A/N: More Allie shenanigans :)
It was the smell that was the worst. Clint had long ago inured himself to the smell of blood, of guts, the smell of death, of poverty, the stench of fear. But the smell of alien sweat and blood... it made him want to vomit...
Clint jolted awake, gasping for breath, trying to process the clean, vanilla-scented air of the Tower.
Natasha was instantly awake by his side, and hovering cautiously out of arms reach. They both knew what it was to wake up with nightmares, and so true to promise she stayed out of his way until he could calm down. He always did the same for her. "Clint?" she murmured, once he'd stopped heaving for air.
He rubbed a hand over his face and let out a groan. "I'm okay," he grunted. "It was just a nightmare. Memory. Something." He sat on the edge of the bed and put his face in his hands, breathing deep.
Natasha moved up behind him and gently put her hands on his shoulders, massaging his tense muscles silently.
He let himself relax until his back hit her chest, and he took her hands in his. "Thank you," he said, kissing her hands.
She pressed a kiss to his hair. "Do you want to come back to bed?"
"No." He shuddered. "No I don't think I can get to sleep again." He stood up and grabbed his hoodie off the chair. "I'll go watch some crap TV, maybe play a game."
"Tetris 4000?" she asked wryly, curling back under the covers.
He smirked. "Yeah, gotta beat my own high score."
He stopped to check on Allie. She was sound asleep, a tiny lump of puppy under the covers in the very center of her bed. He smiled at the sight of a tiny nose peeking out from the covers, and continued on to the common room. Most nights, someone was awake due to work, nightmares, insomnia, or calls to the other side of the world.
Tonight, there was only one person in the living room, sitting on the couch, reading a thick, heavy book. Loki. "Trouble sleeping?" he asked the archer quietly.
Clint frowned at him. "Yeah. You?"
"Same."
Clint went to the kitchen, made himself some tea (yes he drank tea from time to time, he wasn't an animal, and yes okay technically it was Natasha's special post-workout muscle relaxing blend), and made himself a perch on the other side of the common room, sitting on top of the couch. "JARVIS, TV," he said, "low volume. Please."
The TV switched on, and automatically went to the old westerns movie channel. That, and infomercials, were the only things that could soothe insomniac Avengers.
The two men ignored each other for the first hour. And then Loki asked a question about John Wayne. Clint explained.
When Steve got up at six to have a smoothie before his workout, he found Loki and Clint sitting on the sofa eating popcorn and watching The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Steve just raised an eyebrow and continued on his way.
A~A~A~A
Tony walked into the living room, bleary-eyed and still mentally in the land of differential equations. He walked past the giant snow pile in the living room, made a beeline for the coffee, poured a giant cup of coffee, gulped it down, refilled his cup, and started back to the elevator, stepping around the end of the ice slide. He got in the elevator, and leaned against the side. "Lab," he said hoarsely.
"Yes sir," JARVIS replied placidly.
He got to the lab, took another sip of coffee, and promptly choked on it. "JARVIS!" he wheezed, running to the elevator, and hopping in it. "Common room!"
The elevator whisked him back to the common room, and he catapulted himself back into the living room.
"WHAT-" Tony could only stop and stare. "What did you do to my living room?!" he demanded.
The entire living room and dining area had been covered in a solid layer of ice, and there was essentially a giant ice slide, six feet high at one end and floor-level at the other, with a pile of soft snow to keep one from crashing out the wall. Loki was sitting quite calmly on a kitchen chair, Clint was juggling snow balls while perched on a snowdrift, and Sam was filming an adorable penguin that was sliding on the ice. No one paid the gaping Tony any attention.
"How did you get snow?" Tony demanded almost feverishly. "It's August! What are you doing? Is that Allie?"
"When was the last time he slept?" Loki asked Clint idly.
"I dunno. J?"
"Three days ago," JARVIS replied.
Tony squinted at them suspiciously and looked at the small penguin that came to bump his leg. "Allie?"
The penguin chirped.
"Am I hallucinating?" Tony asked numbly, reaching down to smooth her sleek feathers.
Sam grabbed him by the shoulders, steered him to the sofa, and pushed him down onto it. "Go to sleep, man," he said.
Tony lay there in a daze, and watched Allie the penguin have the time of her life with the snow and ice. He fell asleep sometime after that, and didn't even notice the ice disappear.
When he woke up, there was a movie on the screen, a puppy curled up on his chest, and he was snugly tucked under a blanket. He kissed Allie's head, and went back to sleep.
When he woke up again, Allie was still curled into his side, this time as her normal self, and she was reading Babysitter's Club. "Hi Tony," she said, kissing his cheek. She made a face. "You need to shave."
He scrubbed a hand over the three-day stubble and grinned wryly. "Yeah, I probably should huh?" He sat up, stretched, groaned, and leaned against the back of the couch. "Where'd everybody go?" he asked.
"It's tomorrow," she replied matter-of-factly. "I was just waitin' for you to wake up so you could come with me to school."
"Why?"
"You's got to judge our robot ideas."
"I do? When did I agree to this?"
"Last week," Allie replied. "Remember?"
He didn't. But he wasn't going to let Allie down. "Uh... how much time do I have?"
"An hour."
"Okay. I'll be there."
She gave him a beaming smile and hugged him. "Yay thank you. Now go shower cuz you stinky."
He laughed. "All right, all right, I'm going."
An hour later he presented himself at the schoolroom, shaved, dressed in slacks and a Science Rocks! t-shirt, and with Pepper's admonishments to be nice ringing in his ears.
He had to admit the kids had some really great ideas for robots, and he picked the three with the most potential so that they could work directly with R&D to make their robots reality.
