I'm so sorry this took longer than expected. It's also not as long as it was going to be but I decided to cut it off so that the other stuff is added in the next chapter. I'm going to try to update earlier than usual with the next one to make up for lost time because I have a lot written for this but I just haven't edited it. Another shout out to T. Rycbar because she stayed up late to help me edit this masterpiece. As always, enjoy some more angst.

IDontOwnMarvel

"Sir, Miss Patel is showing signs of distress-"

"Ignore it." Tony pushed off of the door he had slammed and started off towards the garage.

"What did she want to talk about?" Bruce asked as Tony stalked past him. He started to put on the suit. "Um, Tony?"

"Call me when the samples are done. I have somewhere to be."

"What-" Before Bruce could finish another question, Tony took off. Quite literally too. "Okay then."

Bruce was going to turn back to his book on the theory of alternate realities when Jarvis interrupted him.

"Dr. Banner, Miss Patel is showing signs of distress."

Bruce tossed aside his book and started up the stairs.

"I got it Jarvis, thank you." He moved a little quicker when he realized that Jarvis had not identified what kind of distress.

Please don't be actually hurt. He cringed at the thought, even though he was sure Tony wouldn't hurt a child. He pushed open the door to her bedroom to find her on the floor against the back wall.

She looked up quickly when she heard him enter the room, standing back up against the wall with wide eyes.

"I'm sorry… he wasn't mad at first… He yells really loud," she stuttered quietly.

He shook his head and crouched down to her level when she crumpled back to the floor. Her attempt to stand was short-lived.

"Ok, ok, how about you just...tell me what happened." He could feel the Hulk grumbling below the surface, but refused to give him any attention and hung on tight for control.

Lincoln shook her head again and covered her face with her hands. "I was trying to fix it, but I just made it worse."

Banner was hesitant to place a hand on her shoulder, but did it anyway. "Made what worse?"

Lincoln shook her head. "I had to tell him. Bucky was coming back and I couldn't keep it a secret. If I didn't- He was really mad. He yelled at me."

She looked up at him with tear filled eyes and a look of regret - a feeling Bruce knew all too well.

"It's alright. What did you tell him?" Bruce remained the voice of reason, keeping the calm.

"The Winter Soldier," she started, looking aside as if she was debating telling him or not.

"Hey, I already said it's alright. I have a bit more self-control than Tony does, you know," he smiled thinly. "It's sort of a requirement, given my...well, my green friend."

Lincoln looked back down at her hands that were indeed shaking and clasped them shut just to cradle them closer to her and took a deep breath.

"His parents. They were killed by him." she looked back up at him cautiously, still not completely convinced that Bruce would take it any better than Tony had. "But I had to tell him! I promise! If I didn't he'd hurt Steve when he found out on his own. Or he'd hurt Bucky…"

Lincoln looked past him, muttering something to herself about Bucky and stupid plot before Banner reached out to offer her a hand up. She hesitated only a moment before grasping his arm, standing up carefully. But when he led her towards the bed she took a lurching step backwards out of his grip.

"Not the bed," she shook her head vehemently.

"What's wrong with the bed?" Bruce asked, scrunching his eyebrows in confusion.

But Lincoln didn't respond, instead turning away to sit on the couch. It took another minute or so for her to seem to gather herself enough to speak up again, but even then Bruce could hear a strain in her voice that hadn't been there before. She seemed...tired.

"I want to go home," she almost whispered, barely making eye contact with him before turning away again.

"I know," Bruce responded, frantically trying to think of things to say to the obviously distressed teen. "We're - we're going to do our best, I promise. If anyone can figure it out, it's Tony."

She paused, apparently thinking it over, before nodding slowly. "Can you - I mean, would you tell him I'm sorry?"

"Y-yeah, of course," Bruce answered quickly, glad that the kid seemed to be snapping out of the daze he'd found her in.

"Bucky is nice I promise," Lincoln continued, barely letting Banner finish his sentence. "He likes sushi and Steve, of course. He really likes Steve. They're best friends...well, they were, before Bucky fell off the train." She stopped abruptly and frowned to herself. "Am I rambling? I hate that."

"I, uh, no it's...fine," Bruce commented lamely, shoving his hands in his pockets.

Then she gasped and bolted across the room before shuffling through the nightstand drawer and pulling out a cell phone, dialing a number while pacing back and forth.

"Clint?" she stopped pacing abruptly. "I told Tony the thing I was supposed to tell him… No he didn't…He took it well but then left real fast."

Bruce frowned. For some reason, she was covering for Tony even after he yelled at her. Weird.

"It was about his parents. They were murdered by the Winter Soldier and the information was coming out soon. I didn't want it to hurt the group, so I had to tell him so that he could have time to cool down and forgive… You have to get Bucky and Steve to somewhere secluded. I don't want them to fight."

