Recover
“Sir, I’d like to reiterate my earlier advice to take a break and get some food and some sleep. You have been awake for 47 hours straight and your last meal was 49 hours ago.”
Jay didn’t even hear him.
He was seated rigidly in front of his computer but he wasn’t touching it; he could be far more efficient by diving in himself, but it had made him feel more connected initially, to sit close to the computer, close to a place he associated so intrinsically with his baby girl. Had anyone been there to see him, he was certain he’d have looked strange, freakish, otherly, his eyes a pure blue light while he was fully integrated with his systems.
Whatever Ross and his team had done was thorough. They knew FRIDAY ran the Compound, that she was responsible for security and pretty much everything else around the house; it was a weakness that Jay had been so certain no one would ever be able to exploit since so few people even knew, let alone knew enough to combat it. The folly of his stupid fucking ego, his hubris, again, coming around to bite him in the ass as it always did. God, would he ever fucking learn? He should’ve shored up the system’s defense measures, he shouldn’t have made it so that FRIDAY was the primary point of defense, he should’ve made sure FRIDAY was fully backed up at all times.
Because he had backups for her – of course he did. After JARVIS, he had vowed he would never lose another one of his children so completely again. But those backups – they were only updated once every six months. Six months. That was almost a fourth of FRIDAY’s life, just fucking gone on her most recent backup. And for an AI so young? God, and she was so smart, she learned so much so fast that erasing the last six months would erase so much of who she was.
He was never supposed to have to use his six-month backup. It was only meant to be a failsafe, a way of making himself feel more secure while he made something better, something that would save his AIs exactly as they were at all times. He’d worked on a system after the Ultron fiasco that would automatically store every bit of new code, every new ‘memory’ that his AIs made, essentially preserving them exactly as they were at all times – but it was a work in progress because of the sheer magnitude of data that was required, of the need to constantly update and integrate based on the multitude of different places the AIs were active. He’d never quite figured out how to condense everything into one single, easy save, so he’d never been able to implement it.
And then it had gotten put on the back burner after everything else that had happened over the past couple of years – and he didn’t know why he’d never picked it back up, if it was laziness or fear of failure or hubris that he wouldn’t need it again for a while. Well, now he’d needed it and it wasn’t there. It wasn’t there, and he couldn’t restore FRIDAY as she was, only as she’d been six months previously.
Could he bring her back, then? Could he use that old backup and restore the FRIDAY of six months ago? Because it felt too much like it had been when they were trying to put JARVIS back together and missing those few pieces. Sure, they could write in new pieces, but then it wouldn’t be JARVIS anymore – just an AI that was painfully similar to JARVIS. Was that not exactly how it would be if he restored the FRIDAY of six months ago? An almost-FRIDAY? A painful reminder that he’d once again fucked up and let his family get hurt in his stead?
He couldn’t do it. He had to bring her back as she was – he had to, because otherwise he didn’t deserve to have people in his life worth protecting. He would just bring them to harm.
And so he’d searched – searched everywhere, trying to find his baby girl, ferreting out the pieces of code she left behind any time she touched something, scrambling to put them into an order that reconstructed his FRIDAY. But it was like trying to shape a sandcastle out of bone-dry sand: as soon as he had one part shored up, another part started sagging, the sand dribbling down the side, losing its place. And then when he fixed that, another part had crumbled, until he was trying to hold everything together with his two hands as little grains of sand slipped through his fingers.
It was a nightmare. But when he found himself particularly hopeless, he turned to his side project. It was a project he was keeping particularly secret because he knew how his friends would react: Rhodey would be stoic but disapproving, Pepper would fret, and his teammates…well, based on what he’d seen today, they’d worry over him too. No, it was better for him to keep this to himself – because what he was doing (or planning to do, rather), well…it was dangerous. It was dangerous, so they’d object, and he refused to be talked out of it. So he didn’t want them to have to worry over him, and he didn’t want to waste time having to explain why he was making this decision, so it was secret.
But if it worked? He’d never be defenseless again. He’d be much better prepared to keep his family safe. Because if it worked, the nanotech of the suit would integrate with the hollows of his bones, and he’d be able to use Extremis to call it out at will. He’d be permanently connected to his suit – and therefore his AIs who were integrated into the suit. He’d never lose them again, and he’d be better equipped to protect his family with permanent access to the suit.
