Real or Not Real

By: Kuroi Atropos

Rating: Teen (to be safe)

Warnings: Vague mention of suicidal thoughts, PTSD, and the general craptasticness that is the world of the Hunger Games. Mentions of brainwashing, comic violence, and technobabble. This was started ages ago, pre-Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Cap 2, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, so it isn't really "canon" compliant any more.

Summary: It's not really Loki's fault that Clint Barton got thrown through time, but he's definitely at fault for the world finding out about it.

XxXxX

Chapter One

XxXxX

12 Years and 3 Months After Incident

Phil Coulson sipped his coffee and looked across the table at the young man that was mopping up every last dredge of gravy with his roll and took a sip of his coffee.

It was hard to believe that 20 minutes ago, this kid had saved the lives of three of his agents with a well-placed arrow while dressed in a sparkly purple get up from his circus act. Coulson wasn't sure exactly how that color scheme was considered a good idea even for something so showy, but whatever worked for the archer.

"Have you given it any consideration?" He asked calmly, mentally already going through the needed forms and placement tests they'd have to run.

He should have stuck to not making assumptions however, because the next thing that came out of the brat's thankfully empty mouth was "I'm sure that you would want to deal with my authority issues about as much as I'd want to wear a suit. Thanks for the food though." And then just like that the kid was out the door.

Coulson blinked, nearly completely thrown off, before he dropped a fifty on the table and bolted after the fast little twerp. The kid was simply too skilled to leave it at that.

"I can promise you that you wouldn't have to wear one often." Coulson told him as he caught up. "For most field agents with specialties like yours, we're fairly loose with our dress code policies and design protective field gear to your specifications. As for authority issues, I'm sure we can find a work around."

Grey blue eyes blinked at him before reflective, purple shades that matched the outfit covered them. "Look, Agent Coulson, I'm not disputing that it sounds like a great opportunity. I just really have issues with the whole scary government agency thing you're inviting me to join. With my family I've learned the hard way that governments aren't always that fair, and have a tendency to ask for more than you can give and rarely offer anything back."

It was Coulson's turn to blink and he mentally cursed that his enthusiasm to snag this kid had gotten the better of him and he hadn't waited for the back ground check to plan his recruiting pitch. This was just what he needed, a prime possible candidate that had someone in the system… He'd have to find out who it was and try again later.

For now, he merely nodded and said his goodbyes, no matter how temporary he was determined they would be.

XxXxX

12 Years, 3 Months, and 9 Days After Incident

Coulson stared at the open file on his desk in the New York Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division office.

"You've certainly found an interesting one, Coulson, I think if we play it right he'll definitely be worth it," Agent Maria Hill said idly as she poked through his side bar, trying to find where he hid his creamer for her coffee (even she knew better than to take any from the full pot that had just finished percolating, only Fury could get away with that).

"It takes someone pretty spectacular to get that out of you about a new agent, Hill. Want to give me an overview?"

"If you tell me where the creamer is."

"Third drawer on your left," Coulson hid a smirk behind his own cup of coffee as Hill practically dove for the drawer and quickly poured some into her travel mug.

"His aim is every bit as good as you suspected. His shows are insanely complicated and he hasn't missed a shot by even half an inch – the agents you assigned measured. He also figured out he was being tailed and kept losing our agents to the point they'd have to go back to his circus and wait for him to show up again. He had pizza delivered to their hotel room." Coulson had to chuckle at that particular ballsy move.

When the mirth finally died down, Coulson held up the file. "Any idea on why his family would give him a bad view on big bad government agencies?"

Hill nodded and took a sip of coffee, settling into the chair across from his desk. "His parents died when he was young, leaving him and an older brother, Bernard – Barney for short. We're not completely sure on his age because we could find birth records on the brother, but we have nothing on him." Coulson raised an eyebrow at her. The foster care system did give a lot of kids bad impressions of the government, but not to the level that Clint had. "It was bad. They were in a group home for a while and details of that place weren't pretty. They took off about a month before the bastards running it were busted for a variety of crimes that ranged from emotional abuse to child prostitution. The records were fudged too which is why we can't trust them in place of his missing birth certificate."

Coulson scowled. That would be hell for the security clearance that he wanted to get his new agent. "Where'd they take off to? They wouldn't have been in a home if they had any other family left."

