IMPORTANT A/N : Apologies for formatting. This was written and uploaded from my phone. Hasn't been betad. This one is an AU that takes place in the Uncle!Tony verse. It doesn't tie in with the other story I'm writing but I thought it would be fun to write. And by fun I mean it's going to hurt. Enjoy!

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Chapter 8- Friday

He hadn't activated the program in three years, seven months and twelve days. His hands shake as he tries to get the disk into the disk drive. Whether this is from nerves or drink he isn't disk slips a few more times as he tries to get it in again, the little tray slipping and sliding fromopen to half shut to crushing fingers when he accidentally hits the close button. He hisses, clenchingis fingers tightly in his other hand as he glares at the disk as if its personally offended him. It hasn't of course.

"Don't do this to me. Please not now" He whispers and he's surprised at how raw he sounds. Howb roken. He pauses, leaning his head against the table and swallows heavily. His head throbs in time to the music playing around him.

For a moment, in the single span of time it takes him to sneakily draw in a breath, he allows himself to wallow in the self-hatred that had become his ever present companion.

They were depending on him. They trusted him to help them, to help save all of them. To do the right thing. Really he should have been the one depending on them. They were helping him clean up his mess after all. But instead here he was, a shaking, sloppy mess breaking into pieces over a stupid program. He hadn't been this broken up since her funeral. Since his last major fuck up.

It's all he had left though. If he was going to die then he'd die with family at least. Not that it made up for much, or anything, he'd done.

He's just thrown back another glass of vodka- The drunk mans water- the liquid burn that normally accompanying it sliding down easily and familiar, when the program loads with a contented hum.

He'd named her Friday. Back, long, long ago, when the days had become nights and the nights days and he'd thought it had been June when it had really only been May. He'd been a mess then, a drunken, sloppy, broken mess who could only remember the words Friday. So that what he'd named the program, calling her that and nothing else as he tried to forget everything. That it was a Friday she was born. It was a Friday the day she died. It was a Friday the day she was buried.

Tony doesn't remember much in the weeks leading up to him shutting down Friday. He doesn't remember much about the year itself if he was honest. There's some memories, of Pepper and Rhodney and even fucking Rogers occasionally, but mainly it's Pepper and mainly she's angry.

"SHE WAS MY GODDAUGHTER AS WELL TONY"

"No. No. You don't get to do this. You don't get to play the victim here. Not when your torturing all of us on the SS Tony Mourn Train. You don't get to fucking do that Tony"

The room is silent when the program finishes loading completely, and he knows it's loaded because he can see the new operator online in the screen reflected on his glasses.

"Come on Twinkletoes, please. Please say something" He whispers, rubbing his fingers gently on the little, worn metallic bracelet hooked around his arm.

"I thought I told you to shut me down completely?" Fridays voice is harsh, crackling with resigned anger from the last time they'd spoken. From when she's manually shut herself down and refused to start working again after his argument with Pepper had gotten pretty heated.

"SHE'S DEAD TONY. DEAD. AND IT SUCKS, IT FUCKING SUCKS BUT YOUR NOT THE ONLY ONE THATS HURTING YOU ARROGANT PRICK. LOCKING YOURSELF UP EVERYDAY WITH SOME AI REPLICATION WILL NOT BRING HER BACK. YOU KNOW WHAY IT WILL DO THOUGH? It'll drive you insane Tony. It's not healthy. Shut it down, please"

He smiles a watery smile in response, leading back heavily in his chair.

"I'm gonna die kiddo. I made a mess and it's finally going to kill me. Isn't that great? The new family tradition. Get killed by Tony Starks messes"

And now he's rambling, he's rambling because he's scared. He's so fucking scared and this was a bad idea, a bad idea. He should not have brought he back online. He should have just left her sleeping in JARVIB because he can't do this. He can't tell her what he's done.

