Azari is technically a king.

He doesn't go on about it, though, like Torunn does about her dad and Asgard, or linger on it like James on his shield. He doesn't remember being a prince, just his mom's white hair as she leaned over him and his dad's laugh. He was just two. What is he supposed to remember?

But he does know that every Black Panther has had...well, a black panther. It's just what their daemons do. He and Adahni just never expected anything different, so it's a little weird to be sitting cross-legged in his room watching her ruffle her feathers, as startled as he is. Sure, she liked being a bird. He liked it to. But this? This isn't what Black Panthers end up with. Just doesn't happen.

Still, though. She's tall, taller than he is. Strong and fast, with heavy wings to spread out protectively and wide blue markings that match his. There's nothing wrong with her, and even though he knows James will say she looks stupid, well, that's James. He reaches out and runs a hand down her neck, fingers settling on black feathers at the base of it.

His mom had a bird. A crane, graceful and only delicate looking, whose feathers popped with sparks and whose wings brought down the rain. Adahni can't fly like Ororo's Tufani. They don't bring the rain. But there's nothing wrong with her. Nothing wrong with him either. If he ever gets back to Wakanda they'll just have to get used to an ostrich.

"We're going to be late for training," she murmurs, ducking her head to bump on his, and he laughs.

"Yeah, and I can't wait to see you make Furball flip. Come on."

They go side by side, him easy in her shadow, and this kind of thing has always been the calmest for him. He doesn't need to prove anything to anybody. He knows who he is, and she knows who she is, and they're just fine that way.

*

Torunn's blade has no name.

Asgardians have no daemons. This never struck Torunn as a strangeness until the people Barton brought with him murmured and shied away from her. As a child she had asked Tony why she had no daemon, and he said it was of no consequence--she had her sword, waiting for her to be strong enough to wield it. At twelve she had picked it up and taken to it at last after all her practice with mortal blades, and with her brothers it was simply known her daemon was the humming blade always quick to hand. Different, yes, but no less her soul.

With the humans it marks her now. No robots has a daemon, of course, so they suspect her. Even if she is no creation of Ultron they treat her as unnatural. Lacking. Frightening. And her sword is far from her hands and will not answer her, and she feels as if her heart is lost and yet it is not as it is for her brothers when their daemons go far, for she does not die nor scream, and Torunn has never been so alone.

Barton asks if she's a witch and Torunn does not want to say that she is not. That her soul is a sword and she has lost it carelessly, recklessly. Her soul is her sword and her father will never speak to her now. She is sure of it. How can she ever return to Asgard soulless? It cannot be done.

So she is on her knees, in helpless supplication, when a name rises as bright in her chest as rainbow lights: Nororljos.

And Nororljos, northern lights, comes back to her.

*

When Nuhad settled James had been so angry he didn't talk to her for a month.

His dad's daemon, Valora, had been a hybrid. A wolf-dog, but really more dog than wolf, with golden fur and infinite patience for Nuhad tumbling around her. His mom's black little Krasnaya had been a lizard, darting and supple and quiet. Growing up Nuhad was alnost always a puppy or a lizard, and then--then she settled and she wasn't. She was a stupid little cat (caracal, Tony said, with 'Thena fluttering around his head and James didn't care) with huge ears and red fur and nothing like he wanted. What she was supposed to be.

"Change it," was the last thing he hissed at her, and she bristled and didn't change at all.

It was hard to ignore someone who was always at your side, but he did. He ignored the other daemons or his siblings talking to her too, until one day Pym said--he couldn't even remember right, something about accepting, and what did he know? His daemon hadn't betrayed him. His soul wasn't all wrong. He was just a stupid kid.

So James stalked away, and made it back to his room before Nuhad darted in front of him and slammed into his chest hard enough to knock him down. She bared her fangs at him when he tried to push her off, so he just lay there unhappily instead. Miserable. Because she wasn't right, so what was he?

"I don't ask you to change," she spit, "So don't ask me. This is who we are. Accept it or don't for yourself, but stop asking me to be things I'm not, James."

Three years later they're sitting on top of the Hulk's cave, his hand rubbing the back of her neck as they don't look at each other. It's a crazy plan, they both know it. But it's the best they've got. Someone has to make it right. He looks at her out of the corner of his eye.

She's beautiful in the desert light. It brings out all the subtle shades of her reddish fur, the tips of black and touches of gold. She's beautiful and she's brave, protective, and fierce. She carried Tony's tattered 'Thena safe in her mouth, stared down Barton's hawk, fought with him all the way. Maybe she's not a dog or a lizard. But she's his. She's his and maybe--maybe that's okay.

"Come on, let's go tell them." He smiles at her, and she stretches, licking his palm once before they go.

*

At first they called him Little Hawkeye.

His dad had a red kite that Fletch used to soar with--sometimes Aella flew too far, but always came back for Fletch. Always. Until one day she didn't anymore, and Francis--Barton, now, the only one left--had clutched Fletch to his chest and cried for the last time. He'd been eleven, and Fletch had settled that night.

She's an American Kestrel, for all that America isn't a country anymore. Tiny, next to other raptors, but she's the fiercest little kestrel in the world, and she swoops through the tightest corners of Ultra City faster than even a machine can follow. In open air they could catch them, maybe, but in the cramped ruins of the undercity Barton and Fletch are untouchable. They're ghosts, shadows, dust, nothing that can be caught and caged.