"Records are really sketchy for a while, a police report or two that might be them and that's the most we could find. We're pretty sure that it wasn't more than a year before they were picked up by the Carson Carnival of Travelling Wonders."

"You're telling me that he and his brother actually succeeded in running away to join the circus?"

"Yes."

"Fabulous." Coulson was smiling more and more with every tidbit Hill told him as he scanned through the file. That was until he noticed two names.

"Jacques Duquesne and Buck Chisholm? How are they involved?"

Maria scowled, "Apparently, they were using the circus to hide from a bit of a tangle with a theft gone wrong. Clint was good enough that he caught their attention and they took to training him. You saw the results."

He raised his eyebrow again at Hill who smirked. "Clint found out about their backgrounds and didn't take it lightly; tried to inform the cops but those bastards found out he planned on turning them in and beat him to a pulp, leaving him for dead. Sad thing is Barney went with them rather than Clint."

"Ouch."

"Agreed. Then the police tried to pin some local crimes that the three committed on Clint and only the other members of the circus providing alibies kept him out of jail."

"He still helped us though," Coulson stated as he eyed the file that would fill in the exact details of the over view Hill had given him, and couldn't help but smile again. Somehow, he just knew Clint Barton was still the teen that would try to hand in the bad guys. Coulson would just have to dig a little bit to find that kid beneath all the hurt and anger.

XxXxX

19 Years and 11 Months After Incident

Black Widow stared up the shaft of the actual damned arrow that was pointing at her to the blue-gray eyes of the man sent to kill her - the same man that had just beaten her.

She didn't bother to rage or scream or shout. He'd hunted her across nine countries, saved four contracts from her bite, and now had her trapped. In a field. In Switzerland. Of all the places to die... Well, at least it looked pretty.

The man in black stared down at where she lay, the spent electrified arrow he had tagged her with shaken loose from her side and lying in the grass beside them. He'd somehow managed to nail her as she tried to dart away from the body of the blonde-haired woman that had joined him on his hunt after the debacle in Tai Pei.

He just stood there, arrow knocked and ready to fly and she could barely lift a finger due to sheer exhaustion and that stupid electric arrow (she knew it would take several minutes for the tremors to stop). He'd won and they both knew it. Still, while she knew when she was beaten, she wasn't quite sure of what to make of the look in his eyes as he viewed her twitching form. She really wasn't sure what to think when instead of releasing the arrow to finally put her out of commission, he relaxed the tension in the string and placed the arrow back in his quiver. Then, to her utter surprise and confusion, he turned and moved away.

Even with the remaining jolts of electricity coursing through her system she managed to drop her head to the side and watch. The agent looked young as he lay down beside the dead blonde woman, petting her hair. It really wasn't fair that he had defeated her but was more interested in the woman that she had killed.

Why wasn't he killing her?

In their world when you were beaten, you died. End of story.

Why was he ignoring her?

Black Widow wasn't sure how long he lay there, trailing his fingers through the woman's hair. It was enough time that she'd begun to feel her limbs again and was mostly confident that she could put up a decent fight. However, she was far more transfixed on the sight before her. She'd never really seen this with her targets… this mourning. It made something inside of her feel strange in a way that her training wouldn't allow her to describe, even to herself.

She'd almost recovered to a point where she could get away when the man stood up, his dismissing gaze making her freeze again. He simply walked over to a patch of wild flowers several feet away and used a combat knife from his boot to start cutting bunches of them.

His back was open. She could remove him—kill him. As good as he was, she bet that she could get him in the back of the head. Why wasn't she firing at him?

Why was she kneeling beside him to help him cut flowers and carry them over to the woman she had just beaten? The dead body should be ignored, forgotten, shouldn't it?

She hovered behind him, unsure of what to do as he arranged the flowers all over the woman until they had created a sort of burial shroud. Then he leaned down and kissed the blonde's forehead for a moment before sitting back on his heels. Then he did something even stranger than everything he'd just done: he started singing. It was a sad, haunting song in English that made her ache for the emotions in it.

How could he still feel that? He was like her—better than her in certain ways even. How could he still feel all of that?

By the time the last line had faded from the air, she was sitting, legs drawn up to her chest with her arms locked around them and her head resting on her knees. She barely cared when the man left the woman to sit beside her in the field grass.

