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i.
“There’s patter,” Tony says the next time they’re all in the coffee area. “This little tiny country called Sokovia. Apparently they’ve got enhanced people.”
“On our side?” Sam asks hopefully. “Like, please tell me these are not people-plural we’re gonna have to fight.”
“I have no idea,” Tony admits. “They’re really good at hiding their tracks - too good, almost any television feed of them, phone upload, anything, cuts out within about two seconds. We’ve got no clear shot of any of them.”
He flicks his fingers from his tablet to a screen and JARVIS brings up an array of blurry images.
“What we can see, however,” Tony says, “Is that like… at least three of them are kids.”
“I’m going,” Clint says. “Nat should come too.”
Tony shrugs. “You can talk to capsicle about that, he’s running this thing.”
Clint raised his eyebrows. “Do any of you know like… even the slightest thing about kids?”
Nat raises an arm.
“Aside from me and Nat.”
“I treated a lot of kids when I was travelling,” Bruce says. “But I imagine you don’t want to risk this turning big and green.”
ii.
The team, in the end, is Steve, Sam, Clint and Nat. Thor’s taking a break to spend time with Jane, Tony is “Not having anything to do with kids, no thank you”, Rhodey has a meeting and Bruce, as they agreed, was staying away lest they risk big and green.
“Looks peaceful,” Clint says as he and Natasha pilot the Quinjet down.
“That’s a new development,” Steve says. “According to Tony’s research the whole country was dealing with constant riots.”
Natasha hums, her lips curling into a smile. “So either we’re dealing with peacemakers or dictators even worse than the ones that were here. This is going to be fun.”
iii.
They’re already waiting for them when they finally set the Quinjet down.
Or, more accurately, when the Quinjet goes dead in Clint and Nat’s hands and someone else pilots the thing down.
“We’d apologise for that,” says one of the people - teenagers, Clint realises - opposite them. “But we’d rather have the upper hand when the Avengers appear in our city.”
There’s a lot of them. There’s three children - one grubby and grimy boy, clinging to the hand of an older girl, one boy pale as snow, ice curling over the cobbles where he’s stood, one girl stood between a boy in blue and a girl in red, her hair a pale soft green. The rest are teenagers of various ages. The oldest are two boys, standing close to each other, one bright as gold, the one beside him with two blacked eyes, a broken nose, a chipped tooth and a smug grin so wide it covers his entire face.
“We’re the Amis,” the golden boy says. “We protect our home. Why are you here?”
iv.
The Amis don’t take well to learning that the Avengers have come to see if they’re dangerous, the Avengers don’t take well to learning that only three of them are older than twenty.
“’ferre will be 20 next month though,” the one called Courfeyrac says. “Then there’ll be four of us older than twenty.”
Courfeyrac, it turns out, is the one who hacked the Quinjet and piloted it down, and is also the one who shuts off most of the newsfeeds if they’re pointed too close to them. “Technopathy,” he explains. “I also have photographic memory and can stream whatever I’m seeing live.” Most of the time, when he’s working, the Amis call him Code. “Because I insist they abide by certain rules,” he explains.
Their leader, the golden one, only tells them to call them Apollo. The beaten up man at his side, however, has no such issues. “Call me R,” he says, offering Steve his hand to shake. “They haven’t come up with a nickname for me that isn’t ridiculous yet. Don’t mind my boyfriend. He’s just suspicious.”
It is in this vaguely confused and overwhelmed state of mind that the Amis lead them through the streets of Sokovia - “Novi Grad,” a blonde girl corrects the moment Clint thinks it. “The country is Sokovia. The city is Novi Grad.” - to a cafe, where, it looks like, others of their group are waiting.
In total, Clint counts, there’s twenty of them, including the three kids.
Nat laughs and orders him a coffee. “You’re so fucked,” she laughs. “Hawkdad is overwhelmed.”
v.
Its the blonde girl who corrected his thoughts and the girl in red who approach Clint and Nat with the green-haired girl. The grimy boy, holding tight to the older girl’s hand, stand in the corner, watching closely.
“I’m Cosette,” the blonde says. “Telepath. I saw you-” she points at Clint, “Panicking about how safe the littles are. So Wanda said we should introduce you to Lorna.”
“Estrie,” the girl in red says. “Wanda only to friends. Telepath, sort of. Telekinetic, sort of.”
The little girl waves, hops up onto a barstool with a far lighter jump than seems reasonable. “I’m Lorna,” she says softly. “I can control metal.”
Inside Clint is quietly screaming.
vi.
Lorna glances to Wanda while they wait for the Americans to respond.
“Are they ok?” she asks in Sokovian. “The red lady is smiling but the archer is-”
“Trying to process that you have powers,” Wanda says softly, stroking her hair back with scarlet. “It’s ok Steel-dove.”
Cosette pulls another barstool over, and begins to explain how they got their powers.
vii.
“I don’t like them,” Gavroche says.
“You don’t like anyone, Gav.” Eponine holds her brother’s hand fiercely, but his grip is just as tight.
