It all started with a letter and a medium sized brown box lying on the coffee table in front of him.
He'd finished reading the letter hours ago and had simply been sitting there in the dark for the better part of the evening, well into the early morning hours- just staring at the stupid thing as if it were a bomb or something.
And for all anyone else knew, it very well could have been one.
To a man like Tony Stark, the contents of the box were probably even more life altering than the contents of the letter that he'd already read.
And this was how his friends, and fellow Avengers found him early the next morning around five am. Sitting on the couch, staring at the box. His expression holding a wealth of knowledge, concern, anxiety, sadness and just a slight touch of something akin to joy.
Happiness, maybe?
Which was why no one seemed to understand why he didn't simply open the damned thing and peek inside.
Steve and Bucky were the first ones to join him in the common room, followed a little later by Natasha. All of whom had already gone about their usual morning routines and were beginning to start working on everyone's breakfast.
When Clint and Bruce finally mosied in and grabbed some coffee to help them wake up a little bit more before any of them began to even try to tackle the reason's behind the box and just why Tony was staring at it like a fucking zombie.
Finally, as the first rays of light began to filter through the large windows of the room, Clint finally decided to say something. "So...Christmas came early this year, I see."
"I don't think that's a Christmas present Clint." Bucky said as Steve turned his head to peer over his shoulder at the short brunette across the room. He didn't think the box was Christmas present either. But until Tony finally bothered to open it- he and the others would probably remain curious for a while.
"Boss, Rhodey is here." Friday chimed in. Tony didn't even twitch. He didn't even speak.
Well, not really anyways. Did, "Myaahsth" count as an actual word or was that simply zombie Tony speak for brains? Steve wondered as Rhodey suddenly came tearing into the room looking frantic.
"Tony! I got you're nineteen phone calls and I came just as soon as I could- So...now that I'm here what's the problem?" The man asked, trying to hide his own anxiety as he took several deep breaths and waited for a response.
And when he didn't get one right away, he shot the lot of them a questioning look and mouthed the words, What's wrong with him? As if they would know something.
Under normal circumstances he wouldn't have been wrong. Tony wasn't usually able to hide things from any of them very well. And there were at least three incredibly good intel gatherers in the room with him. Well okay, four if one bothered any to count Bruce.
"Tony?" Rhodey said hesitantly as he slowly inched his way over to the man and then finally managed to seat himself next to him as Tony wordlessly picked up the letter and absently handed it to him. Rhodey looked down at it for a second and then started scanning it to see if it could somehow explain the state of suspended duh that his friend was seemingly stuck in.
He nearly had his eyes pop right out of his head when he read the words, You have a daughter.
"Holy shit." He muttered loud enough for everyone in the room to pause what they were doing as he continued to read and kept muttering the same words over and over before finally falling silent and just sitting there next to Tony staring at the box too.
"Uh...guys- I think we just lost Rhodey." Bruce said as he pointed at the two who were now weirdly communicating through various, zombie-esque sounds.
"Your kidding." Was all that Steve could manage to say as he turned his head to look at the two men across the room. Sure enough, it did look like Rhodey had joined Tony in...whatever the hell this was?
A shocked daze?
An actual honest to god zombie virus- shit, he needed to start watching more than The Walking Dead with Bucky and Clint during the weekends. Because suddenly Steve's mind was turning to mush and he thought he'd survive a zombie apocalypse.
In truth, if one ever occurred, Bucky would outlast him.
And Clint would likely get fed to the zombies by Bucky, first thing, because that's just how he rolled. Something about getting rid of the annoying people first?
Finally after watching the two men interact for nearly five more minutes, Bucky let out a loud sigh and muttered, "That's it. I can't take anymore of this." And then stood up and dug a knife that he carried with him at all times- probably a habit left over from his days as a former Hydra assassin- out of his pocket and then flicked it open and approached the two.
Steve was about to tell him not to do anything stupid, but let's face it- Bucky tended to sometimes do stupid shit. Not only that but Clint and Nat both shushed him because they wanted to see what would happen.
The sadists.
Tony only managed to let out a squawk while Rhodey...must have maybe thought that Bucky was going to stab him or something because he threw himself off of the couch the moment the man rounded the thing, and gave Bucky all the time that he needed to cut the tape holding the box closed and then stood back with a satisfied look on his face and put the knife up.
"There now let's see what's in this." He said happily as he then picked up the box and started to slowly dig around in it before Tony finally snapped out of his funk and snatched it right out of his hands and gave him a dark glare before setting it back down where it had been sitting for the past night.
"Stay the hell out of it Barnes." Tony growled in a warning tone before then sitting back down and resumed staring at it as Friday chimed in,
"Boss, Pepper has the jet ready for you to use as soon as you snap out of it and get packed. She also wanted to know if you'd talked to anyone to see if someone would go with you."
"Friday, why would Tony need to talk to any of us about going somewhere with him?" Nat asked curiously.
"He has a very important meeting with someone very speciel and he's more than a little bit...shell shocked." The last two words were giggled by the AI before Clint asked who it was that Tony had such an important meeting with.
Nothing in the world could have prepared any of them for the AI's amused reply.
Which was probably why Clint wound up on the floor in a dead faint while the rest of them merely stood around in stupefied disbelief until Nat finally regained her senses and simply cracked up with hysterical laughter.
Tony Stark- their Tony- billionaire, genius, playboy, Avenger...was a father.
It took them all over an hour to pack and grab some of Tony's things and then leave the tower to go to the airport. No words were needed, nor spoken once everyone was in the car. To be perfectly honest, none were really needed.
Tony was still...zombified? And in shock?
And the rest of them were simply too goddamned curious to let an event like this slide by any means.
I mean, Tony was a dad! They knew that the man had a record of sleeping around and had often joked about how he needed to be more careful with whom his pent his nights with- so naturally now that nature had taken it's course they were all dying to meet the kid.
Friday hadn't really divulged any further details apart from Tony being a father.
But she had told them where they were going was a place in Japan called Karakura Town.
It was a town located about fifty miles from Tokyo, and had a population of more than forty eight thousand people. So it was a fairly big place. They'd googled it just to figure out what they were heading into since they'd never heard of the place before. And among the Google searches they had found a shit ton of really, really interesting articles on the place being a hot bed for odd occurrences, monster attacks, mysterious murders and deaths and disappearances ect.
And along with more than a handful of those articles were pictures of unexplained 'terrorist' attacks on local schools- and children. And in those same articles, the same name popped up hundreds of times.
Ichigo Kurasaki.
There had also been a few pictures in the articles of the girl, but nothing updated since most of the articles were years old. Still, most of the articles had stated that wherever disaster struck- the girl tended to be.
Steve and Bucky wondered if the girl was a bad guy. And Clint and Nat wanted to meet her and take her hand. Apparently they had found a YouTube video of her doing something and had been impressed.
Bruce didn't care one way of the other, he was leaning over on zombie Tony's shoulder sleeping.