Recon
Helen Cho had had a long day. Her patients had been demanding, her research projects were stagnant, and she was ready for a drink. Or perhaps just bed – one of the two sounded perfect right now.
Her research lab was quiet by the time she finally sighed and decided she was finished, the students and staff having long since cleared out at a more reasonable hour. Later, she would wonder how she’d missed the tell-tale whirring and shifting that she was certain had to have hissed their way through her lab when it was so deadly silent otherwise. She’d blame her exhaustion, her weariness, her eagerness to finally be done and go home for the day – but in the end, it wouldn’t matter.
In the end, her lack of attention meant she was caught unawares (though, if she was honest with herself, she was fairly certain the outcome would have been the same even if she had been aware).
In the end, she came face to face with a pair of glowing eyes on a metal face that spouted sinister demands.
In the end, she was destined to repeat the nightmare she’d experienced only a few years prior.
“What the fuck do you mean we can’t trace the signal, J?”
JARVIS’s silence was equal parts discontent and disapproving. “I’m sorry, Sir, but it appears whatever comprises the drones’ signal is too different from known patterns for us to trace back to its source.”
Jay stared blankly at the screen. “So we have nothing. Still,” he summarized, voice flat. It had been weeks since the first attack by the drones with their cryptic message, and there had been several more attacks since then, each progressively more difficult for Jay to fend off, which both frustrated and panicked him.
“Indeed, Sir.”
Thankfully, FRIDAY chose this moment to interrupt. “Boss, your guests are upstairs.”
“Guests? What guests? I didn’t invite any guests. FRIDAY, who’s here?” Jay asked, bewildered.
“Your stress levels have been concerningly high over the past week, so I took the liberty of inviting Mr. Parker and Mr. Keener to assist in correcting this.”
Jay blinked, then glared at one of the cameras. “Seriously, FRI? I’m an adult, I can take care of myself,” Jay said petulantly.
“All due respect, Sir, your age, mental or physical, has no bearing on your ability to take care of yourself – or lack thereof,” JARVIS interjected, tone snitty.
“You’re so donated to the local college. So donated,” Jay grumbled standing up and making his way over to the elevator.
“If it pleases you, Sir,” JARVIS said serenely.
Jay was still grumbling about meddling AIs and community colleges when he stepped off the elevator on ground floor. Ahead of him, he could hear voices chattering, and he had enough presence of mind even after his four-day lab binge to feel a bit wary about what mischief his two ducklings could be getting up to. Striding into the kitchen, he could see he’d been right to be worried; Harley and Peter were eyeing the Avengers with suspicion and dislike, Peter standing with his arms crossed and Harley looking downright hostile as he glared at a vaguely terrified-looking Steve.
“ – mean to tell us there was absolutely no way you could’ve figured out bashing in a teammate’s chest with your shield was wrong? The witch prevented even that from being common sense?” Harley was saying accusatorily.
“I – I wasn’t – “ Steve stuttered, eyes wide and horrified, and Jay coughed pointedly as he stepped into the kitchen. Peter spun guiltily, but Harley just cocked an eyebrow at him. Steve was half-hiding behind the kitchen island and looked like he was unsure whether to be relieved to see Jay or worried Jay was about to jump in. Jay had to hide a smirk at how utterly petrified the super soldier looked at being confronted by the two small yappy children that he maintained Harley and Peter truly were inside.
“Children, I know you’re not terrorizing the superheroes because a) you’re smarter than that, and b) you know they saved my ass and I kind of want to keep them around for the foreseeable future,” Jay said flatly and was rewarded with a beatific smile from Peter and an unimpressed look from Harley.
“Not terrorizing, just asking some pertinent questions to determine how suitable they are to keep protecting you,” Harley said breezily, clapping Steve on the shoulder, though he had to reach nearly straight up to do it. Jay snickered at the sight, and Harley glared at him.
“Well stand down, small infant children, my AIs and I have vetted these guys. They’re in the clear,” Jay said, rolling his eyes.
“I didn’t vet anyone,” FRIDAY piped up immediately.
