a/n i don't even know how this happened. it started as 'Avengers baking Christmas cookies' and then turned into 'everyone has feeeeellings.' also known as 'steepedinwords processes life through fic.'

Natasha's memory of a certain person's nicknames for her is from the very talented irnan's fic spectrum.

for all your friends and kindred

It starts shortly after Thanksgiving, when Steve's out running with Thor. They watch early morning fog swirl through Central Park, catch glimpses of sparkling lights, and then Thor tips his head back to gaze thoughtfully at a star hung high on a lamppost and asks, 'Is this for some solstice feast?'

Steve slows, comes to a stand beside his friend, and joins him in staring up at the fragile strands of blue tinsel strung through with electric light. 'Christmas. Guess Asgard wouldn't have that?'

Frost is forming and melting in Thor's short beard. 'On Asgard, we have a feast at midwinter. To celebrate, since we are halfway out of the dark. Yule. This is similar?'

Steve's not quite sure of the best way to explain Christmas to an alien from another world who used to be worshipped as a god on this one, but if there's anything he's ever been, it's sure of what he believes in, so he finds himself putting the story into words and knows as he talks that Thor will understand. The concepts are familiar to his friend: betrayal, redemption, forgiveness, grace.

Thor listens gravely, giving full attention. They walk for a while, among skeleton trees, bare branches spidery and frost-furred; Steve's hands are shoved into his pockets, eyes on the brightly lit store displays that are coming closer, and he says bitterly, 'I'm not sure people remember why they're celebrating. It's a lot more commercial than – back when. Giving gifts – it's not just about the gifts, it's supposed to be a – a reflection of God's gift, to us, and I'm not seeing that.'

'I have noticed,' Thor says, 'that the folk I encountered in Macy's were aggressive in attempting to convince me to buy gifts for those I love.'

Steve nods, having noticed the same phenomenon. It's full dawn now, and sunlight's sparkling off the frost. His mood lifts. Thor smiles, suddenly, and says, 'This Christ – I think he would be pleased that his birth is still cause for celebration on Midgard.'

Thor is probably right, but something still feels like it's missing.

'Hih... hehGNTSCHT!"

'Clint, if you'd listen to me and just go to bed…'

They're all losing patience fast. Clint's managed to come down with something, which wouldn't be so bad, but he's refusing to rest. Which means that he's come down to Tony's workshop and is sneezing on everything. And asking too many questions. Bruce can feel a headache coming on, and he's not even the one who's sick.

Clint fixes Tony with a glare that belongs on a five-year-old kid: make me. Apparently, he's in denial. Bruce twiddles a control with one hand, passes the archer a Kleenex with the other, hoping he'll take the hint.

''M not sick,' Clint says hoarsely, which, seriously, can't he hear his own voice?

'HSHSZCHH!'

Okay, that does it. Bruce turns, fixes Clint with a stern eye. 'Barton. Go. To. Bed. Or I'm calling Agent Romanov to deal with you.'

Clint turns a bit pale, or maybe that's nausea, because about then is when he bends over and starts retching miserably beside a workbench. Tony, who's been watching the exchange with a grin, gets this hilariously alarmed expression and rushes to the rescue. Of the tools, naturally. They're escorting Clint upstairs within a few minutes, after a brief argument (We should get Steve to do it, he can't even get sick, he's an excellent nanny/nurse/mother hen, no really, Bruce, okay, fine, I'll help but if I get sick I swear I'll revoke your workshop privileges, Pepper won't let me kiss her if I get the flu…) Bruce tunes out Tony's whining and hopes against hope that Clint's not going to hurl on either of them on the way upstairs.

They get him to his room without incident, but that's only because Natasha is out somewhere with Steve and not around to yell at Clint for being a stubborn mule. And yeah, taking care of sick people is something Bruce hasn't done in a while, but it feels good to fall back into old routines, sending Tony for a thermometer and a glass of water and a bucket for Clint to be sick in, just in case.

It's nice to be the one taking care of his teammates.

Steve's been sparring with Natasha more often lately; he's gotten over being afraid he'll break her, knowing it's far more likely she'll break him. They're stepping off the mats, sweaty and breathing a bit hard. Steve looks sad around the edges, and Natasha, approaching the matter tactfully, asks what he's planning for the evening.

