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“You look a little rough.”
Hunched over a knife wound, the kid spat, “Been rougher. What’s it to ya?”
The stranger said, “Nothing much. Just kind of—well—”
“You gonna say sad, you can save your breath,” the kid panted, smearing his hand across his mouth. “Wha’d’you want?”
“Got a piece of advice,” the stranger replied.
“Oh, yeah?” The kid tried and failed to straighten. “Dammit,” he hissed, blood dripping from his mouth.
“Should get that checked out,” the stranger said. “And when a man named Abraham Erskine walks into your life—he’s selling snake oil. Don’t buy it.”
. o .
Private Gilmore Hodge made a superb Captain America.
To a reporter, Hodge explained, “I always say, Boys, we’re either gonna bring this home, or they’ll bring it home to us—which fight d’you wanna rumble?”
They sent him to the Front. He took so many bullets they called him Old Iron Lungs.
The stranger approached. “How’s it hanging, Hodge?”
“Haven’t heard that name in a while,” Cap replied, pumping his hand vigorously. “You must do your homework, soldier.”
“I try, Captain.”
Hodge’s grin was boyishly toothy. He’d fall off a train tomorrow if the stranger did nothing.
“Take it easy, Hodge.”
. o .
“Steve?”
“No,” the stranger said, leveraging Bucky upright. “C’mon. We gotta get you outta here.”
“Steve,” Bucky repeated, his eyes bright with hope. “You’re alive.”
“Course I am, punk.” The stranger unsnapped the leather straps. “You’re the one who got your ass handed to ya.”
“Takin’ my men,” muttered Bucky. “Takin’ my—gonna intern ‘em, I couldn’t—”
“I know,” the stranger dismissed. “I know. C’mon. Hold onto me. You’re so damn skinny.”
“Steve,” Bucky repeated, overjoyed. “S’this a dream?”
“Yes,” the stranger lied. “Help is on its way. They’ll get you home.”
“It’s funny,” Bucky said. “You’re so big.”
. o .
It was funny.
He was so big compared to the kid in Brooklyn miserably awaiting a call-of-duty that would never come.
He was so big compared to the nobody kid in Brooklyn, who would always struggle to hold down a job, who would struggle to manage a battle-weary body that had never seen a war.
He was so big compared to the firefly lives of all the men and women around him who’d be lucky to see their next birthday.
The stranger was huge, cosmic, timeless—he was a firefly that had broken free.
The emptiness outside it was breathtaking.
. o .
The stranger went after Dr. Zola next.
Infamously weak-willed and noncommittal, desperate like so many to see the other side of a war that would take fifty million lives in collateral alone, Dr. Arnim Zola cowered when the stranger bore down on him.
“Please make it quick,” Zola begged, already knowing it was over, ashen, wide-eyed, self-aware. “Please make it—”
The stranger snapped his neck. Held his ragdoll body as the lifeforce left it, wondering if there was more or less he could have done.
He lowered the still-warm body to the floor.
And then he realized his mistake.
. o .
“This better be important,” Colonel Phillips greeted. He didn’t look up from his papers.
“You need to see this,” the stranger replied.
“How urgently?” Colonel Phillips asked. “File it with your C.O.”
The stranger opened his bag and dumped Arnim Zola’s head onto Phillips’ desk.
“Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” Phillips said, and retched.
The stranger stood by. When Phillips recovered, the stranger presented the documents in Zola’s pockets. “They’re planning an attack,” he announced. “An airdrop. On—”
“Are you Hydra?” Colonel Phillips interrupted. “Did you turn?”
The stranger didn’t smile. “No,” he said. “I’ve always been on your side.”
. o .
Time break, time break, chanted the demons.
Shut up, the stranger replied, avoiding Agent Carter’s gaze as she regarded him with coldness. Shut up, shut up.
He never heard their discussions, wrestling with his own voices. All he knew: they had not condemned him to death, and that was good.
It wouldn’t matter to them. The Grandfather Paradox isn’t real. I can show you who I am. And that’s a skinny kid in Brooklyn.
But it would mean the world to him. He would disappear from the script. Trillions of others would carry on while he was:
Unmissed and unknown.
. o .
The stranger offered to fly the plane.
God, fucking, dammit, hell, why was he always so willing?
He even kept the Tesseract on board, radioing back, “I got the cube.” It was trying to burn a hole through his shield, but it wouldn’t succeed.
The radio crackled with life, but Peggy didn’t speak to him. She didn’t even know him.
I know you, he thought.
As icy water flooded the plane, he fumbled for the time stone and grasped it in hand. Cold water lunged towards his chest.
He leapt out of the past like it never was.
. o .
Perennially young, Old Iron Lungs stood backstage at the memorial opening and said, “Say, I know you.”
The stranger replied, “I get that a lot.”
“No, I do,” Cap insisted, looking him over. “I remember you.” He grinned. “I remember everyone, soldier.”
That much was terribly true. “How’s it hanging, Hodge?” the stranger asked, breaking the silence.
Hodge shook his hand vigorously. “You look an awful lot like your grandfather,” Hodge replied, releasing him.
I am my grandfather, the stranger thought, but they weren’t on the same page about it, so he just said, “I get that a lot, too.”
. o .
Captain America was married, with a wife and a kid and a white picket fence.
The stranger wanted to throw up.
“This is the good life,” Cap said. “All the bells and whistles, they’re fun as hell—” He crouched to pick up his two-year-old son. “They’re a good time, but they’re nothing compared to this. You married?”
