A/N: I'm BACK! Well, not yet, but fear not, I'm gearing up to take the "Power of Seven" off hiatus here shortly! In the meantime, enjoy this short snippet from some point in the mysterious future...
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"I'm booooooored..."
Natasha looked up from the book she was reading and glanced at the billionaire in something like surprise. Tony was hanging upside-down over the back of the couch in his rebuilt Avengers' Tower, the blood rushing to his head. Thankfully, however, Bruce intervened, his expression puzzled.
"How are you already bored, Tony?" the sometimes-Hulk asked incredulously. "We just finished designing the kid's room an hour ago - didn't you make any modifications?"
Tony sulked for a minute.
"Pepper wouldn't let me." he grouched. "I just thought putting the Mark XVII in the corner would be good security...I even painted it blue and silver and green! I was trying to be nice!"
Bruce and Natasha looked at each other and sighed a huge sigh of exasperation. Tony meant well, he really did, but he was honestly inviting disaster. The Avengers' reunion weekend they were planning was supposed to be fun, not freezing.
"Toushiro-kun would have killed you if he'd even thought for a millisecond that you were trying to watch over him, Tony." Natasha interjected, rolling her eyes. She kept her attention focused on the book though, and as such missed Tony's pouting expression - all the better, because Stark's childlike sulking often annoyed her.
"I knoooow..." the billionaire groaned. "Ugh, he's so prickly."
Pepper came walking in with a large bowl of ranch chip dip and a bowl of ruffled potato chips, having caught the entire conversation from the hallway.
"For goodness sake, he's a little boy, you two." the copper-haired woman said firmly, placing the bowl of chips down on the table. "And you talk about him like he's worse than Natasha with a hangover."
Bruce nodded, his expression resigned.
"...that's Toushiro in a nutshell." he said with a sigh. "Luckily for us, Steve, Natasha, and Lieutenant Commander Matsumoto are all going to be here, and they know how to defuse him pretty well."
Pepper threw a pillow at her boyfriend's lab partner and friend, her expression scolding, and leaned casually on the back of the couch.
"Oh, not you too!" she said desperately. "He can't possibly have a temper that terrible."
Thor walked in, dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans, and sat heavily down on the couch.
"Whom are we talking about this day, my friends?" he asked, cautiously nibbling on a chip. Natasha rolled her eyes.
"Thor. If you could avoid only one of two people, who would you chose to avoid? Me with a hangover, or an irate Toushiro Hitsugaya?" she asked bluntly. Thor choked.
"I would rather face a herd of angry bilgesnipe and your hungover self rather than face the wrath of our young shinigami friend, though neither option is very appealing." he said, paling sharply. "Why do you ask?"
Natasha looked pointedly at Pepper, who was gaping openly.
"Pepper didn't believe Tony, Bruce, and I when we tried to warn her not to set Toushiro-kun off." she said, smirking at the stunned woman. Then the assassin's expression turned serious. "Pepper, in all seriousness, there are two things that you should absolutely never do. Okay?"
Pepper nodded faintly, and Natasha held up one finger.
"Number one. Do not make ANY reference to his apparent age, his height or the way he still looks like a twelve-year-old unless his appearance directly relates to a mission in apositive manner."
The CEO of Stark Industries nodded again, and Natasha put up her second finger.
"And Number two. Do NOT, for any reason, treat him like a child." Natasha said sternly. "He sees parenting as protecting, and it seriously rubs him the wrong way. It took ages for him to trust Steve and I enough for him to allow us to start parenting him, even just a little bit. Steve is currently the ONLY person on the planet allowed to call him 'kiddo,' 'son' or any other diminutive nickname. Most of the Avengers will get away with calling him Toushiro, but in Japan everyone uses surnames unless they're incredibly close. Since you and Tony are all kissy-face with each other, you could probably get away with calling him Toushiro as well. But if he tells you to use his surname do it. There aren't many people who dare to defy him on that, and of those few, most can match him power-wise. You don't come anywhere close to ranking on that list."
Pepper stared, but nodded, not understanding the Russian woman's solemnity but respecting it nonetheless. Natasha's sardonic nature made her moments of sternness all the more grim, and even Pepper, who was only loosely connected with SHIELD, knew better than to ignore the spy when she was serious. But then Bruce suddenly perked up, a grin on his face.
"Steve, Lieutenant Commander Matsumoto, and Toushiro have arrived." he announced with a fond sense of cheer in his voice, the intense focus of sensing reiatsu plainly evident on his face. "From the feel of things, Toushiro's asleep."
