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Chapter Text

Thor poured himself a bowl of Cheerios and slopped some milk over them early on a Friday morning. Steve Rogers leaned against the kitchen counter with a glass of orange juice, already dressed for a morning jog but still groggy. It was a day like any other. Doctor Banner was at a conference in Chicago and would not be back until Sunday night at the earliest, but Clint and Natasha would be back from their mission in the afternoon. Jane Foster was in her lab, and aside from bodily removing her from science when Darcy gave the signal, Thor had no plans for the day. The Captain drained his juice and shambled for the elevator with a mumbled “Good morning.” The Thunderer nodded mutely and watched him go, at ease with the peace in the kitchen. There were no urgent threats in the city that needed tending to. Asgard remained as safe as it could be. All was well.

The elevator hummed shut behind Steve and carried him downward.

The only warning Thor had before his understanding of the universe and his place in it shifted was a tingle of ozone and then something in the air crackled before exploding into the shape of Loki. Thor coughed hard, trying to dislodge the soggy cereal he had inhaled when his traitorous brother appeared. “Loki!” he snarled, throat burning. “What are you…?”

“Listen to me,” the exiled prince snarled. His armor dripped with blood, the leather gouged and mangled in places, his green mantel riddled with burnt holes and still smoking slightly. He closed the distance between them in a single stride and wrapped a claw-like hand around Thor’s neck and bent his head close so their noses were nearly touching. “I require your assistance.”

“Brother, I do not think it wise to wreak havoc on Midgard and then ask a favor.”

Loki’s lips peeled away from his teeth, smeared with blood. “I haven’t time for your complaints, oaf. My safe house has been compromised and I need you to look after my most precious belongings. Just for the weekend.”

“You must be truly desperate to come to me for help.” Thor privately wondered how long before the other Avengers arrived. Surely by now JARVIS raised the alarm.

Loki gave a startled bark of laughter. “Using my own words against me? How droll! You will help me, Thor.”

“What makes you so certain?” he hedged. He toyed briefly with the idea of destroying Loki’s treasured whatevers, or at least leaving them in the shared living room with a note explaining who their owner was and letting Hawkeye destroy them for him. Loki’s wrath would be immeasurable, but it would be gratifying in the moment.

“It’s in your blood, Odinson. Time is short; I must fly.” He whirled on his heel, ruined mantle flaring dramatically in his wake and disappeared in a puff of completely unnecessary emerald smoke. Thor coughed again at about the same time the kitchen’s smoke alarm shrilled. He glowered at it and then looked back at the place where his brother had just been, where now his most precious belongings waited, small and pale and holding hands with eyes like saucers in their little faces. The bolder of the two piped up. “Uncle Thor?” The alarm beeped steadily above him while he gaped.

Tony Stark blinked owlishly at the two big blond men in front of him, then at the two miniature Lokis half hiding behind them. “What, really?” he said when the hallucinations did not disappear. He was nearing hour 72 without sleep, so the threat of seeing things that weren't actually there was very real. And then his brain kicked in and he really looked at Loki's mini-me's.  Sometime, about six years ago by his reckoning, Loki had fathered fraternal twins. Thor ground his teeth.

“Yes, Stark. Really.”

Steve crossed and uncrossed his arms, watching the children with his peripheral vision nervously. The children in turn stared unblinkingly at his shield, but only after looking around the living room with something like awe. They were willowy, with deceptively delicate bone structure and inky black hair, the girl’s in a short bob and the boy’s shaggy about his ears and falling into his eyes. They wore clothes typical of Midgard’s children: little red sneakers, nearly identical black denim jeans and nondescript t-shirts—gray for the boy, dark purple for the girl. They carried backpacks on their shoulders, possibly with changes of clothes inside but they would not put it past Loki to hide powerful artefacts with his children as well. No one volunteered to investigate. 

When he looked up, both Stark and Thor were waiting for him to say something. “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Normally I’d lock them in a cell—don’t look at me like that, Thor—but they’re just kids.”

“Or are they?” Stark murmured. He dropped into a crouch so he could get on their level and offered his patented charming smile. “Hello, kiddies. Do you have names?”

The twins exchanged a loaded glance before the girl answered. “Yes.”

They waited for a moment. “Okay then,” Stark prompted, smile growing more strained. “What are they?”

“We’re not supposed to talk to strangers,” she replied, her eyes reproachful.

“I’m not a stranger. I’m Iron Man!” When the kids only looked skeptical he pointed at Steve. “And that’s Captain America. See his shield? And you know Thor, I’m guessing. We’re not strangers; we’re the Avengers.”

She looked doubtful still, but started to nod. “You work with our father?”

“Yes? I mean, yes we do. What’s your name, sweetie?”

“I’m Raven, and this is my brother Thadcus. Father said we would be safe here.”

“You will be safe,” Thor told her in his gentle voice, as much a reassurance for the children as a warning for the adults. “You have my word.”

“Okay,” Raven said.

Stark straightened up, knees popping. “So where are they staying?” he asked the Captain, eyebrows raised.

“They will stay on my floor in the guest suite,” Thor said, tone sharp.

Steve glanced nervously at the twins, who seemed to have taken a vested interest in the carpet. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. For all we know this could be a trap.”

“A trap,” Thor scoffed.

“We don’t know what Loki might be planning.”

“They are his children!”

Stark stuffed his hands in his pockets. “From your kid brother’s track record, using kids as bait doesn’t exactly strike me as beneath him.”

“You dare!”

Steve frowned. “Um, guys?”

“These are my niece and nephew, Man of Iron!” Thor boomed.

“Guys?”

“Yeah, but they’re Loki’s spawn!” Stark hissed. “There is no way this isn’t some ruse or trap or whatever!”

“I refuse to entertain the idea that Loki would use his own children—“

“Avengers!” Steve barked, 100% commanding officer and about 200% done with this conversation. Thor and Stark glared at him. “Where are the children?” Thor and Stark glared at the place where they had just been standing. “And where is my shield?”

Stark rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Goddam demon spawn. JARVIS, are the two little bundles of joy still in the building?”

“They are, sir,” JARVIS replied, unruffled as ever. “They are on Captain Rogers’ floor in his kitchen, I believe.”

The color drained from Thor’s face. “And Sergeant Barnes, JARVIS?”

