One year ago
"No, Tony," Lynn said. Tony wasn't listening and she never knew why she bothered, but still. She wanted her protest on record.
"I haven't even asked yet," he said. He grinned and winked at her, and she couldn't stop herself from mimicking the expression back. She rubbed a hand across her face to wipe the smile away. He wasn't fooled.
"It'll be fun," Tony said as he sat next to her. The bench they shared looked over a large ground fountain, active on this hot summer day. Children ran through the water, shrieking and playing happily in the streams. Lynn leaned forward and braced her hands together, a pose Tony recognized in himself.
He sighed.
"And Cap'll be there," he said. At this, she looked at him with raised eyebrows, interest piqued.
"Throwing in the big guns?" She laughed and shook her head, leaning back against the bench. A small boy fell nearby and she started to twitch to grab him; an older man, clearly a father or uncle, raced nearby and scooped the young boy into his arms, crooning soothingly to the confused child. Lynn watched them until they rejoined their family group.
"Alright, I'll bite," she said. She scratched against one cheek. "Tell me."
"Ok, so Foster -"
"Jane?" Tony smiled sideways at the interest in her voice. He knew exactly how to entice this kid.
"Yeah, Jane. Dr. Foster if you presume." She snorted and he shrugged one shoulder. His leg jittered against the bench. She glanced down, then stood and motioned for him to join her as she began walking.
"Thanks, kid." He nudged her with an elbow and she crossed her arms loosely, chuckling.
"You can't stay still for more than a few seconds without going crazy," she said. He raised a hand.
"Don't sell my secrets."
"I wouldn't dare," she said. He looked her over when she took a slight lead, keeping the pace casual. Still too skinny, in the unhealthy way. He couldn't tell her that without pissing her off, but he knew who could. Several someones in fact. If his plan worked, he wouldn't have to say a word.
He reached forward and picked at her hair. "I'm liking the white."
Lynn slowed enough for him to catch up and scowled at him. "Haven't you learned it's rude to touch a woman's hair yet?"
"I don't learn," Tony said with a flourish. "I'm too stubborn for my own good. Pepper says she doesn't know how to handle it."
"You were trying to convince me to come to something." Lynn raised both eyebrows.
"Oh right, right - well how about this." Tony turned and gestured at the entire park. "A full concert, right here."
"What?"
"Concert. You know what that is, right? You go to them all the time."
"Stop spying on me," Lynn said absently. She tapped the pendant she wore around her neck. "It's not polite."
"Give it back, then." Tony held out his hand, and Lynn rolled her eyes.
"A concert?"
"Yeah, that thing you like that I don't know about."
"What does Jane have to do with it?"
"She'll be there," Tony said. "Everyone will be there. We're even gonna try and ship in the boys from Asgard."
"What about Sif?"
"She's stays here more often these days," Tony said with a sliding smile. "Seems she's found a lot more to like here than home."
Lynn shook her head. "What is this about?"
"Foster misses everyone." Tony had produced a bag of sunflower seeds from somewhere, and his statements were punctuated by occasional small crunches. "She wanted to do a little get-together, reunite the crew. She thinks too small."
Lynn felt utterly confused. "Why are you asking me at all? Why not just do it?"
"Well…"
Tony's hesitation continued into an awkward pause, then slid into outright silence. He was nervous about the next few words, which meant he didn't know if he was about to piss her off. Which meant…
"What, exactly, is Jane missing here?" Lynn tried to sound calm and reasonable, but the tightness in the back of her throat was hard to miss. Tony flinched and raised both hands.
"Look, kid -" Lynn snapped her eyes to his face now. He didn't call her that so often these days, since she'd finished her degree - "- when you were uh, when you were in certain company, before we -"
Lynn stopped walking and tightened her arms. Tony saw how her posture changed, ever so slightly curling inside, angling a bit away from him in defensiveness. She knew why he was asking now, but she was going to make him say it out loud.
"Well, we used to have gatherings, see. Get-togethers. It was...well, we enjoyed it. We stopped after you, you woke up, but -"
"But Jane misses it. Which means Thor misses it, which means...all of you?"
Tony looked miserable. "More or less," he hedged.
