The Avengers were kind. Tony fell on her when she stepped into their midst, gripping her shoulders and checking her for injuries. He wrapped a hand behind her neck and held her close, the touch affectionate and warm. Fatherly.

Lynn felt cold.

He told her that she and Loki had been gone, completely gone, for nearly three weeks, until just yesterday Heimdall had summoned Thor to tell him he caught sight of Loki within the Chitauri realm. She told them time hadn't passed so quickly for them. She didn't know how; she didn't care enough to answer questions. Jane, who was there in person now, pestered her until Lynn stopped answering.

"I think it's because you were pulled through Loki's time pocket," the physicist said, excitement making her giddy. "I think it messed with your timeline."

"I didn't want this," she said to Jane, but the physicist barely heard her.

They told her the plan had worked - the Ridley strain was gone, apparently eradicated. Deaths had continued among those too far progressed to survive, their immune systems turning on their own cells when the invaders were ripped free. Hydra and the Ten Rings were floundering in the wake of an apparent miracle, unable to convince those who had sympathized with their ideologies that this sudden departure of humanity's greatest threat wasn't the work of God's hand.

Tony told her it was close enough to the truth. Churches were having a field day.

She laughed when she was supposed to laugh, looked morose when it was appropriate. She told them all she was tired, and left the group for her "brand new alien-free quarters," as Tony called it.

Bruce offered to escort her. When the others were out of sight, he simply pulled her aside and hugged her tightly, shielding her from reality for a short while.

She hugged him back and closed her eyes, content to let him protect her in whatever small way he could.

"Maybe I can survive you now," she said weakly, and he laughed into her ear. He pulled away and searched her face. She met his eyes and felt dull, muted - as though the colors and sounds around her no longer held their meaning.

Bruce gently knocked her under the chin, pulled at the netting on her arms, and smiled a warm, sad smile.

"It gets better sometimes," he said. "When you forget."

After a week had passed, Steve expressed concern to Tony about Lynn.

"Doesn't she seem different to you?" he asked the inventor as Tony prodded his latest gadget, a smaller version of the Tesseract's container. Jane was insistent upon opening further trade routes between Asgard and Earth which eliminated the need for reliance on either the Tesseract or the Bifrost, and her enthusiasm for the project spurred both Tony and Thor into compliance.

"She's recovering from a killer ick," Tony said. "I'd be downright hostile."

"It's more than that," Steve said. "She doesn't seem engaged -"

"Nobody's getting engaged without my say-so," Tony said tightly, and Steve raised his eyebrows. Tony shrugged.

"That Brent guy called thirty-five times while she was gone," he said. "Some of the messages were...more than friendly worry."

"Who's Brent?" Steve asked, and Tony relished how easily distracted other people could be.

Thor, for his part, noticed a pallor in his brother's countenance. In his concern he pulled Loki aside and drew a truncated version of the story from his brother, only to find no satisfactory answer for either Lynn or Loki's dissonance. It was Sif who later demanded the extent of the story from Loki's lips, and found herself shocked by the revelation.

"Can't you change it, Loki?" she asked when he was done. His scowl in her direction only prodded her further. "You have done as much before - if it is only his seiðr -"

"It was not seiðr," Loki said. "He changed her very being, down to the core." Loki glanced back, where Steve spoke with Natasha about some mission they intended.

"She is no longer human," he said. "At least, not as much as she was."

"You did not say if you can reverse it," Sif said. Loki sighed.

"I can," he said. "I should. It is a matter of will alone."

"You do not want to," Sif said. Steve laughed behind them, and Natasha pressed a hand to his arm. Sif watched them with open fondness. She dipped her voice low, below the threshold for human ears.

"I understand, Loki," she said. "You must know that I do."

"And yet you would not ponder it so," Loki said, his voice bitter. "How happy you must be, Sif, to become my confidant once more. I am sure you have missed it."

"I have," she said, and he clenched his jaw. "I said once that we would regret that day, when we attacked Jötunheimr for no reason other than your brother's foolish pride."

"You hated me then," Loki said.

"Yes," she said. They looked at each other, understanding passing between them. A sudden, easy smile lit upon her face, and she took his hand in both of hers and kissed the back, over his knuckles.

"I have missed my friend," Sif said.

"Council me then," Loki said. "Tell me that I must undo what Thanos has done, and return mortality to her."

"I cannot," Sif said. Loki looked at her in surprise; she was looking back at Steve and Natasha. Tony had entered the conversation, introducing an apparent but good-natured disagreement between the two men which Natasha refereed.

"He has outlived most of his friends and all of his family," she said. "He lives in a time not his own. It causes him great grief, to endure while others have perished.

"And yet he is here, now, and if given the choice I would selfishly choose the same path for him." Sif looked at Loki. "Am I not terrible, for thinking such thoughts?"

"What would you do, if it were you?" Loki asked. "What would you say, with your noble heart of hearts?"

"I would ask him," she said. "I would respect his wishes. And…"

Loki waited for her to continue. When she remained silent, he prodded gently.

"Sif?" he asked.

"And I might hate him a bit, if he made the choice I did not want him to," Sif said.

"I did not plan to ask," Loki said, and Sif laughed quietly.

"Loki," Sif said. She shook her head, frustration battling with amusement. "You must ask a woman what she wants. You must never assume."

Loki laughed quietly. "Is this your revenge at last?"

