Tony doesn’t look at his thing with feathers often. It had withered over the years, grown ugly and gnarled, feathers dirty and small. He’d shown it to Pepper, once, small enough it didn’t even take up his entire palm, and she’d pressed her lips together into a flat line to hold back a horrified gasp.“Tony, it’s,” she’d begun, clearly trying not to sound judgmental and failing, and Tony had nodded sadly, covered it with his other hand, and carried it back to his room in silence. The thing with feathers peeped miserably as Tony set it down on his dresser. “It’s not your fault,” Tony had assured it, just as miserable, because it wasn’t. It was all his.
To his surprise, when the rest of the Avengers move in, they have no compunctions showing off their things with feathers. Natasha’s is stunningly big, and Clint’s fluctuates from one day to the next, although it seems to be consistently growing. Bruce’s is the average size, and sometimes its feathers shift glossy green, but Bruce doesn’t flinch away when it happens anymore. Thor’s is… Thor’s is ginormous, and he’d happily told them that he hadn’t had it before he’d been banished to Midgard, and it had burst out of him in a mess of gold feathers the moment he’d looked up at Jane after she’d hit him with her jeep. Steve’s was the only one comparably small to Tony’s, wings moving slow and creaky like the old man he should have been instead of the young man he still was.
They worry about Steve. His thing doesn’t grow or shrink, like it’s caught in stasis, feathers brittle like they’re still frozen the way they had been when he’d been pulled from the sea. Steve spends hours staring at it, face blank, and they carefully don’t think about the pictures from the war, when his thing with feathers had had wings wide enough to lovingly span the huddled mass of the Howling Commandoes like a mother hen gathering her chicks beneath her.
Tony considers bringing his out, to show Steve that it was okay. His thing with feathers had looked small and pathetic even before Afghanistan. He’s actually just getting up to go fetch it when he notices Steve’s thing moving across the coffee table. It’s feathers look shinier, all of the sudden. Steve is examining a folder with rapt attention, not even noticing that Tony has stood, and as Tony watches, Steve’s thing with feathers’ hobbling turns to strong steps, until it’s hopping across the table and leaping onto the couch beside him. Steve lifts his arms, and the thing settles in his lap, preening itself for the first time since Tony has known it.
He’s glad he didn’t bring his thing with feathers out. It would be cruel to bring it out to show Steve he wasn’t alone, only to make it watch as Steve’s thing with feathers grew and preened and purred. Tony sits down on his bed, hands cupped around his thing with feathers. “I’m sorry,” he says softly, and the thing peeps up at him sadly. He wishes he could make it bigger and stronger, too, but he lost the strength to do that years ago.
Maybe the misery would be easier to deal with if everyone would just leave him alone. Everyone’s thing with feathers is nosy, keep peering around Tony for his. They chirrup and they squeak and they growl but Tony doesn’t waver. He remembers how Obadiah’s thing with feathers had clutched his in its sharp talons, had almost snuffed it out completely but for Pepper’s thing with feathers flying in to stop it. No one outright says he should bring his out, because that’s bad manners, but he can tell they’re hurt. They think he hasn’t forgiven them for the nasty things said before, or that he doesn’t trust them yet, or sometimes even that he needs to be treated like finely spun glass because he simply doesn’t have one anymore. Tony can’t find it in himself to care.
Barring the first interaction with Pepper, she’d been happy to look at it, because Tony’s thing with feathers has always chirped musically even when sad, and sometimes its feathers fluff when she calls it strong and sweet. Rhodey and Happy are the only other ones who regularly see his thing with feathers, and Rhodey still is the only one who takes it in his hand and coos, and its feathers go a little glossier when it happens. (Tony doesn’t hold it against Happy. Happy is a man of action, of quiet shoulder hugs and bags of cheeseburgers. He doesn’t touch. But his thing with feathers always shares an order of fries with Tony’s when it can, and Tony is always amused as he watches it try and force his take the bigger half when it can barely finish a quarter.) But even though Pepper had more than made up for her initial response to his thing with feathers, and Rhodey and Happy never show judgment either, he doesn’t want to open himself up to the rest of the team, with their beautiful feathers and wide wingspans and happy chirrups. He knows his thing with feathers holds no judgment for him not making it bigger or stronger or prettier, but he still feels like he failed it every day he sees everyone else’s.
It comes to a head. Tony has enemies, and he’s always known it. Still, when JARVIS tells him that someone has attacked the penthouse and it’s not safe to go up, he can’t bring himself to listen, so frantic that he doesn’t even stop to grab the suit. His thing with feathers is up there, and it’s small and wounded and sad but it’s his, and if it gets snuffed out he knows he’ll become just a shell of himself. It turns out to be AIM, and he wants to be angry, but mostly he’s just tired, dodging attacks from their laser guns and trying to draw them away from the door to his room. He doesn’t keep anything of value there, not except his thing with feathers.
