Note: For those who need to visualize an actual person doing all of this, in case you haven't looked at the thumbnail, Anna Stark/Lady Anna Thorsdóttir is portrayed by Nina Dobrev, picked by the program I wrote to spew out random actresses' names. (Well, Emma Stone technically won, but she's neither brown-haired nor brown-eyed. Multiple tries later, Nina Dobrev was the first actress I got from the program who could actually pass as Robert Downey Junior's kid.)

So yeah, Nina Dobrev, everyone! Applause, applause!


An eternity passes her by.

Or at least that's what it seems like. With her eyes closed, she can see nothing, but Anna can hear and smell and feel everything else. She knows she's still in the detention room of the Helicarrier because the hum of technology never goes away, and the sound of doors whooshing open and feet stomping soon accompanies Loki's struggle to get up.

"Loki, step back in the cage! You! You're under arrest, so put your hands up behind your head! Slowly!"

"Thor," she hears Loki rasp. "Thor!"

"Brother," Uncle Thor's familiar voice thunders through the room. "Are you well? What has happened?"

'Uncle?' something asks just inside her ear, and lassitude creeps into her bones as the darkness is pushed aside with a flash.

"Hello there, little one," a big face greeted her, and Anna did her best to imitate the smile on his face. "I am your Uncle Thor—"

"—run to the elevator, Anna," Uncle Thor said steadily, never facing her as he kept his body between her and the man in violet and yellow on the balcony. "Go—!"

"—father," Uncle Thor said as he looked up to the king, "I bid you to give blessing to my plea. Allow Anna Stark to take refuge on Asgard as a lady of the court."

'Anna Stark.' The lethargy pulses again as more memories flood forward.

"Antoinette Natasha Stark!" her mother's startled voice rings out. "What have you done to our toaster—?!"

"—as of today, you can no longer be Anna Stark." She swallowed and met Clint Barton's hard gaze. "Do you understand—?"

"—hello," she greeted her guests, resting her wrists at the podium and channeling her father's unflappable confidence. "My name is Anna Stark. Thank you all for coming tonight—"

"—your true name must never pass from your lips," Loki warned her. "Nor should you speak of the lineage you come from. This is the second rule."

Rage suddenly fills her every nerve and Anna gasps, taking a step back at the encompassing emotion. She knows at once that it's a mistake, because the rage doubles when she moves, and a familiar roar echoes and sinks into every crevice of her mind.

"Fuck," she chokes out, clutching at her scalp and dropping to her knees. "No," she moans, because how the fuck could this happen to her?

Amusement tinges the rage, and Thanos—motherfucking Thanos, holy fucking shit—laughs. 'I see,' he says. 'So Anna Stark, One Yet To Be Born. You've come with intentions to thwart my plans.'

Fuck. "Get out of me, you cock-sucking shit!" she gasps, but despite knowing what she should feel, the adrenaline doesn't rush through her like it had just moments before. Instead, her whole world suddenly bursts into hot flash, white noise searing her ears as every part of her was set on fire.

But through the pain, she sees more.

"Forgive us, my prince, but we cannot play now. There are places we must be."

And then the vision dissipates, along with the pain.

'Watch yourself, Lady Thorsdóttir,' he warns. 'I am your master now.'

Traces of her scream lingers in her throat, but she manages to gather enough of her wits to croak, "Go fuck yourself," even as she shifts away in a bid to avoid—

The fire returns, and her back arches involuntarily as another scream escapes her.

"Oh, they are simply busy, Thanos, my son. Come, stay with your lonely mother instead."

'It seems so much worse, doesn't it?' the deep voice asks, interrupting the memory—because it couldn't be anything else—she was seeing through the pain. 'I've found that a vessel breaks faster when I start conversion from the inside first.' A rumbling chuckle quakes through her nerves. 'You should be a quick one, mortal.'

When he finally lets the pain stop, Anna whimpers, "Mother-of-fuck son-of-a-bitch god-shit-fuck!" and slumps over, fatigue seeping into every inch of her being. Some part of her wonders if this is how Loki was kept in line.

Thanos laughs again. 'Loki is no longer your concern.'

The outside world suddenly oozes back in, sounding muffled to her ears. "Loki, we won't say it again!" one of the guards yells. "Stop whatever it is you're doing to the girl and get back. In. The cage."

