Happy New Year! Clint gets some screen-time here.

Disclaimer: I don't own The Avengers. Or Christmas, for that matter. All chapters quote heavily from the movie.

Rating: A shade more kid-friendly than The Avengers.

Chapter 13: A Right Jolly Old Elf

Clint eyed a posse of shadows fanning out along the street to corner them. The shadowy black monsters were memories, Clint was pretty sure. He didn't know if this certainty came from his own intuition of was a holdover from his time with Loki…

Clint shook the thought off, using a bolt through the center of a shadow to clear his focus. More were coming. The shadows swooped and leapt from the sides of buildings, snatching at children and people as they ran shrieking. Adults couldn't see them like the children could but were obviously affected just as strongly, losing track of their children or succumbing to "random" bursts of panic as a pack of shadows flew by. Yes, Clint was pretty sure he understood: the shadows induced flashbacks to the worst memories of the person they touched.

Annie and Rudy shuddered as the three of them dashed across an intersection to take cover behind a stalled semi-truck. The driver was gripping the steering wheel with white knuckled fists and staring at nothing. Clint passed just as close as the others, felt the creeping unease… but he wasn't assaulted by any flashbacks. Clint pulled an arrow, attached a flashing charge to it and smiled as he shot it into the center of the posse. His time with Loki landed solidly in the "worst memories" category—and he couldn't remember any of it.

"Merry Christmas!" he said as the shadows were swallowed up in light.

Clint shifted to retake his natural position at Annie's side. She and Rudy were peering down the street towards Grinch Tower. Just visible through the chaos of the street was the horde of children trapped in the plaza and lobby, with nary a handful of adults to watch them, as if they'd be any help anyway.

"They're fish in a barrel down there!" Rudy said.

Clint swept his own gaze around the intersection. There was a family trapped in a little hybrid across the street. "Got some fish of our own right here."

Annie shifted closer to him; they shared a nod. "We got this," she said to Rudy. "It's good. Go."

Rudy evidently hadn't caught their wordless exchange and asked Clint: "Think you can hold them off?"

Clint grinned widely, and his smile was a little too malicious to belong on the face a cheerful little elf. This soldier business wasn't as bad as it looked. Here he was, out in broad daylight kicking butt with a legendary reindeer and his best partner with a truly excellent new bow and lots of new gadgets—upgraded courtesy of Loki. "It would be my genuine pleasure."

With that, Clint drew a flash arrow, armed it, aimed and fired at the air of shadows crouching on top of the hybrid in about three seconds. The light obliterated them and scattered others nearby. Clint didn't bother to watch Rudy; he was probably already gone. Annie had leapt out from their cover behind the semi and begun flinging darts at the shadows. Clint wasting half a second watching her scale the side of a streetlamp and jump onto an unfortunate shadow before ripping into it with her bare hands. In addition to light, enough physical damage seemed to take the shadows down, though it was possible they were just dissolving to reform somewhere else.

That was a sobering thought. What if they weren't even destroying the shadows?

Two little shrieks reminded him that there were children in peril. Clint ran over to the car and pulled open the door—slowly, it was twice his height—to reveal a father and two twin girls. All of them were terrified. Clint turned on what little charm he had and motioned for the girls to unbuckle.

"Let's play a game, girls. We can go down in the subway to play."

Wide Brown eyes stared at him but the girls didn't respond. Clint hid the prick of nervousness crawling along his neck as a passing shadow grew interested in them. He needed to change tactic. These girls looked like Lego girls… elves had a sixth sense about presents. Clint swung up into the car and sat between the girls, hands restless on his bow. "What did you ask Santa for Christmas, huh?"

The girls sparkled slightly to life. "Legos…"

Clint watched the approaching shadow out of the corner of his eye, focusing on the girls' Christmas spirit like it was a fire he couldn't let flicker out. "And have you been good this year?"

Nothing like familiar rote words to comfort a child against the frightening unknown. The girls crack little shy pearly smiles, nodding vigorously.

Clint smiled conspiratorially at them. "Well, I'll tell Santa."

