The moment that Steve, Tessa, and Natasha all decided to run with Scott's bizarre plan, life became… disrupted. Long before they found Bruce and convinced him to come back into the fold, before they called on Rhodes and the space cadets and asked them to return, before they even went to Tony to beg for his help, Steve and Tessa packed a few suitcases – one entirely devoted to children's books and stuffed animals – and moved their little family into the Avengers Compound.

Ava didn't seem to miss home – or pre-K or the park around the corner or all of the friends her own age – one bit. Not for those first few days, at least. Not while Natasha was around.

She doted on Ava, carrying her almost everywhere, which the little girl normally hated, but not when it was her Aunt Nattie doing the heavy lifting. She made her breakfast – just because she could, because she actually had a reason to make food now – and occasionally lunch too. She played with her, read to her, and held her at a safe distance during those initial, pitiful time travel trials, all the while explaining to her what they were doing as though the 4 year old might actually understand. And truthfully, she almost seemed like she did understand.

But then Rhodey returned with word on where Clint might be, and the redhead took off with little more than a, "See you soon, kiska." And later that same day, Rocket and Nebula – whom she only barely remembered ever meeting at all and so were truthfully utter strangers in her book – came to stay with them as well. And now there's some giant man with long, icky hair standing in the kitchen, rifling through the refrigerator, and Ava's just about had it.

Her mom's been gone all day, working with the giant green guy who ruffled her hair and called her a spitfire, whatever that meant. Her papa's been busy ignoring her and instead talking and whispering with all of the strangers invading her home away from home. And now this colossal bum was blocking the fridge and keeping her from the juice box that she so desperately needed to get her through the rest of the afternoon.

She doesn't think twice – doesn't think once, really – before storming across the room in a rage, 4-year-old fury burning through her as she barrels toward the man and shoves him with her tiny – but fearsomely strong – hands. "No!" she screams at the top of her lungs, the shrill pitch matching the tight, angry pull to her features.

The man turns slowly away from the open refrigerator and narrows his deep blue eyes down at the small creature before him. "Who are you?" he asks suspiciously before downing the rest of his beer and reaching in to grab two more from the top shelf.

Ava's face stays pinched and red as she stares at this newest intruder. Her bottom lip juts out, eyes narrowing in response to his snake-eyed glare. "You stink!"

He pulls back a touch, expression shifting from confusion to… is it hurt? And he glances up over the little girl to see Nebula stride casually into the room, the commotion perking her interest. He cocks his head at the cyborg. "Who's tiny human is this?"

But before she can answer, Steve comes sliding in, nearly slamming into the blue woman on his way over to Ava. "Sorry," he breathes out, sounding more than a bit frazzled as he takes hold of her hand and tugs her away. "Sorry, Thor, she's mine." He kneels down in front of her and gives her a rather reproachful look as he calmly asks, "What is going on?"

Her bright blue eyes bounce from him to the giant by the fridge and back again. "I don't like him," she nearly snarls.

Thor pops open one of the beers in his hand and swings the refrigerator door shut with a resounding thunk. "She told me I stink," he mutters plainly. "Quite rude."

"Quite true," Nebula adds as she stands off to the side, arms crossed casually over her chest.

Steve lets out a depleting sigh and asks Ava, "Is that true?"

She nods. "Yes. He stinks."

"You see?" the slovenly god behind her intones. "Rude! And cruel!"

Steve sighs again and asks the girl, "Is that a nice thing to say?"

She shrugs. "I don't know."

"I think you do."

"I don't think so," she shoots back, chin jutting challengingly.

"Are you certain that she's yours, Captain?" Thor asks, his eyes narrowing once again as he assesses the child and then looks back at Steve. "She looks nothing like you," he declares simply.

