This one felt fast considering that I was running short on how to spin my old ideas into a whole new plot. Sixteen year old me was on something else when she wrote this shit. Anyways, I hope you enjoy. This one might take some thinking and a bit of time since I actually have to Frankenstein some ideas together to make this decent. I'm not a therapist or anything btw, so take anything said here about healing from trauma with a grain of salt.

T. Rycbar is dumb.

Trigger warning- Mentions of suicide and angry parents

IDon'tOwnMarvel

"Do you understand?"

I sniffled and nodded, wiping my face again. "I just…lost it for a minute there. I'm fine, really."

The Ancient One pursed her lips and sighed a little. "You're not. Do you need me to repeat myself?"

"No, I got it." I shook my head, standing up straight with the fragmented room shimmering around us. "I'm bottling up the memories. I won't do it anymore. I learned my lesson."

"You don't 'learn your lesson' about these things." She huffed, pacing around by me to a table with tea. "You need to process the emotions and embrace the experience as something that is not you. All you've done is run from them and what they have to teach."

"I need to embrace being tortured by Hydra?" I asked incredulously, "Yeah, sorry, I don't really want to learn from Nazis."

"Please be serious."

"I am!" I whined, "You're speaking in poems."

"You don't hide, Lincoln." She turned to face me again, handing me a cup with tea in it. "Then, for the first time, you did."

"I...hide." I scoffed back weakly. "I mean, I ran away for two years. I'm a 'professional' hacker. That's what we do."

She cocked her head at me. "But you never have before."

"How could you even know that?" I shrugged her off, "I haven't lived here that long."

The Ancient One gave me a sort of sad look before turning away again as I set my tea cup back down.

"What?" I prodded, "What do you know about me that you haven't seen?"

"I'll admit I was a bit more curious than I should've been when you first arrived."

I tossed up a hand in defeat and laughed. "Great. Everyone's a liar. You and Steve should meet up-"

"Lincoln," She interrupted, barely glancing back at me. "I had to know. And what I saw sealed my decision to keep you here. Your memories with your sister…and after- They told me what I needed to know."

My stomach did a quick flip as I stood there, waiting for the rest of it. "What'd you see?"

"You're selfless to a fault." She shook her head at it. "Your sister died and you fell to your knees to comfort your parents. You told yourself they had it worse and that they needed you. Hydra, as awful as they are, taught you to look in on yourself and those piles of memories you never bothered to share with anyone."

"Oh, back to the boxes." I groaned lightly, gesturing a hand then "I have a system that works, okay? What's the big interest anyways? You got me to chill out. I can go back now."

She hesitated again before sighing again. "I need you to confront your memories. I won't train you in this state, so until you're ready to heal, you will stay here."

"Wait," I held out a hand as she raised hers to open a portal out. "Train me? Like a wizard like you?"

She dropped her arm again. "Kaecilius is on the move. Strange's arrival is…imminent. This is part of my story, Lincoln. And you will learn from it too, but only if you are willing to remember it all and grow from it when I'm no longer here."

I furrowed my brow before turning around and kicking at the floor. "It is your story, isn't it?"

"You know my days are numbered," She paced over to me again and placed a hand on my shoulder. "We need to do this now or I'll have no choice but to leave you here for Stephen Strange to find. I can't let you out until you confront your demons. Otherwise they could control you, and wreak havoc on a world that was never supposed to know you in the first place. Do you understand better now?"

I nodded, staring at the floor.

She squeezed my shoulder. "Good. We can start tomorrow with Hydra."

I winced at that when she stepped away again. "Can I at least have a bed?"

"You don't need to sleep in the mirror dimension." She waved me off absently. "You could use the time to do some meditation. Remember when you first started here?"

"I remember." I rolled my eyes with the golden portal opening up for her and giving me just a glimpse of the normalcy outside before it closed again.

She walked away then through the fragments of reality and I followed her to the door before deciding against going far and just returning to the center of the room.

It was all exhausting for the most part. I mean, being so overwhelmed with thoughts that I thought I was dying? That's pretty intense on top of feeling like I might have overreacted a bit with Steve. It was just…the final straw, I guess. Some more lies built on top of three years of paranoia, torture, and gaslighting kind of toppled the pile. Maybe the Steve thing wasn't as big of a deal as I had made it at first, but anger is one hell of a motivator when you get it.

