So, i made a boo boo! When I was posting for i Can Hear the Drums the other night, I accidentally posted it under Avenge me, causing the mass notifications with links that didn't work. Sorry! Here is the actual new chapter!

Thank you To::

natashgriz, brandibuckeye, BookLuv, newsyd, IWriteSinsOrTragedies, penguincrazy, KatHarvey, Liliththestormgoddess, discordchick, ShadowPhoenix22, Ms. Hawkeye, Niom Lamboise , ThePenguinApocalypse, .ROX, lizarddbreath, Chinagirl18, CandyGirl999, 5mairer, Pinkypop22, Qweb

Daughter of the North: OHHHHH so many options!

DatNatCatThoe: AW! I loved this review! and I really am hoping this story kinda introduces the type of woman that we all know Clint needs. I never saw Laura as sheepish or "his little woman". someone like that just couldn't cut it with his life.

Aini NuFire: total unintetional movie weaving going on. but then it happened, and I was like OK! roll with it!

khaitosfren: BAHAHAHAHAH!

amy. .9: I like to think JARVIS indulges her mischief too:)

WestonFollower Uh, oh, someone's getting started on the Clint series. LOL. I hope everything you read you enjoy!

TortoisetheStoryteller

8839 Oh, there will be no brief cameos here:)

PilotDante: welcome to the family! please enjoy all of my Clint universe!

Avenge Me

Chapter 12

Clint didn't want to go back to his room. He wanted to stumble down the stairs of the upper lab, shirtless and all, find his boy, his daughter, and his wife, then circle all three of them up on the couch and simply sit together. He didn't need to say anything, he just wanted to hold them, all together, again. Tony shooting that happiness down, stung.

"You need a shower."

"I'm fine. It's not that bad. I want to find my - "

"You found your family. They're here and surrounded by all of us. They will, I'm sure, appreciate it if you clean yourself up." Tony picked up Clint's shirt off a chair. He inspected the filth and grime over it while Dr. Cho shifted her equipment away from the table. Clint swung his legs to the floor. Tony lifted the shirt, stuck his hand through the hole the advance weapon made. It was large enough to fit even his Iron Man suit's gauntlet through if he had the notion to try. "You are still covered in blood and Hydra parts. Go shower."

Clint thought about fighting him. He glanced down and noticed the streams of dried blood that flowed down either side of him. His trousers were caked in it. It didn't make the best homecoming sight for his family. Tony might have had a point. He groaned a little, pushing up off the table. His hand rubbed the new skin created over his side and pushed to his feet. The knee jerked up in annoyance while the purple outlines on his back felt raised and angry.

Tony saw them at the same time and dropped his hands a little. The shirt fell into the chair. A curse slipped between his lips.

"Language," Clint said, moving the hand to his back where it fished around for the pain radiating down to his kidney.

Tony cursed again, for no reason except to make it stick. Clint felt Iron Man's hand find its way along his skin. The foreign fingers made two wide circles on the sensitive skin of his back. "Gonna need to ice these. Take something. You'll be sore for a while, a long while. Don't make that water too hot. Cho?"

The doctor whistled. Tony's hands retracted, and a set of long cold fingers replaced them. Clint jumped a little and winced.

"Clint Barton, I do believe you have nine lives. Well, maybe five now."

Clint pulled away from them, slightly embarrassed about getting their hands all over him, and grabbed his shirt. He thought about pulling it on, but noticed the entire front had been ripped in half. He glared at it, and then at Tony.

"You were dying. Steve was trying to help."

Clint threw it back onto the chair and limped for the door. "Fine, shower. Happy?"

"Everyone with the ability to smell is happy," Tony replied, grinning. He watched as Barton stalked out of the lab and headed for his room. He wouldn't stay angry for long. Tony had suggested the same thing to Laura only five minutes ago. By now she'd be half undressed, and readying to enjoy her own bubble bath. The tubs in Avengers Tower could fit three men in them. He imagined it could fit Clint and his pregnant wife very comfortably. The mental image wasn't exactly something he needed.

The parents deserved a break after all they'd gone through. The baby, so far as they could tell, was jumping like a bean in a can. No one in Hydra had put their hands much on her, though they threatened it enough.

Fury didn't come back with them. A great decision on his part, given that Clint was liable to put a few bullets into him. According to Laura, Hydra was under the impression that Fury fathered her kids. That they'd been married in secret, and he'd kept them hidden from the world to safeguard what was his. In retrospect, the idea made sense to some. Why no one put together the fact that Cooper looked about as African American as an albino dog, was anyone's guess. Maybe they thought the second baby to come out might look like him. Who was to know?

Tony spent some time stealing information from one of the computers he'd encountered during his own search. He left the data on a drive in the lab, and with Clint off to enjoy some one-on-one, he considered looking through it. Cho stayed behind to pack her gear. Something in South Korea had popped up, forcing her to head home early. She never did stay long.

