Steve hissed between his teeth as Light pressed in on his wounds one last time so they would be prevented from bleeding any further. "Whammy's House?" he inquired after the sudden jolt of pain had subsided. He looked directly into the mocha-brown of his saviour's eyes. "What's that?"
"It's an orphanage," Light answered quietly.
"Oh," Steve said, looking away in pity, but not before missing the faint flash of resentment in Light's eyes.
"I don't need pity from you. It's fine."
"Yes, yes, I'm sorry," said Steve sincerely, looking back at Light as he put away the dressings. He turned to the end table and gingerly picked up a bowl of soup Steve had not noticed before.
"You must eat."
"Oh, you don't need to waste your hospitality any more on me," said Steve nervously, struggling to sit himself back up again.
"No, no," chided Light gently, as if he were talking to a restless toddler, pushing Steve back down again. "It is no trouble. Nothing happens around here anyway, so it's a good thing for me to have something to do other than read." He smiled at Steve to further emphasize the fact that he was grateful for the unusual diversion.
Steve thought about protesting again, but decided that if he truly wasn't an inconvenience for the scrawny boy, then it couldn't hurt to stay a while.
He reached out his hands for the bowl, assuring to Light that he was strong enough to feed himself- which he was, since he could feel his nasty wounds already healing with a slight prickling of his skin, like needles- and Light placed the bowl in his hands, turning to leave so Steve could eat in peace.
"If you need anything, then just cry out," Light said in farewell as he left the room.
Steve looked into the bowl. It was vegetable soup, the kind that had noodles shaped like the letters of the alphabet. He smiled, remembering his first time eating this type of soup. He knew that it had existed in the thirties and forties, but hadn't had any until after the first Chitauri war, with the Avengers.
"Here you go, Cap," said Tony jovially as he handed Steve a bowl of soup, holding a glass of scotch in his other hand. "Warm soup is always good for those cold winter days."
Steve nodded politely as he looked down into the bowl. He had chanced upon Tony in the coffee shop the other day, and Tony had talked nostalgically about the time a year ago when the band of misfits had gotten together to defeat the rather formidable force that was Loki. Tony then had an idea to bring everyone back together and they could all play poker or truth-or-dare, for old time's sake. Steve had agreed and presently helped Tony contact the rest of the Avengers, who had hurried down.
And now Steve was sitting at a table in Stark Tower, with the other Avengers-even including Thor- eating soup because Tony had nothing else but Poptarts and pancake mix, and after three days of nothing but those foods, he was definitely ready for something more savory.
He observed the soup closer, holding his spoon up in surprise.
"Um... Tony, why are there letters floating around in it?" he asked.
"That's alphabet soup."
"Oh!" Steve had looked incredulously up at the scruffy genius. "I've heard of that."
"Yeah. Try making a word! It's always fun," Clint smiled goofily from across the table at him.
Steve smiled also and used his spoon to try making a word. After about ten minutes of searching and arranging and several mentally uttered curse words, Steve had finally made one. He pointed to his bowl proudly to show everybody the word he had made.
"'Friends'?" Tony asked, and as everybody heard the word he had made being spoken aloud, there grew a tender atmosphere in the room; even Bruce looked up from his newspaper and smiled.
Tony stared into space for a few minutes before catching himself and giving a smirk to Steve.
"Goodness, Cap, you really go for corny, don't you?" he said jokingly and Steve smiled sheepishly. Tony patted him on the back good-naturedly and Steve chuckled, starting to eat his soup.
It was only a week later that the Chitauri would decide to attack again.
Steve smiled to himself at the memory, and he eagerly picked up his spoon to attempt to make another word. As soon as he began, he discovered that the noodles were easier to manipulate than last time, but he was only able to find eight letters: A, N, S, W, E, K, S, E; as opposed to the last time, when he had a few dozen at his disposal.
Steve knew what he was doing was incredibly childish, but he felt as if the incessant responsibilities put on him as the head of the Avengers warranted a few moments of childish glee; something he inwardly thanked the mysterious Light for, again.
He continued his work, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not put the letters together to make a word with meaning. In a slight frustration, he stirred the soup viciously with his spoon and closed his eyes. After a few moments, he opened them again and looked down, his expression turning into one of astonishment as he realized that his angry stirring had arranged the letters just so into a word that made him slightly uncomfortable. All eight letters were used. The word spelled was WEAKNESS.
