Work Text:
When Pepper, Darcy, and the rest of the Avengers’ P.R. team approached Steve with the idea of going to an underfunded public elementary school summer program in Brooklyn for a celebration of Captain America’s 100th birthday, he was…not exactly enthusiastic. He already knew that D.C. was making a huge deal out of his birthday, and all he really wanted was to spend it quietly with Bucky. Maybe sneak off to Coney Island and grab a hot dog. Go see a movie. Do the things he couldn’t do before the serum, before the ice, before everything. But Darcy gave him the puppy dog eyes, and Pepper used Morgan like some sort of Jedi mind-trick, and he found himself agreeing to at least talk to the team about it.
At the last strategy briefing of the week, he told the team. The results were mixed at best.
Tony pulled out his tablet and started doing a work-up on tiny Iron Man suits for every kid.
Clint grinned bigger than a kid at Christmas and asked, “Can I bring Nerf guns?”
Bucky smiled softly, nodding his head, resigned as always to Steve’s penchant for doing the right thing.
Sam hooted and hollered, asking Tony if he could make baby wing-packs, and texting Pepper to ask if she had the names of the school counselors.
Thor smacked Steve on the back, saying, “This is a fine use of our time, Steven. We shall make the little ones scream with joy. Will there be glitter?”
Vision and Wanda looked at each other, then at Steve, and asked politely to be excused. Steve still didn’t know how their relationship worked, but he knew they needed time to process.
T’Challa was on conference call from Wakanda—supposedly alone—but then Steve heard Shuri in the background shouting, “Brother! We are both going. You are not the only one who gets to have fun in America!” Following this pronouncement, he agreed that, barring any royal complications, he would participate. Shuri was a maybe. If she behaved herself. “I always behave, brother! Bah!”
Natasha was…Natasha. She looked at Steve with a mixture of disdain and affection that only made sense to them. He knew she had issues with children other than Clint’s. He hoped it might be okay. She didn’t say no.
Carol and the Guardians were off-world for the next…however long, so they were no-gos, as was Dr. Strange as he was somewhere…not here? But also here? Steve always had trouble remembering where the Sanctum was concerned.
Bruce politely declined, citing that he knew the school wouldn’t likely be comfortable with him going, but added that he would be willing to send something signed for every child.
Finally, Steve laid out the big guns. “Team, this is a mission. If you’re not up for it, we’ll need to have a discussion as to why.”
“Oh no, not a discussion,” snarked Tony. “Will we get the disappointed furrowed brows and everything?”
“Shut it, Stark.”
“Just kidding!” Tony replied, throwing his hands in the air. “I’m all in.”
Steve looked around at his teammates. They were a ragtag group that had really only found their footing relatively recently. Living in the Tower together had helped, along with mandatory team dinners foisted on them by Darcy Lewis, Labs Manger, Avengers Social Media Manager, and aggressive creator of social connections through baked goods. Pepper had made some strides, but Darcy was really the one who made them a family. Everyone else in the room, excepting Bruce, nodded at him. “Okay then. Let’s do this.”
They all piled into nondescript cars. That was Steve’s only insistence. He didn’t want it to become a media production that had a narrative controlled by everyone else. The faculty and staff knew they were coming, and the kids knew there was an assembly, but nobody knew anything else. Everybody had signed NDAs or been politely asked not to be in the building that day. Darcy would handle the picture-taking, Pepper would handle the inevitable parent complaints, and everything would be fine. Right? Right.
When they arrived at the rear entrance to the school, they were ushered into the back of the auditorium. Steve heard the teachers saying, “Yes, Asher. You are required to put your phone in the bag. No this is not just for you. No exceptions. I can see it in your back pocket,” and “Camila, no llore. Puedes sentar conmigo.”
The principal walked deliberately up to the mic. Dr. Oluo was her name, and her cascading dreads swayed as her sensible heels clicked across the tiles. “Good morning, scholars!” she exclaimed with her right hand raised in a fist.
