Chapter Text
Prologue
October 14, 2039
Earth
The commotion in the command room cut off as a sharp ping sounded from the terminal. Allison Stark held her breath as Shuri, Black Panther and Queen of Wakanda, reached out to receive the message with a steady hand.
There was a stillness in Shuri's shoulders as she read the transmission. "The Mars base is no longer responding."
At Allison's side, Captain America made a soft, pained sound. She put her hand on his shoulder, as much to comfort him as to steady herself.
They had lost Mars. All the thousands of people who had settled there after the terraforming event of 2033 were just… gone.
Across the table, Kamala Khan, who had taken on the mantle of Captain Marvel after Carol Danvers died at Alfheim, said, "We have to do something."
"What?" Allison's half-sister, Morgan Stark, demanded from her perch on the railing. "There's no bad guy here! There's nothing to fight!"
"I'm with Mags," Kate Bishop chimed in. "Show me a bad guy and I can drop a laser target in his engine over a parsec. We've been over this a thousand times, Kamala. How do you fight when there's nothing to fight?"
"People are dying," Shuri said, her hand still pressed to the screen. "The universe is dying. Earth is next, and even if we can stop that, what do we do when the sun goes out? How do you stop that?"
Kamala got up, absently adding a couple of feet to her height as she walked around. "There has to be a way, something we haven't thought of yet. The Avengers undid the original Snap, and we know that's what is causing this… nothing."
"We're not the Avengers," Kate pointed out, gesturing with an arrow. "Even Captain America is operating on version 3.0."
The man in question stood up. "This team has always been better at fixing things than the Avengers." Bucky Barnes walked to where Shuri sat. "Your majesty."
Shuri took in a deep breath. "Yes, I know," she said. "We have to do something." She looked at the screen. "And we have ten hours before the Earth is destroyed."
Morgan slid down from her perch. "How?" she asked as she pulled up her holoscreens. "Every scientist from every realm has been working on this for years, ever since Xandar vanished. No one has found anything that helps."
Allison curled her hand around her favourite knife. No one expected her to come up with any answers, that she knew. She was in the room as Captain America's sidekick; the Stark who used her knives instead of her brain, like Morgan and their father before her. At forty-six years old, Allison was too old to learn new tricks.
But when she was younger, back when she had trained as a Hunter, before she learned that Tony Stark was her real father and she'd been stolen away by the Argents, she had had her worldview turned upside down more than once. And back then, whenever something happened that none of them could explain, there was a catch-all they had landed on.
"If science won't solve this, what about magic?" Allison suggested. Everyone in the room turned to look at her. "What? It's not like anyone has any better ideas."
"Magic." Shuri shook her head. "All magic is—"
"I know, science as-yet unexplained," Allison finished. "But it's something we can try."
"Do you know what you are suggesting?" came a deep voice from a dark corner of the room. Allison had known the man was there; even with his advanced age, his heartbeat was clear. "Throwing magic recklessly into the universe on the off-chance that something might stick?"
Allison narrowed her eyes as Dr. Strange emerged from the shadows. "I don't hear you coming up with any other solutions."
"I have none."
Morgan slapped her hands down on her screens, making the displays fizzle. "We don't have time for this," she snapped. "We have to fix this. That's what Starks do. We save the world." She looked at Allison with Tony's dark eyes. "Okay? There's two of us. We'll save the world. Hell, we'll save the whole universe."
Allison let her head drop into her hands. She loved Morgan, but her little sister had too much of Tony's arrogant bravado for Allison to be comfortable.
Not that it mattered. They'd all be dead in under ten hours, at this rate.
It was all the fault of the original Snap, Allison thought miserably. Thanos snapping away half the people in the universe, then four years later having them all brought back into existence. Twenty years later, the very molecular structure of the universe was crumbling. Shuri had tried to explain the physics behind it all, but Allison had been recovering from blood loss and a head injury at the time and just kept nodding until Shuri patted her shoulder and went away.
If only Tony hadn't died. Maybe, if Tony Stark had lived, maybe then they would have a fighting chance at coming up with a solution.
Or maybe not. Allison was in the room with the smartest people in the galaxy, and none of them could come up with anything, either.
