Lynn spent several days thoroughly living the life of a freeloader in his new home at Stark Tower.
Having a fully automated home really was comfortable. JARVIS set the lighting, temperature, and curtains just right, and delivered the weather and news every morning on schedule at his favorite volume. There was always food in the fridge. Tony occasionally came over to mooch a meal, and Ivan had tagged along once. When he saw the white porcelain tea set Lynn had picked up, he offered a rare comment: "Better taste than your boss." Then Tony dragged him back to play mad scientists together.
But Lynn wasn't someone who could sit idle. At the Sanctum, he had at least had Wong to bicker with, Yinsen to chat with, and basic magic classes to attend. Now he lived alone in an apartment spanning several hundred square meters. Although JARVIS was always at his beck and call, it still felt a little empty.
He decided to make a trip back to Kamar-Taj. It was time to check on Wanda and Pietro's studies, and he needed to find out how things were progressing with Dr. Banner, too. Since Fury insisted on going his own way, it looked as though the Battle of New York couldn't be avoided. He needed Banner's brain to prepare in advance.
He left as soon as he made up his mind. A portal blossomed directly in Kamar-Taj's courtyard, its orange sparks startling several snowfinches dozing under the eaves. It was afternoon, and the apprentices were all in their respective classes, practicing basic runes or meditative perception. The courtyard was very quiet.
The door to the Ancient One's study stood ajar. Through the gap, he could see her sitting on a meditation cushion, sorting through a yellowed star chart. Lynn knocked on the doorframe and leaned halfway inside. The Ancient One raised her head, shifting her gaze from the star chart to his face. She was silent for a moment, then sighed softly.
"Go on, then. What are you planning to do this time?"
Lynn pushed the door open and walked into the study, wearing his standard goofy grin. "Nothing. I just came to see you."
Both annoyed and amused, the Ancient One set down the star chart, picked up the teacup on the low table, and took a sip. Her voice held the resignation of someone this child had worn down past the point of anger. "Nothing, he says. You've certainly been busy stirring up trouble lately. The Monaco racetrack, Hammer Industries' drone armors, that Vanko boy, and what you told that... Coulson. Did you think I didn't know?"
The goofy grin slowly faded from Lynn's face, and he sat down on the cushion opposite the Ancient One. He neither defended himself nor interrupted with a cheeky joke. After a brief silence, he spoke, his tone earnest but not grave.
"Ancient One, I know changing the timeline can lead to uncontrollable outcomes. But I hope to save some people who shouldn't have had to die."
The Ancient One looked into his eyes without interrupting.
"And you haven't stopped me, either. When I warned Tony in Monaco, you didn't stop me. When I brought Banner to Kamar-Taj, you took him in. When I urged Vanko to let go of his hatred, you didn't interfere." Lynn raised his eyes to look at the Ancient One. "That proves my ideas do have at least a little merit, doesn't it?"
The study fell quiet for a moment. Wind from the snowy mountains slipped through a gap in the window, gently fluttering the edge of the star chart on the low table. The Ancient One looked at Lynn, this child who had gone from a homeless man nearly starving to death in a subway station to someone who dared interfere with and change the plot, and gently shook her head in resignation.
"You should know I'm due to retire before long."
She set down her teacup, her tone returning to its usual calm. "Can't you wait until Stephen gets here before you start messing around?"
The moment Lynn heard that, he knew the Ancient One wasn't truly angry. His goofy grin returned, and he leaned back, bracing his hands on either side of the cushion. "Him? Some aspects of his personality are pretty good. But when it comes to these issues, he's nowhere near as open-minded as you. If he found out, the first thing he'd do would definitely be to tell me how dangerous changing the timeline is, then give me a whole list of things I can't do."
The Ancient One truly had no idea what to do with this little rascal. She waved a hand toward the door and said in mock anger, "Hurry up and get lost. Just looking at you annoys me."
Grinning, Lynn sprang up from the cushion, gave a proper sorcerer's bow, then turned and slipped out of the study. He had taken a couple of steps down the corridor when he heard an extremely soft sigh from the Ancient One in the study behind him. Rounding a corner where prayer flags fluttered, he headed toward where he sensed Banner.
Banner sat cross-legged on a jutting rock on the mountain behind the compound. He wore the plain robes of a Kamar-Taj apprentice, their hem fluttering slightly in the mountain wind. From behind, his figure still looked thin, but his shoulders were much more relaxed than when he had worked at the soda factory in Brazil. He no longer seemed constantly tense.
Hearing footsteps, he turned his head. Once he saw that it was Lynn, he rose from the rock.
"Mr. Lynn." Banner still spoke in the gentle tones of a physicist, but there was a steadiness that hadn't been there when they first met.
"Dr. Banner." Lynn sat on a rock opposite him and looked him over. "How's it going? Getting along all right with the big guy?"
Banner looked down at his hands. He was silent for a moment, then raised his head, a gentle hint of a smile on his lips.
"We've made peace. The process was more complicated than what you described to me before. Hulk really didn't trust me, and I couldn't truly trust him, either. That mutual distrust had lasted so many years. A few words weren't going to change it.
"But the Ancient One helped a great deal. She taught me to approach Hulk in a gentler way. No control, no negotiations, just letting us grow closer to each other."
Banner paused and laid his hands open on his knees. "Although I haven't achieved the complete control you mentioned yet. I still can't switch at will, nor can I fully retain my own thoughts after transforming. But at least I no longer transform at the slightest agitation. This is the first time in all these years that we've had this kind of understanding."
Lynn listened quietly to the end, then nodded. He had experienced the despair of being unable to control his abilities himself, but he knew very well that what Banner faced was far trickier.
"Since you've made peace, there's something I wanted to bring up." Lynn rested his arms on his knees and leaned forward slightly. "I found you a job with Tony. A research position at Stark Industries. The pay's good, and the lab equipment is more advanced than Kamar-Taj's by about... never mind, there's no comparison. Kamar-Taj doesn't have research equipment. Most importantly, you're not going to let all the knowledge in your brain sit idle forever, are you? Gamma rays, anti-gamma pulses, targeted neutralization using nanomagnets... you've kept all that in your head for years. It's time to bring it out and show what it can do."
Banner looked at him without speaking, but his eyes were full of excitement. There was no sympathy or charity in Lynn's tone. It was simply, "I know a super-smart person. He has superpowers. He should have a job." To Banner, that attitude was easier to accept than any explanation.
"And in the not-too-distant future, there's going to be a disaster. An alien army invading downtown New York, a force numbering in the tens of thousands. I need you to prepare some things in advance."
Banner stood up and brushed the dust off his robes. "'The not-too-distant future,' to use your exact words. How much time do I have?"
"Enough for you to settle into your new job, enough for you to make plenty of preparations, but definitely not enough for you to be fully prepared."
"All right. I'll go with you. I've had enough of staying here, too. There are plenty of people here, and Master Mordo is very professional, and the Ancient One is very wise... but there really aren't many people I can have a normal conversation with."