'Carol service at church,' he answers tersely, and goes back to looking morose.

'First one since you woke up?'

'I went last year, after I woke up,' he says, quiet and careful. 'It was… different. Used to go with a friend.'

Natasha doesn't do compassion, but she changes her rules regularly for the people she considers family. 'Want company?'

'You sure?'

She remembers standing on a shield, Steve lifting her up; it's her turn to be a hand up. 'Sure. It'll be fun.'

They get ready in their separate rooms, meet outside by a back entrance and slip away before anyone sees (Natasha can just see the headlines, crass speculation on whether Steve's finally made a move on a woman, and it just isn't like that.) The sun's glowing, low and yellow-white in a frosty, overcast sky as they walk, shoulders brushing, and Natasha wonders if this is what having a brother feels like. She and Steve both blend in well in their street clothes: dark wool coats, jeans, boots, the scarves Bruce and Darcy have started knitting for everyone.

The church is small, warm, feels holy in a way most of the grand cathedrals she's been in from Russia to England didn't. Candles burn brightly against darkened windows, the smell of pine and apple cider, spice cake and melting snow filling the air. They're passed tall white wax tapers as they enter the sanctuary; Steve lights his from someone else's and Natasha follows suit, hoping the wax won't spill onto her leather gloves. There are readings mixed in with the singing. Some of the carols are familiar, some new. Natasha listens attentively to the words while music soars and handbells chime. Born to give us second birth – O come, Emmanuel, and bar the way to death's abode – joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King! There's joy that's almost tangible, and she wonders if such promises could be true.

Beside Natasha, the lostness is leaving Steve's face. There's peace in both their hearts when they leave.

Pepper Potts isn't easily surprised. Working for Tony Stark will do that to you.

She is, however, not a little amused when she enters Darcy Lewis' office and finds Captain America and Thor employed in cutting paper snowflakes. Because it's rather a ridiculous picture, really – two men with large hands more suited to weapons and war, carefully wielding small craft scissors and covering everything with tiny snips of paper. Steve looks up with a bright smile.

'Look,' he says happily, and unfolds his piece of paper to reveal an intricate paper snowflake, eight-pointed, with delicate tracery in each branch. 'Isn't this amazing? Darcy taught us how to do them.'

Pepper laughs, admires, and sends someone with a pack of paper to the boys when she gets back to her own office. They apparently take the hint, because by the end of the day, almost every window in Avengers Tower has a paper snowfall happening.

He's run out of coffee in the lab.

Tony rubs his eyes, wonders briefly how long he's been up and what time it is. Looking at his phone's not worth the effort, not till he gets something to drink, preferably heavily caffeinated. He stumbles into the elevator, mind still mostly-focused on the engrossing project he's leaving behind, and makes it to the kitchen without falling over or running into someone. Mostly because there's no one around to run into. There are, however, absolutely incredible smells pervading the hallway, coming from the kitchen, and coffee is most definitely in the mix, along with what he thinks of as Christmas spices: ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg. Tony walks in the door and stops, because Coulson's assistant Darcy Lewis is standing beside the marble-topped counter, deftly rolling out cookie dough. She gives him a bright smile, washes dough off her hands, and pours him a cup of coffee. 'Morning!'

'You are way too damn cheerful,' he mutters, but the coffee is good, and she got the cream/sugar/coffee ratio just right, so he smiles back. 'So, cookies. Not that I'm complaining, but I was under the impression that you lived in SHIELD quarters – don't you have your own kitchen?'

Darcy's cutting circles from the dough now with a champagne glass. 'Nope. Just a microwave. Your kitchen is, like, totally awesome and also I know for a fact you never use it.' She grins up at him again where he's leaning one hip up against the other side of the counter. 'If you mind, I can leave.'

A timer dings and she turns, wiping floury hands on the apron she's wearing over her jeans and sweater to pull a tray of cookies from the oven. They're golden brown, with small star-shaped cutouts filled with jam in the centres, and she's sprinkling them with powdered sugar, and oh. Tony's actually kinda really hungry. 'No. No, this is great. You can stay.'