Bruce heard a small crack in her voice from the explanation but decided to start with his own phone call while she continued. Before he could put the dialing phone to his ear, Lincoln dropped to her knees beside the bed.

"Do you think I made a mistake, Clint?"

After a quick sigh she lowered the phone down to her lap and stared at it.

He forgot all about the dialing phone in his own hand. He didn't notice either when it clicked indicating a through call, as it was pulled away from his ear now. "Are you okay?"

She shook her head again and looked at him with a fresh set of tears before turning her attention back to the phone. She was quiet for a moment. They both were until she broke the silence.

"I had a Bucky once." She started, keeping her eyes on the phone in her hands.

Bruce remained quiet and let her continue.

"She got sick like Bucky did. Her brain telling her one thing while the rest of her was trapped, bound and gagged inside her head." Bruce saw a tear fall from the hunched child and land on the phone. "I lost my Bucky. Once at home and again when I came here. I don't want Steve to lose his Bucky. Not again like me."

Bruce didn't need to hear anymore and pulled her into a hug only slightly awkwardly. He had never been one for showing affection, but it felt like the right thing to do at the moment. She didn't pull away either. He held the shaking child until she calmed down enough to breathe easily.

It was at that time that he felt his hair start to prickle up on end and he looked down at her to see she was giving off a soft purple glow.

"Um, Lincoln?"

The glow disappeared quickly when she opened her eyes and turned her attention to him. "Yeah?"

He opened his mouth to speak but stopped himself and just shook his head. "Nothing. Never mind."

She nodded and stepped away from him out of his embrace. "I still have to call Tony and reason with him. Hold on just a minute."

As she finished speaking, the phone that had sat forgotten in Bruce's hand made a soft clicking sound. Bruce, still distracted by the implications of Lincoln's strange display, didn't pay it much mind, ignoring it in favor of trying to call Tony once more. He dialed twice. The first time, the phone rang with no answer. And the second, he got sent right to voicemail.

Guess Tony isn't ready to talk yet, Bruce frowned, pocketing the phone. He shrugged to himself, already turning to leave the room. Tony had always been a stubborn guy, but he'd come around. Eventually.

Tony growled into the suit and landed before throwing punches at a nearby rock face. Bruce hadn't meant for him to hear that conversation but he did anyhow.

"Dammit, Banner. You had to humanize the kid, huh?" he resisted the urge to punch the rock face again, instead sighing and pressing his masked forehead to the rock face.

He sighed again before turning and sinking down to sit against the rock. He hadn't meant to yell at Lincoln, but what she had said had made him angry. Angry in a way he hadn't felt since that night, when he got a phone call from some doctor he can't remember the name of, but whose detached voice is forever seared into his memory as the one that brought him the news that his only family, his mother, had just died.

How could Lincoln have kept something like that from him in the 35 hours she had spent with him? She had plenty of opportunity on the plane to tell him, and yet, she waited. She must have known he was going to be mad. He scowled again when Bruce rang him up a second time and ignored it.

But Lincoln didn't have to tell him at all. She could have waited for however long it took for him to find out in her world and tossed it out at the last second like some sort of sick thank-you gift. But she didn't. She told him right off the bat, even though she knew he wouldn't take it well.

God, it's like she carries a book on ethics around with her. Little miss I-won't-tell-a-lie. Cap is gonna love her.

"Damn it," he growled again before taking off back towards the estate.

"...her brain telling her one thing while the rest of her was trapped, bound, and gagged inside her head."

He hated her explanation too. It made him feel like it wasn't Bucky's fault, whoever this 'Bucky' was. He shoved it down though. It was Bucky's fault. The blood of his mother and father was still on his hands. Not only the blood of his parents, but from the sounds of it, a lot of other people too.

Lincoln was just the messenger in this situation. An annoying messenger that kept pieces of information from the recipient, but a messenger all the same. And had just threatened possibly his only source of information on the asshole who killed his mom.

Great. Thank you, world. You succeeded in making me feel like a dick again. Not that he didn't already feel like that most times anyways. Just...more so now after yelling at a kid.

Her words kept him from turning back around towards DC though. It was probably best for everyone that he had picked up that phone. Obviously he would have been able to destroy this so-called Winter Soldier in a fight, but something about it felt wrong. Lincoln was clearly very close to the topic, and now that his anger was ebbing Tony was starting to realize that he only knew the barest details about the guy. As much as he liked to put on a show for the media, Tony wasn't actually the impulsive son of a bitch he pretended to be for the tabloids. His suits were powerful, but he wouldn't have survived this long if he didn't think things through once in a while.

Besides, he consoled himself as he drew closer to his destination. If I play my cards right the kid will tell me everything I need to know to take this guy down. I just have to be a little patient. After the kid was gone, he'd hopefully have enough dirt on the Winter Soldier to take care of him for good. Tony smirked to himself as he powered down his thrusters and landed smoothly back in an empty garage. He could play nice with one teenager for a little while. How hard could it be?

