1+1=4
Natasha:
Some agents double as teachers for the new recruits. Those that are sent on quite a few missions are sometimes dragged in as substitutes. Agent May is lucky to have Agent Romanoff to sub her class, even if her students seem to think otherwise.
Half of the group was awestruck and Nat plans on giving a few of the more experienced agents who happen to be unable to keep their mouths shut a face full of mat at some point in the near distant future. They wouldn’t focus, and the males? Yeah, they may be leaving with a few more bruises than necessary that day. She really didn’t take kindly to the new recruits trying to catch a feel.
She taught the group some basic hits and throws when Coulson enters the training area. She doesn’t acknowledge her silent observer until he calls out for her. “Agent Romanoff, Director Fury would like to speak with you in his office.” The last time Fury had called for her was to give the three of them their new assignment of making up Strike Team Delta. No one goes to Fury’s office.
“Class dismiss.” Natasha orders the newbies, already following Phil out of the area. “What happened?” She knows Phil would tell her if something went wrong on Clint’s mission. They know she’s able of putting her emotions on hold when need be. She’s proven it time and time again over the years she’s worked with them.
Phil won’t look at her, which just makes her even more concerned. “You’ll see, Agent Romanoff.”
Nat pulls her emotions inward, becoming the cold assassin that she was raised to be. They sent Clint on an assignment that would have him play at being a security guard at a Hydra facility. Clint would find a way to mess up a simple information gathering assignment. Besides the fact he stayed two weeks longer than originally planned.
Agent Phil Coulson opens the door to Fury’s office and Natasha walks in behind him expecting the worst. What she doesn’t expect is to see her husband perfectly healthy, holding the hands of two children that may be about eight. Or maybe nine. They’re not small children, but they aren’t teenagers.
One of them had a hand held up with red light shining from it, as though holding something back. Her gaze moves from Clint and the children to where Fury is being held against the wall by the same red light coming from the girl’s hand.
Clint smiles her way. “Hey, Nat.”
Fury doesn’t look so much as, well, furious as more like annoyed. “Agent Barton, please tell your ward to put me down.”
Nat stares, a bit wide eyed at Clint bending down and whispering in the child’s ear. The girl nodded, and pulled the red mist away. The boy on his other side looked to be furious. They both looked to be about the same age.
“Clint, what’s going on?” Her tone was mild, but her emotions are anything but. What in the world did he get into this time?
The smile he has covers his entire face, and if she didn’t know any better, she would say he was excited. “I found kids!”
Wow. Just wow. Clint should get a reward for being the most obvious agent of that SHIELD has to offer with that comment.
Clint:
Originally he had been there to figure out what Hydra was doing at a remote site. When he did find out, he told Phil that it’ll be a bit longer. Clint’s just happy that the relationship he had with his handler was so he didn’t have to explain everything. He was nearly caught just sending the message adding a couple of weeks.
He became friendly with the kids, and kept the not so nice guards away from them. The boy was the most grateful, and most suspicious of the two of them. Clint passed messages between the two kids that Hydra scientists were experimenting on, and worked on a plan to get the two of them out.
Clint set off an explosion in one part of the building (yay delay fuses!) and took out the guards in front of the cell doors. He stole a set of keys and got the boy out first before going for the girl. His plan dealt with him doing most of the heavy lifting, so he didn’t expect the two kids to actually help.
They did, and he was grateful for that. He actually expected to end up with at least a few wounds on this escape route, but he knew that the way he picked was the best bet for all of them to get to the plane he had stored away.
He took the two of them and didn’t even have time to buckle them in before taking off with enemy planes on following. He yelled at them to buckle in, not even sure if they would be able to understand him at the way he was yelling.
To say Phil and Nick were surprised when he came back with packages? Yeah, definitely an understatement.
And now Nat looks just as surprised as they did a few hours ago (Wanda didn’t like Fury referring to them as it). He probably should have called to say that he was coming in with more than just himself. Oops.
Director Fury straightens his clothes, and Clint has a feeling that if he didn’t like him so much, he definitely would be shot right now. “Agent Barton, since you have a repertoire with…the children, you get the joy of being in charge of them.”
That may not have been part of the plan. “Sir, I know nothing about kids.”
Fury’s look was incredulous. “Then you’ll learn. Get out of my OFFICE!”