"I wish the Snap never happened," she said, then stopped. Something had just occurred to her, a spark deep in the darkness of her despair. She looked up, saw questions on the faces of Kate and Kamala and Shuri, at the calculations going on in Bucky's head, and finally to Strange. She turned to face the old sorcerer. "Can we do that? Can we go back in time to stop the Snap from happening?"
"That's not how time travel works, going to the past," Bucky said. "Remember what happened with Steve?" Allison could practically feel Bucky's discomfort, in talking about the choices Steve Rogers had made to walk away over sixteen years before. "If we went back to change the Snap, it wouldn't matter. This universe would still be dying."
"But there has to be a way!" Allison stared at Strange, who hadn't moved. "Can we send back a message, into our past? To change this reality?"
"Do you understand what you're asking?" Strange asked. "What you speak of could tear reality itself apart."
Kate stabbed her arrow into the table. "Doc, reality is already tearing itself apart," she pointed out. "We've got ten hours until our molecules disintegrate into their constituent elements. I'd rather die trying."
"What if it is worse than dying?" Strange asked. "Not death, but simply ceasing to exist?" He looked at Allison, his eyes mesmerizing. She glared back at him. "If you go back, in a way that affects your own timeline, every action you take destabilizes your own future. Children who might have been born, never come into existence. Those who may have lived, would instead die."
Allison stood up and slowly paced around the table, closing in on Strange with every step. Bucky let out a warning sound, but she paid him no mind. "The way you say that," Allison said, "Makes me think that this isn't the first time someone's suggested the idea."
She stood in front of Strange. He was taller than her, old and verging on gaunt, but she knew how very powerful he was. If he wanted to, he could pick her up and fling her across the room, breaking every bone in her body.
She didn't care. She'd healed from worse.
"Do you understand what you are asking?" Strange's voice was quiet, but it seemed to reverberate in the room. "To truly change this timeline, you can't go back as you are. We would have to push your essence, your memories, your…" he paused. "Your soul, back in time. Who you are now would inhabit your physical body at that time. It probably will not work. It will probably drive you mad, if not kill you instantly."
"That's the family motto," Allison said. "Stark raving mad. Do it."
"It is not that simple—"
"Don't care. Send me back. I'll make it work."
"Allison." Morgan caught her sister's hand. "We need to talk about this."
"She's right," Strange said. "Do you understand that if you stop the Snap, Morgan will never be born?"
Ice ran down Allison's spine. Morgan hugged Allison.
"That is the consequence," Strange went on. "I don't know how far back the Time Stone will send you. But if you go back, if you take the actions that stop Thanos from gathering the Infinity Stones and wiping out half of the universe, millions of people who would have been born will never exist. Including Morgan." He looked over Allison's shoulder. "And depending on how far back you go, possibly Hawkeye."
Kate got up. "Don't care," she said, and Allison could smell the fear. But Kate stood tall. "I always knew that taking up with A-Force would probably be the end of me. But I joined the team to save people. If Allison can save the rest of the universe…" She took a deep breath. "Do it."
"Wait." Shuri joined the group. "If this insane theory were to actually work, what happens to us, here and now?"
"The moment we change the past, this future ceases to be," Strange said. "Those of us who are alive will be in the places our new lives dictate, with no knowledge of what has happened in those intervening years."
"And what about those of us who were born after the Snap?" Morgan asked. Allison put her arms around her younger sister, the half-sister she'd helped Pepper Potts raise after Tony died. "Do we just… stop?"
Strange reached out to touch Morgan's elbow. When he said, "Yes," his voice held only sorrow.
Allison hugged Morgan. "We'll find another way," Allison said, her eyes flashing. "There's no way that I'm going to do anything that—"
"You have to," Morgan said. "Allison, we have ten hours until everything here just… stops. That's ten billion people just on Earth alone. If you can go back, if you can save them all, if you can save the universe—"
"Morgan, no."
"You have to," Morgan whispered. She leaned her forehead against Allison's, tears spilling down her cheeks. "That's what us Starks do. We save the world."
