A/N: Ha! What, do the rest of you just not like this crossover as much as I do? *grin* This should be... yeah, a lot of fun. But you'll see!

Title: Cosmic Composite

Author: liketolaugh

Rating: T

Pairings: Tony/Pepper, Natasha/Steve

Genre: Family/Adventure

Warnings: AU

Summary: The exorcists reincarnate into Marvel's next generation. No one can figure out how. Still, it's nice to have a family. (Also includes Agents of SHIELD. AU starting one year before CA2. Major divergence begins after Age of Ultron.)

Disclaimer: I only wish I owned D. Gray-man, and the Avengers are but a dream that is not my own.

"YA ne mogu v eto poverit'!"

"Khotite ver'te - eto nakonets-to gotov prosnut'sya."

Voices?

Kanda twitched awake, trying to frown. He felt tired; something dragged at his limbs, and he couldn't open his eyes. After a few seconds, he realized that he was floating in liquid, which rushed in and out of his lungs in time with his labored breaths.

"Nashi lidery budut rady."

"Khoroso. Eto bylo nelegko. Prinesite yego; vremya prishlo."

What was going on? Kanda should be dead. He had, in fact, just been thoroughly murdered.

...Had the CROW brought him back for further experimentation, as had been done to Alma?

Almost instantly, Kanda dismissed the possibility from his mind. After what had happened the last few times, and with no further need for exorcists, Central wouldn't dare. Even they weren't that sadistic.

He stiffened as he felt large hands curl behind his back and under his head. Extremely large hands.

Kanda was lifted from the liquid and, as soon as his head broke the surface, he started to cough violently, struggling to exchange liquid for air.

"Ne dayte yemu zaglushayut!"

Kanda was lifted up against a shoulder, and one hand started to pat his back gingerly, making his job easier as he continued to cough up liquid. Finally, when he felt less like he was choking to death, he pried his eyes open, still gasping weakly.

"Razve ne deti dolzhny plakat'?"

"Vy predpochli by, chto on sdelal?"

Kanda's vision was blurry and colorless. He felt something thin and rubbery pressing awkwardly into his stomach; from the feel of it, it was embedded uncomfortably into his navel.

Most importantly, though, either everything had gotten very, very large, or Kanda was now very, very small.

Kanda panted against the huge shoulder, feeling his lungs ache with the effort, and tried not to panic. Something was wrong. Really wrong. And he had no idea what it was.

The large hands shifted him again, exposing two blurry hands to his vision. Belatedly, Kanda realized that he wasn't wearing anything, and he burned with humiliation. At the same time, he shivered.

A hand reached down to his belly and detached the tube. The sensation was strange; Kanda swatted feebly at the hand and looked down, and then he froze.

That's not my hand.

He clenched his fist. The tiny, chubby, blurry hand in front of him fisted also, and a violent wave of deja vu crashed over him.

That… is my hand.

Kanda was a baby.

A goddamn baby.

He shuddered violently, closing his eyes against this realization, and opened his mouth to scream in anger. As if to mock him, all his lungs produced was the high, thin wail of a newborn baby.

"Yebut, u etogo yest' mnozhestvo legkikh na yem!"

"Znal eto bylo slishkom khorosho, chtoby byt' pravdoy."

A hand covered his mouth and nose, blocking off his air supply, and very quickly, he was forced to stop screaming or else pass out. A few seconds later, the hand was cautiously removed, and Kanda stayed silent.

"Slava Bogu."

"Bez shutok. Pelenat' yego, prezhde chem on zamerzayet, ili yeshche khuzhe, rydayet snova."

A moment later, Kanda was wrapped tightly in soft cloth, which had the irritating side effect of pinning his arms against him. He squirmed.

"Probuzhdeniye vo desyat'. Davayte vyvesti yego."

Something about this last sentence triggered something in Kanda's memory, and the corners of his mouth pulled downward. Scientist. He could be half-dead and drugged to the gills, and he'd still recognize that tone.

With that realization, the situation began to unfold in his mind.

Kanda had been brought back again. As a baby, this time. For whatever sick purpose these people had in mind.

Silently, he fumed. Why did this keep happening to him? More importantly, what gave them the right? Couldn't they just let him burn in Hell in peace?

He twitched as the scientist holding him started to move, and the world shifted dizzyingly - he couldn't seem to track anything. His neck was bent at an uncomfortable angle, and wriggling produced no reaction at all. Was this what it was like to be vulnerable?

Kanda hated it.