Natasha nodded absently, turning another page of her book.
"Makes sense." she said distractedly, though her alertness did not wane in the face of her concentration on her book. "It's a pretty long car ride to get here from Washington D.C. Can you tell if Clint hitched a ride? He said he might try to mooch off Steve's gas mileage."
Bruce's brows furrowed together, his stress-weathered face wrinkling in an attempt to locate the archer's much-weaker reiatsu. He searched in vain for a few minutes then sighed, giving up.
"Sorry, Natasha. I don't have enough practice with it yet." he apologized. The Russian spy flipped a hand nonchalantly.
"It's fine, Bruce." she said with a rare smile. "We'll just wait until they get up here. Besides, I don't think Toushiro would go to sleep around Clint voluntarily - they're not quite close enough."
Thor looked up from the now half-empty bowl of chips and sighed.
"Knowing young Toushiro, he may not be voluntarily asleep." the Asgardian brought up pointedly. "You know as well as I that he does not value sleep if he has work to do. He may have drifted off by mistake."
Pepper's brows drew together in concern as Natasha conceded the point, blinking in rapid shock.
"What on earth?" she exclaimed. "Is this boy really that overserious? I can't imagine a child giving up sleep to work of their own free will!"
Bruce nodded, casually moving the bowl away from Thor before the broad-shoulder alien ate all of the ruffled chips. He popped a small one into his mouth, savoring the ranch dip.
"Unfortunately." the scientist said, his voice somewhat melancholy. "I won't deny that he's exceptional at his job, but the poor kid doesn't take care of himself nearly well enough. And it doesn't help that Lieutenant Commander Matsumoto is...somewhat flighty when it comes to paperwork."
"Understatement." Natasha muttered under her breath, remembering the last time she'd been over at Steve's house. Steve had been pitching a fit about Toushiro's sleeping and eating patterns when the boy had walked into the kitchen in a very zombie-like manner and collapsed on the tile floor. The pair of pseudo-parents had panicked briefly, then put the boy to bed. He'd woken up a day later with a nasty cold and fever, at which time Natasha had discovered that the young man had gone nearly four full days without sleep. Apparently Matsumoto had given him her stack of backed-up paperwork.
Needless to say, Natasha and Steve had promptly stormed into Soul Society and yelled themselves hoarse at an extremely frightened Matsumoto before returning all of the paperwork to the busty lieutenant and practically terrorizing her into completing it. Her captain's paperwork included. Matsumoto had acquiesced with a meek squeal of terror, and the two Avengers had returned to the Living World to care for the sick shinigami.
Toushiro hadn't particularly enjoyed being stuck in bed, but that was beside the point.
The elevator dinged suddenly, indicating that someone had arrived, and immediately Natasha and Pepper stood up and quickly slipped out of the room. They went down the hallway for a short while, then spilled out into the main room which the elevator connected to. The silver doors were already open, and a tall blonde woman in a fluttery blue sundress had stepped onto the slate floor, followed closely by a familiarly roguish face, both carrying multiple suitcases. Natasha grinned at the sight of her smirking best friend, chuckling wickedly as the archer cracked his knuckles. They'd planned an intense series of pranks on Tony over the course of the weekend, and were planning on blaming every single one on Bruce and Steve.
But then a broad-shouldered man with neat blond hair carefully tiptoed out of the elevator, carrying a small figure gently in his strong arms. Pepper's soft 'aw' echoed the warmth swelling in Natasha's chest.
"Hey Steve." she said softly, glancing at the child sleeping in her boyfriend's secure grasp. "How are you doing?"
The supersoldier's lips quirked into that endearingly amused smile that Natasha knew so well.
"I'm fine, thanks." he said calmly. Then he nodded down at the boy in his grasp, his glance switching from Natasha to Pepper and back again. "Is there somewhere I could put him down? He fell asleep on the way here."
Pepper quickly came forward.
"Oh, yes." she said with a smile. "Tony and Bruce just fixed up a room for him. If you go down the hallway and up the glass stairs, it's at the left end of the catwalk."
Steve smiled gratefully and trotted off, his white-haired cargo shifting slightly in his sleep. Natasha took Toushiro's luggage from Matsumoto and then followed Steve, her footsteps light, and together they wound their way to Toushiro's room. She opened the white door for Steve to step through, then slipped into the room just behind him and looked around.
