Chapter Text
Morgan smiled as the last diagnostic test she ran came back saying everything was in order, the plan she’d been working on since she was 12 was ready. Just in time for her 21st. The ship she’d been upgrading the past few years was finally done, she just had to pack and make sure she picked the right person to go with her. Packing was simple enough. More than a few of the standard tactical gear, some specific nano suits and far too many weapons to make her feel comfortable. Most of the munitions she’d packed were night night rounds, modified from the original Fitz-Simmons the new rounds could knock out a super soldier and make Professor Hulk dizzy. It was also specially formulated so if the rounds hit someone who’s not enhanced it wouldn’t kill them, it would still knock them out but it wouldn’t hit their systems so hard as the original rounds.
Picking someone to come with her though was a trickier task. She wanted a pilot for a start. Someone with great tactical sense. But most importantly someone who knew the mission files very well. Don’t get her wrong she knew what happened but she didn’t know all of what happened, she knew enough to want to change things but not enough to know how. That’s why she needed someone tactically minded instead of an engineer like her. Morgan knew more than a few of her extended family would jump at the chance to help her, mostly Peter, but she knew just because they’d jump at the chance to help her didn’t mean it was smart to ask them. Besides, Peter wasn’t a pilot. She knew who her best bet was but she would have to get her involved in the plan before telling her the plan.
“Out of all the pilots in our lil group, why call me?” Lila Barton asked as she walked into Morgan’s private hanger.
Morgan smiled as she straightened out her overalls. “Girl Power.”
“Monica Rambeau. Carol Danvers. Melinda May. And probably every other former Shield agent and current Sword agent. Their first base was in space you know.”
“I know.”
Lila rolled her eyes as she walked into the ship, eyeing the many storage boxes in the jet. “So where are we going?”
“Up.” Morgan said as she clapped her hands on the 34 year old.
Lila settled herself at the flight controls and familarised herself with the modifications Morgan made to the interface. Morgan closed the hatch to the ship and settled herself behind some secondary controls, the controls to the modification she added to the ship.
“So it looks like a quinjet, 2014 model if I’m not mistaking.” Lila said as she studied the flight plan. “But it’s moded so it can go into space safely from the look of your flight plan.”
“Uh Huh.” Morgan said with a nod as she spun around to face Lila who was looking at her over her shoulder. “It’s more of an entirely new build built to look like the 2014 model.”
“Why?”
Morgan shrugged and lied. “I like the aesthetic.”
Lila narrowed her eyes at her before turning back to the flight controls. “Any checks you need to run before we take off?”
“Nope.”
“In that case let's blow this popsicle stand.” She ignored Morgan’s snort as she started the ship, getting the holographic flight plan on the window in front of her. The ship rolled forward gracefully and they were soon out of the hanger and into the air. “We’ll be breaching the atmo in t-minus 5 minutes. 5 minutes jeez what is the engine on this thing.”
“I don’t know.” Morgan shrugged as she prepared her modification. “Something strong enough to get us out of atmosphere, I put the engine in when I was 16 so.”
“Had a few sleeps since then.” Lila laughed.
“Just a few.”
“Breaking Atmo and initializing Orbit.” Within moments they were in a stable orbit around earth. “I could never get sick of this view.” Lila sighed as she leaned back into her seat and looked back at earth.
“When were you last up here?” Morgan asked as she started initializing her system.
“Some time last year. Monica wanted an extra hand with something, can’t even remember what it was. Just remember seeing the lights as we circled the planet and went from day to night.”
“It sounds beautiful.” She said as she finished the set up.
“It was.”
“Take the controls. Initializing Delorean protocol.” Morgan said just after she hit the button.
“Delorean protocol?” Lila shouted as the ship started to shudder and shimmer. “What Stark level bullshit are you pulling?”
“It’s fine! I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to do this.”
“Pretty sure?!” She screeched as she stabilized the controls. “You take something into space you should be 100% sure! Not just pretty sure.”
“I was sure enough!” Morgan shouted back as there was a flash outside and the ship stabilized.
Lila took a deep breath and checked that the orbit was stable before unbuckling herself and striding over to Morgan and her controls. “What the hell did you do Stark!?!”
“Something I’ve wanted to do since I was 12.” She said with a shrug as she connected to some Stark industry servers in the California offices and confirmed the date.
“My god. Please tell me that doesn’t say what I think it says.” Lila said as she looked at Morgan’s screen.
“Welcome to 2013. Pre-winter soldier and fall of Shield.”
“I hate you.”
“Do you really though?”
“Yes.”
