Disclaimer: I don't own Avengers

Thanks so much to my beta Krystal Lazuli.


He dribbled his way up the court, did a layup, and caught his rebound. He made a few more baskets before he heard the door slam and a little boy no older than six trudged his way to the bench on the porch. The six-year-old leaned forward touching his elbows to his knees, glaring at the world.

"What crawled up your butt and died?" he asked his younger brother while taking another shot at the hoop.

"Mom and Dad won't get me a pet," he said sadly. Hayden raised his eyebrow at his brother. They already had 4 dogs, 3 cats, 3 birds, and 4 tanks of fish. His parents were animal lovers and even though they could barely afford the animals they had, as far as he knew, his parents had never actually said no to an animal.

"Why?" He asked putting the basketball against his side and making his way up to his little brother. Nathan looked at his knees as he said.

"They muttered a lot at first, but they said that they couldn't buy a dragon." Hayden looked at his brother's face and realized he was actually serious. The older boy laughed boisterously, dropping the ball and grabbing his stomach after several laughs.

"A dragon? You asked for a dragon?" His brother looked up at him like he sure what was wrong with his request.

"Dragons aren't real," Nathan jutted his lip out and folded his arms defensively against his small chest.

"They are too," he pouted back at him.

"No, they aren't. They're fairy tales," Nathan folded into himself even more and his lip jutted out further. Hayden sighed and made his way to the bench where his brother was sitting.

"Sorry," he said. It wasn't the kids fault he was too young to realize that there were no such things as dragons; he was just going to have to get him to see that. "But dragons aren't real," he said this time gentler.

"Yeah they are," his brother insisted.

"Look, they're just in stories, and animated movies, and sometimes CGI'd stuff, but they aren't really real," he said and attempted to put his arm around his little brother as an apology for laughing at him earlier, but his younger brother shoved him away. Hayden tried to think of a way to get his brother to realize dragons weren't real, but he was having a hard time coming up with anything other what he had already mentioned. Hayden opened his mouth as an idea struck him but before he spoke his brother pointed to something in the sky.

The two of them turned their attention to it, but at the moment it was too far away to make out any details. The far off thing steadily got closer and closer until Hayden's mouth dropped open. It wasn't - it couldn't be….it was impossible. It had to be some sort of trick or something. It couldn't actually be what it looked like because what it looked like was a dragon. A giant dragon that was more than four times taller than he was and so very very long.

It had to be a prank, or a joke, or something other than what it looked like. The closer it got, the scarier it got. It's eyes were wider than his head and they were golden. The dragon was black with green wicked looking spikes down it's back. It was also pretty fast. It had only taken a few moments for it change from an object in the distance, to something that was flying overhead and a few moments more to disappear into the horizon. He had absolutely no idea how to respond to that, he looked down at his brother who looking at him with a smug smirk on his small face.

"I knew it!" Nathan crowed.

Hayden couldn't come up with anything to say to that.


Thanks so much for reading and thanks so much to Sabaku no Sable for the idea for this chapter. After I read the prompt I had to write it.