Eventually she looked up and stared at the woman. She didn't have to glance at him to know that he was watching the body too.

"Back in town, you pretty much lost us." Black Widow didn't say anything. "I was already getting ready to check for exit points when we heard the screams." Black Widow cocked her head to the side, still gazing at the flower-covered woman. She had darted down a back alley, found a young girl maybe 12 or 13 years old that was about to be raped and castrated the man before slitting his throat and continuing to run.

"Mockingbi-" he paused and swallowed. "Bobby, she knew what she was doing. She signed up for this. That girl was innocent and you saved her."

She had been stressed at another too-close call, exhausted from nearly 62 hours with only moments resting her eyes and seeing that man holding the girl down unsettled something inside of her that she had thought she'd long since accepted.

"I'm sure that you know I can't let you go free, so I'm going to give you a few choices."

Choices?

"The first is obviously that I put an arrow through your eye." Black Widow couldn't help but smirk at that. "Stop that." She removed her smirk at his tone, feeling a shiver of something strange creep up her spine again. "The second is that you go to jail. It'll be a special one so that even someone with your skills can't escape." She scowled at that, doubting it slightly, but pretty sure it would harder than anything she had ever done before. "The last is that you come back with me."

She froze again. The man obviously wasn't going to say anything more until she replied, but she wasn't sure what he meant. Turning, she studied his profile. "Back with you?"

He nodded, "I can't promise it'll be easy, or that we'll never ask you to use your particular skillset, but I can promise you that we're about as good as you can get these days. And the difference you made for that girl—the one that I'm guessing no one made for you—you'll get to be that difference a lot more often and it won't just be by chance."

Black Widow stared at him for a while before Natasha finally nodded at him and said simply, "Take me with you."

XxXxX

22 Years and 1 Month After Incident

Pepper shifted the bag of groceries in her arms to glance at her watch as she rode the elevator of Stark Tower up to the penthouse area that housed the Avengers. She had long since alerted Jarvis to notify her of any strange occurrences (they'd had to adjust the parameters and definition of 'strange' after the first few weeks since, well, it was a group of super heroes and she needed SOME sleep) and luckily this night's weirdness was a relatively easy fix since she had already been on her way to the Tower and there was a Whole Foods on her way.

Thanks to Jarvis inventory of the Tower, she knew that every other week or so all four of the kitchens somehow went from well stocked to nearly empty, usually overnight. She'd asked Jarvis about it and the A.I. had merely stated that the 'strangeness' had been caused by an Avenger and that the staff couldn't anticipate the problem without research out of their purview (although Jarvis was close to working out a likely algorithm for when this particular instance would happen to help prevent future predicaments). Since Jarvis assured her that he had it in hand, Pepper had shelved it, remembering some of Tony's truly terrifying binges when he hadn't slept for over 72 hours and figured that one of the other Avengers had the same issue and they just ran into each other.

Still tonight, Pepper had been pinged when the fridge and pantries in the main kitchen and the lounge kitchen had been cleared completely and Jarvis had fretted about the Chef being able to make breakfast for everyone in the morning. The household staff were exemplary and kept a tight ship at Jarvis's direction (they stayed away from labs, knew to give warning before entering rooms to avoid getting shot, didn't gawk at the heroes, covered each other's duties as needed, and in return were paid ridiculous sums to put up with the insanity that was Tony Stark and his new friends) but even they'd be hard pressed to make a healthy meal from the contents of Tony's lab kitchen or the roof kitchen. They might be able to scrounge something from the various in-suite bars or kitchenettes, but Pepper figured it would be easier and less life threatening to do a basic re-stock on it now and have the delivery service make a special run tomorrow.

The doors to the main floor opened and Pepper kicked her stilettos off towards the couch so she could push the bags at her feet into the hall with her feet only to jump and clutch at the bags in her arms as a sharp yelp came from where her shoe landed. After a startled yelp of her own, she watched in surprise as Clint rolled off the sofa rubbing his arm.

"Oh my gosh, Clint, I am so sorry!" Pepper quickly put the bags in her arms down next to the other bags that Happy had placed on the floor for her and trusted Jarvis to hold the elevator as she rushed over to Clint, dropping her purse and coat on the floor just inside the doors.