Allison squeezed Morgan into a hug, felt Morgan trembling as she cried. She couldn't do this, couldn't go back in time in a way that would undo the very existence of her sister.
But if she didn't, her sister would cease to exist, along with everyone else, in mere hours.
She didn't have a choice.
"Why Allison?" Kamala asked. "Why not one of us? Me, or Shuri? Or even Bucky?"
Allison took a deep breath. She had to think logically, even as she cradled her crying sister. "I have the best chance of getting to Tony and getting him to listen, to do something with the Avengers to keep the Infinity Stones hidden," she said, working through the problem as she spoke. "If I end up at a time after he knows I'm his daughter, then I have first-hand access. If it's before, I can shock the crap out of him and get him to listen."
"I would have access to Wakanda," Shuri pointed out. "The technology, the army…"
"Strange said that he could send someone back with their memories and their powers," Bucky said. "Right?" Strange nodded. "Allison is a better advance party, then. She's more powerful." He looked at Allison. "You okay with this all, Alpha?"
Allison made herself smile. "Sure am, Cap."
"Why don't we send Bucky back in time?" Kate asked. "He's supernaturally strong."
Bucky shook his head. "If it's back to any point before 2014, I'll be in cryo. Hydra will have me." Allison let out a faint growl. "And if it's after, Tony Stark will be trying to kill me."
Shuri clapped her hands. "Fine, we send Allison back first. This is the stupidest idea I have ever heard," she added in Xhosa.
"If it doesn't work, you'll know, right?" Allison asked Strange.
"Possibly."
"If I don't make it, and everything keeps falling apart, then send someone else." Allison patted Morgan's back as the young woman sniffled. "Like Morgan said. Push comes to shove, I'm a Stark. Saving the universe is what we do."
Morgan wiped her eyes. "Do you know how far back you'll be sending her?" she asked Strange.
"It is not I who makes that decision. It is the Time Stone."
"Great," Morgan said. "I—"
A siren went off. Shuri hurried over to her computer, fingers flying over the sensors. "The monitoring satellites on the other side of the moon have stopped responding." She looked at the group, her eyes wide. "The earth does not have ten hours. We might not even have ten minutes."
"You have to do it," Morgan said urgently, turning on Allison. "We don't have any time, you have to go."
"But what am I supposed to do?" Allison asked, her heart already breaking from grief. If this worked, her sister would never be. "I thought I'd have time to think this over."
"There's no time." Morgan cupped Allison's cheeks in her hands, like Allison had done over the years when Morgan was just a little girl, growing up. "Just remember me, okay? Tell Mom and Dad about me if you can?"
Allison blinked through her tears. "I promise." She kissed Morgan's cheek, then stepped back.
"Alpha," Bucky said. He was pale, his blue eyes glowing. "Be smart. Keep yourself safe. If you get back there before Hydra is uncovered, don't go after them on your own. Get the Avengers to protect the Infinity Stones. And don't die."
Allison huffed out a breath. At her side, Strange was drawing complicated energy patterns in the air. "I'm going to get you safe as soon as I can."
"Don't do anything so stupid as that." Bucky scooped her up in a hug, his strength crushing. "Don't worry about me. You have to save the world, not save me."
"What was it your mom always said?" Allison asked, squeezing Bucky with all her might.
He let out a whuff. "He who saves a life, saves the world."
"And I'm going to save a whole lot of lives." Allison let Bucky go, rubbing the back of his neck in reassurance as she stepped away.
She looked around the room, at her teammates, her friends. Kamala was holding Morgan now, Shuri standing by Bucky, and Kate looking miserable.
Allison turned to Strange. His energy wove a tapestry in the air. "What do I do?"
"Stand there," Strange said. "And good luck."
Allison stood still, her hand over her heart as she looked at Morgan. "I love you," she said.
"Love you," Morgan said, one last time, then the entire universe collapsed under Allison's feet.
She fell forever.
Awareness crashed back in on her in an explosion of sound and smell and light. She jerked, trying to get up, but her body was restrained. Inhaling was pain, opening her eyes was a blinding torment.
"Allison!" shouted a voice just to her left. She cringed right, reaching for her knives, her guns, but the restraints across her lap and her chest held her in place.
