A/N: Okay, so I threw this together - Sorry this took so long to post, I was going back through all my old notes on what I was about to do so I should wrap this entire thing up soon. Once again, sorry that this is mostly a filler chapter, I promise the next couple will be better - sososososososo sorry once again for everything!
Bucky sat down in one of the lounge chairs with a huff, "I don't care what she says. We did the right thing." He punctuated his last two words with the first two sharp clicks his shotgun let out as he began to dismantle it. Steve, however, looked slightly abashed, rubbing the back of his neck and glancing at the entrance to their floor nervously.
"Maybe, but we went a little overboard in the process…"
"He made a move on her right in front of us-"
"He thought we were in the kitchen-"
"Does that make it any better?"
"No, but Buck, you didn't need to actually shoot at him."
Seeming to mull this over for a second, Bucky set down his gun and gazed out the window. After a moment of silence, he shook his head, "Nope, it was perfectly justifiable."
"What if, instead of that random boy, it had been Peter?"
Natasha strode in, adjusting one of Tony's gauntlets to make it detach from her hand, "Peter would never disrespect our little girl with the 'yawn-and-stretch.' That move is just cheap."
"Okay, and you, Nat-" Steve wheeled on her, tearing the gauntlet from her hand. "He was already running, you definitely did not need to use this."
"It wasn't necessary, but it was cathartic. That girl was a part of me for nine months. I helped raise her. I won't let that joke of a teenager touch her."
Though he opened his mouth to reply, Steve was cut off when an angry, formless cry came from the elevator. He immediately unhooked his shield and stood so Nat could hide behind him, carefully slipping her the gauntlet. "This isn't going to be pretty is it?"
"Probably not…" Bucky set the gun aside and jumped the back of his lounge chair, moving to stand by Steve. "She's never been this angry before…"
The doors of the elevator opened and Sarah stormed out, excess magic flowing around her in her anger, "What is wrong with the three of you? I expected something embarrassing, maybe even something to make him run, but really? You had to shoot at my date till he left the premises? That's got to be illegal somewhere!"
"Technically…" Tony intoned from behind the door to the stairwell nervously, "It's not illegal because the Avenger's building has special exemptions from-"
"Shut up, Uncle Tony!" A blast of light seared the wall by the door, haphazardly aimed. "God! You are all the worst!"
"Hey, hey-" Tony peeked out again, "I'm just here for my gauntlet. No need to go green." He held his hands out, edging slowly towards Natasha, "Nat, please-"
"Nonono," Natasha shook her head, leaning out from behind Steve, "I'm keeping this till she's calmer."
"Calmer? Calmer? How do you expect me to be calm after what you guys did! You're all in your 30's at the very least and yet you still act like small children!"
"Hey," Bucky raised his hand, "Let's not get mean."
"How is it mean for me to tell you the truth, but it's 'reasonable' for you to physically attack my boyfriend - well, past boyfriend, now!"
Steve sighed, raising his shield slightly higher, "Well, if this scared him off, then it wasn't meant to be."
In response, the shield rang as brilliant blue light exploded upon it's surface, "You're an asshole!"
"Hey!" Bucky frowned and moved forward angrily, ignoring common sense as he lacked anything to protect him if his daughter decided to fire at him. "You are not allowed to speak to us that way! We may have shot near that kid, but we never would have hit him. You know that. So there's no excuse for you to call your father that!"
"I don't care, you ruined everything-"
"That boy isn't everything, now if you don't calm down right now I'm going to send you to your room, do you hear me?"
"Oh yeah, you and what army?"
After this, there was a soft silence, and Bucky gave her a 'did you really ask that?' look, crossing his arms and rumbling the gears within. Sarah heard the quiet steps of the rest of some of the Avengers behind her waiting for orders, readying into one of the formations they usually used to deal with Bruce. She licked her lips and let the lights around her die down, while Bucky sighed, feeling bad for her, "Are we good?"
"No!" She shouted, shoving past him, tears in her eyes, "I hate you all!" The door didn't slam behind her until she'd leveled them all with a particularly scathing glare.
"Well," Natasha started, "What's being a teenage girl without a little meltdown or two?"
"Most teenage girls don't wield dangerous magic…" Clint muttered, lowering his bow, strung with an arrow designed to carefully deliver a small portion of sedative. "But I'll put myself out on a limb here and say her anger is justifiable." When everyone gave him a betrayed look, he shrugged, "She's right. You guys were total assholes."