Suddenly, Anna's head turns and her eyelids open—all on their own.

Possession. Fuck.

Through the lingering fog of pain and eyes she could no longer move, Anna recognizes Loki's blue form, leaning heavily against Thor's grip. The fair-haired god has one hand around his smurf of a brother, supporting Loki's weight even as his blue eyes remain on her, alarm and a hint of worry in his eyes. And behind them is a contingent of guards, aiming rifles at them all.

Their mistake? Most were still aiming for Loki, ignorant of the fact that there was another, more dangerous being in the room.

"I've said that this is not my doing! Brother!" Loki shakes his brother's arm lightly. "Brother, I'm not your enemy. I swear it on my name and honor. I wasn't in control!"

'Sentiment,' Thanos grumbles in disgust. 'I've shown him worlds beyond his knowledge and he still clamors for his captors. Pathetic.'

'You're pathetic,' she retorts weakly, hoping he'd slip and give a physical reaction with her body to get most of the guns trained on them, but instead of getting angry, Thanos simply chuckles and ignores her.

"Then I was right," Uncle Thor declares. "Who was it, brother? Who took you from us?"

Her mouth suddenly opens. "I did," she says, but it's not Anna who says it. Not really.

…well. At least the guns are pointed at her now.

"And who," the voice from earlier speaks up, "are you?"

Her head turns, eyes moving in the voice's direction, and though she'd never personally met him before, the eye patch gives his identity away.

"Commander Fury was the leader of SHIELD," Uncle Thor told her as they gazed up at the stars. "He was a great leader to us."

"Ah," her mouth sounds. "Commander Fury. We finally meet." Fury stops to her right, between a gap along his men. Her body rises to her feet to face him even as Anna tries to stop it from moving because holy fucking hell, it's like the time she took her father's old suit for a joy-ride and JARVIS took control of it when her mother ordered him to take her back home. It's like a carnival ride—like a rollercoaster and a spinning teacup on a carousel at the same time.

That's what being out of control felt like.

"I'm not a commander," Fury replies with the barest hint of confusion.

"Tell no mortal of their future," Loki had warned her. "Not even a hint. You, and you alone, will drop the ripples in their ponds. Should anyone else know of what's to come for them, we may end up with the same unfortunate events as our current present."

She blinked, turning that over in her head. "What, like a self-fulfilling prophecy?"

He smiled. "Precisely."

Thanos should've known about Fury's current ranking—he'd been in Loki all this time and Anna knows from the old stories that Clint had filled him in on everything. So what was he playing at—?

'Fuck,' she thinks, realizing what Thanos was up to. 'Stop it!' she tells Thanos.

'Ah, but this is justice,' he responds. 'You dipped your fingers into a plan long-devised, Thorsdóttir. I must ensure that my plans will succeed. Telling the mortals of their future will secure this, will it not?'

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. 'Son of a bitch!' she shrieks at him, and he retaliates with a dose of that white hot pain.

Her body bows forward as she screams the pain out once more, and for once, a vision or memory doesn't show up because Thanos is screaming with her.

Or rather, he was roaring furiously, and the pain is cut off almost immediately.

'WHAT ARE YOU?' he demands, letting her feel his wrath. 'HOW CAN YOU BREAK MY CONTROL?'

"I don't know," she whimpers, and this time, she has control of what she's saying, thank fuck. "I don't know, please stop—" because she hadn't been built for this.

Clint and Uncle Thor had taught her how to fight what she could hit. She hadn't been trained for torture.

Thanos rumbles discontentedly, rummaging through her memories so swiftly that it made her nauseous, but it doesn't seem like Thanos finds his answer there because he sends another wave of pain through her, making her scream and writhe.

By the time she recovers from…whatever it was Thanos kept doing to her, it's obvious that she's already missed a great deal of the meeting. "…take your brother to the infirmary," Fury was saying, "and keep an eye on him."

Anna's head turns, her body out of her control once more as her eyes look around. "What…?" her mouth stutters as she takes in the fact that she's now locked in the cage Loki had been in. "What's going on? Where am I?"

Fury looks perplexed. "What's your name?" he asks, clearly ignoring her question.

"My name…" her lips murmurs, Thanos shaping her reply. "Anna S—No!"