The stranger could not swallow around the lump in his throat. He merely shook his head.
“Baba,” the two-year-old said, gripping his father’s uniform and looking at the stranger. “Baba.”
“Yeah, that’s me,” Cap said, tapping his son on the nose. “Papa.”
. o .
“You’ll drive yourself mad, rolling the dice,” Dr. Strange once told him.
“I’ll take my chances,” the stranger replied, gripping the time stone tightly in his palm before returning it to its locket. “This isn’t—”
“Something you can live with?”
The stranger gritted his jaw. “Something like,” he allowed. A sense memory swamped him—blood dripping from his mouth, a pain like metal and fire in his gut, fists clenched at his side. I’m not looking for another fight, but I’ll take you down, if I have to.
“Godspeed,” the magician deadpanned. “It’s hell out there.”
It really was.
. o .
“Oh, thank God,” Tony Stark sighed, breathed, very nearly sobbed. “The cavalry’s arrived.”
“Can you walk?” the stranger asked. “Stay close.”
Tony nodded wearily. His eyes were so bright; his arms trembled as he reached for the car battery beside him. “Yeah. What do I look like?”
A dead man walking. “Stay close,” the stranger reminded. “I’ll cover you.”
“Yinsen, what about Yinsen?” Tony pressed.
“Who?”
Tony limped over to the sleeping carpet and kicked it. A man emerged from the rags. “What?”
“Cavalry’s here,” Tony deadpanned.
The stranger thought, I wish I was sooner, and led them to freedom.
. o .
“You special forces?” Tony asked.
“No,” the stranger replied. I’m a one-man army. “I’m just a—” Kid from Brooklyn didn’t work in his superheroic context. “I’m one of the good guys.”
“The good guys,” Tony huffed. His legs were shaking, but Tony Stark was a proud man. He wanted to walk. His arms were stained with metal burns, his face overgrown and gaunt. He’d been locked away for forty-three days. What twice that time would do to him, the stranger didn’t want to contemplate.
“That checks out,” Tony managed, and crumpled in the sand.
The stranger caught him, battery-first.
. o .
James Rhodes suspected. “Who the hell are you?”
No one. The stranger didn’t know how to respond.
“One of the good guys,” Tony slurred, stumbling forward, hugging his car battery. “Aren’t ya?” Whole body shaking and thirty pounds too thin, Tony grinned as Rhodey held him up.
The stranger thought, Thank you for that.
Rhodey said, “Got more than a few questions.”
Can’t answer them.
The stranger thought, This is a time break. He should run. He should hide in another universe, where he could try, try again.
You don’t have to stay. You already broke it.
He stayed, anyway.
. o .
I think it broke something in me, the stranger did not say as they tied him to a chair he could break out of and demanded answers. The day Tony died, it broke something in me. The something that said every loss had to be forever. What’s the point in having the tools to fix the problem if you can never use them? He didn’t even hear the questions, let alone respond. They locked him up for further questioning. It was cold and abysmal in his cell, but never permanent.
Nothing in a time traveler’s world had to be permanent.
. o .
Tony himself finally came forward.
“Stay close,” he announced, holding his car battery. He looked stronger—a man about to rebuild. “Can you walk?” he jested. His expression fell as the stranger stood, clothes hanging. Three days without food weren’t kind to him. “I can’t carry you.”
“I don’t need you to,” the stranger replied. He’d been Captain America, once, too. He didn’t know who he was supposed to be anymore, less and more than the other Steve Rogers’s—a husk of a man, struggling to find his way in a cold world.
Tony said, “Then follow me.”
Steve did.
. o .
I’d give anything to do this the right way, Steve, the stranger, thought, as Tony asked who he was, really.
“You don’t want to know,” the stranger, Steve, said. I’m the messenger. I’m the endgame. Tony watched him with bright, haunted eyes. The car battery sat on the table between them. The night was still young.
“I’m curious,” Tony entertained, stirring a scotch that couldn’t touch the raw edges inside Steve.
“You always are.”
Tony frowned. Time break, the stranger thought, panicked.
“Have we met before?” Tony asked.
Yes. “Not here,” Steve replied foolishly. “It’s a long story.”
“Tell me.”
. o .
Well, it started with Thanos, and the end of half the universe, and a promise to himself and those around him that he would fix it, come what may.
It ended with, Were we ever friends?
“So, you—” Tony narrowed his eyes. “And this is assuming I believe in magic.”
Time break. Time break. Steve nodded and nodded and drank and drank.
“You’re … Captain America,” Tony echoed, like he couldn’t imagine Steve Rogers as a person, let alone a person who mattered.
It was his identity, the zero-state of the universe. It was no longer reality. “… Yes.”
. o .
Captain Hodge—leader of the Howling Commandos, comic book legend, Old Iron Lungs himself. They put a hundred bullets in him and Hodge laughed. It was never about honor; it was simply a refusal to die.
Captain Hodge—twenty-nine at his hundredth birthday. He hadn’t aged a day since Steve had met him. It was eerie, a glimpse of his own future, a revelation: Hodge’s serum wasn’t fading as fast as Steve’s.
The serum amplifies what’s already there, a voice inside him whispered, as he shaved his beard in Tony Stark’s mirror.
Snake oil, he seethed, setting down the razor.
. o .
What good was it to live forever if nobody was there to live it with?
If Natasha Romanoff and Tony Stark were dead, where did Steve Rogers land? At the end of the line, if he was alone, was it worth the march?
