Shattered (Sequel to Shadowfax)

Mending the Broken Parts

              "I'm sorry, you did what?" Tony's eyebrow arched to impossible heights as Jade attempted to explain the situation as calmly as possible.

"I told ye the first nine times, ye bleed 'in idgit! We downloaded 'is conscious and now we're stuck with 'em like this until you fix the problem." So far, she wasn't succeeding.

Tony ran a hand through his hair, exasperated. From his position in the corner, Steve noted the dark, usually kempt brown locks were shaggy and shot through with gray. Come to think of it, the billionaire didn't seem to have shaved in a while either. The super soldier made a mental note to interrogate him after they averted the current crisis.

"I got that," Tony was saying. "What I don't understand is what you expect me to do about it. This is uncharted territory here. One wrong move and we could end up with the next Ultron—or HAL."

"I think we can rule out the evil robot from Space Odyssey," Natasha chimed in, elbowing her way into the screen. "But I was thinking, isn't this kind of like what you did with Vision and Jarvis?"

Tony eyed the assassin warily. "That was different. I was introducing a computerized conscious into an artificial body. Plus, we had a magic rock to speed things along. This time, we're trying to re-integrate a human conscious into a slightly damaged body without understanding the extent of Nutsy's power. We could fry the kid into a vegetative state."

"Zola did it." Every pair of eyes switched to Steve. He pushed himself off the wall. "Remember, Tasha?"

Natasha perked up, nodding slowly.

Steve continued, "Well, he did the reverse. He managed to download himself into a computer system while he was with S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Even so," Tony countered, ". probably buried any evidence of the procedure with the other skeletons in the proverbial closet."

"Not necessarily. Nat dumped all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s dirty secrets on the internet. There's bound to be records of it somewhere."

"Great. I get to sift through mountains of crackpot web theorists' blogs until I find the actual files." Tony whined. He sobered up at Jade's warning growl. "But I'll get right on that, as I care deeply about the revival of our dear friend."

"We'll prep the medical bay on our end," T'Challa intervened as Jade opened her mouth again. "Call back in three hours."

The screen went dark, and the scotty slumped against Steve and began to sob quietly into his shoulder. He wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulders, nodding gently to T'Challa, who spared the girl a pitying glance as he glided from the room.

Steve rubbed Jade's back gently, doing his best to reassure her of the situation. "It will be alright. Tony's an arrogant ass most of the time, but he's the best there is. Between him and Dr. Cho, they should be able to work out a solution."

"And if they don't? Nutsy can't spend the rest of his life as ten gigabytes on a USB stick." Jade took a shuddering breath. "And he's got people besides us that care about him. They trust me to keep him safe. What do I tell them? Hell, what do I tell Danny?"

Jade whispered the last part under her breath, so low Steve almost didn't hear her. He filed the name away for later. Pulling away, he held her by the shoulders and forced Jade to meet his gaze. "Kid, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that you have to have faith. If they could pull me out of an ice cap after seventy years, then they damn well better be able to save Nutsy. The best thing you can do right now is be there for him and for your team. You're the leader. They need you to be strong for them more than ever." His gaze softened. "I know it's hard to sit back and do nothing. But this isn't a problem we can punch through. This is something we have to trust in Tony to fix. Can you do that?"