It had been almost a two week period since the incident involving Lana's face being imprinted by a burning hand, which she fondly referred to as the dream incident. Surprisingly enough, despite Stark's assurances, Lana hadn't been back to the lab since the dream incident. It wasn't even because of the bodies laying on the tables, because they had long since been removed and placed into cold storage somewhere that wasn't the tower. But when ever Lana walked passed the lab doors, she could smell burning flesh, a detail she hadn't even remembered very well before. And she could see gaping holes in the faces of the bodies, which in reality, didn't exist. So, in with the intention of keeping her sanity intact - to a degree - she stayed away from the labs.

On the plus side, thanks to some Korean technology whose creator she had already forgotten the name of, the awful reminder of her dream was gone. There wasn't even vaguely a scar on her face, which Lana was almost thrilled about. Because every time she walked past a mirror when the burn was on her face, she remembered the dream. The lab might have been somewhat easy to avoid, but mirrored surfaces? Not so easy.

Lana shook her head, spinning a coin on the probably the most expensive kitchen counter tops Stark could buy, which is to say, the most expensive counter tops in the world. She slid her fingers along the cool surface, wondering if they were granite. But granite was more than likely too inexpensive for Stark's tastes.

The coin landed. Heads. Her brother had always liked flipping coins.

"Heads I win, tails you loose, Lana." Alex said, watching a silver coin flying from his hand, landing on the back of his hand. Lana walked passed him, and shook her head at his antics. She snorted, and slapped the back of her brother's head. "Likely, Alex." She sat down beside him on the couch. "Come on, you know you have to go." He had been debating on going to his work today back and forth for the past hour.

"I know. But it's such a nice day." He whined, more like a child than a full grown man of twenty-nine. He brushed his light brown hair out of his eyes. He really needed a haircut, she thought. He looked like some lanky teenager.

"Yes. Sweltering hot. Very nice." Lana said sarcastically, picking at a nail. It was hot out today, the temperatures soaring above ninety. And in the concrete jungle, it would probably be hotter as the day went on. It was very strange for the beginning of May.

"You know exactly what I mean, Lana. The sky is blue, clear, and it feels like I don't have a care in the world." He sat back with his feet up on the table, which Lana shoved off almost immediately; she had just cleaned that table, and he was not getting smudges on it.

"I think you do have a couple of 'cares'. One of them will loose you money of you don't pay attention to it, and the other will keep slapping you on the head." She said, raising her hand, poised to smack him again.

"But I could call in sick. We could go to the park, just like we did when we were children." He said, his hazel eyes somewhere else.

"Alex." She said, with an uncharacteristic look of fondness on her face, as she recalled their childhood. What little she remembered of it anyways. "I would love to; a nice family picnic. But you have work, and so do I." She got up and walked around the coffee table to hand him his papers. He looked at them with disdain, but took them anyways.

"Now, go do something amazing, and life changing. Like Papa did."

"Like Papa." He agreed. He ruffled her hair, messing up her half an hour's work on it. She clicked her tongue in annoyance, but a small quick of her lips broke her annoyed facade. No matter how much she wanted to, she could never stay mad at him.

She called out to him as he was on the door's threshold. "Alex! After work, let's go get something to eat, and we can go to the park." Her brother cracked a smile, and nodding, before looking at his watch, a look of alarm as he realized the time. He quickly waved, before disappearing.

She shook her head slowly, and tossed the coin somewhere behind her. She hadn't meant to think of Alex, especially not that memory. That was the last time she had seen him. Ever. She gulped, but turned around slowly as voices down the stairs wafted towards her. She identified them immediately. Nat and Clint. Excellent. She clasped her hands together, and looked rather like a comic villain, planning something dastardly and evil to the unsuspecting heroes. Well, no, actually. She wasn't going to do anything of the sort. But getting in the gleeful mood that she felt film villains would be in when unleashing their horrific plan would help her a bit. She would have cackled loudly, except then she wouldn't be able to hear what was being said.

"What if something happens to her?"

"We deal with it."

"Nat, something weird is going on, and talking like you want to use her as bait." Clint said, fiercely. Bait? Lana did not want to be used as bait, but stayed silent.

"Clint, you know that isn't what I mean - " Natasha didn't finish her sentence, probably not wanting to upset her long time partners. No, of course not. You don't want to use the only thing that seems to attract the smoke as bait. Hell, even I would use me as bait, if I weren't me!

"Well, what do plan on doing with her then? We can't - " The two agents stopped abruptly, realizing the subject of their conversation was sitting at a bar stool, waving at them.

"Lana..." Clint began. "So, how much did you hear?" He asked slowly, like it would smooth things over. Or like he was slowly approaching a hungry lion, hoping it wouldn't see him. The latter was more than likely the case.

"Enough to know that you were talking about me." Lana said. "Where do I fit into this conversation, Clint? What do you plan on doing with me?" She hopped down from the bar stool. "Because I'll have you know, I don't exactly feel comfortable with being used as shark bait." At her words, Lana then imagined herself being dangled above water, with giant sharks circling her below. She shook her head. Definitely not shark bait.

