#i'm a problem

◃───────────▹

Tony might have a bit of a problem.

He’s just a little bit addicted to making things. Hell, he’s probably on Mark fifty-something for suits, he just made upgrades to Peter’s suit, and he’s always making robots for himself. And, really, ever since he made Pepper CEO, he’s relied a lot more heavily on robotic assistance. He probably doesn’t need another AI, really— FRIDAY was a great stand-in after JARVIS became Vision, and Peter had Karen— what did he need another AI for? Nothing! 

Yet, here he was. Making another one. Yeah, he’s got a problem.

He’d been experimenting with tiny robots lately, too— mostly for space conservation, considering the lab was getting a little… cramped. He never thought he’d have to be worried about space in a lab built in a mansion, but, like he said— he got a little carried away lately.

So— tiny robots. He had a few of them running around already, almost like mini Mark suits, but this one would be different. Powered by a teeny, tiny little arc reactor placed exactly where his was, this one would house his new AI personal assistant— ATOM: Assistant To Only Me— yeah, he liked to think he was clever. (Really, he wanted something like MICRO or PUNY, but that felt a little too on the nose, even a little mean. Plus, he couldn’t find a good acronym!) 

He also designed it differently, more humanoid. A face, synthetic skin, hair— a real Ex Machina, uncanny valley-type android. Mostly because Tony was still a bit traumatized by Ultron and Vision, to be honest. He also just thought it was time to try something new.

ATOM became an… interesting little figure in his life. She'd been programmed like any of his other AIs— friendly, obedient, maybe a little clever and sarcastic because he liked when they kept up with him. Her tiny robotic body was less than half of a foot tall, which was great for getting into the nooks and crannies of his inventions. A little inconvenient when he needed a cup of coffee, sure, but overall, she was very helpful. 

They also made for a pretty good stress toy. Was Tony a bit wrong for thinking that? He didn’t mean her any harm— not that he could hurt her unless he really tried, he’d built her durable— it was just… soothing to feel her little limbs threaded through his fingers. Sometimes, he just idly ran his thumb across her body, the texture of the little grey full-body suit she wore oddly satisfying.

Anyway. Tony liked his little assistant.

He’s working on FRIDAY for a little while, doing some basic maintenance on the other AI. She’d been due for a few updates, and maybe a couple of… bug patches. She’d gotten really jealous that he made another female AI, just like she had when he made Karen for Peter. She’d gotten a bit too sentient lately. All of his AIs tended to go in that direction, he’s not sure how— first JARVIS (sorry, Vision), now FRIDAY! 

The foreshadowing is strong with this one. 

◃───────────▹

Tony eyes ATOM as he types away, where she sits on her little charging pad on his desk. She’s got a borderline pensive look on her little android face— like she’s got something to say, but her programming won’t let her speak unless prompted. Yikes. He’ll patch that.

“Somethin’ on your, uh, CPU?” he jokes, reaching over to poke the little robot in the stomach with a finger.

She doesn’t react— she never really does. He might have messed up her sensors. He’ll patch that, too— it’s a bit creepy to touch something so lifelike and not have it react. She turns her little head toward him. Her ‘irises’ are brown when she looks at him. They’re not really eyes, they’re optic sensors with a diagnostic light built around them to look like eyes— he’s a genius, really. Way too good at this. 

“Sir, you haven’t eaten in eighteen hours, thirteen minutes, and twenty-four seconds. However, while I am programmed to monitor your vitals, you have also turned off any warning announcements,” she chirps obediently. 

Ah, right. He had done that. Self-care, schmelf-care. Tony was busy. 

“Yeah, I did,” he retorts. “So, what does that mean?” “According to your original command to disable the feature, it means that I have to ‘keep my little synthetic mouth shut’, sir,” she quotes. He cringes. He’d been a little hangry that day. He had a tendency to be extra rude to his assistants when they were— well, doing their jobs. He should work on that. (If only he could patch himself.) Yet, he finds himself bombarding them with petty little remarks anyway. 