Worse, the rocking motions were making him sleepy, and against his will, he felt his eyes start to slip shut. The last thing he saw was a tall, glowing rectangle, the silhouette of a person standing behind it.

A moment later, he fell asleep.

The sound of voices woke Kanda up again, and he opened his eyes to the same situation he'd fallen asleep in. Obviously.

Kanda's luck was shit.

"Voin."

Tentatively, Kanda identified the language as Russian. Allen had offered him lessons once, and now, he bitterly regretted refusing. Beansprout would probably get a kick out of that, the little shit.

He was moved to face a new figure, just a pale face with a mass of brown hair to Kanda's vision.

"Etot mladenets teper' vasha glavnaya missiya. Berite yego s, za ney ukhazhivat', i nikogda opusti yego. Obuchat' eto stat' velichayshim assasin v mire."

"...Ponyal."

Kanda was handed over to the seated man and squawked painfully. One of the man's hands was hard, metal, maybe, and pressed uncomfortably against his shoulders and neck. The other, flesh and bone, curled awkwardly somewhere around his knees.

"Net, net, stop. Kak eto."

A second set of hands appeared, rearranging the seated man's grip. The metal hand was curled to accommodate the curve of Kanda's head, sliding further up to better cradle it, and the other was moved to better support his lower body.

Kanda was pretty sure supporting his body was his job.

"Ponyatno."

From this new position, Kanda could see the man's face clearly, the first one since he'd…

The man's eyes were blue; his face was rugged, and stubble covered his chin. He looked intent and focused, his gaze fixed on Kanda. His hair was long, down to his shoulders, and his mouth slightly open, as if in surprise. Silently, Kanda named him 'the bear', for his appearance and low voice.

He looked stunned. He looked mesmerized.

Kanda heard the whip of thick paper, and the man looked up. Then he shifted Kanda so that he was held only in his right arm, the human one, and reached forward. When his hand came back into sight, it was holding what was clearly, to Kanda, a mission folder.

Kanda didn't know what was going on, but he knew he didn't like it.

After a moment of consideration, he turned his head and bit him.

It was that first day out of the lab all over again.

Kanda didn't recognize anything and nothing made sense, and he was growing more frustrated by the minute. His eyes burned and his chest ached; he felt like he was about to cry, which made it worse. When was the last time he had cried?

Over the last half hour, he'd been released from his cloth prison, had a diaper put on him, dressed like the baby he was, and then fed from a bottle. And now he was being burped.

He was, needless to say, more humiliated than he could ever remember having been in his life.

Kanda's face scrunched up as he felt the bear clumsily pat his back a little too hard, and he resisted with all his might… and then burped.

His eyes popped open, startled at himself, and then he clenched his too-small fists, breath hitching… and apparently, that did it.

Kanda couldn't stop the whine that pierced the air, or the tears, or the loud cries that filled the area. The bear jolted hard and Kanda just cried harder, face screwed up and thrashing angrily.

He hated this, he hated not being able to take care of himself, hated not being able to lift his own head or feed himself or be able to control himself when he needed to go to the bathroom. He hated being carried around and he hated that the world was not fucking done with him.

Wasn't it about time for him to go to hell already? Or did it just not want him - was that why it kept spitting him right the fuck back out?

He didn't want this. This wasn't okay. He wanted to crawl back to where he came from and go to sleep and never wake up, and he hated that because it was weak, he wasn't fucking weak-

And crying was exhausting, and the bear's voice was low, and Kanda's anger never faded as the darkness of unconsciousness pulled him under again and he dreamed of nothing.

Kanda woke up, again, in a building, being shifted around uncomfortably, sending his blurry view of the world into a nauseating rock.

"Derzhite yego v etom. Derzhite yego vmeste s Vami vsegda."

"Ponyal."

Kanda growled unhappily as he realized that, not only was he still in the stupid bear's arms - without having even noticed at first - but he was now being shifted around clumsily. A moment later, he was placed in something like a cloth hammock that held his head still and kept him close to the bear's chest. From this angle, he could see a little better, but everything was still blurry. Reluctantly, he settled and started to watch the world before him, and then, slowly, realized something.

He could hear the bear's heartbeat.

Before he could properly react to this information, the bear was moving again, and the other man spoke, crisp and businesslike.

"Vas budet ozhidat'sya syuda zavtra v polden'. Mladencheskaya dolzhna byt' zabotilis' vami v techeniye vsego etogo perioda. Ne podvedi."

"Da. Ponyal."

The other man nodded at the bear once and then left; Kanda could hear the door thudding closed. With his departure, the bear remained silent, the only noises coming from the objects he was handling.