Clint scurried on out, pulling the two kids behind him into the hallway. He turns back to see Phil and Nat standing with him in the hallway. “We have extra beds.” He put on his best puppy face, surely at least one of them would fall for it.
“Durak.” Nat’s accent curled the voice on the r and he knew she was annoyed, but on board with the plan. She only called him that when she was about to give into whatever foolish plan he had come up with. Usually his plans end out alright.
Phil, if he was anybody else, would be shrugging. “This isn’t the first time Clint’s brought home a stray.” Uh oh, Clint doesn’t want to be Phil when Nat gets her revenge for that comment.
Snapshots:
The family took some time for each of them to get used to, but eventually they all did. They became one big and happy family, with some issues thrown in because they are still human.
Clint and Pietro – Playing Fetch
Clint pulls back the bowstring, lines up the target, and lets the arrow fly. Instead of hitting wooden dummy straight in the target painted on its chest, it was plucked out of the sky by a silver and blue colored blur. “Ha! You’re going to have to try hard than that, old man!”
Clint’s smile promised retribution as he fingered the arrows beside him on the bench. In quick succession, he shot all ten arrows at the target in quick succession. Five of them hit the target straight on. The other five? Well, Pietro caught them. “How about that, punk?”
Nat walked into the range, and looked at the two males in the family in exasperation. “Clint, what do you think you’re doing?” They had been over this multiple times. Clint wasn’t allowed to shoot at Pietro, even if the kid drove him insane.
“Playing fetch.” Clint smirked, one arm going around the boy at his side.
At first the smiles were matching, until the boy completely heard what the man had said. “Hey! I’m not dog.”
“You were fetching his arrows.” Pietro’s twin and usual partner in crime, piped up from where she followed Nat from the mess hall. Today was supposed to be a simple day of training for the Barton/Romanoff/Maximoff family.
Nat should have known Clint would make a game out of it.
Natasha and Wanda – Shopping Trip
The twins given into their care needed clothes that weren’t SHIELD issue and three times too big for them. Originally the plan was that Clint and Nat were going to pick up some clothes for them after guessing their sizes. Instead, Clint had been sent on a mission at last moment and it was left for Natasha to find clothes.
So the plan changed to Natasha going and picking up clothes for the two, just to be surprised at Wanda standing awkwardly at her table. Pietro had already been sent to the track for his morning run. The poor kid. If Pietro didn’t get enough energy out of his system early on, he couldn’t focus for the rest of the day. Usually Wanda tagged along when Phil came to pick him up or they dropped him before going to their own training.
“Agent Coulson said I should go with you.” Wanda pulled at the too big shirt that covered her frame, and Nat has no idea what could have made Phil think that sending the girl that could move things with her mind, read minds, etc. out with the civilians.
Though, she wondered the same thing when they first let her out of the walls after her own training. She had been surprised that Clint had been right about SHIELD then. “Fine.”
Nat picked a place where she had went shopping for, Wanda following at her side. The girl kept her head down and tried to avoid making eye contact with anyone. At that age, Natasha may have done the same if she had been saved from the Red Room Black Widow program. Maybe. Possibly. “Try this on.” Natasha held out a simple red dress for the girl, and she watched Wanda’s eyes light up.
“I like red.” Wanda fingered the cloth, and Nat added that dress definitely to the pile to take back. SHIELD was supplying this shopping trip, so why not?
Nat looked through the outfits and found a red shirt for the girl. “So do I.”
Clint and Natasha – Late Night Talks
The day had been a long one. Natasha was just back from a mission and really just wanted to get some much needed rest. There was only so much adult babysitting one can do for the most annoying man in the universe before joining the side of the many people wanting to kill him. She was tempted to give the other people a hand at killing the annoying scientist.
Luckily for her (and the annoying scientist), they were able to get him to the permanent safe house so that he’ll be someone else’s problem. She just wants to get home, take a shower, and sleep for three days. Preferably in that order.
It took forever to finish the preliminary reports back at headquarters before Coulson told her to go on home. She knows that after her three days of sleeping, she was going to have even more paperwork to go through. The joy of the bureaucratic system; there was always more paperwork do.
She was tired, smelled because the past week had very little access to running water, and couldn’t wait to get home to her family. She sneaks into the house, or at least is near silent as she entered the home in the suburbs. Another place in the suburbs, hopefully they won’t destroy this one like they had the last.
