A/N: I have too much headcanon to keep it to myself, or to explain it adequately in each piece of writing. Relevant details: This follows my AU headcanon, in which Clint has wings, and he and Natasha have kids – Tess and Phil – who happen to be born with wings as well. Also Steve Rogers and Maria Hill got together and made little baby Jack, who was born with all Steve's former physical problems. You can read my other fanfics to get a better idea if you really want to. /shameless plug/
Clint and Natasha had complained about the cameras and microphones all over the Tower from the first day they'd stepped inside it. They had systematically gone through and ripped out every single mic and camera on their floor – over and over, because Tony kept going through and putting more in. He'd finally agreed to leave most of their floor – most, mind you – free of the things.
Since the twins' birth, however, Clint had discovered that having surveillance throughout the whole building was quite a useful feature. Between JARVIS and the cameras everywhere, it was a little easier to keep track of the pair of mischief-makers. Despite taking after their parents in their desire to constantly get into trouble and go places they shouldn't be, Clint felt pretty safe about them with an entire tower full of SHIELD agents and Stark employees keeping an eye on them. JARVIS usually warned if they started getting into dangerous places, and, as much as he and Nat could worry about people like Bruce and Tony, the whole team made great babysitters.
At the moment, Clint was enjoying an almost-nap. He'd intended to sleep, discovered that for some reason he couldn't, and ended up sprawled on the bed watching the security feed from one of Tony's workshops. The genius billionaire was on his stomach teaching Phil to make robots. At five, the kid already showed surprising talent with the computers and robots, and Tony had decided he needed to learn things.
Nat had protested, of course – "He's only five, Tony. I didn't even start that young." Clint had muttered something about computers not existing when she was that young, and, predictably, she'd punched him, but she'd given up and let Tony show Phil how fun robots could be.
Clint wasn't sure whether the little boy was actually learning much or not, but he seemed to be having fun, and Tony was grinning like a kid himself, so it couldn't be all bad. Every now and then Phil would get a little too excited, and his little wings would start flailing, and he'd end up halfway to the ceiling before he remembered to stay on the floor with Uncle Tony. Clint chuckled.
Suddenly Phil stared up, like something had caught his attention. One chubby finger pointed, and Tony turned, and then leapt to his feet. Clint was already halfway up. Whatever it was, it couldn't be good.
JARVIS' voice arrested him halfway to the door. "Agent Barton, your daughter seems to be in distress outside the south side of the seventh floor of the Tower."
Tess.
Damn AI sounded so calm about the whole thing, like there was nothing wrong with a distressed five-year-old flying seven damn stories up.
Clint swore, barely bothering to toss his quiver and bow over his shoulder as he dove for the window. "Open that thing, JARVIS," he yelled, and it slid open just in time to prevent him slamming into the glass.
He had to circle half the tower to find Tess. She was, as JARVIS had said, at about the seventh storey, fluffy black wings flapping madly and not seeming to do much good. Clint dove toward her, his own wings handling the air much more efficiently. As soon as he got closer, he could see her face scrunched up in a stubborn, determined look that Natasha always said came from him. Her little tongue stuck out between her teeth and one eye was actually closed. Her arms and legs were all wrapped around something black and furry, and she seemed to be doing her best to get to the top of the Tower.
Clint came up under her, arms outstretched, and pulled her close. Her little wings kept going a moment too long, and he nearly crushed one as he pulled her in and started back up for the top of the Tower.
"You're not supposed to be out here, kiddo," he said as they reached the roof. She didn't answer. She had a knack for knowing when she was in trouble, even in less obvious circumstances than these, and generally waited to see how angry he was before trying to somehow talk her way out of it. He didn't set her down until they were actually inside, opening the roof-access door with his daughter and whatever she'd taken possession of tucked beneath one arm.
"How'd you get outside?" he asked. The little girl had proven herself an escape artist from the start, but they'd managed to make it very, very difficult for anyone to get in and out of the Tower unnoticed. Everything was locked. JARVIS was under strict programmed instructions not to open any outside doors or windows for the twins. Everyone knew better than to let them out.
Tess looked up at him, tongue back inside her mouth, big green eyes pleading. He hated that look; it twisted his heart and made it so hard to say 'no.' She held out her fluffy bundle – the thing was almost as big as she was, which wasn't exactly saying much – and offered a tentative grin. "Found a puppy, Daddy!"
Clint rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. How'd you get out there, Tess?"
The pouty face came back and she clutched the big fuzzball a little closer to her tiny chest. The dog squirmed some and let out a muffled woof, and a bright pink tongue emerged to attack the underside of Tess's chin. She giggled once and then pouted again.