Panic—pure, unadulterated panic—somehow grants her the power to retrieve control of her mouth before Thanos could break Time-Travelling Rule Numero Deux. She files that thought away for later dissection as she and Thanos fight for control, her body trembling while her fingernails scratch roughly over the smooth cage floor as she clenches her fingers and Thanos unclenches them right back.

It takes her a few moments to think and wonder why he isn't just dousing her with another bucket of his soul-clenching pain. Then it takes another moment for impulsiveness to capture her.

"The cube will be at Stark Tower in New Yo—!" she manages to get out before Thanos mangles her words with that pain she'd been expecting.

But this time he's pissed. She could feel it in the way he makes the fire burn excruciatingly beyond everything else, and the memories—Thanos's memories—rush past her in broken clips and pieces.

Another eternity passes by.


"How many?" Loki ignores the attention he's drawing from the mortals in the room and focuses on his brother, whose face falls at the question. "Thor," he presses, gently pushing aside the fragile mortal who ridiculously wanted to take his temperature with a respectful nod. The woman gapes at him, but by then, Loki has already turned his attention back to his oldest companion. "Tell me."

"I was told," Thor finally says, "that there were eighty casualties to date."

With a wince at the body count, Loki drops his gaze to the floor, remembering clearly how his body had moved to follow another's whims.

Eighty. Eighty Midgardians. It was one thing to slay eighty warriors—another to slaughter eighty peasants. There was no honor to be found in such deeds and Thanos struck him where he, as a prince of Asgard, would hurt the most.

A warrior's honor was all he had left, saved by his father before he could taint it with the lives of innocent jötuns, but Thanos had ripped even that away from him when he used Loki's body to spill human blood.

"Enough of that, brother," Thor snaps. "You weren't in control. None of this is your fault."

"But it is." Loki meets Thor's narrow-eyed gaze. "If I hadn't ruined your coronation, none of this would have happened."

"No, brother," Thor replies firmly. "Had you not ruined my coronation, I'd be a fool king sitting on an undeserved throne while my brother remained ignorant of his blood-heritage." Loki winces at the reminder, but his stubborn brother claps a hand on his shoulder to make him pay attention. "Loki," he intones, "you have missed much. We mourned the loss of you. We thought you dead. Our parents told me why father took you from Jötunheim, about his plans to unite our kingdoms one day—"

"Those plans don't matter," Loki interrupts him bitterly. "Father said as much."

"Because you were to be king of Asgard!" Thor cries, shaking him as he was wont to when trying to bring someone to his senses, though he's never done it to Loki until this instance. "No one knew how long I'd remain in exile and Asgard needed a king! Asgard needed you."

Loki holds his breath, wondering if it was all true.

…by the Nine, what if this was another of Thanos's tricks?

"You must see the truth in my words," Thor pleads. "Father didn't mean for it to sound callous, but he thought you would come to this conclusion yourself! He didn't consider the effects your discovery would have on your mind—he thought only that he had told a prince that he was to be crowned king. Brother, please!" he adds. "We may not be of flesh and blood, but I and our parents are your family. We love you, and this is true because of how you were raised, not what you were born as. We'd never wish for you to change—and that is the truth."

Only after the impassioned speech is given did Loki realize he was holding a breath, truly stunned at the sight of the normally-brutish Thor waxing words of affection in a bid to convince him of his beliefs and desires. Loki knows lies intimately, and nothing he'd just heard was that at all.

If this was a trick, then Thanos has discovered his true weakness.

Thor squeezes his shoulder tightly once more. "You're my brother—my only brother—and I could not and would not wish for a better one."

Licking his lips, Loki nods and swallows back the lump lodged oddly in his throat. "I believe you."

Thor slumps, bowing his head in relief. "Thank you," he sighs, briefly pressing his forehead against Loki's before pulling away. "You, and only you, can rouse such worry in me. It's maddening."

To Loki's surprise, he finds himself grinning at the sentiment. "Now you know how I feel. I've gone half mad chasing after you and your whirlwind whims after all these centuries," he reminds Thor, who gives his most innocent smile.

"I've no knowledge of these whims," Thor claims with wide eyes. "You truly must be half-gone—or at least five tankards in!"

