Author's Note: Last chapter, I got 10 reviews, which is the most I've received for any one chapter so far! So thank you very much to all those who left a review (and favorited and followed)! I am seriously so happy with all the positive feedback this story has been receiving. So please, keep reviewing, favoriting and following. Enjoy Chapter 14!
PS: Virtual cookies to anyone who catches the Age of Ultron plot point hint...
Chapter Fourteen
With November came Thanksgiving. The next couple of weeks rolled by in a blaze of school, training, play dates (for Christy), and lazy Saturday mornings. But at last, the holiday was upon them.
Christy was beyond excited to celebrate Thanksgiving with her new family and Steve was determined to give her the best day possible—not only because he wanted to, but because it also prevented him from focusing too much on past Thanksgivings.
Memories were dangerous things, for the both of them. But they were healing, slowly but surely.
The Sunday before Thanksgiving, on a rare occasion that all the team (minus Thor, plus Christy) was in the Common Floor living room watching TV, Steve broached the subject.
"So…is anyone doing anything for Thanksgiving?"
Natasha shrugged. "Not exactly. Is your floor open?"
"Yeah, I was maybe gonna make a few things…" Steve said casually. Christy shook her head crazily.
"Dad's gonna make everything! So you guys should all come!" she said decisively.
"Everything, huh?" Tony said.
Christy rolled her eyes, a habit she'd picked up from Steve. "Well, not everything. But he's definitely gonna make a turkey."
Tony nodded. "Well, Pepper and I were just gonna eat down here. But if you're making food, Steve…"
"We should all just eat down here." Clint put in. "Have a big team meal. Maybe invite Coulson and Hill; heck, maybe even Fury would come."
"Does the eye-patch even celebrate holidays?" Tony quipped. Everyone ignored him.
"Okay, so what does everyone want to eat?" Steve asked. "Christy, can you find a pen and paper?"
"Just use your tablet, old man." Tony muttered. Steve whacked his arm, just as Christy came back with list-making materials. "Thanks, baby. So, turkey, obviously. With the amount we eat, probably two turkeys. What else?"
"Bruce can make smashed potatoes." Tony offered. Bruce glared, but nodded. "I can do mashed potatoes."
Christy grinned. "Those are my favorite. Can I help make them?"
Bruce's glare subsided. "Sure, sweetheart."
"Cranberry sauce." Tony added. Everyone nodded.
"I can do vegetables." Natasha offered. "Green beans, Brussels sprouts…will Christy eat those?" she asked Steve.
Steve nodded. "She actually likes most vegetables."
"Except for tomatoes." Christy made a face. "Ugh."
Clint rubbed her shoulder in silent camaraderie. "Yeah, tomatoes are pretty gross, huh, kid?"
"No tomatoes." Steve promised. "What about stuffing?"
"Pepper makes the best stuffing in the universe." Tony said. "Seriously, I'm drooling thinking about it."
"Does Pepper ever not do anything well?" Clint muttered to Natasha. The redhead grinned.
"I know, I know. But it's actually kind of cute. Besides," she added in a near-silent whisper, "you do it, too."
Clint's lips twitched in a silent laugh.
"Okay, so that's turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, vegetables…what else?" Steve asked.
"Sweet potatoes with marshmallows and brown sugar?" Bruce asked; his voice enveloped in longing.
Everyone stared.
"What, it's my one good memory of Thanksgiving!" the scientist protested.
Steve nodded. Good childhood memories were few and far between for most of his team. "Right, sweet potatoes it is."
"And crescent rolls." Clint added firmly. "Oh, and pie. We need pie."
Natasha smirked. "Not sure how much need factors into that equation, but…"
Clint snorted. "Well, what do you know about Thanksgiving traditions, you're Russian!" he mock-argued
"Barton, you're the one who introduced me to this holiday in the first place!" Natasha said, mildly exasperated.
"Now that is a story I want to hear." Tony said.
"Me, too!" Christy echoed.
"And you can hear it on Thanksgiving." Steve said, steering the conversation back to pertinent matters. "Anything else?"
Clint shook his head. "Don't think so…I can make pies beforehand, 'cause that takes a while. Yes, Stark, I can bake." he added, at Tony's incredulous stare. "You think that pie I brought the night of Christy's welcome home party was store-bought? Don't make me laugh!"
"Alright, well, I can put in the turkeys the night before Thanksgiving, and then we can all meet down here the next morning and divide up making stuff." Steve said.
Everybody nodded.
"Jarvis, did you get all that? Can you order supplies?" Tony asked, tipping his head towards the ceiling.
"I can do that, Sir." came the AI's smooth voice.
"Hi, Jarvis!" Christy said, tipping her head up like Tony. "Did you have a good day?"
"I did indeed, Miss Rogers." Jarvis replied; his normally professional tone softened into something like a verbal smile.