A light on the kitchen stays her feet from going to the master bathroom and instead to who could be up at this time of night. The kids’ bed time was hours ago. The only person who should be up would be Clint, but even he was usually asleep by this time.
She goes in there to see Clint staring at a beer bottle in front of him, his eyes unfocused like when he was overthinking. She shouldn’t have been able to get as close as she did when he turned with a kitchen blade in hand. The bad part about being a master assassin, or living with one, was the instincts that had been honed over a life time.
He places the knife down, a sad smile on his face. “Hey, Nat. Didn’t expect you till tomorrow.” The empty beer bottles in front of him told her that whatever happened to him today was also bad.
“Had a break.” She answered, grabbing the bottle from him and setting it to the side. Usually they didn’t talk about the nightmares that had each of them wandering the halls late at night. “How many have you had?”
Clint hardly ever drinks. For him to have done so, either the nightmares were worse than normal or something else must have happened. “Four, I think.” He shrugged, as though it didn’t matter. “How was the mission?”
“Dirty. The guy deserved a kick in the pants.” When he didn’t smile at that, she knew that things weren’t going to be so easy to solve. “You?”
“I wasn’t sent on a mission, you know that.” His words are a bit slurred. Either from the alcohol or maybe from his lack of hearing aids. She knows his last good set was destroyed with a dip in the water.
The durak. “How was your day?” She kept the words soft, and if he was completely there he would have known how annoyed she was getting at his childish behavior.
He shrugged, not even bothering to take the alcohol back from her. “Met an old friend today.” Considering their pasts, that could be either a good thing of a bad.
Soft footsteps behind her has Natasha turn with a smile for the preteen, even though Wanda doesn’t smile back. “His ex-wife.” Now that would explain his funky mood.
“Shouldn’t you be asleep?” Clint told the girl, his eyes finally focusing with the intelligence that those who knew him laid behind his fun guy exterior.
Wanda rolled her eyes, and pushed a memory at Natasha.
Natasha found herself back at SHIELD headquarters, looking at a blonde woman who was yelling something at Clint. She was looking up, and she suddenly figured out she was looking through Wanda’s eyes. Looking back through a memory. She sees that Pietro is with Clint, and relief that isn’t her own goes through her mind.
“So what happened to leave you on babysitting duty?” The blonde woman asked Clint, and instead of running out like Wanda was prone to do, she held back. Looking at the scene from a distance.
The kids may be catching different traits from her and Clint. The distance thing was purely Clint.
Clint’s smile is forced, and his bluster is unusually down as he pulls Pietro closer to him. “Nothing, Bobbi. This is my son, Pietro.”
Bobbi laughed at that moment, “What fool made you think that? Come on Clint, you and I both know you aren’t father material.”
Wanda chose that moment to come out of the shadows to stand on Clint’s other side. “Dad?” That shocked Natasha, because the kids hardly ever used that term inside of the headquarters. Usually they called them Aunt and Uncle, sometimes switching the other way in the case of Pietro when he’s feeling cheeky.
Bobbi looked at the three of them, her smile somewhat dimmer than before. “I guess Natalie left you with the kids?”
“My wife is busy with work.” Natasha heard the anger in his voice, but Bobbi either didn’t hear or not care. His words, though, reminded her that they never did change the file. Oops.
“Right.” Bobbi’s tone all but said her opinion to that statement. “Still shooting that bow of yours? I heard they were keeping you close to headquarters, away from the action.”
Clint had the two kids close to him, and Natasha can see the lines of stress on his face. “You heard wrong. Nice meeting you again, Bobbi.”
“Nobody needs an old man with a bow watching their back.” Natasha swears she hears Bobbi saying that as they walk away from the blonde woman.
But why would anyone say something that? She’s still in Wanda, and so when Wanda stretched out her mind to read the other woman’s thought, Nat could hear them as well.
The thoughts are covered in a blue sheen, and jealousy is the emotion that Wanda senses through the connection. Jealousy that didn’t feel genuine.
Natasha blinks as their kitchen comes into focus. “I didn’t know you could do that.” She tells the girl, surprised at how much she’s been able to accomplish in just the short time she had been away. They really were growing up to fast.
The blue color was something to be concerned about, and so were the emotions being pushed on someone else.
But that would be for the morning, tonight is for clearing up Clint. She nods for Wanda to go back to bed. They each knew that sometimes only one of them could deal with the males’ emotional turns. Wanda usually had Pietro, while Natasha had Clint’s to handle.
