THANK YOU TO:::

All my guests! Archt, natashgriz, FFegni, halfshapechildfan, Aini NuFire, Casey Storm, Niom Lamboise, amy. .9, Roses in May, IWriteSinsOrTragedies, m klindt, Qweb

(one random) Guest: Oops, bad me forgetting Grumpy Cat was a female.

WestonFollower: AW! Thank you! I work hard to keep in=character so to speak:)

Ms. Hawkeye: Emotional wreck? Oh...oh yes. That's happening.

Jewls58: Welcome to the family! it's gonna get bumpy:)

discordchick: Never thought THor would be a stand-out star in this, but he keeps popping up waving his hand going "pick me!" so here...we..go:)

8839: YAY! hope you like it, I'm excited to see where this goes.

Avenge Me

Chapter 2

Thor pulled up to a stop and forwent a soft landing to crash right into the grassy hill on one knee with Stark mirroring his stance just beside them. Tony blinked twice into the corner sensor of his heads up display and the faceplate for his mask opened and peeled back. He looked around with his naked eyes.

"Do you believe this to be the place?" Thor asked, standing and considering the area. He gripped his hammer in one hand. Everything on first glance seemed quiet.

Clint described the area as a quiescent, white, farm house with a wrap-around front deck. There were a few outbuildings, including a barn, and an old truck in the driveway beside Laura's black Volvo, if it was around.

"Looks like it," Tony replied. He brought his arm up and checked the virtual map that hovered over his right gauntlet. Clint had given them precise coordinates to go off of. The satellite data was, surprisingly, non-existent. Somehow Nick Fury had created a vacuum of information in this little spot of planet Earth. When they found him again, Tony was adamant on discovering out exactly how the former SHIELD Director did that.

"Shall we?" Thor headed off down the hill toward the main house.

"We better sweep the whole place before Clint gets in. If we find something, it might be better for us to soften the blow." Tony dropped his face plate again and scanned the area with his HUD. In another feat of curiosity, he discovered seeing through the home's walls wasn't even possible. They'd been internally lined with some polymer impervious to three dimensional radar scans. "This place is a fortress."

"Our friend prefers his privacy. It does not surprise me that he would go to great lengths to preserve his happiness here," Thor said.

"Privacy means you don't share your favorite coffee and hoard it in your room instead. This is something else. I mean, you don't have a wife and almost three kids hiding back on Asgard do you?"

"I do not," Thor replied.

"Well there you go."

They moved around the small gate that separated the fields and trees from the main yard, and headed up the drive. Tony swept two fingers to the right, and Thor peeled off instantly. They'd sweep the outer buildings first, and then move their way inside the house. Tony circled around the left of the home. He closed in on the two abandoned cars. The Volvo had a set of keys on the front dashboard and a wallet in the center console. No one inside, though. He tried the door. It came open. He reached in, grabbed the wallet, and managed to work it open with his armor on.

"Well, hello Mrs. Barton," he said to himself as the woman's face reflected back at him through the holographic state driver's license.

"Stark?" Thor's voice came through his comm.

"Nothing yet, just a wallet."

"The same here. The building is empty."

"Circle around the back, I'll check the truck and we'll go in from there."

Tony left the wallet on the front seat and continued back to the truck. It was an old, heavy diesel. At one time it may have been used to tow farm equipment, but now it was purposed as little more than a lawn ornament. The hood was propped open, its rusted engine parts left bare for the elements.

"Tsk, Tsk, Barton. Take better care of your toys," He whispered to himself. Tony checked the cab and the bed only to find them as eerily empty as everything else in the place. He tapped his comm and double checked that it was on a two-way relay system only. If Clint was listening before, which undoubtedly he had been, he was officially shut out the minute Thor and Tony hit the family farmlands.

"Thor, I don't like this," Tony said, sweeping the rest of the house's exterior buildings. He could see the Asgardian approaching him from the other side of the property.

"Myself either. There is something strangely concerning here. I cannot place my apprehension on any particular entity, but nonetheless it affects me."

"I'll take the back. You circle around front and we'll meet in the center of the first floor. Then we'll move up."

