Chapter Text
Steve had the stones in a suitcase. The suitcase was in his hand. He looked down at it. It was black, ordinary.
The thing was, really, that the world was over.
Reality had been shattered too many times to count. Normal was meaningless and naive, happy was a word steeped in harsh light and lonely nights. He had the stones. Time to put them back. Time to put back the stones. They were too powerful. He had to keep the universe safe. Always, he had to keep it safe. His universe, as it had grown and exploded—from a house, a block, a country, a face, a name, a world, worlds, to—whatever the hell this was now. Who knew.
What was the universe, anymore? When Tony—oh, God, oh, God, Iron Man, that was safer—Iron Man had invented time travel and torn the universe into millions of little shreds, little universes, who even knew. Thanos had used the stones, ripped the universe open. Bucky had lived, Bucky had been alive, and the universe had frayed. Steve had opened his eyes, and the universe had been an unfamiliar thing. Angry and foreign.
What the hell was the universe, that Steve had to keep it safe?
Selfish. He couldn’t be selfish.
He had the stones. He stared at the suitcase.
Time to put everything back. Make everything neat and tidy again.
In the last moments before Steve was flung into the abyss, he met Bucky’s eyes. There was nothing neat and tidy about Bucky’s eyes.
+++
“Okay,” said Steve. “Okay.”
The Tesseract was first. It was the first in the suitcase, just in—the order of the stones in the suitcase, from right to left, like a book. It was arbitrary, okay, but the organizational system was like a religion, making sense of the chaos. Space—mind—time—reality—power—soul.
He was in New York. In 2012.
Tony, he thought wildly, I have to find Tony, and it was nonsensical, but he needed it like he needed to breathe. Never mind that marching into the tower was beyond stupid, they would be on the lookout for another Captain America. He would deal with it. He would deal with whatever.
Suitcase in hand, Steve set off.
+++
JARVIS gave him clearance to the tower. In the chaos after the heist, they hadn’t fixed it yet, and Tony was in the med bay recovering from a heart attack. Steve’s strides were long and sharp. No one questioned him. One woman said, “Glad to see you back, Captain Rogers,” said Steve smiled.
So the other him had gone. To find Bucky, of course. To save Bucky. Well, it was too late for that. Steve’s head was beginning to hurt.
His other self being gone made things easier, anyway.
How long had it been since the heart attack? When exactly had Steve been sent to?
More precisely: had Tony managed to lie, beg and steal himself out of medical yet?
“What floor?”
Steve took a chance.
+++
Tony was in his workshop.
Tony was in his workshop, real, living, breathing, okay, okay.
“Requesting clearance, JARVIS,” said Steve.
Tony looked up, mouth moved, twisted back to look at Steve with something approaching suspicion.
“Clearance granted,” said JARVIS—that was nice, having JARVIS back. Not that JARVIS had ever liked Steve much, or that Steve had ever understood JARVIS, but the smooth British voice was familiar and carried the promise of a time before the universe was broken.
Not that Steve had ever understood Tony, either.
The doors slid open.
“What the hell are you doing here, Rogers?” said Tony.
He was so young.
“Um,” said Steve, “uh—“
“Thought you were going to find your friend.” Tony’s hand flexed over the arc reactor absently the way it did when he was with someone he didn’t trust. “Gave up already?”
“I wanted to be here to strongarm you into medical,” said Steve. “But you beat me to it.”
“Slipped from your grasp.” Tony grinned, easy and fake with a hint of uncertain and an edge of calculating. “What you got there?”
“Oh,” said Steve. The suitcase. “Right. Can I come in?”
“If you want.”
Steve stepped inside the workshop. The doors closed behind him.
“You look tired,” said Tony.
It was an olive branch. Steve took it gratefully.
“So do you,” he said.
Tony waved a hand. “Eh. I’m always tired.”
Steve took a step.
“I found the Tesseract,” he said.
“What?” said Tony. “Holy shit, Rogers, why didn’t you lead with that? How the fuck did you track down Loki so fast? Why didn’t you involve us?”
“Well, I,” said Steve, and stopped.
“Look, I know how the whole ‘lone wolf’ thing goes, but we’re a team now, Rogers. You’re not on your own anymore.”