He looked at Sam and Bucky—They’ll have each other—and tried not to look at Bruce. He tried to look secure as he stepped up to the platform. He had the infinity stones in his case. He had to return them.
He went back and sat down with Strange. And Strange told him he was doomed.
. o .
“You shouldn’t have come,” Strange said. “Now, you’ve really mucked it up. Do you even understand what you’ve lost? There’s no going back. There’s no changing what’s done. Everything happens once, and only once. You can go back, all you want, now. Make as many new timelines as you please. But you can’t go home. Those people, that story? It’s over. It’s gone. Think of them as dead. They’ll never see you again. All because you did this. You came here. Why?”
“How do I save Tony Stark?” was all Steve said.
“You’re unbearably naive,” Strange replied. “You poor child.”
. o .
“You can understand my confusion,” Tony said, as Steve lifted a car over his head. “You can imagine my surprise,” he went on, as Steve broke his own arm and it healed in three days.
Tony didn’t demand he prove his identity. Tony just seemed glad to be back in the states, grateful for Steve’s company. Yinsen was back home, and Tony was terribly afraid of being alone.
So, he entertained the impossible superman in his midst while the real Captain America appeared on television with his beautiful wife and boy.
Unprompted, Tony remarked, “Kind of a meathead, isn’t he?”
. o .
I was a bit of a womanizer, Cap laughed on a radio in the ‘80s. Errant youth and all, but a woman like Peggy Carter, she set me straight.
Hodge—Steve’s Hodge, the one who never became much of anybody—died in 1957. Ten years after the war, the bastard wrapped a car around a tree. He wasn’t invincible enough to survive.
You meet your future wife in 1992, Steve didn’t tell the Hodges he left to die. You ever think about living more sensibly?
Living sensibly worked for his skinny self: Steve Rogers died in 1951. Complications from pneumonia.
. o .
He showed Tony the time stone.
“What happened to the others?” Tony asked.
Steve said, “Left them with a wizard.”
Tony raised both eyebrows. “You trust the wizard that much?”
Steve toyed with the green stone in his hand. “He trusts me this much,” he replied.
“Bet you can’t prove that,” Tony said, nodding at the stone. Time travel. It wasn’t a dare; it was a sad truth.
Like: I’ll never see a shooting star in my lifetime, will I?
There’d be hundreds of them. But not everyone would look up at the right moment.
“No,” Steve said. “I can’t.”
. o .
Steve dreamt of other universes. He dreamt of slow-dancing with Peggy. He dreamt of drowning in the icy water on the Valkyrie. He dreamt of losing Bucky on the train; he dreamt of his own hand slipping off the rail. He dreamt of snapping his fingers and watching the universe go black. He dreamt of waking up and being stuck in time, unable to run away.
He dreamt of Tony with a glowing blue light in his chest instead of the car battery. He dreamt of sleek red metal. Of Iron Man.
He dreamt of flying. He dreamt of joy.
. o .
He told Tony, “I have to go.”
Tony stared at him like he’d announced he would be returning them to Afghanistan. “You can’t,” Tony said at once.
Time break, time break, time break.
“I have to,” Steve persisted. Something was wrong. He didn’t feel good. Killing Zola, crashing the plane, sparing Hodge, damning himself.
None of it felt right.
“Please don’t,” Tony said, and he was not a man to beg.
“I don’t care that it’s wrong,” Tony insisted. “You saved my life. I need you here.”
Steve couldn’t abandon him. He couldn’t.
Strange was wrong: they all mattered. “Okay.”
. o .
You’ll be tempted to call them family. But they’re not. What is family but lived experience? People you know, people you love? These people won’t know you. You’ll lose yourself, you’ll lose them. And what’s it all for?
Them, Steve thought. Natasha. And Tony.
He had to lose Natasha to save S.H.I.E.L.D. The Hydra infiltration was inextricably intertwined with the Red Room. Black Widow and the Winter Soldier were forged in the same fire—there was no way to separate them.
It was probably a kindness to Natasha to free her from the Red Room.
Steve couldn’t lose her, too.
. o .
“Miss you every damn day, Buck,” Steve told Bucky’s grave. He laid a trembling handful of red poppies down. “Wish you were here.” He gripped the headstone for balance, gentle with stone he could shatter. “You oughtta get some sleep, Buck. Somebody should,” he said. “Somebody deserves to—” He hunched forward and shut his eyes, trembling with a grief not a soul on this Earth understood.
Buck had lived a long life. Died at eighty-four. Had kids, grandkids. A good life, free of Hydra—free of Stevie Rogers, too.
Steve wept at his gravesite, reunited again, far too late.
. o .
“Hey.”
A shoulder bumped into his. Bony. In his memory, Tony Stark was strong, built up. Like one of his machines. The one beside him was fragile. Edgy, holding his boxed up heart close to his chest. “Hey,” Tony said again. “If this is a mental break, I’m gonna need you to step off the gas and focus up. Look at me,” he insisted.
Steve did. He wasn’t sure it mattered. “Look at me,” Tony insisted. “You saved me for a reason, right?”
Steve nodded.
“Then c’mon,” Tony said, and with all his meager strength, pulled Steve off the ground.
. o .
Maybe it was a mental break.
He’d lost all desire to eat, to sleep, to simply exist. All he had left was a to-do list. Save him, save them, save the universe. With everything set in motion, he no longer had a place in the grand scheme of things.
Sitting on the floor with Tony, Steve thought, I brought all of this on myself.
I have made the last big mistake of my life.
Stepping onto that platform, so goddamn confident.