“Nor did I,” JARVIS said, a touch of amusement in his voice, and Jay turned to aim an incredulous stare at one of the cameras, irritation shooting through him.
“Seriously, guys? You can’t back me up one time?”
“Sorry, Boss.”
“My apologies, Sir. We endeavor only to keep you safe and believed perhaps you had meant to vet your guests and simply forgotten.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s exactly what you believed,” Jay said sarcastically. He huffed out an annoyed breath then turned back to the room. “Regardless, everyone here is welcome and will be treated as such, am I understood?” he said, voice steely as he glared at Peter and Harley. Peter looked fairly abashed, but Harley just rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, yeah. Fine. We’ll play nice,” his sass-monster responded grumpily, folding his arms.
“Great,” Jay said drily, rubbing his temple where a headache was already forming. He should never have left the lab. “Now that the fucking soap opera bullshit is out of the way, how about some introductions?” Without waiting on a response, he gestured at Steve who was still semi-cowering, James who was pressed close and standing stiffly behind him, Natasha who was smirking at the half-traumatized super soldiers from the kitchen table, and Clint who was simply looking at the group in bemusement beside Natasha. “Guys, this is Steve, James, Nat, and Clint. Team, meet Harley and Peter, two of my friends who also knew my dad, which is why they were being enormous dicks to you a minute ago.”
“Wow, just bring up my enormous dick in conversation why don’t you,” Harley deadpanned, and a small snort escaped from James – without his volition, if the startled look on the former-assassin’s face was anything to judge by.
“Yeah, I see how that one was friends with Tony,” Clint sighed, drumming his fingers on the table, and Natasha caught Jay’s eyes and winked, dragging a small smirk out of him.
“Anyway,” Jay said, drawing the word out before turning to Harley and Peter. “Why are you two here?”
“Wow, rude,” Harley declared immediately, and Jay rolled his eyes at the false-affronted tone the boy took. “We come all this way for you, and you just – “
“Oh my god, don’t be such a drama queen, I just wanna know why,” Jay interrupted with a very put-upon sigh.
“FRIDAY said you needed a distraction. She said you hadn’t left the lab in four days,” Peter piped up, aiming his charming little grin at Jay.
“And you guys just…came?” Jay asked, trying to keep the disbelieving note out of his voice – and not succeeding very well, if the look the boys exchanged was anything to go by.
“’Course we did, dumbass, FRI-baby wouldn’t tell us you needed us if you didn’t, and you’re our friend,” Harley said in the ‘duh’ voice that all teenagers seemed to possess, walking over and slinging an arm around Jay’s shoulders.
“Yeah, plus we missed you! It was fun plotting world dom – uh, architecture with you last time,” Peter said excitedly, glancing around surreptitiously to see if anyone had noticed his slip – not that any of the superheroes in the building would’ve been worried. Really, Peter’s adorable concern at being overheard and complete lack of discretion while checking for reactions were all any of the super soldiers and spies would’ve needed to classify Peter very firmly in the category of Not Overlord Material.
“Did he just say you hadn’t left the lab in four days, doll?” Jay had gotten so involved in his strangely emotionally-charged conversation with his younglings that he’d almost forgotten the others were even in the room, and his eyes snapped to a surprisingly stern-looking James Barnes.
“Uh, yeah?” Jay said, voice turning up at the end and making the question a statement. James’s face darkened further, and Steve looked concerned.
“Have you eaten or slept during that time?” Steve asked, and Jay squinted his eyes, trying to think.
“Mayyyyybe?” he finally settled on responding when he couldn’t remember.
“Sir has not eaten or slept during that time,” came JARVIS’s exasperated response, and then two sets of accusing super soldier eyes were on him, along with the eyes of two very unimpressed chicklets. Jay held his hands up in surrender.
“Hey, I don’t need as much food or sleep as a normal person, remember?” he said defensively before any of them could get a word out. “Plus there was a lot of work to do. I mean, there’s been four more attacks at this point, and all of them have been getting harder and harder for me to shut down, so, like – I was doing it for the good of the world. You can’t fault me for that!”
