"What did Hill have to say?" Pepper asked as Tony and the kids went to get dried up. (Pepper had snatched the water gun from Tony's grasp and made him sorry he'd ever tried to soak her)
"They still don't have much. The second blood tests came back abnormal, and they're still waiting on a few results. They haven't worked out what any of it means yet"
"No luck getting the Hydra agents to talk?"
"Not yet, but Hill thinks they're getting closer"
Clint and Natasha ran back into the room, putting a swift end to the conversation
"Clint, those pants are too big, they're falling down"
"They're all like that!" he insisted, hitching them back up and turning on the TV
She sighed; he was just too lazy to go get changed again and wanted to play with Steve on a racing game.
She passed Natasha the glass she was trying to reach from the cupboard and went to speak to Tony.
"You're a big kid you know" she told him, picking up his soaked jeans from the floor and throwing them at him
"We were just having some fun"
"I know" she smiled; "I love seeing you with them" she told him fondly while getting changed herself. "I thought you moved the glasses down so the kids could reach them?"
"I did"
"No you didn't"
"I did, I moved them the other day"
"Well Tasha can't-"
A knock at the door interrupted them
"Hello?" Pepper called, pulling her hair back into a simple ponytail
"I'm going to head to the store and get some bits, there anything you need?" Steve called
"Clint wanted some apple juice" Tony shouted back
"Right, see you later"
"You know what Pepper?" Tony asked, quietly, crawling across their bed to sit beside her
"I know where you think this is heading Tony Stark, but not now"
"It's been so long since we've been alone. Can't the terrible twosome stay with Steve for just one night?"
"Tony-"
"We could go out for a nice meal, just the two of us" he asked, pleadingly
There was suddenly a yell from the other room and Tony sighed; "See, we need some time alone" he told her, getting up to go and see what had happened.
He found Clint sat at the table, clutching his face and crying. Natasha was nowhere to be seen, but her bowl of abandoned ice cream sat untouched next to Clint's.
"Clint, what happened?" Tony asked gently, pulling his hand down and away from his face to reveal a horribly swollen black eye
Clint was too distraught to talk; his sobbing leaving him incoherent and gasping for breath.
At the appearance of Pepper in the room, Tony turned his attention to the missing piece;
"Natasha!" he called, looking around the open plan living space while Pepper grabbed some ice for Clint's face.
He looked everywhere he could think of, visiting the gym and the roof before returning to his floor of the tower.
"Natasha, sweetheart; you've really got to come out now! This isn't funny anymore!"
Tony thought it was odd calling her 'sweetheart', though it had become a regular occurrence recently. He'd have to get out of the habit quickly once they were returned to adults; If he ever slipped up and called Natasha a sweetheart once she'd been re-aged; the consequences could be dire!
He eventually found her huddled in the back of her closet. It was pitch black and she sat hugging her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on them as she watched Tony awkwardly climb in to sit in the closet beside her.
"You going to tell me what happened?" he asked. Stern, but gentle.
"It wasn't me"
"I never said it was"
Her green eyes looked up to his, reading him carefully for any tricks or games. Tony could see she'd been crying and kept his expression neutral.
There had been no one else in the room with them, and it wasn't beyond Natasha's skill level to give a young boy a black eye, but then; Natasha and Clint got along great (when she wasn't beating him at games), and since that initial misunderstanding at Shield, Natasha hadn't been violent once...
"I don't know what happened. But it wasn't me"
"Then why'd you run away?"
"I was scared"
"Scared of what?"
"That you wouldn't believe me. That I'd get them blame and then I'd be... I'd-"
"Natasha, it wasn't you. So it's fine. But even if you did do something wrong; that's okay too. You don't need to be afraid while you're here, okay?"
She nodded, but she looked doubtful.
"Is Clint okay?" she asked tentatively
"Let's go see"
Clint was lay on the sofa clutching an ice pack over his swollen eye and cheek. Two empty bowls of ice cream were beside him while he watched The Incredibles on the TV
"Tasha! Come watch this with me?" he asked hopefully, placing the ice pack on the floor. His eye looked terrible; black bruising spread across his face. She looked hesitantly towards Tony who nodded and gave her a gentle push, before he joined Pepper in the kitchen.
"You find out what happened?" Tony asked quietly
"No, he said it just hurt all of a sudden"
"Natasha said he just screamed and then it was bruised... No idea why. I'm going to check the footage Jarvis got before I mention it to Shield, you okay here?"
"Yeah" she nodded, joining Clint and Natasha on the couch with a cup of hot cocoa for them both.
In his lab Tony watched the footage over and over; both kids had been right in that suddenly, out of nowhere Clint's eye bruised and swelled. He cried out, and Natasha fled.
He explained the situation to Phil over the phone, and then again to Hill and finally to Fury;
"That may go some way to explaining what we're seeing here. You and Rogers need to bring them back down here ASAP. The situation just got upgraded"