A/N: And this chapter still arrives on time. *smile* Thank you guys for all the birthday wishes!
Thank you to Yuki F. Karasu, Katherine Sanderson, jy24, Ragnar-Vale, Marinne Karneval, Jayden, Resident of Wonderland, Scedasticity, Firehedgehog, InsanityOwl, Dragon Silhouette, XavierForest, karina001, kickassdani, Yami-The Lord of Darkness, IncredibleIdiosyncrasies, RMXStudio, PoisonousDemon, Shadow-X1999, Relena Duo, and guest for reviewing!
Title: Cosmic Composite
Author: liketolaugh
Rating: T
Pairings: Tony/Pepper, Natasha/Steve
Genre: Family/Adventure
Warnings: AU, !spoilers for Winter Soldier onward, spoilers for Agents of SHIELD!
Summary: The exorcists reincarnate into Marvel's next generation. No one can figure out how. Still, it's nice to have a family. (Also includes Agents of SHIELD. AU starting one year before CA2. Major divergence begins after Age of Ultron.)
Disclaimer: I only wish I owned D. Gray-man, and the Avengers are but a dream that is not my own.
Lavi: 3 years
Kanda: 3 years
Lenalee: Just under a year
Melinda had been reluctant at first, considering new developments, to let Skye play with Lenalee again. Skye was, after all, in quarantine. What would they even do?
But she'd found a spare moment and brought Lenalee to play anyway, without letting her into quarantine, and Skye seemed happy. So did Lenalee, for that matter, who wasn't even questioning why Skye was behind a sheet of plexiglass.
Skye was resourceful. Melinda had never quite gotten a chance to forget this, but she had to smile a little as this fact displayed itself in a new way, and Skye managed to coax Lenalee into a game of peek-a-boo through the glass.
Skye covered her face, and Lenalee's eyes widened and she looked around, cooing in confusion. Skye removed her hands, and Lenalee let out a crooning, delighted sound as she found Skye again, and Skye grinned at her. Melinda chuckled quietly.
Taking care of Lenalee was even more difficult than she had expected it to be; there was always something important happening. Something that required her immediate attention, or was emotionally taxing, or dangerous.
Then there were the heart attacks. Any threat to the ship was now far more terrifying than it ever had been before, because Lenalee was on the ship. More than once, she considered whether this was really what was best for Lenalee, but she had to admit - she'd been compromised. By a baby. How embarrassing.
But it was worth it. Lenalee was worth it.
It helped that Lenalee was, all things considered, an easy baby. She rarely cried (save that one day after the San Juan incident, when she'd been inconsolable), didn't demand a lot of attention, was easily fed, and wasn't even a picky eater. Coulson claimed that she took after her mother. Easy for him to say.
"Peek-a-boo!"
"Ahh!" Lenalee clapped her hands and beamed at Skye, who grinned at her, pleased, and then hid her face again. Lenalee let out a confused sound and looked around, and Skye chuckled before revealing herself again.
"Peek-a-boo!"
"Ahh!"
Melinda was going to file this under 'Blackmail Material'.
If she ever regained the ability to look Skye in the eye.
Lavi backed up, eyes wide, hands clenched around his hammer. There were akuma everywhere, huge and looming, taking aim at him. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to take cover, just him and the endless, cackling akuma.
They shot, and he warded off the bullets easily with a single swing. Only he wasn't alone.
Kanda screamed, and he wasn't healing, and he fell, bleeding and crumbling and gasping painfully, blood bubbling from his lips. "Idiot rabbit," he gasped out, turning his head to glare at frozen Lavi with the last of his strength.
Lenalee cried out, and fell to the ground, legs twisted and mangled, and she was crying. "Lavi!" she sobbed. "Lavi, please!"
Allen didn't scream, and he didn't cry out; he turned his head to look at Lavi, eyes wide, and then his knees folded, and he fell. His eyes turned sad, and then they closed.
"It's all your fault, Lavi! IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!"