Clint sighed, took her back to their floor, and sat her down on the edge of the bathtub to clean her up a little. She was covered in dirt and grass, which meant she'd gotten far enough to find a park of some sort. Probably that was where she'd found the puppy. The thing was a pure mutt of some sort, all short, curly black hair and adoring eyes – one brown and one blue – and energetic tongue. It kept wagging its tail and pawing at Tess's lap, which made her laugh, which made it hard to pick the leaves and twigs out of her wings. They still had a lot of baby down in them, even though they'd grown strong enough and sprouted enough regular feathers to carry her – more was the pity, because she kept getting in more and more trouble the better she got at flying.
"Where'd you get the dog?" he asked after he'd gotten her mostly cleaned up.
She gave him a long, suspicious look, then jumped off the edge of the tub and half-ran, half-flew out into the living area. The puppy loped along with her –awkwardly, as if it hadn't yet figured out which of its oversize paws worked together. Clint called her name and followed. He caught her in the middle of the room, dropped to the floor, and sat her down with him.
"Where'd the puppy come from?" he repeated.
She only managed to pout for a minute before a broad grin split her face. "The park!"
Which was what he'd figured, but which was disturbing, because he needed to figure out how she'd gotten out unnoticed. The idea of his daughter alone in New York City nearly stopped his heart, even now, with her safe in front of him.
Her grin turned abruptly into a severe frown and she clutched the dog close again. "Some boys throwed rocks at him." Which explained why she'd dragged it home. She liked shiny things and she liked to save things. Maybe it was living with the Avengers, but she had a thing for rescuing anything in distress, whether it was a fly in the window or Phil in some make-believe game or Jack when his asthma kicked in.
Clint sighed and reached for the puppy. "Lemme see."
Tess gave the furry bundle up reluctantly. Clint ran his hands over the thing, which seemed friendly, but definitely neglected. It was filthy and let out yips when Clint touched a few points on its ribs – probably where the little boys' rocks had hit it.
"P'ease, daddy – Tess wants a puppy."
He raised his eyebrows. "Oh, Tess does, does she?"
The little girl nodded, red curls bobbing. "Phil does, too."
Clint chuckled. "Does he? Does Phil know he wants a puppy?"
Tess nodded enthusiastically.
Clint pulled her a little closer with his free arm, kept hold of the dog with the other and leaned back a little. "Nat!" The sound of typing in the other room ceased. "Your daughter takes after you."
There was a brief silence. "Oh really?"
"Stubborn as hell and likes to rescue things."
He heard the chair rolling across the floor, and then her head poked around the corner. "That's you, Clint. You're the one who likes to rescue things."
He grinned up at her, watching her eyes slide from his face to Tess, to the puppy, and then back to him.
"The hell happened here, Barton? Last I knew we were parents, not dog trainers."
Clint shrugged. "This little rascal rescued a puppy."
Natasha's eyes narrowed. "How'd you get outside, Tess?"
The five-year-old ducked her head and squirmed out of Clint's grasp to wrap her arms around the big puppy again. "Jack showed me the roof."
That made sense, unfortunately. Steve and Maria's son was old enough to know better than to do things like jumping off the roof, and JARVIS was allowed to let him roam pretty much wherever he wanted. And the twins had been following him since the day they'd been old enough to drag themselves across the floor baby-seal-style. Probably he hadn't thought anything of it. Probably he hadn't meant to let a five-year-old with wings and no fear loose on New York City. Clint made a mental note to have a chat with someone about it.
"His name's Fury." Tess's voice was muffled by the puppy's fur, but the words were intelligible.
Clint blinked twice, gave Natasha a "this is your child" look, and managed to ask, "Why?" without laughing or choking.
Tess wriggled sideways enough to thrust the puppy toward Clint's lap. "He has a eyepatch too," she said, rubbing one hand over the puppy's face.
Clint tipped the mutt's muzzle up to get a better look. A blue eye and a brown eye. Figured that would remind Tess of SHIELD's director. She'd been fascinated by the eyepatch most of her life, and with her farsightedness, he could see how the blurry view she had of the dog's eyes resembled it. He shrugged up at Natasha. "She's more or less right."
Nat rolled her eyes. "Great. Nick Fury in dog form. Just what we need."
"She wants to keep it. Apparently Phil does too."
"You mean you want to keep it." Clint grinned but didn't disagree.
Natasha turned and headed back toward her computer. "Have Tony find out if someone owns the thing," she called as she went. Clint figured that meant 'yes.' He left Tess hauling the puppy across the room to the door, explaining to it that Jack could be friends, too, if it didn't jump on him, because, "Jack falls down easy. Nobody gaved him wings."
Tony didn't seem too interested in finding the owner of some stray dog Tess had picked up, but he "got someone on it" – by which Clint assumed he meant that Pepper had taken charge of the situation.
When Clint got back, he was met by a very wet Natasha and three soaked kids.