Steve merely pulls in a breath and shakes his head as he rises to speak to the old friend he'd yet to officially greet. But the moment he takes Thor in fully, his brows shoot high, head cocking almost suspiciously as he stares at the mess of a man before him. "You look nothing like… you," he finally utters, the unintentional quip earning a swift chuckle from Rocket as he joins the group.

"Perhaps she is yours then," Thor states, his voice rising a bit in tenor as though working to hide an obviously wounded note. "Rude."

The snickering raccoon steps closer, his mere presence causing Ava to leap behind Steve and latch onto his leg. Rocket notices right away, just as he'd noticed the frightened tears that streamed down her face when he and Nebula first arrived yesterday morning and were introduced to the little thing they hadn't seen since she was tiny and new. Back then, during the handful of times he had gotten to see her, he'd been intrigued and excited both to hear her frenetic giggles as she reached out for him and grasped at his fur. It hadn't occurred to him that she might – after a few years of being exposed only to Earth's boring, useless raccoons – be scared of him every time he approached. Truth be told, it kind of stings.

"She's the doctor's," he tells Thor with a sigh, glancing pitifully at the frightened girl from the corner of his eye.

And all at once, he sees it, the gears in Thor's alcohol-addled brain grinding and clicking into place. Yes, of course, the Lady Doctor had been with child when last he saw her, when he left for the other side of the world. She had been with the Soldier's child. And this, well, this steel-eyed little curly-headed tot – now that he was paying attention enough to actually see – is so very obviously the Soldier's.

"Yes, well," he mutters, unsure of quite what to say. His eyes ping around the room for a quick moment before he leans down and holds out one of the bottles of beer in his hands, offers it to the girl along with a gruff utterance of, "I am Thor."

Steve quickly snatches the bottle away, even as Ava begins to sneak around his leg to reach for it. And Rocket gives a hardy laugh as he chokes out, "Even I know you don't give terran babies booze, ya dumb lush!"

Ava's face twitches and hardens as she steps out from behind her papa and sneers at the animal. "I'm not a baby."

"Oh, ho!" he laughs out. "She speaks!"

A rather exhausted sounding sigh slips from Steve's lips as he opens the refrigerator and trades in the beer for a juice box, pops the straw through the foil and hands it over to the little girl. He looks up at Thor and says simply, "This is Ava." Then peers back down at the kid with an almost commanding, "Ava, say hello to Thor, and tell him you're sorry for saying he stinks."

"You told him he stinks?" Rocket laughs out, striding a bit closer to the girl and internally breathing a sigh of relief when she doesn't back away.

She eyes him for a long moment, the final traces of fear in her eyes melting away and turning instead into a blatant sort of curiosity. Steve taps her shoulder to regain her attention, breaking the rather intense stare she has trained on the sniggering racoon. She looks up at him, sees the expectant brow raised high, and turns to Thor with a huff. She assess him for a moment too, the silent stare as she fits the straw between her lips and sucks at the juice setting off an eerie unsettled feeling in the pit of his stomach. Yes, she is very clearly the Soldier's child.

She swallows down her drink and says simply, "Hi. Sorry."

"Great," Steve mutters almost to himself. "Great," again, absently, before dropping down to her level and asking, "Why don't you go hunt down the cats, huh? I'll see if your mom's almost done downstairs, but I've got to…" he trails off as his gaze bounces from person to person in the room. "I've gotta get back to work, angel."

She doesn't try to hide her disappointment, bottom lip jutting out into a terrible pout as her eyes – suddenly glassy – drop to stare down at her scuffed pink sneakers.

"Well, hey," Rocket breaks in, reaching out and nudging her arm with his paw. "I've always wanted to meet a cat. I mean, I hear they're real assholes – "

"Rocket," Steve interrupts with annoyed intonation.

"What?"

"You can't…" He stares down at the creature before him, at the perplexed look on his face. "She's four. You can't use that kind of language around her."