The spacious room had been painted a light, soothing green, and on one wall an interesting tesselated pattern had been stenciled in white paint. The desk, chair, bedside table, and empty bookcase were all made of glossy black metal, and the bed, made from the same dark steel, was a four-poster with white sheets, white curtains and a light green bedspread. The portable device that Seireitei and Asgard had made to contain the power of the Infinity Stones in case of an emergency stood in the far corner of the room.
Steve gently set his younger brother down on the bed, pulling the boy's black Converse off his feet and tucking the sleeping child up to his chin in blankets. Then, as he was setting the young man's shoes in the closet, Natasha slid the suitcase across the floor to Steve and gently laid a kiss on the sleeping shinigami's pale forehead. Toushiro stirred briefly, his lips parting, then rolled on his side, curling into the fetal position.
"...Mmmf..." the boy groaned lightly, his nose pressed into his pillow, one small hand coming up to curl sweetly on the pillow by his face. Steve sighed from behind Natasha.
"Toushiro was up pretty late last night, and we had to wake up at six this morning to leave on time." the supersoldier whispered, moving towards the door. "Come on, we should let him sleep."
Natasha cast one last look at the slumbering child then followed Steve out, her gaze soft.
"God, I wish he was mine." Natasha said somewhat wistfully, watching as her boyfriend shut the door behind them. Steve raised an eyebrow at her, but he knew exactly what she meant. Natasha had started wanting kids after she'd met Toushiro - but since that was impossible, she turned all of her still-developing mothering instinct on the shinigami in question.
"Tasha, he is yours." Steve told her gently. "He lets you dote on him in the way that nobody else does. And you know the affection is returned. I mean, who's the one who can coax him to bed when even watermelon doesn't work? You."
Somewhat appeased, Natasha sighed, smiling faintly.
"I know...It's just hard, having to share him with a fossil like you." she said, her tone light. Steve frowned and bit his lip, trying to determine whether or not to spill. But then, he'd never been good at keeping secrets.
"Tasha...I know I shouldn't have done this without your permission..." he started, watching as the assassin's eyes darkened at the start of his sentence. He winced. "But...I talked to Bruce. I didn't mention your name - Samantha agreed to let me use her as a excuse name should it be needed - but he's agreed to try to look up ways to reverse the sterilization process. I knew you would never ask about it yourself, so..."
For a moment there was silence, and then Natasha slapped Steve across the face hard enough to bruise. But before he could gather himself enough to respond, she leaned in and kissed him hard on the mouth. Steve went scarlet in the face, but made no move to resist. They broke apart gasping.
"I can't even put into words how furious and grateful I am." she breathed. She slapped Steve again. "But I swear to god, if you ever do something like that again without my permission, you will wake up minus a few body parts. Am I clear?"
Steve gulped, clutching his stinging cheek.
"Crystal." he squeaked.
Natasha, still smoldering, glared at Steve from across the room. Truth be told, she wasn't particularly upset at what he'd done, and she appreciated that Samantha had agreed to be a stand-in at first. But the sheer idea of this being kept a secret? That infuriated her. Who did her boyfriend think he was anyway?
"So. Still bitter?"
Natasha looked up to see Bruce standing over her, faint concern in his eyes. Clint was just behind him, the usual smirk replaced with something like compassion. The Black Widow rolled her eyes.
"What are you talking about?" she asked, her voice coming out a little more harshly than she intended. Bruce sighed.
"Look, you know Tony's good at hacking SHIELD." the scientist said carefully. "I managed to use his link to sneak into some of the files. I wanted to see if there was any substance that could counter the super-serum in you and Steve...and I saw. Steve didn't realize I knew about it before he asked me to look into reversing that process. With any luck, he's still in the dark."
Natasha glared.
"You looked through my files?" she demanded, eyes narrowing in anger. Bruce nodded calmly.
"Yes." he said placidly. "As the field medic of the Avengers when I'm not fighting, it's my duty to know all of your specific needs. But that's beside the point. He was asking because he knows you'd never ask for it yourself even though it's something you desperately want."
Natasha sighed, her expression suddenly solemn.
"I know..." she groaned. "It's just...I don't know, I just wished he'd asked me about it first, that's all."
"You'd have shot him down, 'Tasha." Clint interjected, plopping down on the couch next to his long-time friend. "Don't try to deny it - you know you would have. Steve might be a little behind the times, but he's not stupid. He protected your privacy as best as he could and tried to solve a problem that's been killing you inside. Sure, you can be pissed at him, but try your best to forgive him, won't you?"
The assassin looked hard at the archer, her blue glare steely, and Clint sighed exasperatedly.