"What?" Sif tilted her head, shaking it slightly.

"I know well what she wants," Loki ground out. "To be rid of this life - of me. All of the horrors she has witnessed - death, and now life, eternal - that is because of me."

"Loki," Sif said. She rested a hand upon his shoulder, and he glanced at her from the corner of his eyes.

"Perhaps what she needs is a reminder that a long life and a lonely life are not equals," she said.

Lynn sat on the couch Tony had given her, in the quarters Tony had given her, and tried to remember what motivation felt like. She was a driven person, and had been her entire life; now she sat, and brooded, and hated herself a little for it. She was not the type to mope. And yet…

She rubbed her chest over her heart, and wondered if she would ever stop feeling the sting there. Tony had told her once that he could still feel Yggdrasil's root burrowed deep into his chest, and Bruce had repeated the same. Now she shared a similar wound.

The puncture healed well. There was no scar.

A demure knock pulled Lynn from her thoughts and to her feet. She approached the door and opened it, expecting Steve or Bruce on the other side. Loki peered down at her instead, and she blinked in surprise.

"You don't knock," she said in confusion. "You've never knocked."

"Perhaps I am trying to develop better habits," the trickster said. Lynn, in no mood to argue, let him in.

"Bruce knows," Lynn said as she wiped her face, removing the tears they both pretended were not there. The quarters Tony had given her were spacious by even Asgardian standards. "I asked him how. He said he knows the look of someone who sees too many years ahead."

"Are there ever enough years, for creatures as short-lived as humans?" Loki asked. Lynn laughed without mirth.

"I don't want to live forever," she said as she looked out at the cityscape below. "I haven't even always wanted to live this life."

"I have lived over a thousand years, Amma Lynn," Loki said. "I have not always enjoyed my years, but I have not regretted them."

"I was born a human," Lynn said. "I'll watch everyone I know grow old and die, and then…"

She was staring at the city beneath her, seeing brittle rubble thousands of years from now, when Tony and Steve and all the rest were dead and gone.

"I could fix what was done to you," Loki said behind her. Lynn closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath. Relief made her giddy.

"That's what I want," she said. She opened her eyes and turned to see Loki looking down at her, his face an impassive mask.

"Can you really do it?" she asked, because she couldn't think of another reason for the delay.

"Yes," he said. She crossed her arms and bit her bottom lip.

"But?" He was hesitating, and she didn't intend to let him think much longer.

"There is another option," he said slowly, carefully. As though he were afraid of the words as he spoke them.

"Which is?"

He was staring her down, nearly looking through her. He looked so afraid to speak.

"Humans live such short spans of time," he said. "You cannot serve as a leash if you are dead."

Lynn had thought this herself, on a beach millions of lightyears away from here. She stared at him and said nothing. Loki turned his face away. His arms shifted behind his back, his hands out of sight.

"I can remove Thanos' influence tomorrow or a century from now," Loki said. "Even a millenia. You could stay, Amma Lynn, for a time. If you wished."

She found her voice as her mind's eye looked ahead, far into the years when she would be worn down long before he would consider himself done with her.

"And when I'm ready?" she asked, watching him closely. He kept his gaze locked outside, refusing to meet her eyes. "In a century, when watching my friends die is too much for me - what would you say if I asked you then?"

He blinked once, slowly. A deliberate rewetting of his eyes.

"You'd say no," she said. "We both know you'd say no. And if I don't ask - if I don't, and you die because of - of - whatever, when that happens, where will I be, Loki?"

"You do not trust me," he said.

"I never have," Lynn said honestly. He smiled at the window, chuckled to himself, and turned to face her.

"I will show Thor," he said, and she creased her brow. "He harnesses infinite power; yes, he can undo this as well as I can, and possibly better, for he is nobler of heart than I."

"Thor would do as I asked," she said, "regardless of your wishes."

"You've come to know him, Amma Lynn," Loki said. "What do you think he would do?"

He would honor her wishes without argument or attempt to guilt her into a few more stolen years. He would accept her decision quietly, gracefully, and without conflict.

Lynn crossed her arms and shivered, once, though there was no breeze. She felt so much fear…

"A long life and a lonely life need not be equals, Amma Lynn," Loki said gently. She looked up at him, at the hopeful crease between his eyes. She thought of ancient beasts in the desert, and a beach on an alien world, and she found herself at a complete loss for what to do.

"Everyone's safe now," she said. "You'll take me to that beach again, won't you?"

"Yes," he said. "I promise you that."

"The promise of a trickster," she said with a small smile. "It's not worth much."

"You are aware of that limitation, which makes you wiser than most," he said. Lynn was moving, unable to stand still; she picked up her guitar, a source of comfort when stressed, and sat down on Tony's fine couch. Loki watched her from the window, a conscious decision to avoid crowding her with his presence.

He wouldn't have cared a year ago. She waved him over, and he sat on the fortified coffee table in the center of the room. Familiarity made her throat ache.

"I need time to think," she said as she strummed gently. Loki nodded.

"That is fair," he said. "It is your choice, after all."

She looked at him, looked through him, and barely saw anything she properly recognized anymore. The revelation lifted her spirits, and with them, with tentative fluttering and some nervous resistance, her heart.

"I'll sing you a song," she said, and watched as Loki smiled with his entire being, as though he had waited all this time for those words alone.

Fin.