He barks out a harsh scoff. "She's the doctor's kid, right? I'm sure she's heard worse." He turns back to Ava, pleased to see that she's looking up rather training teary eyes at the floor – and that she's no longer shying away from him either – and he asks, "Maybe you could introduce me to your cats?"

She purses her lips for a second, takes another drink from the juice box, and instead of replying to him directly, looks up to her papa and proclaims, "We're gonna find kitties, but we need cookies."

000

Tessa spins once more on the padded stool, sulking in the silent rehabbed lab they'd set up in the Compound's lowest level. Everyone else gets to hang out together upstairs right now and talk through plans, figure out to how to get their hands on the stones. And she's being forced to help the currently not-so-jolly green giant create time travel suits that will hopefully keep them from combusting or melting or doing whatever bouncing around through space and time can do to a person. And sure, that does sound pretty cool. But the truth is, aside from offering input on the biosensors, she's not really adding much to the party down here. And she's practically vibrating out of her skin with anticipation, desperate to see what schemes everyone's managed to cook up upstairs.

A longwinded sigh, replete with utter tedium, spills out of her. And she almost smiles despite herself when Bruce quirks a brow and rolls his eyes. Because he may look quite different now, but he's still the same friend and colleague she used to annoy and harass alongside Tony back in their old labs in the Tower. Back in the day. And seeing the irritation build in his expression as he works to ignore her, feeling it creep beneath her skin as it begins to radiate off his newly massive body, just manages to remind her of those better days.

Another sigh, this one louder, and she pulls herself up off of the stool and wanders over to his side. "So… question," she drawls out, circling the high-tech bench and letting her fingers dance across the myriad buttons and switches.

Bruce bats her hand away with a low growl. "What? And don't touch that."

She looks up at him with a frown, but steps back all the same, folding her arms across her chest to keep herself from pressing any potentially dangerous controls. "When you turned into this… Dr. Hulk combo person," she starts, narrowing her eyes as she stares up at him, "it didn't fix your astigmatism? I mean, you can bench like 1,000 lbs, survive a nuclear blast, but you still need those glasses?"

He looks away, lips curling into a sheepish near grin as he gently pushes the black-rimmed glasses back up his bright green nose. "I've always worn these… since I was a kid."

"Yeah, but – "

"No," he interrupts, tugging the glasses from his face and staring down at them with a forlorn expression. "No, I don't need them. These are just…" He taps on one of the lenses, "plain glass." He lets out a short scoff, gives a quick shrug, and settles the rims back in place on his face before returning his attention to the task at hand. "Guess I just like them. They make me feel more… me."

Tessa shakes her head and snorts out an amused breath, blinking rapidly as the contacts she accidentally slept in rub more grit into her already red eyes. "You're so fucking weird. If I could cure my vision and never need contacts or glasses again… hell, I'd even risk turning green for that."

"No you wouldn't," he smarts, letting out a tiny laugh as he pulls up what will hopefully be the final, complete schematic on the holoscreen in front of them.

"Are you calling me vain?" she asks with a challenging brow raised high.

"Yeah. Yeah, I am." He turns to face her, quirking a wide, self-satisfied smile in her direction as he nods his head toward the screen. "What do ya think, huh?"

Her eyes dart over to the impossible-to-understand images before her and she gives a quick nod after just barely taking them in. "Yep, looks good to me. We done then?"

Bruce's expression drops, his face pulling into an utterly unamused grimace.

"What?" she shoots out. "I told you, I'm not… whatever kind of scientist would build a time machine suit."

"Yeah, sure," he retorts, turning back to his work. "And you also aren't the kind of mutant who could just pull a little bit of energy from someone and use that to cure her vision."

Again, her eyes narrow. "Fair point. But if I pulled energy from just anyone, it could kill them." She takes a single, wide step closer to him and places a hand on his mammoth elbow. "It would take a very special kind of person to supply me with the life force I'd need to do any healing."

