Hey everyone sorry for the delay. I had a pretty wild couple of days. Spring break got off to a wild start and made it hard for me to work on this story. It was always on my mind though so this is one of the longest chapters I've written in a while. Anyways thank you so much for all your reviews and please continue to let me know what you think of this story. I'll update as soon as the next chapter's done. So here it is.
"So let me see if I'm understanding correctly, you went into a shop in 2011 and this old lady gave you a bracelet with the stone that brought you to 1943. No one else saw the old lady but you and you didn't think it was unusual." Peggy said in the car as Jarvis was driving us to the airport.
"I thought it was a bit creepy but didn't think much of it at the time." I said.
"It's a bit of a long shot, How do we even know that lady who is probably a teenager right now is even there or if the shop is even there?" Gramps asked.
"The shop sign said it was opened 1927 and as for if she's there I'm not sure. We won't know until we try and if she isn't there then we could always take advantage and do a pub crawl while we're there." I said.
"There are worse ways to spend my day off, you coming with Pegs?" Gramps asked.
"No, one of us has to stay here and look after things." Peggy said not looking too sad she's missing out.
"Sir we have arrived." Jarvis said.
"Thank you Jarvis," Gramps said and we got out of the car.
"Keep me updated and for god sakes be careful." Peggy said
"We will." I said as we got on Gramps' plane.
One hour later we were in Dublin. The majority of the buildings were the same as the last time I was there in 2011, except that they didn't look as vintage as they did them. Most of the buildings interiors matched their outsides. There were pubs everywhere; at least some things never change.
Gramps checked us into a hotel. He said chances were it wasn't going to take too long to find the shop but since we were already here we should make a weekend out of it. I didn't argue, staying in a different country would make it easier to avoid Steve and Bucky especially now that I wasn't allowed to lock myself in my room to wallow in my depression.
We checked in and had a quick lunch before we started walking around the city. Some parts were very familiar but other parts not so much. We walked along the River Liffey until we came across a very familiar street. I remembered it as the street Jess and I had been shopping buying things for my godson. Gramps and I went down the street until we found the alley.
"Are you sure this is the way? There are hundreds of alleys in Dublin, How are you sure this is the one?" Gramps said.
I made another turn and said, "That's why?" There it was, the same apothecary, herbalist shop I had visited almost seventy years in the future.
"I'm never going to question your sense of direction again." Gramps said with a smirk.
"I seriously doubt that." I said with a chuckle.
I took a deep breath and walked towards the shop. We opened the door and a bell rang. The shop looked almost exactly the same as it did in 2011. The arrangement was still the same. The only difference is that instead of glass shelves, they were all wooden shelves. There was a woman in her thirties standing by the register.
"Welcome, How may I be of service?" She greeted. She spoke with a very thick eastern European accent. She had long black curly hair and dark brown eyes. She wore a long necklace and bracelets on each wrist.
"Oh, we're fine. Just looking around." I said politely.
"Very well." She said "If you have any questions ask, don't touch anything without asking." And after that she went back to reading the newspaper.
I looked around the shop. Everything was the same as before. I saw the tapestry of the tree except that it wasn't as worn out as before. The color of the thread was more vibrant. I saw the symbol representing Asgard and without realizing I reached out for it.
"I would not do that if I were you." A voice called out from next to me. "Mama doesn't like people touching the decorations. Spreads the bad energy." I looked over to see a girl around my age, probably a few years. She wore a red bandana in her hair. She had a white top and matching flowing red skirt.
"Sorry, I was just admiring the needlework." I said.
"You sew?" She asked sounding surprised.
"I'm a doctor, sewing up people's cuts is my job." I said.
"A woman doctor?" She said sounding surprised.
"Yeah, I get that reaction a lot." I said casually looking around.
"My name is Amara." She said offering her had for a handshake.
"Nora" I said shaking her hand. As she pulled her hand away, I saw a very familiar gold bracelet.
"That bracelet…" I said looking at her hand. She looked a bit frightened.
"It's just a trinket." She defended right away.
"No it's not. I had one just like it. Where did you get it?" I asked. Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone move fast and then throw something at me. I lifted my hand and made a force field to block it. Turns out the cashier had a knack for knife throwing.
"What the hell?!" I heard Gramps shout.
"Step away from my daughter." She snarled.