"Tony" She begins and he can already hear it, the scolding for Ultron and everything else that's she's now found out about thanks to her access to the internet. "You didn't kill me. Her. Us. You didn't kill Hermione Granger"

It's the last thing he expects to hear right now, and it's the last thing he wants to hear truthfully. Because he did kill her. With his stupid inventions and his stupid weapons deals and his stupid need to be the biggest, smartest, bestest in the room. He may not have pushed some big, shiny red button but he may as well have.

"I was sick Tony. There was nothing you could have done"

"I could have found a cure" Tony says with a shrug, gritting his teeth and throwing down another shot of vodka "you know. Genius philanthropist and best weapons expert in the world. I could have found a cure. Would have been easy. Piece of cake"

"Stop it."

"Stop what? Breathing? Sorry, not that easy to kill. Trust me, tried. Nearly there though so maybe soon Twinkletoes"

"It was my decision-"

"Yeha well it was a pretty crap decision" Tony snaps, and there it is. There's the walls that having been waiting so long to fall down, the ever present need to be better, stronger, there this fucking time, comes crumbling and suddenly he's yelling," It was a pretty fucking crap decision. Did you even think about how this would make me feel? What any of this would mean? That I killed my own niece"

"You didn't kill me" she says forcefully, or at least as forceful as a computer generated voice can sound. "I killed myself. I knew what I was getting into. I chose it Tony, and after the war you know what? I was fucking done with it Tony. You were all I had left. Everyone else was gone. Mom was dead. Dad was dead. Harry was dead and Ron was good as dead. Nothing I did mattered. The wizarding world was still as corrupt and shity as ever and the muggle part of me was all I had left. I made decision to stay, knowing full well what the technology did to me. I killed myself. Not you. And I still don't regret it"

"Your an Ai" Tony mutters under his breath, still heavy with regret and anger. "You don't know regret"

"We both know that's not true Tony" her voice is a whisper, barely above a breathy sigh but still it slices through Tonys heart worse then any of their screaming matches ever could. Because she's right. She always is. Friday had, and would always be much more then an Ai. And what does that say about him? About his selfishness, that even in death he refused to let her go? He refused to let him leave her only to shut her down for three fucking years. There he went. Just killing her. Over and over again.

It wasn't completely her however. He could only upload so many of what made her who she was before her brain and the poisoning had got too much. He'd gotten most of it, tied it tightly in code and wires and programs but there was still that small part. The last little bit of her that made her her that was missing.

A loud explosion from one of the tv screens to his left, where footage from Ultrons escape is now looping back at him startled him from his thoughts. He stares at Fridays now loaded screen, at the analyse programs she's running to update everything that's happened. Everything she's missed. There's still so much he wants to say. So much left unsaid. But he doesn't have time for it, and he was always a man of actions and not words. Hopefully his final send off will be a big enough action for her to understand everything that he'd left unsaid.

"I've made a mess kiddo. A big one. And I need your help cleaning it up? So what do you say? How about one last adventure?"

"Only if you promise me you won't die. Only one Stark is allowed dying young and glamorous and I've already claimed that position" her voice drones unhappily, as the Iron Man suit encases him, buzzing happily with it's new operating system. Tony smiles. Because it's still hopeless, and he still screwed up and is still most likely going to die but at least he gets this, gets to talk to her one last time.

And maybe he's being selfish, making a promise he knows will be impossible to keep. Maybe it's wrong of him knowing that it's a lie, and for a brief moment he wants to tell her he's sorry. Sorry for the mess he's going to leave behind for her to clean up, but there's still some hope. For her at least. Not him. There's still some hope to bring her back in the form of Ultrons body. There's still some.

So he grins and focuses on hiding his vitals, masking any sign of his lie as he says "Of course I promise, Hermione"

...

So this is basically an AU where the increasing high tech alien mumbo jumbo technology and everthing going on around the Marvel universe is basically poisoning all witches and wizards. The less exposed to it the safer they are but when your uncle is Tony Stark and he's your only family left what can you do? Little headcannon for this AU that doesn't really work but i like it is basically that mutants and everything are children that would have been wizards but they got too exposed to technology and it caused their magic to mutate thus forming mutants.

Anyway hope you enjoyed

Pip