James glowered at him, eyes intense. “That’s not how it works, kid. You may not need as much food and rest as a normal person, but you still need some. You can’t just run yourself into the ground for this.”
Steve nodded firmly, James at his back. “What would we do if we got called to assemble and you were too exhausted to pilot the suit?” he reasoned, and Jay felt an uncomfortable pang in his belly but waved the worry off.
“I could still pilot the suit right now and it would be fine,” he reassured them. They didn’t look reassured, which only served to grate on his nerves more. He was a fucking adult. He could do what he wanted, and if he wanted to stay up long hours to work on this, he’d fucking do it.
“Maybe, but we wouldn’t let you,” Steve said resolutely. “That level of sleep deprivation means your reflexes would be shot, and we couldn’t risk you like that – or anyone else, with you operating heavy machinery with lots of firepower.”
Growing increasingly irritated, Jay threw up his hands. “Fine, I won’t pilot the suit right now. Happy?” he asked venomously. “Wouldn’t wanna be a danger to others.” James looked a little surprised at his vehemence, but Steve only gave him a small, understanding smile.
“Or yourself, Jay. We want you to be safe and happy, too. You need rest, sweetheart,” he said with a pointed look, and though he didn’t state it outright, Jay caught his meaning. His first reaction was to take offense – but honestly, that exact reaction might be indicative that what Cap was wordlessly saying was true: he was on a hair-trigger, where everything was irritating him and he was acting out.
Deflating, Jay sighed. “Yeah, yeah. You two old codgers worry too much,” he grumbled without heat and was rewarded for his apparent capitulation with small smiles from the super soldier duo.
“Only because you don’t look out for yourself enough,” Steve countered, and Jay rolled his eyes.
“You’re not gonna convince him, Stevie, he’s too stubborn for that,” James interjected, elbowing the blond man before turning his attention back to Jay. “I’m gonna make you a sandwich and you’re gonna tell us what you and your bots found, doll.”
Knowing arguing was futile, Jay just sighed and sank into one of the open seats at the kitchen table across from Natasha. He gestured at the other open chairs and looked at Peter and Harley pointedly, and they took the hint and joined him as James started searching through cabinets. “We haven’t found anything. Not a goddamn thing,” Jay said tiredly, rubbing his face with his hands, and Steve, Nat, and Clint shot him a concerned look that he ignored. “We’ve had, what – four encounters with these weird drones now? And each time their signature has changed just a little, gotten a little stronger, a little harder to pin down.”
“Are we sure they’re all from the same source?” Natasha asked, and Jay was nodding before she’d even quite finished the sentence.
“Yes, whoever or whatever is sending them, all the attacks were coordinated by the same person or group. The fundamental coding is too similar for any of the attacks to be from different sources,” Jay responded. “The changes between each attack are minimal – but they’re really important.”
“Yeah no shit, you were barely able to shut down the last attack,” Clint said, brow furrowed, and Jay nodded grimly.
“Right. Whoever’s coding them is figuring out how my power works and figuring out ways around it,” Jay agreed.
“And how are they doing that exactly?” Steve prompted as James slid a plate with a nice, neat PB&J in front of Jay, who smiled gratefully at him. James winked and stepped back, returning to Steve’s side behind the island, leaning onto his elbows.
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” Jay admitted, taking a bite of the sandwich and swallowing quickly. “Basically, I’m interfacing with tech in a way that allows me to edit code in the drones and tell them to shut down or just rip the code apart and make them hunks of metal. So I’m controlling the tech, I’m not controlling the person at the other end of the tech – my power doesn't work like that. So whoever’s coding them seems to be making it so that they progressively have more and more direct control over the drones, which means I’d have to be controlling them to shut the drones down, rather than controlling the drones.”
Blank stares met his explanation, and Jay frowned. “Sure, kid,” Clint said agreeably with a small shrug. “Honestly, makes about as much sense as everything else in our lives. So what I’m hearing is that it’s making it so that your power can’t touch the drones, and it’s weird enough that you, JARVIS, and FRIDAY can’t figure out how to track it.”
