4Uncle Clint, Aunt Natasha and Aunt Laura
Prologue
Fuck him, Clint was so tired right now. He had gone on plenty of hard missions before but this one had really taken a lot out of him to say the least, the final bill of damage came to four crack ribs, a broken arm, a sprained ankle and a black eye and quite an impressive collection of scratches, burns and cuts all of which hurt like a motherfucker.
But, all of it was nothing that couldn't be dealt with a metric fuckton of pain meds and a cuddle from his wife when he finally managed to get home which would not be too long now as all he was going to do was check in with all of the others at the tower and then he was going to hop on to the earliest plane for home and not look back.
Natasha, of course, was insufferable as she always was with how unflappable she had been. She had come under just as much fire as him and yet she somehow always managed to come away from it all smelling like roses and if Clint didn't love her as much as he did then he might actually hate her for that but of course he couldn't.
They were Nat and Clint, Black Widow and Hawkeye, they belonged together and hate was something that he was never going to be able to feel for her. Really, on top of every other feeling that he had for her there was always just this overwhelming sense of awe that had been there since the day that he had met her and had only grown stronger every day he spent with her.
And of course, she could tell that he was looking at her. She glanced over her shoulder at him from where sat she in the cockpit of the quinjet and the smirk that had made him fall in love with her spread across her face. "What are you looking at?"
"You." Clint said with a smirk of his own and if it weren't for his own injuries, and the fact that his head was a little bit still loopy from the pain pills that the Doctor had given him, then he would stand up from his seat and walk over to her and sit down next to her and kiss her until the both of them had no choice to pull away if they wanted to get any air into their lungs.
Natasha laughed and turned back to the controls but Clint didn't need to see her face to know that the smile was still there and Clint couldn't deny that it did terrible things to his ego to know that he had caused that. Yeah, when his head did not feel like it was stuffed full of cotten wool then he was never going to let her hear the end of it.
Soon enough the quinjet was hovering over the tower's helipad and Nat brought them down with practiced ease and once they were down she walked over to help him out of his seat and Clint had no problem with leaning on her, he knew that Natasha was strong enough to hold him up and so he closed his eyes and smiled as Nat's warmth flooded all of his senses.
He knew for a fact that it was possible to fall asleep on your feet, he had needed to do that more than once when he was out there in the field so it did not surprise him that as Nat helped him out of the jet and on to the helipad and then across it into the tower, it was a cold novemeber night so he could tell when they had entered the tower even with his eyes closed as the tower's internal heating banished the chill almost instantly.
Life had made it a sad necessity for him to be a pretty light sleeper so he did wake up for a second when Natasha placed him down on the sofa and moved his feet up so that he was laying down and he couldn't help but smirk as he felt her pull his boots over and place a pillow under his head and after that Clint fell back into his slumber.
The scream and the sound of something smashing against the floor was then more than enough to pull him out of his sleep and Clint pushed himself up, the pain that burned through him pushed aside as not being important at the moment. He did not recognise who it was, but the voice had been higher in pitch than any of the people who had lived in the tower and being a parent he came to his conclusion pretty quickly.
It was a child, there was a child in the tower and they were in danger. Instincts took over and he leapt up from the sofa and ran in the direction of the scream, his body would not thank him for it when the adrenaline died off but his body could go fuck itself, a kid was in danger and Clint wasn't going to let that happen if there was something that he could do about it.
The scream had come from the upper level of the common room and Clint ran up the stairs, taking each step two at a time and it was good to know that even when he was in pain he could still depend on his body to put in the hard work and when he reached the top of the stairs...well, his mouth dropped open and a noise that sounded a lot like a goat that had all of the wind knocked out of it.
Natasha was there, which he was very glad for and going by the look on her face she seemed to be seeing what he was seeing as well which he was very happy about because it meant that he wasn't going completely insane and if he was then at least it meant that Nat was going crazy with him and he couldn't think of any other person he would rather go insane with.
Well, he could think of one person. But that wasn't important right now.
