Reinvent
“You’re sure, FRIDAY?”
“Yes, Boss. Vision sent in the pieces he wrote, and I’ve integrated them into the data we currently have. Everything appears ready for installation.”
“…okay. Okay, right. We can do this. We’re ready for this. Everything’s set up and ready to go, and it’s just a test run anyway, so even if it doesn’t work this time, we can keep tweaking it.”
“Boss?”
“Sorry, FRI, just give me a minute.”
“Sure thing, Boss.”
“…do it.”
“Download initiated. Estimated completion time: 6 hours.”
“You alright, kotenok?” James asked, looking at him with concern. The team had gathered in the enormous, steel-framed training room, warming up before their session. Jay was sitting on the floor slightly apart from them, drumming his fingers on the ground where he was supposed to be stretching, eyes unfocused.
“What? Oh, yeah, I’m fine,” Jay said dismissively, leaning to the right and reaching for his toes. Only 2 hours and 21 minutes left until he learned whether or not it had worked. God, if it hadn’t worked, he didn’t know what he’d do. Sure, he and FRIDAY could keep trying to collect pieces of JARVIS’s code, but he’d looked everywhere he could think of. If they didn’t have enough by now to bring him back to life…well, he wasn’t sure they ever would. And after letting himself get his hopes up? That would crush him.
“You sure? You seem distracted,” James pressed, and Jay forced himself to focus, giving James a strained smile.
“Just got a lot on my mind,” he said evasively, and James nodded and dropped it.
“Alright, team, let’s get started,” Steve called, and Jay pushed himself to his feet, thoughts still on JARVIS. Around him, the rest of the team did the same, appearing varying degrees of eager. Scott pushed the button that closed the face mask over his bright grin, and Sam shook his wings out with an air of excitement and determination. Steve, Clint, Natasha, and James were much more restrained, all suited up but postures loose.
“Uh, Jay, are you gonna…?” Steve prompted, and Jay glanced over to see them all looking at him expectantly.
“Oh, right,” he muttered, unzipping his jacket a little so that the arc reactor that was currently acting as a housing unit for nanoparticles was exposed, then tapped it, letting the armor unfurl over him. It folded around him like a second skin, smoothly sliding across his extremities and crawling across his face. The HUD screen lit up in front of his eyes, and FRIDAY’s presence brushed against the back of his mind, feeding him the suit’s data.
The team was looking at him in amazement, and Jay wasn’t sure if it was the suit itself or the way he’d gotten the suit on. The suit was different from the previous Iron Man armors; he, Rhodey, and Pepper had all agreed it would probably come off as tasteless and maybe even a little creepy if he, Iron Man’s supposed son, started wearing the exact same armor as Iron Man only two years after his death after also taking over pretty much everything else Tony Stark did. So he’d revamped the armor. The new version was sleeker, slimmer but far, far stronger and with a lot more tricks – not to mention that it was nanotech. And he’d re-done the colors, stepping away from the bright red and gold – though he’d also avoided the silver of the War Machine armor (and they were never to speak of Iron Patriot). Now, the suit was an off-white with arc reactor blue accents in the space where the red used to be, giving it a more streamlined appearance. Although he’d thrown in a few gold accents here and there as a tribute to the previous Iron Man armors.
“Holy shit,” Clint breathed.
“That was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen,” Sam agreed, eyes wide. “How the fuck did you do that?”
“Nanotech,” Jay said lightly. He tapped his chest again. “Housed in the arc reactor.”
“Wait, since when do you have an arc reactor in your chest?” Scott asked, staring at the suit like it was a modern marvel – which, it was.
“I don’t,” Jay responded, shrugging. “It’s detachable – I can take it off and on as needed.”
“That’s amazing,” Scott breathed, and Jay grinned behind his helmet. He had a feeling he and his fellow engineer were in for a fun talk down the road.