“GOOD MORNING, DR. OLUO,” the children screamed back, their arms in the salute of the Wakandan army.
“Quiet, sister,” T’Challa whispered as Shuri screeched when she saw these children doing her country’s salute.
“This morning,” Dr. Oluo said indulgently, “we have several special guests that will be joining you for your rotations.” She paused for the mix of gasping from the first graders and groaning from the sixth graders. “I expect you to treat them with the respect they will undoubtedly give you. Ladies and gentlemen, come on out.”
As the curtain of the auditorium stage rose, the roar that came out of two hundred little bodies became positively deafening. Friends grabbed each others’ shirts, pointing at their favorite Avenger. Even the sixth graders looked impressed behind their thin veneer of “too cool for school”. Steve felt really good about what he’d prepared to say, but found it wasn’t what needed to be said. He looked at Dr. Oluo and she quieted the crowd again.
“Good morning, kids,” Steve began. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time speechifying and keeping you from the activities we’re all excited to do with you. But I want to say this: I went to a school that looked a lot like this when I was your age, almost a hundred years ago. And I don’t remember much of my time, but I do remember the best friend I ever made—” he looked at Bucky”—and the teachers who made a difference. My teacher who noticed I could draw was Miss Halsey. She told me I could be an artist or a machinist or whoever I wanted to be, even though I was sick so much I could almost never spend a whole week in school. I cannot wait to meet your teachers, and to hang out with you all today, and I know my friends can’t wait either. So…uh, we’ll see you in your classrooms. Dr. Oluo?” He gestured at the principal, hand on the back of his neck, who took over.
“Thank you, Captain,” said Dr. Oluo, having to quiet the applause and hollers again. “Scholars, you will find that you will get to meet each of the Avengers during your rotations today. Please treat them as though they are members of our community. They are here to work with you, to answer appropriate questions, and to simply spend time with you. Please treat them with the same respect that you would treat any adult coming into your classrooms.” She smiled brightly. “Now that we all know the schedule, I get to say the most fun thing I’ve ever gotten to say: Avengers? Assemble!”
Each of the Avengers had been assigned a teacher who would see all the students throughout the course of the day, as well as at least one Avenger-buddy so none of them were on their own with the kids. Tony would be with Shuri and T’Challa, Clint with Bucky, Sam with Steve, and Thor with Natasha.
They left the auditorium with screaming kids attempting to hang off them, and the teachers had to establish firm ground rules after that. No grabbing the Avengers! No, you cannot ask Mr. Barnes if he can take of his arm.
The rest of the day went off without a hitch. Well, technically it went off with several hitches and a lot of complaints from parents after the fact. But the kids were so happy. And Tony had lots of lawyers so…
In the science lab, Tony and Shuri went absolutely ham with the technology. Tony brought some of his 3D touch screen interfaces with FRIDAY integrated and was both amazed, and not, by the fact that the kindergartners were the best at using the capabilities because they didn’t know they couldn’t do it perfectly. If Tony was so impressed that he decided to take each of them for a celebratory fly around the building in his suit, they weren’t going to tell anyone, right? Right. He didn’t use the blasters, though, so at least nothing was burning. Much.
Shuri was showing off her “pretty bracelet” to the kiddos and calling Okoye. She wanted them to see good, female role models. And to annoy Okoye. T’Challa sat at the back of the lab, entertaining the kids with his suit. He showed them all the things Shuri designed for him, and told them stories about the technology of Wakanda, and what it was really like to live in a place where magic was real.
Clint and Bucky were outside on the basketball court teaching juggling. They might have been using knives, but the kids had scarves. They promised. Except for Benny, but he was really good. They also might have started a new Nerf Gun club by accident and were talking tactics with each grade individually to plan an all-out Nerf War for the end of the summer. And they might have promised to come back to be captains of the two teams. And they might have shown the fourth graders how to upgrade their Nerf guns to be automatic. And they might have brought out Clint’s bow “just to show these kids that arrows are just as cool as bullets.” Maybe. Possibly. They won’t confirm or deny.