"I'm not going to hurt you or your daughter we just want to ask you some questions" I said slowly raising my hands so she could see I didn't have a weapon and letting the force field down.
"No, Anywhere that thing goes, disaster follows. No more, Leave NOW!" She yelled.
"You know about the stone?" Gramps said surprised.
"Yes that thing is a curse, It always comes back to haunt us." She said.
"Please we just want answers. I got the stone from an old lady, who I'm going to have to say is your daughter in seventy years, give or take. She gave me the bracelet she's wearing with the stone on it. Ever since, I've been jumping through time and I can't control it." I said. Her eyes softened a bit and she lowered the knife she had in her hand.
"You can't control it, no one can. Have you talked to it?" She said.
"What do you mean talk to it?" I said confused.
"The last person who this happened to started having dreams where the stone appeared to them." She said.
"It happened once and all it said was that it doesn't interfere and that actions have consequences." I said
"At least you got a warning. No one who has ever ended up the host of that thing has ended well. My sister was driven mad by that thing. The knowledge you have with the power of that stone is the perfect combination for disaster. But I'm guessing you already know that." She said.
"That's why we're here. I want to learn to control it or if not how to get rid of it. This thing is making my life a living hell. I'm not aging, I time jump at the most inconvenient times, and fighting in a war you learned about seventy years in the future and not being able to stop some of the biggest atrocities in history is really causing some issues in my relationship." I ranted.
"There is no controlling that thing, only learning to live with it until it takes what it needed from you and leaves whatever is left of you where ever it picked you up from." She said.
"You said your sister was driven mad from what the stone did to her, what exactly happened?" Gramps asked.
"I think it's better if you show them mama." Amara said.
"arh, your right, follow me." She said she walked to the back of the store and opened a door that had a staircase behind it. We went up and saw that it was an apartment. We went down another hallway and up another flight of stairs that led to another room. The room was simple, it had a small bed on the corner of the wall a desk next to it and an easel next to it. There was a woman a few years older than Amara's mother. She was on the floor scribbling on a paper on the floor.
"That is my sister Katya, years ago when we were still living with our clan she met a stranger. That stranger gave her the stone and the stone merged with her. She had your problem; she would disappear for days at a time and come back with stories of strange lands and of things that wouldn't happen for years.
One day she came back after she saw something. She saw our entire clan be murdered by those butchers. She warned everyone but no one believed her. They thought she was insane. So one night after everyone had gone to sleep she took me and left everyone behind. The next day we came back and found their bodies. Katya became obsessed with undoing what had already been done. She wanted to go back in time and save our parents and her lover. But no matter how much she tried it always ended the same. Then she made her biggest mistake she triggered a time jump as you called it and went to warn a younger version of herself to change things.
The problem with doing that is that two identical entities can't exist in the same time. The timeline and the stone will do everything in its power to correct that paradox. Katya fought and resisted. She left hints for herself. The stone would not let that happen so it left Katya back where it first found her but with all the knowledge she already had acquired. Katya was forced to relive they're deaths and not be to do a single thing about it. After that day she was never the same. The stone may have disappeared but its hold on her exists to this very day."
"You said she triggered a time jump, How?" I asked.
"You may have noticed that sometime the jumps occur out of the blue but other times in times of great stress or fear they are triggered. Katya put herself in danger on purpose until the stone took her where she wanted to be." She said.
"What is she drawing?" Gramps said looking around the room.
"We don't know. This is all she does now. The drawing helps take her mind off of things but most of the time we don't understand what they are." I take a step closer to look at what she's drawing. It looks a bit like New York City from my time but there's a black cloud over the city and some type of worm coming out of it.
Katya looked up at me and said, "He's coming"
"Who's coming?" I asked.
"The man with the golden hand." She says before looking down and continuing on her drawing.
"How long has she been doing that?" Gramps asked Amara's mom.
"Ever since the stone left her she has these episodes where she gets lost in her own thoughts. When she finally comes out of it she starts drawing but they never make sense." Amaya, Amara's mom explains.
"Would you mind if I look at some of them?" I ask.
"Suit yourself, you won't find any answers. Amara stay with them, I have to go take care of the shop." She says leaving us in the room.
I walked over to the desk and saw a drawing of a caravan with people standing around the fire. They seemed happy and content but in the shadows there was someone lurking with something that resembled a gun in his hand and a red band on his arm.
