to tell her to not do that.
“Listen, things were really bad after you died, and Billy wasn’t doing so good for a while.” Teddy had told her with a calm but exhausted voice. He didn’t seem like he was doing well either.
But Cassie hadn’t cared about that at the time. She was just tired of not being given a straight answer.
“Yeah Teddy, I know things were really bad after I died, I was the one who died!” Was what she chose to yell as she stormed out of the Kaplans’ apartment.
In retrospect she probably shouldn’t have done that, but that was a long time ago. Things had gotten better, certain members got mental help. Up until Teddy being forced to live his worst-case scenario,the Young Avengers were trying to meet up at least once a month and everyone seemed to be doing much better. Eli was happier, and Billy was a better version of himself: all the sarcasm and wittiness intact without the terrible teenage angst.
But still, no one was willing to give her an account of what happened to Jonas and frankly it pissed her off. It wasn’t fair that she wasn’t allowed to know, because what? Her friends couldn’t handle it.
What about all the time she spent running around trying to chase the woman who she thought murdered her dad, not out of revenge but because her friends thought that she might be their mother. Now that was a fucked-up scenario, and she didn’t even complain about it. She supported them until she died for it.
It wasn’t even like she was even using this information for any sort of emotional healing. She wanted this information so she could bring back Jonas. Someone that was all their friend. It was like they didn’t even care about him. Did they even care about him? Or was she the only one left who cared?
Cassie knew she needed to calm down, she had the Iron Lad armor right in front of her to worry about, but she was just so stressed and angry. She just wanted to roll up into a ball and cry. She wanted to strangle something, kick something, punch something.
Her head hit the ceiling.
“Cassie is everything alright down there?”, the Vision called out.
Shit, shit, shit
Cassie took a few deep breaths to calm herself down before shrinking down to her normal size and running to her bag to grab a shirt and pajama bottoms to change into. She barely had the shreds of her old clothes stuffed into her bag before guess who phased threw the door.
“Cassie, I felt the house shake is everything alright?”
When Cassie was younger and would spend one weekend a month at Avengers Mansion, Vision was someone that would scare her. As she grew older, she quickly learned that he was a kind friend. But after her death all she could feel when she saw the Vision was the certain uneasiness that stemmed from looking at the body of your dead boyfriend belonging to a different person. A person who was an adult man with a teenage daughter .
“Um, yea everything’s fine”
He looked skeptical but didn’t seem to question it as he made his way down the stairs.
“You’ve been down here for a while Cassie”
“What time is it?”
“Twelve A.M.”
Oh
“Oh”
Cassie looked over at the Iron Lad armor. “I’m sorry I didn’t think it was that late.”
“That’s alright Cassie, Viv isn’t home yet either”.
Viv must still be with the Champions, Cassie thought to herself. She should join a team again. Sure, she had gotten offers to join the Champions from Nadia Van Dyne and her father had tried to tell her it was a good idea, but something had held her back from going back.
Vision’s eyes followed hers towards the Iron Lad suit.
“Have you made any progress on your friend’s armor?”
No, she hadn’t.
“It’s a work in progress, I’m looking for familiar pieces”.
“Are you referring to pieces that could have been salvaged from my previous…”
“Yes”
Cassie had no clue as to why Vison was letting her use his lab. He should be at the very least uncomfortable with the thought of Jonas. The idea that after he died someone else was using his body should be uncomfortable to him. But Cassie had been asking for a lab to borrow, and Vision had pulled her aside and offered her his. The only rule was that she shouldn’t tell Viv about why exactly she was here. She had assumed it was because of what she heard about Vision’s late son and wife. If Cassie was trying to rebuild Jonas, why couldn’t Vision rebuild them?
Viv wouldn’t understand that it was more complicated than that. Vison probably didn’t think Cassie was going to get results from this. Maybe he just allowed her to use his lab out of curiosity? To piece together the time he lost while dead?
Visions looked at Cassie. “Does your father know you’re here Cassie?”
He didn’t, for all he knew Cassie was sleeping at Kate’s house.
“I texted him”
Did it even matter? Cassie was almost seventeen and being in a superheroes house felt as safe as you can get.
Vision nodded. “So, were you able to find any familiar material?”
Cassie went back to picking threw the suit’s helmet, “Not yet, it looks very tossed together”.
“May I have a look?”
It wasn’t like she could tell him no in his own household, Cassie reluctantly nodded.
Vision pulled up another chair and began examining the suit.
“You’re looking to rebuild the former Vision?”
“Yes”
“I’ve gathered that this Vision was created from using my remains and the brain waves of a young Nathaniel Richards?”
