Chapter Text
Death:
Wolverine runs Wiccan through. His blood is everywhere. Patriot holds his guts in while Hulkling tries to smash an adamantium skull on Latverian rock. Hawkeye is out of arrows on Stature’s shoulder and Speed is horror-struck.
They have no idea how they manage to get out, but Hawkeye suspects the Scarlet Witch.
Soon enough, the Night Nurse takes them in, ushers them to the room on the right, but sends half of them out again when Patriot punches a hole in her wall.
“I told you this was a bad idea, Kate!”
He’s right. They’ve made a lot of enemies.
Insides:
It takes hours, but the Night Nurse stitches Wiccan back together. Something is different. Speed tells Hawkeye when they’re alone, huddled up in the corner of the clinic waiting room, and she’s finished crying on his shoulder, finished admitting Patriot had been right about everything.
“It’s something arcane,” he says, with no idea how it might change all their lives. “She said it would make him stronger.”
He pulls her closer against him and Kate can feel the way he shakes, not with barely contained impulse speed, but fear.
“He’s gonna need to be stronger,” she says. “We all are.”
Enemies:
Arrest warrants are issued in their real names, codenames listed as ‘known aliases.’ Their unmasked faces are on the news and there’s talk of extradition to Latveria. They stop watching altogether when the Kaplans show up to tearfully plead for them to turn themselves in, for the sake of their dead son.
No one tries to convince Billy to cop to being alive. It’s safer for him to be dead, with Wolverine looking for blood.
It’s a small victory that Eli hasn’t left yet and it feels like something bigger when he finally asks, “So, how do we stay gone?”
Passing:
They have friends in places just low enough to not be influential with the Avengers. Clint lets them squat in his building. Luke gives them pointers on how avoid Iron Man and it feels like the SHRA all over again. Jessica Jones is just a sympathetic ear.
“Think there’s any going back after this?” Kate asks him one day. He’s helping her refurbish some old trick arrows.
“I can’t,” Tommy admits. “I’ve got priors.”
“You know that wasn’t real juvie, right?” she asks. There’s only so many categories into which inmate experimentation fits.
“I know,” he says. “It was hell.”
Touch:
It’s easy to fly under the radar when the Avengers are busy fighting the X-Men. When the world feels like it’s unraveling. When nothing feels right anymore.
Every time things begin to feel like they’re sliding too far off kilter, she reaches for his hand. He isn’t steady, he feels like he’s going to vibrate apart, but that’s exactly how she feels and it’s good to not be alone.
The very first time she touches, he doesn’t miss a beat. He laces their fingers together and smiles, like that’s all he needs in the world. Like it’s all he’s got.
White:
The other shoe drops.
They get caught out by the Avengers on a sunny summer afternoon, while sitting up on the roof because fresh air and sunlight might help Billy’s slow recovery.
The battle goes badly - and Wiccan goes ballistic, just like he did the night he set off the whole chain of events. Only, when the dust finally settles, they’re not on Earth anymore.
They’re not anywhere at all.
Wiccan wanted them right into nothingness, into a void, and out of the stark whiteness came the modulated voice of Iron Lad: “Welcome to the time stream, Young Avengers.”
She:
The ship is quiet. Comfortable. Welcoming. It slips through the void of the time stream on a course Nathaniel plotted long ago, a course to find Kang the Conquerer somewhere in time.
They’ve been there for weeks when she finds Tommy sitting in the hallway outside her quarters, looking lost, angry. She ruffles his hair as she walks past him into her room and leaves the door open for him to stare in after her, annoyed.
Eventally, he follows her inside, reaches out for her hand, and stands there vibrating with nervous energy until she leans up and kisses him.
Lovers:
The first time they fall into bed together is fumbling and only a little bit ridiculous until Kate finally just laughs. Tommy sighs with relief against her throat and laughs, too.
She realizes that he likes to take his time, that she’s far more impatient than the speedster himself, that he’s polite even when he shamelessly asks if she likes to be eaten out.
She laughs again, hopes she can make a habit of it, and laughing after so long of not wanting to feels almost as good as Tommy’s hand brushing along the inside of her bare thigh. Almost.
Years:
Things change. Slowly, then in rapid little jolts that scare her to death. She falls casually into calling him Tom, less so into calling him Quicksilver when they’re back to back in the thick of it.
Nathaniel loses the armor, Vision shuts down all his emotional components, and Eli slips off into the time stream for a blink of an eye, but returns with a wife and five year old son.
The Avengers are two steps ahead of them, then three steps behind, and in a temporal divergence Billy becomes Sorcerer Supreme.
They all make hard choices, just slightly wrong.
Dark:
From where they’re standing, from this side of the time stream, the Avengers are the ones who have been corrupted. Nathaniel reads the ripples through time, interprets them, and marks all the Avengers’ offenses down. Billy still bears the scars and, Nathaniel says, so do a lot of other innocent people.
But sometimes Kate wonders. At night, in their quarters, she asks Tom if he has any doubts.
He brushes her wedding band with his thumb, twists it on her finger slowly. “Never about this.”
“But everything else?” she asks.
He’s quiet in the darkness, then admits, “Everything.”
“Me, too.”
Parents:
“Nothing is going to change,” Kate assures impatiently.
Tom raises his head from kissing every square inch of her exposed stomach, grinning. “You’re kidding, right? You know, unlike some people around here, we’re not just going to run off into the time stream and come out with a grown kid.”
Kate rolls her eyes. “Keep it up and I might send you off with him.”
“Or her.”
“Or them?”
Tom grins even wider. “You think?”
It hadn’t occurred to Kate before now. “Maybe. We should probably see a doctor. I really don’t trust how often twins run in your family.”
Choices:
After Moord, after setting the events into motion to alter the past, Kate wonders. Then worries.
The bridge of the ship is dimly lit and Cassandra is curled up in the throne of the master control with a cup of tea.
“We’re safe in the time stream, right?” Kate asks. “If Nathaniel changes the past?”
“The way I understand it, infinite possibilities filter into the time stream. There’s no causality here.” Cassandra looks sympathetic. “We’re not going to disappear when Nate interferes in Latveria.”
“Then why interfere at all?”
Cassandra shrugged, half-smiling. “To get the Avengers to leave us alone.”