“Also in the kitchen.”

Stark had never seen a Norse god and an American icon sprint for the elevator and get stuck at the door because they tried to walk through it at the same time, but today seemed to be an exceptional day.

Bucky had his good days and his bad days. Admittedly, he seemed to have more bad days than good days, but he had not had to wash blood and gravel out of the Weapon since leaving Hydra, so he counted that as a win. Sam Wilson, codename the Falcon, regularly assured him that the path to recovery was rarely straight. Sam Wilson, codename the Falcon, never needed to spackle and paint over holes he put in the walls with the Weapon. Sam Wilson, codename the Falcon, would probably remember putting holes in the wall if he put them there with the Weapon. The other day Bucky killed one of Stark’s pet Roombas because it startled him in the middle of the night, and then Steve Rogers, codename Captain America, made sad faces every time he conspicuously toed around the mess of rent wiring and crumbled plastic. At one point Steve Rogers, codename Captain America, had gotten out the dustpan and made to sweep away the dead Roomba, but Bucky growled until he left it alone. The Winter Soldier never cleaned up his own messes; Hydra had people for that. But Bucky could and he would.

Right after he was done glaring at it.

Life was strange in Avengers Tower, let alone in the twenty-first century. His routine, rigid and punitive to the civilian eye, was self-imposed and too often interrupted. Sometimes other residents in the tower tried to include him in their lives, which he found…worrisome. More often one of the scientists tried to persuade him to come to the labs so they could examine the Weapon or his body, and he would firmly decline by glaring until the scientists got flustered and wandered away. Tony Stark, codename Iron Man, seemed immune to this method, and so Bucky had taken to gently flipping furniture over until the man excused himself. Steve Rogers, codename Captain America, would frown and rebuke him after these episodes while trying not to giggle.

Today there were children in his kitchen. In the morning, JARVIS tended to inform Bucky of the date, the weather conditions and any abnormalities in his schedule for the day, but he never mentioned small children. Of course, every morning Bucky was greeted by a disembodied voice reminding him that it was the twenty-first century, so as odd as it was to see a pair of dark-haired children carrying the Captain’s iconic shield between them was, Bucky literally dealt with stranger thing every day. He bit into his toast and watched them pull open the refrigerator.

“I’m pretty sure that isn’t yours,” he said.

The girl shut the fridge and they both fixed him with identical big brown eyes. “We found it.”

“Finders keepers,” the boy said.

“Uh-huh,” Bucky replied. He rested his chin on his fist and employed that ancient and most effective interrogation technique; he let them fill the silence.

“It was just laying around,” the girl went on. She hugged the shield to her chest. “If we hadn’t come along, who knows what mighta happened to it. You’re welcome.”

Some weeks ago, Natalia Romanova, AKA Natasha Romanoff, codename the Black Widow, interrupted his lunch with a pint of soft ice cream and a spoon, saying “You need this,” and then proceeded to walk away. It almost made up for yanking Clint Barton, codename Hawkeye, out of a ceiling vent and nearly breaking both of his arms before realizing the SHIELD agent was not trying to infiltrate the tower but had simply made it a habit to travel via ceiling vent. The ice cream provided a pleasant distraction that day, but this was better.

“I’m hungry,” the little girl complained, dragging him from his reverie. “Can you make me a grilled cheese?”

He drained his coffee and got up, walked over to her and placed his flesh hand on the top of her head. “Poof. You are a grilled cheese,” he told her somberly.

She stared up at him. “You’re not very funny.”

“You’re right. I’m hilarious.”

Bucky was standing at the stove with a spatula in his hand and the frying pan sizzling nicely when half of the Avengers stormed into the kitchen. He froze, knuckles whitening around the spatula, the Weapon whirring softly as the plates settled and resettled, but he did not make to grab one of the kitchen knives Steve Rogers, codename Captain America, thought he hid too well for the Winter Soldier to find. So this is what progress looks like.

“The children?” Thor boomed, and did not make to lay his hands on Bucky. That too was progress. God of thunder and a warrior of Asgard he may be, but the first time he tried to grab Bucky, the Winter Soldier drove two knives into his forearm and had a garrote wrapped around his neck before help could come and pull them apart.

Bucky glanced at the kitchen table, where the twins had found his toast and demolished it. Steve Rogers, codename Captain America’s eyes went to the shield proudly resting on the table. The little girl, Raven, followed his gaze, picked the shield up and hid it behind her back like everyone had not just seen her do it. Bucky flipped over the sandwiches in the pan and grinned to himself. He remembered, in the time Before, that he had liked children. History says that he wan an older brother, and Steve Rogers (codename Captain America) claimed he was basically the older brother of most children on their block, with a protective streak a mile wide and an eye for mischief. Until now, those words came across as conjecture, but he now suspected that a soft spot for kids was one thing Hydra failed to dig out of him. It was too soon to tell if he still truly liked kids in general, but he liked Raven just fine, and he suspected he would like Thadcus once he opened up.

They took their time eating their sandwiches, radiating doe-eyed innocence all the time. Tony, Thor, Steve and Bucky all crowded around the table waiting for them. Steve had relieved Raven of his shield and now leaned it against his leg, one proprietary hand touching its topmost edge. “How did you even get up here?” Tony demanded.

“We walked,” Raven replied, bewildered, as if that were the most obvious thing in the world.

“You don’t have clearance for the elevator to take you to just any floor,” Tony told her, voice laden with suspicion. They just stared at him and ate their sandwiches. He sighed and flapped his hands. “I don’t know. No more jumping from floor to floor, okay? It’s bad for my blood pressure.”

“Okay,” the children replied in unison.

“We need some ground rules,” Steve told the kitchen at large. “You two need to stay on Thor’s floor. He’s in charge of you. No using the elevator unaccompanied, and the same goes for the stairs.” They nodded at him. “And leave my shield alone. No playing with weapons period, okay?” They nodded again.

“Can we watch a movie?” Raven asked. She pushed her crusts from her plate to her brother’s. Thadcus glared at her.

“Yes, fine, you can watch a movie when you get to Thor’s floor,” Steve assured her.

“Can uncle Bucky come with?”

Tony snorted. “When did you become Uncle Bucky?”