"All of you?" She insisted, wanting to know how deeply this craving for old times ran. Old times before her.
"I'm ambivalent," Tony said. "Everyone else...well, we don't have many friends outside our jobs, if you get my drift."
They wanted to ask her first because they didn't want to offend her but they did want to include her. Tony was the one asking because…
"Yeah, of course," Lynn said with a shrug. Her posture was no more relaxed, but she smiled. "It could be fun, right?"
"Look kid," Tony said. He had grabbed her shoulder and turned her to face him. He was staring straight at her, daring her to look away, and her own stubbornness forced her to meet his eyes. "You don't want this, you don't want anything even a little bit like this, I'll shut it down." He was intense because he understood. She wasn't the only one who'd had a bad time while someone else's life moved on. She wondered if he'd ever asked Pepper what she did for those months he was missing, or if she, like him, simply pretended it had never happened in the first place.
"That's fine," Lynn said. Tony scowled. "What? You'd let them do it."
Tony snorted and squeezed her shoulder, then let go.
"Just because I'm a bad mentor doesn't mean you get to blame me for things," he said.
"Yes it does!" Lynn hissed and grabbed a clump of her hair, tugging it slightly to calm herself. "That's exactly what it means."
"That's not -"
"It's fine," Lynn said. "It's been five years. At some point I have to move on, and so do they. And if this is what will help them." Lynn paused, then shrugged.
"Sounds like fun," she said. She didn't mean it. He sighed again.
"Whatever you say, kid," he said. "Whatever you say."
Now
"She's secure," Steve said as he entered the conference room.
"You mean unconscious," Tony said. He sat in one of the swivel chairs, knee jittering, twirling a pen on the table. "We don't know that thing'll hold her once she's awake."
"That cell was made for me," Bruce said from the back corner. His eyes darted around the room, inspecting for exits, always on the alert. Even among friends. "If Hulk can't break out -"
"That is for strength alone." Thor laid Mjolnir on the table and gestured. "Pick it up."
"What?" Bruce eyed the hammer.
"Pick it up," Thor said. Bruce walked closer and wrapped one hand around the handle. Mjolnir did not move. He added a second hand; the hammer lay still. He tugged, strained, grunted and finally yelled out in frustration.
"Physical strength alone cannot account for Lynn Creed," Thor said as Bruce struggled. "There is more at work here." He glanced at Loki, who nodded.
"Why is she doing this?" Natasha had seen the look between the two Asgardians. She crossed her arms and turned to look outside, where the rain clouded the view. "How is she doing this?"
Thor watched his brother. Loki stood silent, his expression troubled. They all waited.
"Thor," Loki said after a long, tense silence. "She is dreaming, and something is making her dreams into reality."
"Dreaming?" Thor looked impressed. "Her dreams are so violent?"
"Yeah." Tony waved a hand from the chair he perched in. "She has panic attacks every night, just about. Or night terrors. Sleep paralysis, PTSD symptoms, you name it, kid's got it."
"When were you going to tell me this?" Bruce looked ruffled and agitated. Tony shrugged.
"She called me a hypocrite enough times that it stuck. Besides, it wasn't dangerous to us."
"Until now," Steve said.
"Until whatever happened," Tony said. "This isn't new - this isn't sudden. She's been acting weird for years."
"Weird how?" Clint sat awkwardly on the edge of the table. All of them sat or stood awkwardly, twitching, anxious to move, to do something.
"Weird like Lynn isn't home anymore, and hasn't been for a while." Tony ignored Loki's indignant scowl. "None of us noticed because we're not around her enough, and we didn't know her before. But her friend, Brent, he noticed." Tony looked at Clint. "He called me a week ago."
"One week," Clint said, "and now she's trying to what? Kill us?"
"Why us?" Natasha turned from the droplets streaming against the window. "Why does she hate us?"
"Where'd she get all that shit I just talked about," Tony said. He watched the pen spin between his fingers, his face grim.
"That can't be it," Clint said. Tony scoffed. "No, listen - that can't be it. That's it? That's all? No." He pushed away from the table, suddenly enlightened. "It's something else - something inside."