Thor tipped him hammer, acknowledging the words. He spun his weapon in a simple, speedy arc, and flew to the other side of the house. Tony took a steadying breath to prepare himself for whatever he might find inside, and slowly stepped up to the back porch. He had to stop almost instantly. The doorpost was marred in pencil and pen marks of at least three different colors. Sharpie hearts danced along a few of the hash marks along with what Tony recognized at once as Clint's handwriting.

February 15, 2009, 3'1". Cooper. Smiley face.

March 29, 2010, 2'4". Lila. Three hearts.

May 20, 2012, 3'4". Lila. Two hearts, and maybe a picture of a kitten.

The next line above it was Cooper again.

The May 20th date was from only days after the attack on New York. Clint had left to finish a mission, clear up paperwork or something. Tony never really asked where the Avenger had gone. Instead, Stark jumped into his own car with Bruce riding shotgun and blasted off for home. Clint must have driven here with Natasha. Maybe she dropped him off on her way wherever it was she went and maybe she stayed here with Barton during those trying months after the shock of the near war settled in.

The sight of Clint's personal touch along that well-worn door post suddenly made everything Tony did now very real. This wasn't some cover, or made up family. Clint was a father. These two children who were growing day by day were his and Clint was doing everything he could, even sending the Avengers themselves, out to check on them.

"Stark, are you ready?" Thor had said something a minute ago, which Tony missed responding to. The Asgardian must have been anxious. Tony tried to shake off the haunting feeling of the growth chart and got his head back into search and destroy mode.

"Yeah, I'm good. My mark. Mark!"

They breached the house simultaneously.

Tony stole through the back door, sweeping left instantly as he hugged the wall of kitchen cabinets. He dropped low, scanned the room with his gauntlet extended, and waited to see if something came crashing or shooting at him. Nothing came. He raised a little and swiveled his head around to take in the general chaos he'd stumbled into. Clint's fears were founded, at least. The place had been completely tossed. Cabinet doors hung loosely on one hinge with their contents spilled all over the kitchen floor. The table was overturned, one leg fractured with flesh-tone wood exposed. Only a single chair survived.

The metal suited Avenger followed the closest wall and entered the next room. It was a dining room in a similar state of distress. He hoped Clint's wife wasn't too attached to the family dishes. There wasn't much left of them.

He looked over a half-wall and saw Thor making his way around a staircase. The Asgardian gave him a short nod. Tony pointed to the staircase and lifted his thumb skyward. Thor repeated the gesture and adjusted his grip on Mjolnir. Silently they made their way up the stairs, bypassing the shattered glass of Clint's family photos. Tony couldn't help sneaking a glance at them as Thor led him up.

Laura Barton had long, dark hair and a smile like a sunrise. Her arms were draped around the neck of the young boy, Cooper, who grinned in an absent-tooth way into the camera. A little copper-haired girl hung over Laura's shoulder with her shy face buried into her mother's arm. The next picture was just Cooper with a baseball bat over his shoulder and a number 14 jersey on. Lila came next, dressed in a purple tutu with, of all things, a plastic replica of Thor's hammer in one hand with a stuffed floppy-eared dog in the other. Tony noticed that none of the photos contained Clint himself. Maybe he thought of it as a way to protect them.

They reached the top of the stairs and split up to their respective sides. Tony flanked right, scanned as many rooms as he could, and cleared them in quick succession. The same level of disarray he noted in the lower floor continued here. Lila's room was almost completely destroyed. Drawers were yanked out of the dresser and smashed against the floor. Clothes littered the place. Pictures and posters had been torn off the walls and the mattress flipped. Whoever thrashed the place was looking for something and they stopped at nothing to try and find it.

"Stark!"

Tony moved instantly when Thor's voiced called out. He blew through the open door way and thundered up the hall. It was a sharp turn into the parent's room, but he pulled up to a stop almost instantly at Thor's back.

A pool of blood coated the floor boards a few feet from the off kilter king-sized mattress. The blood had clotted long ago, the liquid turning as cold and dead as surely the person who produced it had. Tony swallowed the lump in his throat and moved in around Thor's body. The Asgardian looked around the room again, but found nothing more amiss beside the general plunder which appeared throughout the home.

Tony stooped down and touched a finger into the blood pool. JARVIS set to analyzing the sample as he scanned the room a second time for himself.

"It is a considerable sum, is it not?" Thor asked quietly.