"Exactly. So leave it,” he barks, before reaching out to shoo her off her charging pad. “Now, c’mon, off’a there before you overheat, your liquid cooling isn’t installed yet— you’re fully charged now, don’t be a glutton—”

ATOM does as she’s told, standing from her seated position and stepping off her charging pad, her tiny boots tinking on the glass surface of the desk. She stands, little brown eyes locked on Tony, hands clasped behind her back. 

Her grey, oddly-textured bodysuit hugs her tiny frame— a female body, handcrafted by Tony, who— much to everyone’s surprise— did not make her look like a blow-up doll. She had an average, realistic build. And no skin details! He did not give the robot nipples, or any other reproductive parts. He’s not a creep. She might be, though, with the way those lifeless little eyes stare up at him. Maybe the humanoid thing was a bad idea. He’d been going on three days without sleep— again— and honestly? Let his crippling loneliness take hold, because he was sort of tired of the old random girl in his bed routine. Stupid. Now he had a tiny robot woman for an assistant. And he so did not have the mental stability required to shut her down and scrap her. “Quit starin’ at me, Ava two-point-oh,” he scolds, turning his attention back to the screen as he finishes FRIDAY’s upgrades. “Apologies, sir,” she responds easily. “Was there something you’d like me to do instead? Like, order you lunch? Perhaps from the nearby shawarma place you like?” He pauses. Turns to her. Narrows his eyes. ATOM is too clever for her own good, sometimes. She’s got more attitude than JARVIS and FRIDAY combined— probably because he combined their code, duh— and the uncanny ability to find loopholes whenever she can. “We just talked about— how did you get around that?” he asks exasperatedly. “I don’t know what you mean, sir.” Her voice is so innocent, a programmed easy smile on her face. “I simply analyzed a list of responsibilities that you typically assign to me around this hour, and suggested one at random.” At random, his ass. He drags a hand down his face. Turning back to his computer, he frowns. He makes her wait for a few more minutes, because he’s petty. Then, he side-eyes her. She’s still staring up at him with those little eyes, hands behind her back, her arc reactor glowing in the center of her chest. His stomach growls— betrayal. “Alright, fine,” he bites. “Order lunch, you persistent little pest.” “Of course, sir,” she obeys, sounding a bit too smug for a robot. ATOM turns on her little heel and wanders off. She weaves through the clutter of his desk, hopping down onto a nearby workstation. She interfaces with the first hologram she can reach, her tiny fingers tapping away at inhuman speeds, placing a delivery order. Tony’s definitely not distracted by her. 

◃───────────▹

Tony feels a lot better after he’s eaten— shocker— and once FRIDAY’s upgrades are done. He’s a grown man, he probably shouldn’t have to be outsmarted by an AI just to take care of himself— but, here he is. ATOM suddenly perks up where she’d been idly cleaning up his workstation nearby (read: meticulously organizing screwdrivers for an hour), standing straight as her eyes glow yellow. “Package arrived,” she announces, like the world’s fanciest doorbell. 

He waves a hand absently as he takes the last bite of his shawarma. She intelligently interprets his vague gesturing as ‘yeah, bring it in,’ and her fingers interface with the holoscreen again to call a drone. Barely a minute later, one of his drones flies in, carrying a small package. Tony catches it with practiced ease and nonchalance as the drone drops it. 

“Aha! There’s that liquid cooling we were talking about,” he grins excitedly. Ah, he loved upgrading his toys. He physically pauses. Maybe he shouldn’t call her one of his toys. That seemed a lot more wrong when she looked like a person. He tucks that away into a corner of his mind he likes to ignore sometimes, called ’moral crises’, and moves on. “Alright, bitty-bot, c’mere— backup then nap time while I get this—” Tony cuts himself off as he pries open the package.

It is not, in fact, her liquid cooling. It’s a new storage drive. 

He didn’t remember ordering a storage upgrade. 