Bucky made a face, turning to Steve, "What do we do now?"
He shrugged, "I didn't grow up with girls, I don't know how to deal with this sort of thing."
They all looked to Nat, who shook her head, "I grew up with girls, but I… don't think you want to hear what happened to the ones that retaliated against our guardians…"
Tony, Thor, Loki, and Victor all stepped back, waving their hands in various motions to indicate they weren't the ones to ask. Clint raised a brow when all eyes returned to him, "I grew up in a fucking circus."
"And…?" Steve prompted. "I'd say our living situation is pretty similar to that."
"Well… One time one of the girls who trained with the elephants tried to trample our knife-thrower after he practiced his skills on one of the tigers…"
"What happened to her?" Tony asked, moving past him to the kitchen, presumably to pour himself a drink.
"Um… the ringleader made me shoot them both." When everyone gave him looks of shock, he grimaced, "God, I didn't kill them! I just hit each of them in the leg so they would stop trying to murder each other."
"Oh." Bucky let out a breath, "Well, let's not go with that."
"What of Lady Jane?" Thor offered, "She and her friend Lady Darcy could prove helpful in this problem."
His brother snorted and nodded, "That would be better than any information we will find from this collection of disastrous childhood memories."
"Let us not be cruel…" Thor grumbled, turning to press the 'up' elevator button.
Jane sat criss cross on a table, having just tucked little blond Erik under a blanket next to his father, with Darcy to her left and Sam to her right. Each one looked around as the rest of the Avenger's sat down to receive an impromptu parenting lesson.
"First off," Sam began, "I just want to say that the lot of you need serious help. You could have just picked up the kid and set him outside, you're Avengers, not some trigger happy fathers… Well, most of you aren't." He gave a pointed look towards Bucky, who rolled his eyes and avoided meeting Steve's gaze, who in turn shouldered him so he wouldn't continue to act childish.
"And Natasha," Jane sighed, "The whole scary Russian aunt thing was a bit too much - though I'll admit it was fun to watch."
Nat had a moment to smile before Sam leveled her with a glare, "More than a bit. We could all get in trouble for this, you know."
"We should get Pepper a pre-PR spin gift…" Tony muttered.
"That will just cause her panic if she doesn't know what incident to deal with yet…" Sam sighed. "But let's get back on track. I have a little sister, and every time she throws a fit she's grounded for being immature - unless my parents have done something wrong. Which is rare, I'll be honest, but usually that results in a day where we all sit down to talk about what we did that was inappropriate or unjust and how to avoid doing it again."
Nodding, Jane added, "That's pretty reasonable, my parents did something like that too - though we would always pretend everything was okay for a bit and go get ice cream before we all sat down to talk."
"See," Darcy laughed, "My family always felt bad for me so they would apologize and let me choose what we had for dinner."
Steve frowned, "Well, that explains a lot... Sam, Jane, what other sort of things did you guys… do…" He trailed off, his eyes focusing behind the three on the table, "Hey, sweetheart…"
"Hey guys…" Sarah rubbed her metal arm shyly, "Can I come in…?" A discordant chorus of agreement met her, and she stepped towards the group, slowly moving to sit between Steve and Bucky. "So… Are we going to talk, have a dessert, or both?"
"...What do you want?" Steve asked.
"Both?" She looked between her parents, and when they nodded, she finally smiled.
"So…" Peter watched a sparrow flutter past them on the rooftop garden. "Everything is okay?"
"Yeah. Everything except John's psyche… But they offered to pay for a therapist if he needed one." Smiling, Sarah offered Peter her leftover ice cream and spoon.
Taking a bite, he pondered what to say next. Swallowing, he asked nervously, "Are your parents still that opposed to you having a relationship?"
"Yeah, but they said next time they would just let Winter pick up the guy and toss him out the front doors… it was the best they could agree to."
"Ah… I see…" She watched as Peter tried to calm his nerves.
"What's up?"
"Nothing," His voice squeaked a bit, "Nothing, really. At all."
"Okay…" She shrugged, returning to her snack, "I'm going to eat this all if you don't help me."
"Right, sorry." He held his hand out for the spoon with a determined expression, which made her giggle.
"Hey, we should go see this botanical garden exhibit Uncle Tony made for my parents years ago."
"Sure, which one is it?"
"It's like this miniature tundra room, it's really cool."
"Literally?"
She snorted, "Also, yes."