Darcy laughs outright at the look on his face and passes him a hot cookie. It burns his fingers a bit, but it tastes just as awesome as it smells. 'I had a craving,' she confesses. 'My mom used to make lebkuchen spice cookies at Christmas, and I really, really wanted some this morning.'

Which reminds Tony. He glances at his phone, and yeah. It's early. 'You wake up at six AM thinking about cookies?'

'It's never too early for cookies,' Darcy says cheerfully. 'Besides, it's Christmas Eve.'

He's surprised. 'It is? Huh.' He takes another bite, mentally tallying spices and flavours, asks what's in them. She refuses outright to let him add more leavening agent to the dough so they'll rise higher – 'obviously you've never baked a thing in your life' – and Tony's offended, because he has. He made a cake once, because his mom used to and he thought he might be able to recreate her recipe. Turns out he couldn't, but this isn't the first time he's been in a kitchen. Just, you know, he usually makes things like toast.

Darcy laughs at his rant, sets him to making gingerbread dough with strict injunctions to follow the recipe exactly. He does, except the part where he triples the recipe. What? Gingerbread is Pepper's favourite.

Steve comes in at eight, rubbing his eyes, surveys the racks of cooling delights spread out over tables and counters, and asks, 'Can I help?'

He ends up eating so many spoonfuls of raisin walnut spice dough that Darcy declares he'll be sick and sets him to making breakfast, which Steve does cheerfully. It's just toast with scrambled eggs and cheese, but the others have been drifting in one by one, attracted by the smells and chatter and the Christmas music Darcy's broadcasting via speaker from her iPod, so he makes enough to feed a small army. Or five Avengers, one Lewis, and one Potts, which, y'know, same thing, especially with a supersoldier and an Asgardian prince present.

The day turns into a baking extravaganza. Tony forgets the abandoned project in his lab. There are butter blocks piled on counters, refusals by all but Thor to wear aprons, people sitting on counters and cabinets and furniture that is not meant to be sat upon, Barton, stealing cookie dough and decorating their gingerbread men to look like the people they know. Tony's favourite is Clint's depiction of Fury, eyepatch and all.

Around midafternoon comes a lull. They're all headed for the inevitable sugar crash, looking around with slightly glazed eyes at the mess they've made. There are cookies stacked everywhere, flour on the floor and everyone's clothes, molasses smeared across the sharp line of Natasha's cheekbone, crumbs in Thor's beard. Somehow, someone got jam on the ceiling, and Tony's rather proud of the floury handprint on Pepper's backside – that's all his doing.

'We should go sing Christmas carols for Fury,' Bruce begins, surveying their handiwork, and then stops, smacking himself in the face when he sees the others' expressions.

'It'd be suicide,' Clint says.

A wide, wicked grin spreads over Natasha's face. 'Let's do it.'

Fury doesn't kill them, which is a testimony that the spirit of Christmas pervades even their scary-ass Director. He does, however, accept the eyepatched gingerbread man, propping it up against his computer. He doesn't laugh, but Clint swears his mouth twitched in a smile, and yeah. All in all, it's been a pretty good day.

Thor strides into Avengers Tower on Christmas Eve just after dusk, a hefty log from who-knows-where balanced unwieldy on one shoulder. He's wearing the red knitted hat Jane got him, earflaps tugged down and a breath of chilly, pine-spicy air wafting in with him. Small deposits of snow follow him down the halls; he's carefully stamped the snow from his boots, but not from the log. Bruce sighs and gets a mop; Natasha trails Thor into the (ridiculously huge) living room to watch the fun.

'You are not lighting that in here, you'll set the chimney on fire,' Pepper says firmly, but Thor just beams at her and replies, 'Surely you would not deny us the tradition of my people?'

Natasha would swear there's a mischievous twinkle in Thor's eyes, but Pepper just smiles and says, 'Only in the fireplace, then. I don't want you setting the floor on fire – will that even fit?'

Like everything else in the living room, Tony's fireplace is twice as large as it needs to be, so that's not exactly a problem.