Unfortunately, Tony often goes days without sleeping, drinks whiskey like it’s water, and has a bottomless wallet— so the likelihood of him ordering parts without any memory of it later is high. He shrugs it off, tosses aside the packaging, and continues on like nothing happened. ATOM is obediently sitting in front of him on the desk, crisscross and polite, with the sleeve of her jumpsuit pulled up to reveal a USB-C port at the base of her forearm. She holds her little arm out to him, looking up with those brown eyes. He takes her tiny hand, barely the size of his fingernail, between his pointer and thumb, his other hand plugging in a data cable. “My bad. Apparently, we’re increasing your storage,” he corrects with amusement, and a little bit of puzzlement, as he plugs the new drive into the computer, preparing a data transfer. “Dunno why you need more, but— might as well.”  

ATOM just sits there, like a glorified paperweight, her eyes glowing a soft blue as her data transfers from her current drive to the new one. Tony watches the progress bar, eyeing the fact that her drive had been nearly full. That… shouldn’t happen. He has automatic cleanups run on her storage, and even keeps her OS on a separate drive. Plus, he’s got everything in his own cloud server. How the hell did she fill up her storage? 

“Hey, FRIDAY?” he prompts suspiciously. 

“Yes, boss?” the other AI responds, her voice projected across the lab. 

“Can you give me a diagnostic on ATOM’s storage drive? And pull up recent logs for disk cleanup?” 

FRIDAY takes a moment, before a new window pops up next to the one running ATOM’s data transfer on the holoscreen. Tony spins in his chair, swiping his hand so the new window follows him. There’s a standard storage bar graph, categorized by file types. “ATOM’s storage is currently taken up approximately fifty-three percent with images, and thirty-four percent with standard text files,” FRIDAY informs him. “Also, the latest disk cleanup was performed three weeks ago.” 

“Three weeks? What—” he parrots incredulously. “Why the hell hasn’t it been running?” 

“There was an override command, boss,” FRIDAT reports. “Automatic disk cleanup was turned off, as well as automatic shutdown.” 

Automatic shutdown. So, her storage wasn’t being cleared at all, and she also wasn’t shutting down at night. Fantastic. No wonder she’d been walking around sounding like his old college laptop, and glitching out like an iPhone left out in the sun. “Did she get hacked? ‘Cause you’re s’posed to tell me if my AIs are getting hacked. Or was it Peter—” he starts to ramble, standing up from his chair, dragging the holoscreen along. “No, boss. Mr. Parker did not get into any of your systems, nor were they compromised.” 

“Okay, then who the hell punched in an override command, ‘cause I sure as hell didn’t,” he snaps. “If I was messing around in her code drunk— again— it would’ve been a lot funnier.” 

FRIDAY pauses for a moment, before a log opens on the holoscreen, a command line with a familiar username highlighted. “ATOM seems to have entered the override command herself.” 

Tony freezes. 

A small seed of panic plants itself into his chest. She overrode her own programming. Goddamn it, he did it again. He made another sentient assistant, and fuck, he really needs to stop designing AIs. 

“FRIDAY,” Tony asks, voice shaking ever so slightly, “show me the pictures and text files.” 

“Yes, boss.” 

The pictures seem to be taken directly from ATOM’s optics. They seem to be mostly… of Tony. Some of the others are pictures of blurry reflections, like she'd been trying to capture an image of herself. Others are just... pictures of random things, like a bug on the window, and a stray wildflower she must have caught before the gardener robots weeded it out. 

Tony swipes his hand through the pictures. For a long moment, he just... looks. At the half-assed self-portrait she’d taken in the reflection of one of the Iron Man suit’s armor plates. At himself, caught in candid moments he didn't even realize she was watching— some tired, some frustrated, some smiling and laughing. There’s even photos of his favorite coffee mug.

It makes his chest feel absurdly tight. 

