✔ᵉⁿᵍˡⁱˢʰ a.k.a. Part II - Endgame✔

09

Sleep, had not been a big thing that night, so Jyn had grabbed her jacket around four and made her way to her apartment to pack the most necessary things for several days. She wouldn't need more than what fitted into her sports bag anyway.

With the bag over her right shoulder Jyn trotted through the half-dead main street in front of her apartment, across the boulevard and through several alleys where she stopped at the sight of a flickering neon sign. Opened stood in white neon writing below. It should not be longer than half an hour if the person in the parlour had nothing to do and was working properly.

"Up so early?", Natasha asked, puzzled, as she hadn't expected anyone on their feet at this time, and saw Jyn in the living area who had just put her bag down, "You are clearly a tomorrow person. Coffee?"

"Rather tea, thank you", Jyn had fallen asleep during the procedure, so she carefully took two hot cups from Natasha and sat down with her legs raised on a chair at the table, "To be able to sleep through the night like before, I need a bag of cokain and a packet of painkillers, but I have stopped taking them because the side effects are not worth it. How about you?"

"Someone has to be there or at least reachable if something happens somewhere and I have enough time right now", Natasha, which only one could be his, "Allow me a question. All this. How can it be so easy for you?"

"By just living and not being guided by what was one and now is gone. But to get to your real question. You can't lose someone when you have no one left, because the person is either dead or you've split. Agent Natalia Alianovna Romanova, you should have googled me. If you had, you'd know the answer to the one question you've been wanting to hear from me for years," Jyn replied as she frantically tried to get to the tablet that was within close range of her and started typing before handing it to Natasha, "Just like Tony, an absolute genius. Absolutely horrible. Egocentric, as many intelligent people are, and a brilliant doctor. For a long time he was considered the best neurosurgeon in the world and at the height of his career, he suffered a car accident. His career was over. I am glad that we divorced months before that, otherwise the shit storm against me would have been enormous. Anyone who says I can be obnoxious didn't experience it after the accident. Respect to the Palmer's."

"Hold on. This guy here.... this one, the "Wizard", from the picture archive of all the missing Avengers, Natasha picked out a picture of Stephen and tapped the screen several times with her fingernail to make sure, "... who gave Thanos the timestone? You've been on Titan, watched it like Tony and Nebula and yet you act as if you couldn't care less. You couldn't care less."

"He asked for it. The way I see it, he didn't have to do it. Whatever his intention was, it should be over now", Jyn smacked his lips soundlessly, pushed all his loose hair back and tied a new braid, which was held together by a strand of hair, "I never had many people in my life, but it is no use mourning for what you cannot change. I have always been good at accepting and tolerating things. What I cannot do, on the other hand, is forgive. It runs in the family, apparently.

"Then why haven't you done it yet?", the resemblance to Brock was obvious, so it was a mystery to Natasha that Jyn had done nothing like that before, "Steven. Five years ago you assured him you'd kill him. Someday when he didn't expect it."

"Even though everyone thinks it would suit me," and a lot of people assumed, as Jyn knew, "I don't kick someone who's already down. It defeats the purpose behind it. Kick gladly but you have to put the person down yourself."

It's never about what someone did, it's always about who it was done to. For that reason, and because you want something done right, you do it yourself.

✥.❖.✥

After a short beep and the sensors lit up, Jyn Scott stuck one of the small metal plates to each temple, two to the neck and one to the spot above the heart. A quick glance at a tablet followed, then she went behind the wall of monitors and compared Scott's current readings with those from previous measurements. There were two or three discrepancies, but they were within range and perfectly normal.

"He's a grown man, you can set the rate higher. We measured his heart rate variability beforehand and we couldn't find any polyneuropathy or mononeuropathy. You can set it higher without him dying right away, being close to it or passing out," Jyn said incidentally, pointing to a small monitor as Banner made the initial adjustments on the computer, causing Rogers to turn to her as if she was speaking in a completely foreign language, "I studied medicine without having studied medicine. I knew a doctor. Is that enough? Good. Scott?"

"I'm not you, you're well aware of that?", in all ways, Scott wasn't Jyn and this started with the constant confidence and good humor, "My body can't take as much as yours."

"Trust me, just because I can drink hydrofluoric acid like water doesn't mean that my body can stand everything", in the end it had been Maw who had mauled Jyn and that not a little, "Do you remember the first curse of the Caribbean? Captain Barbossa, his crew and the curse of the Aztec gods. That's me without the part about the night. As far as we were able to test you, you're healthy. Do you have any other questions or last words?"

Not at first. That would come later, once Banner or the Hulk, whoever, had entered the final data to recalibrate for time travel and the machine was ready in the van.