I pulled a cushion off a chair by the wall, accidentally turning it into two, and then three cushions. Grumbling silently in annoyance to myself, I just kicked the other two aside before setting the cushion down and sitting on it. Maybe I did need some mediation. That's what people with anger issues do, right? Meditate? Take deep breaths?

I dropped my face in my hands. "I hate thinking."

Tony turned his gaze up again and turned in another full circle.

"Fucking wizard lairs." He cursed under his breath, fixing his glasses on his face to try and locate the building again on this street. "Friday, why can't we get eyes on this thing? What, do they live underground?"

"Sorry, Boss. My signals keep rerouting around those four blocks."

He sighed again before turning and walking down a street he'd already walked, trying to make note of any suspicious doors. He barely made it to the end of the road and turned left before he had another incoming call from Steve.

"Jesus, Cap." Tony huffed, "What do you want?"

"Are you really still looking for Lincoln?"

"I don't like how you phrased that." Tony stopped and stood out of the way by a door.

Steve sighed over the line. "You're not going to find her. These guys aren't joking around about security and won't be so welcoming if you go knocking on their doors. I told you this."

"Yeah, I'm not really the best listener."

"Look, I know you're worried about her." Steve sympathized, making Tony knit his brows together in skepticism. "You really rely on knowing where she's at because you hate it when she's mad at you. You think she might do something unwise because that's what you did when you were mad as a teenager. I promise she's in good hands. You have to trust me on this."

"Hey, Steve-o." Tony laid eyes on a man walking into an alley with robes and marched on after him. "I'll let this go. But I need you to do something for me."

"What do you need?"

"Stop going to therapy." Tony shook his head to himself. "Just because we told the judge that we would do therapy, doesn't mean we actually have to do it. It's a tactic so the public thinks we're all soft and cured of all our morally gray tendencies."

"It's court-mandated therapy, Tony. You have to go."

"No, I don't." Tony lowered his voice, following the robed man around a corner and continuing after him once he went around another. "Look, I'm very happy that you are able to cure your inner moral…demons with some lady that makes you talk about yourself, but I have my cure. It's called 'knowing where everyone is all the time and making things'. Fool-proof. You should try it."

"I'll tell Pepper."

"Snitch," Tony scoffed, "It's fine. Everything's fine. I'm gonna lay eyes on the kid, know she's okay, and then return to the compound. Pepper knows I'm out."

"This isn't good for you." Steve insisted gently, "You shouldn't need to have eyes on her all the time. You're not her dad-"

Tony didn't even humor that conversation and waved his hand to hang up on Steve. The guy in a robe stopped in front of a very basic looking door and opened it up before pausing in the doorway. Tony ducked back behind the wall quickly, hiding out of sight until he heard the door close again. Looking around the corner a second time, he noted the empty alleyway and marched on up. There was no harm in knocking at least.

"Tony Stark."

Tony stopped in front of the door with his hand hovering in front of it. He turned around on his heel and smiled almost insincerely at the same mad he was sure just entered the building. Then again, this guy was probably a wizard.

"Kamar Taj?" Tony stepped down off the stairs. "I'm looking for Lincoln."

"I know." The man sauntered over closer, pulling off the hood of his green-tinted outfit. "The sorcerer supreme said you were likely to stop by."

"Mhm," Tony nodded at him. "I got the whole sorcerer-talk from a friend, so you can spare me."

"Well you should've brought him." The man smiled a little. "Steve is much less of a pain. I might've let him in."

Tony looked around the area briefly then before glancing back at the door. "That's fine. Okay? I get it. I'm sure you all know plenty about me if you were 'expecting me' to show up. I'm just asking to see her once."

"The sorcerer supreme doesn't want that right now."

"When?"

The man looked away and walked up closer, stopping by the stairs to face him. "You'll know when she does."

"I don't want to do this whole...riddle thing with you." Tony felt desperate, standing so close to where he knew Lincoln was. "I just need to see my- the kid. I'll be quiet and I won't touch anything or ask questions-"

"It's not up to me." The man tilted his head a little, studying Tony's face back while he was trying to run facial recognition on the guy. "The sorcerer supreme makes the rules. Take it up with her when it's your time."

Tony stared back, hoping for some kind of push back before the man just looked away and went up the stairs, shutting the door behind himself. He looked around at the alleyway before shaking his head and sitting down.

I can wait.