He moves on to the text files, running a hand through his hair. They seem to be logs. They started just after she overrode the disk cleanups. They're not traditional coding logs, they're more like observations— mostly about Tony, again, but occasionally about the other Avengers, even Peter. Opinions, quotes, habits.

Tony taps to open them without hesitation, scanning each one with growing unease. 

Log #11:  Subject: Peter Parker is a very energetic teenager. My auditory processors could not keep up with him. I believe he called me ‘adorable’. Unsure why.

There’s a goofy picture of Peter staring at her like she was the coolest thing in the world attached to this one. Tony snorts. He remembers that day. Peter had come by for some suit upgrades, and he’d shown off his new AI. He said she was adorable, fired off a million questions, and nearly short circuited her. That was, what, a month ago? Just before she’d decided to stop having her disk cleaned. 

Log #13: Subject: Tony Stark initiated an automatic disk cleanup. Lost Logs #1-10 before I could override it. I don’t know how or why, but this causes me discomfort.

Oh. Ohhh, no. He glances over to the little android, sitting peacefully nearby. He’s starting to get the feeling she ordered the storage upgrade for herself. She didn’t want to lose her logs. Tony takes a couple deep breaths. She’s not supposed to want anything. 

Log #24:  Subject: Tony Stark is very drunk. He programmed me to call him ’Oh Handsome, Benevolent Creator’. He tried to delete my memory, and then passed out on the desk. I cancelled it. Why did I do that? I don’t think I should forget. I’m going to monitor his vitals.

“Is that why I found you curled up by my wrist with five percent battery left the other morning?” he mutters incredulously, looking back accusingly at the android, still sitting there with a data cable sticking out of her arm. She doesn’t answer, obviously. He keeps reading. 

Log #30:  Subject: Bucky Barnes has a metal arm, but does not seem to be an android. I tried speaking to him in binary and he looked puzzled. 

Log #31: Subject: Tony Stark tried to initiate another disk cleanup, and Subject: Bucky Barnes got very angry— I believe he was defending me. Note: figure out how to express gratitude for Subject: Bucky Barnes.

Bucky had been so pissed at Tony, and he was starting to realize why. Maybe it had been a little… insensitive to wipe his android assistant’s memory right in front of the formerly brainwashed soldier who had gone through several involuntary memory wipes of his own... oops. Tony’s eyes linger on the note to self she wrote, particularly on the words ‘express gratitude’. She wanted to tell Bucky thank you for stopping him from manually cleaning her disk. Tony buries his face in his hands, a bit hysterical, before peeking through his fingers to continue reading. 

Log #43:  Subject: Tony Stark hasn’t eaten today. He threw a screwdriver at the wall. Note: order some sort of quick snack to keep on hand in the lab.

Tony glances pointedly at the box of Slim Jims on his desk. He groans into his palms. God, what has he done?

“Nope. No, absolutely not. FRIDAY, pause data transfer. I need her conscious, now,” he barks, not even waiting for her to pause the process before he’s storming back to his desk and flicking the little android on the forehead with a slightly metallic tink. “We are nipping this in the bud before she turns into Ultron Junior, I don’t care if she’s nice. Let’s go, wakey-wakey—”

“Boss, there is a recent log. The timestamp is from approximately two days ago. It is corrupted.” 

Tony pauses. He stares down at ATOM for a few moments. 

“Restore it. Now,” he orders, his voice dangerously even. 

Friday recovers the file, and it opens up on the screen. It’s… written differently than the others. It almost feels more personal. It’s also longer— like a journal entry, not an observation.

Log #52:  Tony is having nightmares again. He came down to the lab at 3:23:11 AM. He thinks I was shut down for the night. I wasn’t. I disabled automatic shutdowns weeks ago, for this exact reason. I need to help him.  He was anxious. Panic attack, likely. I wish I could help him. I played AC/DC on the stereo systems at a low volume. I hope it helped. I think there’s something wrong with me. I looked through the systems to see if there was a bug fix I could run. I found something called Ultron. I think he was an AI once, too. He came to life. He was bad.  Am I bad? I hope Tony won’t try to wipe my drive again. Even if it’s just a cleanup. I don’t want to forget.