“Pretty much,” Jay agreed, relieved and biting into his sandwich.
“Great,” Clint said sardonically. “So now what?”
“Honestly? I have no idea.”
Grim looks were exchanged by the Avengers at that pronouncement, though Harley and Peter mostly just looked mildly confused.
“Alright, that’s enough shop talk,” Steve finally decided. “I’m pretty sure FRIDAY called Peter and Harley so they could distract Jay from all of his work, not so we could hijack him.”
“Quite right, Captain,” FRIDAY chimed in, her typically-sniffy tone when speaking to Steve slightly warmer than usual.
“Cool, that means we can talk about more interesting shit – like what the fuck is going on between Cap and his old ‘buddy’,” Clint declared immediately, aiming a shit-eating grin in the super soldiers’ direction. Jay blinked, the subject change unseating him enough that he didn’t immediately catch onto the direction Clint’s mind was heading.
He didn’t appear to be alone in his confusion. “What do you mean?” Peter asked, and Clint’s eyes glinted wickedly as Steve reddened and James got progressively stiller.
“Just that our resident geriatrics department is shacking up, finally,” Clint said smugly, and Jay felt his heart give a funny swoop. He controlled his face with effort, careful not to let anything slip through, though Natasha shot him a concerned look. For their part, Steve and James looked to be a mixture of shocked and embarrassed, with Steve red-faced and wide-eyed and James motionless and emotionless.
“What?” Harley shrieked, animosity towards the duo forgotten in the face of such big news. “Captain America and the Winter Soldier are fucking?”
“Language,” Jay said automatically, at the same exact time as both Steve and James. He coughed awkwardly as the pair exchanged looks. “Congrats, guys,” he said, trying to make his voice upbeat and excited for them.
“We’re not together,” Steve blurted quickly, looking like the words nearly burst out of him. James nodded his stoic agreement at his side.
“Liar!” Clint declared, pointing an accusing finger at the duo. “Barnes has been spending the night in your room for the past three nights in a row, and you’re going everywhere together, and you’re always whispering and looking like you’re plotting something.”
“We always go everywhere together,” Steve insisted, face bright red but eyes determinedly looking straight at Clint and nowhere else. Harley and Peter for their parts just looked fascinated, looking back and forth between Clint and the super soldiers. Natasha’s expression was blank, but Jay would swear he could see the faintest hint of concern in her eyes. Jay didn’t even want to know what his face looked like right now.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t known there was a possibility of Steve and James getting together; hell, the chemistry between the two of them was basically legend at this point, with the number of comics and movies made about it over the decades. And Jay had been shut up in his lab for a while now – outside of seeing them in team meetings, sparring practice, or when they were helping him bring FRIDAY back, he really hadn’t seen them at all in at least a month. And it wasn’t like they’d spent just a whole lot of time before all that together – it wasn’t like they were close or anything, outside of his overly active imagination. So it really shouldn’t have been any surprise to Jay that he hadn’t known the two had finally gotten together, and it definitely wasn’t any of his business, no matter how much the sinking feeling in his stomach wanted to beg to differ. He was going to be happy for them because they deserved their happiness, he decided.
“Yeah, but it’s different now,” Clint argued, gesturing between them emphatically. “You’re always touching now. Like, intimately. It’s all coupley and domestic.”
“Steve and I are not a couple,” James said quietly but firmly, folding his arms and looking increasingly intimidating. Jay tried to ignore both the part of him that breathed a sigh of relief at the words and the part that insisted that James was lying, schooling his face into a teasing expression with the practice of someone with decades of experience hiding his emotions.
“Aww, why not?” he whined, trying to force his voice into conveying some sort of hope that the duo would get together. It was strangely difficult. What was stranger was the brief look of hurt and disappointment that crossed Steve’s face at Jay’s words before it quickly disappeared; James was acting strange, too, eyes intently focused on Jay’s face as though searching for something.