On the floor, in a growing puddle of water there was large pieces of glass which Clint could tell had come from a glass pitcher being dropped to the floor and he was just about able to piece together what had happened, Nat had gone to get him some water and what she had seen had managed to shock even her enough to drop the pitcher.
Which, to be fair, would be the least of what Clint would have done if he was in her place and saw what she had seen first. It had to be a joke, right? There was no way what he was seeing in front of him right now was actually, factually, happening.
Standing in front of the rest of the group, his arms held out to his sides like he was trying to protect the rest of them even though out of all of them he was more than likely the smallest of them, was Steve Rogers in minituare. Literally. He couldn't be more than six year olds at the moment, but Clint could tell that it was him from the blond hair and the blue eyes and the shape of his face, and of course he looked like he was totally ready to fight a man who was over six feet taller even thought Clint was certain that he would have a tougher fight from dryer lint.
Standing only a step behind him, because where else would he be, was James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes who was no taller than his friend but looked like he was about ready to either pull his friend away from a stupid fight or at the very least make sure that his friend had some backup when he was about to throw himself into a fight that he could not win.
A step behind the both of them was a little boy with black hair and tan skin and deep brown eyes and oh fuck him it was Tony, who Clint had really been hoping had not been affected by whatever all of this was and would be in his workshop right now trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong and more importantly than that finding out how to fix it, in fact if his luck had been good then Tony would have stepped out of his workshop and they would find that he already knew the answers and how to fix it.
But his luck had always been shit, so of course it wasn't going to be that easy. Jeez, Tony was small at this age and it made Clint's heart throb with worry as he remembered when Lila and Cooper had been at the same age as Tony looked to be now and they had never looked so small, so thin and he didn't understand how that could be as Howard Stark had been rich as all get out.
He was not as small as Steve of course, but then it would be impossible for anyone to be as small as Steve considering that he had both grown up during the depression and seemed to have every single illness under the sun, but Tony was not that much bigger than him and considering his different circumstances that should not have been the case at all and it really did not sit well with him, so much so that it took a lot of self control for him not to go and scoop Tony up, carry him into the kitchen, and make him something to eat.
Standing slightly behind Tony was a little boy that Clint had to assume was Rhody, his dark brown eyes starring at everyone around him like they were threats and god, did any of them have a happy childhood, or at least something close to a normal one? It was a depressing question, but not so depressing as the answer that he already knew.
All though, to be fair Sam had a good childhood and how could he not, Clint had met his mother once during thanksgiving and a sweet woman Clint was sure did not exist and reflecting that the boy who had to be Sam, with chubby cheeks and warm brown eyes, who at the moment was away from the rest of the children and looking at everything in the tower with a very keen interest.
The youngest of the kids, she couldn't be more than two, was Wanda. She was very pale and her long red hair only made her look more so, there was a small bruise on her cheek that stood out all the more for the paleness of her and her eyes were red from crying and there were still tears on her cheeks that had not yet dried which told Clint that had been still crying mere moments ago and that was utterly unacceptable to him.
He strode forward, swerving to avoid Steve who clearly was trying to stop anyone from getting close to any of the other kids, and scooped Wanda up into his arms and soothed her as best as her could, rubbing her back with soothing circles, it always used to sooth Cooper and Lila whenever they needed it, if it was from a nightmare or a storm or just the sort of fear that a child would sometimes have without being able to explain why they were having it.
She had stopped shaking but she clinged all that tighter to him and Clint just knew that he wasn't going to be able to put her down, not that he wanted to of course. As he held her Natasha stepped forward, a little boy with curly brown hair in her arms that Clint could only assume that had to be Bruce, if there was any sort of mercy in the universe then they would not have to deal with a baby Hulk as well as Clint did not have the slighest idea how they would be able to deal with that.
Wait, hang on. They were missing one of them, there was no sign of Thor. "Ugh, okay. Guys," Clint began, speaking as gently as he could while trying his best to make sure that he was not going to break down in front of the childhood versions of his friends. "Is this all of you, was there another little boy with really long blond hair and blue eyes, maybe?"