The archer, who had been sprawled out on the couch, still wore a heavy coat and had obviously just gotten back from somewhere, given that the chill radiating off of him was even worse than what was coming from her.

"I should have looked where I was kicking those! Let me take a look," she tried to reach for Clint's shoulder only to have the archer wave his un-injured arm in her direction and smile reassuringly.

"'S okay, Pepper." A twist of the arm in question and a quick stretch (there were enough pops there that Pepper couldn't help but be a little jealous) and Clint changed from smiling to outright grinning. "It didn't have much force, and was a thankfully non-messy reminder not to let my guard down." Oh, now she felt horrible. Clint and Natasha were almost as bad as Bruce at adjusting to being in the Tower and here she'd brained him with a shoe just when he was getting comfortable.

"What is all that? Need a hand?" Clint pointed his chin at the pile of bags in the elevator.

Pepper smiled. She kind of liked having gentlemen around. Tony had countered by increasing the number of robots around to do her whim so he could still take care of her but he didn't have to do any manual labor he didn't want to do. "While the thought is appreciated, you are not helping me with groceries after I hit you with a five inch stiletto."

"No harm done. And I'd never forgive myself if I didn't at least carry a few bags." Clint had stayed smiling at that, but something had shifted in his eyes as she mentioned what was in the bags. Pepper scrutinized him for a few moments, but nodded finally - her well trained BS sensor not alerting her even if something did feel off.

They'd managed to get all the bags to the main kitchen and Pepper opened the fridge, only to sigh a little at the fact that it was literally empty. Jarvis's sensors had told her so, and she had seen some of the heightened metabolisms at work on the Avengers in action, but the delivery service had just done a drop off so this was a little ridiculous.

She turned, only to see Clint carefully holding out the eggs and the bags of peppers and mushrooms. She smiled and got to work sorting items into the fridge and pantry. With Clint's help, she managed to finish in no time flat.

Pepper sighed in happiness as she pressed a button on the coffee machine and it whirred to life to make her usual wind down blend. Tony was not allowed to touch any of the settings on this coffee maker, no matter what shape the industrial sized monster in his lab kitchen was in, and she had only grown more territorial over her presets after the other Avengers moved in.

After her perfectly brewed decaf was poured, she arched an eyebrow at Clint and waved at the coffee machine. Clint smiled that same smile as when she'd mentioned the groceries earlier and after dry wiping his mug (Clint always used the same one, as opposed to Natasha who never touched the same utensil twice if she could help it and made sure everything was sterilized 3 times) pressed the button for the hot chocolate. They stood there in companionable silence for few minutes while his drink brewed and Pepper smiled slightly as she saw him put in a dash of the plum syrup. She was really glad that she'd ordered such a large range of the drink mixers. She liked knowing that the others could have everything just the way they enjoyed it no matter how esoteric their world-hopping tastes were.

Their calm silence was broken by Jarvis after a few minutes. "Mr. Barton, Mr. Jeffries with the shelter is on the line. Would you like me to put him on speaker?" Clint's eyes flew to Pepper's and she found surprise overruling her confusion. He was a master assassin that could face down Loki and not flinch after everything that monster had done to him, and yet she would almost say that he looked…scared?

When Clint just kept staring at her rather than answering Jarvis, Pepper sighed and took charge. "Please patch him through, Jarvis."

"Right away Ms. Potts. And may I say that you are looking particularly beautiful this evening." Pepper mentally noted to thank Tony for the thought, but remind him that it was a little creepy having Jarvis compliment her all the time and to turn that feature off.

"Clint, it's Davis. I just got back and saw all the food that you dropped off with Maggie and I can't thank you enough. We were going to be pretty tight this week and it's more than enough to get us over the hump." Clint practically cringed away from her, even though the look on his face had turned defiant, like he thought he was wrong and was expecting to be harshly chastised for what he had done even if he wasn't sorry.

Pepper finally put together the pieces of what had been causing the random grocery disappearances. She settled her mug on the counter and just stood there for a second. Then, knowing full well that she was placing her life in her hands, she stepped forward and hugged Clint, pecking him on the cheek as she released him. Clint just stood there and gaped at her.