"So, what brought along this thinking, then? Because unless something has happened that you've elected not to tell me, nothing has happened in the past two weeks."

Natasha, knowing that she couldn't play word games with Lana, said simply, "More bodies were found."

"Ah. I see. Well," she gestured around her, "as you can see, I'm being incredibly productive. I don't need to see any sliced and diced bodies again, thanks."

"Unfortunately, we can't leave you here alone."

"Alone, Natasha?" Lana gasped, being quite comical about it. "How would I be alone? How many SHIELD agents are here, exactly? 100? 200?" Natasha opened her mouth, but was cut off by the arrival of Stark.

"Lana! Gear up, they found - " He trailed off. "You told her already, didn't you?" Lana nodded in unison with Clint's response.

"Yep." Was Clint's ever so eloquent reply.

"Then why are you still sitting there, Lana? Up and at 'em."

"Wanda," Lana said, exasperated, "why didn't Pietro just run?"

"Because then he would do something foolish." The girl in red spoke, with out opening her eyes. It seemed almost like she was meditating. She would need to with her brother being an insufferable pain. Pietro turned around in the front seat, and glared at his sister.

"I would not!" He complained, loudly enough for Natasha to spare him an annoyed glance before looking back to the road.

Somehow, Lana had been stuck with Natasha and the twins, which was better than carpooling with Loki, she would admit, but barely. But Pietro and Wanda could be loving in one moment, Lana had found out these past two weeks, but completely hateful and childish in the next. Truly like a brother and sister.

Wanda rolled her eyes, opening them to reveal her green orbs. "Pietro, yes you would have, and you know it." He opened his mouth to reply, but Wanda cut him off. "Don't give me the excuse of being twelve minutes older. Last night you went out, and didn't come back until the morning. The night before that you brought girl back, and she set off alarms when she tried to leave the building in the morning. Stark thought we had an intruder. You have been doing foolish things ever since we arrived." He looked back to the dashboard in front of him, and absentmindedly started to tap his fingers in a rapid, incredibly random, pattern, so fast he was quickly beginning to dent the hard plastic.

Their bickering reminded Lana of her arguments with her own brother. Except he had never been the player type. But she didn't mean to think about Alex again, and leaned her head on the chilly glass to her right.

"Pietro." Natasha snapped. "Be quiet. Or I'll make you." She threatened. Lana completely understood her threats. In the car ride so far, which had been about fifty minutes, in New York traffic, no less, Pietro had practically buzzing around the interior of the car. She shook her head. He could learn a thing or two about patience from his sister. Granted, Lana was being a hypocrite. She was never patient, except when it came to the masterful making of detectable food.

Pietro visibly gulped. A few days prior, in training, Pietro had all but declared that no one in the Avengers, save his sister, could 'take him down'. Natasha very quickly proved him wrong. Lana still wasn't quite sure how she'd done it, but she had. One minute, Pietro had been standing, and the next he wasn't.

"Okay, Pietro, you can get out. We're here." Natasha said, her normally monotone voice displaying relief.

Again, there were several bodies this time, numbering to be thirteen. Lana was very proud of her counting abilities, she would have you know. But that would be breaking the forth wall.

She meandered around the small park that she didn't even know the name, avoiding the yellow tape, long since having given her two-cents to Loki's truth telling. She rolled her eyes, wondering why she even had to put up with it any more, because honestly, he had been telling the truth. As far as she could tell, anyways.

Lana plopped herself down on a park bench, and watched the scene before her. Loki and Thor were arguing about something; Stark and Bruce were poking around one of the bodies with particular interest, poking and prodding the ground around it; and the rest? She quite honestly didn't know, seeing as the majority of the little park was coordinated off.

A whoosh of air brought her back to reality.

"Bored of the bodies already, Pietro?"

"You could say that." He said lightly. "But I have also seen enough death, don't you think?" He implored her, his big blue eyes speaking volumes as to what he'd seen.

"There isn't a person here who would disagree with you."

"Ah, actually, I believe one of the gods would." He nodded his head to the one in question, which came no surprise to Lana, was Loki. Of course it was.

"Somehow, that doesn't surprise me. And gods, Pietro?" She questioned, giving him a raised eyebrow. "They just happen to live longer. A lot longer. And they're a bit undestructible."

Pietro stayed silent. "What'd he say, anyways?" She sighed sitting back on the inadequate support of the wooden bench. "That next time you would be a body like these?"

"Ah, no. He said that 'I shouldn't be so surprised by the number of bodies here, because there would surely be more next time'. Or something similar to that. I don't remember the exact words he used."

"He does tend to use archaic words." Lana mused. Thinking over the past two weeks, and on the rare occasion that they had spoken, it was full of of pedantic words on his part. Snarky, over-used words on hers. Such fun.

She leaned her head back, looking at the dark grey clouds that would soon produce snow.

"If you wanted to poke Loki while running at mach one, I wouldn't be opposed to that." She said, walking away quickly, her words lingering in the air.

For reference, mach one is 1195 KPH.

Review, because I really need some ideas as to where this is going!