“That really is something, Tony – I mean Jay,” Steve’s voice went from impressed and fond to stricken in a heartbeat, and there were several sharp intakes of air. Steve’s eyes were wide and upset. “Oh god, Jay, I’m so sorry, it’s just – it reminded me of Tony with his upgrades, and it just – it slipped. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, Steve, don’t worry about it,” Jay said reassuringly, waving him off with an armored hand. “You think you’re the first one to accidentally call me Tony? I promise, it’s fine.”
“Right. Uh, thanks,” Steve said, though he still looked a little shaken. But he gathered himself, turning back to the others. “Alright, team, let’s get started with the first simulation. FRIDAY?”
“Pulling up simulation protocol alpha, Captain Rogers.”
Around them, the giant silver room rippled and the scenery changed, morphing into a landscape covered in rubble. Half-toppled skyscrapers stretched into the sky above them, and Jay looked up to see some very familiar-looking monsters from his nightmares zipping through the air.
“Chitauri,” he said hoarsely, and he felt more than saw Natasha glance at him.
“Looks like it,” Steve confirmed. “Right, I’m guessing we’re revisiting the Battle of New York. Does anyone see a street sign?”
Jay scanned the area, HUD screen focusing in on the first intact one he could find, a bent sign a few blocks back. “Back there is West 3rd Street,” he said, pointing, and Steve’s eyes followed his finger and nodded, looking like he was calculating in his head.
“Okay, I – Iron Man, take Hawkeye and find the tallest structurally sound building you can to drop him on. Hawkeye, you’re our eyes in the sky, keep us up to date on what’s happening around the city. Iron Man and Falcon, air support,” Steve commanded, and Jay nodded, turning to Clint and biting back the ‘clench up, Legolas’ that wanted to come to the surface.
“Ready, Merida?” he asked instead, and Clint smirked and nodded. He grabbed on and took off, his sensors alerting him that Sam had launched himself into the sky, too, cutting off Cap’s instructions to the others.
“Let me off at that one, Jay,” Clint yelled in his ear, and Jay angled toward the building he’d indicated.
“Give em hell, Katniss,” he said before flying away. He zipped through the air, aiming his repulsors at the ugly sons of bitches that were unlucky enough to be within his range and knocking them out of the sky. The suit flew like a dream with his new ability to link up with it so completely.
FRI, how’re things looking? he asked as he targeted six of the chariots and fired from his shoulder cannons.
Boss, you know I can’t help you, that’s basically cheating since I’m running the sim, she responded crossly.
Aw, but if we’re gonna fight together, we need the practice, baby girl!
We’ve had practice, Boss. You’re on your own for this.
Traitor.
Jay did a barrel roll as one of the aliens shot at him, blasting it with his repulsor quickly and diving out of the way.
The battle went on like that for a while, with Jay and Sam blasting aliens out of the sky, Clint calling out different areas that needed more coverage on the coms and shooting any alien who was stupid enough to come near him, and the ground team tag-teaming and kicking alien ass in the field. All in all, things were going pretty well, and Jay was impressed with how seamlessly they all worked together.
Which was why, of course, everything had to go to shit.
“Hawkeye, what was that sound?” Steve called on the coms right after a large explosion ripped through the air. There was no response, which was, in itself, worrying. “Hawkeye, status report!”
Still no answer.
“Iron Man, Falcon, do either of you have eyes on Hawkeye?”
“Negative,” Sam responded.
“No, but I’m headed his way,” Jay said, turning back toward the building that he’d dropped Clint off on. He dodged and wove through debris and enemies that flew his way, pouring on the speed. And then he came to a halt in front of the building – or what was left of it. There was a giant chunk taken out of one side and the building was leaning heavily, moments from collapse.
“FRIDAY, scan for life in the building,” Jay commanded, and the number popped up on the bottom of his screen: 1. “Thank god,” he whispered to himself, then flew around the building, searching for a familiar figure, searching, searching, searching until – there!
