Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Stephen has lost track of how long it’s been, sitting alone in his crystalline prison of his own making. Has it been centuries, or merely days? Even with the time stone in the Eye of Agamotto around his neck, time means nothing when there’s no universe dictating its flow.

So when the Watcher returns – looking defeated, and isn’t that interesting – Stephen almost feels… relieved?

Relieved isn’t the right word, but there’s really a lot of emotions going through his head (along with the hissing of dozens of the creatures he’s absorbed – but he reigns them back in for now) as he approaches the Watcher.

And oh, oh, the sweet irony in seeing this asshole here, begging for help – well, if he needles the Watcher a bit, he feels like its deserved. Can’t interfere my ass.

So Stephen agrees to help – even as the Watcher explains the dangers of this Infinity-powered android called Ultron – because at least it’s better than sitting around feeling sorry for himself.

---

At first, it seemed like the Watcher might just want Stephen’s help alone, which was… well, it would be fine. Probably. It probably would’ve been fine. Okay, well, the fact that the Watcher was almost bested by this android made Stephen a little nervous, so when the Watcher paused and stared for a moment, Stephen definitely felt relief then.

“No,” the Watcher had said, “maybe… yes. Yes, a team will work… much better.”

Stephen’s first thought had been, Ah, finally, other people to talk to. His second thought had been, Ah, shit, other people I’m going to have to talk to. He didn’t think talking to himself (the beings he had absorbed into himself) counted as ‘healthy social interaction’. He’d had his cloak, but it wasn’t quite as lively as his old Cloak of Levitation had been – he’d torn the cloak apart, not even a thought for his old friend – it tried, though, but it wasn’t quite the same as another person. He’d been talking with the Watcher for all of five minutes, it seemed, and it was the most interaction with another entity outside of himself since… since.

At least he was given a moment (so it seemed) to learn about who he would be working with. This T’Challa that had been chosen was one of the best thieves in his galaxy – this Gamora brought with her a device that could hopefully neutralize the stones – Captain Carter brought leadership and a sensible head, one that was open to input from teammates. He supposed Thor was there for the brute strength and the lightning – it would catch Ultron’s attention, at least. The only one he couldn’t quite figure out was Erik “Killmonger” Stevens – a murderer, a liar, singly determined in his own goal.

The Watcher picked them, though. The Watcher must have seen something in this Killmonger to warrant him being chosen – so Stephen would roll with it.

---

Being part of a group is actually quite enjoyable, Stephen thinks, even if he’s sort of awkwardly on the fringes of it.

The five chosen Guardians (Guardians of the Multiverse – not pretentious at all) are planning and plotting, running through scenarios of how they can stop Ultron. Stephen adds his input here and there – the Watcher adds even less, content to let them figure it out for themselves. You could tell us something, Stephen thinks, but if the Watcher has suddenly developed the ability to hear his thoughts, he doesn’t respond to it.

The Infinity Crusher has promise, though. T’Challa seems confident in his ability to grab one of the stones from Ultron, given the right distraction, and Stephen suggests the soul stone as the target. It makes the most sense – he doesn’t know much about the soul stone, but from what the Watcher has told them, he knows it is the stone that gives Ultron the ability to summon and control his army. Take out the army before it can even form, and it will be a much easier fight.

(Not that much easier, really – Ultron is powerful, regardless of the number of stones he possesses. He’s an android, lacking human empathy, and with a vibranium body that will be difficult to damage – but at least it would just be one foe, instead of an army of killer robots.)

They’ll start in a universe that never formed intelligent life, one that Ultron will overlook. Once they’ve gained Ultron’s attention, Gamora and Killmonger will go back to the universe Ultron originated from to set up the Infinity Crusher, and once the rest of them have the soul stone, they’ll lure Ultron back there and let the Crusher do its job.

Or at least, that’s the plan. But in Stephen’s experience, things rarely go according to plan.

---

Stephen starts setting up wards shortly after their arrival. Most of these are basic protection spells, and he tells his cloak to be alert, in case Ultron somehow finds them before they’re ready. With that done, he begins plotting out the higher-level protection spells for each individual on his team.