Then Tony began to talk about his plans for the future. And it felt like a reason to live.
. o .
“Tell me about the wizard,” Tony asked at some early hour. “What’s he like, does he have a cape?”
Steve said, “Yes.”
“Knew it,” Tony preened. “What color ‘s it?”
“Does it matter?”
“Course it does. He’s a wizard.”
“Red,” Steve replied.
Tony said, “Mm,” and then, “You’re really a time traveler?”
“Yes,” Steve said, for the dozenth time.
“Why don’t you go home?” Tony pressed.
Steve was silent for a long moment. “Not a thing I can do,” he allowed.
Even Tony was quiet at that. “Really?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“So—all this—for me?”
Steve nodded once.
“Wow.”
. o .
“You ever miss home?” Tony pressed, refusing to sleep if Steve was awake—refusing to sleep if Steve wasn’t home. Comfortable around him.
Time was a funny thing. Sometimes, Steve thought there was a tempo that other universes could hear, a drumbeat that underpinned them. He thought of it as resonance—the inclination of the universes to follow one original outcome.
A sort of cosmic rut.
“… miss—”
“No,” Steve interjected, gentle but adamant. “Not so much.”
He missed Bucky. And Sam. But the thought of waking up to a world without Tony was—unbearable.
“Me, too,” Tony yawned.
. o .
Tony fell asleep against him. The car battery rested on the floor nearby.
Mouth open against Steve’s shoulder, every line in his body exhausted, there was gratitude in Tony’s posture, a knowingness in his company. Steve had come back in time to save him from a terrible fate, and he knew that much. The rest—the history, the understanding, the love of family you’ve so built up—was gone.
He might never really appreciate just how truly and utterly gone it all was.
He hadn’t always started at the beginning, though. He’d been more optimistic, once.
Once upon a time. . . .
. o .
I’m not Loki.
Looking down at his unconscious self, Steve thought, I’m losing my mind. He picked up the scepter before he could second-guess his mission and returned to the lobby.
One Tony Stark was being resuscitated; another was struggling upright alone.
Steve made his way towards that version, first.
“Hey. You all right?” he asked, leveraging the stealth-suited Tony to his feet.
“Steve?” Tony rasped. “Thought we were—”
“Change of plans,” Steve said quietly. He made sure Tony was upright—there were timelines Tony died unattended—before going straight for the freed cube.
He was never fast enough.
. o .
Steve tried every tactic he could think of.
He went back to 1970, only to be caught and compromised, compromising the entire damn mission, jeopardizing whatever version of himself and Tony were present.
That was always the stickler—unless he eliminated or neutralized his younger self, he could never quite get around him. They had the same goal, after all—stop Thanos and keep everyone alive. They kept running into each other, and time kept breaking.
Strange had been right—it had become an obsession, once he realized there was no going back to his original timeline.
Try, try again.
. o .
Then he went even farther back. And that was when he finally hit paydirt.
How much will you surrender for a little victory?
Tony slept like the dead. Are we even friends? Steve wondered.
He’d given up his sword and shield and name for a blood enemy. In … eight years, he’d drive his shield-sword into Iron Man’s chest, and they’d never speak again. Two years later, they’d coalesce, they’d eat each other, they’d fail the entire universe.
They’d end up here. Desperately alone on their isle.
Was I too early, or too late?
The answer was only, always yes.
. o .
The stranger made mistakes, too.
“I got nothing to say to you, Cap,” Tony said, dark-eyed and furious and so damn hurt Steve could feel the heat from the wounds that weren’t healing ten feet away, the readiness to lash out.
“Who the hell are you?” Clint demanded, years earlier, both hands on his bow, eyes on the arrow sticking out of the stranger’s chest.
Bruce’s lab was a sacred space; the green eyes that locked onto him were not friendly.
When Steve sought out Natasha, he never found her. She was a ghost, and he was just a number.
. o .
A sort of cosmic rut:
“There’s no ‘win’ scenario.”
“I can’t live with that.”
“Then die.”
Steve stared at the wizard, his ancient eyes pitiless. “You want it in writing?” Strange asked dryly. “There is no ‘win’ scenario. The best you can do is minimize—”
“Fourteen million universes, and not one works—”
“That’s right. You wanna make more? How many will you burn, trying to build your paradise? Stark was ready to die. Or he wouldn’t have died.”
Respect the dignity of his choice.
“I can’t live with that,” Steve repeated.
Strange said, “Then die on your hill.”
. o .
Steve was more than ready to.
He'd picked up the gauntlet and looked at Tony, of all people, before he'd snapped.
What the stones did to Thanos, the titan, was horrific. What they did to Tony was beyond description.
As for Steve? They had burned the serum right out of his blood.
I’d live for this, Steve had thought, lungs on fire and every inch of him hurting, a wound that would never heal. Then his own shadow had trotted forward, mangled arm dangling half a shield, and Steve had known, I can’t stay.
He’d dropped the gauntlet and vanished.
. o .
In one universe, a man dropped a blue vial, destroying the last of Erskine’s magic-in-a-bottle.
Selflessness, noun, was returning the vial to Howard Stark, allowing the world to replicate it and create a legion of super-soldiers, for better and worse.
Selfishness, verb, was injecting it into his own de-serumed body, revitalizing him, a shot of lightning in the dark. It felt like breathing again. It felt like he wasn’t going to die a painful death in the middle of temporally nowhere.
While his doppelganger saved a drowning boy from a river, Steve, the stranger, snarled at the dying Hydra agent.
