"Her name? Scottie Casey," Tony softly murmured as the grin spread across his lips. "I cannot wait for you to meet her."

//.//

"Since when does Stark care so deeply about anyone but himself?" Sam asked the present members of the team while they waited on Steve and Tony to make their way to the Quinjet that was sitting ready to leave the Avengers training compound.

Natasha rolled her eyes slightly, looking to Rhodey to supply the ex-military man with the answer. Rhodey smiled slightly at her before turning around and passing a folder towards the man. Reaching his hand forward cautiously, Sam plucked the folder out of his hand and flicked through the file.

Nothing worth noting was really popping out until Sam saw exactly what Natasha was trying to get Rhodey to tell him. Across the bottom of the page was a single note - so small that Sam had almost missed it - but it was there.

"Last known legal guardian..." Sam murmured, trailing off as he closed the folder back over and looked up at the two Avengers in surprise. "I didn't realise Tony had adopted her!"

Wanda's head shot up at this, having been barely paying attention to their conversation until Sam had dropped that bomb on himself and on her. Vision also looked up slightly from where he was standing, but Wanda knew that the android 100% knew that file inside and out already and therefore would have known that prior to Sam's announcement.

"Not officially," Natasha said, turning around in the pilot's seat to face the rest of the team. "It was almost finalised but she dashed before all the paperwork had been completed. He was going to surprise her after..." She trailed off as Wanda filled in the gaps that Natasha had left.

"Ultron was made," she finished, causing everyone to somber up immediately at the thought of the metal man that had almost killed millions of people.

All conversation was instantly shut off as Tony and Steve strolled into the jet, both wearing normal clothes like the rest of the team as they continued whatever conversation they had been having before they had got on board. Steve laughed slightly as the man mentioned something about Pepper and Happy, before he sat in the co-pilot seat beside Natasha.

"Okay boys," Natasha said, her eyes flickering around the room as she looked at them all. "You're all on lookout while Maximoff and I try to figure out how the hell we're going to do this."

___

Smacking her head once more on the grass below her, the blonde let out a yell as she tried to regain her breath. Scowling as she heard the deep, raspy laugh from above her, she kicked her leg out and smirked as a small groan confirmed that she had made contact with her target.

"It's not my fault you're a sour loser Scottie," the man laughed as he playfully rubbed at the area where her foot had struck his shin. The girl stuck her tongue out at the man as she accepted his outstretched hand that was offering to help her get back to her feet.

"You and Lila clearly have an unfair advantage when it comes to this game," Scottie Casey replied as she raised a hand to cover her eyes from the sun. Leaning forward and quickly swiping the hat off of the man's head and sticking it on her own, she almost sighed as her eyes received some cover from the rays that were blazing down on them. "Capture the flag does not mean shooting the flag with a grappling arrow."

Clint Barton simply laughed at the girl as she rolled her eyes, watching as his eldest came sprinting over to them both clutching a dark green sheet of fabric in his eyes. The boy was cheering loudly as he ran over until his eyes latched on to the yellow fabric that his younger sister was clutching in her hand from where she rested on her father's hip. Cooper huffed angrily, turning on his heel and stomping straight back into the house without another word.

Scottie smiled softly at the boy, knowing that he loved to win at capture the flag. She had only spent five months hiding out with the Barton family, but it honestly felt like she was back to being a fourteen year old who had no concerns except from homework. Years of fighting and hiding had turned her worried and cautious, but her short time here had really let her re-learn how to be care-free and fearless again.

On her last trip to the local farmers market with Laura, Scottie had even realised in the car home that she hadn't looked over her shoulder once. No longer did she feel hunted, rather, she just felt normal. She wasn't quite at the stage of being brave enough to go somewhere a lot busier with the chances security cameras would pick her up, but she was getting there.

And maybe she would have gotten there on her own terms, but things began to change a lot quicker when her powers started changing for the worst.

___

The group of superheroes must have looked utterly ridiculous to anyone who knew who they were. Luckily for them, it was only Tony and Rhodey that had been seen enough in the public eye to really be recognised in public straight away. While the original plan had involved Wanda and Natasha being the front of the operation, it had quickly changed just as the newest sighting of Scottie Casey had came in.