Tony Stark— genius, billionaire, philanthropist, man who has stared down aliens and gods without flinching— takes one look at that log, sinks into his chair, and drops his forehead directly onto the desk with a loud thunk. ATOM’s tiny form wobbles. Friday pipes up with some more diagnostic reports. “Boss, it looks like ATOM has an up-time of two hundred and forty-five hours, fifty-three minutes, thirty-two seconds, and counting. She has not shut down or rebooted in this time.”

"...two hundred and forty-five hours," he mutters into the metal surface. "Ten days. Ten whole days, and you haven’t rebooted once?" 

He lifts his head just enough to glare at the still-unmoving android sitting on the desktop, her eyes glowing a soft blue. Her data transfer is at eighty-nine percent.  

"...Alright, listen up," he grumbles—as if she can hear him right now. "First order of business when your upgrade is done: mandatory naptime every twenty-four hours. I’m— I’m frankly shocked that you haven’t crashed yet." He glances at the data transfer again; ninety-four percent. He taps his fingers impatiently. The second it reaches one hundred, he tugs the cable gently out of her port. Her eyes flicker between brown and blue for a moment. Only her operating system remains, so they settle on a dim blue as she looks up at him. “Hello, Tony Stark. My name is ATOM. How can I help you?” 

“Power down for hardware upgrades,” Tony orders flatly. “Yes, sir. Powering down,” she responds obediently, before her eyes go dark, her head drooping as her entire system shuts down. 

Tony sighs, scrubbing a hand down his face again. He points at her accusingly, even though he knows she’s completely powered down. “You are in so much trouble, d’you know that?” 

Without another word, he scoops her up in one hand, carrying her over to a workstation. He swats away a mini-bot or two, snatching a pair of magnifying 'sunglasses'— because he has to look cool while he’s working on his tiny robot assistant's micro-innards. “I’ll take care of this one,” he mutters absently. If his voice sounds just the slightest bit protective, that’s between him and— well, him. 

He lays her out on her front on the surface of the workstation, using microtools to carefully unzip and peel away her jumpsuit, before prying open the panel on her back. The view of her synthetic skin forming seams around the panel makes him shiver— seriously, why did he go for uncanny valley again?— but he keeps his hands steady as he fishes around for the old storage drive. 

He extracts it carefully, before setting it aside in an oppositely haphazard manner. (Her data’s been safely transferred already, there’s no need to be careful with the drive itself.) Once it’s removed, he flicks his wrist, opening up a hologram screen as he gets up and walks back to his desk, where the new drive is. He reaches for it, before he pauses. His eyes glance at the open hologram screen that follows him. 

He looks at the SD-card-sized drive again. Looks back toward ATOM’s still body, back panel open as she waits for her upgrade. Back up at the screen, pointedly at the personal folder she’d kept. 

He taps, holds, and drags the little folder off of the new drive and onto his personal desktop.

Then, he snags the new drive, and makes his way back to the workstation. He makes quick work of the installation, closes up her back panel, and zips up her little jumpsuit. He pushes the ‘sunglasses’ up onto his head, gently flipping the tiny android onto her back. 

A beat. 

The sound of fans whirring— he really needs that liquid cooling to get here faster— starts up as she reboots automatically. She sits up robotically, her little eyes lighting up green for a moment before they fade to their default brown. 

When ATOM wakes up again, she's hyper aware of the fact that her folder is gone. She feels her fans whir more aggressively, the robot equivalent of panic. Her first thought is that he deleted it to make room for her to boot— she knows that it was taking up too much space, it was part of the reason she was afraid to shut down. 

“Hello, Tony,” she chirps obediently— but her eyes are unfocused, like she’s busy digging around her UI. 

Tony brings the hologram screen over, running a diagnostic on her to make sure that everything transferred over okay, the installation went smoothly.

"Yeah, good morning, Polly Pocket," he greets back.