Clint climbed nimbly into the front seat, bringing the girl's excitement with him and using it—like he might use a touch of elf magic to whisper under a locked door—to remind their father of the Lego set he just had to buy them… right now. In fact, he had better just get out of the car and take the subway.

"Come on," the adult said, still distracted. "I've got a surprise for you." The girls lit up like decorated trees.

As soon as their father opened his door, Clint shot the approaching shadow, and herded all three humans quickly towards the nearest subway. There was, in Clint's opinion, nothing more mundane than a subway. Even if the shadows followed the human underneath the city, they would not have as much effect in such a boring, normal space. Unless the lighting failed. Then things would get bad.

Once the children and their father were safely out of the way, Clint returned to Annie's side, taking out several shadows as he did so. They worked together, an effortless team, but for every shadow they vanquished another two showed up a moment later.

They leap over a stalled car to take cover and are surprised to see a shadow hiding there. Annie swipes an arrow from Clint's quiver and drives it in its neck—well, neck-like extremity. Clint didn't think memories or shadows had necks. Nevermind.

Annie smirked at him. "This is just like Budapest all over again."

Clint raised an eyebrow at her. He glanced around with exaggerated motions, noting the absence of both maniacal nut-crackers and ninja ballerinas. "You and I remember Budapest very differently."

Rudy's progress towards Grinch Tower was slow. Too slow. Every time he took off he would spot a gang of shadows creeping up on someone, or see them tearing at a car to get at the civilians inside. He had to stop. Luckily one bright flash of his nose could take out several at once.

Still, he was a block away from Grinch Tower at least.

Suddenly, Rudy caught sight of a sparkling light and heard the unnaturally loud clinking of spilled coins and shouting. He slowed and dropped towards the source of the sound. After a moment he recognized the shouting—a Gaelic dialect mixed with a Jersey accent. The speaker was swearing profusely.

Had to be a leprechaun, then.

Rudy grinned in spite of the situation as he landed next to a scruffy leprechaun, who was arguing with a much smaller, daintier figure. "I've been woke too early, lost half my bleeding gold and been harassed by meshuganah shadows, I ain't—l"

"But the World Holiday Council has to know what's going on here!" It was a tooth fairy, probably caught by surprise by the attack as she was doing her rounds, just like the leprechaun, Rudy thought.

"Missy, do we even know what in St. Patty's name is going on?"

The fairy paled.

Rudy, with the beginnings of an idea forming between his antlers, decided to announce his presence. "Someone's trying to kill Christmas. If you two are trying to get off the island, you need to take as many children as possible with you. Rainbows, portals, whatever you have. Get them down in the subways, off the streets. Miss, if you can get your sisters to help—"

"Wait a minute! I didn't sign up for nothing! Who are you?" demanded the leprechaun.

Rudy let his nose glow dimly. "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer."

The fairy gasped, covering her mouth with a tiny hand. The leprechaun, on the other hand, was not impressed. "What's that to me? Why should I worry about Christmas? You Yule folks get all the attention anyway."

"How long do you think the other holidays will last if Christmas goes? What happens to your gold, Patty, if kids stop believing in you?"

The leprechaun hesitated, looking anxiously around. Then his gruffness returned. "Well, I wouldn't care exceptin' they turned up in New York. The nerve of it, coming into my town…"

"We'll help," the tooth fairy told Rudy.

Rudy smiled. Help was good. Maybe they could do this after all. "Merry Christmas," he told them.

"Yeah, yeah," grumbled the leprechaun. He heaved his bag of gold onto his shoulders and waved at the fairy. "Lead the way, Twinkle Toes."

Tony careened around a corner, trying to keep up with the monstrously huge shadow that had just pulled itself from Loki's portal. It wasn't moving too fast relative to its size, but it was literally so big that just moving one body length put it far ahead of Tony.

"More power, Max."

"Sir, we are already reaching dangerously high levels of expenditure…"

Tony's attention flicked to the power readout on his HUD. He wished he'd had more time to prep the new suit. He wished he'd had time to analyze these shadows and find their weaknesses instead of just blindly shooting at them. He wished—Stop that, Tony told himself. Wishing did him no good and raised his blood-pressure dangerously.