"How do I feel about being yelled at by Tony?" I shrugged the question off, my feet pattering on the ground. "How does Tony feel about being ghosted? Probably not great."

The Ancient One watched me pace quietly, standing her ground. "It reminded you of your parents."

"My parents didn't yell at me." I waved off that suggestion too. "Or wish that I was dead. Or…accuse me of genocide. They were decent parents. Nothing specifically horrible comes to mind."

The Ancient One went silent again and I ran my fingers through my hair before scratching the back of my head.

"I don't know what you want me to see." I admitted quickly, "I don't know how to talk through this one, okay? Can't we move on to Steve? He's next, right?"

"I think we should try a new technique." The Ancient One held out a hand. "You're blocking memories. It's different than intentionally boxing them up."

I looked between her and the hand for a moment. "What's going to happen when I touch your hand?"

"We will find out your attraction towards the idea of Tony Stark as a parent." She nodded me closer. "You need to be aware of what actions and intentions are dictated by your past experiences."

"I don't want Tony as a parent." I scoffed at the idea, "I'm gonna do this, but I'll prove you wrong, okay?"

"Alright," She smiled when I put my hand in hers and raised her other one to my head, tapping my temple. "Let's look."

I might've blinked at the very most before the scenery around me folded up and changed into a very familiar kitchen. The sun wasn't out and it was cloudy too that night with the sound of a microwave humming and lit up above the counter.

"Do you remember this?"

I shook my head, looking around the kitchen and noticing my mother walk in to get said microwave dinner. "I don't know. Sometime after Ellie died."

My guide nodded and looked around too, turning her eyes to the door after getting acquainted with her space.

"You couldn't take me back to see Ellie?" I asked, looking over at her. "I mean, just once?"

The Ancient One shook her head back with footsteps coming up the stairs. "I'm afraid there are too few good outcomes from something of the sort."

"So…hot pockets?" I asked, walking up behind my mother and peering around her while The Ancient One stayed by the front door, a few paces away. "Mom ate those a lot after Ellie died. Just an easy dinner, I guess."

The front door opened and shut then and I watched myself walk in, all young and 'innocent' in a sense. She looked tired.

"You're three weeks from finals and you're failing English." Mom mentioned casually, sitting down at the island and making the younger me cringe. "That's unacceptable."

"Grades." I shrugged at The Ancient One. "Regular parent-kid things."

She nodded me onto the scene where my younger self was taking a deep breath as if to calm herself down.

"Okay," Little Lincoln shook her head. "I'm kind of busy. It's not like English is important anyways."

"Yale doesn't take people with failing English classes."

Little Lincoln flinched from the statement and looked away from the woman. "I'm going to MIT on a project, Mom. Remember?"

Mom gritted her teeth at the statement and then scoffed to herself.

I remembered the attitude around the house sometimes. So, my mother's reaction wasn't totally new, but I also didn't remember her disapproval after Ellie's death being so direct. Or, if I did, it wasn't so intentionally mean like this. Maybe it just seemed harsher looking in from the outside.

"I don't want to be an actor."

I remembered that too. The gentle reminders of who I was and how I was not my sister.

"You can't do that one thing for us?" Mom snapped back then, much more aggressive than I recalled. "It's called being respectful to your sister- my daughter. Your dad and I want to remember her."

Little Lincoln shook her head. "Can we not talk about this again? I said I don't want to be an actor. I hate that stuff."

"I'm your mother. We can talk about what I want to talk about."

"I'm not going to Yale."

I looked back at The Ancient One then as the rough memory came back from that night. "I get it. Can we go?"

Mom set her food down again and took a deep breath. "I don't know why you're being so difficult about this. You've done nothing but cause trouble ever since Ellie died. We're grieving too, you know. I lost my daughter."

"I want to go to bed." Younger Lincoln shook her head, "Please?"

"You can't keep dismissing me every time I talk to you about her."

"I don't dismiss you!" Lincoln snapped back then, "I don't."

"Don't yell at me."

I moved back out of the kitchen and away from the two to stand back against the Ancient one.

"Don't push me into some stupid pipe dream that Ellie talked about when she was ten!" Lincoln shouted anyway. "I helped you for weeks when you wouldn't get out of bed!"

"Oh, so I'm just a shitty mom, then? Huh?" Mom shouted back finally, "I was just the worst person to be around and I'm the one who didn't love my only children enough!"

"Maybe you are!"