Steve checked his watch. "Uh, oh; nine-twelve. Looks like bedtime for someone."
Christy pouted. "Do I have too?"
"You have school in the morning." Steve said, lifting her up on his shoulder. "Besides, don't you get off from school starting Wednesday?"
"Yeah! But I still hate going to bed early."
"Look, kid, just be glad you have someone around to make you go to bed at a decent hour." Tony said, in a rare moment of seriousness.
Christy sighed. "Yeah, I guess…"
She still hated that she was the only one in the Tower who had to go to bed early. But if that was what it meant to have someone who cared, then Christy knew she wouldn't trade it for anything.
The week dragged slowly through Monday and Tuesday (at least to Christy). Finally, it was Wednesday night, time to cook the turkeys.
It seemed like everybody had an opinion on how to cook a turkey. Steve had had Jarvis look up 'easy Thanksgiving turkey recipes,' so he'd gotten a decent idea on how to do it, but everyone on the team insisted on throwing in their two cents. Well, everyone being mostly Bruce and Clint.
He was sort of glad for the advice, though, given that he'd never actually cooked a turkey before.
"Are you telling me that Captain America doesn't know how to cook a turkey?" Tony asked in mock-horror.
"We were sort of poor, Stark." Steve hissed, digging the bag of giblets out of the second turkey. "Turkey was expensive; we usually ended up eating chicken on Thanksgiving."
"You must've had turkey at some point, though." Bruce said.
"Yeah, I remember one year my mom managed to get one from somewhere…I don't know how she did it."
Christy, enjoying to chance to stay up late, frowned. "I'm sorry, Daddy."
"Don't be sorry, baby. I wasn't ever starving." Steve assured his daughter. "And this year, I get to celebrate Thanksgiving with someone very special."
"Aww, Rogers, I'm touched." Tony said, pressing his hand to his arc reactor.
"Not you, Stark!"
"You need to baste the turkeys in wine." Clint suddenly broke in.
"Wine?" Steve looked over from the spice cabinet, where he was getting out seasoning. "The recipe didn't say anything about that!"
"Trust me, you need it. Just get a whole bottle of some kind of white wine…actually, let me do it." Clint started rifling through Tony's wine collection, ignoring the billionaire's token protests. "Here ya go, Pinot Grigio; dry, white, perfect. Just pour a whole bottle over each of 'em."
"A whole bottle?" Steve asked skeptically, staring at the wine like it was from outer space.
"Yup! Just pour it on!" Clint said, imitating the motion with his hands.
Steve looked at Bruce. Bruce shrugged. "Sounds fine to me."
"Alright, alright, just let me get the seasoning on first…"
"Aren't you supposed to be making pies, anyway, Clint?" Natasha asked.
Clint waved his hand. "Already covered. Well, sorta covered. I made two apple pies today. I'll make pumpkin tomorrow."
"You have pie?" Christy asked, glancing toward the elevator.
"No, Christy, you cannot have pie at 10 o'clock at night." Steve said, guessing her intent.
"But Daaaad!"
"No. You'll get plenty of food tomorrow, I promise."
"Fine."
It was around nine o'clock on Thanksgiving morning. Christy was sitting at the kitchen counter helping Bruce peel potatoes.
At first, the scientist had balked at handing a sharp kitchen tool to the seven-year-old, but he'd quickly decided that with all the other Avengers AWOL at the moment, he needed all the help he could get.
"You doin' okay?" he asked quietly. Christy nodded.
"I figured it out." They worked in silence for a few minutes. "Uncle Bruce?"
"Yeah, kid?"
"You said sweet potatoes and marshmallows were your one good Thanksgiving memory. Don't you have any more?"
Bruce bit his lip to stop the groans emanating within him from leaking out. "Uh, no…not really, Christy. My childhood…it wasn't all that great."
"Oh." Christy frowned and shifted restlessly. She looked at the slicer. "Uncle Bruce? Can I cut something?" she asked, her voice a little strained.
Bruce's eyes widened. "Uh, yeah, sure…here, the sweet potatoes. Wash them and cut them up into little chunks. I'll show you."
Christy scrubbed at the skin of the sweet potatoes—probably a bit harder than necessary.
"Nobody here had a happy childhood." she said suddenly, in a burst of emotion. "Uncle Clint was in foster care, like me. Aunt Tasha won't tell me anything; which means it was bad. Uncle Tony didn't like his dad. And my dad woke up in another century! It makes me mad!"
She let out a tiny growl. Bruce turned off the sink and grabbed the scrub brush from her hand.
"Breathe." he said firmly. "In; and out."
Christy obeyed, drawing in a couple shallow breaths. "Sorry…I just…don't want anything bad to happen to anyone else. Even if it happened a long time ago."