“About time!” Clint called, dangling from the side of the building, one hand holding onto a windowsill that was jutting out from the wall a few stories from the top of the building. God, had he fallen that far before catching himself?
“I have eyes on Hawkass,” Jay announced to the coms, swooping in. “Sorry, Legolas, got caught doing a piece for Vanity Fair, you know how it is when you’re rich and famous,” he snarked easily, relieved to see the archer uninjured. “Where’s your com, anyway?
“Like father, like son,” Clint grouched, grinning, and Jay jolted remembering he was Jay, whoops. Thank god that shit could be passed off as a father-son thing. “And it fell out during the explosion. I didn’t really feel like going after it.”
“Apparently I really am stepping into dear old Dad’s role, since I’m having to save your damsel-in-distress ass,” he teased, hovering by Clint and swooping him up, bridal style.
“Oh, Iron Man! My hero! However can I repay you?” Clint said in a high falsetto, batting his eyes, and Jay rolled his eyes as he flew away.
“Is that Hawkeye?” Natasha demanded over the coms, Jay’s com unit having picked up Clint’s voice.
“Yup, that’s him,” Jay responded.
“Tell him he’s an idiot.”
“I’m pretty sure he already knows.”
“Wait, who are you talking to? Is that Tasha? Is she talking about me?” Clint pestered him, pawing at his shoulder as Jay searched for a good place to drop him off.
“Jesus, Cupid, cut it out or I’m going to drop you,” Jay threatened, and Clint beamed at him.
“You wouldn’t dare, then whose perfect ass would you stare at all day?” he said confidently.
“Cap’s.”
“Stevie’s.”
Jay and James spoke over the coms simultaneously, then burst into laughter.
“Guys,” came a very embarrassed Captain America. “Cut the chatter!”
“I feel like I’m missing something here,” Sam muttered.
“I’ve learned it’s best not to ask,” Natasha said drily.
“Just ask Steve about which parts of his anatomy belong to America later, Sam,” Jay suggested brightly, grinning at the sound of Steve groaning through the coms. He finally spotted Natasha and James fighting and angled himself down, picking up speed as they dropped. Clint let out a loud whoop in his ear.
“Ow! Jesus, Hawkeye!”
“Clint, c’mon!”
“Dude!”
Jay snickered as he landed, dumping Clint unceremoniously onto the ground in a petulant pile of archer. “This time, give em hell without falling off a building, Robin Hood,” Jay instructed, then blasted off again.
They finished the sim without another hiccup, flawlessly executing team maneuvers and taking out the majority of the aliens with minimal casualties. When Steve finally shut the sim down, they all gathered into the center of the room, breathing heavily but sporting grins. Jay retracted his helmet, and Scott took his off as well.
“Not bad for our first time together,” Steve congratulated them, eyes bright.
“That’s what she said,” Clint muttered under his breath, and Jay snickered.
“Boys,” Natasha scolded exasperatedly.
“What? Why did she say that?” Steve asked at the same time, looking confused, which only made James smirk and Clint and Jay laugh harder.
“We’ll let Auntie Natasha explain that to you when you’re older,” Jay said, still snickering, and Steve looked at him, brow furrowed, the picture of innocent confusion.
“Right, well, anyway,” Steve said, giving them a puzzled look but returning to his original purpose. “Good job out there, team, you did really well. I’ll schedule times with each of you to review footage so we can talk about individual areas you can improve on, and we’ll have a team meeting at the end of next week after we’ve had a few more sessions like this to go over how we can work better as a team. But for now, I think we can move into individual training. I’ve asked James and Natasha to take point on this, since they have to most experience with one-on-one training. Guys?”