Tony swooped in close to the side of the megashadow, trying to block out the despair that seeped into his bones as he got close. Lots of time for flashbacks later. After saving Christmas. His aim wavers, and Max, who presumably doesn't suffer from emotional instability, has to correct Tony's aim.

Tony sends a barrage of shots into the side of the megashadow. At first they seem to have no effect, but then the shadow slows and turns, orienting on Tony. His blood runs cold and he's sure he can hear screams of pain that never sounded in New York City but far away in the desert. Max is calmly but insistently warning him about his blood pressure readings.

"Well," Tony says, sluggishly shaking off the shadow's chilling effect. He turned and zoomed off, not fast enough to lose the monster but hopefully fast enough not to get eaten—or whatever. "We got its attention. What was Step 2?"

Clint really hoped someone had a plan here. He was wrestling on eth ground with a shadow, having been separated briefly from his bow. He wasn't sure he was doing any good, taking these things down one by one. Most of the time he was on the defensive anyway. Clint reached back to rip an arrow out of his quiver and stabbed through the most opaque section of the shadow with it. He barely waited for the shadow to finish dissolving before he rolled away, grabbed his bow from the street, and knocked another shadow upside the head with it. He turned back towards Annie just in time to shoot at a shadow sneaking up on her. Annie smirked at him and threw her last dart inches past Clint's head to knock out another shadow behind him.

They were a good team.

Annie was looking stressed, stretching thin by constant exposure to the shadow's unpleasant magic. Clint knew he was starting to feel it more strongly too. They met the next wave of shadows back to back. Annie appropriated an arrow to slash at shadows with; she was the only person Clint would let get away with touching his quiver or bow. Before the real nastiness could start, a red flash vaporized the nearest shadows.

Clint and Annie shifted automatically to let Rudy land next to them. They all three share a grim look before facing up the shadows again. Clint braced himself as more shadows surrounded them. The bad memories pulled at him relentlessly.

Suddenly, lightning struck all of the surrounding shadows and Thor landed amongst them. He stumbled a bit, Clint noted, so he was wearing out just they were. Clint decided that Thor was even cooler up close than he had been in New Mexico, with the hammer and the lightning… "That was freaking neat."

Thor grinned, a little surprised maybe at the compliment. Clint caught Annie rolling her eyes at him, but he knew she appreciated the small release of tension.

Rudy was all business. "What's the story upstairs?"

"The power surrounding the Hourglass is impenetrable," Thor answered.

Their comms came to life as the Grinch added his two cents: "Thor's right. We got a deal with these things."

That was really the plan Clint had been hoping for.

Annie said, "They're wearing us down pretty fast…"

Everyone knew what she meant. The shadows were hard to fight because they made you not want to fight—except, Clint thought, when he had been fighting with Annie. "It's better when you're not alone. It grounds you."

The look in Annie's eyes told Clint she didn't get it. "We're already together."

Clint caught Rudy's eye next. The reindeer got it; he was a soldier. "But we're not together, as a team. That's how we have to do this."

"I have unfinished business with Loki," Thor said.

Clint eyed him. Was the Toylander going to be a problem? "Yeah? Get in line."

Rudy cut between them both. "Save it. Loki's going to keep this fight focused on us, and that's what we need. Without him, these things could run wild. We got Grinch up top. He's going to need us to…"

Rudy trailed off. Next to Clint, Annie stiffened and he followed both their gazes. A dark-haired human—no, wait, not human—was picking his way up the street towards them. He was in warm clothes but barefoot, and ice formed on the street and the debris as he passed. His hair was frozen in an unruly mess. It had to be Jack Frost. He looked perfectly calm to Clint, even a little tired already, but looking closer, Clint thought he noticed a bit of a sparkle in the man's eyes.

Rudy stepped forward, hesitantly. "Mr. Frost, are you…?"

"Under control? Perfectly." Frost looked around. His fingers tapped restless at his sides. Clint noticed that Annie was still as stiff as a plastic Barbie at his side. "This all seems horrible."

"I've seen worse," Annie said.

Clint glanced between the two of them. Frost looked penitent, and Clint wished he'd had a chance to be filled in on whatever this backstory was.

