A/N: Soooooo I wrote a thing. I started this last night and I'm already five chapters in and I really have no plan I just started with an idea of Kidvengers and a plan of how to shrink them into tiny kiddies of cuteness and already I'm regretting my life choices cuz this has consumed my entire night last night plus this whole day so here. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers or any of the related rights.

This is magic and monsters and nothing we were ever trained for.

"Nat, you were right. You were right, and I was wrong, and we should have called in Thor," Clint said, clutching Natasha close to him.

She said something in Russian, and while Clint knew a few words (enough to know when she was sweet-talking him and when she was swearing, and also enough to order food and beer), he didn't quite get the gist of that sentence.

"English, Nat. Do you not know English yet?" Clint wouldn't be surprised. She was tiny and uncomfortably adorable and full of words that sounded like fiery insults, but Clint could never be sure. He didn't quite know what a three-year-old's vocabulary would be, but knowing Nat, she'd already learned the swears that would make sailors blush at that age. She said she'd started young.

He muttered his best approximation of "It's going to be okay," over and over again in her ear in his best Russian, and that seemed to calm her down.

He didn't know it was going to be okay, of course. That was a lie. But it was the one lie they'd agreed to let each other slide on. Other lies were open to ridicule and revelation (except lies about the past, but they'd both learned long ago that those weren't lies as much as they were survival mechanisms, so they were exempt from the lying rules as well).

"Stark," he said through gritted teeth as he curled his body protectively around the tiny child that used to be Black Widow and was now just a toddler wrapped up in Clint's best attempt-at-swaddling using the old Black Widow suit. He could feel the building coming down around them, and he tried not to breathe in the dust. He was coughing pretty violently already, heavy, bloody coughs, and he was pretty sure that would freak out the already-freaked-out kid in his clutches—plus he was pretty sure there was something in the dust, because the more he breathed it in, the more he felt like he was constricting, shrinking, almost like panicking but a lot more physical.

Natasha'd been hit by the first wave of dust. He'd just been lucky, really. He worked better from a distance, so when the building came down, he'd been on the neighboring roof. But when she'd doubled over and coughed up half a lung and at least a pint's worth of blood, he'd felt every second it took him to get down there.

"Fast as we can, Barton," Stark said. He sounded panicked, too. "Civilians first."

"There were people in the building?" Clint frowned. That shouldn't have been possible. They'd scouted the place, and it was empty.

"Reporters showed up as soon as the building came down. We got 'em clear and pumped some oxygen in them, but Barton—they inhaled something . . . ." Stark trailed off, and that's how Clint knew it was bad. Stark had words for everything.

Well, at least they hadn't brought a building down on civilians. That would've been bad.

"Stark," Clint said. He was trying hard not to breathe, but this part was important, "don't let anyone else in here. Not Cap or Banner or even Thor."

"You embarrassed you need the help?" Stark asked lightly, but it wasn't full of the usual sting.

"Your armor filters the air," Clint said. He took a deep breath—he couldn't hold it any longer and talk at the same time—then immediately burst into a fresh round of coughing.

Little Nat, who had curled her arms around his neck and hidden in his chest when the walls started to shake, looked up at him in alarm and asked him if he was dying. He recognized that phrase, at least. Nat asked him that whenever he was hurt in the field.

He decided not to give her his usual "You only wish I'd go down that easy" (which, by the way, had taken a long time to learn) and fell back on the "it's okay" lie.

After his coughing fit, he felt the familiar push of constriction. He noticed Nat was coughing again, too, so he wrapped his arms even tighter around her and held her until the coughing fit was over and didn't much care that his whole front was now covered in blood.

"Barton?"

Clint didn't reply. He needed to hold his breath. Whatever this stuff was, it was deadly, and it was very probably magic, given what it had done to Natasha, who seemed now to be a little closer to two than to three years old.

He tried to ignore the fact that his own uniform felt a little big, too.

He instead used his air to whisper his "it's okay" lie over and over and to kiss Natasha's forehead and to close his eyes and hold her close and wait for the team to dig them out.

It was a long two-minute wait before he felt rather than saw the debris shifting nearby. "Watch it, Stark," he gasped into his comm link as the movement kicked up more dust and he hurriedly stuffed his shirt sleeve over Natasha's face in the best approximation of a filter he could get.

His quiver was thirty feet away from him, but he couldn't reach it, not with his legs pinned down. The building had come down on him almost as soon as he'd reached Natasha, and he hadn't had time to do anything but pull her out of harm's way. But if he could've reached it, there'd be a breathing mask, a special new toy for underwater exploration, and it could've helped Natasha, who seemed only to be getting younger.

The sunlight blinded Clint temporarily, and little Nat buried her face in Clint's chest.

"Are you two okay?" Stark asked, pulling the rubble aside. "Is anyone else in here?"

It was Stark's civilian voice. His "it's okay; I'm a hero" voice that he used on people he rescued, and Clint would've told him off if he hadn't looked down at his uniform and realized it was so covered in dust and blood that there was no way Stark would recognize it. And with Nat in her current state, there was no telling what Clint looked like . . . .

Clint pointed at Natasha. "Get her out of here before she gets any worse," he said. He tried not to cough through that sentence, but it was hard.

Stark reached out for little Nat, but she just nestled in deeper into Clint's shirt and held on tighter. She shouted a few words in Russian, but they were much simpler. Things like "no" and "scared" and words that didn't together make a full sentence.

He was going to lose her. His Natasha. Right here in this pile of rubble because they thought they were just stopping a common bank robber. "Stark. My quiver," he gasped out. It was harder to stop the coughing now, but if he could just hold out for a little longer. . . .

Stark tilted his head. Clint couldn't see the guy's expressions behind the faceplate, but he could tell from the way his whole body stiffened, even through the armor, that Stark had figured out what happened. Who they were.

Stark blasted his way through the rubble, which kicked up more of the dust and sent both Clint and Natasha into another round of coughing fits, but Clint felt the quiver drop into his outstretched hand as the fit subsided.

He went right for the outside pocket and pulled out the breathing device, holding it in front of Nat and whispering the "it's okay" lie five hundred times over again, even if it meant he had to keep taking a breath in the dust and rubble and coughing and blood, because she was tinier than ever, and he wasn't sure she could understand him, but maybe if he sounded comforting enough. . . .

And then Clint could feel his legs again as Stark lifted the wall off of them, and with that feeling came a roaring pain that he would have shouted at if he hadn't been holding a toddler. He felt metal hands scoop him up and concentrated on just holding onto Nat and not losing consciousness. He knew Stark was saying something, probably asking questions, but he couldn't concentrate on anything but holding Nat and staying awake.

He coughed.

Stay awake. Hold Nat.

Coughed again.

Stay awake.