“Yes”
“Am I missing anything?”
God, Cassie couldn’t even begin to describe to Vision how much he was missing. How much she was missing. She wanted him back, she wanted everything back. She wanted to go back to a time when things were simpler, a time where she hadn’t died. Where her friends didn’t grow up without her.
“Cassie is everything alright?”
Cassie looked up at Vision and wiped her eyes. “Everything’s fine”, she got up from her chair and grabbed her bag.
“Listen I should go. Can I leave the suit here tonight then pick it up tomorrow?” Vision didn’t respond.
Cassie made her way to the stairs.
“Cassie, can I ask you a question?”. She stopped at the stairs and looked back at him.
“Who was he?”, Cassie didn’t know what to say. How do you describe such a short life that meant so much to you?
“I…his name was Jonas” Cassie assumed those words would suffice; it was more than most knew.
“I understand you we’re on the Avengers with him, were you two close?”
“Yea, he was my boyfriend”
Cassie sat down on the steps. Vision let her use his lab the least she can do is let him ask her a few questions. Even if she really didn’t want to.
“I didn’t know that Cassie”
No way he was gonna take that seriously. No adult in their right mind would see two fourteen-year old’s dating as real, to be fair adults were probably right on that one. But to Cassie that made it even worse, that she was only fourteen at the time when she came back from the dead to find that someone she loved was gone. No one seemed to understand how horrible of a feeling it was.
“I’m very sorry
“
“No don’t be, I’m fine”, She was fine until the minute she thought she had the slimmest chance of getting him back.
“Cassie, I understand what you’re going through, I lost my wife not too long ago”. That was different. Vision and his wife were adults, they had two kids together. Vision wasn’t a fourteen-year-old girl with a crush.
It didn’t even really matter what she felt. What mattered was that a boy died too soon, and he was a boy who wanted much more than he got.
“I get that but I’m fine, I just wanted to see if I could rebuild him”
“Cassie who was Jonas”
“Like I said he was the remnants of you combined with the brain waves of Nate”. That should be enough for him, those words were always enough for everyone else.
“I misspoke, I mean what was Jonas like?”
It was like a bomb was strapped to Cassie’s heart again.
“I don’t…”
Vision got up from the chair and sat next to Cassie. “It’s alright if you don’t want to say anything, I just thought it would make you…”
“No, no it’s fine. You should know. He was using your body after all.” Cassie straightened up and composed herself.
“Jonas was…”
Cassie sighed; Jonas never got to be anything.
“Jonas could have been so many things, but he didn’t get to be any of them. One moment he was full of wants for what he wanted to be and then the next he was just… gone”. At this point she couldn’t even stop it, Cassie was crying, and the worst part was it wasn’t even an angry cry for someone that was lost, just a weak whimper. “But no one can remember someone for what they wanted to be; Jonas will always just be you”.
She looked over at Vision, who was somehow quieter than usual. What Cassie had always known was obviously true: A robot can cry too.
“Vision I’m sorry I didn’t mean to upset you; l should just go”. Cassie reached for her bag as Vision calmly wiped his eyes.
“No Cassie, it's not your fault.” Vision quickly composed himself. “The way you described Jonas reminds me a lot of my own son".
For a second her brain went to Billy and Tommy, but she knew he didn’t mean them. He meant his third son; the one Cassie had only heard rumors about from other Avengers.
“I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories”, Vision shook his head.
“Don’t worry Cassie, I think of Vin a lot”. Vision looked down at Cassie. “There’s no worse grief than losing someone who wanted so much in life.
Cassie sighed. “Yeah, there isn’t”.
The two of them sat there in silence, not knowing what to do with the emotions they dealt with in the last few minutes.
Vision laid his synthetic hand on Cassie’s shoulder. “Cassie, I guarantee you that lots of people remember Jonas in many different ways than just being the Vision”.
Cassie wiped her eyes and smiled. “You really think so?”
“I know so”. Vision stood up. “Now it’s quite late and Vivian should be home any moment now. Would you like to stay for dinner?”
Cassie nodded, she should try to befriend Viv, Jonas would have liked her. “I would like that a lot, just do you mind if I make a quick phone call?”
“Of course”, Vision walked out of the basement leaving Cassie alone to pull out her phone and find a name in her contacts
“Yo, Cassie, what’s up!”Cassie breathed into the phone, how do you phrase this?
“Is everything alright?”, maybe not right now.
“Tommy, do you remember Jonas?”
“Jonas? Of course I remember Jonas”.
“Can you tell me everything you remember about him?”