"Clint?" Pepper smiled at the still cautiously grateful sounding man over the phone and waved at Clint to answer the poor man, even as she dug through a few drawers and found one of the spare Starkpads that Tony had the tendency to leave lying around and grabbed a spare chopstick to use as stylus since the slot for this one was empty. She tapped through a few screens as she listened to Clint talk to Davis. The kids were ecstatic at the thought of the gooey brownies from the boxes of mix and the earlier mentioned Maggie was already happily slicing up the bushels of apples for the kids breakfast tomorrow morning.

Pepper mumbled a quick thanks to Jarvis as he provided her the phone number and address along with the back ground info to the shelter that Clint had apparently been donating Avengers supplies to. It was a full on Children's Shelter at that – Pepper smiled wider - one that, according to Jarvis's research, was completely on the up and up.

While Stark Industries did its fair share of Charity work (even more since Loki) this felt like something special and even though she would add some of the standard donations to the group of kids that Clint was currently beaming over, she didn't feel that was enough.

With an utmost glee that made her almost giggly, Pepper quickly shuffled the delivery schedule of certain goods, parsed out a few things, added a couple of extra items that she considered necessary for kids to have along with a few 'for fun' food stuffs recommended by Jarvis based on transcripts of some of Clint's past thank you calls and notes from the kiddies. Then, with a completely unnecessary flourish on her signature, she promptly arranged for 2 of the 4 standard deliveries a week to drop off directly at the shelter. She flicked her finger on the screen and the new order details appeared on the holo board near the coffee maker where Clint froze in mid-sentence when he saw it, and she was quite proud to have completely broken his normal composure in such a positive way. Slowly, ever so slowly, a look of almost pure disbelief and joyous shock took over his face.

"I…. Pepper, are you sure? I mean, I…." she grinned.

"What was that, Clint?" Davis asked.

When Clint just stared at her a little dumbstruck, Pepper smiled and spoke up. "Mr. Jeffries? My name is Pepper, I'm a friend of Clint's, sorry we didn't warn you but you're on speaker."

"Oh, hi. Sorry about that. Nice to meet you, ma'am. Please, call me Davis." The man sounded delightfully abashed, and Pepper grinned at the thought of what he would sound like once Pepper talked to the people in charge of the community outreach programs and set up some Avengers fundraisers and community service options. The normal donations weren't personal enough for something that meant so much to Clint that it rendered him nearly speechless.

"It's a pleasure to meet you too, Davis. Clint is currently a little tongue tied over some good news he just got that I am sure he'd love to relay personally. Give him a few moments."

"Uhh, yeah. I mean, yes, sure, thank you very much." Pepper smiled as Clint outright beamed at her and started excitedly explaining the new deliveries to Davis. Oh, he looked like a little kid on Christmas.

Pepper, with great relish, shot off the email stating that if any of the Avengers and their various entourages had any issues running out of things for the span of 2-3 days, they could just go buy whatever it was themselves.

Oh, and they would be doing public appearances at a shelter as soon as she finalized the schedule.

XxXxX

22 Years, 1 Month, and 3 Weeks After Incident

Bruce had an entire mental list of things he knew he was good at, no matter what his Other-Guy-induced-insecurities told him. For instance, he knew gamma radiation inside and out, could knock most people out of the park on physics, was pretty decent at biology, engineering, and computers - not to mention that he made a mean curry.

Nowhere on that particular list was dealing with children.

He'd had to handle the occasional sponsor's child before his transformation, or maybe a random prodigy or two. Then after the Other Guy came along, while he'd learned to deal with sick kids for the most part, he still tried to avoid humans under the age of 25 for the sheer annoyance or loudness factors, not to mention the fact that as fragile as humans were compared to the Other Guy, kids were even more so and the idea of handling something that… breakable scared him.

In conclusion, he had no real idea who decided it would be good to drag him out of his lab and make him attend some type of publicity event at a children's shelter. He couldn't even hide in the corner, because every time he tried, either Tony or Clint would drag him into something.

Tony seemed to be having a ton of fun just sitting there and arguing engineering with some of the kids (who, surprisingly enough, seemed to actually understand what he was talking about) and somehow during the course of this thing a huge number of Lego, K'Nex, and dozens of other kid appropriate building sets, were delivered so that Tony and his band of miscreants could start testing their ideas.