The bottom dropped out of Steve’s stomach.
Tony’s eyes narrowed.
“Cap?”
“Um,” said Steve, “let me just…get it out. And I’ll give it to you. And I’ll…”
“What?” said Tony. “God, what is wrong with you? Don’t give it to me, I’ll use it to take over the universe or some shit—“
Steve chuckled. “I don’t believe that.”
“Give it to Fury.”
“I don’t trust Fury.”
“Oh,” said Tony.
He grinned, slow and full of relish.
“So you admit I was right?”
“Yeah,” said Steve.
“The guy’s up to something.”
“You were right.”
Tony’s eyes went full on narrow. Equal parts predatory and defensive. Of course, the predatory instinct was defensive in origin, too.
“I mean,” said Steve, “I still don’t think we should have—“
Tony relaxed. “Get the stick out of your butt, Rogers.”
“The scepter can’t possibly be up my butt,” said Steve. “Because we don’t have it.”
Steve smiled.
“Except,” he said, “we do.”
“What?” said Tony.
Steve tapped the suitcase.
“How the hell did you—“
“Don’t ask.”
“I’m asking,” said Tony. “We’re supposed to be a team. You spout all this bonding bullshit, then you waltz off and find the scepter and the Tesseract yourself? Won’t tell us how you did it? That’s—“
“I know,” said Steve. “And I—I wish I could tell you. Honestly. I swear. I do.”
Tony’s eyes searched his face. Steve struggled to keep it blank like Natasha had taught him, but Tony’s eyes were open and earnest, and alive, and Steve couldn’t.
He couldn’t.
“Fine,” said Tony. “Don’t tell me. Give me a pained look and no actual, you know, words. I’ll imagine whatever fanciful horrors I please, I hope you don’t mind if you’re shirtless in them?”
“Tony—“
“What?” said Tony, defensiveness etched in his voice, practiced ease in the lines of his shoulders. “If you want to cut me out, do it. But don’t try to tell me that I’m the one keeping this from being a team.”
“I don’t think that, Tony.”
“Oh, really? Really. Okay, so that whole—“
“Tony—“
“It’s fine,” said Tony. He smiled brightly, the way he would in front of Loki, in front of God and everyone who had ever dared to hurt him. “Fine.”
“I want to tell you.”
“I don’t care, Steve. You found the stones, congratulations, that’s all that matters.”
Steve let out a shaky breath.
“No, it’s not,” he said. “Tony, I’m sorry.”
Tony’s hands stilled on his shirt.
“For what?” he said.
“For all of it,” said Steve. “More than all of it. Everything.”
“Everything ever, or me specifically?” Tony was goading him, waiting for the snap back, the irritation.
“Everything,” said Steve, “ever.”
He couldn’t face Tony’s eyes, so he kneeled on the floor, rested the suitcase on the ground. Flipped it open.
The stones winked at him, mocking.
Steve reached for the Tesseract.
“You look older,” said Tony suddenly. “That’s what it is. I’ve been trying to place it, that’s what it is. Why do you look older, Cap?”
Steve froze. He looked up.
“I don’t,” he said.
“Bullshit,” said Tony cheerfully. “Why do you look older?”
“I,” said Steve, “I, uh—um, I—“
“JARVIS, scan him.”
“No, I—“ Steve began.
“Captain Rogers is,” said JARVIS, “considering the rate of age of the super serum, approximately thirty-eight years of age.”
Tony stared at Steve.
“Who the fuck are you?” he said.
Steve shut the suitcase. He exhaled heavily.
“I’m from the future,” he said.
Tony’s mouth fell open. He nodded slowly. His eyes put the pieces together.
“Fuck,” said Tony. “What did we screw up?”
Steve chuckled humorlessly.
“Let me guess. Everything ever?” said Tony.
“Well, basically.”
“Shit.”
Steve knew, suddenly. Not what he was supposed to do, or what he had to do. What he was going to do.
“Tony,” said Steve, “I’m going to give you a choice.”
Tony’s eyebrows went up.
“What’s that?” said Tony.
“I can do what I’m supposed to do,” said Steve. “Return these stones to the right points in the timeline so everything goes the way it did before. For you. For the Avengers.”
“You can’t tell me how it ends,” said Tony.
