Phil kissed the top of Skye's head before he set her down beside her siblings, picking up his bag instead.

"Will you be back soon, daddy?" Skye asked with a smile, and Phil responded with a smile of his own, tweaking his youngest daughter's nose.

"I'll be back in fourteen days, do you know how long that is?"

"This many, with four of Jemma's fingers, but not her thumb," Sky replied, holding up both hands, fingers splayed apart. Jemma giggled and put up her hand alongside her sister's, thumb tucked against her hand.

"That's it," Phil grinned, tugging gently on one of Jemma's plaits as he rose to his feet. He'd already kissed goodbye to his older children, Skye liked having the last kiss before he left.

"Be good and do what Mrs. May asks you to do."

"Yes daddy" Jemma and Skye chorused.

"Sure thing, dad," Clint nodded.

"I'll miss you dad," Leo chimed in.

"I'll miss you too, now I better go, before Uncle Nick get's cross with me."

With that Phil waved and headed out the front door of his house, putting his bag in the back seat of Lola, and getting into the driver's seat. He glanced back at the house, and he could see his children, pressed against the glass, waving. Phil waved back before he started the car and backed out of the driveway, before he drove away from his house.

It wasn't the same house that he and Audrey had lived in, the safety of that house had been compromised the moment that Agent Collins accessed Phil's personal file. Who knew which criminal scumbags or enemies of Phil he told. Still, it was similar, a normal looking two story house in a middle sized town, with a white picket fence and white shutters on the windows. The children were happy enough in their new town and their new house, though, and that was all Phil cared about. Nobody within SHIELD but Nick Fury, Maria Hill, Melinda May and Jasper Sitwell knew Phil's address, and it wasn't kept on record anywhere. Phil's family were, in essence, completely off the grid

Four years had passed since the day that Collins had put his plan to destroy Phil into action, and their location wasn't the only thing to had changed. No matter how old they were at the start of those four years, children grew a lot during the span of four years.

Skye was now a four year old, bright, inquisitive, determined and cheeky. Physically, Phil and Audrey's youngest child was a mixture of both of them, with Phil's brown hair, and Audrey's brown eyes. She had Audrey's nose and chin and smile, but the rest of her features where similar to Phil's own, or to Phil's mother. Skye was the only one of Phil's children that could be considered a social butterfly, outgoing and confident with the other children at the day care centre she attended three days a week, and very much looking forward to starting going to school in autumn. Phil knew that Skye wouldn't have any trouble adjusting to being at school. She was clever and a quick thinker and she loved using technology, often playing happily with Mrs. May's laptop or Stark pad for hours.

Jemma was quieter and less social than her sister, but she made up for it in brains. At the age of five, Phil's oldest daughter was already reading confidently, tucking herself in a quiet corner and reading a story to herself contentedly.

Of the children, Jemma was still the one that physically resembled Audrey the most, except her hair was more like Phikl's own, except longer. Despite losing her mother at such a young age Jemma was very cheerful, and was almost always smiling, with the same happy disposition that she'd had as a baby.

Wherever Jemma was, Leo wasn't far away. Despite Leo being two years older than Jemma, the pair were seldom apart, preferring the company of each other over the friendship of children their own age. Leo especially had trouble making friends, since he had little in common with them in terms of interests. Leo loved science and building things, and more than once Phil had contemplated the idea of introducing Leo to Tony Stark. Leo loved Iron Man, and he had a poster of his favourite hero pinned up on his bedroom wall. Phil had been rather surprised when he'd gotten home from a mission to find it. Mrs. May had brought it for Leo as a reward for a good report card (the others had all gotten a present as well), and there was a small part of him that had been disappointed that Leo hadn't fallen in love with Captain America like Phil had when he'd been his youngest son's age.

Leo was mere weeks away from his eighth birthday, and Phil couldn't believe how time had flown by. Physically, it was Leo that had changed the most in the past four years, not so much in terms of growth, but in terms of appearance. Leo, who had once looked like mini Clint, now looked more like his mother in his face, especially when you put it with his blonde hair and his curls and his smile, which had been just like Audrey's from close to the beginning, made the resemblance even more obvious. Leo didn't resemble his mother in his face as much as Jemma did, his face was still a little too thin for Audrey's rosey cheeks, but it was apparent that Leo's genes had decided late to favour his mother after all, with her gentle features to match her gentle nature.

In terms of personality, Leo was the one to most reflect Audrey, with his forgiving nature and his hatred of violence and conflict, although Phil knew that Leo had struggled in the aftermath of loosing Audrey. It had taken almost two years for Leo to adjust to the changes in his family dynamic, with the change in location, and the introduction of Mrs. May as the one who looked after the children while Phil was away on missions, instead of their mother. To this day Leo hated change, and Phil and Mrs. May always made sure that the children, and Leo in particular, were well warned whenever their would be a change in their routine.

The one of Phil and Audrey's children who had changed the most in the aftermath of Audrey's death was Clint. Active and adventurous, Clint was still a daredevil with a great fondness for heights, but now Clint was borderline obsessive with protecting his younger siblings, forgoing playing with his own classmates and instead watching over Leo and Jemma as they played, usually from the branches of the tree in the school yard they liked playing under, like a bird of prey watching over her chicks.

Clint didn't trust anyone outside of Phil, Nick, his siblings, and as of the previous year, Mrs. May. He didn't like dealing with emotions, and tended to bottle things up inside until he couldn't cope anymore and broke down. There was, however, a coping mechanism that Clint enjoyed. It was Nick who had suggested it, the summer after Audrey's death. A local summer camp was running day programs with a circus theme, run by real circus performers and the camp co-ordinators and councillors. Clint had always loved Audrey's stories about her days in the circus, and at that point Clint hadn't smiled or laughed once since Audrey's funeral, so Phil had signed him up. It had been a good move. The child that Clint had once been before his mother's death started to come back after his first week of the program, some of the light coming back into his eyes. The people running the camp had all told Phil how talented Clint was. By the end of the summer Clint was doing basic tricks on a trapeze, walking the tightrope, and doing some of the same things that his mother had once earned her living doing. And he was smiling the whole time he was doing it.

When he was told that the people who were running the summer camp were also running after school programs during the school term, Phil hadn't thought twice about enrolling Clint. Once a week Clint headed off to Circus Skills and continued to build up the skills he'd started learning that first summer.

It wasn't long after Clint first started going that he picked up a bow for the first time. The kids had been learning about targets, and they'd been taking turns shooting with the bow and arrow. Clint had fallen in love with archery, and, it seemed, archery had fallen in love with him. Clint rarely missed, and when he did it wasn't by much. Even Nick Fury's jaw had hung open in amazement the first time he saw Clint shoot. At the tender age of seven Clint was being heralded as one of the best marksmen to ever walk the earth by the director of SHIELD, and Phil hadn't known if he was proud or terrified by the notion.

Clint was eleven now, small for his age, and still with his dark blonde hair that tended to stick out messily, like Phil's had when he was a child. Clint's face, however, became more and more like Phil's own with each day, and it wasn't uncommon to see Phil's own serious expression on Clint's face when he was doing his homework or deep in thought.

Clint, Leo, Jemma and Skye were all very different, but Phil was very proud of how they'd all turned out, and he hoped that Audrey was too.

He was pretty sure she would be though.