"They're just ink on paper. Bookmen have no need for a heart. Just look away."
But Lavi couldn't. He watched Kanda claw for life up until his last shuddering breath, he watched the light die from Lenalee's eyes, and, with a finger on his neck, he felt Allen's heart slow to a shivery stop.
And he turned, and there was Bookman, and Tony, and Pepper, and Komui, and Reever, Johnny, Bruce, Krory, Thor, Miranda, Marie, Natasha, Clint, Tiedoll, Nyne, Rhodey-
All dead. Staring at him. Bloody and silent and still. Lavi stumbled back and screamed, horrified, bile rising in his throat as the stench filled his nostrils.
And then he felt the Flame Wing tag hit his back, and there was fire, and he burned.
Lavi woke up crying.
"Master Lavi?" JARVIS sounded alarmed. "Master Lavi, should I call Sir?"
Lavi wasn't paying attention; he buried his head in his pillow, shaking, tears soaking into the material. Nightmares were much worse than he remembered.
"Master Lavi, I'm calling Sir. He should be there within a few moments."
Sure enough, a few minutes later, Lavi could hear Tony's alarmed voice at the door.
"Buddy? Little man?" Footsteps, and then the bed dipped beside Lavi, and Tony lifted him up and set him against his chest. Lavi whimpered and clung to him and felt like a little kid. "Lavi, what's wrong? What happened?"
"Don' go," Lavi managed finally, hands fisting in Tony's nightshirt, tears soaking the cotton. "Don' go."
"Not going anywhere, buddy," Tony promised him instantly, hugging him tight. "I promise."
A few minutes passed in which Lavi continued crying. Tony was worried; he wasn't sure he could think of a time Lavi had cried this hard even when he was a baby.
"I believe he had a nightmare, sir," JARVIS volunteered, confirming Tony's suspicions.
Well, Tony knew all about nightmares. He may not know what they were about - he and Pepper had agreed not to push Lavi, who seemed more than content not to talk about it - but he knew how to handle them.
But, not for the first time, well… It occurred to Tony that people weren't generally reborn, and maybe… probably, Lavi's last life hadn't been so normal.
Shit. This might be bigger than Tony had thought. And he'd thought it was pretty big.
Showing no signs of this realization, Tony patted Lavi's back and stood up, hoisting the little boy up with him. "Alright, little buddy. Do you want to talk about it?" Lavi sniffled and looked up at him with big, wet green eyes, and nodded cautiously. "Right, well, can't do this on an empty stomach. How do cookies sound?"
Lavi managed a small smile, and Tony grinned at him, then hoisted him up on his shoulders and carried him off to the kitchen, where he found the cookie jar - yes, an actual cookie jar - picked out a handful for each of them, and then returned to Lavi's bed, sitting down and relocating Lavi to his lap.
For a few moments, both of them quietly munched on the cookies, and after a few long moments, Lavi leaned his head against his shoulder and started to talk, hushed and quiet.
"Las' time, I didn'... didn' have a lotta fweinds. Bu' all the fweinds I had were exowcists, like me." Lavi tilted his head up to find Tony looking down at him, eyes dark and concerned, just visible in the dim light. "An' there was a gwoup, they were called the CROW. An' they didn't li'e exowcists." His breath hitched, and his expression crumpled. "They were s'pposed to be on ouw side. But they weren', an' I didn' know 'til it was too late."
When Lavi made no move to continue speaking, in favor of burying his face in Tony's nightshirt, Tony asked quietly, not keeping the dangerous venom out of his voice (because he wasn't stupid), "What happened?" And what was an exorcist?
Who were you, Lavi?
Lavi listened to that tone, and tightened his fist in Tony's jacket, taking a little comfort from it. Tony sounded… angry, that someone would have done that, even before he knew the details. Even though it was before Lavi had been Tony's son. He sounded ready to go back in time and take vengeance on them if he had to.