Sam and Steve went to something called Restoration Time. When Sam had heard about it, he was stoked. Like, jumping up and down, somersaults in the air, stoked. Restorative justice practices in the classroom and mental health being taken seriously? He was all over it. They spent their time reading aloud to the kids. First, Sam read his personal new favorite book, I Am Enough, and Steve read a chapter from Winnie the Pooh that he’d loved as a child. Then the kids started asking questions. Lots of questions. The younger kids mostly asked about what it was like to be a superhero, and did they get to drive fast cars? And what about the suits? Do they get to keep them? But the older kids. The older ones asked Sam what it was like to be the only Black Avenger until Black Panther. And they asked Steve what it was like to be in the ice. Could he stand the cold now? Did Sam ever wonder about being Black and wearing red, white, and blue? Did he ever feel weird about working with police officers?
But the biggest surprise was that a fifth-grader named Ajax, “I go by they/them pronouns,” chanced to ask Steve privately about if the rumors online about him and Bucky were true, and did it make them a bad person for wanting the rumors to be true so they could know for sure that a superhero was part of their many-lettered community. Steve, nearly in tears, nodded, hugged Ajax, and asked for their email address just in case they needed someone to talk to. They ended each read aloud session by reading the First Amendment, and encouraged the kids to fight for what they believed in.
Thor and Natasha, somehow, ended up in the arts and crafts room. When Thor saw the glitter glues, he was instantly in heaven and somehow managed to make a crayon drawing of a Giant Angry Mutant Earthworm that looked both terrifyingly realistic and obnoxiously glittery. The kids loved that he encouraged them to invent their own monsters to draw, and even let them climb on him around the room. One little girl asked about Mjolnir, and Thor explained that only those who are worthy can lift the hammer, and that the best way to become worthy is to live into the love you have to give to the world. Then he knocked over the paint cans, which became a whole mess and a half.
Natasha was quiet. She watched from a corner until a little boy with a t-shirt that said, “B is for ballet AND for boys,” grabbed her hand and asked if she’d come to the table with him. She nodded, and when she sat in front of the yarn and popsicle sticks, realized they had a lovely set-up for making children’s first garrotes. Which did not go over well with the art teacher when he finally plucked up the courage to watch Nat with the kids, but one well-placed glare was enough to silence his protests. The little boy asked her if she knew any fighting moves they could learn, and she acquiesced to teaching them how to dislocate a finger. It was mostly harmless, she thought. Yes. Mostly harmless.
They all leave the school feeling like they really did some good.
The following week, Avengers Tower received a giant bag for each Avenger, full of mail from Brooklyn, with letters, drawings, poems, and pictures from their day at the elementary school. Predictably, everyone tore through their letters, reading every single one. Tony promised to pay for a new science lab for the school, Clint and Bucky were already planning that Nerf War trip. T’Challa and Shuri had already flown home but were assured that they would receive their bags as soon as possible. Thor read his aloud, one by one, to Jane and Darcy, who indulged him while sipping on their coffees, sorting through their latest data. Sam and Steve wrote painstakingly thought out replies to each one.
Natasha, though, took her bag and headed to her room. She was still uncomfortable with the easy affection of their group at times. She read every single letter, but one in particular caught her attention. It had a picture of a child in a tutu on the front, crudely drawn but with bright red hair. It said,
Hi Mrs. Natasha Widow,
I really hope you read this. My name is Sammy and I do ballet. But some of the boys on my block don’t like that I do it.
One of them tried to beat me up yesterday when I was getting off the train and wearing my tights, and I used your trick and he stopped!
Thanks,
Sammy
Later, after she requisitioned a small frame, everyone always asked why she had a poorly drawn picture of a ballerina on her desk. She just said, “As a reminder.”