Pepper and Natasha were holding what amounted to some sort of court with a good chunk of the girls, and the not-on-camera focused conversations seemed to basically be them teaching the girls how to handle people that couldn't take 'no' for an answer (although he might have heard several tangents pertaining to how to rule the universe, he deliberately stopped paying attention when he heard the words "castration by stiletto heel").

At present, Steve was huddled over a low seated table with a bunch of the kids that had drawn various pictures and was giving impromptu art lessons (there had been a mysterious delivery of art supplies also.)

Thor and Jane were swamped by most of the younger kids who thought it was beyond awesome that Thor was a Prince that could shoot lightning. More than one had said something about his pretty hair (and no one had managed to not smile at that) and he apparently told amazing stories.

Bruce however, had been dragged into what was apparently a rather standard pick-up basketball game lead by Clint with most of the teenagers and was surprisingly (and he would not admit this to anyone should they ask or even hint) having a blast with it. Leading a basketball team opposite of a trained assassin so that the orphanage owner could talk to the press (that were absolutely going to town with the photos) was not something he had ever thought he would do, but Bruce had to admit to himself that he was enjoying it.

Still, Bruce couldn't help but be grateful it was his rotation out and he happily snagged his disposable red cup and filled it at the painfully yellow water cooler. As he started chugging it, he heard Clint chuckle a little as the archer meandered up with his own water bottle that he'd snagged from the Kitchen here and filled it up about halfway before he let Bruce fill up his cup again. Bruce couldn't help but smile, "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Clint said with a grin of his own as he watched the kids on the court along with the range of children that that sat on the sidelines watching the game.

Bruce settled against the wall next to the card table with the cooler as he followed the archer's gaze. The fact that they were here, helping, well… "I don't know how much of my file you've read, probably all of it," Clint merely nodded neutrally, "so you know I didn't have the happiest childhood." The archer turned his head and looked at Bruce this time, and he felt no shame in the fact that he shifted under the intense gaze.

The man's nod this time was a bit more decisive. Bruce sighed a bit, "I ended up in half-way houses and places like this once or twice, and from what I can see, I wish that those places had had someone like you when I was growing up."

Clint was now looking rather gob smacked (well, for Clint), but it was true. Earlier, Bruce hadn't really been surprised when the archer seemed to know every kid, every story, and every hope and dream that went along with them. He'd been able to shift the slightly awkward Avengers (except for Cap who cited experience) to kids that helped get them engaged in activities, and had ultimately made this more than just a photo shoot.

If he thought about it, it really kind of fit. Clint was the one that had gotten all of the Avengers to talk after the invasion, and had really knitted them together despite being the technical last to join the group even if, according to the reports Tony had shown everyone, he'd been the first of them all picked by Fury. (There was photographic evidence of Clint's shocked face at that revelation; Tony was saving it for when he wanted to blackmail Clint into shooting someone with a paint arrow.)

Bruce didn't say anything as Clint quickly recovered. Instead, he chose to turn and cheer for his own team as he made sure to drink enough water so that he hopefully wouldn't die on his next round in. He really wasn't the best at this whole sports thing, even if being on a team with the others (heck even Tony boxed and spent an hour at the gym everyday) had gotten him to figure out ways of exercising without letting the Other Guy out, although the Green Guy had discovered a love of swimming that just did not need mentioning.

He and Clint had just begun to make their way over to the line since it was about time for them to get tapped in, when the screams started. Both of them turned towards the front of the shelter where the commotion seemed to be coming from. Out of the corner of his eye, Bruce saw Clint pull a gun from somewhere he wasn't too sure about.

Then a wall came down, some of the ceiling started to crumble towards a group of kids that had just been watching the game, and Bruce saw green.

XxXxX

Hulk was not happy.

Annoying people were interrupting playing with the ball, and that wasn't fun.

And they scared the kids. Hulk didn't like scared kids. They should be happy and playing and safe.

These annoying people were dressed funny, too. Not in uniforms or the fancy colors his friends wore a lot, they were all in neon yellow and blue and were bright and annoying. They smashed really well though.

Birdie was fast and got the kids out of his way, letting Hulk smash as much as he wanted. Birdie was nice that way.

