Tony Stark has faced kidnappers before. He may only be four years old, but his new friends are strong and brave, and together they can take on any monster…even the ones that come from within. And oddly enough, this is not an AU. Coulson probably wishes it were.

Thor takes a good look at Loki once he has hauled him back onto the quinjet, and realizes that there is something odd about Loki's eyes. Thor has grown and changed much in the last year, and no longer takes anything for granted. So he starts asking questions. It doesn't take long to figure out that Loki is not acting of his own free will. Tony Stark knows what it is to be forced to do as an enemy commands. Steve Rogers has seen the atrocities manipulative madmen are willing to commit. Clint, Logan, Bruce and Natasha have been subjected to said madmen. They all know what it is to lose themselves, and to seek redemption. Together, this band of broken heroes draws a line in the sand. They will not tolerate any tyrant, foreign or domestic. That includes Nick Fury and the WSC, who have used everyone on the team for their own aims. It includes Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross, who has hunted Bruce against all reason. It includes Odin, who treats his sons like commodities. And it includes Thanos, who has delusions of conquering Earth. Along the way, they learn to trust each other. They learn to help each other. They become a family.

Jake Jensen is sixteen when he meets Tony Stark at MIT. He's nineteen when he joins the US army, and twenty-four when he becomes a Loser. Becoming a Loser is also when he happens to discover that DADT might apply. But that is not where this story begins. It begins on a cold, winter morning in Massachusetts, when a little girl with hair the colour of cornflakes meets her newborn brother for the first time. (In which there are evil toasters, all-around nerdiness, and ohana ).

How Sokka learned to shut up and be nice, and also learn a little bit more about Zuko than he wanted to.