I kept going through the drawings until I saw a blank page with a drawing of the arc reactor in Dad's chest on it. What the hell?" I flipped through the next page and what I saw gave me the chills.
There was a drawing of me wearing the same clothes I was wearing the day I was captured by Hydra. I was standing struggling against the Hydra guards and in the background was a red banner with the Hydra emblem.
"Amara," I called the girl over.
"Yes." She said once she was standing next to me.
"When did your aunt draw this?" I asked.
"Oh that one. I knew you looked familiar from somewhere. A few months ago, around October I think, Aunt Katya had an episode. She started shaking and saying gibberish. It was the longest one she's ever had according to Mama. She started drawing for days. She drew that one first then she drew these other two over and over again," She said handing me two drawings. One was of me strapped to a table with Zola standing next to the machine used to administer the electric shocks. The other was of Asgard. It showed the same thing I had seen in my dream, the blond man with the hammer fighting a black haired man wearing green robes.
"She also started carving that symbol she said pointing to the drawing of the arc reactor.
"Nora, Is that…?" Gramps started asking.
I pulled out my necklace from where I had it tucked under and nodded.
"How did she know?" Gramps asked.
"The stone may have left her but it still has a hold on her." I answered with the explanation Amaya had told us earlier.
"She also drew all of these." Amara said placing a pile of drawings and a filled out sketchbook. I looked through them and some of them did not make sense but others were. There was a drawing of Asgard. There was another of the Aesir with Heimdall standing at the entrance. There was one of me the night I first used the force field and another of the atomic bomb being using on Japan. I had to hide that one so Gramps wouldn't see it. I saw a drawing of me with Connor and Ellie having a picnic at the ranch with Wren playing fetch with Axl in the background. That one made me smile.
"Uh, Nora. I think you should see this." Gramps said looking a bit pale, staring at the sketchbook in his hand.
"What is it?" He hands me the sketchbook.
This drawing was drawn in color pencils. It was me wearing my uniform, half lying on the ground in a puddle of my own blood with Bucky holding me in his arms, crying and Steve kneeling next to him with an arm on his shoulders and the other around me. His shield was lying on the ground next to me and he was also crying. Steve's uniform was stained with what I'm guessing was my blood. My eyes were closed and I could see there was a trail of blood coming from my hairline.
"Amara, when did Katya draw this?" I asked taking a deep breath and trying not to panic.
"I'm not sure." She said helping her aunt off the floor to sit on a chair near the desk. "She finished that sketch book last week so not too long ago, I would guess."
I looked through the rest of the book and tried to see if there were any hints as to where this was going to happen. The rest of the book didn't have any hints. It showed the first time I met Wren. The first time I met Peggy and Dum Dum when I was thirteen. There was a picture of Loki and Thor as children sitting at their mother's feet listening to her story as Heimdall and I stood behind them.
The last picture really surprised me though. It was a drawing of the lab in the basement of the ranch. A little girl was sitting on a stool looking at drawings of some sort of telescope. Behind her was a tall man with chin length hair and cold steel blue eyes wearing a mask looking at her. The girl obviously knew he was there or didn't realize he was there. That wasn't what surprised me. The man had a silver arm that looked like metal with a red star on it. The same as the man I found in the barn a few years ago.
"Okay, this is getting really creepy." I said.
"All of the drawings of you are things that have already happened to you. If what Amara said is true, Katya can predict the future, yours specifically." Gramps said. I knew where he was going with this.
"The future isn't set in stone Gramps. This doesn't mean anything." I said trying to get him to not overreact.
"Nora, there's a drawing of you lying in a puddle of blood wearing your uniform. Everything else She's drawn before it happened, happened exactly the way she predicted it. Don't you think maybe you should consider not going back in the field?" He said trying to reason with me.
"Gramps that's not an option." I said. There is no way I am getting left behind on a mission. Especially if it means I might not be able to save Steve and Bucky later on.
"Nora, think about it." Gramps said.
"Gramps we don't even know how Katya's doing this." I said and then looked over to where she was sitting. "I just wish there was some way to know what's going on in that head of hers. I think she wants to tell us but when she talks it get jumbled up."
"There might be a way to do that." Amara says.
"What do you mean?" Gramps says.
"Amara, go downstairs now." Said Amaya coming into the room. "I think you've seen enough." She told us.
"Amara said something about being able to see into your sister's mind. What did she mean?" I asked.