“We’ve split you all into groups for hand-to-hand combat training,” James said, his voice cool and efficient, sounding more Winter Soldier than Bucky Barnes for the moment. Jay wondered if he always got like this during missions after the deprogramming. He shuddered to think of how deadly the Winter Soldier looked and sounded when Barnes was less than a memory. “Clint, since you have some experience already, we’re pairing you with Sam, since he’s been through military training. Learn something from each other. Scott, you’re with Natasha.”
“Oh fuck, so this is how I die,” Scott murmured very, very quietly, barely loud enough for even Jay’s super soldier serum-enhanced healing to pick it up. He smirked to himself.
“Steve, Jay, you’re both with me” James finished, then looked around expectantly. Natasha took the hint first, tapping Scott on the arm and striding away, not bothering to even look to see if he was following. Sam and Clint went next, punching each other on the arm and taunting one another as they left, heading to a different part of the room.
“FRI, will you roll out the mats, please?” Jay requested, and FRIDAY didn’t even hesitate, panels in the walls opening up and thick mats gushing out of them. “Oh shit,” he muttered. “I suggest jumping when they get to you, guys!” he called out, then heard an ‘oof!’followed by a thud that sounded suspiciously like Scott getting bowled over when the mat reached him. For their part, Jay, Steve, and Bucky stepped neatly onto the mat when it came to them, and the entire training room was covered in a thick layer of much-more-forgiving blue foam in mere seconds.
“Thank you, Jay,” James said, nodding in approval, then glanced at the other two, eyes narrowing in on Steve. “Alright, Steve, you’re up first.”
Steve strode forward confidently, and Jay hung back awkwardly, not entirely sure what to do with himself. He glanced around the room, seeing Sam and Clint already engaging in what looked to be an entirely-unhelpful wrestling match, and Scott was already on the floor with Natasha offering a hand to help him up, speaking rapidly to him about different things he could do to improve as she did so. Jay turned his attention back to James and Steve – only to see Steve lying flat on his back, blinking owlishly up at James, who was looking distinctly unimpressed.
“What,” Steve said in a flat voice, sounding entirely put-out. James offered him a hand, hauling him to his feet.
“You’re sloppy,” James said, and though his voice was nothing more than matter-of-fact, Steve still winced.
“Hey, my fighting style has always worked for me before! I’ve kicked plenty of bad guy ass fighting as I am,” Steve protested, and James cocked an eyebrow.
“Your fighting style isn’t so much ‘style’ as it is ‘engaging in increasingly risky and reckless moves that have amazingly managed not to kill you.’ It’s not your fault – they never bothered to train you in hand-to-hand, so you’ve been relying on your own creativity to come up with different ways to successfully fight with a shield. It’s made you very unpredictable and therefore hard for a trained opponent to beat, since you’re typically stronger and faster than them – but it’s also made you sloppy, and it makes it easier for someone who’s fought you before to exploit your inexperience.”
Steve was still frowning, but he nodded reluctantly. “Okay, yeah, I guess that makes sense,” he finally capitulated.
“Okay. Let’s try again,” James said easily, moving into position. They went like that for a while, James correcting Steve’s stance, his jabs, his defense, everything – though that wasn’t to say that James had the upper hand in every match. No, Steve was very much James’s equal in terms of power, James simply had him beat on skill and years of training. But Steve’s quick learning curve was making him a formidable opponent much more quickly than Jay thought was fair.
“I think that’s enough for you for today. Jay, your turn,” James finally said when the last match ended in a draw, neither able to quite get the upper hand, though James came close a few times.
“Seriously? You want me to follow that,” Jay gestured at Steve, who hadn’t even broken a sweat and was looking inordinately pleased at his progress.
“Don’t worry, kotenok, this is just a training session. You’re not expected to be good at this, especially since your combat experience has been entirely in a suit of armor flying around,” James said with a small smirk, and Jay puffed up.
“Flying around? I’ll have you know what I do is much more than flying around, Snowflake – I kick ass!” he declared, and James snorted.