Steve blinked at him.
“Fuck it,” he said. “I can do whatever I want.”
Tony stared. “You sure you’re Steve Rogers?”
“You’re happy,” said Steve. “You are. You’re happy. The only one of us who is. You’re married to Pepper. You have a kid. You have a house. A life. A llama.”
Tony’s eyes glittered with emotion too complicated for Steve to unpack.
“You die,” said Steve. “To save everyone.”
“Okay,” said Tony.
“Half the world dies, and we bring them back.”
“The fuck?”
“It’s these,” said Steve, and he opened the suitcase and turned it so Tony could see.
Tony’s eyes went wide.
“The Infinity Stones,” he said.
“I hate these things,” said Steve. “I hate them so much.”
“What about the team?” said Tony.
His eyes flickered off of the stones and onto Steve.
“We fight,” said Steve. The familiar rock hard guilt. “Because—Bucky is an agent of HYDRA, and he killed your mom and dad.”
Tony’s face was unreadable. Too many battling impulses. Too complicated.
“The Avengers are split in two,” said Steve gently, “over something called the Sokovia Accords. And you and I lead the separate teams, but what we’re really fighting over is Bucky. Because Bucky was brainwashed.” Steve tripped over the words in his rush to say it all. “HYDRA brainwashed him. It wasn’t his fault. And he was recovering, he was getting better, and you wanted to kill him. And I couldn’t let you do that. And I lied to you for so long about it, you didn’t trust me anymore. And we never trusted each other again, not the way we were starting to. We never really fixed things. You died, and we’d never really fixed things. And Natasha,” said Steve, and stopped.
“What did Natasha do?” said Tony.
“Natasha died,” said Steve. “She died.”
“And then we brought her back?”
“No.”
Tony’s face was pale.
“What’s the other option?” he said.
“People die all the time in these kinds of—“ Steve began, comforting, but Tony shook his head.
“The other option, Steve.”
“No, I want you to know,” said Steve. “She knew what she was getting into. And we brought everyone else back.”
Tony’s eyes blazed. “Steve.”
“I’m giving you a choice. I want you to have a choice.”
“Then tell me the second option.”
“You take these,” said Steve. He gestured to the stones. “All of them. You destroy them.”
“Me?” said Tony.
“And anyone else you want to help you.”
“I thought you didn’t trust me,” said Tony.
“I trust you to do what you think is right,” said Steve. “And I think you know that nothing this powerful should exist. And I trust the team to remind you of that, if need be.”
Tony flashed a small, bitter smile.
“I do trust you, Tony,” said Steve.
Tony’s face shut down. Went on the defense. Steve almost laughed at the familiarity of it.
“If I did this,” said Tony, “what would happen?”
“I don’t know. I can’t promise it would be better. It could easily be a lot worse. I can promise it would be different. It would be your future. Your team’s future. Not mine.”
Tony nodded.
“Are you going to blink out of existence on me if I step on a butterfly?”
“No,” said Steve, with evident regret that made Tony shoot him a look of concern. “Apparently, that’s not how time travel works.”
“What are you going to do?” said Tony.
Steve opened his mouth. Closed it.
“Not what I’m supposed to,” he said.
“I knew that,” said Tony. Steve laughed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “All the rules keep getting broken. Playbook keeps getting rewritten. Figure it’s time I try to write it myself.”
Tony nodded.
“Good luck,” he said.
“Good luck to you, too,” said Steve. “Oh, and one last thing. Could you do me a favor?”
“Yeah?”
“Please don’t let me be on my own,” said Steve. “I’ll want to be. But please don’t let me.”
Tony saluted with knowing eyes.
He took the suitcase.
+++
Steve had enough Pym particles for five trips.
He got coffee at one of the few Starbucks still standing in New York. He smiled at the barista, sat by the window and made a list.
- Bucky
- Natasha
- Clint
- Thor
- Bruce
- Howard
Became—
- Bucky and Natasha (1944)
- Clint (1970)
- Thor (???)
- Howard and Bruce (1991)
- Home
Steve scratched out ‘home’ and replaced it with ‘emergencies,’ and then he set down his pencil.
He drained the last of his coffee and grinned.
+++
The Quantum realm was the most unnerving place Steve had ever been in. It seemed to go on forever. It was like drowning, but beautiful.