“All right,” he says. “I don’t trust them. And if they hurt us, I’ll shiv them.”
Eponine laughs. “With your hands or with your micro-kinesis?”
Gavroche looks thoughtful for all of two seconds. “Hands,” he says. “More precise. And Enjolras would burn the bodies for us.”
viii.
“We can manage our own territory,” Enjolras says to the Captain. He can feel the fire in his belly, clawing at his stomach lining, desperate to climb out and prove to this bloody American that he is perfectly able to protect his own. Only R’s hand, gentle on his own even as the fire starts sparking at his fingertips, keeps him calm.
He can see R’s hand starting to glow with his heat, his bones illuminated in the skin.
“Given the peace here, I don’t doubt that,” Steve says. “But we want to be certain you won’t hurt people, that you won’t overreach yourselves, or put yourselves at risk.”
The one in blue who’s been whizzing around the room since they arrived, getting water for the boy with flowers coiling up his arms, tucking back the scarf of the girl in red, watching Steve with eyes as piercingly hawklike as Clint’s, scoffs. “Hurt people? Like you do not? One of your own killed our parents, my sister and mine’s, and they had committed no crime. And what do we do when it is HYDRA, capturing people and making them like us?”
ix.
Steve’s throat goes dry. “What.”
“HYDRA,” R says. “In the castle at the edge of town.”
“They recruited Apollo, Estrie and Blue here,” Courfeyrac, points a thumb at the boy in blue. “With a bunch of others. Promised them powers so they could fight to make Sokovia a better place, so they could battle the corruption more directly than just with protests.”
“But they lied,” Apollo says, and he is glowing now, glowing like the fire of the factory when Steve had gone to rescue Bucky, his eyes like molten gold coins. “The experiments killed all but us and then it was training and training and training, lies and more lies. I can burn any weapon that tries to attack me, my heat protects me. It can even heal me, sometimes. So I burned my way out. I didn’t kill any of them, though.”
“We did.” The boy in blue is smiling viciously. “HYDRA are Nazis, and Nazis killed our grandparents and cousins and kin. And they had lied to us. My sister and I, when we broke out, we killed every one.”
Steve doesn’t know what to say.
x.
Sam’s watching everything from a corner. Sat around him are Silvanus, a boy with so many flowers curling up around him he looks like a walking flowerpot; Bahorel, who looks about as well-muscled as Steve or Thor; “Vinci”-but-you-can-call-me-Feuilly, a boy darker than him, as dark as Rhodey, who can apparently figure out how to make something as soon as he gets his hands on it; and the little boy who makes ice turn up wherever he goes.
“Andrej, please?” Silvanus asks, and the boy picks his hand back from Silvanus’ withering flowers.
“Sorry Jehan.”
“Are you guys usually like this?” Sam asks. “So relaxed?”
They all look at each other and shrug.
“We know each other,” Bahorel says. “Trust each other. Apollo and the twins came to break us out when HYDRA captured us. Apollo gave R the fuel to blow them all to hell.”
xi.
Eventually, Natasha leaves Clint to talking to little-Lorna and goes to the girl standing at the edge of the room, the little boy next to her.
“Your brother?” she asks in Sokovian, and they both start to hear her use the language.
“Gnat,” she says. “Call me Zap.”
“Wary,” Natasha says.
“I don’t trust you,” says the boy - Gnat, “And if you hurt any of us, I’ll shiv you.”
Natasha almost laughs aloud. “Oh?” she says instead. “Do you know where to stab properly, to make sure you hurt someone?”
Gnat grins. “Even better,” he says, “’parnasse showed me where to stab to castate a guy if he tries to hurt Zap.”
“Castrate,” Zap corrects. “And he shouldn’t have taught you that.”
Gnat waves a hand, “Well we can protect ourselves now, it doesn’t matter.”
Natasha hasn’t been around children as wary and ready to murder since she was in the Red Room. It’d be frightening if it wasn’t so refreshing.
x.
Eventually, they gather up again and leave.
“Here,” Steve says, giving Courfeyrac a tablet. “This has a direct connection to the tower, if you ever need our help-”
He grins, nods. “We’ll get your attention. And if you need our help?”
The Captain looks vaguely uncertain. “You’re kids,” he says. “We can’t just-”
“Put us in danger?” Cosette asks. “We do that every day. Some of us more than others - Marius cannot protect himself or predict danger as some of us can, but he fights with us anyway. Most of us have been in danger since we were born, until we made the city safe again.”
Clint is fiddling with his bow, with his quiver, in thought. “We don’t wanna put you in harms way,” he says. “But it would be helpful to have you on side. But you have to be age of majority here. Eighteen, right?” The Amis nodded. “Then only of you old enough,” he says. “Unless it’s seriously dire.”
Steve seems uncertain, but even Sam and Nat agree to that.
“Clint?” Lorna asks, before the turn to go onto the Quinjet. “Can we really visit you?”
Clint grins, plucks one of the - mostly-harmless, only-bladed - tracker-arrowheads from his quiver, and tosses it to her. “You ever want to visit,” he says, “push the button on the side.”