The rest of the team arrives seconds later, because they’re all idiots and they disregard JARVIS’s orders to evacuate too. Tony leaves them to it, running into his room, and he cries out in dismay when he sees the broken glass and battered furniture. His dresser is in pieces. He can’t even find the little nest of cotton he’d made for his thing with feathers. Then he realizes the beeping he hears past the roar of blood in his ears isn’t beeping at all, but the frantic peeping of his thing with feathers. It’s under the debris somewhere. He drops to his knees and begins digging, calling for it, but he can’t figure out where the peeping is coming from, and he realizes with a start that his hands are already bleeding. He doesn’t stop though, picking up what he can and looking under it. As long as he can still hear the peeping, it’s still okay, and he still has a chance to find it.
“Move,” Steve says, shouldering him out of the way, and Clint and Natasha hold him back so he doesn’t get in Steve’s way as he picks up furniture. Tony doesn’t realize he’s babbling pleas for Steve to be careful until Thor pulls him around and yanks him into a hug so tight that all he can do is melt into it and sob helplessly. He focuses on the fact that his thing with feathers is still peeping.
“Oh,” Natasha says, like the word’s been punched out of her, and Tony can’t help but cry harder, because it sounds a lot like what Pepper had said when she first saw it, horrified and disappointed and sad. Then, “Give it here. Give it here. Come here, золотце. I’ve got you. Here you go. Thor, put him down.”
Thor does, and Tony immediately turns, hands cupped and out for it, and Natasha hesitates when she sees he’s still bleeding, but then the choice is taken out of her hands as Tony’s thing with feathers leaps from her hands and into Tony’s. He gathers it close and whimpers when he feels it trembling against his palms. It must have been so scared. He hates himself for being a coward, just a little. If he’d just carried it with him like a normal person, it never would have been in danger.
“No wonder you never showed us,” Clint says sadly, and Tony flinches, until his next words register and then he just stares in disbelief. “You already get so touchy about being called short, if anyone mentioned how small it is, you’d tire yourself out from throwing hands.”
“Clint!” Steve barks reproachfully, and Bruce grabs him by the ear to drag him out.
“ARE YOU GONNA LOOK AT ME AND TELL ME I’M WRONG?!” Clint bellows before he clears the door, offended, and Steve and Natasha actually look uncertain about it.
“Tony,” Thor says pleasantly, ignoring him. “May I see it?”
“It’s scared,” Tony hiccups.
“You don’t need to give it to me.” Thor holds his hands out. “Just show me.”
Tony stares up at him, anxious, but his thing with feathers flutters against his palms, so he lets them fall from his chest, hesitantly placing his cupped hands on top of Thor’s and suddenly grateful for the offer because he’s still shaking. He gets nervous when he notices Steve and Natasha leaning in again too, but neither of them look disgusted, so. So maybe it’s okay.
“Hello, little one,” Thor tells it gently, and the thing with feathers peeps at him from under its wings, shy. “Hello. You were very brave. You must get that from Tony.”
“It’s pink,” Steve says in surprise, and then adds, rueful, “I don’t think I have that color marker yet. I’ll have to buy it.”
“I am…” Natasha begins, looking unsettled. “…Filled. With aggression. It is so little and cute.” She leans closer, and the thing peeps uncertainly. “If anyone so much as looks at you wrong, I will crush them in my fist like a grape,” she whispers.
The thing with feathers is definitely unsettled now, and peeps in alarm and shoves its way under Tony’s sleeve cuff so it can hide there, overwhelmed.
“How am I supposed to live, having seen that,” Natasha hisses, livid, and turns to storm out. “I’m going to go ethically torture the AIM agents. I can’t believe this. It’s small and pink. I can’t believe I’m going to kick someone’s ass over this.”
Tony watches her go, still too stunned to speak. Steve and Thor consider going after her, but she had said ethically torture, so. It’s probably fine?
“You both need to eat. Come down to the common kitchen. I’m making you a cake,” Steve finally says, and when Tony and his thing with feathers both squawk in affront, Thor simply throws Tony over his shoulder so he has no choice.
Somehow Steve gets the icing color the same shade as Tony’s thing with feathers. It’s still a huge fucking cake though, so he allows the rest of the team to help him eat it.
He doesn’t notice his thing with feathers shifting beside him, preening, feathers fluffing out with a healthy sheen for the first time in decades.
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