A/N: Fair warning, the plot begins to grow a tiny bit darker from here. Still fluffy, but with some seriousness and edginess. Also, I know it's very short, but if you read one of my polls on deviantART (My username is FairyBubblePuppy) you'll see. I promise I know what I'm doing! In any case, enjoy, and please review!
Whatever high spirits Pepper had gained from finding the children evaporated as soon as Fury walked in. It wasn't even because of his announcement. Pepper was beginning to find the man utterly annoying.
"Oh, what now?" she sighed.
"Well... Okay, we have- to a certain extent- isolated the issue," Fury said tentatively. He wouldn't admit it, of course, but the look on her face was, well, a little scary.
Pepper frowned. "Isn't that good news?"
"Let me finish. We know what's wrong, mostly, but we have no chance of fixing it until Loki is willing to cooperate with us."
"So this is basically you telling me to hurry things along." Pepper resisted the urge to stick up her middle finger at him and scream her exasperation for all the world to hear. "You've got a lot of nerve, you know?"
Fury winced. "Our apologies, Pepper. Unfortunately, there is more."
"Oh, goody!" Pepper said, as dry as the Sahara.
"You see, after discovering the issue, we also realised that... How do I put this? Are you familiar with the time travel theory regarding meeting oneself from a different time?"
"You mean the explodey one, yeah?"
"Uh, yes. If one meets an alternate reality of oneself, they will both cease to exist. Unfortunately, a similar scenario is applicable here. You see, these seven people aren't normally this age."
"No, really?" Pepper was getting more and more sarcastic by the second.
"Please, Pepper. As I was saying, these people are usually much older. By de-aging them, Loki has effectively ripped the fabric of time. The issue here is, because it's against the laws of the universe, the children will be suffering potentially fatal side effects. I'm sure you've realised that they've been acting much older than they were when you first came in yesterday."
"Oh. God, has it really only been one day?" Pepper groaned.
Fury smiled apologetically. "I'm afraid so."
Pepper pulled a face, and then stopped and thought about his actual statement. "Well, yeah, I guess they have been acting older. I mean, they use bigger words, and they're- they're reading..." She glanced over at the children, absorbed in their books. They did look taller, and older...
"That's because they're aging. Not normal aging, but... Unnatural aging. Their adult life memories will eventually snap back, and it will be too much for their bodies to take. They will grow very unwell, and they will die." Fury looked at her solemnly as this sank in.
"Wait... What? That- no, that can't be right, I... Fix it!" Pepper snapped, not making much sense.
"We're trying. However, we need Loki's cooperation..." Fury looked at her imploringly.
"Ugh. So, in a nutshell, I need to hurry up and get a toddler Loki to trust a bunch of super secret agents before all six of Earth's Mightiest Heroes as well as an Asgardian super villain explode."
"That's basically it. There is only one more complication."
"Oh, God, what now?" Pepper almost shouted.
"Loki is still a little too young to be able to tell us anything. We need to age him a little further."
"So it's not just hurry up, it's hurry up and also time it?" Pepper buried her face in her hands. "I'm sorry, I can't- I didn't sign up for this. I'm doing you a favour. And I don't like you coming in and- and putting all this pressure on me! I mean, obviously- obviously, I don't want them to die!" Her voice was getting shriller and shriller, and Fury was looking more and more alarmed. "But I have no training in this sort of thing! You're the head of a bunch of highly trained agents and I have to do this? I've always been willing to help you however I can, but I just don't think I can do this. I just can't."
"Lies," came a small voice from the corner.
"What?" Pepper turned, still vaguely unhinged.
"That's a lie," came the voice again. Pepper realised that all seven children were watching her. Again, the voice spoke, and Pepper saw that it was Tony. "You can do it."
Pepper laughed bitterly. "Tony, do you even understand what's going on?"
"No," said Tony, without changing his expression. "But I don't have to. In all my years of knowing you, I have never seen anything that you couldn't do."
"Tony's right," Natasha said quietly. "We believe in you."
"If anybody can do it, whatever it is, it's you," Steve added.
"We know you'll succeed." Bruce murmured.
Pepper swallowed. "But what if I don't?" she said in a small voice, momentarily forgetting that she wasn't the child.
"Then we will know that you did everything in your power to succeed," Thor said reassuringly.
"But you will succeed," Clint told her firmly.
"Not a doubt in our minds." Tony's gaze was unwavering.
Pepper choked back a sob, touched. She turned back around to Fury, who was still looking at her somberly.
"Will you do it?" he asked her quietly. A request. Not an order.
Pepper considered her options. She looked at the children. All of them, even Loki (sort of), were looking at her seriously and trustingly. They all caused an awful lot of trouble and pain to her at times, both their adult selves and their child selves. All of them could be annoying and infuriating and sometimes she hated them with all of her heart.
She tried to imagine a world without them, and found that she couldn't.
She looked at them again. Their gazes were beseeching now.
She couldn't let them down.
"Pepper...?" Fury looked uncertain. "Will..."
Pepper looked up at him. "Yes."