"Come on, 'Tasha." he groaned. "You know I'm right."
"For the first time in your life." Natasha retorted with a sigh. "I guess I just need some time to cool off and plot retribution."
Suddenly Clint's face split in a wicked grin.
"Should we pull out the master plan?" he asked, referring to their pranking plot. Natasha considered, then nodded with a devious grin.
"I think so."
Bruce slowly backed away. The less he knew, the better
Toushiro woke up to the sight of calming green and warm, fluffy pillows nestled around him like solemn white guardians of the dreamworld he'd just come from. Slowly, sleep heavy on his limbs and eyelids, he sat up and stretched. The five small bead-like protuberances of the Infinity Stones set in his chest flexed with his skin, moving seamlessly with the shifting of his muscles. Tessa, Animen, and Fortens mumbled sleepy greetings in his head, the buzzing hum of their power in his bones comforting. He allowed a gentle wash of greeting to fill his mindspace, not enough to wake Vera and Aevus, both of whom still slept in a passive red and green glow. Then the Purple, Blue, and Yellow Stones went back to sleep, allowing their consciousnesses to withdraw from their host's mind.
With a huff, the boy climbed out of the mess of pillows and threw the blankets back to slide out of bed. He was still wearing the t-shirt and jeans from when he'd gotten in the car with Steve this morning, he noticed absently, though not the sneakers. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Toushiro pushed open the door to the room he'd found himself in and cocked his head to the side as he heard raised voices echoing from somewhere in the large room he found himself hovering in, suspended by an edgy black marble and glass catwalk about ten feet above the floor.
Curious, he peered down, then tried his hardest not to snicker in schadenfreude as he took in the sight below him. A frantic Tony was staring wide-eyed at the frilly undergarments strewn across his living room, as were a stunned Thor and red-faced Steve and Bruce. Matsumoto, however, had advanced on the billionaire, her cheeks scarlet with embarrassment, her blue eyes wild in fury.
"You!" She howled. "You did this!"
Tony held up his hands, obviously distracted by the lacy little things tossed everywhere, and backed away quickly.
"No, I didn't, I swear. Pepper would murder me if I pulled a stunt like this. She's scarier than the Hulk when she's angry!" he tried, placatingly giving his best puppy eyes to the infuriated woman. Matsumoto stopped when her face was an inch from her prey's, reiatsu gleaming off her pores. Tony squeaked like a little girl.
"Then who did?" she hissed.
Toushiro smirked wickedly and used that exact moment to allow his left eye and tattoo to gleam gold, carefully coaxing the nearest pair of Matsumoto's entirely inappropriate underwear to creep unseen into the air. Then with a deft flick of his fingers, he used his telekinetic power to pull the lacy monstrosity over the man's head. Matsumoto instantly lost it and started chasing a blinded, squalling Tony around the room.
Then he stiffened as he felt a hand tap lightly onto his shoulder from behind. Natasha Romanoff hung casually from the opening of a nearby air vent, pure pride in her eyes.
"I saw that, you sneak." she teased, smiling. Toushiro blushed a bit and turned his face away in clear dismissal. But then the spy fully left the vent and wrapped an arm around the white-haired boy's thin shoulders. Her grin was vicious.
"I just want you to know," she informed him slyly, "that your big sister is very, very proud of you."
Toushiro stared at her for a long minute, then started to snicker under his breath, accepting the statement with a sort of childish embarrassment. He leaned into her touch, still looking huffy about the whole thing, and then Natasha felt all of her longing for her own child quelled in one simple moment. Her eyes softened a bit.
"Love you, Snowman." she told him. His emerald stare widened, slid to her face, and stayed locked in an expression of pure shock for the next several he burst into laughter. In an instant, everyone in the room was staring at them instead of the whimpering Tony.
"...that's the best you could come up with? Snowman, really? That's so unoriginal! I thought spies were supposed to be creative!" he chortled. Natasha growled, then lunged for the boy as he wriggled from her grip, slippery as a fish.
"When I get my hands on you, you're going to wish you'd never been born, Toushiro Hitsugaya!"
Needless to say, when Pepper Potts returned from her yoga class to an Avengers Tower covered in underwear, a cowering Tony hiding under a table from a bloodthirsty Matsumoto, and an irate Natasha Romanoff fruitlessly chasing after a teenager - who somehow managed to evade her with ease - she just let out a sigh.
How did the Avengers' reunions always manage to end up like this?
Review, please! And remember, for this story - Submissions Welcome!