***
After landing and heading to a non descript dinner in the middle they settled into a corner booth. Morgan happily ordered herself a strawberry milkshake and a cheeseburger while Lila ordered herself a cola and BLT sandwich. Lila was eyeing Morgan across the table while the girl was fiddling on her phone under the table.
“I hope you have money.” Lila said.
Morgan scoffed. “Course I do. I’ve been planning this for a long time.”
“Jesus christ.” She said as she leaned her head back against the back of the booth. “How long have you been planning pulling a stunt like this?”
“In detail? Since I was 15. Idly and just as random day dreams? Probably since I was 11 or 12.” Morgan shrugged as she set her stark phone on the table with a purple credit card on top.
Lila narrowed her eyes at the card. “Where’s the money coming from? Your dad’s accounts?”
“No.” Morgan chuckled slightly as she leaned forward. “I had Antony…”
“Still weird you named your AI after your dad.”
She rolled her eyes. “I had Antony compile a list of Hydra finances and accounts, then once we hooked up to the network he syphned of a neat little sum that should be enough for the essentials for a while. We can probably do it a few more times too before they start to get suspicious. Couldn’t do that with my dad’s accounts Jarvis or my mum would notice.”
“Fair enough.” She said as their food and drinks arrived, she gave a whispered thank you to the waitress before turning back to Morgan. “What are your plans then? Long term goals and Short term goals.”
“Well.” Morgan spoke around a mouthful of burger. “Short term goal is to get Uncle Jamie out from under Hydra but still somehow cause the fall of Shield or somehow kick the double agents out.”
“Difficult but doable.”
“Long term I want us to be prepared for Thanos and avoid the blip.”
“And stop your dad from dying.”
She looked down at her plate fingering her fries. “A happy side effect.”
“Sure Jan.” Lila said around a mouthful of her sandwich. “I want you to know I’m doing this under protest.” Morgan beamed at her from across the table but she plowed on. “First we’ll need to get the red book, pretty sure it’s in russian so that won’t be a problem. Then we’ll have to head to siberia. I’m pretty sure that’s where he’s stored when not in use. God I feel dirty just saying that.” She shivered as she took another bite. “While we’re there we’ll also take out the other enhanced that are on ice there.”
“Other enhanced?”
She nodded. “I’m not sure when it was, I’ve a feeling it was the 80’s I’m not sure. There were 5 of the worst Hydra assassins that were enhanced, they had the highest kill count before the procedure and just added to it after. If we take James out of play for them we can’t risk them activating someone even worse. Those assassins believe in Hydra’s cause which makes them infinitely more dangerous than James.”
Morgan nodded sadly. “I don’t like the idea of killing someone.”
Lila sighed and put down what was left of her sandwich, leaning forward on the table with her arms crossed before she spoke. “Look. To get to where we want to be we’re going to have to do some things we don’t like. We can’t do this sort of thing through social media and think pieces, we’re going to have to get our hands dirty.”
“I know.”
“I won’t make you kill someone though. You don’t have the stomach for it let alone the training.” She shook her head as she went back to her sandwich. “I’ve got the training so if someone needs killing I’ll do it.”
Morgan gave a weak smile as she went back to her burger, it didn’t taste as nice as before they started talking about killing people.
***
Finding the red book was a simple case of breaking and entering. After growing up in a house with a paranoid ex-spy for a father and a protective retired Shield analyst for a mother she learnt all the best hiding spots. Nearly every time she got busted but she still could spot an excellent hiding spot a mile off. It was one of Lila’s special skills. Probably one of the reasons why Morgan picked her for her merry little trip in time, that and the fact she’d researched and memorised a lot of the Shield files. It was nice to read about her dad and aunt Nat back in their hay day, kicking ass and taking names. The Budapest files alone were movie worthy.
“Do you have a plan?” Morgan asked once they’d taken off.
Lila sighed and rolled her eyes as she read through the book. “This whole thing was your idea but yes I have a plan. The base should have minimal security, a handful of guards at most. Intel suggested that it was a storage facility more than anything else. We’ll double check before we head in though, don’t want to go in prepared for a handful of guards and be faced with entire squadrons. What’s the weapons situation looking like?”
“Few handguns, couple of snipers, some mid size guns and more types of blades that I’d care to count.” She said. “Handgun rounds are mostly the new night night rounds, but there’s a decent amount of normal rounds though. And since you didn’t ask armour wise there’s a few different Kevlar options, a couple of nano suits and some more specialised suits.” She finished with a smirk.
“Specialised suits?”
