"We can't just leave him unsupervised," snapped Bruce. "Look, I'll stay with him while you guys take care of this mess."

"Jarvis is here," reasoned Steve. "If we just lock him in a bedroom, he'll probably fall back asleep and Jarvis will notify us if anything goes wrong."

Tony wanted to yell at them for wasting time. He wanted to summon his suit and get out there, protect people, because he still had a lifetime of wrongs to right. But he was essentially a selfish creature and couldn't bring himself to speak and hear his young voice. Instead, he went and crawled under the couch.

"Look, just go, I'm tired, you have the Hulk, you'll be fine," said Clint, throwing up his hands. "I'm taking a nap. Have fun saving the world again."

Natasha met Clint's eyes and nodded.

"Come on," said Natasha in her even voice. "The faster we stop whatever villain decided to try their luck, the faster we can get some food."

"I'll order pizza and have it hear by the time you get back," said Clint with a grin, moving back to the couch.

The others left as Clint sat down on the ground, leaning to the floor so he could peak at the toddler hiding under it.

"Hey Tony," said Clint with a grin. "You want to come on out now, buddy?"

Tony shook his head. The alarm was still blaring and it hurt his sensitive ears that had not had decades of loud music and explosives to dull it. To get his message across without words, he put his little hands over his ears. It did little to muffle the sound.

"Jarvis, cut the alarm please," said Clint.

"Right away," said Jarvis.

The alarm cut off mid whine. Slowly, Tony eased his hands away from his ears as if he was afraid it was a joke and the noise would start again the moment he let his guard down.

"Come on, Buddy," said Clint. "If you come out, I'll let you play with-"

The room exploded, glass window shattering inward, noise reverberating off the walls, Clint covered his head as debris rained around and Tony was dragged back with the couch, small body bumping painfully as he went. Before the rubble had settled, Clint was up, activating his bow, which he had close at hand because of the alarm, eyes scanning the scene for danger.

Tony, stuck under the ruined couch, one large piece sticking out of his left arm while a gash on his foot throbbed angrily. He could feel his toddler emotions betraying him again, fighting against all reason for him to scream and cry even though his mind could reason out that the pain was from his injuries and crying would do nothing for them.

Then people were pouring in from the hole in the wall and Clint was shooting them while Tony could only look on with wide eyes, distracted momentarily from his pain by seeing the archer in action. But that distraction cost him because suddenly he was in the air, the arms of a stranger wrapped around his already injured left arm and if there was anything more frightening than being turned back into a toddler, it was being turned back into a toddler and someone trying to kidnap you.

The pain in his arm combined with the unknown man attempting to take him away from his home by force made Tony scream out in a decidedly high pitched, terrifyingly painful yelp.

What the would-be kidnapper had not planned on was Tony Stark fighting back. The man had clearly never tried to hold on to an upset toddler before, because Tony's sudden movements caused him to drop the child in surprise after just a few seconds. As soon as he was on the ground, Tony was off, scrambling through the debris and wreckage of the room to latch on to Clint's left ankle. The archer spared the young Avenger a glance, more to confirm that the sudden slight weight on his foot was indeed Tony, before deftly shooting an arrow through the eye of the man who had scared the boy so.

Their assailants were dwindling in numbers quickly because even caught off guard and virtually alone, Clint was more deadly than the eleven men and women who had foolishly broken into the home of the collective Avengers. The final two villains Clint shot to kill, his patience gone due to the trembling mass he could feel attached to his leg; people who harmed children had no place in the world, even if keeping them alive would help Clint find out who sent them.

The silence that usually followed a fight was absent, sniffling and near silent sobs taking its place. Clint scooped Tony up and relocated them to a bedroom off the hall, locking the door and asking Jarvis to keep an eye on the attackers, set to alert Hawkeye if any of them moved.

Tony, for his part, clung to Clint as if his life depended on it. For all his genius, he could not stop crying and shaking nor the irrational fear that someone was going to try to take him away again and he would be powerless to stop them. Even when Clint attempted to pry him off to check over his wounds, Tony refused to let go, only gripping the archers shirt more tightly and burrowing further into his shoulder. Part of it was because Tony didn't want Clint to see him in such a way, his pride smarting at the thought, but most of it was the irrational fear of abandonment.

"It's okay," soothed Clint softly. "You're okay now. I've got you. I'm not going to let anyone take you away. I just want to check you over for any ouches, okay? So I need you to let go now, Tony."

Tony shook his head.

"Tony, come on," said Clint, gently tugging the little boy away from where he was trying to become one with Clint's shoulder. "Let me see."

Too small to match the archers strength, Tony was pulled from his haven and could finally see that he had ruined Clint's shirt with the blood from his wounds. The tiny billionaire would have felt bad about that if he hadn't been busy blinking the tears out of his eyes.

"Bruce is going to kill me," groaned Clint when he saw the damage done to the littlest member of the Avengers. "I had one job, keep you safe, and I couldn't even do that. Jarvis?"

"Yes, Master Barton?" came the ready reply.

"Would you patch me through to the group comms?" said Clint, leaning back against the headboard of the bed, adrenalin draining from his body.

"Of course," said the AI.

"You guys almost done?" called Clint when the sounds of fighting entered the room via speakers.

"Depends," grunted Steve. "Have you ordered that pizza yet?"

"No, I was a little busy fighting off a group of idiots that thought it'd be a good idea to blow a hole in our living room and kidnap Stark for good measure," snapped Clint, not in the mood to deal with anyone's sass.

"Wait, what?" said Steve and Clint and Tony could almost see the super soldier standing up a bit straighter.

"You heard me, Captain," said Clint. "Some idiots blew a hole in the living room. They didn't survive long but they did try to take Stark."

"Is he okay?" asked Natasha.

"Banner will want to take a look at him," admitted Clint.

"ETA is twelve minutes," said Steve.

"Roger."

The line was ended and Clint looked down at the toddler still sitting in his lap. Tony had taken the distraction to once against curl up close to Clint and the assassin found he didn't have the heart to move him again. Tony, instead, was mildly interested in a distant way to discover how truly cuddly he was. The older, logical part of his mind knew it was due to being touch starved and ignored as a child, but the toddler portion of his brain was just concerned with having the physical reassurance that he was not alone, that someone was there to care for him. When Clint began combing through Tony's hair absently, Tony closed his eyes, the pain receding slightly as exhaustion and the soothing sensation of his hair being finger combed lulled him into a peaceful slumber.