Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel or the Avengers or any of the related rights.
...
"'Watch out for Nat,' they said. 'Everything will be fine,' they said. I hate them both," Tony muttered as he tried and failed to get Natasha to help him hide in a nearby room. She didn't seem to want to hide and kept trying to toddle back to the door. Probably looking for her stupid boyfriend.
Steve had asked Tony to hide with Nat until Steve could figure out which of the gazillions of doors in this place was actually an exit. And Tony hadn't minded, because it meant he wasn't the one who had to take on the really tall scary people who both liked to wear green and were probably using tech that Clint thought was magic because Clint's dad wasn't a super genius like Tony's dad was, so Clint didn't know about awesome things.
Tony knew about awesome things. He did, and he was smart, but mostly he got in the way—at least, according to Dad.
"Kint?" Nat asked, her eyes big and wide.
Tony sighed. "He's gone, remember? I already told you that."
Nat babbled some more words at him, looking angry and frustrated.
"I don't speak whatever it is you're speaking," Tony said, waving his hand at her to try to make her go away. It wasn't Canadian, because Tony had been there once with his dad, and they mostly just spoke with really weird accents. One time he heard something that sounded like a different language, but he wasn't really sure. And it wasn't Italian or Spanish, because Tony knew both of those languages. Or at least, enough to get by. He was almost six, after all, and he'd had a dozen different nannies. He probably spoke Spanish better than English, really.
Nat poked him in the stomach with one of the crayons she had stuffed in her fist. "Kint," she demanded.
Tony shook his head, exasperated, then pointed at himself. "Not Clint. Tony." He jabbed his finger at her. "Nat," he said. Then, pointing at himself again, "Tony."
"Nee," she repeated.
Tony sighed. "Yeah, sure. Nee. Whatever."
She looked down at the handful of crayons in her hand and, slowly, unclenched her fist to offer him his choice.
They were sticky and covered in the remains of cookies and milk, but Tony knew a peace offering when he saw one. He figured he probably shouldn't take the purple one (that was for "Kint"), so he grabbed a bright orange one.
Nat smiled at him.
"Oh, yeah, we're getting on like a house on fire," he said tiredly as he tried to bustle her into the closet.
She followed, but only after he turned on the light switch.
"We're so gonna get found, and it's gonna be your fault," Tony said to Nat, but she just beamed at him and stuck one of the crayons in her mouth.
…
Clint watched and tried not to laugh too loudly when Loki got tackled to the ground by the tiny Bruce monster. He was, after all, still in the clutches of one of the bad guys.
Loki went down, and the commotion was apparently enough to make the Enchantress notice, because she bustled inside, looking slightly annoyed that anyone would dare interrupt . . . whatever it was she was doing. But when she saw the scene before her, it was like sparks flew from her eyes.
Literally. Sparks. Clint saw them.
"Find the others," Loki hissed at her as he wrestled with the tiny Hulk who had attached himself to Loki's arm.
The Enchantress nodded grimly and called into the next room, "Executioner! I need you!" before she disappeared again.
And then the weirdest thing happened. The bad guy who was holding on to Clint ripped off his helmet; Clint could see it clatter to the floor.
Clint couldn't get a good look at the guy because he was still being held with his face pointed toward the floor. But he saw the helmet guy reach for some kind of weird communications thingy. "They're loose in the building. Try and get to them before the Enchantress or your brother get there."
A voice on the other end said, "At last, there is good news," before the helmet guy shoved it back in his pocket.
Loki seemed to recognize the guy in the helmet. He had turned to see what was going on when he heard the communicator thingy go off, and he had looked . . . was there a stronger word than surprised? His jaw kind of dropped like he forgot he was supposed to be better than everyone else.
"You were dead," Loki said as he recovered his senses, having thrown the tiny Bruce monster halfway across the room. (Bruce got back up, shook his head, and was charging again, but Loki kept throwing spells at him that seemed to slow him down.)
"Yes, I was," the guy said. His voice had lost all its gruffness, and it sounded actually surprisingly pleasant, like he and Loki were just having a normal conversation on a normal day and were not standing in the middle of all sorts of chaos. "I've got to say—it wasn't pleasant."
Loki looked like he wasn't sure what expression his face was supposed to make, but luckily, the tiny Bruce monster got to him about then, so he didn't have to decide. He just went sprawling, and the helmet guy took that opportunity to tuck Clint in tighter and take off running.
Clint tried to kick or bite or something, but he couldn't reach, so instead, he defaulted to screaming at the top of his lungs: "STEVE! STEVE, HELP!"
The helmet guy skidded to a stop around the corner pretty close to where his octopus plane was parked and finally pulled Clint out of the hold he had him in so that Clint could see his face. "Barton . . . Clint, do you know where the others are?"
Clint was getting ready to punch or kick or something, but the helmet guy's tone stopped him. It was the way he said Clint's name. So Clint paused and looked up at the guy's face, and he felt all the tired and the scared and the awful drain out of him.
"You're one of our pirate friends!" Clint said with a grin.
The helmet guy looked like he hadn't meant to smile but sort of did anyway, and then he smiled for real. "My name's Phil," he said. "I'm here to help you, Clint."
"That's a relief," Clint said, and he felt every bit of it. He felt like his legs were going to fall out from under him, like now that he knew he wasn't fighting all by himself, his body was just ready to be done. "Me and Steve were kind of hoping we could get some backup."
"And where is Steve now, Clint?" Phil asked.
Clint frowned, jutting out his bottom lip. "I don't know," he said. "He said he was gonna try to find a door or something that we could all escape through. This Tower is really tall, so he was gonna try to find whatever the ground floor is."
Phil sighed, but he was still smiling. "That sounds like Steve."
Clint nodded. "He's a superhero, you know."
For some reason, Phil laughed at that. "I did now, actually. And did you know you're one, too?"
"Yeah, I'm Nat's sidekick," Clint nodded vigorously.
This made Phil laugh even harder. When he was finished laughing, he said, "Yep, you sure are." He paused, reaching down to scoop Clint up so that Clint could ride on his shoulders. "Do you know where she is, then? Or Tony?"
"They're supposed to be hiding," Clint said as he wrapped his arms around Clint's head and tried not to accidentally cover his eyes or something. "Tony was in charge of Nat."
"Who thought that was a good idea?"
"I was busy being the distraction, and Steve was busy being a superhero," Clint said, because it was clearly obvious, wasn't it.
Phil just laughed again as he turned the corner and approached the octopus plane.
"Are we escaping?" Clint asked as a thrill of danger and excitement (and also exhaustion) rushed through him.
"Mm-hmm," Phil said as he gently helped Clint down so that Clint could sit in the front seat. There were a whole bunch of tied-up bad guys in the back, and Clint figured maybe Phil had taken over the bad guys' plane to come get them. "You wait right here, and if you see anybody besides me or a big blonde guy with a red cape, hide, okay?"
"A red cape?" Clint repeated, wrinkling his nose.
Phil sighed. "He's one of the good guys. He's on your team, actually, but he wasn't hit with the de-aging." He opened up a compartment nearby, which revealed a suit that looked like it had been hastily stuffed inside. Phil took the jacket of the suit and laid it out over Clint. "Stay here, okay?"
Clint nodded. He was too tired to argue, anyway.
...
A/N: Tiny!Tony at last! I didn't realize how fun he was to write until I started writing him. He's adorable.