One of the last yellow-blue guys decided to try to be stupid-smart and ran towards the kids while Birdie was busy smashing a few of the others. The stupid-smart guy grabbed a little girl who was crying and they made her drop her doll. Hulk roared and raced towards them, but then realized he couldn't hurt stupid-smart because he'd hurt the girl too. He paused, not sure what to do. He didn't want to smash the little girl.

Suddenly there was a loud bang next to him and the man holding the little girl screamed as blood burst from the shoulder of the arm with the girl, dropping her. Birdie darted past Hulk and punched the stupid-smart guy unconscious. Hulk stared at Birdie, who looked as sad as Red normally did as he finished the others off with a few more bangs and fast moves before Hulk could smash them. When it was just them and the kids and a few of the funny people with cameras left, Hulk huffed. He still wanted to smash!

After a few moments, Birdie nudged him towards the kids, but kept looking around for more stupid-smart people and Hulk knew that Birdie would warn Hulk if he needed to smash them.

Hulk shuffled forward a little and picked up the one girl's doll, holding it out to her with a bit of a grunt. Maybe that would make her smile and if she smiled maybe the others would too.

The little girl looked up at him with tears falling down her cheeks and then jumped right at him hugging him. And Hulk fell backwards onto his butt, shocked. She wasn't scared of him at all! If Birdie hadn't been helping to hold her a little, she would have fallen and might have been hurt because his hands didn't want to move to hold her. Hulk wasn't sure what to do. He could smash the tiny girl really easy.

Birdie smiled at him and moved Hulk's arm so that it was under the girl, and then Birdie waved some of the other kids over, saying that it was okay, and that Hulk would protect them.

Birdie then promptly left Hulk with the kids, and Hulk couldn't help but feel more confused and scared than he remembered ever feeling before.

XxXxX

One of the things that Bruce had noticed about being angry all the time was that it did, to an extent, make it harder for him to get generally annoyed.

Waking up after a Hulk out to find several of the kids he'd been afraid of hurting (especially the sleeping, blonde haired little girl on his chest) gathered around him was, to say the least, confusing. Remembering that it had been some truly stupid criminals that had decided to try and crash the Avengers publicity appearance at the shelter was worrying. Tony snapping pictures and cooing while the press gawked (and of course their cameras were all still rolling) and Clint looking all gooey eyed….

Oh someone was going to pay. Right after he figured out why he was being used as a pillow, and who drew flowers on his chest. He could only thank heaven that he hadn't lost his pants this time.

XxXxX

25 Years and 20 Days After Incident

Cap glared at the flying squid as it calmly chewed on a lamppost. How was this his life? Really? How had he gotten involved with giant flying squids from space - that could somehow survive both the void of space and the Earth's atmosphere - that had, for some reason, decided New York—rather than LA, or London, or Tokyo, or anywhere else—would make a good snack place and breeding ground?

The thing was, they didn't seem like they were really trying to hurt people. They just ate metal. Not that that didn't have its problems, but they were even leaving anything that actually moved alone. Still, of course, people had panicked and so here he was on a gloriously beautiful day, fighting giant squids… from space.

Really.

Given that he wasn't very inclined to throw his Shield again after he'd barely gotten it back from the one that decided to try snacking on it (apparently it was too hard), Cap was rather limited in his reactions to the things, and that certainly wasn't helping, either. He fought the urge to sigh into his mic as Tony hit a particularly high note of whine on the comms.

"But it's an ALLOY! This isn't fair! I should not be food!"

"Face it, Tin Can, you're just absolutely delicious," Hawkeye deadpanned, his words punctuated by the familiar twang of his bow. The archer had been switching between armaments this fight as they thought up new things to try, but so far the man's nets, bollas, and flash bangs were proving the most effective in caging the creatures into the area they'd set up. Thor was working with Stephen Strange (who was a Sorcerer, of all things—as in magic capes and flying and spells and… all Cap could do was think how much fun Howard would have tearing that to pieces) to create portals into an uninhabited area of space with some resource-rich asteroids the things could chew on instead.

He didn't even want to think about what they… excreted.

Tony, unused to not being one of the most useful people and thus hitting the before mentioned high notes of whine, had to float above the fight to try and scare the creatures back with loud noises from his speakers since they were trying not to hurt the poor little innocent creatures and his weapons were predominantly heavy hitting. Black Widow just chuckled every now and then as she kept up with Hawkeye, keeping him stocked with replacement arrows as he'd run out of his original quiver.