Loki laughs. "I seem to recall that you're the one who's half-gone five tankards in," he says, making Thor grin widely.

"Aye, those were the days," Thor sighs nostalgically, and suddenly, the mood turns sober. "Brother," he says, "what happened to you?"

With a deep breath, Loki glances around and notes that the mortals in the room had shuffled to oversee the healing of the half-nude blonde woman escorted in by two guards. Satisfied that no one was about to eavesdrop on their conversation, Loki looks to his brother.

"Sit, brother," he says quietly, "and I shall tell you everything."


Fury's back in the briefing room by the time Jarvis gives Tony the all-clear, and of course, that's the first thing Fury asks about.

"It's not there yet," Tony answers, "but at least we know where it's headed. For now, can we go over the fact that the guy had been possessed by a purple cloud? Because if that was a Chitauri, then we are screwed if that portal actually opens."

"We'll debrief Loki about his…possession," Fury grimaces at the word, "later. Right now, I want you and Doctor Banner to keep looking for the cube."

Tony raises both eyebrows. "Why? We already know where it'll be."

"Actually," Bruce speaks up, "I think I'll go do that now." Tony feels a little tingle of aw race through him when Bruce meets his gaze and tilts his head to the screen. And then the aw-factor goes away when he realizes oh right. Watching a girl get tortured by purple, gaseous body-snatching aliens could make for a pretty stressful environment.

And contrary to popular belief, Tony Stark can be a sensitive guy. "You want my fantabulous ass to keep you company?" he asks, feeling the I-wanna-be-alone vibe the mild-mannered scientist was giving off.

That gets him a quick grin from Bruce. "I'm good. Thanks." And then he was off to the lab. Tony sighs, instantly bored without the doctor to keep him entertained—or rather, without the doctor to entertain.

"Right," Fury says once Bruce was well out of earshot. "I want someone keeping an eye on our new guest at all times. I want to know when she can talk the minute she can talk."

"Yes, sir," Hill nods, because she's apparently the one Eyepatch is talking to.

"Do we know how she got onboard?" Fury asks.

Hill shakes her head. "We've found nothing from before she was spotted coming out of a closet," Tony stifles a grin at the obviously—because humor was clearly not part of SHIELD's SOP—unintended pun, "in Corridor B-4. She assaulted Agent 13 and took her uniform, then proceeded to a small laboratory to hack into the mainframe for access to a map and the security feed to this room. She didn't linger long though, and proceeded directly to the detention room."

"I need access to those surveillance feeds," Tony demands, waggling his fingers in the universal 'gimme' gesture. There was something odd about what Hill had said, and Tony wants to see the evidence for himself, wants to see what her report couldn't tell him.

Hill looks to Fury for permission, and Eyepatch gives his consent. The files appear on the console in front of Tony soon after, and he delves into the videos with immediate gusto.

"You looking for something, Stark?" Fury asks.

"Later," Tony waves him off, never looking up from the impressively high-def feeds. "Go whip your little minions into shape or something." Nearby, Coulson gives a loud sigh of exasperation, briefly lifting Tony's spirits before it deflates at the continued screams going on in the background.

Part of him wants to tell Fury's little bitch to mute the feed, but another part reminds him that just because he can't hear it doesn't mean it's not happening. And while Tony can ignore a lot of things and be a legendary asshole about it, torture wasn't something he could abide by without doing anything about it. Yeah, he wanted to march down there and kick alien ass, but he's also well-aware that any alien ass-kicking would mean fighting a possessed girl. Asshole he may be, but unless it would help free her from possession, then that wasn't something he could do.

Which was unfortunate, because if that were the case, it would solve a lot of problems very quickly.

Shaking the thought away, Tony focuses on the videos he was going through, listening to the ongoing discussion with half an ear.

And eventually, he sees it.

Yes, the girl did everything Hill said she did all right, but She-Minion had only read the dry facts out to them. As Tony had expected, watching the feeds gives him a better insight on what had happened. And that insight is just what Tony needed to gather all the facts about the girl—Anna.

Fact 1: There was no footage of Anna-girl prior to leaving the closet on Corridor B-4. That suggests she was really good at sneaking around.

Fact 2: She didn't bother hiding after exiting the closet, which suggests she felt confident enough about her disguise that she stopped being sneaky.