"Damn thing was filthy," she explained at his raised eyebrows, her voice suggesting it might be dangerous to inquire further.
The dog looked more or less clean and the kids looked ecstatic.
Two days later Tony said they'd found the dog's owner. The man hadn't seemed particularly interested in the dog until he'd realized someone else was, and Tony seemed fairly offended by the amount of money he'd needed to pay before the guy would relinquish his rights to the neglected puppy, but apparently the man had been more than happy to accept an exorbitant price and announce to anyone who would listen that he'd sold a dog to Tony Stark.
"Keep it out of my labs," Tony said, and then, as he was walking away, tossed, "You're welcome," over his shoulder.
Fury was introduced to the dog with in the week. There was no tactful way to do it. He came to heckle Tony and give Natasha another one of those paper-trail research projects she hated so much, and the puppy got to him before anyone else did. Tess followed almost immediately.
"Fury! Fury, i's not your turn yet!" Clint got into the room just in time to see the director glare down at both Tess and her puppy. Predictably, confusion on Director Fury came out looking like irritation. The pup scratched excitedly at one black-clad leg and Tess beamed up at Fury. "See my puppy?"
"Yeah. I do. Where's your mom?" The director seemed entirely unimpressed by the black mutt or the little girl's enthusiasm.
"He plays hide'n'seek," Tess announced, not the least bit put off. "His name's Fury."
Clint couldn't quite hold back a smirk as the director's face went from disinterested irritation to surprise and then to something between annoyance and curiosity.
"Why the hell would you name a dog Fury?"
Tess's grin came back in full force, and she bent to pick the puppy up, little arms clamped around its chest. She managed to fly up to Fury's eye level with it– an impressive feat, really – her wings desperately flapping and the puppy's back legs and tail flailing along with her. "Look! He has a eyepatch!" She managed to hover at Fury's eye level for just a minute, beaming, before the dog's weight and renewed kicking forced her to nearly collapse to the ground.
Fury just stared, for once speechless, until Clint came to his rescue. "Nat's in the back," he said.
There was almost a smile on Fury's mouth, but his good eye was still glaring fiercely. Clint started for the doorway and Fury followed him, eye still on Tess and his canine namesake until they reached the door.
Clint couldn't help chuckling. "What, nobody ever named a puppy after you before?"
The director managed to hide the smile entirely and turned his glare on the archer. "Statute of limitations still isn't up on some of that shit, Barton. I can still have you prosecuted."
"Yeah, yeah. Tell that to my daughter." He decided it was probably entirely untactful to let the director know that they'd also discovered that Tess's puppy was a female, but that they'd been unable to persuade her of that fact or dissuade her from keeping the name. Somehow it just didn't seem like the sort of thing Fury would appreciate.
Tess carried the dog half the time and let it run beneath her the rest of the time. Tony made a little carrier for it – something along the lines of those baby backpack things they sold for parents – and Tess flew around with the puppy tucked underneath her. For a long time she carried it so often that her muscles kept up with its growth, but within about eight months it had gotten too big for her to lift. And the thing kept growing. It was just some black, curly-haired mutt, but Clint figured it must have some kind of mastiff in it; its head was massive and broad and it grew as tall as Tess by the end of its first year with them. She wheedled Tony into making a new harness – one that would fit Fury and attach to two people, so that she could literally rope Phil into helping her carry the dog around. He once caught her trying to make Jack ride in the harness and had to tell her it was strictly for dogs.
At first they tried to make rules about where Fury could and couldn't be, but they proved utterly futile; Tess managed to sneak the dog everywhere from Tony's workrooms to her bed. Eventually they gave up and figured as long as it stayed well-behaved, it could go wherever she did. By the time she was ten, Tess was sneaking out of the Tower regularly. Usually she took Phil and Jack along with her, and, with Fury either in the sling harness or loping along on the sidewalk beneath them, they got into as much trouble as Tess and Phil could dream up together.
Clint was assembling a new set of explosive arrows the first time he heard Tess come in scolding the dog. He left the parts and glue to poke his head out.
Fury looked deeply apologetic, tail drooping and head nearly touching the floor as Tess, one hand closed on the scruff of her neck, told her in no uncertain terms just how she felt about her behaviour. At fifteen, Tess was going through some kind of rebellion. She'd dyed her long red curls black and her black wings purple and green, and Clint had a feeling the dog didn't appreciate the spiky rings and bracelets that decorated her hands and wrists.
"What'd she do?" Clint asked.
Tess spared him a glance. "Ran off."
Odd – the dog had been devoted to her since the day she'd brought it home. He'd never known it to leave her before.
"She won't do it again," Tess added, giving Fury one more glare and then sighing and ruffling the fur between her ears. "It's fine," she muttered. "I don't hate you. Dumb dog." Fury seemed uncertain for a moment, then wagged her tail hesitantly, and then, sure Tess was finished scolding, jumped up to shove her face at the girl's and lick vigorously. Clint chuckled and went back into his workroom.