"They killed us," Lavi said softly, and it was to himself as much as to Tony, to force himself to remember and to accept. "All o' us." His breath hitched. "They se' me on fire, Daddy. Don' like fire anymowe." He didn't fail to notice the way Tony's arms tightened, angry and protective, around him. "An' I dweamed… tha' evewyone was dead. You, an' Mommy, an' Bookman, Kanda, Allen, Lenalee, Wodey, Steve, Tasha… evewyone."
Tony winced - a boy as young as Lavi shouldn't have those sorts of dreams, it was just so wrong - and hummed at him, one hand rubbing his back softly. "We're not dead," he promised. "None of the people you know now, we're not dead. And there are no CROW here."
Lavi's fists tightened in his shirt again, and he wasn't so sure. But he smiled anyway. "Love you," he whispered.
"I love you too, Lavi. Cross my heart."
Kanda was trying to meditate. It was not working.
He just couldn't concentrate. Every footstep was interesting, every clunk, every stray thought demanded his immediate attention. His eyes snapped open to look at things every other noise, and it was irritating.
"Yuu."
Kanda's concentration was shattered, again, as Bucky picked him up and hefted him high enough for him to wrap his arms around his neck. Kanda scowled at him, and Bucky regarded him thoughtfully, disregarding the scowl.
"Do you not have anything to do?" Bucky asked him.
Kanda scowled, then laid his head on his shoulder and frowned at the wall. "No," he muttered irritably. "Nothin' t' do." He wanted to meditate, but the stupid bear made too much noise, and he had no attention span. None at all.
Bucky considered this. "Small children need mental stimulation," he decided finally. Kanda knew that letting him read those books about childcare was a bad idea. "Let's go, Yuu."
Kanda pushed himself up a little so he could frown at Bucky properly. "What we doin', stupi' bear?"
"Call me 'Dad' in public," Bucky reminded him. "We're getting you toys."
Kanda considered this. He stared at Bucky. "Toys?" he echoed, genuinely befuddled.
"Yes," Bucky replied seriously, heading out the door. "Toys are supposed to be good for small children."
Kanda stared at him for a few moments longer, and then huffed and let himself lean on the bear's shoulder again. "Stupi' bear," he repeated. Bucky almost smiled; Bucky was gaining the ability to think for himself.
Mostly in regards to Kanda, but Kanda didn't want to contemplate that.
The toy store in this town wasn't huge, but it was the biggest intact toy store Kanda had ever been in. Bucky instructed him to pick three toys, and Kanda thought about it for far too long before picking out a jar of Play-Doh, a yo-yo, and a bouncy ball.
Bucky also bought him a teddy bear, and a book called 'Stellaluna'.
A small smile decorated Kanda's face all the way back to the safehouse, and the teddy, basic with short brown fur and glassy eyes, fit neatly under his arm, between his chest and Bucky's.
There we go! The thing with Lenalee is a lot funnier when you realize how thoroughly she's playing Skye. *grin* Then Lavi has a horrible nightmare and Tony gets very ominous feelings and lots of angry ones, and Kanda gets toys. At the very least, important things happen this chapter. Next chapter, we go, very briefly, over AoU, but it doesn't need as much time as CA2 did because none of the kids are around for it, so it's, like, a passing mention in one scene.
Additionally, I'm giving you due warning now that, two chapters from now, the guy from Ant-Man appears. I say this because most of you have probably not watched Ant-Man. As it turns out, the movie IS significant to Marvel's main plot, so I'd recommend doing so. You don't need to know anything about what happens, though. It's not really important. (Also, the post-AoU character dynamics were hell to figure out. With the Avengers I had a lot of fanwork to use as a base, but not a lot of people are writing about the New Avengers. Mostly Vision/Wanda stuff.)
Hint number three: None. There is no hint. Yes, Allen will eventually be adopted by Steve and Natasha, but he's gonna go through hell first.
Countdown: 1 chapter until Allen's birth. (Yes, that means his first appearance is next chapter.)
