The artificial intelligence advised Loki that Lin was back and that she needed his help as soon as the girl stepped into the place, but he already knew what was going on his "bride's" mind hours before she arrived. The prince found her in one of the bathrooms of the house resting her hands on the sink, with her hair more disheveled than usual and with a pain expression. The magic in his body failed to cover her scars completely as it did before and the strength with which she held the marble was so much that it broke and was now blood-stained, although the hands that caused that were already regenerated.
She faced her reflex in the mirror, but it seemed she couldn't see herself. Sweat dropped down her face and the girl seemed to strive not to shake, even if it didn't make much sense and she didn't even notice he was there. One of her hands started to move fast on the blood, apparently a twitch.
- It's time to wake up, little monster. – The prince put his hand on her shoulder, but he repented doing so soon after.
When his skin touched hers, Lin sucked Loki inside her mind unconsciously, allowing him to see and to feel exactly what she was seeing and feeling. After that, looking ahead and around him again, the adopted Asgardian was scared to presence so much chaos and destruction. There was no life there anymore. Loki could confirm that without even knowing where he was or anything about what seemed to be a civilization before, nothing remained in that place anymore. That was a memory of Original, the god noticed, maybe the one that brought pain for him the most. The planet that the memories showed was collapsed, it was possible to feel so much suffering coming from Stark that the prince felt his eyes tearing involuntarily. There were dead bodies of creatures wherever he looked and Loki knew that no matter what the Original had been someday, it was broken in the day these memories were registered.
As soon as he got in her partner's mind, he was expelled, taking with him just a part of what that celestial being showed to his friend and the terrible sensation of having been hit on the nape. Loki rested on the wall, trying to recover the breath and reorganize his own mind. It's been a long time since the prince learned to control his powers to the point of not seeing people's memories, unless he really wanted it, it was the human who exposed this kind of things for whoever was strong enough to see. Maybe it was about time to continue her training so that such things didn't happen again.
- You're bleeding… - The worried voice of the girl called his attention and made him to notice that in fact there was a considerable amount of blood coming from his hand, the same he used to touch her. – I'll take something to stem it. – Lin left the bathroom and the prince would follow her if he hadn't notice something that definitively shouldn't be there.
On the blood stain spread next to the broken marble there was a word: "Domum", home in Latin, and together with it there was a portion of numbers put in an order that ringed him a bell. That seemed to be somehow intergalactic coordinates and even not being sure of what that meant, Loki decided he would keep those data, if the Original allowed Lin to transmit it out her mind, it should be important.
When the mortal came back with the bandage, there was no sign anymore of the message she herself had left with her crisis, but the girl didn't even notice it. She probably had already forgotten what just happened.
- It's the first time you get hurt after intervening. – She observed carefully while took care of the injury with another Stark's invention, a spray capable of speeding up considerably the regeneration of any living being tested to the moment.
- Our plan will be put into operation soon. – Loki changed the subject as if what had just happened weren't important at all. – That wizard apprentice agreed to teach you some tricks and there are still some things I need you to learn to control.
They were too close to each other, Lin kept her attention to the hand she was now trying to clean and he whispered on her ear some of the things he intended to do, anyone would see that scene as typical between them. It wouldn't be suspicious that way.
Stark was definitively the greatest finding that the jotun had in his life and he deeply hoped he could use her gifts on his own favor when the definitive battle came. She was like his card up his sleeves in any kind of situation, the strongest of his assets and also his undeniable most precious gem. Loki took his hand to her face, cuddling softly the scar that somehow gave her a somewhat fearing smile; he felt lost, he knew he should get rid of the girl when the moment arrived, but he wasn't feeling able to do this for a while. The god probably should learn to follow his own advices. What would he do if one day she really turned against him? Or if she forgot everything she was to assume the personality of one of the voices that tormented her so much? He didn't want to discard those good feelings the human causes to him. Odin's adopted son involved her in one arm and felt the woman nuzzling up against his chest, comforting herself with his smell and his presence as she usually did, but not understanding what had taken the prince to act that way. Loki didn't need anyone to tell him that his little one wouldn't survive what they had to do.