He was so close, too, the formulation a few decimal points away from being within acceptable parameters to test on himself, though JARVIS had very vocally declared his opposition to the plan.
So he split time between searching for his girl and perfecting his upgrade – but unfortunately, one was coming along much better than the other, and it wasn’t the one he wanted as fervently.
But when the morning dawned high and clear – not that he could tell from the confines of his workshop – the modified nanotech injection was ready, and so was he.
“Sir, I really must protest,” JARVIS was saying as Jay tuned him out, eyes unblinking as he stared at the test tube holding the formulation that would keep his family safe that would make sure he never lost any of them again.
“Noted, JARVIS,” Jay said absently, cutting off whatever protests the AI had been airing. “Where are the clean needles?”
There was a very, very pointed silence. “Third drawer on your left, in the bag next to the unused screwdriver,” came the clipped response, but Jay was well past caring about anything else. He would do this, and he would keep them safe, and he didn’t care if they were mad at him in the meantime. He just wanted them protected.
“Thank you.” He grabbed a needle, inserting it into a syringe, then very, very carefully put the tip of the syringe into the test tube and pulled back the plunger, filling the syringe with the molten semi-liquid. When every last drop was gone, Jay tossed the tube into the nearest trash can, holding out his arm in preparation and eyeing it critically.
“Sir, if you are determined to do this, can I recommend you at least be seated? You don’t know how it will affect you,” JARVIS said, worried and tense. Jay sighed but complied, striding over to the couch, grabbing a long, dirty rag on his way, and sitting down. He tied the rag with one hand and his teeth around his right bicep, supinating his arm and tapping it lightly with his left hand until the vein stood out.
“Here we go,” he breathed, then inserted the needle and pushed down the plunger.
There was nothing for a long moment, and then – pain, acid racing through his body, searing him in a way Extremis and the super soldier serum had not. Jay clenched his teeth, not wanting to let JARVIS hear him hurting, though his back arced when the acid reached his vertebrae, piercing the spinous processes and entering the vertebral canal to wind and intertwine along his spinal cord. It seared through the muscles of his neck, shoulders, pelvis, until it finally, finally reached the bone, burrowing in to nestle alongside the marrow and creating microscopic pores as it went.
And then it settled, and the pain simmered and drained away until Jay was left drifting, drifting, drifting until he gave in to the exhaustion.
“Jason Anthony Stark, you get your scrawny ass up right now, mister!”
A voice scolding him was nothing new, but a voice scolding him that wasn’t Pepper? Or, more importantly for his on-alert brain, one that wasn’t someone he recognized?
Jay’s eyes flew open, and he leapt to his feet, gauntlet forming over his wrist with less than a thought, eyes wild as he pointed at – Mrs. Barton?
“Oh god, Mrs. Barton, I’m so sorry!” he cried, retracting the gauntlet immediately. She only looked amused, arms folded as she surveyed him. He tried not to fidget, having the distinct impression that he was being found displeasing.
“I told you to call me Laura,” she chided, a small smile quirking at her lips. “And I’m married to a spy whose best friend is also a spy – it’s not the first time I’ve woken someone up and had a weapon pointed in my face for it. And with what you just went through, I’d say it’s more than understandable.”
Jay flushed, shuffling his feet and still feeling weirdly guilty, though his shoulders relaxed some in relief that Laura didn’t seem too upset.
But then her eyes sharpened and she put her hands on her hips, and Jay had the distinct, terror-filled impression that he was about to get mom-ed. “Now you listen here, kiddo – I know you’re an adult and can take care of yourself, yadda yadda yadda, but no growing boy under my roof is going to go – what was it you said, JARVIS, 58 hours without food?” She glanced up at the ceiling expectantly.
“Indeed, Miss,” JARVIS replied, his voice professional but with a distinct edge of satisfaction to it.
“Traitor,” Jay muttered, eyes narrowing at his AI. “Wait, isn’t this the Accords’ council’s roof?”