“Yea. I’ve got my own armour of course.”
“Of course.”
“And I took the liberty of designing you a custom suit.”
“Oh god.”
“Don’t judge me. Besides it was a lot of fun and a nice break from designing the ship.” Morgan laughed. “I was going to follow a Hawkeye design but we both know the only true Hawkeye is…”
“Kate Bishop.” They both said at the same time.
“Exactly.” Morgan continued. “So I thought I’d follow a design closer to your daddies murder hobo gap year and breakdown look.”
“Mom still hasn’t forgiven him for the tattoo he got.”
“As she should! Anyway I know you prefer a sword and daggers over the bow so the Ronin armour made sense. It’s the leather look breathable super flex kevlar fabric; fitted jacket top half and fitted pants as well as the standard female fit tac boots. But a smidge more stylish. I did it in black and navy so we’ll match.”
“You’re ridiculous.” Lila said as she left the pilots chair to dig her gear out. She quickly changed into the new outfit and kitted herself out with weapons, a hand gun with two clips of regular ammo as well as a set of throwing knives and a standard tac knife. “I feel like I should be concerned about how well you know my measurements but honestly I’m just grateful.”
“Thanks? I think.” Morgan would wait till they were on the ground to kit herself out in her armour, it was a similar style to some of her dads armour but in navy and gold instead.
The Siberan base was built into a mountain side, they used the ships infrared tracking to check for people before they landed on a cliff out of the way. Morgan then flew them both with her suit up the plato to where the entrance was, Lila pulled her gun while Morgan broke the lock. Lila entered first taking a stealtier approach than Morgan would be able to, beckoning Morgan forward after she rounded each corner.
“I don’t like how we’ve not ran into anyone yet.” Lila said under her breath, the comms Morgan made picking them up anyway.
“Me neither.” Morgan whispered back. “It seems too good to be true.”
Lila held her fist up as she looked around a corner into what was the deep freeze storage chamber. “We’ve got 3 guards. I’ll be able to take them out but if there’s anyone else here we’ll have a fight on our hands shortly.”
Morgan took a deep breath and nodded.
Lila fired off her gun, killing the largest of the 3 guards first causing the other two to scramble. Then she fully rounded the corner shooting the other two while they were scrambling for their weapons. Both girls walked fully into the room Lila checking all 3 were dead before signaling to Morgan to take their guns.
“You think you can hold this room while I clear the rest of the base?” She asked Morgan.
Morgan nodded. “I’ll access the terminal while I wait.”
There were two more agents throughout the base which Lila thought was a little light, but at least it made it easier for them. In one of the offices she found a rota of sorts, they’d have 3 weeks to get what they needed from this base before they’d have to leave. She’d have to ask Morgan the best way to fake a catastrophic failure in the facility, it wouldn’t do to have them found out by Hydra when the guards shift change came around.
“Open the 5 cryo’s that don’t hold James.” Lila said as she strode back into the room. She might as well get this out of the way.
Morgan nodded as she typed in the commands into the terminal. The five cryo tanks slowly opened, once they were fully open she fired a shot between the eyes of each of the super soldiers.
“We’ll wake James and then take care of the bodies. You can close those for now.”
Morgan nodded again and closed the five cryo’s. “Shall we wake James now?”
Lila worried her lip before nodding. “Do you have a taser in your suit? Or something that can be used a defibrillator?”
“Yeah why?”
“To restart his heart.” She said before looking over to Morgan with sad eyes. “But mostly so we can override any previous conditioning.”
“We’re going to have to have him under?”
Lila nodded. “It’s the easiest and the safest. His orders will be to follow our orders and to protect us. After a while the conditioning will fade and he’ll become his own person again but he wouldn’t be able to hurt us. That’s what it seems like from reading the red book and from what I know from the files. Wakanda didn’t share their files on his conditioning though so unfortunately we can’t try and redo their therapy.”
Morgan set James’ cryo tank into the defrost mode. It hurt to see a man she’d come to think of as an uncle in such a state. It felt wrong to be defrosting a human like they would a turkey for thanksgiving or christmas. She dreaded having to watch Lila initiate James’ programming, she’d seen the footage from the UN fiasco and he’d told her how bad it felt when she asked him when she was 12. At least they wouldn’t be using him to murder, well she hoped they wouldn’t.
“I’m going to get some essentials from the jet.” She said as she stepped away from the terminal, pushing the loose hair back from her face before calling her helmet forth. “I’ll be back before he’s awake.”