“Clint…take a shower with me.” Natasha jumped to a point that she knew would automatically pull him out of his thoughts. “I need the person I trust my back with to help me wash it.”
The humorous light was back in his eyes, and she could tell that this was the distraction he needed for the moment. “Still trust me?” Though that question made her think he wasn’t nearly as over it as she originally thought.
“With everything.” And she meant it, with every fiber of her being. She trusted Clint with everything that she was and will be, she only wished that he could see that.
“Race you.” His voice was soft so as not to wake up the kids, but he was already taking off to the bathroom.
The fool.
Clint and Wanda – Fighting for Love
Wanda crouched inside of the abandon building, trying to figure out what to do to get out of this predicament. She was surrounded on all sides with no way out, and she didn’t want to use her powers. Her powers were to be a last resort option, an option that she wouldn’t go to unless there was no other way. There had to be another way.
She nearly shoots Clint as he drops down beside her, the man who has helped raise her for the past eight years, half of her life so far. In ways, he’s more of a child than she’s ever been. In others? He’s never been a child at all. Similar to her and Pietro.
He nods her way, not breaking from Agent Mode as Pietro got fond of saying whenever Clint was actually being serious. Natasha has her own mode, but it’s not as abrupt of a change as Clint’s is. Aunt Natasha, mom, Agent Romanoff, Mrs. Barton, in every roll that she plays, she’s very efficient and slightly scary in her efficacy.
Clint jokes that she’s a mini Nat at times. Wanda takes it as a compliment. Just as Pietro does whenever they joke he’s a mini Clint. They both look up to the two agents that raised them like that of children looking up to their kids.
He’s looking at her to make the decision, because this was the moment that she has been training for. “What’s the plan, Scarlet Witch?” They haven’t even given her and Pietro real code names yet, but Clint already handed them out a few. Wanda like this one.
But she doesn’t like being here. She doesn’t like being trapped, and she definitely does not like having the only remaining option being her powers. “We’re low on ammo. Back up is over ten minutes out. This place is a kill box.” At least it’s one unless she uses her abilities.
Clint doesn’t even bring up her abilities, he just nods. “Okay. So those are the bad. What good do we have?” He’s the optimist of the four of them, and that’s something that she can admire.
Even if it is highly annoying at times. “We die quickly?” The answer seems simple to her, and he breaks out of Agent Mode to smile her way.
He doesn’t have time to respond because the enemy has already broken down the doors. She has a moment to act, to be able to save them both.
But she doesn’t.
The door breaks inward and the goons come filing in, shooting on their way. She closes her eyes to protect them from the bright light as everything explodes.
She opens them to clapping, shocked and embarrassed that Uncle Nick was there to see her failure in the simulation. “Good job, you two. Choosing the self-sacrificing act. Next time, find an exit.” His look is stern, and she feels even more like curling in on herself.
“Yes, sir.” Clint’s salute is always sloppy, and today is no different. The Director leaves and Clint goes back to the task of cleaning up after their training session. He always keeps up with his arrows, even if they are just the ones designed for playing. “You okay, Wanda?”
She’s not okay. “Sorry.” If it had been real? There wouldn’t be a next time for the both of them. They both would be dead because of her hesitation.
He pauses in his movements, and goes to her with a hug. In his arms, he holds the girl close. “Nothing to be sorry for.” To him, all that mattered was that she did her best.
But she didn’t, and Clint needed to know. He needed to know why he ‘died’ in the simulation when it had been her job to guard his back. “I hesitated. I couldn’t…how can you so easily kill people?”
The wording was wrong as soon as it left her mouth, and Wanda knew it. She knew it in the way he tensed up and was pulling out of their hug. “I don’t.” Of the four, Pietro and Clint were the most prone to being emotional. Her and Nat like to joke about how stereotypes have never met them.
“That’s not what I meant.” Wanda explains, grabbing his hand and keeping him from running off. Last time had been when Pietro had thrown a fit about them not being their parents. Natasha had stayed behind, but Clint had held up a hand before disappearing for a couple of days. “I mean…why don’t you hesitate?”
Clint was like the mom in their group, even if sometimes he took the more dad role. “Because I was protecting you.”
Wanda joins him in picked up after themselves. A few of the dummies had also been made out of wood or straw instead of just holographic. “How about in the field?” She knew that sometimes they were sent in to kill people that weren’t actively trying to shoot them.