It was too much. She had to get away, to get safe.
"Allison, stop!" The ground swerved and moved, just as Allison registered vehicle, then moving. Seat belt quickly followed. Allison slapped her chest, to release the restraints, but nothing happened.
The glare faded enough that Allison was starting to make out her surroundings. She was in a car. Ahead of her, highway and trees. To her right out the window, lay the glittering blue-grey of a lake. When she swung her head back to the left, what she saw made her almost crawl out of her skin.
It was Chris Argent.
Oh god, he was so young.
How far back had Allison gone?
"Stop," Allison got out, clawing at her seat belt as she tried to remember how to get it off. "Stop!"
Chris slammed on the brakes, swerving off to the shoulder so fast Allison would have gone through the window if she had managed to release the seat belt. Once the vehicle had stopped, some small mercy guided her hand to the release buckle at her hip and then she was free, the door swinging opening, Allison falling out of the SUV, barely able to keep her feet.
It had worked! She was in the past. She didn't know when, but Chris had never looked so young before the Snap, so it had to have worked.
Allison stumbled down the embankment on the slope down to the lake. Her foot slid out from under her and she slid, hands clutching at the sharp rocks, the dust kicking up a cloud and coating the air she breathed.
It had worked.
Then reality crashed in against realization.
It had worked.
She was never going to see Morgan again.
A cry of grief erupted from her chest. The sharpness of the rocks cut against her palms, almost slicing through her flesh.
Morgan was never going to exist.
Allison had come back to save the universe, and her sister was gone.
She kicked the ground. She didn't know when she was, but she did know that whenever it was, she was going to find Thanos and kill him for what he had set into play.
But before that, she had to find Bucky, and find Tony… oh god, and Tony was still alive! She'd see her father again, and everyone, all the wolves, and Derek—
Her breath caught in her throat. Derek. Derek would still be alive, he had to be. There would never be a dark night in the Beacon Hills forest where Allison found Derek ripped nearly in half, the light fading from his eyes as he breathed his last.
She was going to save Derek.
She was going to save everyone.
"Allison!"
Allison turned to see Chris scrambling down the slope. Instinctively, she sprang to her feet, moving to keep away from him. She didn't know when she was, and if Chris Argent was her ally or her foe.
"Allison, what happened?" Chris demanded. "Did you hurt yourself?"
Allison looked at him, trying to read his face. It had been so long since she had needed to interpret Chris's expressions for her own survival, she had no idea if the concern was real.
Whatever he saw in her made him put his hands out. "Allison. It's okay." He took a step forward. Allison didn't move, waiting to see what he would do. Was this a trick? Was he hiding a gun? Stupid, really, considering how fast she was, but then how much did Chris know?
But why would she had been in a car with him if he was going to hurt her?
How far back had she gone?
"Sweetheart, why don't we go back up to the car," Chris went on. "Did you have another nightmare?"
"Nightmare," Allison repeated.
Chris tried to smile. "I know the flight was a long one. Sometimes that can kick up old memories."
Allison knew this; hell, getting Bucky to sleep after a long mission was nearly impossible, even decades after his torture by Hydra. But what would this Allison be having nightmares about?
She needed to know the date.
"Yeah," Allison said, and coughed against the dust. "It must have been a nightmare."
"Do you remember what it was about?"
She shook her head. "No."
"Okay." Chris reached out to put his hand on her arm, but she pulled away. "We'll go back to the car. There's some water in the back. We're only another hour from home."
Home.
Allison turned to look at the lake, and she finally knew where she was.
They were on the highway south of Beacon Hills. They were already on Hale pack territory.
Her territory.
"Come on," Chris said. He didn't try to touch her again. After a minute breathing in the lake air, Allison headed up the slope, Chris following her.
At the SUV, Allison had her first real moment of mental dissonance. The SUV was so old. Fashion in 2039 was for sleek electric vehicles, with most of the traffic in the big centres having moved to the skies. This SUV was a big, ugly box. And it would explain why the air smelled like that. Gasoline combustion engines everywhere.