“Semantics, dear,” Laura waved away his words, then fixed him with a stern glare. “Now. You are going to take a shower, clean yourself up, and then you’re going to come upstairs and join my family for dinner. I’ve made ossobuco alla Milanese, and Lila helped me with some tiramisu for dessert. I’ll expect you upstairs in 20 minutes.”
And then she left before Jay could do more than stare after her, mouth open.
“She’s fucking terrifying,” he muttered, then glared at one of the cameras accusingly. “How did she get in here, anyway, JARVIS?”
“You told me I wasn’t to call Miss Potts, Colonel Rhodes, Mr. Keener, Mr. Parker, or your teammates. Mrs. Barton is not a teammate or any of the named individuals. I simply mentioned how long it had been since you’d eaten, and she took it upon herself to rectify the situation.” JARVIS’s tone was beyond smug – it was the kind of tone Jay was fairly certain should have its own classification, specific to his AI.
“Sneaky, clever bastard,” Jay accused.
“I learned from the best, Sir.”
Jay grumbled to himself under his breath, running a hand through his hair and making for the shower – then froze, memory racing back through a very significant thing that had happened.
“It worked,” he whispered, then giggled semi-hysterically. “It worked!” He grinned and punched the air, then stared at his hand as though he’d be able to see the suit through his skin.
“It would appear so, Sir,” JARVIS concurred. “And your vitals are holding steady and appear mostly unchanged.”
“Fuck yes. I’m the best,” Jay grinned, eyes dancing wildly, euphoric at his triumph. He concentrated, calling on Extremis with ease and thought. In less than a second, the armor unfolded around him, faceplate snapping closed and HUG screen lighting up. ‘All systems 100%’ said a small reading in the corner of his vision. Jay whooped excitedly. With barely another thought, the suit retracted, disappearing through his pores to the hollows of his bones once more. “Guess I really am one with the suit now,” he murmured to himself, the joy fading ever-so-slightly at the thought. Because it was another piece of his humanity chipped away, another thing that made him different from the human race, that made him other.
He pushed the thoughts out of his mind. This was necessary, if he wanted to protect his family. If he had to destroy his humanity to keep them safe, so be it. Purposefully locking the thoughts away in a box, he strode forward, hopping into the shower and wiping off the grime of days and days of work without rest. He dressed quickly, uncertain how much time had passed since that 20 minute warning Laura had given him, then padded upstairs to the Bartons’ wing.
The sound of laughter and conversation and utensils clanking echoed down the hall as he approached, and a tentative smile crossed his face at the noise. “Nate, stop playing with the silverware, you’ll get it dirty and we have to eat on those! Lila, set a better example for your brother,” he heard Laura’s voice call. He paused in the doorway, watching Nate and Lila have what looked to be a lightsaber battle with their forks while Cooper took one of the platters of food Laura had made and set it on the table. Laura was stirring something in the saucepan, and Clint approached, pressing a kiss to her sweaty forehead as she poured the sauce over the dish next to the stovetop. Putting the saucepan down, she leaned into Clint’s kiss, smiling as she looked up at him. “Clint, honey, I’m sending you after Jay – you get that boy up here, I don’t care what he says to try to get out of it.”
“No need, Laura, I’m right here,” Jay said amusedly, leaning against the doorway, and Laura spun, beaming.
“Good, the guest of honor has arrived!” she said, eyes sparkling as she approached him, pressing a kiss to his forehead, then stepping back to eye him critically. “Yes, much too thin. Not to worry, I’ve made enough for you to have thirds, fourths even, if we can keep Clint from gorging himself.”
“Calling me fat, dear?” Clint asked, tone playfully affronted as he took the dish Laura had just finished and set it on the table.
“I would never, darling,” she called back, winking at Jay. “C’mon, let’s get you seated so we can start this supper. Children! To the dinner table!”
And like the well-behaved children they definitely weren’t, the Barton kids fell in line, squabbling over who sat where. The family immediately began passing around the food, each person heaping whatever they wanted on to their plates while Laura waved her spoon at Nate and Lila, insisting that they take some of the vegetables. Later, Jay would swear Laura had placed herself next to him purposely so she could pile extra food on his plate when he wasn’t looking, because otherwise he wasn’t sure how he ended up with his plate stacked high with more carbs than he usually ate in a week.