“Because the dog protects the mouse from the cat.” He sounds as if he’s quoting someone, and he probably is. He has been around. “There are people out there, people that get up in the morning and go to work, who love and care about each other. There are good people out there that have no idea of what the shadows hold.” The arrows with broken shafts are put in a pile for him to go through later. “I want to say my reason is that selfless, but it’s not.” He looks down at her, still taller even after her last growth spurt. “I don’t hesitate out there because my team is counting on me to have their backs. They need to get home. Yeah, the other side has their own homes, but they are trying their best to keep me and mine from returning home. On clean up assignments, sometimes we are striking before they have that chance. Before they can stop someone from coming back to their loved ones. I don’t hesitate, because everyone that I take out is one less that my partner will have to face.”
Wanda can read between the lines, and she can feel that there was a story beneath his words. A story that he probably hasn’t shared with anyone. It took a joke to for them to figure out he was raised in a circus.
“We fight to protect those we love.” Wanda’s voice fully accented at that point, her emotions at play. He nods, and together they finish cleaning up.
Natasha and Pietro – Surprise Shoes
Pietro has a slight problem with shoes. They wear out way too easily. One time he got a pair and used them up before he finished his morning run. By the way, running on hot black top barefoot hurts, no matter how fast you are going.
It took a while for Natasha to notice the boy’s problem, but after noticing a problem she knew it had to be fixed. Or at least to come up with a better solution than him wearing out four to five pairs a day.
Which led her down to SHIELD labs, or R&D department, while Clint entertained the kids with ice cream and frozen yogurt. She knows that asking him not to hype themselves up with caffeine and sugar wasn’t going to end well. (Yes, she includes Clint with the twins on that.) He just laughed and mentioned the ice cream shop. She couldn’t say no to their three faces.
But she can get revenge on them later.
So she asks the department to find something for the boy she has taken under her wing, and been watching out for during these past few months. She may not be able to say the words, but her actions showed love. She didn’t shoot them when they broke her favorite lamp.
The tech is more nervous of her than paying attention, but hopefully the nervous newbie will be able to find something for Pietro. They also needed to find him clothes that wouldn’t burn off when he went to his fast speeds. Or fall off in that one case.
Two weeks later they have something for her, and she’s glad they at least have something. At that rate, she was starting to think her request had gotten lost somewhere. Sometimes the department moved quickly, but at other times? Not so much.
She grabs the shoes and takes them back home. After dinner, when Clint is insisting they watch some kind of classic movie she’s never heard of, she drops the shoes in Pietro’s lap without fanfare. She knows that the three of them are staring at her, but she’s already picked the movie for them. Something involving fast cars.
During it, Pietro brags that he can run faster than that. A new trip for the family, it seems, to determine if he really is as fast as a race car.
The shoes last for two months, even with him impersonating a race car during that time. The lab may actually be handy for something.
The next pair she gets is blue. He seems partial to the color.
Phil, Wanda, and Pietro – Babysitting
Just because Agent Phil Coulson is their handler, it doesn’t mean he goes on every mission each of them goes on. Certain missions have no need for two agents to be at the same locale, especially when the missions are supposed to be routine with his agents only being sent in as back up.
The problem happens when Phil also doubles as the handler for their two children, and yes, Pietro and Wanda are their children in every way but blood. Though, Phil is going to hit Clint for suggesting to them to call him Papaw Phil. He’s not that old, thank you very much.
But Natasha was sent out a week ago to help with some security protocols at a satellite site (No, Clint, satellite site does not mean that it is an actual satellite.). They had been having issues with potential breaches and so they sent one of the best spies to look over what the honest folks could be forgetting. With his luck, it was probably something incredibly simple that will, in some impossible fashion, end in the entire place being a Hydra nest.
The last place she had been sent to had been.
So, Natasha is still in classified at the same time Clint was being sent to go train a few of the new recruits in long range weaponry. Specifically, the ones the no one seemed able to teach. Clint has a knack for finding the correct weapon for each individual while others would despair. It may have something to do with him being a child.
Which all boils down to that Phil, as ‘Papaw Phil’, has the joy of watching his younger charges. Wanda is a dream to take care of. Pietro? Not so much.
Though dealing with Clint has really given him some practice.