It was a week before Tony finally spoke to me again. I filled my time with more random tests from Banner and some attempt to summon whatever lightning I was supposed to have picked up from my brief experience in space. Believe it or not, summoning actual lightning isn't as easy as Thor makes it look, and by the end of the week I was showing barely any progress. Bruce kept saying that they were working on pinpointing my dimension of origin, but assured me that they were narrowing it down. Which was better than nothing, I guess.

Meanwhile Tony kept his distance, although every now and then I'd catch him staring at me like he was trying to size me up. As soon as he realized I was looking at him he'd stop, but the dude was seriously starting to get on my nerves. By the time he finally worked up the courage to actually say something to me, my patience with his attitude was wearing very thin.

I was sitting on the other side of the garage with my stress ball, which Happy found on the plane after my disastrous first night here. I thanked him, of course, but made sure that I eyed the hat he was wearing to throw him off. It was a funny interaction. Happy was supposed to take me to go clothes shopping later, too. Apparently my current style of 'trashy windblown hobo chic' wasn't socially acceptable in this dimension. I had wanted to go alone, but Banner insisted that someone go with me, just in case someone else had figured out who or what I was.

"Stop doing that."

I froze in my seat and looked over at the origin of the voice. "I'm sorry?"

"Good. Stop doing it, then." Tony didn't look up from his work but Banner looked between us nervously before turning back to his reading.

"I don't, um, I don't know what you're referring to." I stopped kicking my legs and my hand clamped down on the stress ball.

"It's the thing you were doing on the plane. Sitting there, all... condescending-like." He turned around in his chair to face me.

That's it. I narrowed my eyes at him and just shook my head before standing up, starting towards the stairs. This dude is seriously annoying.

"Fine. I'll just go bother the AI then," I countered, doing my best not to let my frustration leak into my voice.

"You're doing it again," Tony called from behind me. Gritting my teeth, I drew to a halt but didn't turn to face him yet.

"I'm not doing anything except walking," I answered calmly. Think happy thoughts, Lincoln. Sun's getting real low...no, that's Banner's thing.

"Yeah you are. You're angry with me and it's annoying. Stop doing that."

I finally turned around at that, feigning confusion.

"What makes you say that, Mr. Stark?"

"Oh, I don't know, how about that right there? The whole 'Mr. Stark' thing?" Tony threw his hands up exasperatedly. "Maybe because I yelled at you a week ago and you haven't spoken to me since. Sound familiar?"

"I didn't want to talk to you because I figured you were still mad at me. You do that. You find a scapegoat and target them when you can't be angry at the real cause of your problems." I shot back, unable to hold it back any longer. "And I wasn't mad, I was annoyed, because you kept looking at me like I'm some sort of weirdo or something!"

"I do not do that. Banner, was I doing that?" Bruce shrunk down further into his seat and ignored the question. Tony just turned back to me. "Kid, I swear, I thought you needed space, that's all. I wouldn't blame you if you blamed me for freaking out on you like that."

I shrugged and brushed it off. "No, I-I felt bad. I told you the man who's responsible for the deaths of your parents is still alive and kicking. You can't really be mad at him because it wasn't his fault so instead you're mad at me. I get it."

Tony eyed me for a moment before speaking up, more softly than before. "I don't blame you, kid. It wasn't your fault, it was that Bucky guy, right? And...I am - well, I mean, I...regret...yelling at you the way I did. It was just a lot to process and I guess I lost my cool for a minute. That's all."

I felt my body stiffen again even as Tony finished his little speech, coughing awkwardly before turning back around to face his own work. I furrowed my brow at him. "I didn't tell you his name."

He stopped, not turning around from his workstation. I could practically see the gears turning in his head for the elaborate excuse he was about to make, but I spoke up again before he could attempt to explain himself.

"You know his name, but you haven't gone after him yet?"

"No." He started working again, although his movements were more jerky than before. His back was facing me so I couldn't see his face, but even looking at him I could tell he was tense.

So, I dropped the subject. I didn't want to pry into his reasons for not going to kill Bucky right now, and I also didn't want to know how he found out. Although, I'm pretty sure some very illegal hacking was involved.

"Sorry for your loss."

I stopped halfway up the stairs when I registered Tony's words. He couldn't have heard my conversation with Banner.

Could he have? I looked back at him but he still had his face in whatever he was working on. I blinked and shook my head.

"Me too," I replied quietly before jogging up the rest of the stairs.

Welp, now I have something to keep me busy for a while, I thought grimly as I made my way to my guest room upstairs. Tony had somehow heard my conversation with Banner last week, which meant that I needed to eliminate the most concerning of the possibilities first: that he'd planted a bug somewhere in the hopes of getting more information out of me.

