Another year and seven months passed. Tony tried really hard not to think about the fact that's he's given over two years of his life to directionless misery. On the depressingly bright side, he and Steve were pretty much inseparable again, he even got the luxury of staying the night at their place when he wanted to. For a while he got the guest bedroom but recently he's been happily taking the couch when he stayed over. The guest room in Steve and Bucky's apartment now belonged to someone else. Him and the rest of the Avengers found out after an emergency call was issued to assemble at the tower. So when they found Bucky in the main TV room on one of the common floors, no uniform, no gear, not even wearing shoes- needless to say they were confused and annoyed. The elevator pinged and Steve stepped out in full Captain America uniform, shield and all looking ready to command his team. The blonde took a moment to look and everyone (also in uniform) and as they all waited for someone to say something.

"What's the emergency?" The Captain finally asked.

"We didn't call it, you did Cap." Tony pointed out.

Then everybody looked at Bucky who was standing near the couch with his hands up defensively.

"I didn't mean to call the whole team, I thought I was only signaling to Steve's comm."

"Well?" Steve asked as if were expecting a bomb to go off.

"I got the call..." Bucky breathed out slowly.

Natasha didn't bat an eyelash but everyone else was looking at each other to make sure they weren't the only one who was completely lost.

"...and?" Steve whispered.

"We're having a baby."

The second the sentence ended the super soldier was tackling his husband with a bear-hug so intense it lifted Bucky off the ground and put Thor to shame.

"Well that explains the extra weight,Barnes. But I have so many questions." Tony spoke up.

"We got a surrogate you jackass." Buck's tone was dry but it so obviously overjoyed.

"Congratulations my friends! We must celebrate this most blessed occasion!" Thor boomed.

So from the very first minute, the impending little princess was a pretty huge deal.

A month after the announcement Natasha explained the details to him over lunch. She said that Bucky had a younger sister before he went under and Red Room had tracked her down. They extracted a fair amount of her DNA and her reproductive cells should the Winter Soldier turn on them and needed to be shut down permanently. Tony knew how hard it was for Natasha to talk about the Red Room, so he let himself be proud that she'd discuss it with him at all. She said she found the samples during a recent op for Fury at a Red Room base in Novosibirsk- safe to say that base no longer existed after Natasha was finished. Once she was back state-side she told Bucky about the samples as soon as he answered the phone. SHEILD, Dr. Banner, Dr. Pym and Reed Richards all ran independent tests along with comparative tests to samples from Bucky and Natasha. All results read the same- the samples were clean, Red Room hadn't done anything to them. Nat told him that after several long conversations Bucky and Steve decided that if they were ever going to have a chance, this was it. The surrogate herself was a SHEILD agent who'd been voluntarily pulled from active duty for the mission of carrying the most important child on Earth. Or at least that's how Tony already felt about the unborn baby girl.

In fact her nursery had been fully designed, renovated and furnished by the genius inventor himself. The parents-to-be realized early on that nothing in the universe was going to stop Tony from spoiling Captain America's daughter absolutely rotten, much to their chagrin. Ty wasn't happy about Tony "throwing money away on some brat that wasn't even theirs" but fuck it, there wasn't much left for his boyfriend to beat out of him.

That brings us to now, everyone on the team cautiously crowded around Steve and Bucky in a Brooklyn hospital waiting room to meet the newest member of their mismatched, world saving family.

Sylvia Grace Rogers-Barnes

Tony, for one was infinitely glad that no one asked who she looked liked or anything like that because she was ten minutes old. She looked like a prune.

But putting the overall "newborn" appearance aside, she was beautiful. She looked so small in Steve's arms, gripping Bucky's index finger with her tiny hand, it left an uncomfortable longing sensation in his stomach. And God he thought they looked happy on their wedding day, that was nothing compared to way they were beaming right now. It was almost too much to look at directly...like the sun.

"Hey, she's not incessantly screeching. I like this kid already." Clint grinned, pausing momentarily from the silly faces he was making at her even though she was too young to see them clearly at all.

That night in bed Tony found himself smiling the tiniest bit at the idea having someone in his life who didn't have to know what a broken mess he was. A clean slate. In a way.