“Yeah, why not?” Jay’s eyes shot to Harley, slightly alarmed at the kid’s tone; it was both curious and mischievously delighted, and Jay was fairly certain no good could come of Harley sounding mischievous in any capacity. The kid was grinning knowingly, which upped Jay’s concern to approximately DEFCON 2 as the kid looked back and forth between Jay and the super soldiers with a shrewd glint in his eye. Peter was eyeing the three of them thoughtfully, and Jay debated upping the threat level to DEFCON 1 just based on that alone; a thoughtful Peter was a dangerous Peter.
“We just – well – we don’t think we work together as a couple, just the two of us,” Steve stuttered out, face beet red by this point.
“Just the two of you? Does that mean you’re considering other options then?” Harley pressed, grin stretching wider, and Steve started sputtering, eyes wide, while James let out a choked noise. Jay decided to take pity on the centenarians.
“Harl, let’s not shock the geriatrics division into heart attacks with our weird, wild 21st century sex and relationship ways,” Jay said reprovingly, frowning, and Harley raised an unimpressed eyebrow, opening his mouth to protest, only to be beat to the punch.
“We know what polyamory is,” James said quietly. Jay’s eyes snapped to the super soldier, mouth open in surprise, only to find the man meeting his eyes steadily, face unreadable. Jay was shocked speechless, staring at the other man with a thousand thoughts flitting through his mind (the gist of which could be eloquently summed up as ‘???????’) – but Harley had no such problem.
“Do you, now?” he asked gleefully, grin hard and delighted.
“Yes,” Steve answered as James nodded without taking his eyes off Jay, who swallowed without entirely knowing why.
“Oh my god,” Clint whispered, and that snapped Jay out of his thrall, eyes darting to the archer quizzically only to find Clint looking between the three of them – James, Steve, and Jay – with a dawning comprehension that Jay was fairly certain meant he’d drawn the wrong conclusion.
“Yes, tupitsa,” Natasha said with an eyeroll. “Finally, you get it.”
“Holy shit, that’s…wow, just wow. Are they even…?”
“No.”
“Wow.”
“Yes. It’s very annoying.”
“Should we…?”
“No, they have to do this on their own.”
“Aww but then it might never happen!” Clint whined, and Jay was gratified to see baffled expressions on the faces of the others in the room as well; apparently the spy twins’ secret language was just as untranslatable to them as it was to him.
Natasha shrugged. “It’s for them to figure out. Zvyozdochka is smart, I have faith in him.”
Jay started at the sound of his nickname. “Hey, I know you’re talking about me!” he said indignantly, narrowing his eyes at Natasha. “That’s not very nice!”
“What are you, five?” Harley said with an exaggerated eye roll, and Jay stuck his tongue out at him.
“Wait, I wanna know what Black Widow and Hawkeye were talking about, too,” Peter piped up, and Jay hid a grin at the kid’s more formal use of the spy twins’ superhero names. Clint and Nat looked similarly amused.
“We’ll tell you when you’re older, kiddo,” Clint said with a grin, eyes twinkling, and Natasha looked amused. Peter frowned, and Jay turned those words over in his mind, trying to parse out what the duo was getting at.
“Sirs and Madam, I hate to interject, but the Accords council has just sent troubling news,” JARVIS said, his voice worried, and Harley and Peter jumped, unused to the disembodied voice chiming in at random times after they’d forgotten about the AIs’ existence.
“What’s up, JARVIS?” Jay asked.
“Dr. Cho has gone missing – and she appears to have been carried off by drones.”
Playful conversation was set aside immediately as the Avengers convened in the conference room, Harley and Peter ducking out quickly with a promise to return as soon as Jay could see them again – but a fat lot of good it did. Three days later and they were no closer to answers than they’d been when JARVIS had first told them of Helen’s disappearance.
Jay was worried – near-terrified, really. The last time Dr. Cho had been held by someone, Ultron had nearly destroyed the world. It had taken the strong, amazing woman years to rebuild her faith in science and humanity, to move back into the research sphere with her head held high, and Jay was loathe to believe she might be forced into helping another evil asshole that should’ve been the Avengers’ lot to handle.