. o .
You can never have everything you want, Strange had warned him.
Steve hadn’t wanted to believe him, dancing with Peggy, eyes shut in timeless bliss. Such a token gesture, a last laugh before the sun set and the darkness descended again. Such a token joy, a few moments with his best girl before her husband came home. He’d never wanted to steal another’s joy—only to experience joy for himself. Just for a moment.
One happy little song, and then a kiss on the cheek goodbye.
He never saw her again. Such was the price of time travel.
Once, only.
. o .
Night after night, Steve drank himself stupid with Bucky on the Front, ignoring his happy frown and insisting, “One night, Buck, one night, we gotta live.”
He tried to wring every goddamn drop of joy out of Bucky, treading a line between euphoria and madness, entering a train that made him sick and lunging for a hand into the abyss, never near enough.
Resonance. Time hold. No matter how desperate he was, how many universes he broke trying, he couldn’t catch Bucky.
He slid straight into the abyss after him and lunged for temporal safety before he hit the ground.
. o .
From a shadowy distance, Steve, the stranger, watched Captain America laugh with fellow soldiers, clinking tin cans and sharing joy that belonged to Steve Rogers.
Watch the scene over and over and it started to look like ground truth, like resonance. Hodge had a wife named Eugenia and a boy named Gideon. He was stupid young and like fine wine in his senior years, polished, self-confident, friendly. A young life that long brought out the good in men.
Steve, bitter and old, could only watch from the shadows, wondering if he wasn’t supposed to have remained in obscurity all along.
. o .
In agonizingly small steps, Tony Stark built the first miniature arc reactor.
Steve forced himself to hold fast against questions, no matter how innocently posed. He didn’t care about changing the future—he already had—so much as he cared about Tony, himself. It was Tony’s journey. Every ounce of sleepless agony, of frustrated longing, of impatient anger, was a hammer blow forging him into a stronger steel.
Adrift in a universe that didn’t need him, yet, he went to S.H.I.E.L.D., and shook hands with Nick Fury.
“I think I could be of use to your organization,” he told Nick.
. o .
Nick and he got a beer together.
“I thought you’d take the news harder,” Steve admitted.
“I’ve seen enough little green men to accept that time travel was a possibility,” Nick responded, drinking deeply. “So—do we win?”
Steve’s heart clenched. There is no ‘win’ scenario. “Would I be here if we didn’t?” he evaded.
“Would you be here if we did?” Nick check-mated.
Steve thought, I came back for him. The rest is collateral. “It’s complicated,” he said.
Nick passed him another drink. “Better start talking.”
Steve—did.
Nick was like a father to him. Talking felt like forgiveness.
. o .
“I tried everything.
“Went back an hour. A minute. Ten seconds. You wouldn’t think ten seconds would matter, but they can be the most important ten seconds of your life.” Steve paused to drink. “The shorter you go back, the less you lose.” Another, longer, pause. “Gotta shoot for the narrowest window of opportunity. Keep as much of the good, lose as much of the bad.”
He thought of Tony’s burned face, of that stomach-dropping moment when he looked at Clint and realized Natasha wasn’t with him. He wished he could lose both, for good.
“And you try, try again.”
. o .
A minute, ten seconds, ten years, a lifetime.
“You become self-obsessed,” Strange said, “with a you-centered universe. What do you want? Every dream is at your fingertips.”
Steve tried to accept it, as it was. He tried being friends with Tony. To listen when he spoke, to be present when he’d rather be seventy years away. To not waste time.
But there was no place for him to land. His alter egos had to die, or there was no room for the stranger.
I’m sorry, he thought, staring at his own grave. I never wanted it to be about me.
. o .
It was supposed to be about saving Tony. It was supposed to be about saving Natasha.
It was supposed to be simple.
Why couldn’t it ever be that simple? he raged, snarling back at his doppelganger, one so eager for a fight it couldn’t pause for breath.
Kill me. You would, wouldn’t you? But you can’t.
Their shields met in the middle and it was pure resonance. Steve threw himself into the fight, tore into his doppelganger.
Stronger, better, faster, younger, his doppelganger met him blow-for-blow.
The stranger didn’t deserve to win the fight. He won, anyway, and moved on.
. o .
Moving on wasn’t visiting graves.
Moving on was running from every universe he didn’t like, leaving ashes in his wake.
Time break, Steve thought, as he stared at the reports of a winter soldier whose name he did not know, who could not be his Bucky.
Time break, he thought, as Tony argued with his father in one universe, and sat in his garage watching old messages from him in another.
Time break, he thought, as Iron Man came to life in stunning navy-blue.
“Starlike,” Tony explained, cradling the car battery in one arm. “I think it’s beautiful.”
It was.
. o .
On screen, Captain America said, “Like every threat, we’ll meet this one, head-on.” He looked confident, big brother who joined the Army and came back a changed man.
Steve wondered if he’d looked like that, on television. If he’d been that steadfast, or if he’d been sad, and bitter, and outdated, making mandatory appearances before holing up nowhere for the rest of time.
“I don’t know where I’d go if I wasn’t here,” Steve told Nick over another beer. “Home doesn’t even feel like home anymore.”
“Home is just an idea,” Nick replied. “Give it up, if you have to.”
. o .
Tony trusted him too much. “My own guardian angel,” he kidded, regarding Steve, his very own temporal ghost. “If you wanted to kill me, you would’ve done it already,” he speculated out loud.
Still could. There’s a trillion Tony Starks out there, waiting to be actualized, Steve didn’t respond, watching Tony pace, car battery tucked under one arm.