“Mr. Jay, Mom says you’re Uncle Tony’s son,” Lila said matter-of-factly, out of the blue, and Jay tried not to startle too hard.
“Uncle Tony?” he finally managed to ask, and Lila nodded seriously.
“Sorry, I probably should’ve talked to you about this,” Laura said, eyes sad but a small smile on her face. “The kids got pretty attached to your father. He’d visit from time to time, bringing all kinds of toys and gadgets with him, and then play with them or teach them something new that they could use to show off to their friends at school. They started calling him Uncle Tony after a while – I’m not sure that he ever knew.”
“He didn’t,” Jay said numbly, then remembered himself. “Or at least, he never told me if he did. He mentioned you all and how much he liked you, but…never about how much you liked him in return, I guess.”
“We miss Uncle Tony,” Lila declared, and Cooper nodded fervently.
“Yeah, he was funny, and he told the best stories. And made the coolest stuff!” Cooper said, eyes lighting up in remembrance.
“You were too little to remember, but Uncle Tony was the best. He’s Iron Man, and he was the coolest superhero ever,” Lila said, turning to Nate, who nodded seriously, taking her word like it was law.
“Excuse me, I’m sitting right here!” Clint said, eyes wide in mock outrage. Lila giggled.
“Sorry, Dad, but he made his own superhero suit! And he could fly! And blast bad guys in the face!”
“I blast bad guys in the face,” Clint grumbled, and Jay bit back a smile.
“Sorry, Green Arrow, but you just don’t do it with quite as much style as dear old Dad,” Jay said flippantly, grinning at Clint’s glare.
“I’ll have you know – “
“Boys, boys,” Laura interrupted, voice holding back laughter. “Iron Man and Hawkeye are both amazing superheroes that the world is lucky to have.”
“But Hawkeye’s your favorite, right, sweetheart?” Clint wheedled, batting his eyes at his wife, who rolled hers.
“Of course, dear.”
“Aw, that’s just cheating,” Jay complained, and Laura patted his cheek.
“Eat your food,” she instructed sweetly. Jay eyed the mountain in front of him dubiously, glancing up and opening his mouth to protest – then immediately shoveling food in his mouth at Laura’s stern no-nonsense expression. “Good boy.”
Nate giggled. “Mommy scared new Iron Man,” he said proudly, and Jay pointed his fork at him.
“Your mom is a force of nature, little Agent, and don’t you forget it,” he declared through a mouthful of food.
When he swallowed and returned to his food, he caught Laura smiling softly at him from the corner of his eye and turned, tilting his head questioningly. “Tony always used to call them that – little Agents. You called them that when we first got here, so I’m guessing he told you about it, but it’s just. It’s nice to hear. After we found out about…well, after we found out, I didn’t think I’d ever hear anyone else refer to my kids like that again.”
Jay swallowed, smiling weakly and hoping it looked convincingly natural. “Yeah, I sorta picked up Dad’s penchant for nicknames, and I’m lazy by nature, so I’ve stolen some of the nicknames he used to use. I – if it makes anyone uncomfortable, I can stop,” he offered, and Laura shook her head immediately.
“Don’t you dare,” she insisted. “It’s really good to hear those again. Makes me feel like Tony’s still with us.” She smiled tremulously at him, then frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make you feel like we just want you around because you’re Tony’s son and we’re trying to hold on to him – we, Clint and I that is, we want you to know you’re welcome here any time. I know you’re an adult, 21 years old and all, but you’re still young, too young to not have a family. So we just wanted to offer up ours, any time you want to be a part of it, if you want to.”
And Jay was seeing an expression on Laura’s face that he didn’t think he’d ever seen before – uncertainty. Instinctively, he reached out, placing his hand over one of Laura’s. She stilled, looking at him. “Thank you, Laura,” he said sincerely, holding eye contact. “It means a lot for you to offer that. I – I’m not very good at family, but yours is wonderful, and I’m honored that you would want to include me.”
Laura’s smile turned relieved and genuine. “Of course.”
“You say you appreciate it now, kid, but you just wait till she mothers you to death, dragging you out of your workshop and force-feeding you when she thinks you’ve been working too hard,” Clint warned him, grinning, and Jay smiled back.