"Sorry."

"No, we could use a little worse."

At that, Frost's penitent look disappeared; he smirked, as if something in him was coming alive. "I hope you brought a sweater."

"Grinch, we got him," Rudy said.

"Frost?"

"Just like you said."

"Then tell him to suit up. New York's overdue for a white Christmas, and I'm bring the party to you."

Clint was the first to catch sight of the Grinch, rounding the corner a couple blocks away. He was pursued by the megashadow. Clint braced himself for a wash of misery but instead the air temperature dropped more quickly than a present knocked off the edge of the North Pole. Clint immediately turned his attention to Frost. He didn't remember much from Frost's file, but what Clint was seeing now was a distinct bounce in Frost's step as he turned toward the megashadow. A moment later Tony landed next to Clint.

"I don't see how that's a party," Annie muttered.

"Mr. Frost," Rudy said, "Now might be a really good time for you to get angry."

Frost stopped walking and spun back towards them, arms wide in a carefree gesture. He was grinning, and Clint was now sure that the glint in his eyes was nothing but predatory. Framed by approaching shadow, Frost looked kind of insane. Clint remembered suddenly that the man was originally from Siberia, and back in the day had reportedly took great pleasure in giving the place the deadliest winters on the planet.

"That's the secret, Rudy. Winter is always angry. Always has been."

The megashadow was nearly on him now, zooming low over the street. Frost turned, transforming in one fluid motion into a hulking Snowmonster and roared. As if he had exploded, ice and snow erupted radially out from him, climbing up the nearby building for fifty or sixty feet. Wind blew from every direction, swirling around the Abominable Snowman and lifting him off the ground. The megashadow tried to morph around him, but the Snowmonster covered it in ice and hurled it over his head and into the street.

Clint ducked behind the Grinch, hoping his suit was enough to block the incoming debris as the ice and shadow shattered. Shadows on the surrounding building screamed at them all. The vehemence of their shrieks sends waves of misery at them, and Clint gasped as they hit him with pummeling force. He glanced at the others, unsurprised to see them similarly affected—except for the Snowmonster, who was cackling at the shadows.

Clint had an idea. It was probably a bad one, and since Annie made him promise a long while back to think things through first, he debated the idea for about three seconds. Yep, definitely a bad one. Clint made the call to try it anyway. He sprinted over to stand next to Frost—Frost, rather than the Abominable Snowman, because Clint wasn't entirely sure they were two separate beings. Winter was destructive, angry, dangerous… just as much as it was playful and beautiful. Maybe separating the two had been a bad idea.

As Frost looked down at Clint, he wondered maybe if this had been a bad idea. He couldn't run away or dodge properly because the ice on the street made his footing too unsure. There was no going back. Clint gave Frost a thumbs-up. "Good job, buddy."

Frost stomped a giant foot in place, and a stream of ice ran from the point of impact all the way up a nearby building to spear a shadow. Clint decided it a signal of truce. The ice under Clint feet began melting as the Grinch landed next to him. Clint nodded in thanks and received one back. They stood ready, watching the shadows back to back. Then Thor and Rudy joined their little circle. Thor's hammer sparked and sizzled with shards of lightning that stood Clint's hair on end, and Rudy's nose cast a red glow on the street around them.

Rudy catches Clint eye. "Good idea."

Clint looked around for Annie and caught sight of her just as a rolling buffet of snow swept her off her feet and carried her over to Frost. Her face screws up in fright momentarily until he buries it; it happens so quickly Clint doubts anyone else would have seen it. Annie looked up and Frost, crossing her arms.

"I'm still not afraid of you."

Frost laughed, as if he understood completely—not just the words but also that Annie was lying. Clint was impressed; he was usually the only one who could decode Annie. Annie stalked over to stand next to Clint.

The shadows screamed at them once more, but this time, it didn't feel so bad. Clint knew the others felt it too.

"As a team," Thor said.

"As Angels," Rudy corrected.

Clint grinned. Suddenly saving Christmas no longer seemed impossible.

Notes: So, because of Real Life, this could not be finished this year. It will be continued when next the Christmas spirit hits me. May 2016 be good to you and to me!