"Whoever it came from isn't going to be breathing still, if that's what you're getting at," Tony affirmed. His eyes traced up the wall to his left and he noted the blood spatter that his HUD highlighted. A circular pattern emerged over five feet off the ground. "Head shot, I think." He stood and analyzed the center of the red splatter. A decent caliber bullet lodged into the wall where he searched.

"Do you believe it may be . . ."

Tony turned to see Thor's expression as his voice trailed off. They were in parent's bedroom, after all. The shot was too high for one of the children. It was more likely than not Laura Barton met her end here. Perhaps they'd taken the children. To what end they couldn't hope to guess until Clint arrived.

"The kids, her body, I don't get it. What were they looking for? What could he keep here that anyone would want? Do you think this might just be about us?" Tony accessed the panel on his suit and unlocked it from his body to step out of the armor. He was beginning to feel claustrophobic inside it. Apparently no one was home, and the need to remain in his iron suit had passed.

"Do you think his family has been brutalized merely because we search for Loki's scepter?" Thor asked, flabbergasted.

"Bad guys aren't called bad guys because they play by the rules. We need to keep our options open." He headed to the nearby desk and snooped through a few of the available papers there. "I think it's a good idea to keep Clint out of here for now until JARVIS can determine where the blood came from."

"I agree with the assessment. I think I shall take another look at the perimeter. He seemed to believe their friend was the recipient of some foul blow. I may be able to find her."

"That's a good idea. Look for a car on the roadway—" Tony looked up from the few letters and envelopes addressed to the Bartons and meant to focus on Thor. Instead, he noticed something standing just behind the large Asgardian which pulled him up short. His mouth hung open a little and he dropped down to one knee very slowly.

"Whoa, easy there kid," he said quietly.

Thor took a step into the bedroom, allowing him to turn without being trapped in the door frame. He saw at once a small, pigtailed child with her thumb tucked up by her mouth in a Rapunzel nightdress. Her wide eyes were brimmed in tears that threaten to fall.

"No, no, no, don't do the water works!" Tony exclaimed, inching closer. "It's ok, really! I'm Tony, you know? Iron Man? See, I've got the suit and everything right here. And this is Thor. Clint—Hawk—I mean, your dad sent us to come and check on you."

Little Lila Barton didn't give the introduction half a second to sink in. With a child's cry on her lips, she covered the distance between Thor and herself and glommed a hold of the Avenger's leg. Full of sympathy for the little girl, and desperate to keep her attention away from the shocking blood pool, Thor snatched her up in his arms and walked back into the hallway with her. Lila melted against his chest, sobbing loudly.

Tony didn't like children in general. It wasn't that there was any particular child in his past that set him against the entire hoard, he simply never thought of himself as good with kids. Seeing the daughter of his fellow Avenger crying inconsolably into Thor's rocking arms brought a peculiar nobility and fatherhood he never expected to experience in his life. It forced him out of the master bedroom, and made him close the door behind himself. He crossed over to where Thor stood, trying to soothe the child, and Tony set his own hand on her small back.

"Hey, it's ok," he told her quietly. "You're dad's on his way. He's coming to get you, and everything's going to be just fine." Tony couldn't believe he was referring to Clint Barton as "dad" but he'd gotten used to the idea now that the product was sitting before his very eyes. Thor looked imploringly at Tony as Lila continued to cry.

"We should take her from this place. It is not fit for an heir to see her home so defiled. I will not allow her to return to this state until justice sees it is made complete again. The man that has done this will find no mercy from me if I find so much as a hair on this child's head has been disturbed." The Asgardian said, booking no room for argument.

Tony agreed, fearing the sudden wrath Thor welled with. "I'll call Clint to let him know we have her. You go out. I'm going to search the boy's room just in case there isn't another one of these kids hiding out on us. I'll sweep the area for the . . . you know."

Thor needed no addition to know Tony referred to the poor woman, Stacy, whom was most likely injured or taken as well. Leaving Stark to it, Thor descended the staircase with Lila in his arms. He wasn't letting the child go, not until he could pass her directly into the arms of her father.

Protective Tony/Thor? more please:)

Coming up (might take a bit, moving to another state this weekend): Bun Bun and Clint learns the value of friends

Please review!