- You two are so cute! – Peter said with a happy smile on his face, he liked to see his "little sister" interacting with the Asgardian, no one else seemed to do so much well to her.
- Shut up, brat! – The men laughed when she hid her face in the chest of the bigger, probably to hide the redness on her face.
It was good to be able to enjoy those peaceful moments while they existed.
(…)
- What do we know about her, after all? – Bruce asked, hesitating. That meeting with the team didn't make him comfortable. The girl was Tony's daughter, they shouldn't suspect on her that much.
- Her full name is Linna Mary Stark, she's almost 5'7", was tortured along her childhood and adolescence, she's the daughter of the Iron Man… - Wanda listed what everyone already knew, but there was a tone of irony on her voice, she wasn't happy too with all that suspiciousness, she liked Lin even with all the demons that tormented the younger.
- The girl is allied to Loki, our suspects started based on that because no one here forgot everything he did and how untrustworthy he is, despite being useful. – Fury started, evidencing also something everyone already knew.
- And that's why Thor wasn't invited for the meeting. – The captain confirmed. – I understand that he is also under suspect, but it makes no sense to set Parker aside.
- Peter is already too clang to the both, Lin is the alive presence of Stark in the boy's life and we all know that Tony was like a father for him. It wouldn't be good if one of us made Loki to suspect of what we're doing, we know that he would find a way to stop us from getting any results if he assumed we didn't believe anything he told us. – Barton bothered to explain.
- Do you have any evidence that she really can make us any bad or are we here just for suspiciousness? – Bruce asked, crossing his arms, and resting on the one of the corner walls of the room.
- Loki has been killing people since the Iron Girl was introduced to public; businessmen, journalists, scientists, reporters, it doesn't matter if they are public people of great status or not. All of them have common characteristics, they visited Germany between 2007 and 2010, or Australia between 2010 and 2015, or Russia between 2015 and 2019, or Alaska between 2020 and 2026. All of them were declared enemies of Tony Stark or had at least a hidden hatred for him.
- Do you think he's taking revenge over the people who hurt the girl? – Scott went straight to the point.
- Many of us would do the same for those who we love, without thinking twice. – Wanda reminded them.
- But to what point is she really loved by him? – Clint asked so that they could remember the true nature of the god.
- We have found rumors and writings about an ancient goddess in a bunch of places around the world, a goddess strongly linked to Asgard. – The captain said. It's been a while that the discovers she had done with Jane were tormenting her and now they perfectly fit in the other reports made by the Avengers.
- In Wakanda, this goddess was known as Ego, it was protected by my ancestors as if it were a part of something much bigger. But we lost all the contact with what we protected more than a thousand years ago. My people believed that it had already joined together the rest of its body and that's why it disappeared. – T'Challa revealed for those who still didn't know, he could never imagine that the legend that he was told as a child could be useful in moments like this. All the legends hide a bit of true, after all.
- In our last mission, many people who believe in this very same goddess recognized and acted as if Lin were its reincarnation. – Sam told. – And everyone here had already seen what happened on her first day of training. Even having passed most of her life imprisoned, she has a lot of ability when she needs to fight and has an extraordinary strength for someone who was born as a normal human.
- Stark obtained success with the super-soldier serum and with the gamma rays experiment. – Scott reminded them.
- The problem is that few humans can survive the serum, even less to the gamma rays. None of those who tried to mix them both survived because human body will simply never be prepared for such a thing. – Shuri evidenced with a tightness in her chest, she really liked the Stark girl. – Unless her body had already evolved before the experiments.
- Are you saying the girl isn't human? – Bruce asked confused, there has always been the chance that the girl was an Asgardian or worse, but if she were born from earthlings, it was hard to understand such an affirmation.
- We believe that something or someone made her to evolve to something much bigger, even being born like one of us. – Fury seemed to have all the solution of all that discussion, but he wanted everyone to get to the same conclusion as him by themselves. – Or do you believe that a child would survive everything she's been through? Or that no one would have found her much time before if someone like Loki hadn't intervened?
