So recently I was contacted by a user some of you may know called Sword Brethren Caedus who asked me about writing a story featuring my OCs. I read the first chapter and was drawn in straight away; I can't wait to read more and see where it goes, but it features two of their own interesting OCs aswell as the Avengers kids I've been writing about for the past 90+ chapters, so if you're interested the fic is called 'Related by Proxy' and I'm sure they'd appreciate a read
And in this chapter Evelyn is 4, Elijah & Henry are 11 months and Jacob is 4 months
Darcy watched the two blonde haired boys crawl around the floor, build towers of blocks and giggle when they knocked it down
"Hey Pepper, which twin is which?" she asked when the other women entered the floor and placed Jacob in his spare crib
The red head considered the question for a moment, watching the two boys closely. They seemed to notice they were being observed and stared back at her; smiling their adorable cheeky smiles that were perfectly identical in every way
"That one's Elijah" she said finally, pointing to the little boy closest to Darcy who squealed and crawled off quickly
"How do you know?" she asked, going to help Pepper with unpacking the groceries she'd brought back from the store
"Because Henry's erm... Elijah is... I just can" she answered, leaving Darcy less than satisfied with the answer
"I have no idea how anyone tells them apart"
"You'll get it eventually" Pepper told her sympathetically, it had taken her almost a year to tell them apart
"Hey Henry" she greeted cheerily as the baby toddled up to her and gripped her leg tightly before he fell. She scooped him up into her arms and tickled him
Darcy picked Elijah up and carefully took in his appearance, before leaning over and looking closely at Henry; but she couldn't see it. There were no differences between the two of them at all
"But what if you're wrong?"
"What do you mean?"
"What if you spend all day calling them by the wrong name, and then Clint and Natasha come home and call them the right name... Then next week Tony mixes them up, then the day after that Steve gets it wrong and then me... They might spend their whole childhoods confused as to who belong to which name"
"Darcy calm down, I'm right, I'm sure"
"How sure?"
Pepper looked at the two boys and felt Darcy's doubt creeping in
"Hey Evie!" she shouted to the other room where the four year old was playing with a jigsaw. She ran round the corner with blond curls bouncing and her skirt swaying, a large smile plastered all over her face
"Evelyn, sweetie can you help me and Darcy out?"
She nodded enthusiastically, causing her curls to bounce even more
Pepper bend down so she was at eye level with her niece, Henry (or possibly Elijah) was perched on her hip and smiled happily at his sister
"Is this Henry or Elijah?" she asked
Evie rolled her eyes "Is that it?" she asked, sounding disappointed
Pepper and Darcy both nodded, to which the four year old replied with "One minute", holding her finger up and running off
She returned a moment later with two stickers in her hand. On one she'd scrawled 'Elijah' in purple marker, and the other said 'Henry' in green. She stuck the labels on the respective twins and smiled proudly at her aunts, who each thanked her before she ran off to return to her jigsaw
Pepper looked at the stickers and sighed; "I was sure this was Henry"
"Well according to Eve that's Elijah"
They each put the boys down and watched as they crawled off to play. Darcy got Jacob out of his crib when the twins started trying to climb in with him and set him down in his chair so he could get a better view of what the boys were doing. Henry passed Jacob a block who quickly started trying to eat it; luckily it was far too big for his mouth and it just ended up covered in drool
When Pepper returned from getting Evie a drink, she noticed the twins no longer had the stickers on their shirts
"Erm Darce, which one is which?"
"What do you mean? Just look at the- Oh"
She'd noticed the two name badges were now both worn by Jacob, who was smiling happily at his cousins
"We need Evie again" Darcy said, already sounding defeated
"No, come on. We can figure this out without the help of a four year old, besides I think she went downstairs with Steve"
"Do you reckon they'll respond to their names?" Darcy asked
"Elijah?" Pepper called hopefully, watching as both twins looked in her direction and waved. She waved back and asked Darcy "Any other bright ideas?"
"Try again, call Henry" she told her once the boys had gone back to building their towers. She tried, and once again both boys looked up
"Wait, how did Clint used to tell them apart when Nat went away?"
"You mean when they were newborns?"
"Yeah!"
"He used to weigh them, Henry was bigger when he was born"
"Can't we do that?"
"They're almost one, I don't know whether he still weighs more! or not"
At that moment Clint walked in and both women breathed a sigh of relief
"Clint! Which one of your sons is Elijah, and which is Henry"
He stopped and thought for a moment before sighing "You changed their clothes didn't you?"
"How did you know?" Darcy asked confused
"This morning Elijah was wearing red and Henry was in blue"
"They got dirty" Darcy replied, failing to tell the others that it was probably her fault for giving the toddlers chocolate. It ended up everywhere and she'd needed to give them a bath to get it out of their hair
"Well then you'll have to ask Tasha"
"You don't even know the difference?" Pepper asked, shocked
"Don't have a clue" he admitted, lifting the boys into his arms and looking puzzled at the name tags bearing his sons names stuck to Jacob; one on his cheek and the other was on his arm
Clint peeled them off his nephew and took a guess, sticking them onto his son's with a half hearted shrug
"That would have been my guess" Pepper agreed with him
Natasha walked in next, Evie perched on her hip muttering to her mother in Russian
"Clint, you know that's wrong right" she told her husband, swapping the name tags round as the boys giggled and Evie shook her head at her father
"Hey Nat, how do you know the difference?" Darcy asked, perplexed
She shrugged; "I don't think they even look that silimar" she answered, before walking into the kitchen with Evie
The three other adults all looked at each other with raised eyebrows
"At least soon they'll be old enough to tell us which is which" Darcy said when they boys pulled the stickers off their tops and stuck them to Clint instead