So far the young man has decided to tie together the shoes of every person that comes into his office that day. At least his nearly certain it is Pietro, the boy claims it was Wanda. Wanda? Well, she just rolls her eyes and gets back to reading the manual she took from his desk a few hours ago.
It could very well be Wanda, but Phil is going to stay on the path of blaming Pietro at the moment, because he did see him tie at least one pair. The others? It was a bit blurry for him to completely make out.
Eventually, though, he comes up with the idea of having them go to the training room. Phil has Wanda throw things using just her abilities and charges Pietro in catching them before the hit the floor. He’s certain they are cheating, but it is entertaining them.
Clint is the one to make it back first, and Phil shouldn’t have been surprised when he joined in with a modified version of paint ball. Pietro was nearly impossible to hit, but not completely. Phil even found himself in the middle of the war with his own paint gun when Natasha walked in with an overelaborated eye roll.
She pulled out a weapon of her own and shot him point blank. Her own yellow color making a splat on his used to be clean suit.
Now, war has been declared.
Clint, Natasha, Wanda, and Pietro – We All Have Monsters
The scream woke Natasha in a start and had her reaching for the gun she always keeps close at hand. She makes out another whimper and is shaking Clint awake. He came awake with a knife in hand and eyes chasing the shadows. With a look, they were already on the same note. Clint’s job would be to get the kids out, while Natasha took out whatever threat was there.
They crept along the hallway, Natasha leading the way and Clint guarding her back the entire time. They make it to Wanda’s room first, because she was the closest one to them. They entered, Nat’s gun drawn and ready to take out any threat that happened to be there. No threat, except maybe to Wanda’s psyche at seeing her parents coming into her room with weapons drawn.
Wanda was sitting straight up on her bed, staring wide eyed at the weapon in Natasha’s hand. Silently, Nat motioned for Wanda get up and behind her with Clint. Wanda was perched between the two of them, protected from the front and the back. It was such a difference from how Hydra had viewed her, and even some of the SHIELD agents, as that of a weapon.
They keep on their journey like that further down the hall. This was the first night that the twins had gone to separate rooms instead of bunking in one. A first for them, but it was something that they were trying to do. Codependency may look adorable on television, but it doesn’t do so well in real life. Natasha and Clint had seen too many people go through that to ever think it was a great idea.
They entered Pietro’s room, all of them ready to fight for the boy they each cared for so much.
Just to have Natasha drop her stance, Clint to draw inward, and Wanda to run to hold her brother. After a few moments, Clint and Natasha joined them. Four people on a bed that really was built only for one.
“Pietro, wake up. It’s just a bad dream.” Wanda whispered to him, gently rubbing the hair out from his eyes.
He jerked awake, and the only way to describe his expression would be sheepish. “Sorry. I didna mean to wake everyone.”
Clint just smiled at the boy. “It’s okay. I’ve woken Nat plenty of times.”
Natasha seemed to break slightly at that. “I pulled the gun on Clint before.” She was usually able to keep her nightmares silent, but her reactions at being woken up leaned towards the deadly side.
“Good thing I’m flexible.” Clint made it as a joke, and he really thought of it in that way. She hadn’t meant to attack him, and she didn’t pull the trigger. To him everything was okay.
She still dreamed that he hadn’t been so nimble, or her response time had been quicker.
Natasha found herself being pulled into a hug, and Clint gave voice to what all of them were thinking. “We all have monsters that haunt our rest. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Wanda, Pietro, Kate, and Lucky – Clint’s Apartment Building
Kate swears that Clint just loves to torment her. He really does.
The two teenagers that were dropped off on her looked just as annoyed at Clint telling them to have fun while him and Natasha ran to go kill some robot things.
Both Natasha and Clint had been taking jobs at the same age as Wanda and Pietro were. Heck, she was saved by Clint from some tracksuit dudes around that age AND she was pulling his butt out of dumpsters because he hadn’t figured out that he can’t fly.
The idiot still hasn’t figured it out, but at least now he has some people to catch him.
So now she has two teenagers, and a building to protect at the same time the Russian Mob has decided to renew their attacks on the old building. If Clint found out…Scratch that, if NATASHA found out she was going to have the two teenagers to help her, she would have her head.
But what use is having two enhanced teenagers with spy training in the case of dealing with a bunch of bullies?
