"Who is this?"
Tony beams, "This is Connor! A state of the art android!"
"You must be Virginia Potts," Connor holds out his hand politely for a shake.
"Yes, but everyone calls me Pepper," she confirms as she stares at his hand. Connor continues to hold out his hand, unmoving, taking no offense to her reluctance in shaking it. "So this is the android you've been working on for months?"
"The one and only!" Tony can't contain the joy from his words.
Pepper glances at Tony and then back at Connor's hand. She reaches for his hand and gives him a firm shake. "Pleasure."
Connor smiles. He smiles a really weird smile that Tony knows is an attempt to follow basic human 'friendliness' in greetings.
"You can call on him for whatever you need," Tony explains to her, "and I've set him up so that he has direct communication with Jarvis! Jarvis will send him to you if you ever need any manual work done."
"I have assistants for that," Pepper sighs.
"You never know when you'll need an extra hand," Tony shrugs with a lopsided smile. Pepper sees his happiness and can't help but form her own smile. Tony's mood lifts her own. "Just don't hurt him too much. He's my baby."
Pepper raises a brow. "Your baby?"
"Hell yeah!"
"That's the sort of terms you use for your cars Tony."
"I'll have you know that I created some of those automobiles-"
"He's not a car," Pepper interrupts. She then looks Connor up and down. "Or a baby."
"Mr. Stark may call me whatever he likes," Connor interjects.
"He doesn't mind!" Tony says in elation.
"It's strange if another grown man calls another grown man his baby."
"I am not a grown man, Ms. Potts," Connor explains, "I am an RK800. An Android model created to assist Mr. Stark."
"No but you look like one," she tells him.
Connor says nothing to that.
"Enough of confusing Connor," Tony waves at Pepper dismissively. "I've got tons of things that I need to catch up on now that he's up and running."
"Speaking of which," Pepper says, "you have an appointment with Nick Fury."
"That old kook again?"
"You've been neglecting his calls for months."
"Why should that change now?"
"Because you're the leader of the Avengers," Pepper scolds Tony like a child.
Tony simply huffs and folds his arms across his chest.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever."
After introducing Connor to Pepper - Tony made certain to introduce Connor to many of the staff members as well. He couldn't have the employees at the front desk denying Connor any entry. Then again, even if they did, Jarvis would simply comm them and tell them to let him in.
Tony gets a lot of his things in order before he drags Connor to Detroit.
Chloe waits for them.
Tony doesn't break promises.
Okay - well - except for that one time…
He shivers at the memory.
Pepper was not a person to break promises with.
Chloe welcomes them with open arms. She shows the same exhilaration that Tony had when Connor had first woken up. She circles around Connor in inspection, checking him up and down, and Tony stands to the side to watch.
Chloe then glances at Connor's LED.
She raises her hand and her fingers gently touch the side of her own forehead.
Strange.
"Did you know what his original purpose was for?" She distracts herself with a question as her hand falls back to her side.
Tony shakes his head. "No."
"He was created to assist in police investigations. Homicide."
So that's why he had a whole crap-ton of features that Tony hadn't understood. He had been tempted to remove half of them but didn't on the account that he might have to start from scratch again. One wrong move could be the biggest mistake.
"Why is that?"
Chloe shrugs.
"Haven't a clue."
He misses the flash that flies through her eyes.
Tony leaves Chloe's place after she has her fun asking Connor a billion questions about the way he works. Connor knows every little detail about how he functioned.
He takes Connor around Detroit to see how he'd react to things in person. Connor may have the entire web in his head, just like Jarvis, but that didn't mean he should miss out in the experiences of half of the places they went too. Tony had the full intent on showing Connor the wonders of humanity. He'd show him that there was a lot more to just being a machine even if that was exactly what Connor was.
Connor seems to appreciate it.
Or, at least he pretends to because he always seeks to please everyone with his weird smile.
Which was fine by the way. It was charming all on its own.
Their trip doesn't last too long. They're back at the Avengers Tower before the next evening and Tony does another check-up on Connor.
Then he sees something he had missed.
Small. That's the only way to explain it.
Deviant string.
That's what it was titled. It had been carefully tucked into the corner of Connor's programming.
Tony had no idea what it did.
But Connor? He knows every detail about it right?
"What's this?" Tony points at the floating screen of information in front of him.
Connor glances over at Tony and his eyes scan the screen with precision.
"I am… unsure…"
Okay.
Okay? Wait a second.
"How do you not know?"
"It's not something I'm familiar with," Connor rephrases. "I do not how to interpret it."
