"JARVIS, show me the data Bruce and Nat have been working on." Lynn was speaking even before Thor set her down on the floor, letting her choose where she would go in her quarters. Thor patted her shoulder and asked if she needed anything further; she shook her head and hugged him in thanks before he left.
Loki waited in the doorway until Thor was gone, and remained in the same position after he'd left. Lynn sat at her work station and crossed her legs, shrinking into the back of the leather chair Tony had given her. She flipped through the first images JARVIS displayed, then blinked and looked back where Loki still stood.
"In or out?" she asked. "I don't know if they need you yet for the machine."
"It is harder to relate to them," Loki said as he stepped in and allowed the door to swing closed. "Although I feel that I am better company."
Lynn snorted. "You can't possibly be saying you're tamed."
Loki bristled. "I am saying nothing of the sort."
"House trained?" She looked at him when he didn't respond to see confusion, and laughed. "Nevermind, it'd just make you angry anyway."
"I'm grateful for your superior judgment," he said drily. She chuckled and enlarged the image on the screen, focusing on a small dot inside of the purple organism. Loki stepped closer to watch, trying to see what she found so fascinating in the simple-seeming design.
He gave in to curiosity with a scowl.
"What are you trying to see?" he asked, folding his hands behind his back.
"A pattern," she said. "The one your magic sees. If this doesn't work, that could be the key to a vaccine, or a treatment." She sighed and leaned back, waving a hand at the image. "That's its nucleus."
"And this?" Loki pointed to the larger cell engulfing the strain.
"Macrophage," she said. "Part of our immune system, helps us stay healthy." She warmed to the topic, leaning in and pointing to the outer lining of the cell. "That's its membrane. We're eukaryotic, it makes a difference in the membrane. Here's what's weird." Lynn enlarged the picture further. "See this? The membranes look similar. It's like the strain is eukaryotic, like us, but, but it acts like a prokaryote. But it's larger than them, as large as a yeast cell."
"Is that the pattern you think could be used?" Loki leaned his hands on the back of her chair, and she huffed.
"It could be part of it," she said.
"And these?" He leaned forward, somewhat over her, and pointed at the smaller organelles surrounding the inner portion of the macrophage membrane. "These seem almost similar to the strain."
"Mitochondria," Lynn said. "They provide -"
She stopped, blinked, and sat up straighter. "JARVIS, enlarge the Ridley here. I want to see the inner membrane, as clear as possible."
As JARVIS increased the resolution, Lynn pulled up Bruce's summarized results report and began reading. She looked from the reports to the images, and raised her eyebrows.
"Huh," she said.
"Yes?" Loki shook the chair slightly, a reminder that she had an audience.
"Look, you see this?" She pointed to a chart which indicated no changes over a period of time. "They were testing redox susceptibility, with hydrogen peroxide." She looked at Loki, who raised an eyebrow.
"Sorry," she said. "Basically, they were using a dye that stains inside mitochondria. But here, look at the pattern - JARVIS, pull up a MitoSOX stain image."
She set the Ridley strain and JARVIS' provided image other next to each other.
"The red appears to follow the membrane," Loki said carefully. He was unfamiliar with what she was referring to, but the difference in red outline was obvious.
"And in the Ridley strain there's nothing like it - it just appears at random, no pattern. See that?" She flipped through the files. "JARVIS, has Bruce tried to isolate mitochondria from this thing yet?"
"There is no documentation of an attempt at organelle isolation," JARVIS said.
"They don't have mitochondria," Lynn said. She coughed, breathing hard from excitement. "They're not like us, they didn't evolve like us, they're missing that step -"
"You must calm down, Amma Lynn," Loki said. "You might choke yourself."
She waved off his concerns with a fluttering hand. "Bruce? You in the lab?"
"Yep." His voice was scratchy through the intercom. "What's up, Lynn?"
"Have you stained it with MitoTracker?"
"I can't say I know what that is," Bruce said, "so I guess the answer is no."
"Try it," she said. "I think it doesn't even have mitochondria."
"Power house of the cell, right?" Bruce said. "That's what they always said in school."
"That's right," Lynn said. "Without them, we wouldn't function."
"The energy source," Loki murmured behind her. She snapped her fingers at him, grinning, and he knew he had followed her correctly.