Tony smirked as he fixed his jacket, allowing the man to also pull his sunglasses down to cover his eyes. He could see Natasha and Steve staring and planning over a map of the updated location and the man couldn't help but hold back a laugh as he walked back towards them. Reaching forward, he shut off the tablet as they both turned to look at him unimpressed.

"We don't need to check escape routes," he reassured them. "She's not going to make a scene here, afterall."

Realising that Tony was likely right, Steve and Nastaha nodded. Scottie Casey had always been someone who had been afraid of confrontation but had always been ready to fight if it meant escaping. But somehow, being in the one place that Scottie had a family history with, they all knew that she was not going to start a scene.

Splitting into two different cars that they had acquired, Wanda found herself completely lost as Sam tried to explain exactly where the solar-powered individual was visiting that had set off the security camera trigger of her whereabouts to them. Having lost her parents at such a young age, Wanda had never really had too much time for watching movies or reading books. The concept of Scottie having spent almost all of her free time doing nothing but reading was strange to her. It was hard to adapt to the fact that not everyone had been forced into working every day just to keep a roof over their heads.

Ignoring Sam, Wanda found herself surprised to find that their car journey had only been around a quarter of an hour. The parking lot was massive and it didn't help that the team had leaked information to the public that billionaire Tony Stark was going to be arriving in a silver Audi A1 at the same time they were. There seemed to be hundreds of men with big, black cameras just waiting on the billionaire to show up - and a few normal looking people hoping to catch a glance of the famous Iron Man.

Luckily for them, his overshadowing arrival allowed for no-one to really notice the rest of the team blending in with the crowd outside of the building. Marking all of the poetical entrance points to the front of the building, Natasha gave the short signal to Tony that they were ready to being the plan that had been changed during the course of their flight to the United Kingdom.

Wanda glanced back at the sign that was displayed on the front of the building, shaking her head as she noticed Sam was bouncing slightly on his feet in excitement. Sending him a quick disapproving look, the man rolled his eyes as he looked around with joy.

"Hey, don't give me that look! Harry Potter is a classic!"

__

The first sign that something was changing with her powers was when Scottie had to excuse herself from the family game of rounders that they were all taking part in. Even Laura had been playing, acting as the pitcher with little Nathaniel on his portable carrier at her feet.

Not only had her hand been stinging from the sunlight that was itching to leave her body, but Scottie had found herself unable to stop the skin from heating up as it prepared itself to shoot the beams from her palms. The second the ball had made contact with her palm, it had instantly just disintegrated into tiny pieces of burnt fabric.

There had been an extended silence before Laura noticed the look that Clint and Scottie had shared. Ushering the kids inside with the promise of letting them lick the cookie dough bowl, she knew that the two ex-Avengers needed a moment alone to talk about whatever had just happened.

Scottie had assured Clint that her powers were fine and that nothing was wrong - that it was just a one off. He had believed her, well, until it happened again.

Three days later the blonde had been helping Lila make a lego jail that Cooper had outgrown and passed down to the girl. While it had all been smooth sailing, Lila had grown upset as the last piece of the lego set somehow was not slotting into place like the rest had. When Clint had came over to inspect the piece of lego a sense of danger overcame him.

The lego had almost melted into a different shape, the small indents on the side looking eerily similar to the way Scottie would have indented it if it had been made of something soft and impressionable. The girl had noticed his observation, and that lead to another long chat about managing her powers.

The final sign came at night. She had a nightmare, not that she really remembered the details. A purple man, stones of different colours, flashbacks of the experiments HYDRA had performed on her that gave her the powers she currently had - none of it really made sense. But what made less sense was the burning wallpaper from where her hands had allowed blazes of sunlight to crash against the wall in full intensity.

After that, well, Clint and Scottie both knew that she needed to take a step away from the family. There wasn't much Clint could do for the girl except from get her accepted into a summer camp based in London. Clint knew that the woman who ran the camp was experienced in helping to train powered individuals in their powers, and while that was secret from the world and everyone who attended the camp itself, it was the only thing he had left for Scottie.