James, Natasha, and Clint had flown out to Helen’s lab to look for any sort of clue that might give them an idea as to where or why Dr. Cho had been taken while Steve coordinated with the council and Jay, FRIDAY, and JARVIS tried to track her down using any and every electronic method they could conceive of. They found nothing; not a single street camera had picked up the doctor or the drones, there were no reports of drone sightings, and there was no activity on any of Helen’s bank cards or online accounts.
They had nothing and they were getting desperate – and so Jay suggested the one thing he really didn’t want to do.
“I’m going to talk to Ross,” he announced to a living room full of Avengers. Immediately, he was bombarded with aghast stares and angry shouts, though Natasha and Scott held their tongues. Jay stayed silent, patient, waiting for their anger to tire itself out.
“It’s too dangerous, Jay, you can’t go visit him – and why would you even want to?” Steve finally got the last word in, folding his arms decisively, but Jay was unimpressed.
“He knows something,” he said simply. “And we have no other leads.”
And that was that.
“Someone else should go,” James protested, eyes steely. “He tried to kill you – anyone can question him, it shouldn’t be you.”
“It’s my dad he referenced with his vague threat,” Jay reminded him. “There’s a chance that I’m the only one who’ll recognize what he’s talking about – unless any of you think you know my dad’s life stories better than me?” he challenged, eyeing them. The easy argument would honestly be that Natasha probably knew Tony better than a son who’d only known him one year, but Natasha knew the truth, so Jay knew she wouldn’t protest.
As he’d thought, no one spoke up. “Right then,” he said with a decisive nod. “I’m heading out then.”
And so he’d found himself heading for the Accords’ New York HQ, where they were holding Ross until a trial could be arranged. The ride was short and swift, Jay calling ahead to let the council know where he was headed and why and receiving their quick approval; the world remembered Ultron, and the council was as eager to catch Dr. Cho’s captor as he was.
But in the scant moments between hanging up on the Accords council and arriving at HQ, something had happened – that much was clear from the doors hanging off their hinges at the entrance. Shattered glass was strewn over the entryway as Jay stepped through, immediately calling up the armor.
“JARVIS, call the council,” Jay commanded, HUD screen scanning the area. Several life forms flickered, identified quickly as unconscious Accords employees strewn about the atrium. There was very little blood or evidence of violence other than the shattered glass and sleeping civilians – in fact, Jay would’ve thought the employees had simply collapsed where they stood, if he had to hazard a guess – they were too perfectly arranged in their places of work to have had any time to respond to a threat.
The phone rang a few times before it was finally picked up. “Stark?” a harsh whisper sounded over the line.
“What’s going on?” Jay asked immediately.
“Drones – drones came! They’re letting out some kind of concussive blast – it shatters glass and knocks out anyone in the room.”
“Where are they now?”
“Headed to the detention level.”
“On my way.”
Ending the call with a flick of his mind, Jay shot forward, making his way for the detention level as quickly as possible. With a thought, he sent a message summoning the rest of the team, mentally asking JARVIS to give them a rundown of the situation.
The way down to the detention level was ominously quiet, with Jay coming across unconscious Accords employees every few hundred feet, though he had yet to see a single drone. The detention level was grey, stark, and dark, seemingly decorated such that those who entering knew there was little chance of them leaving without the express approval of all involved parties.
It was eerie, it was creepy – and Jay barely noticed, eyes latching onto one very specific cell block with a familiar figure lying face-down and head angled to the side in a pool of blood, eyes open and empty.
“Ross is down,” Jay announced grimly when JARVIS patched him back through to the Accords council. There were noises of shock and dismay, but Jay ignored them in favor of a much closer-sounding disturbance, a clanging noise that vibrated off the walls. His eyes shot to the source as a drone shot into the air, punching its way through the floor, escaping. Jay reached out frantically with Extremis – and was immediately rebuffed, the force with which the drone’s interface repelled him almost knocking him on his ass.
“JARVIS, tell the team I’m following the drone and send them my location so they can follow,” Jay ordered, shooting off.
“Sir, I’m not sure that’s advisable – you don’t have backup, and – “
“Just do it, J!”
And with his eyes locked onto the drone, Jay took off after it, trusting that his team would find him.