- Do you think he hid her for the time she needed to evolve?
- Could another being have passed its gifts for her turning her into a hybrid, just as happened to the Captain?
- Yes, no, we can't be sure yet. – Shuri answered. – But I analyzed her DNA, she is definitively Tony's daughter, but I'm sure there's something in her organism that makes her to be in constant evolution. It's nothing ever registered or that anyone on Earth knows about, apparently.
- Lin Stark can turn to be a great threat for humanity, mainly if kept with Loki. – Fury announced. – That's why we suggest that she stays in Wakanda until we can prove she is really by our side. But before, we need a proof that convinces the girl that the Asgardian isn't by her side, that he is harming her and that we are the best choice, otherwise she may keep collaborating with him even being far.
All of them nodded, it was a good plan and if, in the end, the innocence of both were proved, the couple could get together again.
- Parker and Morgan should go with her. – The one who stayed shut all along required. – People can get hurt if she gets out of control and the boy could treat a crisis of her already, while the kid keeps her stable, they are the only ones who can calm her down as Thor's brother can.
- Yes. They will be accepted in my kingdom when the time arrives. – T'challa agreed.
The deal was that everyone would influence the girl to turn against the god and, in the end, even if some didn't agree, everyone got back to their lives and their own plans in mind, including Doctor Strange, who simply opened a portal and left in silence, as he had stayed most of the time.
(…)
Humans were so dumb, but the role of good boy Loki has played for the last years made Loki to learn to like a bit their existence, just as it made him to find them even more unbearable with the time. Maybe the god was somewhat bipolar. It was just like Bruce said hours before Ragnarok, his will to kill everyone changed time after time and that was for sure a moment in which he was willing to forget the game he was playing, give a loud fuck about everything and annihilate humanity.
Lin isolated herself on the last days, she didn't want to tell whatever was bothering her, but the prince knew her more than himself, so he didn't need much to understand what happened, just used a little bit of his powers. She still wanted to give his brother a dog, "Thor is annoying me with that false good humor of his, I'll give him a real reason to smile". Then Stark really went after a canine partner for the god of thunder, with her father's fortune, she could literally choose the animal that pleased her the most, no matter how rare it was. The problem started when she decided she wouldn't hide her scars with magic to look for the perfect dog. She said that her marks were already a good enough disguise to hide her from who didn't know her real image, but it was already expected that humans wouldn't see her favorably while in this shape.
The girl went alone (after convincing Pepper that she needed to do this to start to heal her traumas) to a pet shop in which she knew she would find the race she wanted to buy. It was supposed to be a pleasant surprise for Thor, just that, Loki could even make a fun trick with the gift and laugh at his brother's face just like in the good times, but of course the midgardians would mess everything up.
Lin got to the shop with shining eyes, she liked to be surrounded by so-pleasant animals like little cubs, but along all the way she was not-discreetly stared, just as many threw evil and fearful looks at her. When she found the dog she went after (after playing with all the others), she held it, walked towards a seller and would have bought it if the police hadn't arrived.
They ordered her to surrender, to put her hands down and to kneel, but each minimum move of her increased the threat of them to shoot her. Common weapons like those would never hurt her, but she wasn't alone in the shop, a mere mistake made by the humans could kill innocents. All that mess started just because they judged her to be a terrorist threat because of her appearance and the backpack she carried with her.
Friday advised that there were men coming from behind, probably they would try to immobilize her while she was distracted with the policemen. All her instincts screamed inside her to kill everyone and get the hell out of there, but there was a role of heroine to be played and Lin knew that Fury watched each step she took. Although she was turning green, she forced herself to swallow the anger and to ignore what she really wanted to do. The little puppy was put to the ground, Stark felt her head to pulse, that was a terrible time for the voices to opine, though the solution presented by them was really tempting.
The human noticed her vision to get blurry, she wasn't surprised that she would try to take the control under her minimum carelessness, people really didn't collaborate for her mental health. The policemen saw her body unable to get up after she stooped to put the animal on the floor, they also saw her veins on the exposed parts of her body turning green. No one had good memories involving green monsters over there.