"Let's get that water," Chris said, moving to the SUV's back door. He opened it and rummaged around. While he did so, Allison opened the passenger side door and looked into the cab. It held the detritus of any long trip across the decades: coffee cups, food wrappers. And an old-fashioned phone on Allison's side of the car.
She picked up the small rectangle. In her time, phones were small, sleek, using eyes-only visuals and typepads displayed in the air through implants and jewellery. Having her communication tied to this easily hackable brick was already giving her hives.
Morgan would hate this, Allison thought, then stopped. No. Morgan was never going to hate anything, because Morgan was never going to be.
Allison took a deep breath. Fine. So be it. She may have lost Morgan, but she wasn't going to lose anyone else.
She was a Stark. Starks did the impossible every day before breakfast.
"Here." Chris held the bottle over her shoulder. She took the warm plastic container. "Sorry, I got it cold but we've been driving for a while."
"It's fine," Allison said, trying for a smile. She had no idea how the expression looked, but Chris did not appear reassured. "See?"
She put her phone down, uncapped the bottle and took a swig. The water was about as gross as she expected; chemicals from the plastic had leached into the water and the temperature was tepid. Still, she swallowed.
"Are you ready to get back on the road?" Chris asked.
"Maybe just a minute," Allison said. She put the bottle into the cup holder, making a vow to dump it at the first opportunity, then picked up her phone. She saw Chris's eyes narrow. "I thought I'd get a picture."
"Of the lake?"
"Sure." Allison thought back to her childhood. What did kids do with pictures back then? Oh god, this was such a disaster. "You know us teenagers, putting everything up on Instagram."
"Instagram?" Chris echoed.
Oh shit. If she'd gone back in time to before Instagram, she was really screwed. "Yeah." She turned, figured out how to unlock the phone, with the last four digits of her fake birthday, which she'd used until Tony had handed her a phone with retina unlocking software for her nineteenth birthday, and took a quick photo.
"Let's get moving," Chris said.
"Sure thing," Allison said, and got into the car.
Chris started the engine and drove them back out onto the road. Allison kept one eye on the highway as she poked around the phone. The calendar told her it was August 29, 2012, which was about as bad as she could have thought. The first time she lived this life, she'd met Tony Stark just before her birthday in 2012.
Which meant that Victoria Argent was already dead. And Chris didn't know that Allison wasn't his daughter.
Oh, the next few weeks were going to be hell.
But.
Allison tried to remember what else was happening in 2012. Bucky was in cryostasis with Hydra. Kamala was just starting high school in New Jersey. Kate was in pre-school. Shuri was a nine-year-old prodigy in Wakanda, where she was safe and protected.
Allison couldn't think about Morgan.
Tony Stark was in Malibu, fresh off his stint fighting aliens in New York. Pepper was there too, so she was safe. The mess with the Mandarin and Aldrich Killian didn't happen until Christmas, and Allison could take steps to stop that. She could save the lives of all the victims of the Extremis bombings.
She could save so many people.
What was happening in Beacon Hills in 2012? Derek was alive, that much she knew. And if Derek was alive, then Stiles wouldn't hate her. She took a breath as she looked out the window. That had been one of the deepest wounds, after what happened to Derek. Stiles had been her best friend for years, they had held together through losing so much in the Snap, but after what happened to Derek…
What she had done to Derek…
Hasn't happened, Allison told herself firmly. She was going to keep Derek alive, and Stiles too, and the pack, Erica and Boyd and Isaac and Jackson and Lydia and Scott…
Oh god.
What was she going to do about Scott?
He was barely seventeen. And even with how much it hurt, losing him in the Snap, at least they had gotten him and Lydia and Isaac back.
That was the crux of it. Before, Allison had lost her father, but had regained half her pack from his sacrifice.
This time, she wasn't going to let anyone get hurt.
She gave her head a shake. She had a mission. Bucky's words were firm in her memory. You prepare for the mission, you undertake the mission, and then you come home and deal with the fallout in private.
She'd asked him how he did that, only a few weeks after Sam Wilson hung up the shield and passed the mantle of Captain America to Bucky.
If you have to, you scream, he had said, then told her in Xhosa, If you must scream, scream towards the river. The river will hear you.
So Allison would undertake her mission. She would save the universe.