Cap was still trying to figure out a way to be more directly useful, but again with them EATING HIS SHIELD! And while regular net launchers and normal flash bangs would work, the squids liked hovering about half way up the sky scrapers, and no one was quite as successful as Hawkeye and Black Widow about using grappling hooks, lines, and random pieces of hover tech to quickly maneuver around the things. (Also the less mentioned about Cap's archery skills, the better. He had to regularly bribe Pepper with Chocolates to make sure Tony didn't let lose that one video on YouTube.)

Cap sighed.

Then Natasha actually swore over the comms and Cap swung towards the roof he was pretty sure the assassins were on. "Report! Black Widow! Hawkeye!" A pained grunt from Clint was his only answer, and Steve moved.

"On my way. Jarvis, see if you can get eyes on them!" came Tony's shout and Steve didn't bother arguing about him abandoning flying squid herding duties since S.H.I.E.L.D. and the rest of the government agencies were doing fairly good at keeping the remaining ones in check now that Hawkeye and Widow had thinned them down.

Steve quickly waved down one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s new hover bikes and after commandeering it, sped for the roof, already sinking back into battle mode to stave off his worry. What could take both Natasha and Clint? With their combination of long distance and up close skills, no one -

"After reviewing the initial data, it appears that Loki is on the roof with them," Jarvis' calm voice came over the comm. Steve's breath caught in his throat for a millisecond even as Tony cursed, and suddenly there was a low growl that Cap knew meant that Bruce was having a hard time fighting down the Other Guy.

"THOR!" Steve screamed. What was Loki doing here? Were the space squids a distraction? How was he even here? He should still be locked up on Asgard!

"I have him," the God of Lightning replied grimly. Cap finally managed to get eyes on the roof, only to see Clint's left arm twisted painfully above his head as he was forced into a kneeling position at Loki's feet. Thor shot down and landed on the roof across from them followed by Tony, who hovered above Thor's head. Angrily, the god pointed his hammer at his brother. Steve's eyes took in every smug inch of Loki, terrifying quiet in Clint, and tense attitude of the rest of his team even as he slammed the bike into hover mode and jumped onto the roof, looking for Natasha. He found her crumpled on the floor near the side wall of the roof. He didn't see any blood, but she wasn't moving.

"Loki! Release my comrade and answer! How is it you have come here?"

"You always fall for the same tricks, brother. As for Mother and Father, well, they were harder to fool but I have done so before," Loki smirked. Somehow the staff that should have been locked up safely in a S.H.I.E.L.D. safe that didn't technically exist was in the hand the god wasn't using to keep Clint pinned. "And as for my Archer, well, why would I give up what I came for?"

Clint, who had been coiled tight, absolutely froze stiff at that.

Steve knew without a doubt that quite a number of Clint's nightmares had just come to life.

Clint's right hand, which had been carefully hovering to his side, darted to his holster faster than even Cap could follow and one of the thin vibranium knives that Tony had made for Clint and Natasha slashed up and stabbed the wrist holding the staff. The extremely rare metal, one of the few things they'd found on Earth that could hurt Thor when wielded by normal humans, did its job. The irksome god somehow managed to toss the archer even with blood spurting from his wrist, causing the staff to fall to the ground. Cap darted forward to try and catch Clint, but even with his reflexes he wasn't fast enough. Instead Steve barely managed to angle himself to deflect his friends limp arc to take him to the pavement rather than over the side of the roof. Thor and Tony took the opening and started blasting.

Steve and Clint balanced against each other as they got to their feet, and Steve kept a good chunk of his attention on that damn knife still clutched in Clint's slightly trembling hand. The memory of the onetime Clint had gotten hit with a really bad truth serum and admitted that he would rather kill himself than be used to hurt people he cared about again kept pushing to the front of Steve's mind. Steve almost had to tell the stupid train of thought to derail out loud.

A hand darted between the two of them from behind and Steve shouted as Loki wrapped his arms around Clint so tightly the archer couldn't move and the god threw them forward into a weird portal that appeared out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast.

"CLINT!"

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End Chapter One

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