He looks down and sees a sharp blue light, tiny like a static shock, shoot from her fingertip. And he pulls immediately away. "Uh-uh. Don't you dare," he warns, backing away like a scared child. An almost crazed-looking smile tugs at the corners of her lips and he throws up a warning hand. "That's not funny."

"C'mon, Bruce. It'll only hurt for a second."

He stumbles back, knocking over an entire table and sending the two laptops atop it clattering to the floor. "I mean it, Tessa," he says again, his voice warbling despite himself. He raises a single finger up high and points right at her. "No."

She bites back a laugh and forces her face into a tight frown. "C'mon. Just a little bit…"

"Just," he sputters, now waving his hand through the air. "Just get out of here! You aren't helping anyway. And I know…" his eyes narrow to mere slits, issuing a daunting threat even as his feet continue to shuffle back and away from her. "I know that you're only kidding. But I still don't like being… terrorized like this."

She gives him an almost disappointed look. "You love it."

"Get out!" he shouts then, the crack in his voice enough to make her fall into a fit of laughter. "Just… go be useless somewhere else."

"Fine, fine," she ekes out, slowly striding over to the door, trying not to look too desperate to get out of the oh-so-boring clutches of space-age tailoring. She opens the door and begins to sneak through, stopping just long enough to ask, certain of what the answer will be at this point regardless, "You sure you don't need me?"

She's met with one more, "Go!" And she's out the door and bounding down the hall before his booming echo even begins to fade.

Upstairs is far more quiet than she imagined it being. The whole time she'd been trapped below with Bruce, she couldn't help but think that everyone else was up here laughing and catching up whilst hatching crazy plans and schemes. Ridiculous, sure. They weren't gathered together for a damn pizza party, this is work. But still, it had felt like she simply must be missing out.

"Hey!" greets her – and seems to shake awake the few seemingly weary souls in the giant conference room – when Tessa peeks her head inside to check on everyone. "Doc!"

The moment her eyes land on the man across the room – the long-lost, much beloved friend she hadn't seen nor heard from in years – a swell of tears begins to brew. "What the hell?" she laughs out, flying across the room and into his wide-open arms. "You have a freakin' mohawk?!"

"Yeah," he says simply, giving her a tight squeeze before holding her out at arms' length. "You like it?"

She laughs again, a few – admittedly happy – tears sliding down her cheeks as she beams up at him. "No. I hate it."

"Hey, Joan Rivers," Tony interrupts with an impatient air. "You just come up here to judge everyone's new looks?"

"Not everyone's, no," she replies, still smiling wide.

Clint bites back a smirk of his own – "She obviously hasn't seen Thor yet." – and drops heavily back into his seat.

Before she can say a word – did everyone arrive while she was stuck down in that engineering dungeon? – Tony steps in front of her and asks, "Are the suits done?"

She cocks a brow and snorts. "How the hell should I know?"

"What?" he blurts out, annoyance painting his features. "You're supposed to be working with Bruce – "

Tessa throws up a silencing hand and then flops into a chair beside Clint. "Tony, I have no idea what Bruce is doing down there. He seems to know. But I don't have a fucking clue."

"Great," he mutters, rolling his eyes dramatically before stating sarcastically, "I'm sure you were a huge help then."

"No," she shakes her head. "He didn't seem to think so anyway." A low, exasperated growl spills out of him as he turns to head back to the whiteboard at the front of the room. She spins her seat towards Clint, still beaming as she looks him up and down and says, "So, I hear you're some kind of samurai vigilante now. Hm."

The corner of his mouth twitches up into a reluctant smile. "I hear you're some kind of mom now," he returns, the smallest catch to his otherwise light tone.

A quick pang of grief shoots out from his core and slices into her, causing the grin to fall from her face and her eyes to veer off and away from him. "Yeah," she says, clearing her throat and working to steel herself before glancing back. "Did you meet her?"

"We came straight here," Natasha says from her seat at his opposite side. "And we've been trapped in this room ever since," she bemoans, her head slamming theatrically back into the chair's headrest.