Then she would go scream at the river until her voice gave out.
Allison went to the phone's photo album. The most recent pictures were sparse. There was a shot of the Eiffel Tower, and a few street signs in French. Paris, obviously. She tried to think back to the trip from the first time. She had still been so overcome with guilt and remorse about what she had done after Victoria died, she hadn't retained any memory of what had happened in that month.
This was going to be the hardest part of all. She was forty-six years old; how on earth could she remember what she'd been doing when she was seventeen? There had been too much death and trauma in the intervening years.
So. She'd have to wing it, around the people who knew seventeen-year-old Allison best.
The further back she scrolled, the more pictures of herself she found. And holy smokes, she was so skinny. She hadn't been this thin since she joined up with the superheroes after Tony died. Trying to keep up with superhumans meant muscle.
She looked at her wrist, pushed her sleeve up her arm. The sight of those slender bones irritated her. She'd earned every single pound of muscle. And now she was going to have to do it all again.
Something else was bothering her about the photos. Going back, Allison could see selfies almost every other shot, even in the weeks after Victoria had killed herself. But from the first shot of Paris, and all month, Allison hadn't taken a single selfie, or picture of another person.
Why not? She couldn't remember. She couldn't remember anything of that summer.
That was… disconcerting.
"Allison?"
Allison put the phone down. "Yes?"
Chris smiled at her. "I know we're close to home, but how would you feel about stopping for food?"
Allison glanced ahead. It was the truck stop she knew so well from her many road trips between Beacon Hills and L.A. to see Tony. It was moderately reassuring to see that it was still as decrepit and dirt-coated as she remembered. "Sure."
Chris pulled into the parking lot. Allison got out of the car and stretched. Her body was stiff, from the adrenaline and presumably the long drive from San Francisco. She needed to move.
A wolf-whistle cut across the parking lot. Allison turned to see a couple of truckers by the gas station, checking her out. She rolled her eyes as she slammed her door, going around the car to where Chris stood, glaring at the two men. "Are you okay?" he asked as she walked past him, just far enough away that he couldn't reach for her.
"What, that?" Allison jerked her thumb over her shoulder. "They're amateurs."
Chris turned his head, with what looked like confusion. What, was she supposed to break down and have the vapours when anyone harassed her? She was pretty sure that she would have been just as annoyed by that idea at seventeen as she was at forty-six.
"I wonder what their specials are," Allison said, to distract Chris. It must have worked, because he followed her into the restaurant.
The air was hot and smelled like coffee and pancakes and grilling meat. It was the smell of every truck stop and back-station dive she'd ever been in, sharing meals with her friends before they had to saddle up to save the galaxy. Even seeing everyone in old-fashioned clothing, with the terrible outdated hairstyles, wasn't enough to phase her.
"Table for two?" yelled the waitress. Allison nodded. "Over there."
Allison walked ahead of Chris to the booth, taking the seat facing the door. Chris stood, looking down at her, and for a moment Allison wondered if he was going to tell her to move.
Finally, he sat down across from her.
The waitress banged down two menus. "Specials on the board," she said. "Coffee?"
"Yes please," Allison said at once.
"Not for her," Chris countered. "Just for me. She'll have water."
Allison looked at Chris. "Why not?"
He pressed his lips together. "It's too late. You'll never get to sleep."
Allison glanced at the clock over the cash register. "It's five."
Chris's eyes narrowed slightly before he turned to the waitress. "One coffee, and one water." He waited until the waitress walked away. Then he turned that look back to Allison. "You know not to contradict me in public."
Great. She had managed to forget how controlling Chris had been in that last year. At seventeen, she had pushed back, and all she got from it was a reminder of helplessness and rage. Well, she wasn't going to play any more of Chris Argent's mind games. She only had to put up with a couple more weeks of him, then Tony Stark would crash into her life.
She tried to think of what a suitable act would be, one that wouldn't arouse Chris's suspicions. She couldn't make a scene; he hated those and she had no desire to draw attention. If she acted petulant, or whiny, it wouldn't make any difference.
So in the end, she just shrugged and picked up the menu. She could see out of the corner of her eye that Chris was watching her, but she pretended not to notice.