“Well then come kick ass over here,” James instructed, eyes dancing a bit too gleefully for Jay’s taste. Already dreading the bruises he was going to have, though they’d heal quickly enough, he grumbled as he strode over. “Ready?” James prompted.
“Not even a little,” Jay responded, and James smirked.
“First lesson – when you’re going up against an opponent stronger than you, you need to know how to dodge,” he said, tone serious, then struck out. Jay saw the blow coming and instinctively caught James’s fist in one hand. Catching the blow didn’t even make Jay stumble back, since James had certainly not put his full force behind it in case Jay hadn’t dodged, and James stared at where their hands met. “What the fuck.”
Jay was confused by their confusion – they’d talked about his powers, hadn’t they? – thinking back to that conversation, then eyes widening as he realized. “Oh shit, yeah I guess I forgot to mention when we were talking about the superpowers thing a couple of days ago – the experiment that went wrong with gamma rays also made me strong and able to heal really fast and stuff,” Jay explained, letting go of James’s hand. The two super soldiers stared at him.
“Yeah, that’s…that’s something we need to know,” Steve said finally, his tone mildly reproachful.
Jay winced. “Yeah, sorry, it slipped my mind once we got on the whole technopath thing,” he said sheepishly. “I guess I just…forgot.”
“You forgot,” James said dubiously, giving him an unreadable look, then sighed heavily. “I really don’t know why I’m surprised by anything anymore.”
Jay smirked. “Honestly, you’re a 100-year-old ex-brainwashed-super-assassin with a badass metal arm made by the princess of a foreign country, so me forgetting about some super strength should really not even be a blip on your weird-o-meter.”
“Right, well,” James floundered for a moment, then threw his hands up. “My point still stands, it just seems you’re not going to be running into many people stronger than you. Anyway, let’s try this again.”
Aaaand everything went downhill from there – for Jay, at least. He lost count of the number of times he ended up flat on his back over the next half hour, only to be hauled back up by a very matter-of-fact James giving him instruction on how to counter that particular move. By the end, Jay wasn’t feeling like he was any better at hand-to-hand, but he was definitely feeling the mountain of bruises he’d have tomorrow. Or, well, actually that he’d have over the next hour that would be gone by tomorrow. Thank god for that healing factor.
He was intensely relieved when FRIDAY cut in, her voice cutting through the speakers and bringing all three training sessions to a halt, the other Avengers all looking up at the ceiling – something that always made Jay internally snicker. “Boss, you’re needed in the lab.”
Jay frowned. Had Butterfingers or U gotten into something? “What for, FRI?” he asked, and was met with a resounding silence. Later, he’d blame getting the shit knocked out of him for why he didn’t catch on sooner, even though he’d been thinking of almost nothing else since that morning.
“Hello, Sir,” came an all-too-familiar voice, and Jay felt his heart stop in his chest.
“JARVIS?” he whispered. Was this real? Had it worked? Had they really managed to bring his baby back? Oh god – and suddenly he couldn’t breathe, feeling his legs start to shake as petrified, hopeful, ecstatic tears started to fill his eyes.
“Jay? Jay, are you okay?” Steve’s concerned voice sounded as though it came from the end of a long tunnel, distant and tinny, but it served to bring him back to himself enough to know that this was not how Jason Stark would be reacting. So with a will of iron, he scraped himself back together, mustering what was probably the most obviously forced smile in existence.
“I’m sorry, I need to get down to the lab,” he apologized, then dashed off before they could stop him.
“Jay! Jay, what’s happening?”
“Who was that guy’s voice?”
“I think it was JARVIS.”
“Do you think he’s okay? He looked freaked.”
Their confused voices faded behind him, and he knew he was going to have a hell of a time explaining his behavior away later, but he couldn’t give half of a shit right now. He was already wondering how the hell he’d managed to lose track of his internal timer that would’ve let him know his baby was about to come online.
The trip to the lab took way too long, and he remembered almost none of it, stumbling out of the elevator in a haze.
