HESTIA ━ marvel

1.2 | SMALLER AGENTS

THE SUN HAD barely risen when Clint announced their arrival at the 'safe house.' Anastasiya was still shaken, but she was starting to function better.

She followed the rest of the team up the steps, tagging along behind Bruce and Clint led them to the front door.

"Honey? I'm home," she heard the archer call, and the ginger girl was surprised when she saw a pregnant brunette walk over from the dining room.

"Company. Sorry I didn't call ahead," he said to her, as she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.

"This is an agent of some kind," Tony muttered.

"Gentlemen, this Laura," he introduced.

"I know all of your names. Except yours," Laura claimed, turning to look at Anastasiya.

"Hi... I'm Anastasiya," the girl smiled softly. "Nice to meet you." Laura smiled warmly at her. "You too."

"Ooh. Incoming," Clint said, as he heard loud footsteps coming down the stairs.

"Dad!" A young girl called, who was followed by an older boy, and Anastasiya couldn't help but smile as Clint hugged them both close.

"Hey, sweetheart! Hey buddy."

"These are smaller agents..."

"Did you bring Auntie Nat?" The young girl asked, and Anastasiya saw Natasha's face light up.

"Why don't you hug her and find out?" She answered, as Clint's daughter ran into her arms.

"Sorry for barging in on you," Steve apologised.

"Yeah, we would have called ahead but we were busy having no idea you existed," Tony retorted.

"Fury helped me set this up when I joined," Clint explained, with his arms around his wife and son. "He kept it off SHIELDS files and I'd like to keep it that way. It would be a good place to lay low."

Anastasiya heard a crunch and she couldn't help stifle a giggle when she saw Thor stand on several LEGO pieces, and then kicking it under the table.

Anastasiya felt a tap on her leg and looked down to see Clint's daughter.

"Who are you?" She asked, and Anastasiya smiled.

"I'm Anastasiya. What's your name?" The redhead asked, crouching down to the little girls level.

"I'm Lila. Do you want to draw a picture with me?"

"Lila's a very pretty name. And yes, I would love to draw a picture with you," Anastasiya said, and Lila grabbed her hand and pulled her gently to the other side of the room.

Anastasiya heard a door slam and she looked up the see Steve and Thor walk out. She looked at Natasha, who simply shrugged.

She sat down at the table with Lila, who handed her a couple crayons. She watched as Lila started to draw, and Anastasiya was amazed.

"Are you going to start?" Lila asked her several minutes later, looking down at Anastasiya's plain white piece of paper.

"What? Oh yeah, I am. I just haven't really drawn before. Well, not that I can remember."

Lila gasped. "You've never drawn before?" Anastasiya nodded. "It's okay! I can teach you," Lila adds.

"Thank you," Anastasiya says, as she sits down comfortably on the floor, and Lila starts to show her what to do.

***

After a few hours of drawing with Lila and playing soccer in the back yard with Cooper, Anastasiya sat down at the kitchen table next to Natasha, discussing with the others, and Nick Fury who had turned up, about Ultron.

"Ultron took you folks out of play to buy himself time. My contacts all say he's building something," Nick explained, as Lila ran up to her and Natasha, handing them both pictures of butterflies. Anastasiya smiled softly at the young Barton, giving her a hug.

In the few hours of knowing her, they'd gotten to be quite good friends, and in reality, Lila was Anastasiya's only friend. Anastasiya hoped she could see Lila and Cooper again soon.

"With the amount of vibranium he made off with, I don't think it's just one thing," Nick carried on.

"What about Ultron himself?" Steve asks, who was leaning against the door frame.

"Easy to track, he's everywhere. He's multiplying faster than a rabbit. However it still doesn't help us get an angle on any of his plans."

"Is he still going after launch codes?" Tony asks, as he threw a dart at the dart board.

"Yes. But he's not making any headway."

"I cracked the Pentagon's firewall in high school on a dare," Tony told them.

"Well I contracted our friends at the Nexus about that," Nick said.

"Nexus?" Steve asked.

"Isn't that the world Internet hub in Oslo?" Anastasiya asked, looking between Nick and Tony, but Bruce answered.

"Yeah. Every bytes of data flows through there. Fastest access on Earth."

"What did they say then?" Clint asks.

"He's fixated on the missiles, but the codes are constantly being changed," Nick explained.

"By who?" Tony asked, moving out the way when Clint through a dart at him.

"We don't know."

"Do we have an ally?" Natasha asked.

"Ultron has an enemy and that's not the same thing," Nick said.

"I still wanna know who it is. Might need to visit Oslo. Find our unknowns."

"Well this is good times, boss, but i was kind of hoping when I saw you, you'd have something more than that," Natasha commented.

"But I do, I have you. Back in the day, I had eyes everywhere. Ears everywhere else. You kids had all the tech you could dream of. Here we all are, back on Earth, with nothing but our wit and our will to save the world," Nick explained. "Ultron says, the Avengers are the only thing between him and his mission. And even if he doesn't want to admit it, his mission is global destruction. So we gotta outwit the platinum bastard."

Natasha smirked. "Steve doesn't like that kind of talk."

"You know what Romanoff?" Steve teased.

"So what does he want?" Nick asked, interrupting Steve and Natasha's moment.

"To become better, more powerful, and better than us," Anastasiya realised.

"He keeps building bodies, person bodies," said Steve.

"The human form is an inefficient," Tony pointed out. Anastasiya looked up at Bruce, who was crouched over the table, looking at the drawings that Lila has drawn for Natasha and Anastasiya.

"Biologically speaking, we're outmoded," Tony adds. "But he keeps coming back to it."

"When you two programmed him to protect the human race, you amazingly failed," Natasha said, pointing at Tony and Bruce.

"They don't need to be protected," Bruce said, and Anastasiya looked back to the picture that Lila had drawn for her.

"They need to evolve," Anastasiya gasped, finally getting at what Bruce was trying to say. "Ultron is going to evolve."

"How?" Nick asked, who was now sat at the dining table on the other side of Natasha.

"Has anyone been in contact with Helen Cho?" Bruce asks.