"Ahhh, that girl," She muttered. "Why would you want to do that?" She asked at us trying to stare us down.
"Your sister has been drawing me and things that have happened in my life. According to your daughter she started weeks before I even arrived in 1943. I want to talk to her. I think she's trying to tell us something but it gets mixed up when she tries to say anything." I explained.
"What good would that do?" She retorted.
"I want to help her. These episodes haven't gone away even after years of being without the stone. I think there's a chance there still might be a connection. If I could talk to her I think we could figure out why she's that is and maybe even get rid of it." I explained my reasoning.
"Why do you want to help her? She's a complete stranger to you. If you go into her head the way Amara mentioned there is a chance that not only will I never get my sister back but you will get lost instead. Are you still willing to take that chance?" She said angrily.
"Nora…" Gramps said. I held out my hand to stop him.
"I'm willing to take the chance if you'll let me. I'm connected to the stone if anyone can understand what your sister's going through, it's me. I'm her best chance and I want to try. It's up to you." I said.
We were quiet for a minute before Amaya finally said, "There's an herb called silene undulate or dream root. It's rare. Our ancestors used to use it for dream walking. You use the herb to make tea. Then you take a hair from the person whose subconscious you want to enter and you drink it. Both of you will be asleep until the effects wear off. There isn't a specific time for it. Each experience is different. You will get to see everything she's ever seen or dreamed of and not all of it will be good. You'll need someone to watch you the entire time."
"Gramps?" I asked him.
"Yeah, I'll do it." He said.
"And no matter what happens, your body can not be moved while you are in this state. If you do, you might never be able to wake up. Understand?" She told us. Gramps and I both nodded.
"I'll need a day to prepare, in the meantime you should resolve any unfinished business in case this doesn't end well. Be back here tomorrow morning." She said leading us out. I looked back at Katya one last time before leaving. She was exactly where Amara had sat her down and she hadn't moved. She was staring off into space. I really hope this works out.
The drive back to the hotel was tense and quiet. Gramps was extremely serious and I swear I saw the vein on his forehead pop up. I knew he was going to explode any minute so I figured it was better to have him let it out before then.
"Say it." I said breaking the silence.
"I don't know what you're talking about." He answered.
"You think this is a bad idea."
"I think it's a horrible idea. You think drinking some special tea with the hair of some catatonic woman s going to give you answers? You're a scientist Nora, think logically."
"I know but it's all we've got. I know there isn't any real proof this is going to work but when has anything else that's happened to me lately follow normal logic. We've run every possible test possible, read every book we could find, this is our last shot we don't have a choice."
"Is that really all that this is about?" he said.
"What else would it be about?"
"You've been off since you went to 1992. There's something else going on you're not telling me."
"There is but I can't tell you." I finally admitted.
"Why not?"
"It has to do with future events"
"Right, no disrupting the timeline." He said giving me the same answer I had given him before.
"How do you deal with it?" I ask him.
"Deal with what?"
"Being around me knowing I know all about your future and wanting to know what I know but me not being able to tell a single thing." I said.
Gramps just sighed. "It's not always easy but I can manage it because in some weird way you give me hope."
"Hope?" I ask confused.
"I not perfect kid. I'm a womanizer, I like partying a bit too much, among other thing but knowing you and seeing how noble you are and how despite how hard it is, you still do what's right thing it lets me know that however long I live I do end up doing something right because I raised your father to grow up into someone that raised you right."
Hearing that was a punch in the gut. Dad grew up resenting Gramps. Somewhere down the line something happens that makes him change. If I change that I change the way dad grew up and he doesn't become Iron Man. I really hate time travel. Every time I see something happen I can predict how it's connected to something else.
I decided to change the subject into something a bit less depressing.
"So this may be the last day I have left to live," So much for a happier subject.
"As optimistic as always kid." He replied sarcastically.
"What I meant was we should do something." I retorted.
"If it's your last day, wouldn't you rather spend it with Barnes and Rogers. London isn't that far away, we could hop on a plane and be there in an hour and come back bright and early tomorrow." He offered.
"As tempting as that offer is, If I saw them right now I'm not sure I could go through with whatever's going to happen tomorrow. Besides times like these are better spent with family. How about we go get you your first Irish Car Bomb and see where we end up?" I said with a smirk.
"Like I said before your father raised you right. Driver, take us to the closest pub you to the Trinity Hotel." He said with a smirk.