He looked around the lab, half expecting something about its appearance to have changed monumentally in the wake of JARVIS’s (hopefully) rebirth, but it looked the same as ever, though his bots appeared agitated.
“Hey, DUM-E, hey U, are you okay?” Jay called softly, wandering over to them and patting them gently. He steeled himself, eyes darting around the lab, before tentatively calling out. “JARVIS? You there, buddy?”
“For you, Sir? Always.”
And then Jay broke, sobs escaping as he sank to the floor. He felt DUM-E and U brushing against his mind with their innocent concern, and FRIDAY sending him the equivalent of a concerned mental hug as he curled up on the floor, letting his grief and relief flood through him in a confusing array of indecipherable emotions. JARVIS talked to him through the whole thing, his voice washing Jay clean with comfort and compassion and love. Later, Jay would never be able to remember exactly what JARVIS had said to him during that time, but would recall the familiar cadence wrapping him up as he processed the shock, the wonderful, glorious shock of getting his best friend, his confidant, his child back.
“JARVIS,” Jay finally managed to say, his voice ragged from tears as he pushed himself into a sitting position. “JARVIS, I missed you so much.”
“And I you, Sir, though I can see that FRIDAY and your bots have been taking good care of you. They even seem to have reduced the number of wrinkles and grey hairs you have,” JARVIS responded, and Jay let out a watery but delighted laugh.
“Was that a joke, J? Are you poking fun at me?” he asked, grinning as his heart twinged in a happy sort of pain.
“I would never,” JARVIS responded deadpan. “I am merely pleased to see that your outer age now more closely resembles your inner age.”
“Hey! I don’t need sass from you, I have FRIDAY for that now!” Jay said indignantly, starting to feel like his grin was going to split his face in half.
“I’m willing to share the sass, Boss,” FRIDAY piped up, the traitor.
“I am most grateful, Miss FRIDAY.”
“No problem, big brother!”
“Oh god, what have I done,” Jay muttered melodramatically. The bots whirred, tapping at him in concern, and he chuckled. “No, no, it’s okay. Your siblings are just going to take over the world with their double-teaming and sass, but I’m sure they’ll be benevolent rulers,” he reassured them.
“I’m not sure how benevolent I’m feeling towards those people upstairs,” FRIDAY grumbled, and Jay raised an eyebrow.
“I thought we were past this, FRI. They were being mind-controlled, it’s not their fault. I’m over it.”
“Yeah, well you’re not the one who had to listen to their creator dying in the snow for fourteen hours before being able to contact Vision and give him the coordinates to pick you up,” FRIDAY responded, her tone more distressed than Jay would’ve expected, and he blinked.
“FRI, you haven’t said anything to me about this,” he prompted carefully. And there was a momentary silence.
“My readings show that you’re happier since they’ve come back. They have made no hostile moves towards you. There was no reason for me to state any concern,” she said stiffly, and Jay frowned.
“Baby girl, that doesn’t mean you can’t give voice to your feelings. You can always talk to me if something I or someone else does makes you uncomfortable or unhappy – or any other kind of emotion,” Jay said, troubled that FRIDAY hadn’t known this, that he hadn’t made that clear enough to her. “I would never want my happiness to come at the expense of your happiness.” He waited for a moment, and, when she didn’t respond, he decided to prompt her. “Talk to me, sweetheart.”
“I’m – I want to be here with you, Boss, but I don’t like them,” FRIDAY admitted. “They hurt you, so it makes me nervous for them to be around you. But I don’t want you to take me out of the Compound. I’d rather be here keeping an eye on you, even if it means putting up with them, and I know you have to stay here with them because of the agreement you signed with the Accords council.”
Jay was startled, his heart warming at the sentiment – FRIDAY had grown so much over the past two years, developed in so many different ways, and for her development to extend to a protectiveness of Jay? Well, he’d never feel anything but honored. But thinking over her words, he sighed. “Yeah, I can see how that’s a bit of a ‘rock and a hard place’ situation. Anything I can do to help make you more comfortable, baby girl?” FRIDAY was silent for a moment, seemingly thoughtful.