The restaurant was not busy, and the waitress returned quickly with their drinks. "Ready to order?"
"I'll have the patty melt," Allison said. "With a salad."
Chris ordered a hamburger, and the waitress vanished. Without anything to look at, Allison was stuck. What did seventeen year olds do when they were nervous? Should she even pretend to be nervous? What could she ask about? She'd have to pretend that she was normal, and normal people remember what they had done that summer.
The silence stretched on. Finally, Chris asked, "Do you know what you're going to do until school starts?"
Allison shrugged again. She had a very good idea going in her head, involving setting into motion her half-baked plan to save the universe, but she needed something to tell Chris. "Seeing some friends, probably."
"Like who?"
Allison blinked at the question. "Um, my friends. Lydia? Scott? Stiles? Isaac and the others?"
Chris folded his arms on the table. "Allison," he began. Allison's spine tingled with unease. "You need to stay away from your friends."
Allison didn't move for a long moment. Then she ran her tongue over her lower lip. Her body was tensed for a fight and she didn't know where this was all going. "Why?"
"Not Lydia," Chris said. "But the others. You should make new friends, hang out with them at school."
"Again," Allison said. "Why?"
"You need to cultivate the right kind of friends," Chris said. "You spending time around…" He struggled around finding a euphemism for werewolves. "Some of the more undesirable of your peers, it's not good for you."
Allison knew she should just let this go, let Chris go on thinking he was winning or whatever, but this kind of dehumanization of the people she cared about made her furious. That anger, on top of the grief and trauma she'd been living with for years, made her reckless. "So," she said, putting her arms on the table in an echo of Chris's position. "You'd like me to stay away from Scott. And Erica. Who are half-Hispanic. And Boyd, who's black. Did I get that right?"
Anger flashed across Chris's face. Allison held the eye-contact. "That's not what this is about, and you know it," he said in a voice both quiet and hot with anger. "This is about your safety."
"My safety," Allison repeated.
She remembered how the next month was supposed to go – in only a week's time, Maurice Dupont and his Hunter crew had come after her up in the hills in the forest preserve. She remembered Dupont's hand around her throat, calling her a monster's whore. And while she had no plans to restart her relationship with Scott McCall, Dupont and his entire ideology sickened her.
She leaned forward. "Every single one of my friends will do anything to keep me safe," she said. "And I would do the same for them."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Are you sure about that?" After a moment, Allison sat back. She was losing her temper, and she couldn't do that, not here, not yet. She had secrets she needed to keep until after she was out of Chris Argent's reach forever. "I have to go to the bathroom."
"Leave your phone here."
Allison did a double-take. Really? What did he think she was going to do?
Rage and helplessness bubbled in her chest, and beneath that flowed a sense of power that longed to lash out. Rather than deal with it here, Allison jerked her phone out of her pocket, yanked out the battery, then dropped the dead phone on the tabletop as she got up. She shoved the battery into her pocket as she walked the length of the restaurant to the washrooms.
She went in through the door, taking stock. Three stalls, two mirrors and sinks, and no surveillance cameras. Allison checked the stalls to make sure they were empty before going to the mirrors. She rested her hands on the cool porcelain of the sink and tried to breathe. Even the startling sight of her own face, twenty-eight years too young, wasn't enough to quell her growing fury.
Over the years, working with Bucky as Captain America's partner, he'd become half of her impulse control. He was gone now, locked in a Hydra cryo-tube, and even if he did come out tomorrow, he wouldn't know her. Her partner, her anchor, was gone.
Grief and anger welled up in her chest, and something more. The core of who she was, who she had become, poured out, filling every cell of her being with power. She was Allison Stark, daughter of Tony Stark and Clara Vasquez, heir to the Vasquez werewolf pack. Allison was born to the dark of the moon, human in body but werewolf in spirit and in blood. She had run with werewolves since she was seventeen, had fought the pack's enemies, and ever since that terrible, fateful night when Derek had died in her arms in the woods, she had protected the pack.
Allison leaned close to the mirror, letting her hair fall towards her face as her eyes glowed red, the power of the wolf burning through her body.