"We don't know you mister." Steve said, as small as he was and as small as his voice was he still stood against him and Clint knew that if he was the sort of person who would hurt them then little Steve Rogers would be the first one to try and stop him. Despite everything, Clint could not help but smile at him. "You ain't meant to talk to people that you don't know."
Well, he could hardly argue against that since that was basically one of the lessons that he had taught his own kids but sadly if they were going to figure this out it was going to have to be a lesson that was broken and pretty quick. Of course, from the stories that Bucky had told the rest of them about him he doubted that Steve was going to back down easily.
Thankfully, it did not seem like it was needed as Nat stepped in and saved the day as she tended to do. When she spoke her voice was gentle, the only time he had ever heard it that gentle was when she was speaking to their own kids. "You are absolutely right, you shouldn't talk to strangers because you don't know if they could hurt you or not but we aren't strangers at all, we're friends Steve and I can prove it to you."
"JARVIS, are you there?" Natasha asked and Clint really should have asked that before now, after a few moments there was a low beep that filled the air and a moment after that JARVIS's synthetic tone filled the air which filled Clint with relife, hopefully this way they would be able to get some sort of answers as to what had actually happened while they had been gone.
"I am here, Agent Romanov. I am sorry that I did speak to you when you first arrived but I was in the middle of searching for Thor and Loki when you arrived." Oh, well that was terrifying but also in a weird way good news, Loki must have been the one to do this then and Thor was looking for him, he would bring him back here then and Loki would fix whatever he had done and then everything would be fine, no problem at all.
"And where are they then?" Natasha asked, her face was blank and anyone else might have trouble seeing through her mask but Clint had known her for too long now for it to work as well on him and he could see that she was as uncertain and nervous as he was and that did not make him feel any better at the moment.
"I am afraid that I do not know, my sensors can not find them. I did try to stop them from leaving, Agent Romanov." JARVIS spoke and Clint looked over at the kids, all of them had seemed to turn their attention to finding where the voice was coming from and the sight of their confused little faces might have made him smile if he wasn't in the middle of a panic attack.
"I know you did JARVIS, don't worry about it. It's going to be all right." Clint didn't doubt that Natasha was saying that more for his benefit than for JARVIS as Clint was certain that his panic was clear on his face. "Can you actually tell us what happened here? Because this is weird, even by our standards."
"It is difficult for me to recall as my sensors were distorted and it seems that my memory banks have been damaged but I think that I detected a surge in magical energy, I wasn't able to warn the team or indeed identify what sort of magic it was before my sensors were distorted, I managed to reconect and when I had returned I found the team like this. I also detected energy signitures which I was not able to identify, it was then that I noticed Sir and the rest of the team had been...altererd, to say the very least, and I've just been trying to keep them as safe as I could until you returned from your mission."
"Didn't you think to contact SHIELD while we were gone?" Clint had to ask, it probably came out a lot more sharply than he intended it too but a lit bit of anger surely had to be better than him falling apart, which was the second most likely outcome of this. "We could have been gone for weeks, anything could have happened to us and then what?"
"Clint, not the time." Nat said to him and Clint felt like he was about to crawl out of his skin or that he was about to scream or break something, yeah, breaking something sounded really good about now, it wasn't like Tony didn't have enough money lying around that whatever he broke he would not be able to replace in basically a blink of an eye.
But, he wasn't going to do that because even though he was panicing he also was not an asshole and it didn't matter if Tony could afford to replace stuff you didn't break things that belonged to other people because you were pissed. So, he took a deep breath and counted to ten in his head and then let the breath out again.
"Sorry JARVIS, didn't mean to snap at ya." Clint hummed, rocking on his feet slighty as he forced himself to calm down, if not for his own sake then for the sake of the kids. All of whom were looking right at him and yeah, he felt even worse now because it had to be really fucking scary for them and he was meant to be the grown up here.
Oh god, what a horrible thought. Why anyone had thought that he would be a good parent, good with children at all? He had told Laura that any kids he had would no doubt wind up as fucked up as him but she hadn't listened to him, she had just put her hands on either side of his face and leaned in to press a kiss to his lips and told him that he would be an amazing father.
