Although Amii was a brilliant scientist and could hold her own against anyone in the weapons manufacturing industry, she lived a lonely life – she had lost her parents while she was still a child and had put up a wall around herself to keep out the pain, and as a result had very few friends. She used her work as an excuse to escape the loneliness and emptiness inside, and though her work brought her immense success and satisfaction, she still yearned to fill the void in her heart.
Her father, Tejdeep Singh (popularly known as TJ) had been a brilliant scientist who had come to study nuclear physics at MIT from India in the mid-1950's and then had decided to make this country his home when he was offered a job at Stark Industries. TJ had worked with Howard Stark on some of the top-secret programs for the US Department of Defense and, in the process, had become friends with him. Her mother, Uma, had been a dancer, trained in the Indian classical dance form of Bharatanatyam. She had been part of a troupe of dancers who had come to participate in a cultural exchange program and had performed at one of Stark Industries sponsored cultural events. Her father had told her that he had been smitten by Uma the first time he had seen her on stage that night and had pleaded with common friends to get introduced. He had courted her for the duration of her stay in the US and had asked her to marry him the day before she was to return to India. She had been nonchalant towards his advances and had told him that if he wanted to marry her he had to get approval from her parents – that's the way things worked in her family.
TJ had flown to India and after much struggle had finally managed to convince Uma's parents to let him marry their only daughter. The wedding had been a simple affair and Uma had relocated to the US with TJ. She had continued to teach classical Indian dance and had run a small dance academy in New York. Amii adored her parents and they had doted on their only child who had inherited her father's brains and mother's looks. TJ had noticed Amii's genius and encouraged and challenged her by pushing her limits in any activity she undertook. Her aptitude for science and math had become evident at school and TJ had ensured that she attended the best of schools that could nurture her talent.
TJ and Uma had died in a tragic accident in which their house had burned down with them in it while Amii had been away at science camp. Howard Stark had personally come down to the camp to break the news to her and it had been a massive shock for Amii. Her world had been turned upside down overnight. She had nowhere to go and no family she could call upon as both sets of grandparents were dead and both her parents had been only children. The Starks had taken her in and settled her into one of their programs for gifted children. She often spent her holidays – at least the ones where she was not working on side projects – at the Stark residence.
After her parents' death, she had closed herself off, built a wall around herself and withdrawn into that enclosure for a long time. She immersed herself in her studies, taking on increasingly challenging assignments at school which left her with hardly any time to make friends. Though she and Tony had been extremely competitive at first, her parents' death changed things and Tony went out of his way to befriend her. That was one of his special abilities – his compassion and empathy, even at 11 – that always set him apart. He had a gift for reading people's emotions and, somehow, he always found a way to make people feel better. He had stood up for her when school bullies called her an orphan, and a nerd and when she asked him why he'd said that's what friends do. He had stood by her through her struggles with coping with the loss, and had been her friend through her darkest hours, and she was eternally grateful for that. Both of them had gone to MIT and while Tony studied electrical engineering and physics, she had gone on to study mechanical and aeronautical engineering.
And then Howard and Maria had died in a car crash. For her it was like losing another set of parents and she was the one standing by Tony's side as he processed the pain and loss of his parents' death, especially his mother. While Tony took over the reins of Stark Industries, she had gone on to do a PhD in nuclear physics like her father. Though she met Tony once in a while, they began growing apart as she was engrossed in her studies and he was sucked into the corporate world. At one of their increasingly rare meetings, Tony had asked her to join Stark Industries and head up the weapons R&D division and she had readily accepted the offer. She had plunged headlong into her work while Tony descended into the high-flying, party lifestyle. Then everything went topsy turvy when he was kidnapped by terrorists.
After his escape, Amii had been the first person Tony had called, and she had flown out to meet him at Bagram Airbase in the Stark jet. Tony had asked her to keep her trip a complete secret and she had done that. When she had seen a bruised and battered Tony climb up the stairs to the jet, she did not know whether she was more relieved or horrified. They had hugged each other like long lost friends and she had immediately noticed that something was different about him. Captivity had irrevocably changed him, and she had cried with him and for him as, over several hours, he narrated the torture he had been subject to, the things he had seen and heard, and what he had done to escape.
Tony had become uncharacteristically silent after this catharsis and had sat staring outside the plane window for a while. Then when he turned back to her, she had seen in his eyes something fierce, a determination, a commitment and a resolve that she had never seen before. He had told her that he planned to shut down the weapons manufacturing division and he asked for her advice on how to manage the fallout. He had also told her that the terrorists had acquired Stark Industry weapons and he suspected some double dealing at the highest levels in the company. Amii understood the complexity of the situation and had come up with a plan to reorganize the weapons division into a new business unit that researched technology with the potential to change lives and positively impact the planet.
The fallout of his decision to stop manufacturing weapons was massive! Bigger than she had imagined…with the stock crashing, and the company losing many a lucrative deal. While she worked behind the scenes to control the damage, Tony stood in the limelight, taking all the flak and owning up to the circumstances that led him to this decision and the global challenges he was planning to address with the new business focus. And then he announced that he was Iron Man!
Things went batshit crazy after that! She worked with him as he rebuilt the image of Stark Industries, nearly got killed by Obadiah Stane and embraced his Iron Man persona. She had helped him build a newer, sleeker version of the armor and had designed the propulsion and weapons systems for the suit. When Tony was chosen to lead the Avengers initiative, he had brought Nick Fury to meet her and had made an arrangement with S.H.I.E.L.D to keep Amii's involvement with developing the Iron Man armors a secret as he did not want her to become the target for crazy super-villains. In return, Fury had wanted Amii to assist in developing technology for S.H.I.E.L.D under the contract with Stark Industries and to this she had agreed. Tony had handed over the reins of CEO to his assistant Pepper Potts-Hogan and Amii had to admit that this time he had made the right choice. Pepper was competent and had a way of dealing with people – and anyways she had been running the business for a long time while Tony partied away. Amii had stayed on as the Head of the new R&D department while continuing to work with Tony and S.H.I.E.L.D on the side.