“She can call up Pepper and Rhodey and get put on the rotation. I’m pretty sure they have a schedule worked out on who has to go retrieve me,” Jay responded, feeling strangely warm and…happy? Happy. He was happy.
God, the thought was strangely baffling, which was probably a little sad.
The rest of the dinner passed much the same, the Bartons loudly and raucously ribbing each other, smiling and laughing and teasing as they fought over seconds, warred over who got the biggest piece of the tiramisu, and battled over which Avenger had the best costume – Lila stood by Black Widow’s, Cooper said Thor’s, Nate picked the Hulk’s, which sparked a debate over whether ripped up pairs of pants even counted as a costume.
It was after 9 p.m. when Jay finally left the Bartons’ wing of the Compound, feeling strangely light as he headed back to his workshop.
Of course that feeling of lightness faded almost as soon as he stepped inside and the absence of FRIDAY’s greeting reminded him of what he’d lost.
“How was your dinner, Sir?” JARVIS asked, and Jay dredged up a smile.
“It was great. The Bartons are wonderful,” he replied, throwing himself onto the worn couch.
“I’m glad to hear it. Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes visited approximately an hour ago, asking to speak with you. I informed them you were at dinner, and they asked to be informed when you returned if you’re willing to take guests.”
Jay blinked. “Did they say what they wanted?” he asked.
“They did not. I suspect they wished to inquire after your welfare,” JARVIS responded delicately. Jay frowned.
“Should I put them off?” he wondered aloud, rubbing his face with his hands wearily as he sank deeper into the couch.
“I think, if you were to do so, it would only make them more concerned.”
Jay shrugged. “Fair point. Okay, let them know I’m down here.”
In the meantime, he pushed himself up and got back to tinkering with the arrows he’d started working on for Clint, letting his mind wander as he worked. He got a little lost in his mixture of thoughts and work and missed the sound of the workshop doors sliding open.
“What’re you working on?”
“Shit.” Jay startled, dropping the arrow he was holding and thanking every deity that may or may not exist that these weren’t the explosive arrows. He bent and picked it up, setting it on the table and turning to face two sheepish-looking super soldiers.
“Sorry, we didn’t mean to scare you,” Steve said apologetically.
“Not scared – startled,” Jay corrected, and he saw Steve hide a smile.
“Of course.”
Jay narrowed his eyes, knowing he was being humored but deciding to let it go. “Have a seat,” he offered, gesturing at the couch and pulling up a stool that he sat heavily on, setting his elbows on his knees and leaning in. Steve and James sat on the couch, Steve looking slightly tense, the lines of his body taught, while James looked entirely at ease, leaning into the couch with one arm on the armrest, the picture of comfort. “JARVIS said you wanted to talk to me?” he prompted.
Steve nodded, expression worried. “We wanted to check on you. After – after everything that happened, and then…then FRIDAY, you’ve been spending a lot of time down here. We just wanted to make sure you’re alright.”
“I’m fine,” Jay said stiffly, already not entirely comfortable with the concern shown. He wasn’t used to people worrying about him, and he’d pretty much exhausted his ability to handle such worry with grace at the Bartons’. Pepper and Rhodey were the only other ones who usually fussed over him, and they really didn’t count since he’d known them long enough that he could combat their concern with sarcasm and humor until they dropped it.
“Sure you are,” James snorted, and Jay’s eyes narrowed.
“I am,” Jay said, his voice low and flat.
“You just got kidnapped and threatened with death and then your AI who’s basically your child got erased. If you were fine, I’d be asking you to teach me a few tricks, because I’m definitely not fine,” James said, his voice sardonic yet somehow simultaneously gentle.
Despite himself, Jay felt himself soften. “I wasn’t tortured and brainwashed for 70 years,” Jay argued, but his voice was weaker. James only shrugged.
“You still went through a trauma. So we want to check on you. And offer to be here for you, if you want to talk about anything,” he said simply, and the sentiment, purely and freely given with no ulterior motives, floored Jay.
He gaped for a moment, then pulled himself together. “I really am fine,” he said again, but his tone wouldn’t convince even himself.