He just didn't want to screw Cooper and Lila up.
"It is quite all right sir," JARVIS said, he might have just been a computer program but the politeness in his tone was more than enough to make Clint fell even worse than he had been. "And to answer your question Sir, along with making certain that no harm came to the suddenly deaged team and searching for Thor and Loki and trying to identify the energy I also had to insure that the regular runnings of Stark Industries continued as normal."
"Couldn't Pepper do that?" Nat asked, a frown on her face that was only getting bigger and bigger with every scrap of information all of which painted a picture which suggested that they were far up shit creek and they didn't even think to bring any paddles with them in the first place.
"Ah, yes, about that. You may wish to look under the kitchen counter, Agent Romanov." Nat frowned and glanced at him and turned to walk into the common kitchen that they all shared, she was only gone for a few moments but they were the longest few moments of Clint's life as he was left alone with all the kids.
Okay, he could do this. He had two kids of his own and yes, okay, it would be fair to say that Laura did more of the actual rasing than Clint did most of the time but he was as involved as he could be with them considering his work for SHIELD and the fact that he had to drop everything to gave and save the world every other day, he was there as much as he could be.
"So...I'm Clint." He said with what he hoped looked like a reassuring smile and he knelt in front of them and put his hands together in front of him, lacing his fingers together. He had read somewhere that it was meant to be a netural pose or some shit like that. He wasn't sure if he bought it but he would take all the help he could get. "Believe it or not the nice lady wasn't lying to you, we aren't strangers. You do know us, you just can't remember it at the moment."
"We're not dumb." Bucky answered him and oh god, he had both of his arms. Both of his flesh arms, he knew that trying to understand how magic worked was something of a stupid idea but holy crap, his arm had grown back. God, he hoped that Bucky wouldn't remember any of this when all of this was done because seriously, how much would that suck to have your lost arm be regrown when you were turned back into a kid but when you got back to your normal age you lost it all again.
Would it be painful for him? Like undergoing all of HYDRA's torments in one? All of the pain and the fear that had been a part of it and being forced to go through all of it again was going to suck and when it came to reversing whatever crazy magic that has caused this Clint was going to make sure that everyone kept that in mind when it came to turning them all back.
"Didn't say that, buddy." Clint said with a smirk and tried his best not to laugh at the frown that appeared on both Steve and Bucky's face, utterly identical to one another and made them look like grumpy old men that had been shrunken down to tiny boys and it was perfect, it was a shame that he had fallen on his phone and broken it on the mission with Nat as he would literally kill for a picture of them right, just so he could show it to the both of them when they were back to normal.
At that moment, thankfully, Nat came back into the room with a little girl in her arms that Clint didn't need to ask who it was. He let out a sigh as he rose to his feet. "Okay, so what's the plan?"
Nat looked down at Pepper for a moment before setting her down on to the ground, at which point she ran over to Tony and hugged him very tightly, before Nat turned her attention back on to Clint. "I think we're going to need some back up.
Okay, Nathanial was down for his nap and both Lila and Cooper were out on their chores, Cooper milking the cow and Lila gathering the eggs out of the henhouse, and so Laura Barton decided that she would allow herself to have a moment to just enjoy the quiet before she got on with her own work.
Still, she wasn't angry when the doorbell rang because she know what it meant and if anything all it did was make the smile on her face that much brighter as she rose from her seat at the kitchen island and walked through the house, pulling open the front door.
Her smile did not drop, but it did waver ever so slightly when she saw both of her idiots standing there with a lot of kids. A lot of kids that did not look like any of theres.
Laura Barton closed her eyes, counted to ten and spoke.
"What the hell did you two screw up now?"
End of Prologue
Eh, what can I say? I fancied writing something kinda cute and this was the idea that popped into my head, next chapter we focus more on the kids as well as how the adults all cope with them.
Also, you might have noticed that Peter is not one of the deaged team but he is in the character tag, that will be explained in the next chapter as well.
With a lot of love,
DiscordantSymphony