Generally, Lin has always been a calm woman who could stand the unbearable with no overreaction, but things came to be more complicated when certain despicable beings in her mind increased drastically the intensity of her feelings. She was hanging by a hair not to get out of control of the wrath she was feeling, however, she could cool down since no one interfered, what obviously wouldn't happen. Humans use to always repeat the same mistakes and of course they would shoot the threatening creature believing it would kill it.
Stark felt her muscles alter, raising its strength and size, she was turning and couldn't help it. The bullets they shot didn't even touch her, they were stuck in the air for her involuntary telekinesis and the monster pulled up its hands to throw them back, to kill who tried to hurt her once again. It was in these moments that the problematic woman felt a real heroine, although she herself didn't like it when they attributed this title to her. If anyone asked Lin what was her own name at that moment, she wouldn't be able to answer, even so she knew that shouldn't hurt humans and used all her force to swerve the bullets before they hit them.
- "Ms. Stark, should I activate anti-Hulk protocol?"
Friday's voice frightened her and made her to slip again while trying to keep herself up to the feet. She wasn't conscious enough to answer, but the artificial intelligence already knew how to deal with this and activated the protocol. If Lin could answer, it meant that no action was needed. The backpack revealed its real function, for the shock of those who still tried to stop her, it enrolled her in one of the most recent projects of armor and forced the girl to go out of the facility, Friday wouldn't let her to attack no one, no matter how people provoked her or how Lin roared willing to hurt them. The police and its backup even tried to stop her, but in a blink of an eye the artificial intelligence was already in the air and moving more and more away from the humans, even with all Stark's resistance and wrath, it wasn't hard to take her somewhere completely isolated and drop her there until she recovered her mind. Although Friday didn't have a true conscience, it was clear for it that nobody got hurt because the girl could contain the most part of her power, fighting with the entire strength against whatever took her sanity.
The armor dropped her on the earthy and lone ground where no one was worried to know the location, the human hit some trees and got bogged down into the cold snow. The beast was resisting and much as they tried to avoid, it took no longer to get lifted again, ready to destroy the weapon that took her so far away and smash any other living thing it may find.
It was the nature itself the one to provide the key for Lin to calm down. It's not surprising that something that simple as a snowflake could tranquilize a monster, but it was exactly what happened. The flake fell upon her nose and distracted her for enough time for her to notice where she was now. Maybe the sadness that afflicted her so suddenly expelled the angry and the commands the voices gave her. Stark was stepping on the snow again, it usually took away the anguishing sensation that insisted to invade her chest, but in moments like that, she permitted herself to remember… There was such a short time since she left her captivity. Sometimes she had the impression that everything that happened in the last months was nothing but a long dream, a Loki's joke, maybe. She felt like if at any time she closed her eyes, she would wake up locked up in her former cell. In her mind, she believed that it was the humans who did this to her, that it was them who thwarted her to be saved before, who took her mom away from her when she was young and who disabled her to know Tony and grow up as a normal kid, it was them who tortured, marked and broke her, but even so they were the first ones to call her a monster for she was ugly. Lin really liked the avengers, Pepper, Happy, little Maguna, but she always knew that Midgard wasn't her home, she hated her own species and wouldn't hesitate to exterminate them, even though she was doing the exact opposite, what would at the end lead her to death to save them.
The girl was a devastation for herself, she knew Loki intended to go after the infinity stones sooner or later and she also believed he would probably kill her to get them, so to speak, she believed that the seventh would kill her using his body if she didn't have any use for him. Stark was afraid, couldn't presume what would happen when she achieved what she looked so forward and was afraid of never again being able to stop herself of hurting those few who were important to her. Lin laughed sarcastically almost freezing after letting her body fall on the ice, feeling a failure, knowing that she would forget this moment of complete self-control as soon as she got back home. Humans should have killed her when they had the chance, maybe they were not that wrong in saying she was a monster, after all.