Steve chastised himself for the strange feeling he got when he read the word, and he began eating his soup, which had turned cold during his play, much to his dismay.
He finished the soup and put the empty bowl on the end table, and felt himself fall into slumber again, and he gladly welcomed it, if only to get his mind off of things like friends, when he knew they were probably going mad looking for him.
"Tony, I think we should just give up and let Steve come back on his own," Natasha said nervously, after another half-hour of hearing Tony yell into his cell phone at the police. "Law enforcement officers haven't done anything wrong. Well, this time, at least."
Tony sighed and hung up on the poor policeman, who had only started working a week ago and wasn't ready for this type of verbal abuse.
"I have this feeling, Nat. A feeling that he's not doing as well as all of you want to delude yourselves into thinking."
"Still, it's not healthy for you to be this worried. We have S.H.I.E.L.D agents scattered around the city looking for him. It's only a matter of time before he's found."
Tony snorted sardonically. "I don't trust those agents s far as I can throw them. And, without my suit, that's not that far. They're all amateurs."
"Have a little faith, Tony. They're doing the best they can," Clint said. "The best we can do is get some rest and, if he isn't back by then, we'll go out looking for him ourselves."
Tony was about to retort when JARVIS cut in. "Sir, there are two young boys at the entrance."
"Turn them away," said Tony impatiently, not ready to deal with any charity at the moment.
"They are rather insistent."
"I don't care. Turn them away," Tony repeated, downing another glass of scotch.
"Yes, sir. I will do so-" JARVIS fell silent and Tony looked up in confusion.
"Jarvis?"
The door to the main room opened and two young boys entered, dragging a wheelbarrow with a giant cloth bag filled with God-knows-what behind them. The Avengers looked at them in surprise, and Tony blinked.
The blonde one, who was about ten years of age, was looking indignantly at a redhead, who looked to be the same age. The blonde was still speaking to the other as if they had not just walked into the room with a bunch of superheros occupying it.
"The only advantage of video games is that when you die, you just lose a little pink heart and keep on playing. Other than that, I stand by my position that doing things for real is much better than doing them in a game."
The redhead frowned. "But you can do things in video games that you can't do in real life! And they are entirely different worlds."
Tony finally got over his surprise and stepped forward. "Who are you two?"
"I'm Matt!" the redhead lifted his goggles and smiled hugely, which, in turn, made everyone but Tony and Bruce (who was too engrossed in his book to know that they had guests) smile also. "And that's Mello."
Mello frowned contemplatively, a look that most children did not possess.
"Okay..." Tony said. "And how did you two get in here? I gave specific orders to my A.I to-"
"Wow, you have an A.I.?" Matt asked excitedly. "That's cool!"
"Yeah... um... his name is JARVIS..." Tony answered, unsure about how to continue the conversation.
"Oh... so that's what I disabled? See, and Mello said it was just a fancy butler name for a cheap home security system!"
"You did what?" Tony snapped, angry but also impressed. "Do you realize how difficult it would have been to get into the system to turn him off? How did you pull it off? You both are probably five years old!"
"Eleven! Thank you very much!" Mello snapped back with such ferocity that Tony was taken aback.
"I'm sorry! I don't spend a lot of time with whiny kids!" Tony retorted, overcoming his initial shock.
"Well then! I guess you aren't going to get any pretzels then!" Mello said angrily. "So be nice to me before I take a pretzel and stuff it down your throat so you asphyxiate to death!"
"Ah, Mello," laughed Matt nervously, "I thought we established that threatening people is not an efficient market technique."
"To hell with business, this has gotten personal!"
Matt sighed and smiled cordially. "Would you like some pretzels? They are only a dollar a bag." Matt took out a small snack-sized bag of pretzels from the cloth sack in the wheelbarrow.
"That sounds delightful," Natasha said politely, glad that the conversation had steered away from the near-violent.
"Whoa, no, no, no," Tony said, holding his hands up. "I'm not going to let anyone buy pretzels from a person who is so incorrigibly rude."
Matt quickly covered Mello's mouth to mask his indignant retort, receiving a not-so-friendly elbow to the gut in the process. "But, sir, we need the money."
"For what?"
"A new bench outside the orphanage. It got mysteriously destroyed a few years ago and it used to be very useful but now there's a few kids who have to sit on the cold, hard ground because we only have five benches instead of six," Matt said, effectively adding a hint of pathos to his argument, the mark of a true salesman.