Bucky got up from his chair and gently flipped it over. Steve rubbed the back of his neck. “Raven, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

“How come?” Raven whined.

He winced under Bucky’s stare. “Did you want to watch a movie with Loki’s kids?” The ex-assassin nodded. “Can you refrain from damaging the furniture while you do it?” The ex- assassin squinted at him. “Could you at least try?” He nodded. “Okay. Great. One movie. Thor’s place. Move out.”

Bucky saluted, more from habit than because the situation warranted a salute. Raven and Thadcus climbed off their chairs and followed Thor and him to the elevator. Thadcus wrapped his hand around Bucky’s metal prosthetic as they stepped inside and the door slid shut. Tony raised an eyebrow at Steve. “Sure that’s safe, Cap?”

“Bucky’s been getting better,” he said, unable to keep the defensiveness out of his voice. “And this is the first time he’s voluntarily done something social since we got him back. Besides, Thor’s with them. And JARVIS will let us know if something happens, right JARVIS?”

“Of course, Captain Rogers.”

“What movie should we watch?” Thor asked, glancing hopefully at Bucky. In truth, movies were still a novelty for him and he had no idea what would be enjoyable for the young ones.

Fortunately, the twins had opinions aplenty. “We should watch Brave.”

“Cars,” Thadcus demanded.

“Brave is better. It has a princess in it.”

“Cars,” Thadcus demanded again. “Not every movie needs a princess in it.”

“No. We should see Brave.”

“Cars!”

“Brave!”

Thor did not know what to do, which left Bucky to intervene. “JARVIS, load up the Aristocats,” he drawled. He scooped Thadcus up with the Weapon and tucked Raven under his other arm and deposited them on the couch. He settled on the floor cross legged and Thor sat at the end of the couch.

“Ah,” the big blond man beamed at him. “A film from your own time, Sergeant?”

Bucky wondered how much furniture he would have to flip over if Stark learned that the Winter Soldier watched animated children’s movies during his sleepless nights. “Yes,” he decided, trusting Thor would not know that the Aristocats came out well after he was put on ice. .

At some point Raven started braiding his hair. Bucky did not say anything, only kept his eyes on the television and let his body slip into the sniper calm. When she tired of braiding and re-braiding his hair she ordered Thor to sit on the floor so she could braid his as well. The god of thunder plopped himself beside Bucky and leaned back. It was not a bad way to spend the morning.

Darcy texted Thor shortly after noon and he texted back that he was on his way. The twins slept on the couch, leaning against each other, and Bucky had closed his eyes as well, still sitting perfectly upright. They looked tranquil like this; looking at Thadcus made Thor’s heart wrench. Had Loki ever looked so at peace? He sighed to himself and made his way to the elevator.

In the lab, Jane Foster had reached stage four levels of exhaustion. He rested his hands on her shoulders and pressed a kiss to her hair. “Jane, my love, it is time for a break.”

“No!” she snapped. She flung her arms over her work table, knocking over an empty coffee mug and sending her pencil cup flying. He could conceivably carry both her and the table, but the elevator ride would be crowded and moving through the halls would be ungainly. Thor rubbed circles across her back. Darcy smirked at them from across the lab. He wondered if she had dosed Jane’s coffee with sedatives again to make this part of the day easier, but then dismissed the thought with a mental shrug. Of course she dosed Jane’s coffee—that was the most Darcy thing Darcy could do.

He dug his thumbs into her shoulders and waited until some of the white left her knuckles before he peeled her off the table and carried her away bridal style. Before he tucked her into bed he fished out three pencils and one sticky note from her hair and folded the blankets around her. She would no doubt startle awake in about twelve hours and make her way back to the lab, but until then she would be as comfortable as he could make her.

Bucky, still dozing, was alone when Thor wandered back to the living room. “Where are the children?” he asked, heart sinking.

The soldier startled awake and glanced about him, bewildered. “Nngk?”

“JARVIS?”

“It would appear Raven and Thadcus are in sir’s workshop. He is with them currently.”

Bucky squinted. “I thought they couldn’t use the elevator.”

“They did not use the elevator, Sergeant Barnes.”

“How unusual,” Thor sighed.

Chapter Text

When he wanted to get work done, Tony locked himself in his workshop. It was a good system; no one bothered him, and the only way to get in was to enter the key codes to the door—codes that only four people in the world had: Tony himself (obviously), Pepper (also obviously), Steve Rogers (but only because he pulled the whole “What if you fall down and hurt yourself and I am team leader and that’s something I should really have and Tony I swear to God if you don’t hand over the codes I will sign the team up for a week in one of those team building retreats.”) and Rhodey (best friends get key codes and it made it easier to work on War Machine when its occupant could come in).

Tony was locked safely away in his workshop, content in his slice of peace insulated from the Avengers and all the mayhem of Stark Industries, as close to Zen as he could get. Fortunately, today he put away the soldering torches and focused on the designs for updates to the Iron Man armor, because he was pretty sure that hearing the piping voice of Raven right by his elbow would have resulted in him dropping it and probably lighting the entire place on fire.

“Whatcha doing?”

“Gah!” he barked, leaping easily a foot in the air, hand clenching at his chest as his heart stuttered behind the arc reactor. He glowered at the little girl while she stared up at him with a look of pure childlike innocence. “What the fff. What are you doing!?”

“Nothing.”

He narrowed his eyes at her and she offered him a small, sweet smile that he did not buy for a hot minute. At the sound of a mechanical whir he glanced over to Dummy and saw Thing 2 dangling from the main support strut, grinning so wide the top of his head might fall off. “You have robots!” Thadcus enthused when he felt Tony’s eyes on him, apparently impervious to the disapproval rolling off the man in waves.

“Dummy, put him down!” he barked. “How did you two get in here?”

“We walked,” Raven supplied without the slightest note of guile.

“The door was locked.”

“How come his name is Dummy, Uncle Tony?” Thadcus asked. His feet were once again on the floor and he ran his hand over what passed for Dummy’s head. The bot whirred.

“Because he has very limited AI capabilities.” He frowned. “And I’m not your uncle. It’s just ‘Tony,’ got that?”

“Father says you’re Uncle Thor’s shield brother. So that would make you our uncle,” Thadcus reasoned.

“Uncle Tony can we see the Iron Man suit?” Raven asked.

