"Bruce?"

"Sorry, I…ah…what?"

"You want to quit staring now?" I ask dryly, twitching an eyebrow. "Or start working on you deception skills?"

All I get in response is a stuttering, stumbling, blushing scientist.

I hold up a hand to calm him. "It's alright," I sigh. "I'm assuming you had a question."

"Yeah." Bruce nods. "Your schooling. College grad at 16, but the entire timeline…?"

I tip my head over, resting my right temple on my fingertips, with a sigh as I mentally backtrack through my very speedy education. "Okay…so what do you already know?"

"You graduated MIT at 16 with a master's in every mechanical and electrical engineering." Bruce supplies.

"Degrees you didn't really need," Natasha adds, "but mere formalities."

"Right." I nod my conformation. "So, back up four years, I both graduated high school and entered MIT at 12."

I pause briefly, letting this sink in as I reach back further. "Another four years back means I became a freshman at 8 and entered elementary school at 3."

"What about middle school?" Bruce cuts in. "Junior high?"

"I never set foot in a brick-and-mortar middle school." I admit. "I took virtual classes alongside third, fourth, and fifth grades."

"So you took two entire grades at the same time for three years?" Natasha asks curiously, her tone dusted with skepticism.

"Elementary school was a joke." I shrug. "Two plus two?" I scoff. "Please. Someone ask me what 2.5 million is times 4 thousand."

"Okay." Bruce shrugs. "2.5 million times 4K?"

I'm only quiet for about a millisecond. "One billion. 1 with 9 zeroes. Want the scientific notation?"

"Alright, hotshot." Clint gently brings me back to earth. "We get it. Now come on, it's starting again."

I curl under his arm again as we all look towards the screen in front of us.

A~A~A

"All your pencils?" Obie asks as he follows a slightly taller Taylor through a doorway as she struggles with the zipper on a backpack. "Let me get that."

"All my pencils." Taylor sighs as she hands over the bag. "And pens, rulers, notebooks, papers, and even apples. Although I doubt putting an apple on each teachers' desk will truly work."

"The worst they can do is say no and leave you with eight apples." Obie shrugs. "Might help you make friends, genius."

"Right." Taylor scoffs with an eye roll as she slings the bag, fully zipped, over her shoulder. "An eight year old freshman, apples will be all I need to make friends with kids almost twice my age."

"Can't hurt to try." Obie shrugs again. "Now come on, you have a school to be at."

"Thanks Obie!" Taylor waves as a dark green mustang pulls away from a curb, turning to face the looming school building in front of her with a sigh.

"High school. Right. I can do this." she murmurs quietly, purely to herself, as she straightens her back and smiles, pacing confidently up the sidewalk towards the front doors of the school.

Until "Hey, kid, didn't your mother tell you never to talk to yourself?" and a looming shadow forces her to freeze, wincing at the mention of her absent parental figure.

"I asked you a question, kid." the voice restates, and Taylor is spun around with a feeble mew. "Answer me."

Taylor just purses her lips and stares.

"Alright boys." a meat headed jock, the owner of the voice – a boy named Martin Anderson, cracks his knuckles. "Let's show freak show here," he sneers, "what we do to people who disrespect us."

Taylor barely has time to yelp as she's stripped of her bag and grabbed by the arms, forcibly dragged to a secluded corner of the side of the school.

Everything is a blur from then on; just pain, jeers, and a feeling of hopelessness and helplessness she, as a Stark, was not used to.

Eventually they leave.

Eventually Taylor is left with just an eye swollen half-shut, aching muscles, and tears pouring freely out of the non-injured eye.

She digs into her hoodie pocket and produces a phone in a shaking hand. "Jarvis?" she whispers uncertainly.

"Right here, ma'am. Do you need me to call medical professionals?"

"No!" Taylor yelps before she can calm her reaction. "No. Just…is dad home today?"

"He is." Jarvis confirms. "He wanted to be free in case you needed him."

"Well I need him now." Taylor sighs, inaudible to the AI. "How do I get home, J?"

"The quickest route would be down Park Street, onto 7th, and then down Sarahi Blvd."

"Great." Taylor nods, slipping her phone back in her pocket and pulling her hood up to cover her eyes and shadow her face before shakily getting to her feet and walking away.

"Sir, Miss Stark has arrived home." Jarvis announces, causing Tony to slide out from under a car to glance at a clock.

8:50. "Why would she be out?" Tony wonders aloud, getting no response from Jarvis except for the information that she's in the living room.

Tony wipes his hands on his jeans and jogs u the stairs and towards the designated room.

And finds his daughter with a gasp.

Taylor is sitting on one of the couches, curled slightly into herself. What little of her face that is viewable is bruised, her left eye almost swollen shut.

"Taylor?!"

"Dad." she cries, instantly jumping up and running towards her dad, wrapping her arms around his waist. "Daddy."

"Oh, sweetheart." Tony sighs as he gently leads her over to the couch. "What happened?"

"M-mean kids…" Taylor stutters, barely swallowing sobs.

"On your first day?" Tony inquires sympathetically. "Me too."

"R-really?" Taylor sniffs, looking up at him. "You?"

"Of course." Tony snorts. "I was only a year ahead of you."

"What did you do?" Taylor asks, drying her eyes but keeping her head on her dad's lap.

"Hired some bigger kids to be bodyguards." he boasts proudly. "And I can get you the same thing. I know some members of the security team that would gladly do that."

"Really?" Taylor asks again, her voice stronger but still subdued.

"Psh, of course." Tony snorts.

"Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Is it safe to sleep?"

"Yeah. Get some sleep, sweetheart, I'll be right here."

"Thanks…"

Tony just softly orders Jarvis to dim the lights a little and pull up some holograms, all the while stroking his daughter's hair.

A~A~A

The room doesn't make a sound as I blink at that particular memory, one I had actually put on the back burner.

Until now.

"See?" I whisper. "A good parent."

Steve just nods before stating his own sentiment. "I went through the same thing, you know. As a kid. I was the sick kid with asthma."

"Me too." Clint speaks up, surprising me.

"You?"

"Me." he nods. "The scruffy, small kid who did not know when to shut his mouth."

"Me three." Bruce agrees. "The nerdy kid, with huge textbooks and glasses and freckles to match."

"Loki suffered much the same fate on Asgard." Thor admits. "People disliked him for appreciating libraries more than battlefields."

I nod silently, grinning like a madwoman at their support, before I suddenly burst out laughing.

"What?" Clint demands good-naturedly.

"If they could see us now…" I gasp before collapsing into another fit of giggles and taking Steve, Bruce, and Clint with me.

Take that, Martin Anderson.