That was who she was. That was what she had carried with her into the past.
Alpha.
How dare Chris Argent treat her like this? She was not a child, or a fool, and his trying to control her was pushing every button she had. She hated when anyone tried to control her; that was what had broken up most of her relationships over the years. Sam had said that it stemmed from childhood trauma at being raised by her kidnappers, while her auntie Anna had suggested that her Hunter upbringing was a special kind of trauma in its own right. Bucky always snorted and said that anyone who thought an alpha like Allison could be controlled, deserved to have their head smashed in.
And now, to have to sit and let Chris Argent dictate what she could drink and who she could talk to—
The bathroom door opened. Allison shut her eyes, willed the alpha down. The energy coiled back into her centre, glad at the brief stirring, but content now that Allison was back in control.
Allison opened her eyes, the same old brown irises reflected in the mirror. She saw a woman going into a stall, nothing to do with Allison at all.
What was it Bucky had said to her? Be smart. Be safe. Don't die.
Well, if she couldn't be smart, at least she'd stay alive.
She had a universe to save.
The return to the table wasn't great. Chris was holding her phone. He was silent as Allison sat down. He kept the silence up for long enough that seventeen-year-old Allison would have been worried. But this Allison wasn't. She would be legally an adult in a few weeks. She had options, resources. And in the very thin chance that Chris decided that he was going to pick up Victoria's reins as the physical disciplinarian of the family… Allison had been slapped around by the best villains that the universe had to offer. She could handle it.
Or she could just hit back.
Finally, Chris deliberately put Allison's phone into his jacket pocket. Allison wanted to sigh. "If this is the kind of scene you want to cause," Chris said, "Then maybe I should keep your phone for a few days."
Allison felt her jaw clench. "Are you going to take the next step and ground me?" she asked, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
Chris looked at her. "Now that you mention it, yes. No internet, no computer, no phone."
"So, house arrest."
"That's not what this is," Chris said.
"What about school?" Allison asked. "That starts in a week. I'll see them then. Or are you planning on yanking me out and homeschooling me?"
"That's not a bad idea."
"Oh, for—" Allison bit off the words when the waitress put the plates on the table. She took a breath, and smiled at the woman. "Thank you."
"No problem." She glanced at Chris. "Yell if you want more coffee."
Chris waited until she was back behind the register before he said, "Allison, I need you to listen to me."
"Maybe if you say something that makes sense, I will." Allison picked up the half sandwich and shoved it into her mouth before she said something that would make Chris lose his temper in the restaurant. Although, that might at least get the Sheriff involved, and Allison out of Chris's house before her birthday.
"Don't take such big bites."
Allison chewed for a while, then swallowed and put the sandwich down. "Life is going to get really boring, very fast, if all you do is criticize my behaviour."
"Then behave better." Chris picked up his burger.
"Wow," Allison said. "Wow. You do remember that I'm not seven, right?"
"Your behaviour reflects on me as your father," Chris said, putting his burger down untasted. "Your friends, how you conduct yourself."
Allison stared at Chris. She was finally able to figure out what the expression on his face meant.
He was worried.
Suddenly, all the things she hadn't seen at seventeen made sense. Chris, panicked at how she spent time with the werewolves, how she was acting out, not at all like a proper Hunter. Because Maurice Dupont was in town, one of the old school Hunters who took the old code of behaviour very much to heart.
And Chris was worried that Allison's friends were going to come back to haunt her.
Not for the first time in her life, Allison cursed the Hunter mentality that dehumanized inhumans and sentient supernatural creatures. "Okay."
Chris narrowed his eyes at her. "What?"
"I won't be seen hanging out with my friends," she said. "Until whatever's happening blows over. But I still have to go to school."
Chris was staring at her.
"Just tell me what's going on."
Chris breathed in and out, slowly. "When we get home."
That was apparently all he was willing to say on the subject. He picked up his burger and started to eat.
Well then. Allison turned to her salad. It wasn't much, but it was a start. And it was something she could factor into how soon she could get Maurice Dupont and his buddies out of the picture.
She didn't care if it was in the back of a prison transport or in a body bag.
Being a superhero for sixteen years had done a number on greying her morality.