He was watching Loki now, who had begun pacing in a slow path, back and forth. He snarled at the archer.
"It is not I," he began, and Clint laughed.
"I know that. This isn't your style." Not enough asking and fetching, Clint thought to himself. "But you've got something else. I can see it on your face."
He couldn't, and was bluffing, but Loki's irritated expression gave the trickster away. Clint was on to something.
"Stark," Loki said, "that event you hosted - the gala -"
"Yeah?"
Loki hesitated further, not looking at any of them save occasional glances at Thor. But not at Thor, no, but instead to Sif behind him, who had stood silent this entire time, watching Loki's rising anguish with sad eyes. She knew what troubled the trickster as none of the others could; she knew the choice he would have to make, the sacrifice he would endure to grant safety to this realm and those gathered in this room.
She knew that the choice was not so clear as that, and that there was no small possibility that they would all die to Lynn Creed's hand because Loki stayed his own. His eyes when he met hers asked, Can I kill her? And her own replied in turn, I do not know.
"I sensed Thanos," Loki said quietly. Thor's eyebrows rose; Tony stood from his chair and was stopped by Steve's hand on his shoulder.
"You didn't say anything -"
"I was uncertain," Loki said. Thor stayed close to his side, present but quiet, unwilling to interrupt or interfere. "It was only a flicker, a moment's time. I thought I might have been mistaken."
"You?" Natasha couldn't help the lilt of amusement in her voice.
"I hoped I was," Loki amended with a side glance at the assassin. "Does that satisfy you?"
"That was three months ago," Tony said. Steve hadn't removed his hand from Tony's shoulder; the inventor trembled with rage. "Three months and you don't say a goddamned thing."
"Would you have listened?" Loki snarled. "You hardly tolerate my presence."
"Communication, you prick," Tony said, bristling. "Talking to people. Telling them important things they should know, before people die."
"Why do you tell us now?" Sif spoke for the first time, her tone calm and reasonable. Tony hissed and pushed away from the table.
"I had cause to doubt," the trickster began. He stopped at Thor's low noise; the brothers exchanged a glance, and Loki clenched his jaw. The effort to speak without devious intent taxed him greatly.
"Very well," he said. "I doubted my own perception. I was...afraid...to acknowledge the truth, and she seemed at ease…"
"Didn't want to spoil the mood, huh?" The slight hint of sympathy from Tony eased Steve's worry, and he released the inventor's shoulder.
"No." Loki watched Sif again, who met his gaze steadily. Her strength fed him. "I felt nothing else, and determined that perhaps I was incorrect. But now, I know I am right." Loki's fingers twitched. "I...apologize...for not informing any of you before this moment."
"Don't strain yourself," Clint said. Loki scowled.
"I became certain only today." Loki looked at Tony now. "When she tried to kill you."
"She tried to kill all of us," Natasha said.
"Yes, but it was her attempt on Stark which convinced me." Loki shook his head. "She would have - if you had not blocked, if the good captain had been a moment too late. It was a killing shot."
"Right in the forehead," Tony muttered. "Dead center. Good job, Nat."
"Never point a gun at something you don't intend to kill," Natasha said.
"She only pointed it at me -"
"That is how I knew," Loki repeated. "She would never harm you, Stark. Not for any reason."
"Apparently she didn't get that memo." Tony sighed his way back into the chair, tapping the end of the pen on the table.
Loki turned to Steve.
"What did you see, when she attacked?"
Steve was surprised to be addressed, but his response was efficient and immediate.
"Fast, cold. She reminded me of…" He narrowed his eyes. "It wasn't her?"
"It was, and it was not," Loki said. While the assembled muttered over his cryptic reply, he gestured at the table. "The recording?"
"JARVIS, give us a visual," Tony said. The afternoon's conclusion manifested, Lynn standing still, hand raised, gun tight, while Tony stood in his suit several feet away.
"Watch her," Loki said. Tony watched the posture, watched her finger squeeze, not once but twice. He flinched and looked away.
"She didn't say anything," Clint said, shaking his head. "Not one word."
"Amma Lynn is fond of all of you, considers each of you a...a friend," Loki said, "but Stark is her mentor. She frets when she disappoints him."