Kanda scowled the best he could and did his best to peer at whatever the stupid bear was handling. Who was he? What was he doing? Kanda still had no idea what was going on, and it was pissing him off.

It took a few minutes for Kanda to start recognizing the shapes of the objects the bear handled - the barrel of the gun, the point of the knives - and then Kanda looked back up at the bear, whose expression, still the clearest thing in Kanda's range of sight, was impassive, almost dazedly blank were it not for the intent focus.

Kanda's heart clenched, and he tensed slightly, refusing to make a sound.

A killer. A killer of what sort, Kanda didn't know yet, but a killer nonetheless. Nothing else explained this.

Kanda hated this. He hated this and everything about it. He didn't want to depend on this stupid bear for anything, or the scientist who'd left, or anyone else. He was tired of being at others' mercy.

And he didn't want to do this anymore. He was tired.

It took perhaps three hours for Kanda to determine precisely what kind of killer the bear was, and it didn't make him feel better.

As far as he could tell, the stupid fucking bear was an assassin.

Kanda wasn't sure; this wasn't exactly his area of expertise, which, to be fair, consisted of one thing and one thing only. (Killing akuma didn't leave room for much else.) But the way the bear stalked a certain vehicle - like a carriage with no horses, or so Kanda thought - from the rooftops, no less, was a dead giveaway, as far as Kanda was concerned.

It hadn't taken long for Kanda to become aware of a gnawing ache in his belly, and it only made him hate his situation more. He'd have to wait for the bear to feed him.

He'd have to lay here, while the man continued obliviously above him, and wait.

Frustrated, he struck out at him; his tiny fist smacked into the bear's chest and bounced right off. Kanda didn't even think he'd noticed.

Well, obviously. That was what happened when you were tiny.

Kanda's eyes burned, and his anger rose. Who was this stupid guy, anyway? What did he fucking want? Why was Kanda here, and why couldn't he fucking stop already?

He hit the bear again, and then again, suddenly furious.

Who gave them the right? Who gave them the right to mess with his life again? To bring him back again, to kill, again? Why couldn't they fucking let him go and just let him be with his friends? His friends who were just as dead as he ought to be?

The first hitching breath, he barely noticed, and the tears were a footnote in his fury. It was the wail that made him realize he was crying, the thin, piercing sound that he was sure filled the air and finally made the bear take notice.

The alarm on his face might've been comical if Kanda had been in a better mood; as it was, Kanda could barely see it through squinty eyes and tears.

Dead. They were dead, or they were going to be, and he should have been but wasn't, and Kanda hated it. Instead, he was here, and he hated it, hated it, hated it-

The bear did something out of his sight, and then something was at Kanda's mouth and he latched onto it before he could even think about it. Milk - gross and lukewarm milk, but definitely milk - flowed onto his tongue, and he calmed almost instantly.

Of course they were dead. Everyone died, so long as they were still human.

Kanda wondered what that said about him.

The night air was cold, and it was, as near as Kanda could judge, the end of his first day as a newborn baby. The bear had been crouched on top of this building, waiting for something, since the sun had gone down, and Kanda was starting to drift off for what felt like the thousandth time that day.

Then a gunshot, muffled but still deafeningly loud, went off, and then there was a loud screeching sound from below. Kanda squirmed around until he heard a scream, and then the crash and scream of ripping metal, and he stopped.

The bear's heartbeat never changed.

By the time they arrived back at the same building they'd come from, Kanda was exhausted.

Forget the fact that he'd slept more than he'd been awake, and the fact that he hadn't done anything but lay there and stare. He was tired, and he was frustrated.

He didn't want to be here.

The bear's heartbeat still thudded in his ear, and bitterly, he wished ill upon the man.

They entered, and a man with blond hair and light skin hurried up to them. Kanda felt the bear tense slightly, and tilted his head to frown.

"Vasha missiya zavershena. Vozvrashcheniye rebenke."

"Da."

Kanda gurgled angrily as he was removed, almost mechanically, from his resting place, and then given to the blond man, who nodded once at the bear. Kanda turned his head away, refusing to look at him. Then, to someone out of Kanda's sight, the blond man said,

"Protrite yego."

Kanda saw the bear stiffen, and then there were two more men by him, guiding him none too gently toward a blurry machine that Kanda had missed. Despite himself, despite what he thought of the bear's actions, he froze.

The bear was shoved into a half-sitting, half-laying position, something was placed around his head, and then he started to scream.