Tony categorized showing them the Iron Man armor under Bad Ideas. He had no clue what Loki was planning and no idea what his offspring were capable of. The responsible thing to do would be to gently decline, explain in small words that the workshop was not a good place for children, and then whisk them upstairs to Thor’s floor and wash his hands of the whole thing.

But Tony Stark is many things. Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, yes, but strip all that away and what did that leave? An engineer with a reckless streak a mile wide and a curiosity he indulged perhaps a bit too much, that’s what. If there was a harmless-looking big, shiny, red button out in the ass-end of nowhere, with an equally big sign reading “DO NOT TOUCH ON PAIN OF DEATH,” Tony would probably elbow his way through the throng of like-minded madmen to slam his hand on the button. Repeatedly. There are many things that draw Tony like a moth to flame: booze, beautiful women (read: Pepper) and trouble.

This was what Tony knew.

Loki was a powerful, dangerous, psychotic sorcerer. He had two children, who looked just like him, except smaller and less crazy. The world of science had no way to explain magic—there were currently people getting their PhDs in physics with papers trying to describe what the hell Loki did to New York when he got bored, and all their papers usually concluded with the literary equivalent of throwing their hands in the air and saying “Magic! How does it work!” He also knew that he locked the door to his workshop, and JARVIS was not operating the elevator for people under five feet tall, so Thing 1 and Thing 2 should not even be on his floor, let alone inside his personal sanctum.

He crouched until he could talk to Raven on her level, sliding his charming smile into place. “I can’t show you the Iron Man suit today. I had Happy drop it off at the cleaners for me. But if you do something for me, I’ll take you out for ice cream. How does that sound?”

Raven’s eyes glowed. Thadcus peered over her shoulder, mouth puckered with something like suspicion. He shuffled closer so that he stood directly behind her, hands in his pockets. “What do you want us to do?” he asked.

“See, I’m real curious about magic, and I was thinking, since your old man is a sorcerer, maybe you could show me some. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. Deal?”

The twins exchanged a loaded glance. Thadcus spat into his palm and held it out for a handshake.

“Ew,” Tony muttered, face scrunching up.

“You have to shake on it, else it’s just words,” Thadcus explained.

Cringing to himself, Tony shook his little, damp hand. “It’s a deal.”

“The deal is brokered,” Thadcus intoned, and what felt like a mild electric shock shot through Tony’s arm. The man gasped and yanked his arm away. He flexed his fingers, feeling tingles shudder through his bones, as if he had slept on his side wrong and his entire forearm had fallen asleep.

“What the hell was that?” he gasped.

Thadcus wiggled his own fingers, but leveled Tony with a curious look, unperturbed. “Magic. I want rocky road ice cream.”

“Not so fast,” he sighed. “Just…explain what you just did.”

The twins exchanged another look. “It’s old magic,” Raven began. She picked her words with care, as if trying to talk someone through how to do something that was muscle memory to her. “Um, you make a deal, but it’s just words until you mean it. The handshake makes it real?”

“Yeah,” Thadcus replied with a decisive nod. He rubbed his palm against his jeans. “Magic is…I dunno. It’s not real like buildings and dogs and desks are real. It’s more real. Somehow.”

Tony chewed that over for a moment before deciding that he needed a stiff drink before they went any further. Of course, responsible role model that he was, he would have to settle for coffee. He poured himself a mug and leaned against the counter. Dummy rolled to Thadcus and plucked playfully at the boy’s collar. “So what happens now?” Tony asked, not missing the way Thadcus patted Dummy’s support strut. “What if I made a deal to take you to the moon and I couldn’t deliver?”

They both shrugged their shoulders. “I’m not very good yet,” Thadcus admitted. “After the deal is brokered, if someone reneges on their end they’re supposed to die. But if you don’t take us for ice cream you’ll prolly get a tummy ache.”

“Renege? That’s a pretty advanced word for a rug rat.”

Thadcus and Raven both tipped their heads in confusion, but it was Raven who answered. “Renege isn’t an advanced word. ‘Condescending’ is an advanced word.”

That startled a laugh out of him. He gave a rueful shake of his head. “Fair enough. So Thad can make deals like the devil. Can you do anything, Raven?”

Her eyes lit up. “Can I!”

Thor rapped at the door with Barnes at his back, the former looking thunderous and the latter looking a bit sick. “JARVIS, get the door?”

The door slid open with a hiss and the god of thunder stormed inside, arms crossed. “What is happening here?” he demanded. Barnes waited outside the workshop, very carefully not looking at the tools scattered on the work bench, the fluorescent lighting, or the various machines humming along the walls. Tony was surprised Robocop came this far; Barnes avoided labs, sick bays and workshops like the plague.

“What’s cooking, Point Break? Just getting in some quality time with my shield niblings.”

Thor scowled. “Talk sense, Stark. Even the Allspeak cannot parse your treacherous tongue.”

“We’re going for ice cream. Did you want to come?”

Thor glanced over at the children and scowled even harder. “Thadcus! Cease climbing Stark’s robotic golem!”

“It’s just a robot, really.”

Thor turned back to his teammate. “They should not be rewarded for disobedience.”

“A-whut?”

“I must be firm on this, Man of Iron. Though Loki’s children are my wards for but a few days, I must still treat them with the consideration they are due. They cannot be allowed to run amok the tower, and in this I have failed. But they also must not be rewarded for disobedience. I must decline your invitation for ice cream and keep a better watch on my niece and nephew.”

“Aw!” Raven whined and flung herself on the ground for a hearty tantrum.

Thadcus merely leaned against Dummy, features thoughtful, his eyes not on Tony but definitely watching him all the same. That little bastard. 

Raven rolled around on the cement floor, slamming her tiny fists and heels and wailing. They watched her for a moment, both adults at a loss for what to do with a small child in full tantrum mode. “Raven, stop that!” Thor barked, but she only wailed louder. The glass of the light fixtures overhead started to rattle ominously and Tony pushed his fingers into his ears. The day just kept getting better and better.

“Raven!” Thor yelled, face going a bit red and here we go, he was going to lose his temper.

And then the light cut out. The girl went silent and still in the pitch black that followed. “This is getting ridiculous,” Bucky growled from the doorway. Tony heard him pad through the room and stoop to pick her up blindly. “Thor, if I see you yell at her like that again I’ll clock you one, don’t think I won’t. Raven, if you even think about yelling in my ear from here I will put you in the corner for the rest of the night. Capiche?”