The timeline was all wrong—the suit was ready, the man was not—but who was Steve to interfere?
“You saved my life,” Tony insisted, talking to him because he was afraid of the rest of the world. “There’s a why there.”
. o .
With Bucky, with Peggy, there was closure. With Tony and Natasha, there was only anger.
He didn’t get why they couldn’t win—why Tony, who had a beautiful wife and a daughter, couldn’t live to see another day. He deserved to live, and Steve would be damned if he quit, if he survived and Tony died.
Natasha had asked if he’d trust her to pull him out of the fire. How dare he forsake her?
He visited their graves and promised, I won’t let this last. It shouldn’t. It was a puzzle. A puzzle he could solve.
Whatever it took.
. o .
There was satisfaction in fucking up the multiverse.
Words Strange wouldn’t say—it’s like lightning in a bottle. Playing God. You’ve won the cosmic lottery. There’s no dream you can’t actualize. You never have to accept the collateral.
There was always collateral—and that stilled Steve’s hand, as he held his sword at his doppelganger’s throat and thought, The easiest way out is through.
Sheathing his shield on his back, he disappeared before his doppelganger could retaliate. He wouldn’t steal joy from other universes to build his paradise.
There was a line between madness and beneficence. He wouldn’t cross it.
. o .
The longest way out was through.
Day after day, shaping the future, shaking Clint Barton’s hand for the first time as strangers, learning about Natasha from a distance. She didn’t deign to meet him. Who was he, but another number? It would be years before he met Bruce. He could be patient.
Tony suited up. “What do you think?” Iron Man asked him, car battery tucked under one huge metal arm. “Spectacular, isn’t it?”
Steve thought, Time break.
“Spectacular,” Steve echoed.
Three days later, Tony unplugged his metal heart and swapped it for one made of vibranium.
Steve marveled quietly.
. o .
“Dad always had a way with words,” Tony admitted, as Steve showed him his red-white-and-blue sword, his shield. “Had a good relationship with Wakanda. Got his hands on quite the pile. Never used it.” Running his hands over the shield, he mused, “Where’d you get this?”
Steve said, “Somewhere it won’t be missed.”
Even so, Steve couldn’t help but look at Hodge’s heater shield differently, Old Iron Lungs wielding the red-white-and-blue steel with the ease only a lifelong warrior could.
“Looks like the world’s most expensive frisbee to me,” Tony decreed, handing Steve’s stolen shield back to him. “Beautiful work.”
. o .
Tony transformed overnight, shedding his car battery and reappearing on the world stage in spectacular fashion.
“The new name in world peace isn’t having a big stick,” Iron Man announced at a large press conference, “it’s one helluva shield.” He paused so the audience could absorb his words, then added, almost absentmindedly but profoundly: “Winghead over here would know all about that.”
Old Iron Lungs laughed, outgoing and friendly. The audience ate it up as the two superheroes, old and new, sat on camera for the first time and chatted about world peace.
Off-stage, Steve Rogers and Obadiah Stane watched.
. o .
“He’s unrecognizable,” Stane observed over cocktails. “Look at him.”
Steve didn’t need to; he could feel the energy radiating from Iron Man. “Two weeks ago, he wouldn’t speak over the phone,” Stane went on, leaning on a small table. “Now, here we are. New world order.”
“You think it’ll go that big?”
“Tony Stark’s not a man to lie low.” He eyed Steve. “We haven’t met, have we?”
Steve held his gaze. “Not yet,” he lied, offering a hand. “Steve Rogers.”
Stane shook it. “Ah. That Rogers. You’re out of a job.” Steve frowned. “He won’t need a bodyguard anymore.”
. o .
It wasn’t the first time someone tried to remove Steve, the stranger, from the multiverse.
Maybe it was a flavor of resonance—the more abrasive the time traveler, the more frequent the assassination attempts. The multiverse guarded itself against time breaks.
Therefore, Steve almost couldn’t judge Stane for his actions. Stane was skeptical; Stane was protective. Rhodey was protective—but Rhodey didn’t poison Steve’s drink.
He pardoned himself from the party and wretched for an hour, his body overreacting to a poison the serum was already neutralizing.
Then he limped home, thinking about where he should go in the multiverse.
. o .
It was strange and sad to realize how little the multiverse needed Steve Rogers. You’ll see yourself as God, Strange had warned him, and a drop in the ocean. You don’t matter.
Everybody matters, Steve had retorted, as he sheathed his shield-sword and refused to kill his doppelganger just to take his fixed place. Every single goddamn one of them matters.
Strange could wash his hands of the others. Maybe he had to—seeing so many different versions of the people he cared about suffer had to do something terrible to the spirit.
Steve could not go down that road.
. o .
His doppelganger asked, “Why are you here?” He was hollow-eyed, husked-out, as exhausted as the stranger felt. He’d buried Tony Stark. Of course he looked like a gravedigger.
The stranger sat next to him on the porch. They were hours apart, once. Now, they were separated by centuries of accumulated time. The stranger said, “I wanted to congratulate you.”
His doppelganger looked at him humorlessly. The stranger had looked like that, once, like he’d never joke again. He wasn’t sure he was past it, and that scared him.
“You made the right choice,” the stranger told his doppelganger. “You stayed.”
. o .
Returning the stones. That’s what you called it? Strange had looked at him with laughter. You can’t repair a timeline. You can only—
Break it.