Afterwards was a sort of Q&A with the kids, and they asked him questions about being Iron Man, how his suit worked, how he came up with such good ideas, what it was like being at college, working with the Avengers, and so on and so forth.
Tony left the classroom in a good mood, and decided that he and the Avengers should do more of that, encouraging kids. He had JARVIS set up the program, and went back down to his labs.
A~A~A~A
Loki, as a shapeshifter himself, was intrigued by Allie's potential. He could sense that she was still only using a fraction of her power, and he knew that all she needed was training, and time. When she was grown, she would be formidable. Now, if she shifted into any creature larger than five feet, she could only maintain the form for a few minutes.
"Allie," he said one day, as she was working on a history project.
She glanced at him. "Hm?"
"Can you take the form of inanimate objects?"
She frowned. "Dunno. What's a nana mitt? Granny gloves?"
"In-animate," he enunciated. "It is something not living, like a rock, or a sofa."
"Oh. I don't know, I never tried it before." She gave him a wide-eyed look. "Will you help me try it?"
He smirked at the use of her persuasive powers and agreed. "Very well."
The rest of the day was spent in contemplation of inanimate forms, and Loki teaching her how to isolate the feeling of her powers inside her head so that she could maintain a form that wouldn't move.
That evening, after dinner, they sat on the living room floor and Allie stared solemnly at a Lego block until suddenly, she shapeshifted into a perfect two-by-two blue Lego block.
"Well done," Loki praised, grinning. He raised his voice to capture the attention of the other Avengers who were playing poker across the room. "We have made a breakthrough," he announced.
They all put their cards down and came over, stopping to stare at the mess of Legos on the ground. "Where's Allie?" Natasha asked.
Loki smirked. "She is one of the Legos."
"What!" They all took several hasty steps back. "We didn't step on her, did we?" Steve asked cautiously.
Loki's smirk widened. "No. Can you guess which one she is?"
Even Clint's sharp eyes couldn't tell the difference. "Okay, I give up," he said. "Which one is she?"
Loki let his eyes widen. "I don't know."
They all stared at him. Bucky's eyes narrowed. "Is this a prank?" he asked. "Is Allie in the hallway or something?"
"No," Loki said, looking worried, "she is a Lego. I don't know which one she is."
"Allie," Natasha said urgently, "you need to change back right now."
There was no movement from the field of blocks.
"What if she can't change back?" Bruce suddenly whispered.
The Lego block in the middle of the floor suddenly turned into a small Golden Retriever, and pranced around the Avengers happily.
"Oh good," Clint sighed in relief, kneeling down to hug his daughter.
She turned into a human and giggled. "Did we getcha?" she asked.
Their jaws dropped. "Pranksters!" Bucky accused, starting to grin.
Allie and Loki fist-bumped. "No really though," Loki added. "This is a landmark event. Allie can now transform into inanimate objects after some concentration."
"Lots of concentration," Allie corrected, rubbing at her forehead. "But it's boring being a Lego."
The next few days everyone went around talking to pieces of furniture, wondering if it was Allie. Coulson didn't know of Allie's latest accomplishment, and came into the kitchen to find Steve talking to a coffee mug.
"Don't forget that we're going to Coney Island this weekend for the charity event," Steve was saying. "You and Darcy are going to get to have all the fun."
Coulson's eyes widened and he carefully backtracked out of the kitchen. His hero, his favorite person ever, was going crazy...
"He's not crazy," Natasha said, coming up behind him. "He's talking to Allie."
Coulson sagged in relief. "Oh, thank goodness."
Natasha laughed at him and went into the kitchen. "Turn into something else, malyshka, Uncle Coulson wants to say hi."
The coffee mug transformed back into Allie, and she hugged Coulson enthusiastically. "We haven't seen you in forever!" she said, hugging him tightly.
He smiled and hugged her. "I know, I'm sorry." He looked at Steve.
Steve nodded. "Allie, sweetheart, can you excuse us?"
Allie nodded, and left. "Mom, mom, mom, when you're done with your confidential stuff you have to come see what I made." And she zoomed out of the kitchen.
Coulson pulled out a tablet and showed the two Avengers a list of places. "These are suspected HYDRA holdouts," he said, creating a holographic map. "They seem to be regrouping, and there's one loose end that we still haven't been able to wrap up."
"The sceptre," Steve said grimly.
"Yes."
"We'll find it," Steve told him.
Coulson nodded. "I have every faith in you, Captain."
"Now that he's not talking to kitchenware, huh," Natasha added, smirking.
Coulson blushed and Steve frowned. "Huh?"
"Nothing."
A~A~A~A
Their objective was announced that evening at dinner. Everyone stopped eating and looked at Loki.
"I don't know where it is," he said peevishly. "Once I fell out of its control I could no longer sense it." He narrowed his eyes. "But if it is here and people are trying to harness its power we must find it right away."
"We?" Steve asked.
"Yes," Loki said firmly.
He and Bruce worked together on a program to trace the scepter's radiation, and to everyone's surprise Loki really was helpful.
Even still, it took them several months to work through the list of HYDRA strongholds, and the Avengers were going strong. Allie worried about them a lot, and made it her goal to help them. She would pack all of them snacks, and everyone appreciated the surprise protein bars in their pockets. And when one of them came home injured or exhausted, she would stay with them, doing school on her tablet, and feeding them healthy snacks and tea. She even made Dummy hide the coffee from Tony when he came home from a mission with a broken leg, and insisted he only drink milk and tea.
JARVIS loved her even more for her efforts.
A~A~A~A