The sound hurt Kanda's ears, just as the gunshot had, and though he wouldn't have been caught dead admitting it, it scared him, and before he knew it, he was crying again.

Stop, stop, stop, stop-!

The bear stopped screaming, and Kanda forced his sobs to slow so that he could peer at the bear as he was dragged out of the chair, and then shoved into something tall and blue, and Kanda saw a shadow of something in there before, to his consternation, he was turned away again.

What had just happened? What had they done to the bear? What was going on?

"Polozhite yemu usnut'. Dal'neysheye prigotovleniye nachnetsya zavtra."

"Da, da."

Kanda was then, without his consent, carried into another room, seeing mostly boring ceiling pass by and wanting nothing more than to be placed down so he was no longer being held, and was finally put into… a crib.

Kanda hated this so much.

"Spokoynoy nochi."

And then they left, the door again shutting behind them, leaving Kanda alone to stare at the bright colors spinning above him.

Kanda didn't understand much of anything about what was going on. He understood that he was alive again, he was now a baby, and he understood that his friends were gone - dead.

But not much else.

Too exhausted to think, Kanda fell asleep.

Kanda was woken by the blond man who had taken him the day before. He looked bored and a little annoyed as he stared down at Kanda, and finally, he held a hand up to his chest and said, "Nikolai."

...Well, that was helpful.

Then Nikolai pointed at Kanda and continued, "Ubiytsa." Then, under his breath, clearly irritated, "Bessmyslennyy zadachey."

Kanda did his best to make a face at Nikolai, but the man, unfortunately, didn't seem to notice.

Over the night - Kanda had woken up numerous times, generally only just long enough to be fed - Kanda had eventually come to a decision. He couldn't do shit about his current situation, and as things stood, he couldn't do shit for his friends.

But he didn't have to lay here and be a good baby, either. No, he was gonna give 'em hell.

He squirmed and writhed from the time Nikolai picked him up, all through the various tasks the man had to do - feeding him, burping him, changing his clothes, changing his diaper - and cried when he felt like it, and by the time they were through, Nikolai looked just about done with him already.

Kanda was very smug.

Finally, though, the apparent morning routine was done, and Kanda was laid on his back with Nikolai looming over him, looking clearly exasperated with something. That something became very clear with just a little squinting.

It was an image of some gory murder scene.

Kanda couldn't help it; it was too ridiculous. The blond man, scarred and clearly exasperated, holding up a picture that was clearly for a purpose-

His lips twitched, and instantly, Nikolai reached out and flicked him on the forehead. "Net!"

Suddenly it wasn't funny anymore.

The end of the Holy War… hadn't come without consequences. And that would've been fine, maybe, if it had just been Kanda. But it wasn't.

They'd lost a lot. And remembering it hurt. Maybe that was why the exorcists had scattered across the Earth, both wanting to be as far away from each other as possible, and to never lose contact for fear of losing them for good - maybe that was why all of them always took Allen's calls.

Kanda himself had left because he'd known, more certainly than ever, that he was going to die; the last battle of the war had wrung his soul free of any life force it had had left, and that had, in turn, robbed him of even the healing ability a regular human possessed. It didn't kill him right away. Not that.

Lenalee had gone with her brother, fearing becoming a burden on her friends; a battle with Sheryl had handicapped her to the point where she couldn't walk alone, and she certainly couldn't work in most traditional jobs. Komui, the sister-complex, was more than willing to provide for her for the rest of their lives, anyway.

Lavi had gone with Bookman, pretending like everything was back to the way it had been before he met them, and Bookman, surprisingly, had gone along with it - never mind Lavi's missing hand and the red bangle around his wrist, the one matched with the stigmata carved into his flesh.

Allen, his left arm paralyzed and his left eye blind, had retreated for reasons beyond Kanda's understanding, which were probably stupid anyway. Still, he'd kept everyone in contact with each other.

Kanda wondered what had happened to them.

He wondered if the CROW had killed them, too.

Excellent! *beam* Now, things are going to be a little slow at first - I'm ten chapters in and I still haven't gotten to the intense part. 'Cause, y'know, they have to grow up. That begins, I believe, when Allen is three - and they're going to be born in canon order, which means Lavi is soon, Lenalee is in about two years, and Allen is a year after that. So yeah. Sit tight, k? Thanks for reading and please review!

Edited: 4/5/16

NOTICE: Major changes have been made during this round of revisions. Inconsistencies may appear in the future; most notably, several characters will not appear until these changes are made. This notice will be removed when all revisions are complete.