Steve looked at his lack of belongings, dizzied. He wasn’t just sick, he was temporally mangled—aching in every bone, sore from two rounds of the serum.
Residually ill, like he was human and had no business being powerful enough to bring universes into existence.
It’s called decoherence, Strange had explained. Every possible universe exists simultaneously, but until you separate them, they’re all one thread, one timeline. Then you split it. It separates into being.
. o .
Cohere, Steve thought, as his knees buckled. The universe pulling itself together.
The time stone could take him anywhere, but he didn’t know where he wanted to go. He rebelled against starting over.
Iron Man said, “Steve?”
For a bare moment, he forgot where he was. “Tony,” he breathed. “You’re alive.”
“I would hope so,” Iron Man said, worried, mask a deep, starlike blue.
Reality hit hard: “No. Tony, you died, you—”
“This a time travel thing?” Tony asked. “How about one problem at a time, huh? Up.”
“Tony,” he repeated, and sobbed.
“Oh, hell,” Iron Man muttered back.
. o .
You’ll be tempted to call them family.
They’re not.
“Oh. Hello.” His mother’s lilting Irish accent was warmer than the summer, than the four walls around him as he stood in his childhood home, package in hands. “I take it you aren’t here to fix the leak?” She scanned his military uniform inquisitively.
“Delivery, actually, ma’am,” he managed.
His mam’s face relaxed into a sorrowful smile. “S’it Joseph’s?” she asked.
He could hardly bear to nod. He wanted to hug her so badly it hurt. “Yes.”
“Thank you. Off you go, then.”
And so he did, departing like a ghost.
. o .
Steve awoke in Tony’s lab.
“Is it always this fast?” Tony, a fellow ghost, asked, seated on a chair and watching Steve’s heart gallop on a monitor at a robust 280 bpm. “Coulda maybe sorta brought it down, but—” He shrugged. “Guess that doesn’t work, huh? You weren’t kidding about that Captain America schtick.”
Thwuck-thwuck-thwuck-thwuck, his heartbeat rang out. “What happened?” Steve rasped.
“You passed out,” Tony said, spinning on his chair. “This is me, uh. Coping.” He eyed Steve. “Seemed like bad luck to let a time traveler die on my watch.”
“S’not.”
“Oh. Well, then. Extra credit.”
. o .
Tony hated hospitals, doctors, their ilk. He told Steve, no less than fourteen times, as Steve pushed himself off the gurney, disconnected the bells and whistles, and limped off.
“Hey, so, I was thinking,” Tony began, trailing after him. “If you are Captain America, then—well. Why aren’t you? Here, I mean. What changed?”
Steve said, “It’s complicated.”
Tony replied, “You say that like it would stop me.”
“I told you what you need to know, Tony,” Steve insisted wearily. “I shouldn’t have said half as much.”
“Well, you did,” Tony reminded. “So, tell me more.”
Steve ignored him.
“Please?”
. o .
“Mad titan?” Tony interrupted his story, eyes dancing with mirth. He lounged on a couch like a Renaissance painting, effortlessly inhabiting space. He was a fixture the world needed. You oughtta live two hundred years, Tony, Steve thought, seated well away from him, afraid of getting too close.
He might hold on and never let go again. He’d do goddamn anything to keep him alive.
“Sounds like a real charmer,” Tony went on, mesmerized by him. Steve Rogers, the stranger—the time traveler.
It was bizarre, how little history they had. The sharp edges weren’t there. Steve . . . missed them.
. o .
He missed the sharp edges.
He missed Tony knowing him before he knew of Tony’s existence. He missed the jibes, good- and ill-natured. He missed the way Tony might settle against his side, small and warm and desperate, craving any bit of warmth he could find in a cold, dangerous world. He missed their arguments over everything, from sunrise to sunset, from life-threatening missions to the best ways to relax and unwind.
He missed the affectionate smiles, the honest laughter, the warm atmosphere they kindled so tentatively, only to lose it so bitterly in the near-arctic.
He missed Tony irreparably.
. o .
“I have to go.”
Tony’s eyes went sad. “Don’t.”
“I have to,” Steve insisted. “There’s—” Something I have to do. Something I haven’t tried. “I’m sorry, Tony.”
Tony looked at him for a long, long time. “Why do I know you?” he asked.
Steve shrugged. “I think we were always supposed to be friends.” It was a happy, devastating thought.
“Will you come back?” Tony pressed.
Steve waited him out.
Tony stood up, crossing the room. He said, “Dammit.” Then he waved a hand. “Go—if you must.”
Steve met him in a hug. “I will miss you, Tony.”
. o .
Steve went to the wizard. “Strange,” he said, holding up the time stone. “I’ve come to bargain.”
Strange looked up from his desk. “About time,” he deadpanned, as he tapped the empty amulet in his chest. “Give me that.”
“I need the stones,” Steve answered. Strange’s expression was still. “One last time,” he promised.
“And I need reality intact,” Strange reminded him. “You’ve had fun. Now it’s time to go home.”
Strange had five of the six infinity stones on his side. He could easily overpower Steve. “Give me this chance,” Steve pressed.
Strange scrutinized him. “What are you planning?”
. o .
There could only be one set of infinity stones in the multiverse. They were like celestial beings, untethered.
Grounding five of them in one person would’ve been a risk, except a wizard-genius tempered by millennia of experience was perhaps the safest caretaker imaginable.
The benefit to grounding them in one place was obvious—rather than scouting out each stone, Steve had only to find the wizard, whose time stone couldn’t exist in two places. Their meeting manifested a universe where all six stones resided together, awaiting transference.