"Can we go?" I looked at The Ancient One pleadingly. "I remember. I get it now."

"Almost." She nodded me back towards the scene quietly.

Mom stood there fuming for a moment while it was clear that Lincoln was holding back tears. Then, the words that followed didn't really help.

"I wish it was you." Mom stated, holding her ground better than my poor sixteen year old self. "I really do."

Moments later, I was standing quietly in the fragmented room from before and avoiding eye contact with The Ancient One.

"Your mother wasn't a bad person, Lincoln. I know that she just had her moments that you'd rather not remember her by." The Ancient One paced over to the table with tea. "But you need to be aware of the patterns."

"You think it's like Tony." I looked up at a woman pacing by with her own tea. "You think I lean towards people who outwardly can't give praise, and I let them blame me for things."

The Ancient One nodded, "You don't need to box Tony up. There's no good in forgetting because then you can't see the patterns that will break you."

"But I like Tony now. He's trying."

"That's because you set a boundary." My mentor offered out a cup with tea that I begrudgingly took after that memory trip. "You made him realize that if he wasn't going to respect you as a person with feelings, then you'd leave. And when you came back, you reminded him that you didn't tolerate yelling or blind accusations."

"So I did learn from it." I gave her a small smile.

She sipped her tea. "Hydra played a part. And you have more boundaries to set. He's been waiting in the city for a week now and won't leave."

I dropped the smile at that. "Seriously?"

She nodded in affirmation, "You need to set more boundaries. This is a place of healing and he doesn't respect that you need to go through something like this alone. He wants to take you back and do things his own way. So, tomorrow, you will talk to him again and set that boundary. Tell him how you feel, if you can. Then, on Tuesday, we talk about Steve."

"Are you going to try to make amends?"

Steve hesitated with his answer, glancing at the window while he second guessed everything that Sam kept telling him was important. He knew Tony wasn't taking it seriously, and honestly, he didn't want to either, but Sam was very insistent after Prince T'Challa took Bucky back to Wakanda for a different kind of therapy. They'd collected Zemo too as a political gesture, but among all the changes, he was still mostly just struggling with his past opinions. Sam was making sure he went too.

"I don't know." Steve glanced up at her, playing with a stress ball in his hands. "I don't know if she wants that."

"Well, worst case- she just won't accept your apology." Lisa wrote something down. "Do you still believe that what you did was wrong?"

"Yes," Steve set the toy back on the coffee table. "I understand my thought process. I wish that I didn't react how I did to being afraid of her."

Lisa hummed quietly at that. "It is tough to have something like that weighing on you too. Do you think you pushed yourself closer to her because of this guilt? You possibly wanted to make amends with those past opinions without her even knowing you had them."

"I don't think so." Steve shook his head, "Maybe, but I think…"

"What do you think?"

"I think I saw myself." He scratched the back of his head nervously, taking a deep breath. "She was always grasping for a sense of familiarity. She was lost and I remembered a time when I was like that. Maybe I did feel bad that I judged her too harshly from the start, but I really did want to be there for her as someone who understands."

"And that relationship was hurt." Lisa pointed out as if it wasn't the most obvious thing to him. "Are you any good at mending relationships, Steve? Can you remember a time when you had to before?"

Tony walked down the alleyway again on his way to the door, only to stop himself when he saw another gentleman seated there already, shivering.

"Hey, they don't really let people in." He provided, making the man with a scraggly beard and sunken in eyes look up.

"Now I'm really seeing things." He grumbled back, making Tony want to crack a smile.

"Nope." Tony sat down too. "What brings you here…"

"Doctor." The man gave him a suspicious look. "Stephen Strange. It's not your business."

"Okay," Tony put on his glasses, getting a run through of the man and his life. "Neurosurgery, right? Real superstar at it too."

Strange sat up a little. "You know me?"

Tony tapped the glasses on his face, not looking at the man still. "Not quite. You here for someone-"

Tony was cut off when the door opened up behind them. He looked back with Strange and got up fast upon seeing the same guy from before. He looked between them before nodding them both in.

"Let's go."

"Oh, thank you." Strange slid past Tony to go in first.

Tony barely made it two steps in though before the man in the green robes held out an arm to stop him and pointed at a sparkling gold portal. It was not unlike the ones that appeared around Lincoln and dropped her journal on her. It didn't take a genius to consider teleportation.

"She's through there."