"Sorry, are we talking about Lynn?" Tony sounded incredulous. "Lynn, who sasses the shit outta me if I so much as scowl at that piece of crap coffee spitter?"
"Tony, stop playing dumb," Bruce said. "The rest of us are her friends, but you're the one who -"
"If you say it, I'm leaving," Tony said.
"The point is," Clint said, "Lynn might hold some grudge against us, but you?" He shook his head. "No way."
"Why now?" Steve looked around the room, waved a hand to include them all. "After all this time? We're better friends now than we were before."
"Time," said the trickster. The image in the center of the table had rewound, and focused in close on Lynn's face. Cold, lacking cruelty or hate or any other emotion. Muted. "A great deal of time, to give small grievances and petty annoyances time to flourish, while the power within her grew. She needed to learn how to harness it; her subconscious needed time to be swayed." Loki sighed. "Patience, and time, to create a weapon to destroy you all."
Loki looked at his brother and shook his head.
"He knew, or he guessed, that we would none of us understand. Humans have so many diseases, so many categories - I thought this was the same." He met Steve's eyes now. "Thor is correct. There is seiðr at work."
"Meaning what?" Tony asked.
"It is not panic which visits her every night," Loki said. "It is Thanos."
"Six years," Clint muttered.
"Six years," Loki agreed. "Pushing her, filling her with his ambitions. He would have wanted her to kill you all, but even with how he changed her, it wouldn't be enough." Loki shook his head. "There is something else."
"The reality stone," Thor said.
"The what?" Steve shook his head and glanced at Bruce, who shrugged. Loki rounded on his brother.
"Are you certain?"
"I remember the feel of each stone, the weight and power," Thor said.
"It could not be that," Loki said. "Touching it would destroy -"
"No." Thor met Loki's eyes, and a long, tense moment passed between the two.
"Arrogant fool," Loki muttered. "Miserable oaf. You've no idea what you -"
Steve stepped in between them. "Fill us in please?"
Thor nodded. "When the worlds were rebuilt -"
"When you created the universe, you mean," Tony said. Everyone stared at him.
"What?" he said. "Lynn was researching origin of life crap so I had to hear all about it." He looked at Thor. "A lot."
Thor chuckled. "Very well. Yes. When it first appeared - by my hand - six stones appeared with it which control elements of the universe. These were the same stones Thanos used when he destroyed the Nine."
"And other worlds," Loki said quietly.
"Aye," Thor said. "And others."
"What did you do?" Natasha sounded mildly curious, more interested in what Thor did than why.
"I decreased their power," Thor said. Loki hissed and shook his head.
"Even that would not be enough. No mortal could withstand even a single stone."
"It is not the whole stone," Thor said while approaching Natasha, "but a shard. A small piece, placed here within her." He pressed a finger to Natasha's chest, between her breasts and over her heart. "I believe that over time, Thanos taught her to feed that power, to harness it as well." He looked at Steve.
"She has harnessed it, and with even that small shard of power reality will change around her."
"Her strength," Bruce said. Thor nodded.
"Her speed, her abilities, even her emotions - all harnessed within the dream she walks." Thor sighed. "I do not believe she knows this is realily."
"I am certain she does not," Loki said. "She believes this all fiction, and all of you safe. These are fantasies pushed to the fore by a cruel master, and given direction by his guidance."
"You believe his insanity has infected her," Thor said.
"As it once did me," Loki said. Clint snorted. Tony rubbed a hand over his face.
"Got his claws into our heads," the inventor said. "Clever bastard."
"So what do we do?" Clint pushed off from the table and approached Thor. "You have a plan?"
"We must remove the shard," Thor said. He looked at Loki, who looked away.
"Loki?" Steve stepped closer to the trickster, who shook his head slightly. "What is it?"
"That shard is part of her now," the trickster said. "Integrated into her system. To remove it…"
"Is it possible, Loki?" Sif asked.
"Yes," Loki said. Sif walked to his side slowly and pressed a palm to his shoulder. He glanced at her.
"Will it kill her?" Sif asked gently.
"I do not know," Loki said. She felt the slight shudder run through him, and knew he was lying.
She said nothing.