Fact 3: Anna-girl had spent almost twenty minutes wandering around, presumably looking for a computer. At that point, Tony starts to doubt his assumption that she had snuck onto Fury's flying boat, because she'd been walking through the corridors as if she belonged there, not even bothering to hide from the cameras. What kind of trespassing spy does that?

Hm...maybe they hadn't seen her before because she— No. No, that didn't account for why SHIELD's facial rec software didn't spot her before the closet thing. The software couldn't be that awful, could it? And short of her magically appearing onboard…

Hm, well, there's a thought. Is she a teleporter? Loki had done it earlier, hadn't he? Or was that just something one did while possessed? Then again, Anna-girl hadn't been possessed when she went to see Loki, so maybe he should drop the possessed-teleporter theory. But if she hadn't known about the flying boat's layout, then how did she know which room to teleport into?

Contradictions, contradictions. God, but did Tony love them—because it usually means that the puzzles are worth taking a second look at.

Fact 4: Anna-girl had accessed only one video over all else—the feed to this very room. She'd watched them for a little while, but why? Why watch them? Why not check the hallways or even open the feed to Loki's room to see if the coast was clear? Of all the rooms in the flying boat, why pick this room?

Because of them? But then, how had she known they'd be there? Tony very much doubts that it had been a lucky guess on her part, mostly because she'd hesitated over just the one link before clicking it open. No, no. She'd known what she'd find there. It was evident in every line of her body as she kept her hand poised over that link.

But how had she known? And why did she need to see that video?

Fact 5: Anna-girl has crazy-mad hacking skills. Tony's had a decryption program running since he first hit the bridge, but Anna-girl had breezed right through it. And while the camera's angle hadn't caught her face while she was on the computer, it had been perfectly positioned to show them what information she'd pulled up, and what code she'd written to both hack into SHIELD as well as hide her tracks.

The code is what bugs Tony the most, because he knows that code. He wrote that code, not even six hours ago. Jarvis is still running that very code right now, trying to break through SHIELD's firewall without alerting them to the bug. Annoyed as he'd been at SHIELD for depriving him of celebratory-sex and some well-deserved sleepy-time with his beloved Pepper-bear, he hadn't thought of running the codes separately, instead weaving them together into a complex algorithm that was making it harder for Jarvis to milk every dirty secret SHIELD had to hide.

'Idiot move,' Tony chastises himself briefly.

But still. Still. How had she known the code? Barring a few variable x and y's, they'd used the same algorithm. Was she that good? Was she Tony-Stark-level good? Because if she was, then why the hell has Tony never heard of her before? Where had she studied? Where did she come from? Tony's a hundred and ten percent sure that Jarvis had feelers out for every genius developer on the planet, ready for Tony to bribe them with a ludicrous sum of money so that they'd work for him—or rather, work at Stark Industries. If Anna-girl was that good, then Tony should've heard of her before all this.

So why hasn't he?

Fact 6: Anna-girl had come for Loki. She'd known he was possessed, otherwise, she wouldn't have gone through the trouble of sneaking onboard a flying secret government facility only to willingly reveal herself out of the blue. She'd come for Loki, and of all the facts Tony's collected, this is the one he'd bet the Mark VI on. So how did she know where he would be, and how had she known he was possessed—?

…no fucking way.

No. Fucking. Way!

Tony mouths the words soundlessly, eyes snapping up to the still-writhing, still-screaming girl. He's stuck in his seat, sitting with shocked disbelief, and for good reason. Because when he gathers all the questions together into one neat little pile of question marks, it insinuates something so mind-blowing, so out of this world, so fantastical that it thrills the part of him that's always wanted to build the ultimate invention.

Everyone else was so busy talking about something or another that they don't notice him sitting there, grinning like he's a virgin teen watching his first live strip-tease because hell-fucking-yeah—

Anna-girl was a time-traveler.


Notes:

Corridor B-4: I don't know the labels for the Helicarrier schematics, so I'm making this up. Also, it was an attempt to be funny. B-4. Before. Get it? Not funny? Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Agent 13: For those of you who know who Agent 13 is, then yeah, I did throw her in. But that's the only part she plays in this story. This is sort of a backup, just in case I do a sequel or spin-off or something. Best to be prepared ;)