"Okay, guys," Pepper said as the teenagers piled into Avengers Tower behind he and the Avengers late that night. "I know that New York City is a big change from Vermillion, that you're used to your independence, and that you probably don't trust any of us adults, but you will find that there are perks to living here. For example, we have more than enough bedrooms for you each to have your own. You can go ahead and pick whatever room you want; if someone is already there, you'll know by the mess they leave."
"You guys would like the seventh floor of the Avenger's part of this place, I bet," Tony volunteered as he walked up to the group. "There are only eight suites, but they're all empty; you guys would essentially have your own floor."
That's all the kids needed to hear before they were loading themselves onto the elevator with the few things that they had packed from the Junior Initiative Division and disappearing.
"Meeting in the entertainment room," Tony ordered flatly as the rest of his team trickled into the tower around him. "Now."
They went without a word and the seven of them fell onto various places around the room.
Steve was the first to speak. "What the heck just happened today?" he asked, raking a hand tiredly through his hair.
"We may have just unearthed one of Fury's most closely guarded dirty little secrets," Tony answered, feeling the very last ounce of adrenaline that was in his body take it's leave.
"We can't make their moving here about whatever happened back there," Bruce said after a pause. "We have to get them to move past it, to make normal lives here."
"Normal lives?" Natasha snorted. "You heard them; Blaine's killed somebody, and there's no such thing as normal after that."
"Then we need to help them find a new normal," Bruce amended.
"That's going to start with figuring out which kids belong to whom, I'd think," Clint said.
"Not necessarily," Pepper said. "It takes a village to raise a child; we've all got to be there for every child."
"She's right," Tony said. "I've got a feeling they may not be immediately comfortable talking with their parents, but it would be a good idea if they knew that they had an adult willing to listen to them at all times, no matter if that adult is their parents or not."
"Okay, but for curiosity's sake, do we have any idea who belongs to who?"
Natasha spoke up from beside him, admitting in a voice so soft that only her husband could hear, "Blaine and Scarlet are yours and mine."
Clint blinked rapidly a few times, trying not to show the spike of anger that rushed through him. How could his wife not tell him that they'd had two kids together! "What about the others?" he asked after another pause.
"Dakota is obviously mine and Pepper's," Tony said.
"Ryan said a couple of things today that makes me think he's mine," Steve spoke up. "Although I have no idea how…"
"He said in front of all of us that he'd been put in the ice beside you," Bruce reminded him.
"There's a story there, I suspect," Thor mused.
"There has to be," Steve agreed.
Bruce said then, "But we need to let them get settled in before we start prying into their lives. On my front, my best guess would be that the twins are mine."
"That was pretty obvious by the way they were ringing their hands the whole day," Tony said.
"Yeah." Bruce asked, "Well, what about Andy?"
"What about him?"
"He's yours too, Tony," Pepper said softly. "Not mine, but yours."
"Maybe the Rosa Veracruz that he mentioned is his mother?" Steve suggested, looking at Tony like that should mean something.
Tony maintained, "I still don't know who that is."
"That doesn't necessarily mean anything, honey," Pepper said gently. "You were a wild cannon at the time that he would've been conceived. It could've just happened and Fury managed to get his hands on him. Simple as that."
"And you won't hate me, if that's what it is?" Tony asked her worriedly.
Pepper kissed him, smiling sweetly as she assured him, "No."
"That leaves Demi as my daughter," Thor realized.
"Can I be the person who brings up the scary parts that I'm pretty sure we heard earlier while talking with them?" Natasha asked. "If Demi's guardian was telling her about the interrogation that she quoted from… that was an interrogation I did with Loki."
Every person in the room froze.
Clint spoke slowly. "You think that Loki was her guardian?"
"It had to have been him from what she said."
Murmurs rippled through the crowd, but Tony was a step ahead of them, piecing together the other parts of the conversation that they'd been a part of. "But the others had just rescued her from an abusive marriage, they said – that part doesn't fit with any theories that I can come up with. Here's a different theory about a couple of the others. Blaine said that Fury had tried to get him to kill someone close to him; Dakota said that Fury tried to have her killed. They have to have lived a very sheltered life for no one to have found out about them, and those two coinciding stories are too close to be a coincidence."
"You think Fury tried to get Blaine to kill your daughter?" Natasha asked.
"It makes sense, doesn't it?" Tony asked, wishing that he was wrong even though they all knew he wasn't.
"What do you want to bet they're dating, just by what their interactions were today?" Pepper asked.
Tony growled at the idea, but Natasha answered, "Considering that Fury wanted them to be another generation of us? It makes sense."
"Bottom line," Clint said. "These kids have got to be really messed up."
"No," Pepper corrected. "The bottom line is that they need help, and as their parents, it's our job to provide that help."
Here we are at the end of another Junior Initiative story. The sequel, "So They Healed," or one of my other stand-alone fics should be posted soon, so stay on the lookout. Reviews equal love and rainbows! Thanks, guys!:)