He picked up the data drive, and took out one of his drives to load the program. Tony paused, staring at the flash drive still stuck into the available port. It held the voice recording they'd all listened to near a week before when this all started. It made him remember the poor woman who lost her life. Her murder was still unsolved, according to local reports. Most likely it would stay that way unless someone turned up something. Tony made a mental note to look into that problem when he had a chance.

He switched the drives, and left the computer to download the information. There was a cardboard box beneath his work desk, and he dragged it into the open with his foot. Some of them were spare parts, circuits, and gyros he'd abandoned all hope for. In the bottom, he had an old drone with a helicopter rotor. The screws were stripped, and the band running the spinning duel rotors had snapped three or four years ago. Given his new technology, it was an outdated antique. Cooper might like it, and Clint too. It couldn't blow up and, of all the things in his lab, the little gyroscopic drone was probably the safest thing he had for a kid to tinker with.

Tony dropped the old mechanics onto his three dimensional bench top and scanned it through JARVIS. He found his old blueprints, downloaded them to a pad, and took it with a bowl of spare parts and a few tools, then tucked the bunch under his arm.

Clint had the time to take a look at what waited for him in his bedroom and either give his wife some peace and quiet, or jump into the water with her. By not finding the archer limping around the living room, Tony figured Clint had decided to soak his wounds and his spirits in his wife's arms. He never thought of himself as the romantic type. Acting like a matchmaker for a little alone time between the parents, surprised even Tony. Actively seeking out a little human to have a conversation with, was another tic in the column of uncommon-Stark-attributes. Clint wanted Cooper to tinker with something, and Tony said he'd see to it.

Cooper had cleaned himself up too, most likely at his mother's insistence. He was sitting on the couch, staring at the human-sized television screen to the right of the bar. The screen was black, the remote poised in the boy's hand though he didn't press any of the controls. Lila sat on the floor beside the bar with a few dozen pens, pencils, and highlighters. Pepper or Maria had printed out a few coloring pages for her to adorn. An exhausted Thor laid on the floor directly beside her, his head beneath a barstool. She'd braided some of his hair while he slept.

Bypassing the two on the floor, Tony strode over to Clint's son and dropped the materials on the table in front of him. Curious, Cooper sat up and looked down at it all.

"Hear you like playing with. . .things. . . this is just a - "

"It's a Hubsan X4 Pro Quadcopter!" Cooper exclaimed with enthusiasm, he dropped off the couch and picked up the spare parts, turning them over in hands remarkably like Tony might. One of the four arms to the system hung limply on its broken casing, internal wires were the only things tethering it to the central body. "Is this a 1080p video system?"

Slack-jawed, Tony took a moment to catch up with the conversation he didn't expect to be having. He shook off the surprise and reconsidered his words. "Uh, yeah. 3-axis Gimbal stabilization. I used the design and fractioned it by half, upgrading the design with a gyroscopic attachment for the camera balance."

Cooper nodded, noting the improvement Stark implemented. "Does it still run on GPS?"

"SBGP."

The boy looked at him.

"Stark Branded Global Positioning. It could fly underwater and find a goblin shark if you wanted it too. When it worked, I mean." He sat down on the sofa above Cooper, stacking his elbows on his knees, and soaked in a little of the boy's excitement. It was . . . pleasant.

"What happened to it?"

"Thor, after he moved in, thought it was possessed by Loki or something, and took a swing at it. Then again, I did fly it at him in the middle of the night and projected a holographic image of Loki himself. So maybe it was a little of my fault."

Cooper chuckled, cradling the object. He considered the mechanics a little, then returned it carefully to the table. "It's pretty cool. Too bad."

"Clint - your dad," Tony still struggled with that concept, "said you like to tinker with things. I've had this in a box for a while. I'm not doing anything with it. I've already improved the design in other renders, so if you want . . ." he let his voice trail. He felt awkward giving something to the boy, but he wasn't quite sure why.

"Really? I can fix it up?" He dared to ask. When Tony shrugged, his voice lit up. "Do you have a mini Philips, a rubber band, and an L-bracket?"

Stark pointed out the added items he'd brought along. Though a rubber band wasn't among them, it was easy enough to find one. A rubber band could be a useful thing when stripped screws were involved. Clint's house probably didn't have a lot of the toys that Stark's lab did. Cooper knew the simple ways to get things done. That was just fine, it meant he could be innovative.

Cooper sorted through the available tools, his little mind already twirling as fast as the helicopter rotors soon would. Before Tony got up to leave him to it, he lifted the digital pad and fired it up. He handed that to the boy also.

"Here are the plans I drew up when I made it. If you get stuck, you can take a look."

Cooper considered them for a minute, but eventually set them aside. "Nah, I think I'm OK."

Tony smiled. He stood again and headed for the bar. Clint might get on him about his language in front of the kids, but he had yet to curb his drinking. And after all they'd just been through, he figured a victory scotch was well deserved. "A boy that shirks directions. I think we're going to be friends."

Cooper shrugged and pulled the pieces of the drone into his lap. He considered the parts, picked up the screwdriver, and started working on the casing. "I don't read so good. I don't like it."

"You're a little basketful of surprises, kid. Aren't you like, what, in second grade? Don't they read in that grade?"

