Aaaand I'm back to being late. I said I wasn't sick. (Turns out, I actually was; flu times and all that... Obviously, I am now better and back to myself.)

I still do not own Marvel.

TapTap

Claire could not tell which feeling was the dominant one. Neither in the man she was watching, nor in herself. Observing how Tony Stark was working while keeping an almost obsessive eye on a baby monitor was as baffling as it was endearing, and she felt as proud as she felt concerned about him - he was almost at the point where he forgot his coffee, and that just couldn't be safe when handling the type of prototypes he was designing.

As for Tony, she couldn't identify which one was the stronger feeling amongst the many ones she could read in his expression; he was normally harder to read than this. Of course, the strongest one except love, but that much was obvious. Never mind everything else, Tony Stark adored his seventeen days old daughter with a passion which would almost have been funny if it wasn't so heart-warming.

Of course, Tony wasn't the only one completely taken with the newest addition to the Avengers' family: each and every older member seemed to be a bundle of love for the little girl, and Claire knew she was included.

Pepper guarded her like the lioness they all new she was, at heart, Natasha somehow managed to seem even more deadly if she needed to defend her daughter (reporters with too personal questions had learnt to back off damned fast, and reporters were not famous for their delicacy) and she couldn't even think of Steve and Bucky's cooing over the baby without chuckling.

Maybe most surprising, had been the reaction of the Hulk. Bruce had reported that the baby's screaming had made the "jolly green giant" - as Tony not so helpfully expressed it - quite agitated and worried, but none of them had been able to predict his unrestrained reaction.

The baby had been sleeping in her cot at night, while Clint (who was a lot more relaxed about babies than the rest of them) watched over her since he had declared he couldn't sleep. He had left the Moses basket safely in the living room to make himself a drink and settle before the tv, when she had woken up screaming.

They had all been sleeping, the baby monitor not turned on as Clint had her. Clint had headed back immediately of course, within easy reach to hear her as he had been (you could say many things about Clint, possibly, but he was a very responsible babysitter) when her crying unexpectedly had awoken the Hulk.

Bruce's floor was only two floors up from the one Clint and the baby had been occupying, and of course no one was using the elevator at this time: not that the Hulk actually had taken it. Jarvis later reported how he had apparently simply climbed down the elevator shaft.

The sum of all of this, was that when Clint returned to the baby to soothe her, the Hulk had already been there. With the baby.

Now, different from Bruce, who tended to think the worst of the Hulk in many ways, most of the other Avengers trusted their largest teammate very well, and so Clint had not immediately jumped to any dangerous conclusions, even though him being uncomfortable with the situation would have been quite the understatement.

Hulk had not been doing anything, either, just looking around, searching for danger, visibly upset that the baby was upset. It had taken Clint several moments to calm the Hulk, before he could get to the baby. Merely upset because she had been alone, seemingly, she quieted as soon as she was picked up. The Hulk had watched this silently, peeking over Clint's shoulder for a minute or so. After that, he had turned back into a very upset Bruce, who took at least five times as much effort to handle as his supposedly less reasonable counterpart.

In fact, Bruce had still been fussing when Natasha woke at five to come collect her daughter, and it took swift intervention by Clint to prevent a misunderstanding which might have ended in lives lost.

As it was, Tony installed Hulk-alarms in the elevator shaft, Pepper glared at people for saying silly things about the incident, and Claire had a soft-spoken conversation with the Hulk through a deeply uncomfortable Bruce, affirming once and for all that the Hulk wanted to protect the baby, not hurt her.

"He knows she's too fragile for him to pick up. He understands now that she screams for other reasons than grownups would and that it doesn't mean she's in danger. I asked him to wake me the next time, instead, and I'd help. He promised he would," she told a disbelieving dinner gathering of Avengers that same evening.

"Well, I'm sure he will then," Tony finally concluded, and amongst still stunned disbelief, went back to his roast beef.

They were both right. The Hulk did. And he proved quite a useful help, too.