A weak cry of a cub called her and the armor's attention, pulling her out of her state of almost desperate and self-depressing cry, the suffering expression flew away quickly and she got back to her feet with a smile on her face. Appreciating the new snowflakes that fell onto her. Lin walked without any guide to the source of the intriguing sound and there she found the cold cadaver of a fox with its cub still alive crying for it. Stark remembered she should take a canine buddy for her so-dear friend Thor. Well… That wasn't a dog, but the Iron Girl couldn't leave little helpless creatures behind. The small orange thing bit her while she tried to get it, aggressive and clearly wounded. But the human (if it be she could be called so) didn't care about it, only snarled back to the attempt of threat of the cub, which showed its neck in an instinctive act of submission. It wasn't hard to see which of the both animals were more threatening. She carefully put it to her lap, acting as a puppet, and maybe Lin was really one.
Only when she was already overflying her current house that the memories started to come up, the girl knew that humans provoked her in the pet shop and that she almost lost her mind, but that Friday took her out of there to the place where she found the new little friend of the god of thunder. That was everything she recalled, nothing else. But Loki of course could see everything that really happened when invaded her mind with her permission, but without her notice of what she was in fact doing, the Original seemed to underestimate him and didn't even notice the wizard scavenging the filed memories while exposed a part of himself to his girl. Lin now, hours after the situation, trained the ability to see other people's remembering, what was only an excuse of the god to understand how the celestial being was playing now.
The prince exposed to Stark a disturbing part of one of his pasts: the moment in which Thanos convinced him to attack the Earth, showed all the pain that the crazy titan's torture caused him, the way how he got to the point of almost going mad and the moment he gave in and made him to believe that he was by his side, the moment he chose to act, for the first time, as an enemy of Asgard, although, in parts, he was on the control of the mind stone and chose to fail to deliver two infinity stones to Odin, so that he could be arrested and kept very far from the goddamn dried vine fruit (nickname that the girl always used to refer to what brought so much disgrace for both). All of this so that he could slide beyond Lin, so that the Original could understand a little about how he was acting.
Loki showed to feel the most profound hatred for Midgard after his small exploration was done, he didn't hide that humans disgusted him for causing so much sorrow to someone as his precious treasure. He knew exactly when the newest ended to see his memories and got back to his own "normal" as he knew, when seeing her to pucker the frown, that she knew what he had done. Now all he had to do was to make her to believe in her angry against the beings of her species and no one would notice how deep his search had gone. The Original played very well, but had a serpent as peon and forgot how unpredictable a creature like this could be, he would end up being poisoned and without the control over his "bride" when Loki declared the end of the game.
- If you wanted to know the reason for my bad temper you could simply have asked me. – She smiled, ironically, as if it were all fine, for maybe at that moment she really believed it was.
- And would you tell the truth? – Loki smiled back, they were very alike when it was her who controlled her own body.
- Probably not. – Lin laughed, funny.
It was quite unfair that they matched that much, this only would make the duty of being against each other harder when the time arrived. The prince would be really thankful if it were him to fail when he needed to kill her, but he knew that this wouldn't happen, he would always think of his own life before the others'. The trickster god was not a good man, he was cruel, proud, arrogant and a manipulator, the worst person to have around and possibly the less trustable being in the universe. It wasn't possible to know whenever he'd kill for you and save you or whenever he would try to destroy you, Loki could be your glory or your ruin depending on how he's playing. Stark knew all this, she has always known, just as she has always known how to understand him and how to keep her position as his favorite, she was the only one who stayed by his side for that long, the only one who didn't judge him for his mistakes and who understood his contradictory actions, as they might seem, maybe the girl also was the only one who conquered his true appreciation and the only one who would hurt him when he cheated on her.
Loki was alone for so much centuries when he found her, he had no doubt that she was one of the best things that has ever happened in his life, just as he knew she thought the same about him. The prince held one of her hands with missing fingers, it was one of that weird moments for those watching, in which both kept staring each other steadily and appreciating the sensation of the touch of one another.
She was his weapon, his partner, his precious gem. It would be terrible when he ruled her out.