Cooper grinned, finding the humor Tony had in his voice. "No, I'm in fifth grade."

Tony poured himself an amber drink in a squat glass. He grinned. "Fine, fifth."

"My teacher says I'm dyslepic. I don't like reading. Everything just gets jumbled. Dad got me some books for my birthday and they're ok. I read them when he's home." He picked up an L-wrench and worked the gyroscope off the camera housing. He didn't watch Tony's reaction.

Stark's glass hovered between his lips and the bar top. He set it back down without drinking. He knew what the boy meant to say; dyslexic. Clint's child was dyslexic. The family seemed so perfect on the outside. Sure Clint was an Avenger, his wife was a retired ER doctor, and his little girl somehow ran Thor himself into a nap. They were two boys, two girls, baby on the way, house on a farm, white picket fence, broken down truck, barn-owning, chicken-feeding bluegrass Americans. They were perfect. Now they weren't.

The revelation made him scramble for something to say. He liked to fix things. It made his life go round, knowing that his hands, and enough time, could solve all of the world's problems. Though it took a little while to form something, he finally said, "Well, you know, if you ask, JARVIS will just read them out to you."

Cooper looked up at him.

Stark swallowed, trying to decide if what he just said was actually possible. He shook off the temporary worry, and circled the end of the bar. Cooper lifted the pad and handed it to him. Tony scrolled through the information, uploaded it back into the Stark mainframe, and handed it back. He extracted his phone, brought up the integrated system and wrote a few new lines of code into it. His left thumb lifted.

"Done. Just ask, he'll read it. Problem solved." He retreated back to the bar, picked up his glass, and headed down the hallway toward the first level lab. There wasn't necessarily anything for him to do there, but he could find something.

Steve appeared from the elevator with a towel over his shoulders and a face full of water. Tony didn't know if it was water or sweat, and he decided not to ask.

"Clint's kid is dyslexic," he blurted out. Tony didn't know exactly why he said it.

Steve blinked and shook his head a little, reeling from the information lashed out at him. "Um, ok? Should we call someone about that?"

Tony's eyes narrowed. "Your 1940's is showing. Stop it."

Steve lifted his hands and let them drop. "You filled my 'current times' with Angry Birds, Google, and how to use that overly-complicated coffee pot you decided to buy."

"Don't blame your poor education on me!"

Steve lifted his index finger, extracted his notebook from a back pocket, flipped open to five or six ripped out pages and displayed them for Tony to see. Then, wordlessly, he flipped past a few empty pages before reaching one written on in Stark's handwriting. Sure enough, it was a list of Steve's needed exposures in order to be considered a modern man. The three Steve mentioned were at the top of the list, followed by Candy Crush, Steve Jobs, the Daily Show, and Metallica.

Tony took the notebook and slapped it down on one of the stairs behind him. "It means he can't read, not like normal people can. The words turn backwards, or upside down, or jump lines, or whatever the brain decides to do."

"That's really a thing?" Steve looked down the hallway to where the kids sat.

"Yeah, and you can't fix it. They do know what to do about it. They just put these kids in little boxes of extended exam times, or special classes and things and just tell them to get over it."

Steve's eyebrow lifted at the passion in Stark's voice. "What got you all riled up over this?"

Tony opened his mouth, but no words came out. Figuring he'd have better luck commiserating with Banner, he departed for the lab like he originally planned. "You know what? I think the super serum shrank your brain cells to accommodate your muscles, test-tube boy."

"Ouch. I think my skin is burning from that," Steve said to the retreating back. He retrieved his notebook and went out into the main room, noting Thor almost instantly.

Lila looked up at him. She'd painted her nails in yellow and pink highlighters, and had applied a generous amount of freckles to Thor's cheeks while he slept. Steve stifled a guffaw behind his hand. The little girl held up her coloring page. It was a female rendering of Iron Man, suit and all. She'd highlighted the hero in blue with accents of red.

Taped to the bottom of the bar were other coloring pages. They were all Avengers, as women, and she'd taken special care to give them their own color theme. Without missing a beat, she grabbed one out of her uncolored stack and handed it up to him with a bundle of colors. Steve looked down at the female Captain America. In some ways, it reminded him of Peggy.

"Wanna color with me?" Lila asked.

With an offer like that, Steve was powerless to refuse.

Lila is seriously adorable. And I just imagine Clint coming home one day and cooper racing up to him and saying "Dad! I disassembled an engine gasket and refitted with a ceramic ring to improve fuel efficiency!" and Clint just going...I thought i left Tony at the Tower. LOL. I'm not sure why i made his son dyslexic. Perhaps it is because my older sister, a masters student, college professor, and biology lab head, is and I see the struggle she goes through. despite being so incredibly intelligent she still has that one, extra, thing to overcome.

Next time: time alone between lovers, and the reality of a week long captivity on a pregnant woman.

so for these reviews, why not play a game? Tell me, how/why did you chose the pen name you have, and who your favorite Avenger is!

Me: Ezra is my favorite character from magnificent seven, and Cross stands for my christian faith. Of course, my favorite character is Hawkeye:)