Fletch remembers better than Barton does. She remembers Bobbi and her mockingbird Jasper, Clint and Aella, and when they're alone--completely alone, up in a perch somewhere watching the city and planning the next move--she talks about them. Tells him they have to remember everything so they'll know what to do to keep everyone alive (alive, alive, stay alive, it's the only thing they can do, and still blood and Dust explodes at the corners of his eyes when he tries to sleep), so they know who they are and where they're going. They're the last ones. The last Avengers. It's up to them.

So Fletch is small. He's young. Little Hawkeye becomes just Hawkeye, and Fletch's pinions brush the sides of the tunnels as Barton fashions arrows with her feathers. They say a daemon's feathers make every arrow shoot straight from your heart.

"That's stupid," Fletch says, succinctly, and Barton smiles as he works.

*

Pym loves Rani.

Everybody loves their daemon, of course, except maybe James who's always fighting with Nuhad, which just makes everyone uncomfortable--but Pym always thinks he's so lucky he has exactly the daemon he has, because she's the best. He doesn't even know how lonely he'd be if he was like Torunn, although she seems okay with her sword and she sometimes says that she has all the demons she needs in her brothers.

But Rani is sweet and sensitive and always around to listen, and as changeable as he is. They run and fly and play together; she's the only one who can see the world as small as he does, and he can sleep in her feathers when she's a bird and buzz with her when she's a bee and creep into every single hiding place with her when she's as small as a shrew. He can tell her everything he can't tell everyone else, and he really thinks she's the best, and--

"You don't have to settle, you know," he tells her, wide-eyed. "You don't. You can keep changing with me. We never, ever have to settle."

"Everybody has to grow up," Rani says, as a butterfly, her wings shining and iridescently green as they hide in the grass from Torunn and James fighting again.

"Not us," Pym says. "We can stay little forever."

She flickers into a mouse and comes over to lick his face, and he forgets it, laughing as she tries to groom him. (He doesn't want to grow up. He doesn't want to be just one thing, one size, one shape.)

He forgets, that is, until the Hulk looms over him and the Hulk has no daemon, Bruce's nervous little squirrel monkey is gone, he doesn't have a daemon and Rani leaps into Pym's arms as a lemur with the widest eyes and they're going to die, he knows it, they'll die right here with dust in their mouths and he hugs Rani so close, so close, and she gets even smaller and flashes bright on his chest--

They don't die, and Pym sits down. She blinks, frantic and fast with his heartbeat. But they don't die.

A couple days later he goes to James. Not Tony. Rani shivers on the back of his hand and he whispers to her: it'll be okay, they're okay, don't be scared.

"James?"

"Yeah, Pym?" James and Nuhad look up from the plans of how to take back Ultra City. They've both been so much calmer, since all of this. Focused. A unit like they used to be when Pym could first remember. Torunn has her armour and her sword, she's whole. Azari and Adahni have taken to organizing the refugees like mother birds, ushering them this way and that. Francis is slowly opening up--he saw Fletch and Nuhad playfighting the other day.

And then there's Pym and Rani, who aren't going to change anymore.

"Rani settled," he says, even though everybody knows because Rani used to change shape as fast as Pym changed his train of thought, and she's been a firefly since they beat Ultron.

("I'm sorry," she'd whispered in his ear, "I should've been something big, something big to protect us--"

"No," Pym had said, insistently, "No. This is okay. You're okay. We're going to be okay.")

"A bug, huh." James smiles as Rani flies from Pym's hand and sets down in front of Nuhad, who leans in to sniff her, then flicks one huge ear. "I always thought you--"

"James."

He's never serious like this. It's not going to last long, but sometimes--sometimes he can't always be happy, he's realizing, and maybe that's growing up. Sometimes being sad isn't just sad, it's what you have to do. Because this is serious, and he's a grown up now, and this is what grown ups do. They ask questions they don't want to.

"...yeah?" James is looking at him like--like surprise, but not surprise, something a little scared too.

"Do you think this is what we were supposed to be?" Pym rubs the back of his neck. "You know. Us. And our daemons. Is this what we would have been like if our parents hadn't died?"

It's like this: Adahni as a sleek, supple panther, as lithe and graceful as Azari is. Torunn would have known Northern Light's name even when she was little. Nuhad would be a silver-grey wolf at James' heels. Fletch would have sharp, sleek wings for her peregrine dives. And Rani--he doesn't know what Rani could have been, but he thinks of bright wings and bright eyes, laughing all the time, not a little thing that can hide her light to be safe, wants to hide always.

And James looks at him and Pym thinks he gets it, because his heart is all smashed up too.

"No. No, I don't think so," he manages, "But this--this is who we are, Pym. And that's okay. We're okay."

"Rani's beautiful," Nuhad says, and Pym looks over, startled, to see her and Rani nuzzling, and it's so silly looking Pym laughs, startled out of his mood.

"You can use her to light up weak spots for me," Francis says, pragmatically, and Pym didn't even know he was up there. Fletch swoops down and he follows, landing light on his feet, and the look he gives Pym is sympathetic as he holds out his arm for his own tiny daemon.

"Yeah, see?" James smiles, relieved, and ruffles Pym's hair (when Pym ducks he misses the grateful look James gives Francis, which Francis shrugs off impassively). "Come on. It's almost dinner. I have to see how many feathers Adahni lost over Torunn threatening to 'cleave all those who plunder our reserves'."

"She has a point," Francis says, and it's okay. It's all okay, like James says, because it doesn't matter who they would have been. Not really. They're like this now, and when Rani flits back to perch on his shoulder she blinks in almost smug Morse code: I'm beautiful.

"Yeah." Pym smiles at her. "You are."