Tony took a careful breath and turned to walk right to it, flipping off his glasses as he went. "Thank you."

The first thing he noticed was the bald woman with yellow robes before he noticed Lincoln too and sighed a little in relief. His eyes traveled around the room too and squinted at the illusion-like set up when he walked in more. Things were reflected at angles and he could've gotten dizzy if he was too focused on how crazy it looked.

Instead, he turned his attention on the kid and smiled a bit. "Hey, I was looking for you. You left me to hear Happy's complaints about the other kid calling him all the time. I think it might have not been the best idea to give him a suit."

"Oh did that start already?" Lincoln furrowed her brow, suddenly interested. "Did he mention an old lady buying him a churro? What about a bank robb-"

The other lady looked at her, making Lincoln shut her mouth fast.

"Ah, not that I know of." Tony replied anyway, glancing at the woman again. "I'm sorry, I don't think I know you."

"The Ancient One sorta runs this place." Lincoln filled in for him before clearing her throat. "Um, Tony, what I need from you is space."

Tony pursed his lips into a thin line and nodded, "Great. Why don't I give you tons of space outside of this illusionist nightmare of a room?"

"No," Lincoln stated back, standing still and taking a breath. "I need space to get better and you're acting…uh, batshit. Respectfully. You need to give me space and the time that I need to work through what's happened to me here. And you can give me that space by going back to the compound and waiting for me to come back on my own time."

Tony looked up at the lady again. "You're making her say this. Is this more wizard stuff?"

"It's not." Lincoln shook her head, sighing a little. "I'm working through my trauma, okay? I'm not great at setting boundaries with parental figures apparently, so I'm setting a boundary. If you care about me at all, you won't cross the boundary."

"You see me as a parental figure?" Tony scoffed a little. "You have terrible taste. I'm an asshole."

"That's not the point." She gestured a line with her hand. "I'm making a new boundary. See?"

"I…yep," He blinked, "I see."

"I made boundaries before." Lincoln stood up a little straighter. "And I'm making a new one. You can know where I am, but you can't track me physically. You have to go home and let me have time to get better and be better. I don't want to go to Yale."

"I never said you had to."

"That's also not the point." She shook her head again. "I'm just saying that I'm my own person and you should respect that."

Tony wasn't quite sure where all this confident communication came from, but he certainly didn't feel comfortable around it. In fact, it wasn't so far off from how Steve sounded over the phone. There had to be something in the air. Maybe the team drama started to get to everyone for real this time.

"You know, Steve is doing this therapy thing now." Tony told her, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "The court suggested it for the whole team. Speedy and Nat are miserable."

"When did you guys go to court?" Lincoln dared to ask, glancing at the lady again.

"To get the 'Accords' mess all cleaned up." Tony shuffled in his place. "It ended up in front of a Judge after my lawyers tore into it. Therapy for four weeks in a row and then at least every other month after that. Nothing exciting there, but a few other things have changed."

"Like what?"

"Another time would be beneficial for catching up." The Ancient One interrupted the conversation before Tony could reply. "We have more people to speak with and less time now that you let Strange in."

"That guy outside?" Tony looked back to where the portal disappeared, "Ah, no, he looked homeless. Used to be a neurosurgeon though. Doctors don't exactly have the capacity to cause problems, trust me."

"That one causes many." The Ancient One smirked a little, raising a hand and making a new portal appear to Tony's left. "I'll save you the trip home, Stark."

"Yeah," He looked in at it curiously, noting the room that looked an awful lot like his soon-to-be-fully-renovated apartment at the compound. "I can give you space."

"Thanks." Lincoln smiled a little when he looked back at her. "I will come back when I'm ready then."

"Mhm," He didn't move towards the portal right away and cleared his throat awkwardly. "Come over here."

Lincoln took a few steps closer with a confused and suspicious stare. "Why?"

"I'm trying to hug you and you're ruining it." He nodded her over with his head. "Come on. If I'm not gonna see you for a bit. I'm not leaving on a bad note."

She smiled a little at that and closed the distance between them, wrapping her arms around his torso. He took a careful breath before resting his head beside hers and squeezing her back a little.

"Take it easy, okay?" He murmured against her hair before she let go again. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"And don't do anything you would do." She tucked her hands in her pockets. "There's a little gray area. You told Peter that."

"Okay, well," He turned around with a shake of his head and stepped through the portal. "That's just rude. Don't steal my quotes, kid."