***
Morgan took a deep breath and wiped her face from tears when she arrived to the jet, she didn’t realise how hard rescuing James would be emotionally. She knew the conditioning would fade given a few months and then encouraging him to make choices for himself, but she was still terrified of them using him when they tried to complete their goals. They’d want to get Wanda and Pietro out of Hydra’s clutches in the next 6 months and she didn’t think the conditioning would have deteriorated enough for him to make his own decision about joining them. At least his primary directive would be a protective order.
She shook herself and gathered a few of the things they’d need for themselves and James; some meals, a change of clothes for James that he should feel comfortable in as well as some weapons for him. The outfit was somewhat similar to his Hydra gear from the fall of Shield but hopefully more comfortable and obviously without the face mask. She also picked up a tool set so she could perform some maintenance on the arm, Morgan did bring a more efficient model with them but she’d need help and a medical team to get it on him and replace the old model.
She was debating making contact with Coulson’s team but the presence of Grant Ward on the team put her off, they couldn’t risk letting a Hydra member know that someone was onto them and planning to dismantle their network. She knew they’d have to be careful with what they shared with people from this time and would have to weigh the pros and cons of every decision they’d make.
Morgan took a shuddering breath as she crouched down, looking down to the floor as she took deep breaths trying to calm herself down. She didn’t think this through. She thought they could hop back in time, save a few people, set some things in motion, help people prepare and no one on their side would die. God she really didn’t think this through at all. She was only 20. She fell back against some of the crates while she cried a bit. Maybe if she’d talked this through with Lila beforehand she’d have realised how futile this task would be.
“Morgan. You on your way back yet?” Lila’s voice came through on the comm system.
She sniffed and gave her face one last wipe before answering. “Just about to head back now. Anything you can think I might’ve missed?”
“Yea I warm coat for yourself, for when you get out of your suit.”
“Shit. Yea. I’ll be back in a sec.”
“See you in a few princess.”
Morgan smiled at the nickname as she stood up and grabbed a warm coat from one of the other boxes before grabbing the equipment she’d take back to the base with the stork drone.
***
Lila recognised the tone in Morgan’s voice. It was the tone that everyone had after they’d just been crying but didn’t want people to know. She’d used that tone more often than she’d like to admit; after her dad told her that Aunt Nat was dead and the killing spree he’d gone on during the blip. She was so angry that all it took for her dad to go on a murderous rampage against gangsters was his family to disappear.
They didn’t even disappear at the hands of gangsters.
If her family had been gunned down by some kind of mafia she might have understood him going on some kind of criminal cleansing. But it was aliens and he didn’t even take part in the final showdown before the blip. She was just so mad about everything and wanted him to understand how mad she was. It was a strong motivating factor. Her dad didn’t want her joining any of the spy organisations but she’d joined one anyway.
She looked from the defrost timer to James in the cryo. The glass of the tank was defrosted now and she could see him clearly, she was tempted to cut his hair for him but she’d rather give him the choice. James had understood her anger in some weird convoluted way, he wasn’t thrilled about how Steve had spent years trying to find him and then didn’t stay in the present with him in favour of creating a life with a woman he crushed on and kissed once. James taught her how to kick ass and survive more than her dad had, he also continued some of the training Natasha had taught her. Her dad only let her Aunt teach her the basics before he asked her to stop.
Lila was just glad that Loki was dead, or avoiding Earth. She’d have definitely at least debated sleeping with the Asgardian and rubbing her dad's face in it. God that was so cliche. At least she was pretty sure he wouldn’t be stepping foot on Earth anytime soon, if he did she might just be that cliche. She’d left her on again off again fuck buddy back in the future and the idea of getting with anyone in this timeline freaked her out a bit. She was expecting to be frustrated in the coming months.
“God damn it Lila.” She whispered to herself as she moved back to the terminal. “Shouldn’t have had that fight with Jason last week. Then you wouldn’t be thinking with your dick.” She heard Morgan’s repulsors bringing her down the hall and looked up. The suit was really not built for stealth. “We’ve got about 10 minutes left till he’s ready.”
Morgan nodded as she had the drone set the equipment down.
***
The 10 minute wait was the longest 10 minutes of their lives. As soon as the defrost cycle ended they raised the glass. Lila nodded to Morgan to stand next to James and monitor his vitals, and by monitoring his vitals they meant make sure he has any. As he started to rouse, luckily without needing a shock, Lila began reading the code words in the original russian.
“Longing, rusted, seventeen, daybreak, furnace, nine, benign, homecoming, one, freight car. Solider?”
“Ready to comply.”
Both girls took a deep breath in response.