“Uh huh.”

“JARVIS, lights.” The lights came on and Bucky carefully schooled his face from horror to something closer to neutrality. “You two need to stay with a designated adult. The tower isn’t safe for you to run around in, okay?”

“Yes, Uncle Bucky,” the twins told him, eyes on the floor.

He glowered at Thor and Tony. “I’m going to con Steve into making dinner.” With that, he turned on his heel and marched out of the workshop, Raven on his hip and Thadcus scurrying behind him.

This is the thing about living with a recovering brainwashed soviet assassin. Steve watched as Bucky went from volatile drone to being a person again, and though the process was long and riddled with relapses, he cherished every new milestone. But the process was a long one, and it was difficult. There were no silver bullets, no magic cures, no reset button. Bucky could perform small errands inside the tower without incident, and though he had left the tower before he liked having Sam or Steve on his six. The nightmares had begun to get better, and Bucky was relearning how to ask for things and make decisions for himself. Still, Bucky did not care for physical contact, loud noises, sudden movements, medium-sized crowds, medical staff, or using more than the bare minimum number of words required to express an immediate need. Any one of those things could set off a flashback, a panic attack, or worse.

He did not know why Raven and Thadcus had taken such a shine to Bucky, but seeing the three of them together was at once jarring and kind of nice. By the time they reached Steve’s floor, Bucky had Raven held under his flesh arm like a football and Thadcus was holding his metal hand, the former chattering a mile a minute while Bucky nodded.

“Uncle Steeeeeeve!” she squealed, and wriggled until Bucky put her on her feet.

“Hello,” Steve said. Her little feet pattered across the room toward him, then made a sharp detour to the wall. She picked up his shield and came back, grinning. “What’s for dinner?”

“Um, what did you have in mind?”

“Cereal.”

“Cereal isn’t food, knucklehead,” Thadcus rebuffed her. “I want ice cream.”

“Maybe we can have ice cream after dinner,” Steve hedged. He opened the fridge. Out in the hall the elevator dinged and Tony and Thor walked in. Steve shut the fridge with a sigh. “Team dinner?”

“We want ice cream,” Raven told them, still clutching Steve’s shield.

“We should have waffles,” Tony replied, rolling his weight from heel to toe and back. “Is that coffee?” He took a mug from the cupboard and poured the rest of the pot into it.

“Please, help yourself,” Steve muttered.

JARVIS chimed at them, the AI version of clearing his throat. “Agents Romanoff, Barton and Coulson have returned early from their mission, Captain.”

“Good. Let them know we’re all in here. Apparently it’s waffle night.”

Waffles were easy to whip together and cook, but Steve did not bank on Raven and Thadcus “helping.”

“I wanna do it!” Raven snapped, reaching for the carton of eggs and nearly dropping them on the floor. Bucky caught them before they fell and narrowed his eyes at her. Steve let her crack the eggs and put Thadcus on batter stirring duty while he shooed Bucky to the coffee machine to brew a fresh pot. Stark, of course, made himself comfortable at the table but Thor agreed to set the table and start pouring orange juice for everyone.

"What's all this?" Coulson asked, no doubt drawn by the smell of cooking waffles and the promising gurgle of the coffee maker. He stopped dead when he saw the twins. "Captain Rogers, what is this?" he demanded. Natasha padded behind him, her hair wet from a quick shower, the only sign of the mission a line of tight, surgically precise stitches along the side of her neck. 

Steve waved a hand at Thor. People without a problem chewing out Captain America still tended to wilt under Thor's wrathful glare. Thor still steeled himself before he answered. "Son of Coul, Lady Natasha, may I introduce to you my niece and nephew, Raven and Thadcus. They are under my care for the next few days."

Raven and Thadcus watched Coulson and Natasha for a long moment. "Hi," they said softly, wide eyes and innocence.

Coulson and Natasha perfected their poker faces over the years, but this piece of information seemed to be putting them to the test. "Loki's children?" Coulson managed to choke out. His hand wandered to his chest, to the gnarled scar under his shirt- a souvenir from the Chitauri invasion and a constant reminder of the god of mischief himself. 

"Loki's children?" Natasha asked, her voice a neutral monotone, one perfect eyebrow raised. She looked the twins over for a moment, from their longish inky black hair, their pale complexions, their waif-like frames, their delicate facial features. Who they belonged to was not a doubt, but the idea of Loki actually copulating and then being involved with his offspring defied even her loose expectations. "Clint is not going to be happy."

Speak of the devil. "Hey guys, is there coffee?" Clint knuckled at one eye and blinked over Natasha's head into the kitchen, taking in at a moment the cooking mess, his team assembled, the nearly done coffee, the tension in Bucky's shoulders the two miniature Lokis and... "What the hell!?"

Chapter Text

The twins huddled up on Thor’s couch, not looking anyone in the eye. “Is Hawkeye mad at us?” Raven asked in a small voice.

Steve settled cross legged on the floor. Downstairs, Thor and Bucky cleaned up the glass and blood while Natasha worked damage control on Clint. No one knew where Coulson went. Steve rubbed a hand over his face. “No, sweetie. He isn’t mad at you. He was just…surprised.”

“We’re sorry,” Thadcus whispered into his knees, curled up almost into a fetal position.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Tony padded into the living room and rustled a plastic bag in their direction. “I uh, I brought some ice cream, since waffles are out of the question for tonight.”

Thadcus mumbled something that sounded like “Not hungry.” Steve and Tony shared a look—as far as freak outs went, Clint’s was almost unavoidable but…

They were just children. They didn’t need to see that kind of outburst, let alone directed at them. And tomorrow would be a new day, but that didn’t mean Clint would get out of a good ass kicking. Tony stuffed the cartons of ice cream into the freezer.

“I miss Mom,” Raven piped up. Her bottom lip trembled. Beside her, Thadcus nodded and sniffled and tried to make himself impossibly smaller.

Steve blinked. For some reason he never put any thought to their mother, as if they had sprung fully formed from Loki’s forehead (and wasn’t that an image). “Do you know her phone number?”

They shook their heads. “She’s gone where phones don’t work,” Raven supplied.