+++
Steve appeared in the dining room of Howard’s mansion in 1944.
Not the New York one. The temporary one, in Europe.
He’d been there before, exactly once, for a dinner party Howard had promised would be the event of the decade, the talk of the town. Only Steve and Peggy had showed up. Howard hadn’t seemed surprised.
“The town knows you too well,” Peggy had said, and she and Howard had spent the whole night drinking each other under the table.
Steve had watched them from the sidelines, mild amusement turning to concern turning to outright worry. Finally he had gotten up the courage to ask Mr. Jarvis if this was normal, and Mr. Jarvis had replied that it was, of course, perfectly normal, if not strictly advisable. At about three o’clock in the morning, Howard had somehow gotten hold of Peggy’s gun and Mr. Jarvis had transformed from a thin, pale, twitchy man to a force of nature dedicated to protecting Howard Stark from himself.
Howard wasn’t actively suicidal, that Steve knew. But Howard with a gun wasn’t a good idea at the best of times. And drunk Howard was formidable—clumsy and bitter and dangerous, sharp and jagged. Mr. Jarvis had gotten the gun out of his hand, the bottle out of his other hand and shuffled him off to bed before he could muster a word of protest.
If Steve was a little scared of Jarvis, he had good reason.
“Captain Rogers?”
Steve might have been more than a little scared of Jarvis.
“Mr. Jarvis,” said Steve. “Is Howard in?”
Mr. Jarvis had a plate in his hands. He was drying it off.
“Who let you in?” he said.
“Oh, um,” said Steve, “it was open?”
Jarvis’ eyes went wide.
“One of the most high tech security systems on the planet,” he said, “was open?”
Steve feigned nonchalance. “Turned off? I don’t know. When’s Howard back?”
“Captain Rogers—“
“I really need to talk to him.”
“How did you get in?”
Steve stared at Jarvis. Jarvis stared at Steve.
“He talked me through it,” said Steve. “A while back.”
Jarvis let out a long-suffering sigh.
“I’ll have to remind him to stop trusting so easily,” he said.
Steve felt a little insulted until he remembered the hand dragging Howard’s head back and the metal fist slamming into his face. “Yeah,” he said.
“What did you need?”
“I need his help,” said Steve. “With a mission.”
Mr. Jarvis nodded, face politely drawn. “I’m assuming that if I spoke to Colonel Phillips, he would—”
“He would not be aware of the mission.”
“I see.” Jarvis looked exhausted. “I am sure Mr. Stark will be only too happy to help.”
“It shouldn’t be too risky.”
“I’ve heard that one before.”
“When will he be back?”
The doors opened behind them. Steve spun.
Howard looked like a maniacal ringmaster in a suit lined with purple silk and decorated with several burn marks.
“Guess who,” said Howard.
“Welcome home, Mr. Stark,” said Jarvis.
“Steve!” Howard clapped Steve on the back. “You got past my security system!”
“You talked him through it,” said Jarvis severely.
“I don’t remember that.”
“You wouldn’t,” said Steve.
“Oh,” said Howard. “Yeah.”
Watching Howard after becoming accustomed to Tony was fascinating. Tony’s stage face, the one that had made Clint and Natasha boycott his parties, could be found entirely in the way Howard acted behind closed doors. The crinkling of the eyes in a smile. The saunter in the walk over to the counter. Reaching for the whiskey, pouring it into a crystal tumbler. Then leaning back against the counter with eyebrows raised.
“Jarvis, did you offer the man a beverage?”
“My apologies, Captain Rogers, I—“
“It’s fine,” said Steve, “don’t worry about it.”
Calling on Jarvis, in one form or another, to perform some small act. Subtly watching the other person between sips of whiskey to see if they were suitably impressed.
Steve made sure to look unfazed. Howard, like Tony, was much more willing to go on dangerous expeditions when he had something to prove.
Howard’s mouth twisted.
“Did you come here for fun or for business?”
“You know me,” said Steve.
“Ah, well. It was worth a shot. What do you need?”
“I know how to save Bucky.”
Howard smiled, big and warm.
“Good,” he said.
“I’ll need a plane.”
“Done.”
“I’ll need a pilot.”
