Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers or Marvel or any of the related rights.
...
Coulson sighed when he heard the crackle of thunder echoing from a room somewhere beyond him. He knew it was a good thing, knew that it meant Thor had managed to track down his brother or the Enchantress, so at least one enemy was engaged, but he also knew that it was probably terrifying to tiny children to hear thunder that loud indoors.
And he was having a hard enough time tracking down these kids as it was.
He supposed that he shouldn't have been this surprised. After all, they were Avengers, and you don't get to be an Avenger without it affecting your entire life. But still.
At least he had one of them tucked away, and he was pretty sure, judging from how much grief Clint had managed to give Loki and the Enchantress thus far, he didn't have to worry too much about Clint in that plane of theirs.
He was about to turn the corner when he heard something. Quiet voices.
"Nat, c'mon. Steve'll kill me if I let you wonder around out here on your own."
"Nee!" came the insistent response, and Coulson poked his head around the corner to see a tiny but very insistent redhead trying to pull a dark-haired boy out from behind a door.
"No!" said the boy—who, for some reason, had a huge glowing circle in his chest. Odd. Coulson would have thought that the arc reactor would have disappeared with the de-aging process.
So it wasn't a total reversal, then. Coulson tried not to smile and wondered just what else had managed to stick with these kids. It would explain, at least a little, how they'd already managed to cause so much havoc on their own.
"Tony?" Coulson called out, putting on his best I'm-not-here-to-hurt-you voice as he stepped around the corner.
He was met with a barrage of projectiles that didn't so much hurt as mostly stick to him. He ducked back around the corner and peeled a—was that a crayon?—off of his suit.
He heard Natasha shouting at him in Russian, something about "scary" and "no" and "stop," but it was hard to tell, because it sounded like the sound was slightly muffled.
"It's okay!" he called around the corner, waiting for the crayon missiles to stop before he risked poking his head out again. "I'm a friend. One of Clint's pirate friends."
The crayon assault paused, and he heard Natasha make a small, excited sort of squeak. "Kint?"
Coulson grinned and stepped out to find that Tony had a tiny little Natasha held firmly in his arms. His hair was everywhere, and it looked like Natasha had taken a couple fistfuls, but he at least looked glad to see Coulson.
"How do we know you're really on our side?" Tony asked. Shrewd even for a six-year-old.
Coulson shrugged openly, holding both hands out to show that he wasn't a threat. "Because I'm nice like that," he said, and he kept his hands out, looking to Natasha.
Natasha, who, Coulson had long suspected, had always been good at reading people, looked him up and down. Then, slowly, quietly, she ambled over to him. He whispered a few comforting words to her in Russian, and that was what clinched it. She let out a squeal of delight and toddled over, raising her arms as a signal for him to pick her up.
"Take it you knew Nat before," Tony paused, a slow grin spreading over his face, "before she was this young?"
Coulson's smile was more like a grimace. "I worked with her and Clint for some time, even before I met you, Tony." It was weird calling him Tony, but he didn't exactly want to call a six-year-old "Mister Stark."
"Nee," Natasha repeated, pointing at Tony with pride.
Tony smirked and gave his fingers a little wiggle to wave to Natasha, who giggled with glee and looked at Coulson. "He is funny," she said in Russian.
"I've always thought so," he said right back.
Tony raised an eyebrow at them both. "Anyone want to clue me in on what's going on? Or what language it's going on in?" he asked.
It was almost as if Tony Stark hadn't de-aged at all. He was precisely the same kid, just missing a digit in his age.
Coulson shifted Natasha so that he was carrying her with his left hand and could still reach his weapon if he needed to with his right. "We can go through the big explanations later, but for now? Mostly? We're just trying to get you out of this Tower."
Tony frowned. "Kinda want to stay here," he said slowly.
Coulson stopped, frowned, and looked down at the little kid with his arms crossed in an I'm-about-to-get-my-way fashion. "Why?" he asked—because, after all, this was Tony, so he probably had a reason for staying, even if it was a stupid reason.
Tony shrugged half-heartedly, then looked around the hallway. "See," he said slowly, "I sort of think I live here." A wicked sort of grin spread over his face. "Seen my name on a couple things."
Coulson almost laughed out loud. Yep, this was typical Stark behavior, alright. He sighed, bounced Natasha again, and said, "I didn't say we were going to abandon this place. We're just going to leave it temporarily while we get you and your friends back to normal."
Tony didn't look too pleased with that answer, but it made logical sense, and Coulson could practically see logic and self-interest warring in Tony's expression. Finally, Tony sighed and said, "Yeah, okay."
…..
Clint was really very tired. He knew because when he woke up because of a loud noise, he didn't wake up all the way at first, even though the noise had been scary and definitely should have sent him immediately running. It was the sort of noise that would usually send him to Barney's room, and for a second, that's where he was headed—until he remembered where he was.
He was wrapped up inside his pirate friend's suit jacket, which was big and warm but had something inside one of the pockets that was heavy and kept poking Clint when he moved in his sleep. Curious, Clint forgot about the loud noises for just a moment as he dug into the pocket and pulled out a large wallet-looking thing.
He flipped it open and read, slowly and carefully, "Phil Coulson: Agent of SHIELD."
Clint tilted his head and studied the official-looking badge. He bit back a grin at the fact that, in the future—or the present, whatever—someone had actually decided that it was totally cool to make a government agency spell the word "shield."
But the badge also worried him. He'd never in his life been on the good side of anyone in a uniform (though, admittedly, there were only a few years of his life to go by). But Barney hadn't, either, and now that Clint thought about it, it was entirely possible that what the green lady said was right—that he was no hero. Why else would the feds be after him?
Clint felt the familiar panic rise up in his throat, but then the loud banging noises brought his attention back to reality, and he climbed up into the copilot's seat of the jet to stare out the cockpit window and see what was going on.
It was the weirdest thing he had ever seen.
There was the big, tall guy with long, blond hair that looked like he had stepped out of a magazine or something. And he was wearing a swishy red cape, so Clint figure it was probably the guy Phil had told him about.
And the guy with the cape was fighting Loki, while both of them were in turn trying to deal with the little green Bruce monster who kept trying to insert himself into the fight. It didn't seem to matter to Bruce which one of the big scary people he took down—just as long as he was fighting someone.
As Clint watched, he suddenly understood what the loud noise had been that woke him up. The guy in the red cape had a huge hammer that he was swinging around, and it made a loud bang noise every time it collided with the metal floor of the hangar bay where Clint's jet was.
He watched the three-way fight for a while, entranced by the complicated footwork and the noise and the pure chaos that was Bruce, before he realized that they were probably actually getting a little too close to his jet for comfort.
He looked around the cockpit for something that he could use and found a lever that looked like one of those "do not push" things.
So, of course, he pushed it.