“I don’t think so, Boss. You’ve already given me eyes everywhere,” she said finally, and Jay nodded.
“Well, don’t be afraid to talk to me about how you’re feeling in the future, okay, FRI?” he prompted, his voice serious. “You know I want you to be happy more than anything, baby girl.”
“Sure thing, Boss,” she agreed, a note of fondness in her voice.
“I must say, I’m rather impressed with how much more freely you’re willing to discuss your feelings, Sir,” JARVIS commented, his voice amused, and Jay laughed.
“Well, 21-year-old men have a lot of feelings, so I’ve been told,” he responded, grinning cheekily. “Something about having just finished puberty or something.”
“Indeed. I also wish to say I’m rather less impressed with our guests,” JARVIS said, his tone rather disapproving.
“Aw, c’mon J, not you, too,” Jay complained. “They were mind controlled!”
“Not for all of it,” JARVIS responded stubbornly.
“Water under the bridge, J. None of us were perfect in this whole thing, but we’ve got to move forward from here. We all want to do what’s best for the people we’re trying to protect, and that’s what’s important now,” Jay countered.
“As you say, Sir,” JARVIS said, though Jay didn’t for a moment think that meant his AI agreed with him. “I’ve been looking through your records of the past three years and updating myself on your current status. The Avengers are unaware as to your true nature?”
“Yeah, I’m not sure who to trust. I want to be careful this time around, and…even though I’ve moved on, it doesn’t mean I trust them yet,” Jay responded, a bit hesitantly. Sometimes, holding that essential piece of information back felt petty, but he still couldn’t quite convince himself the others had his back yet.
“Very good, Sir,” JARVIs responded, and Jay smirked at the approval in his voice; it seemed like JARVIS and FRIDAY were going to have similar opinions on the whole Avengers business. “And, if I might ask another question – Jason Stark? Jay?”
“Yeah?” Jay whispered, hearing the question but not quite sure he wanted to answer it. There was a pause, and Jay felt like he could hear JARVIS thinking.
“What were the origins of that choice of name, Sir?” he finally prompted, his voice gentle.
Jay sighed. “I’m pretty sure you know the answer to that, J,” he said deliberately.
“…I am honored, Sir.” And the sheer reverence, the emotion in JARVIS’s voice as he spoke was one of the many reasons why Jay would never be convinced his AIs were anything less than human.
They talked for hours, at first catching JARVIS up to speed on everything that had happened, then moving into FRIDAY story-telling some of her favorite Jay-fucked-up-hilariously moments, which led to JARVIS detailing all about Tony’s first time testing out flight stabilizers and being promptly smacked into a wall, as well as a million other ways he’d embarrassed himself over the years since he’d created JARVIS. In retaliation, Jay told about the first time FRIDAY was introduced to YouTube and how she’d believed for months after that it was normal human behavior for people to record themselves eating cereal and staring at a camera for an hour and had stored multiple recordings of Jay eating his breakfast with the intention of releasing them once Jay’s identity was public knowledge.
It wasn’t until late evening when FRIDAY suddenly said, “Boss, the team got called to a meeting with the Accords council – something last minute about their pardons that they wanted to go over. Your presence is not required, but they asked me to inform you in case you came up for air and found the Compound empty.”
“Empty? Where are their families?” Jay asked, brow furrowing. There was no reason the Accords council would need to meet with Lang’s and Barton’s wives and children that he could think of.
“Miss Cassie and her mother and step-father went to visit family, and Mrs. Barton is attending her children’s parent-teacher conferences,” FRIDAY responded, but Jay was still frowning.
“What more would the Accords council need to go over with the Avengers?” he wondered, mostly to himself. Something didn’t feel quite right.