A day later Tess dragged Fury in, swearing in Russian and giving her a detailed lecture on just why she shouldn't run off. Natasha, halfway done cleaning Clint's left wing, frowned. "Thought that thing never ran away."
Clint shrugged. "Apparently she does now. Maybe she found someone who feeds her."
Natasha hesitated a moment longer, eyes on the doorway, and then resumed working soap into Clint's feathers. "Better hope that's all it is. I swear, if that dog's up to trouble…"
Clint grinned. "Come on, Tess's been teaching her to get into trouble since day one."
Fury ran away once more before Tess let Tony set up some kind of shock-collar type of system. She said she'd get her used to it and then take it off once the dog had learnt not to go off on her own. After that things seemed to be fine. Tess had no more trouble with Fury running off, and Fury seemed content to stay close to her mistress.
As a matter of fact, she stayed remarkably close. She'd always been affectionate, but she began to get almost clingy.
"That dog is so needy," Phil muttered once or twice.
Clint started worrying when Fury growled at him. Attachment to Tess seemed to have turned into irrational possessiveness; she guarded the girl to a ridiculous degree and went so far as to snap at Jack once. She was eating strangely, too. For a week and a half, she barely touched her food.
"I think she's sick," Clint told Natasha in private. "We're gonna have to get a vet in." He couldn't let himself think of the possibility that something serious was wrong with the dog; it would tear Tess up, and he couldn't stand that.
By the time they got a vet in, Fury's appetite had returned. She seemed to be making up for her weeks of dieting by eating absolutely everything she could get.
"If anything happens to that dog, Tess'll be heartbroken," Natasha murmured as the vet began the examination. Clint just nodded. Tess stood to one side, arms crossed, wings tucked close around her body, obviously trying to look less worried than she was.
"She's pregnant," was the vet's diagnosis.
Clint actually choked, which made Natasha snort. "She's what?" he managed. "How the hell did that –"
Natasha smirked. "I'll explain it to you later, sweetheart," she murmured, and he glared at her. She'd said about the same thing when he'd asked about the same question about her pregnancy.
"Fantastic," Tess said, and, aside from a wary glance at her parents, she seemed to mean it.
Everyone except Tess tried to pretend they weren't worried about Fury, but they all were. Clint caught Phil adding food to the half-full dish on the kitchen floor a few times, and he couldn't come up with a decent excuse the day Natasha caught him tossing meat scraps at Fury.
The vet said everything would be fine. "She's healthy. I'd say four more weeks. Keep her fed and let her rest."
By the end of four weeks, Tess had set up a nest of blankets for Fury and was spending most of her time keeping an eye on the dog. For a while Clint kept an eye out, too, but Fury seemed to have no desire whatsoever to actually birth the puppies, and Clint got tired of being on edge. He figured she'd have them whenever she wanted, and until then, he had other priorities.
Natasha's kick woke him one night, and he had his bow trained on the doorway before he had his eyes open. Nat was already sitting bolt upright, a gun aimed at the door as it swung open.
Tess stood in the doorway, hands up. Clint and Natasha both swore softly, lowering their weapons. Tess muttered something about being killed by her own parents.
"'s what you get, coming in this late," Clint mumbled.
"Fury's in labour."
It took Clint a moment to comprehend, and then he stumbled out of bed just behind Nat. He had never seen a dog in labour before. He decided almost immediately that once was enough. Long before it was over, he decided that once was too many times. Seeing Natasha in labour had been worse, he would admit, but between Tess's anxiety and the sounds Fury made, he could have done without the entire ordeal.
Tess had been a little off – Fury wasn't quite in labour when they reached her; she was pacing back and forth, whining and occasionally pausing to scratch at the nest. It was hours before anything else happened, but Tess seemed to want them there, so Clint resigned himself to losing that night's sleep and sat with her. The labour took almost six hours, which Natasha reminded him was far less time than she'd taken. He whispered, softly enough that Tess couldn't hear it, that he loved the dog far less than he did her. Tess somehow stayed hyperalert the entire time, barely moving from her place beside the dog. The rest of them were in and out – Phil mostly out and Clint and Natasha, to Clint's discomfort, mostly in.
"Let's not do this again," Clint murmured once Fury seemed to have finished entirely with the birthing process. Six black puppies and one mottled white and grey one nestled up against Fury's side, Fury, apparently a proud mother, licked them repeatedly and kept a wary blue eye on the humans.
Tess turned around, a broad smile on her face for the first time in two days. "I found puppies, Daddy," she said.
Clint, suddenly struck with the responsibility of it all, groaned. "We're gonna have to find them all homes…"
Tess smirked. "I think Phil wants a puppy…"