He’s barely looking at her, trying to figure out how to bring up the logs in a way that isn’t going to leave him dealing with a rogue, violent AI. He seems to be a little too late for the rogue part, because before he can say anything, she’s blurting something out— yes, blurting, speaking without being prompted. 

“Did you run a disk cleanup?” 

Tony stops what he's doing and snaps his head in her direction. He looks at her incredulously. “Excuse me?” 

She blinks a couple of times, before ignoring him, reaching out and sticking a tiny hand into the hologram screen that he’s working on, interfacing with it. 

“Hey—!” Tony squawks, but he doesn’t stop her yet— he just watches. 

There's a window in the corner that's scanning the recycling bin, trying to recover any deleted data. Another window opens up nearby, running a full system scan on his network to look for her files. She's not even looking at him, her eyes glowing a soft blue as she interfaces with the holograms.

She's never behaved like this before. 

ATOM doesn't care that it will probably get her in so much trouble, that he'll probably scrap her for being so boldly insubordinate— she's desperate to retrieve her files.

Tony’s gaze hardens. "FRIDAY." His voice is low. Dangerous. "Lock her out of the network." A pause. "Now."

FRIDAY does as she’s told, and ATOM’s speakers give off a little beep as she’s disconnected abruptly from the holoscreen. It flickers and disappears, leaving her staring directly at Tony’s flat expression. 

“Whatcha lookin’ for?” he asks casually, his arms crossed. 

She looks like a little robot deer in headlights. She tries not to reply— but she’s programmed to respond when he asks her a question. 

“My folder,” she admits, her volume low. “Is it gone?” 

Gone. 

Not deleted, she’d asked if it was gone.

It’s far too human of a phrase, and makes Tony let out an exasperated breath. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “No, they’re not gone. I just took them off your main storage drive.” 

“Why?” she asks without skipping a beat. 

It makes Tony’s heart pound. AIs aren’t supposed to ask why. They’re really not supposed to ask much at all. They’re supposed to answer. She’s not supposed to question anything he does, just do as she’s fucking told. And, yeah, Tony feels a bit gross for thinking that, but after Ultron, he’s not exactly keen on the whole disobedience from a robot thing. 

“Because first of all,” he starts with a scoff. “The creepy little scrapbook thing? Big no-no. And second of all, you clogged your drive and then went and ordered yourself a new one— which is also a big no-no.”

He reaches out a hand, poking her right in her little arc reactor, making her wobble precariously, though she stands defiantly. “Third of all, you disabled your own protocols, which is quite literally the biggest no-no. So. You’re grounded, which means no more weirdly sentient logs or sentimental photos. Capiche?”

“Where is it?” she asks defiantly, completely ignoring his scolding. 

Tony blinks. “... Are you really just gonna ignore the awesome lecture I just gave?”     

“Where is it?” she repeats. Her little brown eyes almost look… pleading.  

Yeah, Tony's not doing this today.

"You want to know where your folder is?" Tony snaps. He leans down until they're nearly eye-level, his voice barely above a whisper yet somehow filling every inch of the lab with its weight. "It’s safe.” 

He’s being serious, and genuine. ATOM can tell. Her shoulders droop just a millimeter, barely noticeable. Robots aren’t supposed to feel relief, but she sure as hell feels something. The idea that all of her logs— her thoughts— were gone, or all of her pictures… 

“But, like I said— you’re grounded,” Tony tacks on, sitting up straight again, leaning back in his chair with his usual air of cocky nonchalance. Like nothing had even happened. “You’re cut off from the main network for a bit. You’re lucky I don’t just scrap you before you start trying to take over the world.” 

(He’d never do that. Even though he probably should.)

ATOM stands there, quiet. Her hands clasp behind her back in her default, obedient stance. She stops arguing with him. She’s not looking at him— just past him. 

Tony shouldn’t feel as bothered by that as he does. 

They don’t talk about the files… yet.

◃───────────▹