"Can I help you find something Miss?"

I bumped my head at the sudden voice and crawled out from under the bed, rubbing the forming bruise. "Yeah I guess. Do you know if there's a listening device in here? Like a bug?"

There was a moment of silence. "My scan showed no sign of any form of listening device beside myself."

"Okay, and you didn't tell Tony about the conversation I had with Banner right?"

"He has not accessed those records, no."

"Then how did he know about Bucky?" I scratched my head and looked around before the AI interrupted my thoughts. Chances are he thought the question was for him.

"Could it be that Dr. Banner placed an outgoing call to Mr. Stark at 2:34pm?"

I thought about that for a moment. "Wait a second, I was with him then because that was when I called Clint. He wasn't calling anyone at the time."

"Mr. Stark was most likely listening in after Banner ignored the connected phone in his hand."

It finally clicked. Bruce had said that he was calling Tony but must have forgotten the phone after he dialed. "Thank you Jarvis."

I felt a frown tugging at my face. How much did Tony hear?

Flopping down on my couch, I pulled up my computer and started playing the only familiar TV show that I could find both here and in my world. I never cared for it when I was back home but after finding out that the characters were played by the same people, I was hooked. 'The Office' was the second comfort of this world. Obviously, it wouldn't ever beat Stress Ball, but it was nice to have something else too. I only got through four episodes before Jarvis alerted me that Happy was waiting to take me to get clothes.

With the laptop closed and abandoned, I left the room for the elevator. "Jarvis can you tell Tony and Banner that I'm leaving."

"Absolutely." There was a short pause before he spoke again. "Mr. Stark has asked you not to drive Mr. Hogan crazy while you're out."

"No promises." I murmured, pressing the button for the ground floor.

I quickly put on my face of unbridled childish optimism and met Happy by the car. What was even better was that I didn't say anything for the whole ride to the store. The uneasy man kept stealing glances back at me but I just ignored him and watched out the window. I just knew I was driving him insane with the anticipation.

As the great Dwight Schrute says- "In the end, the greatest snowball isn't a snowball at all: It's fear."

We finally pulled up to a mall after a twenty minute trip which I had to frown at. I didn't like malls. They were grimy and hotspots for teenage girls. Now, one might be thinking- 'Why would a teenager dislike hanging out in a place where other teenagers always are?'. The answer being - we hate each other.

You see, teenagers have this mutual understanding where we don't talk to one another if we don't know the other person. If we see each other in a public setting, we ignore the other's existence until the uncomfortable tension goes away and I walk down a grocery aisle with nothing in it that I need. It happens. It's weird. Don't judge us, we do enough of that already.

Luckily for me though, it was three o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon, so there wasn't really anyone there. I was pretty glad to be getting some clothes of my own since I had spent the past week using some of Pepper's clothes and that one 'Black Sabbath' t-shirt that Tony wasn't getting back. Pepper was busy in New York, so that was really all I had to work with. I made sure to wash them all afterwards though because I believe in being useful.

I'm a nuisance enough, I could at least do my own laundry...

I ended up with three pairs of pants and two pairs of shorts. I also grabbed two packs of boxer briefs when Happy was staring down some random dude. Due to only having the one pair I showed up with and my fear of Pepper's top drawer, I noted it as one of my smarter choices. Two bras were added to the lot too which was nice because when I finally did get home I would have a total of four usable ones. I also bought a few t-shirts, but only the ones in solid color because all the fandom ones were unrecognizable. Oh what I'd give for an autobot shirt right now.

Happy was not to be bothered by me other than a few stolen glances at his hat until he took it off on our way out. That was when I asked to use the restroom.

He looked between me and the hallway that led to them. "Fine, but if you're not out in 5 minutes-"

I waved him off and rolled my eyes. "Yeah, yeah. I don't understand why you guys are all Drill Sergeant on me when I say I want to go somewhere alone though."

"It's because-"

"I know why. 'I don't understand' is what I said." I clarified, starting down the hallway towards the ladies room.

There was only one other woman in the bathroom that I didn't even notice until I was washing my hands. It was hard not to notice her though while she stared at my back. I kept my eye on her through the mirror until I turned away to get a paper towel. She looked harmless, so it wasn't unreasonable to lose sight of her for a moment. Right?

Wrong.

The second I turned away from the mirror, there was a patter of footsteps behind me and a sharp prick in the side of my neck. I turned to her in a panic at the same time she removed a fucking needle from my neck. The effects washed over me immediately and I felt the room spin while my balance was thrown for a loop. I blinked at her and fought to stay standing with one hand on the sink. The floor wobbled and I dropped. She just stared with the most nonchalant attitude, watching me.

"Wait..." I croaked, my own brain failing to create a coherent thought.

The last thing I saw was the apathetic stare of a strange woman before it fogged over with black and white dots.