While Scottie had once dreamed of attending an international summer camp when she was younger, somehow doing it while posing as a seventeen year old called Erika James wasn't as fun as she once presumed it would be. Sure Scottie loved reading books, but she wasn't particularly excited to find herself stuck on a camp excursion to the Harry Potter studio tour.

What made it even less enjoyable was a sudden change in her plans.

Ignoring the sudden excitement that had started to spread across the group of teenagers she had spent the past two weeks with, Scottie continued to act interested in the sign that she was reading. The display in front of her made no sense to her, and she wasn't wanting to ask why her classmates had all suddenly dashed off to the front of the studio displays.

Looking to her left, she noticed that one of the other loners at the camp had hung back too. Titling her head, she smiled slightly as she turned to face him. The boy looked at her with a strange look in his eyes before nodding.

"What's got those guys all riled up?" Scottie asked, trying to sound uninterested despite the warning bells that were beginning to ring in her mind.

The boy shrugged before turning back to the small interactive display he had been fiddling with. "Says some billionaire is here, that Iron Man Stark guy. Right tosser if you ask me," he told her, the thick Kentish accent reminding her that she had left her home a long time ago.

While her thoughts had gone to his accent, it didn't take her long to realise just what he had said straight away. If the billionaire part hadn't given away exactly who was here, the Iron Man part certainly confirmed her suspicions.

"Aw hell," Scottie murmured, taking a deep breath before shrugging the useless backpack off of her shoulders. The boy watched her confused as he continued to chew on a piece of gum. He knew he recognised her from somewhere, but he just hadn't been able to figure it out.

Just as Scottie was about to take off, she heard the loud shouts from her peers and the sounds of camera flashes enter the room. Turning around slowly, her eyes latched on to a pair of sunglasses that she hadn't looked at in a while.

"Erika James! Just the contest winner I've been looking for!" He exclaimed, walking towards her and pulling her into a hug. Scottie knew that her long-running game of hide and seek had finally been won - and not by her. As he pulled her into a tight hug, he let his mouth sit beside her ear. "Don't make a scene Scottie."

Pulling back with a fake smile, Tony turned to look at the press that had gathered around them. Scottie could see the other teenagers she had been on the trip with look at her in amazement, and she knew that some of them had started to put things together.

"My assistant here - Natalia - will take you to my car while I take a few more promotional photos. Then your all-expenses paid internship can properly begin!" Tony told her loudly, making sure that everyone was hearing the story that he was supplying.

The second he said that name Scottie knew exactly who was about to walk towards her. The straight, red hair would always stand out in a crowd but Scottie couldn't help and notice that she had grown it out since they had last been near each other. Her green bomber jacket was so familiar, and Scottie knew that it was actually her own article of clothing and not Natasha's.

Moving forward with a fake smile to shake Natasha's hand, Scottie felt her anxious feeling build as they left the studio alone. Being pushed into the back of a large, definitely bulletproof SUV Scottie instantly felt hot under the collar as unfamiliar eyes latched on to her. She recognised Rhodey, but the man was too focused on driving to even look back at her.

The face she was dreading to see the most was the one that was giving her a completely stoic look.

"Casey, you've been hiding long enough," Steve told her, and although he had certainly improved on giving out emotionless looks, Scottie knew that she could see a little bit of pity in his eyes.

Nodding, she didn't say anything as she turned her head to look out of the window. There wasn't much she could think in this situation, but there was something strange about the aura in the car. Her senses were tingling and she could feel her hands getting a little hotter as her body began to panic.

Leaning forward so that she was looking in between Natasha and Steve, she knew that being mysterious wasn't going to help anyone at all.

"I know you've just found me and I know I maybe should have said something before I left, but em, eh, I think I might literally start combusting sunlight beams in a second so can we maybe pull over if you get the chance? If not, like, I mean it's okay but I dunno if I'll kill someone accidentally or..."

The looks on the two Avengers faces' were enough to let Scottie know that there was certainly going to be a long conversation to be had once she had let her powers exercise themselves like they had begun to do.