“You’ve got one.”
“Are you sure?” said Steve. “It could be dangerous.”
Howard laughed. He drained the whiskey.
“When?” he said.
“As soon as you’re willing.”
Wiping his mouth with a hand, Howard set the tumbler back on the counter. “Jarvis, prep one of my best, will you?”
“Of course, sir,” said Mr. Jarvis.
“Where are we off to?” said Howard.
+++
The train had run along an ostensibly abandoned track on the outskirts of Latvia, running into Russia.
“Where the fuck do I land?” Howard yelled.
Ice, ice, and more ice. Trees.
“I don’t know, you’re the pilot—“
“You’re the cargo! If I damage you, Peggy’ll skin me alive!”
“I’ll be fine,” Steve shouted over the whistle of the wind and the roar of the engine. “Just get us on the ground.”
“You asked for it,” said Howard, and the plane dropped like a stone.
+++
They hit the ground with a crack like the earth splitting open, and the impact felt like it, too. The plane skidded, bounced and rolled, and Steve was reminded again of the car crumpling like paper when it hit the tree.
The plane screeched to a halt, groaning.
One of the wings caught fire.
“Howard?” said Steve. “Are you with me?”
A few moments of dreadful stillness, and then Howard gave him a thumbs up.
“Do you think you can fix this?” said Steve.
“Are you kidding? Nobody can. It’s impossible.”
He shot Steve a grin.
“Stay here,” said Steve. “Do what you can. Don’t expect me back for a while.”
“Try not to turn into a Capsicle out there.”
“I’ll try,” said Steve.
+++
God, Steve hated ice. It wasn’t a common commodity in Brooklyn or New York, unless you counted that one time the evil weather-controlling wizard had tried to recreate Frozen for his kids. Clint had had a few things to say to that guy about parenting.
Steve had hated ice even before he had seen Bucky disappear into it, screaming. He had hated ice even before he had crashed into it and sunk beneath. Now, stumbling across the uneven ground of the ravine, he really, really hated ice.
Snow fell thick around him, driving into his eyes, and Steve was sickeningly conscious of how it froze when it hit the ground, entombing anything it fell upon. Bucky was under there somewhere. He had to be.
Without the serum, he never would have seen the railroad tracks through the snow and the mist. The familiar cliff face he saw in all his dreams. Steve shouted out—his face burned with cold—and broke into a run.
The ground was solid and white along the base of the cliff. Steve paced wildly back and forth, fell to his knees and crawled, whole body numb, breath coming in short gasps. The serum battled the cold inside him. Bucky, the Bucky he had left (abandoned) in 2023, liked to say Steve was his personal space heater—and Bucky would curl up next to him, and he and Steve would talk in low voices until Steve fell asleep. Bucky was always gone by morning. Sometimes Steve would find him huddled up in a corner, eyes shut tight and whimpering, and he always knew. That Bucky waited for Steve to be asleep, then slipped away to have his nightmares alone.
There was a glove trapped in the ice. Steve snapped to attention.
The ice bank was misshapen—there was a long, raised patch, it had to be—and Steve set to work. He smashed at it with the shield, with his fists, with his feet, tore away at it with his fingers until they were raw and bloody and practically ice themselves.
A hand. The ice came away in chunks. A wrist, an arm, mangled, caked with frozen blood. Steve made an anguished sound, and the wind ripped it away. He followed the arm to its source, a shoulder, and he could see the torso through the ice and he dug with a frenzy he had never felt before. Fought the ice with his elbows and knees, because his hands wouldn’t do what he wanted them to anymore, didn’t even look like hands anymore, really, and certainly didn’t feel like them. But Bucky—
Head and shoulders, slick with frost. Steve tore him free, held him to his chest as though the frozen suit would do any good. Bucky’s eyes. Bucky’s face. Bucky’s everything, everything that should have been dead, but he wasn’t, and all the grief of seventy years of loss and twelve years of more loss broke Steve all at once like glass, and he clung to Bucky and kissed his temple over and over with numb, unfeeling lips.
+++
“Steve,” said Howard. “I’m sorry, but he’s dead.”
Steve smiled, painful and cracked. Bucky dangled in his arms.
“Fifty bucks says you’re wrong,” he said.