It's getting late, but no one seems to be going to bed. Natasha's on her way to the living room (Tony sent her a flurry of texts an hour ago: family movie night, Romanov – we're watching Elf – what do you mean you haven't seen it, your life is incomplete – well then you're coming if we have to drag you – come on tash come on you know you want to.) So far, she's run across Bruce in the kitchen, drinking tea with the photo of a dark-haired girl on the counter in front of him, beside a cell phone he's not picking up; Thor, unburdened by any such complicated relationship history/shyness, in the middle of a Skype call with Doctor Foster, deep infectious laugh booming through his laptop's tinny speakers; Darcy in yoga pants and too-big T-shirt laughing at Clint, who's attempting to teach her to play blackjack; Tony and Pepper talking low and intense behind a closed door as Natasha passes.

She wonders where Steve's got to, and then she turns into the living room and sees him sitting by the fire where the massive Yule log is still burning bright. His back is against the wall, long legs sprawled out in front of him, and there are either tears on his face or that's a trick of the firelight. He's wearing grey sweatpants, no socks, and a black T-shirt she's sure is Clint's. You can make the Avengers do laundry, but you can't make them do it right. His pencil's scratching quick and furious over the pad of paper in his lap, but it stills a moment after she appears in the doorway, and he looks up, acknowledges her with a nod.

'Natasha.' His voice is rough, and he glances back down quickly, pencil angled in strong fingers. She crosses the room, sits down cross-legged beside him, and looks over his shoulder. 'May I?'

Steve offers the book wordlessly. A young woman's face, unfinished in delicate black-and-white lines. Long dark curls frame full lips and eyes full of life. He clears his throat. 'That's Peggy.'

She nods, to let him know he doesn't need to explain further: it's obvious what she was to him, from the loving detail that went into the portrait. She turns a page, then another. Other faces: a man with an impressive moustache, another with his army cap set at a rakish angle. And, oh. Natasha's hand shakes just a little when she sees the next sketch: the man she knew as the Winter Soldier, as James, and bozhe moi, how had Steve known this man's face?

''S Bucky,' he says, apparently not noticing his companion's sudden tension. 'My best friend, we grew up together,' and then, 'Tasha, is there somethin' wrong?'

Natasha gathers her composure, dredges up a smile. It's not as hard as it should be. She doesn't want to lie to Steve, but she doesn't want to talk about this (Talia, darling, love), not tonight. (The door's open a crack, though. Maybe in a while.) So she turns the page so she doesn't have to look at James' dark eyes and cocksure smile, and shakes her head.

'Tell me about them,' she says quietly, because Natalia Alianova Romanova knows what it is to lose people, what it is to have the life you thought you had pulled out from under you suddenly, knows what it is for the world to turn upside down, and Steve Rogers may have been born in 1918 but he's still so damn young.

He tells her about the man she'd known, the man he calls Bucky and remembers as a brother; about the girl afraid of nothing and no one, the girl he'd hoped he might marry one day; about the Commandos.

It feels strangely cathartic.

The others burst in after a while, laughter escalating. They're all wearing their nightclothes, clutching pillows and blankets because Tony Stark is a force of nature and apparently thinks Elf is an excuse for an Avengers pajama party. He's bringing up the rear with Thor, looking far too pleased with himself, both of them carrying plates of cookies and fudge and a tray of peppermint-scented hot chocolate, and Steve and Natasha exchange a small smile that says: tonight's for memories, but it is also for family.

No one actually makes it to bed that night; they fall asleep where they sit after (and in some cases, during) the movie. Steve still on the hearth beside the embers of a dying fire; Natasha resting her head on Clint's shoulder; Bruce curled into a small ball in an armchair; Thor, looking like a sleepy child with hair mussed and rosy cheeks; Pepper sitting in Tony's lap, head tucked under his chin and hands resting over the arc reactor. It feels safe.

Natasha wakes a few times; each time, someone's shifted position slightly, just falling back asleep, and there are a few more gifts under the tree. She falls asleep again each time looking at the strings of pale white lights, and if they blur a bit, well, she's never really had a family before.

It feels like grace, and a second chance. Maybe for more than one of them.