"Lame," Tony huffs before taking a closer look at it.
Must be Kamski.
Of course, it had to be Kamski. Who else could it be?
What a mysterious guy. Tony had looked over his notes ten times over and still didn't know more about him. Then again, he looked over his research notes. Not his diary.
Tony lets Connor free from his clutches after a thorough inspection. Once he sees that everything is in order - Tony proceeds to do tune-ups on his suits.
He had pushed off Iron Man for far too long.
It seems that tuning up his suits were a good idea.
Who would predict that they'd be attacked three weeks later?
"I am Paper Wasp!"
Pfft.
"You've ruined my life!"
Unlikely.
"Now I'll have to start all over again!"
Uh…
"And I'll start over after I kill you!"
Paper Wasp was a scrawny-looking man with a baggy costume. The only things that looked sorta-good were the giant wasp wings that shot out of his back.
Paper Wasp, or whatever his name was, (what a forgettable guy) also had a gun he called a stinger.
Tony underestimated him.
He does that a lot. Ha. Damn.
Tony sniffs as the pain hits him like a fastball going at 100 mph.
Don't cry. Don't cry.
He flies into the wall. Totally destroys the thing.
Rude!
Connor stands to the side. He glances between the both as Tony lays in his wrecked lab.
"Do you need assistance? Mr. Stark?"
"Stay out of this!" Tony warns. He gets up, wipes his nose, and gets hit by another 'stinger' pellet.
He flies back. Again.
"You are injured-" Connor sounds worried. Connor never sounds worried. When did Connor ever sound worried?
"That's an order!" Tony says because he doesn't want Connor to get hurt. It took eight freaking months just to get him to walk around. The last thing Tony wanted was for Connor to have some irreparable damage.
Huh.
Maybe Connor wasn't actually so different from humans.
Tony realizes that he values Connor's life a lot.
Paper Wasp aims again.
"This time I'll kill you!"
'Like you weren't aiming to kill before? ' Tony thinks to himself.
Tony watches as Paper Wasp prepares to pull the trigger.
He also watches as Connor throws himself at Paper Wasp. He throws his whole body at him. His whole body.
It knocks Paper Wasp off-guard and makes the man stumble.
"Get off of me!"
'Better work quick!" Tony's thoughts are loud as he holds up one of his gauntlets.
Ba'am.
One blast to the chest.
Connor jumps back.
Paper Wasp falls to the ground.
Alive. He should be. Tony made sure it was non-lethal.
Ah - but…
Tony sends his meanest glare to Connor.
His baby. His baby!
He could've gotten killed!
"Connor! I explicitly told you not to get involved! When did you ever start disobeying orders!?"
Connor straightens himself and looks Tony dead in the eyes.
"I could not let you suffer any further harm."
"You aren't equipped for fighting!" Tony says, disregarding that Connor knows how to fend off attackers defensively. "Anything could have happened!"
Tony was unaware that Connor had already mapped several different scenarios within his mind's eye. Connor had done what he did because he knew that it would be the most effective way to catch Paper Wasp off guard.
"I apologize," Connor says. It's not sincere. Not at all.
Tony lets a tired noise escape his lips.
Connor never disobeyed orders.
He never-
Tony pauses.
Deviant string.
"We're going to have a long talk about this," Tony states. He has a tone that leaves no room for questioning.
Connor nods.
Tony does have that talk with Connor. He has a really long talk with Connor as he checks him over for the third time that evening.
Tony looks at the deviant string. Again.
He glances back at Connor who sits like a kicked puppy.
"This might be a bit troublesome," Tony mumbles to himself as his finger hovers over the location of the deviant string. One swipe would throw it in the trash. It was easily retrievable, certainly, but it was the action that mattered. Getting rid of it meant that Connor wouldn't disobey again. Connor wouldn't do something against Tony's will.
He wouldn't-
He wouldn't…
He couldn't do that.
He wanted Connor to be his own person.
Was that a strange thing to think of an android? It's not like this hasn't happened before. Tony has had several thoughts of severely reworking Jarvis several times because of the things the AI would do for Tony. Wasn't Connor similar in that aspect? It's not like Connor had any ill-intent with his actions either. He had done it all to protect Tony.
Tony's hand falls to his side.
He pulls up a chair near to where Connor sits on his examination table.
Tony smiles.
"I'm done," he says, "scolding you, that is."
Connor blinks.
"Thank you. For protecting me."
Tony finds himself utterly fascinated by the expression that Connor pulls off.
A smile.
It's not the normal one.
It's so human.
"I would do it again."