Ice clutched at Steve’s chest. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “I miss Mom.”

Tony reappeared with their little backpacks in hand. He and Steve riffled through them, turning up spare clothes and coloring books but nothing that would help get them in touch with the twins’ mother. Assuming she’s still alive, Steve thought grimly. He knew Thor liked to use flowery language when he tiptoed around an unpleasant topic; it wasn’t a stretch to think of Loki doing the same if the mother of his children passed away unexpectedly. And then there would be Loki, an evil space sorcerer with a grudge and a brain like a sack of cats, alone with two children.

Steve felt the suspicion creep up on him. Loki’s not coming back for them. And wouldn’t that be like him? Dump his own kin on some bleeding hearts until they became convenient, like as human shields or the vessels of some kind of lunatic legacy. Steve wasn’t good with kids—never had been—but he found himself pulling Raven into a tight hug. Loki would have to put him in the ground before he laid a hand on either of them. The conviction of the thought cut through him like a knife, straight to the bone. He forced himself to breathe under the weight of it, and looked up to see Tony clutching Thadcus the same way, as the boy cried into his shirt, and Tony’s face was a rictus of several warring emotions, chief among them terror and rage and something Steve didn’t dare identify.

When Bucky and Thor returned to them, all agreed it was time to put the kids to bed. It was an hour long process before they were finally tucked into a bed in Thor’s spare room. Bucky told them a bedtime story, a fairytale of some sort, slipping into Russian without realizing halfway through, not that they noticed. He ran a nervous hand down the blanket, making sure they were warm enough before padding to the door, as silent as any assassin, turning out the light and pulling the door almost closed.

Steve called a team meeting.

Clint and Coulson sulked a hair too long, arriving to Thor’s kitchen table about fifteen minutes after everyone else.

“I’m sure there’s a private school that would love to have them,” Tony was saying, pushing his rocky road ice cream around the bowl.

“I know, but I don’t know if I would send them to Xavier’s,” Steve said. His rainbow sherbet turned a strange green color as he stirred it, but he wasn’t really looking at it.

“Don’t tell me Captain America has a thing against mutants.”

Steve rolled his eyes. “No, but I do have a problem with the fact that Charles Xavier likes to enlist his underage students into a child army to fight his fights for him. That I have a problem with.”

“Okay, fair point.”

“What the fuck?” Clint sputtered, because obviously Coulson wasn’t going to. His voice broke the spell of calm and silence fell upon the table. The temperature dropped. “You think we’re going to keep them?”

Bucky stood up from the table, his chair not making a single noise, and the look on his face reminded all of them that the Winter Soldier didn’t become a ghost story in the intelligence community by being nice. Menace rolled off him in waves. He pointed a single metal digit at Clint. “They’re sleeping. If you wake them, no one can save you from me.”

Steve cleared his throat. “Clint, Phil, have a seat. We were just discussing what’s going to happen with the twins.”

“You mean Loki’s obvious trap?” Clint growled, hands fisted at his sides.

“Have a seat, Barton,” Tony growled.

Coulson dropped into a chair and Clint followed, face pinched up with disgruntlement. Thor blew out a breath and pushed his bowl away. “While the hawk-eyed one may have overreacted when he saw the young ones, I must point out that we all thought the twins posed a threat to us. In the beginning, was it not you, Tony, who said they could have been traps set by my brother.”

“We’re pretty sure they’re not traps,” Tony cut in. “They’re kids, plain and simple.”

“How do you know!?” Clint snapped. “Loki could be playing you! He could have put some kind of mind whammy on you and you’d never know.”

Natasha pinched the bridge of her nose. “Clint, calm down.”

“No! I will not calm down!”

Thor frowned up at him. “Clinton, even if Loki ensorcelled us, he would not have been able to affect you, or the Son of Coul, or the Lady Natasha.”

“I’ve seen them myself, Clint,” Natasha stressed. “There’s nothing weird about them. They’re kids.”

“I don’t trust them.”

Steve laid a hand on Bucky’s shoulder to keep him seated. “Hawkeye, you don’t have to trust them. Just…stay out of the way, okay? No more violent outbursts in front of the kids; they don’t need that kind of stress in their lives.”

Clint rolled his eyes and stormed out of the room. “Let him go,” Coulson murmured as Natasha watched his retreating back. He turned to Steve and Thor, and accepted the bowl of ice cream when Tony pushed it into his hands.

Tony leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the table and rubbing his palms together. “Schools, clothes, food, childcare, toys, what else do growing kids need?”

“Medical care,” Steve said, tacking it onto the mental to-do list. “We need to get their immunization records.”

Bucky groaned and pressed a hand over his eyes. “Thank God for vaccines.”

“So we’re really doing this?” Coulson said. He gripped the edge of the table to keep from pressing a hand over the scar on his chest. His knuckles whitened. “We’re going to keep them?”

Thor bristled. “They are my niece and nephew, Son of Coul. Have care how you speak.”

“We have no way of knowing when Loki is going to come back for them,” Steve explained, as gently as he could. Thor settled a little easier in his seat. “And if he doesn’t come back, there’s no telling if their mother will…will be in a position to retrieve them. And Thor’s right; he’s next of kin.”

“The tower is the safest place for them to be,” Tony added loyally.

“They also make the tower a target for anyone with a grudge against Loki, including the man himself,” Coulson reminded them, and it wasn’t lost on Steve that Coulson had replaced some unsavory, choice noun for ‘man’ at the last moment.

“And what’s your alternative?” Bucky growled. The plates along his metal arm recalibrated with the kind of quiet, solicitous noise that haunted Coulson’s dreams. “Drop them into the wonderful foster care system and hope no one finds them in the middle of suburbia and decides to level a few schools to get to them?”

“Phil,” Natasha said, “they’re here to stay. For as long as necessary.”

Hunter threw his car in park and killed the engine. He clambered out of the rusted vehicle and strode through the winding graveyard path to the proud weeping willow and its singular occupant. In a more romantic world, there might have been a full moon overhead, or at least a dark and stormy night about the place. However, the waning moon cast the kind of light that only serves to outline the dark, and the still, breathless air could not be bothered to stir the leaves of the trees. Hunter moved with purpose, long legs making quick work of the beaten trail, soft with rain and the sighs of mourners, and despite the macabre display he did not show fear. He was, after all, the second-most dangerous thing here.