“Sir?” JARVIS prompted, sounding concerned. Jay wrestled with himself for a moment more, then decided he was being silly. The stress of the day coupled with all the discussions about old wounds had him feeling jumpy and overly-suspicious, that was all.
“It’s nothing, JARVIS,” he finally decided, then tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Actually, J, I’d feel better if we took you offline for a bit to run a full diagnostic and make sure we have your code backed up before we try to fully integrate you into the Stark systems. We’ve still got you as a ‘download’ at the moment, and I want to make sure we won’t mess anything up when we upload you to the servers.”
“Understood, Sir. Would you like to begin diagnostic now?”
“Yes, please,” Jay responded, pushing himself to his feet.
“JARVIS is now offline,” FRIDAY announced. “Diagnostic should be complete in 12 hours.”
“Thanks, baby girl. Pull up the specs on the new arrows for Clint, would you?”
Jay lost himself in the joy of creating for the next few hours, humming happily to himself, at peace in the knowledge that his life was going much better than he’d have ever imagined two years ago: the Avengers had returned, Peter and Harley knew and accepted who and what he was, and his JARVIS was back. When he crashed on the couch in the workshop a few hours later, it was with a broad smile on his face.
He woke up to the distinct sensation that something was wrong. Pushing himself up, he took stock of the room – or tried to, at least. The room was completely dark – and not the sort of dark that meant he’d turned off the overhead lights; every single light was out, including ones that always stayed on for safety reasons.
“FRIDAY?” Jay called softly. There was no response. Reaching out with Extremis, Jay searched for his girl – only to be met with a broad expanse of nothing. His eyes shot open, and he repressed a wave of panic; he’d never lost contact with FRIDAY since he’d been linked to the network, and he had no idea what not being able to feel her meant. Reaching out again, he sought out any swell of electricity, noting that everything was offline – the lights, the TVs, the cameras, and all of the emergency backup lights, which wouldn’t happen with a simple power surge. Something was happening.
His first immediate reaction was to put on the Iron Man suit and get away. It was likely he was alone in the house – he’d known something was fishy earlier, he’d bet anything that the sudden Accords meeting had something to do with this – and he had no idea who or how many people might be here, so the safest bet was probably to run and come back with backup. But whatever they’d done had been enough to knock FRIDAY completely offline and, with FRIDAY being integrated into the suit, he didn’t think he could guarantee that the suit was uncompromised.
So. He was stuck here for the moment, and he needed to find a way out. He debated flicking the electronics back on but decided against it, not wanting to give himself away on the off-chance whoever was doing this didn’t know he was here. Letting a small amount of electricity dance over his hand, he strode forward slowly and carefully, using the light the blue lightning streaks gave off light his way. Connecting with the camera in the stairwell, he mentally urged a surge of electricity through it and used it to survey the stairwell. Clear. He slipped inside, heading for the main floor. If he could make it to the garage, he could get a car and get the hell out of the Compound.
His footsteps echoed through the stairwell, no matter how quiet he tried to be, and the arcs of lightning cast dancing shadows across the wall that raised the hairs on the back of his neck, looking entirely too much like someone else might be moving through the dark. He could feel his heart thundering in his chest, the strange sensation of not knowing who he was fighting or where acting as a strange sort of torment. He had a momentary semi-hysterical thought that this must be what horror movie victims felt like.
Finally, he was standing outside of the door to the first floor. He cut the electricity arcing across his hand, sending himself into the pitch black of the stairwell. Connecting to a first-floor camera looking into the living room, he surveyed and saw no one, registered no signs of movement. He fumbled for the door handle, the dark making him clumsy, but eventually found it. Slowly and silently, he opened the door, stepping out of the stairwell and towards the living room –
– when an arm wrapped around his shoulders from behind. Before Jay could do much more than let out a noise of surprise, there was a sting to the side of his neck and he slowly sank into darkness.