"Where does its energy come from, Bruce?" She was talking faster, energized by the potential. "It acts like a eukaryote, but it has a different power source. It could be how Loki's magic tells it apart."
"Like but not like," Bruce said. "We've been treating it like it's another species like us -"
"But it's not," Lynn said. "It's nothing like us. It must be stealing its resources, whatever it needs -"
"I'm on it, Lynn," Bruce said. "Loki with you?"
"I am here," Loki said when she raised her brow at him.
"Just checking," Bruce said, and cut the connection.
"Your friends are acting strangely," Loki said. Lynn ran her hand through the images in front of her face, swiping them away and blanking the screen.
"You're acting strange," she said, glancing from the corner of her eye at him. "You're being nice, cooperating. It's throwing everyone off."
"Is it truly so strange?" Loki asked. "Perhaps I should stop. I wouldn't want to ruin a well-earned reputation."
She laughed, and he found himself smiling easily at her. The expression was so foreign, the emotion so alien that he turned away and began to stroll around her quarters, inspecting all of the random elements strewn about. Tony had carted in all of her possessions, and on the desk near her hand a small blue fish with lovely green speckles on his fins drifted lazily in his bowl. She reached for a small bottle, uncapping it and pinching a bit of food into the bowl. The fish glided toward the top and poked at the surface, eating with small ripples of water.
He picked up her guitar by the neck and swung the bass into his free hand, looking over the older, dented instrument with a critical eye.
"You could purchase a new instrument, couldn't you?" he asked. Lynn looked over at him.
"I could," she said slowly. "I don't want to."
"Is there some reason for that?" Loki offered her the guitar and she took it, bracing it against her legs in a protective clutch. He studied her carefully and wondered what the damaged piece of wood and string could possibly mean to her.
"It was a gift," she said hesitantly. She didn't want to talk about it, and Loki felt more intrigued for her resistance.
He flickered his fingers through the air and drew forth a thick book with unevenly cut pages. He set the book on the desk, and she reached immediately to pull it open and look through the contents. The language perplexed her, but the images interested her. She ran a finger across an illustration of a bilgesnipe, her eyes wide with curiosity.
"Is this a fairy tale book?" she asked, now tracing the elegant script which described the creature's assorted features and lifestyle. Loki shook his head.
"This is a book of Asgardian species," he said, turning the page to a Marmennill.
"That's a merman," Lynn said slowly.
"They are capable of foretelling future possibilities," Loki said.
"They're real?" Lynn cleared her throat. "Are there female ones too?"
Loki nodded, and Lynn huffed, eyes bright in amusement.
"You know how many girls wished they were mermaids?" she asked. "It's almost insulting to know it could've happened for real."
"Of course, you would have to accept that you would be known as the Margygur," Loki said.
"Hm," Lynn said. "That does present a problem." She was grinning and flipping to another page, bright and engaged. Loki ran a finger along the edge of the cover, fueling the magical charms within, and the images sprung to life. Lynn laughed with delight as colors flooded the pages and the creatures began to shuffle impatiently, as though antsy from having to stand still for so long.
"This is amazing!" Lynn flipped back to the bilgesnipe, which now tossed its great antlered head and snorted loudly in complaint at being disturbed. "I feel like I could pet it."
"You wouldn't want to pet one of those," Loki said. "They are very temperamental animals."
"I bet I could tame one," she declared. "A good handful of apples would sweeten him right up."
"So it's a male, is it?" Loki settled on the desk, gratified by the lack of creaking wood. Tony had fortified all of the furniture throughout the tower specifically for his Asgardian - and Hulkish - guests.
"The grumpy ones are always males," she said with a wink.
"My mother gave me this tome," he said, and paused when she blinked at him. She pulled her hand away and gripped the neck of the guitar.
"Mrs. Turner bought this for me," she said slowly. "It was a welcoming gift when I went to live with them."
"Mrs. Turner is the woman you are sometimes arguing with on the phone, isn't she?"
Lynn laughed. "It's not arguing. She just worries for me."
Loki pushed the book closer to her.
"I think you will enjoy this," he said. "Keep it."
Lynn wasn't fooled by the veneer of sentimentality. "In exchange for what?" she asked, suspicion making her cautious.