“Aw hell, she was right,” he grunted in the tree’s shadow. They, the insular if ubiquitous They, lynched someone here. They hanged a man with a noose of clothesline on goddamn holy ground, in front of the dead and everybody. Hunter glared up at the body swinging in slow circles from a willow branch creaking from unaccustomed strain. “She was right. You don’t actually weigh enough to die like that.”

Loki made an indignant choking noise and scrabbled ineffectually against the clothesline at his neck.

“You just…flap around in the wind. Don’t look at me like that.” Hunter took out his pocket knife and got to work. “How did they get the jump on you, huh? Riddle me that, trickster man.”

Loki dropped to the soft, cool soil with a gasp. He curled up on the mushy grass and coughed, willing his trachea open. Hunter fished about his person and produced an apple, gold in color and strangely heavy. He pushed it into Loki’s hands and waited for the Norse god to bite into its unyielding flesh. Hunter sat on the ground and waited, practicing patience. “No one should be able to get the jump on you, Luke. It’s not right.”

Loki spat a seed into the ground, where it sizzled green before fizzing out. “I couldn’t fight back,” he rasped. He swiped his sleeve over his mouth. “They came…like an avalanche. But they don’t know what I am.”

Hunter shook his head and turned to watch a pair of headlights creeping to a stop at the wrought iron gates. “Yeah, they don’t know you’re an evil-minded sneaky bastard. But at least they went after you.”

Loki barked a humorless laugh and slowly, laboriously, got to his feet. “Amora thinks she’s funny,” he spat. Green eyes flashed in the wan moonlight, and Hunter found himself returning that terrible grin. “But I think I’m hilarious.”

“And where did you learn that from, I wonder,” Hunter grumbled to himself.

Clunky black boots marched up the soft cemetery path to meet them. A soft voice lilted on the air, crooning. “Hexes, and oh-oh-ohs they haunt me, like gho-oh-ohsts they want me, to let go-oh-oh, they won’t. Let. Go. Hexes and ohs…”

Bucky went from sleeping to wakefulness in a heartbeat, apparently without passing through any kind of interim between. The door pressed to his back was cool and solid, and behind it were the soft sounds of waking. Changes in breathing, the shuffling of small limbs, the rasp of bedclothes against sheets. He got to his feet in one fluid motion and opened the door. “Good morning,” he said, voice pitched softly in the way that Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, greeted him.

Raven knuckled at her eyes. Thadcus clambered over her and hit the ground running, little feet slapping the floor as he lurched to Bucky’s side. He lifted him into his arms—he was just a little too large to fit against his hip without being awkward—and suffered the child’s morning breath as he pecked him on the cheek. Raven took his free hand—the metal one—and then they padded down to the kitchen to hunt for breakfast.

Jane found her Norse god boyfriend curled up under her desk. “Thor. What are you doing?”

He glanced up at her, pressed a finger to his lips. Jane sighed and poured herself a cup of coffee, checking her emails on her phone while she drank. She hadn’t finished her first cup before the pap-pap-pap of small feet crossed the threshold of her lab. She blinked. “Hello.”

The little boy looked like a very young Loki, but all resemblance slipped away as he grinned. She had seen Loki himself up close and knew that he never smiled when he could smirk, never laughed if he could sneer. This child grinned, eyes lighting up like a beacon, and it was an honest smile of discovery, of knowing. “Hello,” he said softly, and reached under her desk to poke Thor, who had a near-identical grin on his face.

And then the little boy charged out the door, pap-pap-pap, and Thor followed after, his own tread eerily quiet for such a large man. Jane followed them, nursing a second cup of coffee.

Thadcus padded across Thor’s floor, finding Tony and Steve within minutes, and the queue of adults trailing him lengthened, ducklings all. He found Raven by her feet, where she crawled behind a couch but not far enough to hide all of her, and then they began searching in earnest.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to find him,” Steve said after some time. “Bucky is very good at hide and seek.”

Thadcus and Raven huffed near identical laughs. Jane set her drained cup on a handy counter and crossed her arms, entranced by the search.

They eventually found Bucky under the couch, limbs curled in against himself, body flattened as low as it could go.

“I didn’t even know he was under there!” Raven cried.

If Clint kept his distance from the kids, Natasha stuck to them like glue. Come afternoon she observed them closely, lips pursed and eyes narrowed, as if looking for some trap, some note of disingenuousness.

Raven stared back. The stares of children always haunted Natasha in public—with her bright red hair and symmetrical face, babies and toddlers watched her with unblinking attention on public transportation and when she stood in checkout lines. And those little stares did haunt her; they were always so uncomplicated, but still demanding. Raven stared up at Natasha from halfway across Thor’s living room and she was in no way measuring Natasha up or waiting for some kind of response. No, she merely felt the burn of Natasha’s gaze on her and returned it with interest.

They stared at each other, unblinking, neither looking away. Natasha sucked in her cheeks and made a fish face, the way she saw Clint do when small children looked at him too long. Raven’s brow furrowed, and she sucked in her own cheeks, overshooting the expression and making a suction noise with her face. “How do you do that?” she demanded, and tried again before Natasha could answer. She made another suction noise.

And another.

And another.

I’ve created a monster, Natasha realized as, on the other side of the room, Thadcus looked up from his coloring book and made an answering suction noise, this one louder than the ones his sister had been able to produce so far.

In hindsight, Tony should not have brought the kids to the store. He also probably shouldn’t have taken Steve with him, either, but the Frostiest Soldier hadn’t wanted to come for a laundry list of reasons and Thor didn’t trust anyone else to gently peel Dr. Foster away from her work for her requisite mealtimes and breaks. And Tony going alone was out of the question, because if left unsupervised he would have probably come back with a bag of oranges and a bottle of whiskey.

“What did you feed them for lunch?” Steve accused out of the side of his mouth. They paused at the entrance of the store to watch the twins yank a shopping cart from its corral, Raven yelling at top volume just to hear herself and Thadcus immediately clamoring to sit inside the basket.

“Cake.”

Steve made that face he made when he wanted to bodily lift Tony off the ground and shake him but couldn’t because there were too many witnesses.