Bruce shook his head. "You are your father's kid, alright."
Christy made a face. "Everyone keeps saying that. What does that even mean?"
"Well, for most people, it means you look like him—same hair, same eyes. But I meant that you act like him. He'll say stuff like that. Determined to make sure everybody else is okay, even when he's not."
"Oh…okay."
"Besides." Bruce said firmly. "You are having a happy childhood, right now. And that's good enough for us."
"Really?" Christy asked.
"Really. Even for Tony; though the jerk doesn't show it. He's already making you a Christmas present."
"Already? Really? What is it? Can I have a hint? Plleeease, Uncle Bruce, pllleeaase?"
"Hey, hey; one holiday at a time, kid." Bruce grinned.
He now had two good memories of Thanksgiving.
The quiet atmosphere in the kitchen lasted not too much longer after that. Steve came back from his run, Natasha showed up from somewhere, and Pepper dragged Tony out of his lab. Clint was 'somewhere, but he'll show up' (Natasha's words).
Everything descended into a mad scramble to get things done.
Cranberry sauce was easy to make—open a can and smooth it out. Potatoes, both kinds, took a bit longer.
Natasha sliced Brussels sprouts in half with an accuracy that was almost deadly. Christy helped.
"We'll call this knife training for the day." Natasha said, smirking.
Christy giggled. "I like cutting stuff."
"As long as your cutting is limited only to food and paper, I will be satisfied." Steve warned. "No people."
"But Dad, what if, someday, when I'm bigger and older…"
"No!" Steve said firmly. He paused, and laughed, suddenly.
"What?" Natasha asked.
"Now I know how Bucky felt whenever I talked about going to war." Steve replied slowly. "I always thought he was just being overprotective."
"I think your friend would call this payback." Pepper said.
"Yeah, probably."
"Oh, that reminds me!" Tony cried. "I bet Christy would love to see some of your old USO shows and I think I have some of the tapes just lying around…"
"Not in this century or the next!" Steve vowed. "My daughter is not going to see me look like a performing monkey!"
"But Daddy, I wanna see you punch Hitler in the jaw!"
"It was…just an actor?" Steve tried. Christy still looked too excited for his comfort. "Fine. Maybe later."
"Maybe what later?" Clint asked, coming off the elevator.
"Nothing." Steve said firmly. "Absolutely…how many pies did you make Barton?"
"Three. Everyone knows the best part is leftovers."
Everyone but Natasha stared in mild shock at the archer. Clint shrugged.
"So, what, I like baking. C'mon the food's not gonna cook itself!"
Finally, finally, the food was all cooked, on the table, and ready to be devoured. Coulson had managed to come, though Hill and Fury had not.
"They said sorry they couldn't come, but Happy Thanksgiving, anyway." Coulson said. "And from Fury—his words, not mine, 'a special Happy Thanksgiving to the littlest Avenger.'"
Christy beamed like a light bulb. Everyone's collective 'awws' almost drowned out Steve's 'over my dead body.' Almost, but not quite.
"Right, I'm starving!" Tony declared. "Let's eat!"
"Who's cutting the turkey?" Bruce asked.
Everyone looked between Tony and Steve— the team leader and the master of the house. Steve shook his head.
"His Tower; he cuts the turkey. Today, Tony Stark comes before Captain America."
Something frozen in the dark recesses of Tony's heart (or arc reactor) slowly started thawing at that statement. He'd begun to (sort of) forgive his dad for the neglect Howard had showed him, often in favor of searching for the man in front of him.
He caught the unspoken message in Steve's words: You matter just as much as me, no matter what your father said.
Pepper grabbed the carving knife and handed it ceremoniously to Tony.
And Tony smiled, really smiled, as he plunged the knife into the first turkey.
"Happy Thanksgiving, guys."
Later that night, tired and saturated to the brim with food, everybody began to retire to their own floors.
Christy was nearly asleep, so Steve lifted her to his shoulder as they got in the elevator.
"Did you have a good Thanksgiving, baby?" he asked softly.
"Never saw your USO tapes." she mumbled. Steve groaned.
"Someday, baby…"
"That means never."
Steve chuckled. "No, I'll show them to you, promise. Besides that, did you have a good day?"
"Uh-huh. Uncle Clint makes really good pie. And you make really good turkey." she yawned. "Did you have a good day?"
"Of course." Steve whispered. "I spent the whole day with you."
As he tucked Christy into bed and finally rolled into bed himself, he paused for a moment. A profound sense of gratefulness was flooding his whole heart.
The past year had been rough beyond reckoning—and yet…
And yet he was thankful. For his team. For the tiny girl sleeping two doors down.
For his life.
"Thank you." he whispered, two silent tears spilling down his cheeks. "Thank You."
Nothing could replace what he'd lost. But he wouldn't trade what he'd been given in return.