"You have only sung for me once," Loki said. She looked down at the instrument and her fingers tightened on the wood. Loki continued carefully, seeing the tension across her shoulders.
"And the memory is not pleasant," he said gently. She looked up at him, pulled in her lips and looked down. She plucked at a few strings of the guitar, fiddling with the knobs on the head. "I know I have hurt you, with my words and past actions."
"If you apologize I'll never forgive you," she said tightly.
"Then I won't." Loki gestured at the guitar. "Play us a song, Amma Lynn. A better memory to call upon, in times of need."
"How many needy times do we have to have?" Lynn asked. She was trying to sound amused, and her voice cracked with the effort.
"I am not a good man, Amma Lynn." She met his eyes, said nothing. He looked down. His fingers were carded together, twitching, wrenching the joints. He hadn't realized he'd moved at all. "I will not promise to do better. I can't be held to such a pledge."
"It's not your nature, Loki," she said. "I wouldn't ask that of you."
He felt twisted, weak, exposed. He sucked in a breath through his nose and leaned back on the desk.
"Ask something of me," he said. He couldn't face her. "You must ask something of me. Otherwise, I may never..." He trailed away. He didn't know what he was supposed to learn, how he was supposed to proceed into the dark uncertainty of former enemies becoming comrades.
"I expect you to be exactly what you are," she said. "Isn't that enough?"
"I accept my limitations. I am the sort of man who needs guidance."
"Are you asking me to leash you?" Lynn shook her head, making a face. "You'll fight the bit of any bridle."
"I have fought every bridle ever forced upon me, every superimposed limitation and perceived constraint - save one."
Lynn said nothing. She set the guitar down at her side; her brow was creased.
"I fight myself as I once fought those commands," he said. "Every moment of my life is spent struggling against my own impulses, my nature. You understand the cruelty inside of me, Amma Lynn. You have seen a little, and that was restrained."
She saw the corpses of thousands of Chitauri, frozen for miles of terrain on their home planet. She flinched and looked away.
"Please," he said, so quietly that she did not hear him. He raised his voice, his eyes fixed on a spot on the far wall. The clock. The door. Anywhere but her. "Please."
Lynn was staring at him; he could feel the sting of her shock and confusion. She didn't understand what he was asking, and he couldn't blame her. He had never asked for such a thing - not from his brother, his mother, his cursed father.
He slid from the desk and sank to both knees before her. He met her eyes and saw discomfort contorting her features.
"Loki, stop -"
"Please," he said. He rested his hands on her knees, a supplicant before an uneasy idol. She reached to push his hands off of her. He caught her hand in both of his, closing his eyes as they watered with the onslaught of emotional need flooding him.
"Get up," she said. "Stop it, Loki." She stopped trying to pull her hand free. "You're practically a god. This isn't right."
"Extract a pledge," he said. "Demand an oath. Compel me toward integrity. I cannot on my own, Amma Lynn. I have tried, and failed. I need a stronger hand to restrict me."
"I can't -"
"You can," he said. "You have." He breathed heavily through his mouth, lowered his forehead to her knees. She was frozen above him.
She wanted to remind him of her limitations, her own mortality. She might not last the month, and then where would his leash be?
If she helped him see how to accept limitations, how to control his own cruel instincts, he wouldn't need the leash forever. He could live freely, openly. He could stand at his brother's side, and earn the trust of others through actions rather than lies.
She stroked the fingers of her free hand into his hair, tentative at first. He did not move save for a slight shudder. He expected her to push him away.
"Alright, Loki," she said quietly. His hands clenched around hers without causing her pain. She smiled and traced her nails against his scalp. "I'll think of something, alright?"
He sat back on his haunches, the image of a contrite cat realizing it had let loose a plaintive cry. His nostrils flared, and he pushed himself to his feet with great dignity.
"And I won't tell anyone," she said as he released her hand. "JARVIS, delete this recording from your records."
"Yes, Miss Creed," the A.I. said. Lynn picked up her guitar and strummed, tuned a few minutes, then strummed again.
"I'll play you a song," she said. "JARVIS will let us know when you're needed to help the others."
He hesitated as she began the tune, trust warring with pride, until finally he curled his legs underneath himself and settled on the floor before her, content to listen to the soothing sounds of her music until called upon.
He did not speak again.