“I trusted you,” Steve told Strange. “Now, I need you to trust me.”
. o .
Steve knelt for balance, thought, Cohere, and snapped his fingers.
Power surged through him. For a moment, he was nowhere, temporally. He was separate, as celestial as the stones bleeding him dry, dreaming alive.
This is what it means to be wide awake, he thought, breathless, and then the world snapped into focus, and he was grounded again.
Blood swamped his mouth. Steve crumpled forward, heaving red. Pain erupted in his left arm, hand crushing the stones. A cold sweat settled over him, and he dreaded that his last moments would be wasted on ignorance.
And then: he heard voices.
. o .
“What in God fuck,” Tony yelled, stepping out of his suit and crashing into Steve, knocking them flat.
“That was strange,” Thor rumbled, and oh, Thor, Thor.
From Tony’s helmet Steve heard a familiar voice demanding, “What the hell was that?”
“Tony,” Steve managed, flexing his hand, feeling for stones that weren’t there. He clung to Tony’s shirt. “Tony, you’re alive—”
“Of course I am, dipshit!” Tony grumbled. “I’m not the one who played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with a god.”
Steve looked around, smiling dazedly. “Germany,” he rasped. “Oh, God, I’m in Germany.”
“Bring the hammer down, my ass,” Tony grunted.
. o .
“You’re lucky to be alive,” Tony berated, hovering anxiously as a medic splinted Steve’s arm. “You meathead.”
“You worry too much,” Steve told him. There was a giddiness inside him that could not be touched, a mixture of sorrow and splendor. “’m just a lucky kind of guy.”
Tony looked at him like he was crazy. Steve felt a little crazy, being back on the helicarrier. He knew an attack was coming, but he felt untouchable. “Loki’s got a card up his sleeve,” he warned idly.
“Great,” Tony muttered moodily.
Steve smiled, anyway. “Missed you, too, Tony.”
Tony scowled. “Idiot.”
. o .
“Let me get this straight,” Tony said, nursing his own wounds despite Steve’s warning—resonance, he thought. Only so many battles could be won. “You’re from the future.”
“Yes.”
“The future,” Tony repeated, pointing cryptically to his right. “That way?”
“Yes,” Steve replied, watching him pace, giving him room. He wanted to hold him. Time was too fragile, good. It would be years before he’d get any kind of redo, if he ever did.
He hoped to God he’d never need to.
“The future,” Tony repeated, then frowned. “Exactly how hard did Thor hit you?”
Steve smiled. “Not that hard.”
. o .
“Please tell me nobody kissed me,” Tony said, wide eyes lingering on Steve.
And Steve thought of him as a Renaissance painting, as a man with a car battery in his chest, as a man so desperately grateful to be alive, human underneath the swagger. He thought about those last gasping breaths and those red-faced arguments, all those fleeting victories.
And he took a leap: “I mean, if you ask.”
Tony blinked at him, like he thought he was hallucinating.
Then Tony said, “Wow,” and lifted a heavy metal arm to grasp Steve’s uniform and tug.
Steve met him halfway.
. o .
It could’ve been adrenaline, in the moment, the same force of nature that drove a frightened, lonely Tony Stark to bring him into his cave in the aftermath of torture.
Or it could’ve been destiny.
The aftermath wasn’t heat-of-the-moment—it was homecoming. It was a time in Steve’s life he’d spent looking backwards, longing for home when it was right around him.
As Thor inhaled shawarma and Steve tried his damnedest to keep his eyes open against an exhaustion without definition, he felt a foot nudge his under the table, resting for a while.
And home was home, you know?
. o .
“How’s it hanging, Hodge?” Steve asked, resting red poppies on his grave. “Knock ‘em dead, Ol’ Iron Lungs.”
He stood at the grave for a long little while, whiling away the seconds with the image of a man who had become more, given time. “You did good,” he told him. “Sonuvabitch in the meantime, but—you turned out just fine, Hodge.”
He wondered what other histories could be written, what other stories were out there, one simple choice away from happening.
It was an honor to walk home and find his uniform and shield waiting for him.
He’d found home.
. o .
Admittedly, it was strange to look in the mirror and see a younger version of his own face, to know in his heart where he was from and who he was and to see what the stones had made of him, instead.
Take me home, he’d asked them. Cohere.
They’d brought him here, of all places—the most innocent of times, when an invitation to live in Stark Tower was originally rejected, and a collision course with Thanos was beyond fathoming.
It didn’t seem fair, that he could have it all.
But maybe that was simply awareness of the alternatives.
. o .
“You’re so damn broody,” Tony complained, hip-checking Steve where he stood on the balcony. “It’s like you don’t even want to play Jeopardy.”
Steve’s lips twitched at the reminder, even as he looked out at the city, somberly aware of all the things that weren’t the same—and what still needed to happen. He was a long way from the end of his own war. But he finally felt on the path towards true peace—like he could actually play his hand, instead of waiting for it all to crumple down on him.
“Just enjoying the night,” Steve said honestly.
. o .
It was a strange life, but it had never been a normal one.
The twenty-first century wasn’t so bad, not-so-bad at all. The food was good, the heating was better, and camping in the Rockies with Clint was like spending time with the brother he’d never had. Tony complained that he was lonely and bored at home; when Steve invited him out, Tony moodily told him to come home sooner.
All was right in his world, Steve thought, as a cantankerous, cold, lonely Tony huddled against his chest in a tent in the middle of the Rockies.
All was right.