“You don’t have to talk to us if you don’t want to,” Steve said softly, eyes earnest. “But we’re here if you feel like it. And between the two of us, we know quite a bit about kidnapping and losing close friends.” A small, hopeful smile told Jay that was Steve’s attempt at lightening the heavy atmosphere. And god, he was weak for these super soldiers – and, and it would be a little nice to talk to someone other than JARVIS about this. JARVIS knew him and all of his systems too well, knew how he thought and could cut off avenues of thought that would send him spiraling with ease, knew precisely how everything Jay built worked and all of its potential weaknesses and how hard he’d worked to try to fix them. JARVIS was wonderful, but he’d been providing comfort by giving Jay all the facts of how he’d kept his AIs and family as safe as he could with the systems he had in place, and right now, Jay needed to process his guilt and fear and sadness with someone who just knew him, not his systems. Who could comfort him instead of reassure him he didn’t fuck up.
“I don’t know if I can get FRIDAY back,” Jay finally admitted, voice raw – and, to their credit, neither super soldier betrayed any surprise or pleasure or anything other than rapt attention. “I – I failed to protect her, and now I don’t know if I can get her back, and I can’t stop thinking about losing the rest of you. What if I’m not strong enough? Not fast enough? What if I get separated from my suit again? What if you hadn’t been able to figure out that there were explosives where I was being kept and they’d managed to blow us all up? I can’t get anyone else killed. And I took steps to fix that, so that’s helped me feel better, but it still doesn’t feel like enough. There’s still so many ways you all could get hurt, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it.”
Jay sighed heavily, pausing for breath, and James took the opportunity to interject. “What do you mean by you’ve ‘taken steps to fix it’?” he asked, his voice carefully neutral, and Jay waved a hand dismissively.
“Injected myself with a compound based on the nanoparticles that basically integrated the suit with my body so I can call on it at will. The suit is quite literally inside me, and, since my AIs are uploaded to my suit, I’ll never lose one again,” Jay said offhandedly, and it wasn’t until he was greeted with a decidedly not happy silence that he realized this news might not be so cavalier to some people.
“You injected yourself with what,” James said flatly.
Jay blinked. “It’s fine, I’m fine. And now I’ll never be without the suit again, which means it’ll be that much easier to protect you. Getting through airport security is going to be a bitch, though.”
“For the love of god,” James muttered, and Steve placed a comforting hand on his arm.
“Later,” he said, a promise to James’s ears and an ominous warning to Jay’s. He turned back to Jay. “Do you feel better now that you have another way to protect yourself and your friends?”
Deciding to shove the concern over the super soldiers’ future interrogation regarding this new experiment of his in the hopes that he could distract them enough that they’d forget, Jay forced himself to refocus on the talk they’d been having. “A little bit, but not as much as I’d hoped,” he admitted. “There are still so many ways I could lose you.”
“You realize that’s never going to change, right, Jay?” Steve prompted gently, and Jay shrugged hopelessly.
“I know. I know it’s not rational – we put ourselves in danger all the time just by the nature of being Avengers. There’s no way I could possibly account for everything that could hurt you and protect you from it. But I just – “ Jay broke off frustratedly, looking away for a moment to gather his thoughts. “It’s not like it’s new for me to want to keep my friends safe, but since…since FRIDAY, it’s just been a lot more consuming. The thought of losing any of you terrifies me.”
James nodded understandingly. “Have you ever lost anyone before FRIDAY?” he asked, then seemed to realize that was a stupid question, flinching slightly. Jay took pity on him and nodded, so James took that as his cue to continue. “Did you feel like this after any of the others?”
“A little bit, but never this intense,” Jay responded.
“So why is this different?”
Jay paused, thinking, torn. “Maybe because I…I have a choice that could technically bring her back, but it wouldn’t really be her, so I don’t know if I have that right or if I’d be erasing who she is. But then if I don’t do it, isn’t that kind of the same as killing her? I don’t know, and it’s a choice that’s technically mine to make, but it should be hers, only I never asked her. What happened to her was my fault for not protecting her enough, and I don’t want to make it even worse by making the wrong choice and bringing her back when she should’ve been left in peace, or not bringing her back when she would’ve wanted to – and, and I just don’t know.” He was rambling and he knew it, probably not making much sense, but the words were just tumbling out now.