Kate grabs her own bow and heads to the roof top, really wanting to use the prototypes that Clint dropped off for her. She made her own, but sometimes it was interesting to see the kind of things he would come up with. Though the boomerang arrows are still the best.
Pietro easily rounds up the tracksuit people that she assigned them, and it takes no time for Wanda to have them falling down with a few moves of her hand. This may be the fastest take down that Kate has ever been a part of. Maybe.
When Clint and Natasha come back, a bit beat up with Clint having the worst in the shape of a giant goose egg on his head, they all smiled and said they had a great time. Natasha looking knowingly at Kate’s bow, but Kate wasn’t about to say anything.
Wanda and Pietro’s matching grins though when they said they couldn’t wait to come back? Yeah…they may be taking after Clint in the undercover department.
Good thing for them, and her, Clint can be oblivious to things right under his nose.
Barton/Romanoff/Maximoff/etc. – Family Photo Shoot
After rearranging their busy schedules, and placating a bunch of paranoia, they finally had a date, time, and place set for their big family photo.
It doesn’t go well.
To start off with, Pietro cannot sit still for very long. Seriously, the kid is almost always bounding about even when he’s trying to hold back his speed. Blurry pictures? Yeah, not what Clint was looking for.
Yes, this idea of getting the entire family together falls completely on Clint’s shoulders.
He was feeling emotional, and decided that it would be a good idea to get a picture taken of everyone. And when he means everyone, he really means everyone.
Even Natasha didn’t know everyone that he dragged out of the woodwork, though she could see that they each had their own skillsets and masters in their field.
The first photo had everyone in it. Everyone being people ranging from Director Fury all the way to someone from Clint’s days in the circus.
Each successful photo was followed by one that had even smaller groups together, until finally it was just Nat, Clint, Wanda, and Pietro.
They were pressed together, with Clint and Pietro tickling the girls just as the flash went off for the camera.
It was a photo of a laughing family. The twins were next, with Pietro putting bunny ears on his sister, and Wanda lifting Pietro with her mind when she found out what he did.
The next to last photo was of Clint and Natasha. The twins pushed their parents together, and pleaded with the master assassins to pose together for a picture.
Clint, because he never can do things partway, pulled Nat and the twins back in. For once, Pietro was sitting still and Clint refrained from his antics.
It was a nice photo, and the one Nat gave a copy to Phil.
Wanda and Pietro – We Are Loved
Both of them woke up at the same time in the middle of the night. Pietro could have ran for a snack, and Wanda could have gotten a head start on studying, but they didn’t do either of those things. Instead, each of them snuck out of their windows and onto the roof. Together, they looked up at the stars, each of them lost in thoughts and memories.
“I think mom would have liked Natasha.” Pietro randomly spoke out, telling his sister the idea that came to him from the stars.
Wanda’s smile is small, but genuine. “Yeah. Mom definitely would have.” Their parents had died in an attack years ago, which had left the two of them vulnerable to Hydra’s call.
Pietro reached out a hand for Wanda to grab hold of. “I know Dad would have loved Phil.” Their father was a bit like him, a suit to cover the playful character underneath.
Wanda grabbed it. “I think Mom would have loved Clint. At least feeding him.” They each chuckled at that. The archer was prone to stealing food whenever someone else was cooking. If every meal was up to him, it would probably be some type of pizza.
They each keep staring up at the sky, counting the stars and thinking about how far each of them have come. They went from being a family of four, to being orphans, subjects, weapons, and now a part of yet another family.
“I miss them.” Pietro broke the silence, the energy already pushing at him to start moving. Being a subject for Hydra had its down side and plus. On one hand, he could run faster than anyone he ever met. On the other? He had to fight to stay still.
Wanda didn’t dignify that with a response, because she felt the same. She missed her parents, but she also loves where they have come. “I think they are proud of us, wherever they are.”
Pietro turns, a face full of mischief. “Are you proud of us?” He called out to the two assassin/super spies that were listening from his room.
Clint’s laugh could be heard, along with Nat’s reprimand for him shut it. “We are!” Clint didn’t even bother being quiet, and Nat’s softer laughter (and less heard of the four) joins his guffaws.
Wanda nods to her brother and the both of them crawl back through their windows. At the end of the day, there were all loved, no matter what label the chose to use.
Brother. Sister. Wife. Husband. Assassin. Weapon. Experiment. Carnie. Operative. Agent. Avenger. Twin.
They were a family by choice.