Pip's first day of school started like many others. After light training and chatting at breakfast she and Max followed Tony and Bruce up to the lab. This time however instead of exciting experiments and the inevitable explosions Bruce asked her to name the planets.
"Earth, Asgard, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury... Uranus and Pluto!" She recited.
"Pluto's not a planet anymore, Sweetie." Bruce told her.
"But Uncle Steve says it's a planet!" Max defended.
"It was a planet." He explained. "But it's too small so it's not a planet anymore." Bruce showed them a hologram of the solar system, pointing out each planet.
"But where's Asgard?" Philippa wanted to know.
Bruce hesitated, not wanting to make the lesson any more advanced. "Asgard is in a different solar system. Most people don't know about it." He pulled up the hologram Tony had made with Thor's help.
"So it's a secret." Pip asked.
"Yes. You can't tell people Thor is your Uncle." The whole world knew about Max and Emily, what with Tony being a celebrity billionaire who loved to show off but so far Clint and Natasha weren't recognised too often by the general public and they wanted the same anonymity.
"So Uncle Thor is a secret too?" Max wanted to know.
"Well, not for you but he's a secret for Pip." Bruce realised that teaching was more difficult than he had originally thought. Kids were just far too good at changing the subject. Deciding that learning which planets were orbiting the Sun as enough for one lesson. Bruce sent Philippa across the lab to Tony before she asked any questions he couldn't answer.
Tony, determined to prove his responsibility, moved all the dangerous items out of arm's reach and then sat Pip down at his worktop and had her recite her numbers up to twenty. This took quite some time because though Pip obviously knew her numbers she kept switching from English to Russian. After a fourth attempt where Philippa only corrected herself twice, Tony decided that was a success.
Moving on Tony asked. "What's one plus one?"
"Two." Pip sounded bored. She reached for the solder and flicked it on absentmindedly.
"Two plus one."
"Three." She put the tips of her curly brown hair in the flame. Tony was losing focus himself and didn't notice. After going up to 'nine plus one' Tony started on the 'plus two's'. Eventually Philippa stopped him. "This is easy." She complained, looking up from the exploding arrowhead she was playing with. "Dad makes me do numbers when we shoot. We do taking away too." That explained her competence. The little archer had been shooting from the age of three, at least once a day. It was no surprize she could add and subtract so quickly.
"Two plus three?" Stark tested just to be sure.
After a small pause she answered. "Five." Crushing her burnt hair with the end of a pen.
It looked like Tony's work was already done for him. Before giving up he asked. "Have you done dividing yet?"
"No. What's that?"
Tony sighed in relief. He poured some nuts onto the table and separated ten in front of Pip. "It's splitting a number into equal groups. So ten divided by two is ten split into two equal groups. Can you do that, Kermit? Put the nuts into two groups, one for me and one for you." She did and looked up expectantly.
"How many do you have?" He prompted.
"Five." She stated.
"That's your answer." He smiled at her amazed face. Pip sat happily dividing things in the lab until they were called for lunch.
With Max and Pip explaining to Thor that he was a secret, much to his confusion, the other adults gathered to find out how Pip's first lessons had gone.
"Teaching science- no problem, I'm in my element." Bruce spread his hands to emphasise his point. "Explaining that one child is a celebrity and the other is effectively nonexistent... I'm out of my league." It was the elephant in the room they had all been avoiding. How do you tell two children that one can flaunt their life to the public but the other must lie, for their entire life, never letting anyone know who they really are? The children, with such a clear view on right and wrong would surely say the one thing that would punch adults in the gut- But that's not fair. And it wasn't. Life wasn't fair but they were far too young to learn that not everyone gets the same luxuries.
"We'll explain it tonight." Pepper promised though she had no idea how to even start the conversation.
"We will?" Tony squeaked, perfectly happy to run from the problem for the rest of his life.
"No." Natasha told them. "Don't tell Max yet, he's too young to remember, let alone understand. Clint and I will talk to Philippa though. She knows not to tell strangers who she is and who we are. It'll be easier."
Tony visibly relaxed and almost disappeared into his chair. "Red, what language do you think in?" He asked changing the subject.
"What?" Natasha mumbled through her mouthful of food.
"You're Russian but we're speaking English. Do you think in Russian and translate or think in English?" Tony explained his puzzlement.
"Was Russian." She emphasised her cut ties. "And I think in English, I think?" She said hesitantly, unsure of where the conversation was going.
"What about numbers?" He pestered. "What's 62-36?"
"Uh... 26? I did that in pictures not languages. Why?"
"Pip was getting English and Russian numbers mixed up."
"I'm not surprised." Clint said. "Tasha and I are always switching languages when we talk on our floor so we won't get caught out on missions. She'll have picked it up from us." He was dressed in S.H.I.E.L.D gear, having the joy of teaching new recruits that afternoon. Natasha hadn't taught for years since Clint discovered it gave her nightmares of the Red Room's brutal training.
"What language do think PIp thinks in?" Bruce asked.
"Frog." Steve joked. Pip loved to speak 'Frog' and would answer almost any question with "Ribbit". She was very good at varying her tone so most of the time she was understood better than if she was speaking Russian.
"Probably." Pepper rocked Emily as she paced back and forth in front of the windows.
"Pip," Clint called behind him. "What language do you think in?"
They held their breath as she swallowed the huge bite of sandwich before speaking. "Ribbit."
A.N. I'm not going to go through the rest of the school subjects because I think that would be boring. The next one I'm planning is group weekend trip but it's really long so far so I might split it in half. In which case the next upload will be a filler chapter. I go on holiday again tomorrow for two weeks but I will have my laptop and I should find wi-fi so you shouldn't have to wait too long. Feel free to tell me if my standards are dropping and I'll work on it.