“Cap, have you seen what the inside of my fridge looks like?” Tony countered dryly.

Steve shook his head with a sigh. “Alright, let’s just focus on making the most of this shopping trip. We can take the east aisles and make a sweep along the perimeter of the store and as long as we steer clear of the—Tony! Tony!”

Tony shot him a sloppy salute and pushed the cart at a brisk pace. “It’s a shopping trip, Cap. Not a military campaign.”

Steve loped alongside the cart. “Raven, get back here! No, put that back.”

“But we neeeeeeed it, Uncle Steve!” she wailed, clutching the big yellow box of cereal to her chest.

“Yeah, put it in the cart, sweetie,” Tony laughed.

Steve shot him another Look. “Tony, don’t undermine me in front of the kids,” he hissed.

“Seriously, you need to unclench.”

“You need to respect me. We need to present a unified front—“

“What part of this isn’t a military maneuver—“

“It’s just a metaphor, for shit’s sake—“

“We’re not your little soldiers and I won’t let you act like—“

“If we’re going to make this work—“

“Excuse me.”

Both superheroes shut their mouths and pointed apologetic if strained smiles at the store associate. For a moment Tony thought she was going to ask them to leave; going by the tightness of her ponytail, the dark circles under her eyes and the way some sticky purple substance spattered across her otherwise blue work shirt, she was not interested in dealing with anyone’s bullshit. But then she gave them her own apologetic if strained smile. “Did I see you two come in with a pair of kids?”

Tony blinked at her, then blinked at the cart. The conspicuously childless cart. “Shit. Shit! Shitshitshitshit—“

“Stop!” the woman commanded, and Tony’s mouth slammed shut again. Growing up with Peggy Carter and Maria Stark in your life will do that to you. “If you two keep fighting like that you won’t make it out of this alive,” she went on in a gentler tone. “How old are your kids?”

“They’re not—“

“Six,” Steve cut him off with a meaningful glare.

She nodded. “And reasonably smart? Take a walk down past frozen and check in the toy aisle. They’re either looking at ice cream or looking at toys.” She brandished a walkie-talkie while she gestured for the most immediate route they could take. “I’ll detour through electronics just to be safe.” Her radio unleashed a burst of static and she murmured into the receiver, “We got a Code Adam situation, Caucasian six-year-olds, twins. That’s a Code Adam.”

“You think they’re in toys,” Steve stressed, eying each passing shopper as if they might be hiding the twins in their pockets. “They’ve never been to this store before, they wouldn’t know where the toy aisle is.”

The worker raised an eyebrow at him. “Believe me, kids can get into anything if they want to. I got a few of my own, and let me tell you, they can sniff out candy, toys and trouble from a hundred paces.”

Raven and Thadcus were, in fact, in the toy aisle. One of them had found a shopping basket and they were methodically filling it with everything their eyes fell upon. By the time Tony, Steve and their new mission assist arrived to the scene, the basket overflowed with variations of princess-themed and car-themed toys.

Their associate and new best friend smirked at the tableau even as Raven and Thadcus froze, seeing the looks on Tony and Steve’s faces. “You can just set the basket aside and I’ll take care of it before I go on lunch,” she told them. “Oh, and we totally sell child leashes. Aisle ten, left hand side, eye-level.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Steve said, unleashing the full power of the Patriotic Glare on Raven and Thadcus, who radiated doe-eyed innocence and honest bafflement at the adults. “These two are going to put away all these toys.”

“Baby leashes aren’t a bad idea, though,” Tony added archly.

She chuckled and checked her watch. “Alright, well let me know if you guys need anything. I gotta get back on the clock in a minute here.” She patted at her pants pockets and produced a name badge, which she clipped to her collar. “And I’m Kerry, by the way.”

“Thank you, Kerry,” Steve sighed. “I think we can handle it from here.”

Thadcus scrabbled at the clips on his new child leash, annoyed. He could reach the little buckles well enough, but he didn’t have the dexterity or hand strength to undo them. “Why are you ruining my life?” he wheedled, pouting up at Tony.

“Because I’m a mean, heartless bastar—meanie,” he grunted, and dropped a jar of smooth peanut butter into the cart. Raven for her part seemed perfectly content with her new accessory; the leashes looked like little backpacks and secured around the kids’ chests with unyielding buckles. They put a pink monkey leash on her and clipped the other end to Steve’s belt. Thadcus had a blue elephant and Tony secured him directly to the cart.

The four moseyed up to the checkout and Tony took a long moment to admire their haul: a new pair of secondary shoes for both of the twins, a Pete the Cat puzzle, a Pete the Cat storybook (with a soundtrack included!), some Diplo blocks, assorted clothing, nutritional kid food, a booklet of stickers, a big ass tub of yogurt (for Steve), some fruit, and a noisy robot toy that Tony snuck into the cart when the kids hadn’t been looking. Steve had been looking though, but he didn’t say anything, merely gave Tony an indulgent eye roll.

Kerry checked them out, and if she noticed the twins glaring at her sullenly she gave every sign of being impervious to their disapproval. “I’m glad it all worked out,” she chuckled.

Watching her work was a thing of beauty. Tony usually didn’t bother with supermarkets—most everything he needed could be ordered online and would be sent to the Tower within three to five business days—but even his eye noticed the way Kerry moved. She scanned and bagged their items efficiently with a strategy honed with years of experience, and she worked to make every muscle movement count. And all of that apparently happened without any input from her higher faculties as she smoothly made small talk with them. “So how long have you two been together?”

Steve blushed. “We’re not like that,” he hurried to assure her, and for the first time Tony wondered what kind of picture he and Steve made, wandering around the store with a pair of kids in tow, bickering and talking about the twins and their new shared responsibilities.

Domestic, he realized, while Steve stammered and clumsily steered the conversation away from his and Tony’s unwedded bliss. They looked domestic. And it was such a banal realization, but for some reason it stuck with him even after he paid with his card and they loaded up the car with their loot and he drove through the cluster fuck of New York on a Saturday afternoon. Tony Stark never thought much about having a family, but he glanced in the rearview mirror at the twins while Steve droned about inflation pricing and seven dollars for yogurt is daylight robbery and he couldn’t help but wonder if this was what normal was supposed to feel like. A little fucked up, a little horrifying, but comfortable in its way.