"Tony, come on. We can't deny funds to an orphanage," Clint said, completely drawn in by Matt's argument.
Tony frowned for a moment, and then sighed. "Fine. But there's something I want first."
"Name it," Matt said as he continued to muffle Mello's protests.
"I want you to look at a picture of somebody first and tell me if you've seen him," Tony said, fishing in a stack of papers until he found a picture of Steve. "Here we are." He showed it to Matt and Mello and Matt let Mello go.
"I've seen that guy before!" Matt said. "Like, a year ago! He was carrying a hammer!"
Thor looked uncomfortable and Tony wanted to face-palm.
"No, you idiot! He's looking for the guy with the shield," Mello corrected, and for once Tony was glad he had argued.
"Oh. Then, nope. Haven't seen him," Matt corrected himself. "Is he lost?"
"In a way, yes," Tony said, not masking the concern in his voice. Matt frowned, hating to have let him down like that.
"Well... you never know... sometimes Light can drag in some pretty weird people. Remember that hobo he brought in last month, Mello? Mello?" Matt stared at Mello as a look of realization spread on his face.
"Oh, my God. You know what? Light was dragging someone in yesterday. I remember seeing him and asking him if it was another cat and Light gave me that serious look before going to his room," said Mello. "I couldn't get a good look at the guy, so it's probably not Shield-Man, but it's worth a try."
Tony gasped in relief. "Where do you two live, then?"
Mello gave him a look of disgust. "I'm not telling you that! How do I know you aren't a stalker?"
Tony looked at Matt questioningly. Matt shrugged. "I'm with Mello on this one. Not safe."
Tony sighed. "Fine. Well, you gave me information and I promise to uphold my end of the deal. But there is no way I'm paying a dollar for a measly bag of pretzels."
"But it's Rold Gold! It's quality!" Matt showed him the pretzels.
"I can get the same for fifty cents at the drugstore. Same 'quality' and everything," Tony gave a hard look. "I'll pay fifty cents."
"Ninety-five," Mello said, his glee at the chance to barter unmasked.
"Fifty-five."
"Ninety."
"Sixty."
"Ninety."
"Fifty-five," Tony looked smug, knowing that Mello couldn't go on much further.
Mello frowned. "You will pay ninety."
Tony sighed. "Sixty?"
"Ninety."
"Sixty-five. That's my last offer. I'll buy ten bags, so that will be $6.50."
"No, you'll pay ninety," Mello said.
Tony frowned. "You aren't budging, are you?"
"Nope."
"Well, then," Tony said, drinking a sip of alcohol. "Deal's off."
"Eighty-nine!" Matt said, desperate to save the sale.
Tony smiled. "Sold."
"Matt!" Mello scolded. "You lost us a dime. A DIME. How can you live with yourself?"
"You can't be stubborn about everything, Mels," Matt said as he gave the pretzels to Tony and Tony gave him a fifty-dollar bill.
"Keep the change," Tony said with a smile.
Matt was about to argue, but decided against it. "Let's go, Mello!" He left the room as Mello followed, still grumbling and looking absolutely comical pulling the wheelbarrow. Tony threw pretzel bags at everyone and Natasha smiled.
"See, you aren't completely heartless, Tony," she observed.
Tony shrugged. "I know."
"Sir, the two children have left the building," JARVIS' voice rang out through the building.
"Jarvis! You're back! Remind me to beef up your security later."
"Yes, sir."
Tony turned to address the whole team. "Alright. What we're going to do is figure out which orphanage our pretzel friends belong to."
"After we eat our pretzels, right?" Clint asked.
Tony thought for a moment. "I guess so. Hurry up everybody. JARVIS, get me a list of every orphanage in the city. Wait, no. Just the orphanages that have benches near them."
"Yes, sir."
Natasha frowned. "Was it just me, or did those children seem to be a little smarter than the average eleven-year old?"
Bruce nodded. "Some children are born smart. These kids are probably part of that group. They are really interesting."
Tony pouted. "I just wanna know how that smooth-talker was able to disable JARVIS."
Clint laughed. "We'll find out soon, I'm sure."
And in the background, Thor was happily devouring his pretzels.
AN: Thor thinks pretzels are very yummy. I was originally going to have Matt and Mello sell Poptarts, but I wanted to stray from the status quo. Woo!