Steve and James exchanged puzzled looks as Jay stared at his hands, distraught. “We want to help, Jay, but we’re not really sure what you’re talking about. Can you explain it to us?” Steve asked softly. Jay tried to force his scrambled thoughts into order.
“After what happened with Ultron and losing JARVIS, I – my dad – uh, he made a backup system for his AIs that would store all their coding and growth and everything in case anything ever happened that could wipe them out again. But the backups are only updated once every six months. He’d been working on a system that would continuously update the backup so that the backup would be exactly the same as the original, but he hadn’t quite managed to perfect it, so it was never implemented.” Jay sighed heavily, heart wrenching. “FRIDAY – she’s a pretty new AI, she’s only been online for the past two years. Six months is a pretty huge fraction of her life, and she’s grown so much over the past six months. So yeah, I could bring back the backed up version of FRIDAY I have from six months ago, but it wouldn’t really be FRIDAY anymore – not the FRIDAY we knew, at least. It would be a different FRIDAY who would probably grow in different ways than the original. So the FRIDAY we knew is gone, and I just…I don’t know if it’s right for me to bring back another version of her when it’s not really her anymore.”
There was a small silence after his explanation, and Jay wasn’t sure how to read into that, so he just continued staring at his hands, fiddling uncertainly.
“You could say the same thing about me,” James said suddenly, and the response was so not what Jay had been expecting that his eyes shot up to lock onto the other man’s, who met his gaze steadily.
“What?”
“You could say the same thing about me,” James repeated calmly, eyes not wavering. “I’m not Bucky Barnes anymore, not in the same way that I was, at least. I got mind-wiped again and again, and each time erased more and more memories. So I’m not the same, but I’m still me. I have my own thoughts, dreams, desires, all the stuff that makes me who I am. Losing some of my memories, some of the things I’ve learned and done and seen might make me a slightly different person, but I’m still a person, and I think I’m worth having around.”
“Oh, James, of course you are, I didn’t mean – “ Jay started, horrified, and James waved him off.
“I know, I’m not trying to say that you were,” James reassured him. “Just that maybe it helps to look at it from a different perspective. FRIDAY losing the last six months seems a lot like me losing months or years of being Bucky Barnes, or of a lot of the time lost when I was the Winter Soldier. Yeah, I’m different than I might’ve been when I still had those memories, but I’m still me.”
Jay was silent for a moment, mind racing, James’s words searing agonizingly through him. His words made a lot of sense, and Jay couldn’t help but appreciate how the comparison equated FRIDAY to a human, which Jay would forever firmly maintain that his AIs were. And when he thought about it that way – as though FRIDAY was an amnesiac who’d simply lost the last six months of her life – well, it was easy to say that she was still FRIDAY, that any growth and changes that were different from how she’d originally grown and changed didn’t make her any less the FRIDAY he knew and loved. It was him that was treating it like it was different because FRIDAY was an AI; James was asserting FRIDAY’s humanity more so than him, and the fact left Jay feeling strangely warm towards the super soldier.
“You…you may be right,” he admitted finally, and Steve beamed and James smirked.
“Of course I’m right,” he said easily, teasing a small smile out of Jay. “Now come sit next to us and get FRIDAY back online.”
Jay blinked at them. “Uh, the couch is a little small for that.”
“We’ll make do,” Steve assured him, then hesitated before offering him a small smile. “Just thought you might want the comfort of someone nearby while you talk to FRIDAY.”
And Jay couldn’t exactly deny that. He was tactile by nature, especially when he was wound up, and he was definitely nervous as hell to bring his baby girl back. A part of him was surprised and touched that the super soldiers had noticed, while the rest of him was just grateful as he stood, crossing over to the couch. James and Steve scooted to the edges, and Jay sat down between them, the space tight enough that their shoulders were brushing.
His heart was fluttering nervously as he took a couple of deep calming breaths, trying to steel himself, comforted by the body heat emanating from the two super soldiers. He was startled to feel one of his hands being grabbed, and he looked over to see Steve’s encouraging smile as he squeezed Jay’s hand. Then James was holding the other one, giving Jay a reassuring nod.
So Jay took one last deep breath, steadied by the two super soldiers grounding him, and said, voice wavering only the slightest bit, “JARVIS, please bring FRIDAY back online.”