"Enough sass," Tony interrupts, aiming a dry-erase marker at the lot of them. "We've been making good progress here." He spins around to see that, while Rhodes is still in the room with them, albeit half asleep in his corner, Thor and Rocket have yet to return. And despite him sending Nebula out almost an hour ago to hunt down Steve, the Captain was nowhere to be found either. "Course, we'd probably make way more progress if half the people going on this mission bothered to show up to help plan it."

"I'm here," Tessa says with a shrug. "What do you have for me?"

"What do I have for you?" he asks, both brows blowing high. "I had the very important task of helping to design the suits that might, maybe just keep us from dying on this crazy little adventure. That's what I had for you. And yet here you are, not doing the one thing I had for you."

Her expression remains completely straight and placid as she stares at him, never breaking the intense eye contact he seems so eager to pin her with. "So what do you have for me now?"

Both Clint and Natasha snicker beside her, Tony merely rolling his eyes again, so dramatically that he actually has to lean his head back to support the overdone motion. "How 'bout you just sit there and keep your pretty little mouth shut while the rest of us actually work here?"

"Uh, Tony," Rhodey pipes up from his corner – apparently not quite as far gone as he had seemed – "Thor and Rocket still aren't here, so…"

Natasha leans forward and cranes her head around Clint to look at Tessa. "We were on to their part. The reality stone was in Asgard a few years back – well, more than a few, I guess – so we're sending them in for it."

Clint chuckles between them. "Yeah, I'm sure the Thor who ate Thor and the talking racoon are gonna blend in really well at the royal palace there."

Tony spins on a heel, heated glare painting his face. "You got a better idea, Crouching Tiger?"

He shrugs. "Not really, no."

"Right. So… you can just shut your pretty little mouth too." He turns back to the scribbled-on board in front of him, assessing it carefully as he once again falls into the deep contemplation that had led everyone in the room to either leave or drift off over the course of the afternoon.

"What's he doing?" Tessa whispers, not even waiting for Clint's shrug of a reply before piping up to straight out ask, "Tony, what are you doing?"

"I'm thinking," he says, back still to her.

"Yes, I can see that. And smell it… smells like burning hair. If you keep thinking so intensely to yourself like that, you're head's gonna explode."

"Messy," Clint mutters absently.

Still without turning, Tony drones, "I need to figure out how to get the stone out of her."

"What?" she asks, brows tugging tightly together.

Rhodes rises from his seat with a groan and moves to the front of the room. "The reality stone isn't really a stone… or it wasn't when it was on Asgard. It's some kind of… what did he call it?"

"Aether," Natasha supplies.

"Yeah," he nods before pulling in a giant yawn. "Anyway, it got inside Thor's girlfriend, Jane. And to get it back here, we'll need to get it out of her." He slams an open palm to Tony's shoulder, knocking the deep-in-thought man off balance and setting him to stumble. "I need coffee."

Tony turns back to the dwindling group just as the door closes behind Rhodey, and he lights on Tessa's face, her expression one of both confusion and intent curiosity. "I need to build something. Some kind of tool to… suck it out of her."

"Why are you designing a tool for that?" she asks, seemingly confounded.

"Because I like designing things," he replies with a soft pout.

She shakes her head and frowns a bit herself. "But… it's energy, right? Send me in and I can just pull it out of her myself."

Natasha perks up at that, sitting upright in her chair and swiveling to face her. "Can you do that without killing her?"

Tessa merely shrugs. "One way to find out."

Tony snaps the cap back onto the likely completely dried out by now marker and tosses it aside with a flourish. "Great. Wonderful," he announces, shoulders hitched high. "Problem solved." He slips into silence for a moment as his eyes roam the mostly empty room, then he looks back at the three in front him, breathes out a sigh akin to relief, and finally suggests, "Let's order pizza."