Tesseract Child

Robin Silent

Because when even when there's nothing to be done it often feels like we should be doing something.

Robin, in fury and grief dropped his sticks and ran to Ironman beating tiny fists uselessly against him. "BAD STUPID ROBOT! You don't listen! Stupid Robot how could you! I hate you! I hate you!"

Tony didn't mean to hurt him, he jerked back and pushed out instinctively, completely not expecting the furious munchkin assault. The Ironman suit didn't really have a gentle mode. Robin flew ten feet across the room and slammed into ground then lay still.

"$^# , I'm sorry," Tony stuttered.

"He wasn't trying to hurt you," protested Thor horrified. "He dropped his sticks. He was just upset."

"I didn't think, I just, there was a flash of movement and ..." Tony couldn't stop the stuttering string of explicatives that kept spilling out of his mouth after that. Behind the mask no one could see his expression but they could hear his tone.

Black Widow who dropped down moments later reached up and took her earpiece out turning it off silently and blinking tears out of her eyes. Honestly, her tears weren't for the child but for Tony. No one said another word about it. It was an accident.

Thor walked to Robin and knelt down. He wrapped the now filthy bed sheet more carefully around the unconscious child and picked him up cradling him gently.

"Robin tell Capt'n help Hulk?"

Captain America looked over at the Hulk who seemed to be calming.

"Yeah. He thought you were my awesome green gummy bear friend," replied Steve soft and sad. He didn't feel much like Captain America at the moment.

The Hulk smiled and traced an oversized finger down the child's face.

"Gummy bears nice." Everyone knew the Hulk had a soft spot for small children.

Steve picked up the plunger sticks examining them. They were dented and marked. There was a decent sized chip out of one of them. Bringing them along, the captain followed Thor who was headed to the Avengers jet.

They dropped Robin off at hospital because Bruce who's Hulk rage had cleared comparatively quickly had pointed out they didn't have pediatric medical equipment. When it was explained that Robin would have no identity or medical insurance as he belonged on the other side of the Tesseract, Tony spoke to the hospital. The bills would be taken care of.

The team minus Doctor Banner who had cleaned up and went to the hospital to investigate some of the more unusual contributing factors to the child's injuries sat staring at pizza and waiting for news.

"We didn't really keep up our end of the bargain, did we," spoke Thor.

"What bargain? He didn't seem to free us or do his best to help with any concrete expectation of our aid. He had his own little plan. He was going set the Tesseract to blow up, right after it sent him back to his family. As near as I can tell, all we did was get in the way," protested Steve. "The little hacker ninja just disappeared and ghosted around the bad guys after he ran away."

"Why are his escrimna sticks threaded at the end?" asked Natasha.

"He took them off of a pair of plungers when we were hid out in a store room," explained Steve fiddling with the sticks.

"And the lack of clothes?" she asked.

Tony glared up at her, angry at the universe in general at the moment. "You heard the whole time distortion bit? What kid has the same set of cloths for seven years? Everything he had on him would have deconstructed."