Except his control slips, for just a fraction of a second when Gamora questions the safety of this place, and his right hand forms into tentacles before he can stop it. He gets it back under control quickly enough, but still. It’s… embarrassing, to let others see. Stephen didn’t always keep up the façade of his humanity when alone in his bubble, but keeping it on around other people makes him hate himself and what he’s done a little less – helps him feel like less of the monster that he is - is probably for the best. (He remembers Christine’s reaction to the amalgamation of creatures he has become and he hated that hated it he never wants to see that kind of reaction again he’s sorry he’s sorry he didn’t mean for this to happen he’s sorry – )

Gamora hadn’t been looking at him, when she’d asked, when it happened. Killmonger is engrossed in studying the head of one of Ultron’s army, and hadn’t seen either. Thor and T’Challa were having their own conversation on the other side of their little camp, seemingly oblivious to Stephen’s slip.

But Captain Carter saw.

“Can I ask… what happened?”

Stephen breathes in, and lets it out as a sigh. He really doesn’t want to talk about this, but trust is important in teams, right?

“Same thing that happened to you… Love.”

It’s not a full answer, but he suspects she’ll understand, and she does. She changes the subject, asks about his universe’s Captain Carter – and he loves the way her eyes light up when he tells her that Steve Rogers, Captain America, is the one who received the serum in his universe.

He thinks they could be friends when all this is over, if they didn’t have to go back to their own universes – if they even survive.

Stephen proposes a toast. (It’s kind of shitty, but again, he hasn’t had a chance to talk to anyone else in a very long time. So sue him.) The arm around his shoulder as T’Challa takes over the toast is something Stephen hasn’t felt in so long, and he can almost feel the loneliness lift off of him. Yeah, he could become friends with these people easily.

Too bad Thor is really good at attracting unwanted attention.

---

Natasha Romanoff stares all six of them down, nothing but a gun in her hands. Thank the Vishanti that Peggy Carter is excellent at diffusing tense situations – her familiarity with her own Widow means that this one, battle worn and scarred and so very weary, is willing to give them a chance. (It probably helps that they have the same goal.)

When the Watcher said that Ultron had succeeded in wiping out all life in his own universe, he’d apparently missed one. Stephen wondered if the Watcher intentionally forgot to mention this, and promptly stopped wondering about anything when Ultron broke back through to this reality.

Oh man, who knew an android could get so pissed?

The blast Ultron released would definitely have killed them all, blown apart the planet, if Stephen hadn’t managed to absorb a cosmic being or two that ate supernovas for breakfast. It was easy enough to use the Eye to hold the time of the explosion steady, the power of the various creatures coursing through him to condense the energy down into the palm of his hand, and just – swallow it. D̴͍̮̭̑̒̌͠e̵̞̋̏͗̈́l̷̢͚̅͜i̴̟͌̽͆͘c̷̬̹͋͑͘ī̸̝̩̲̒̃͑̉o̴̺̿͝͠ǘ̶̧͕̲̯s̷̨͙̗̲̔, one of those cosmic beings thinks at him, A̶̰̤̍̆̊̌̒̽ ̵̗̖͉̦͊̓̽͘t̷͊̐̅͂ͅa̵͇͔͓̳͛̊͗s̴̢͇̫͎̓̽̃͜t̷̗̦̗̖̠̉̄̈̓y̴̡̝͎͘ ̸̢̡͛͗͊͛l̸̰͙͈̠̒̑i̴̞̣͊̎̏̓ẗ̷̤́͛̈́̉̔t̷̤͖̳̄̈́l̵̛͕̙̲̘̀͗e̶̼͉̕ ̵̛̞͕̟͍̘̍͛̅s̴̛̥̰̣͙͌̓̅̋n̶͔̔̋̅a̵̛̦͔̲̘͚͉͌̋͂͗͋ċ̶͙͙͙̜͔͒͜ḵ̷̢̖͒̀. Snack or not, that energy was definitely going to fuel him through this fight – and seeing the shocked look on Ultron’s face was totally worth it.

Keeping Ultron off-balance, not giving him a chance to think, to process, is certainly a viable strategy, but the soul stone is just sitting there, and when Ultron finally uses his time stone to make a grab for it –

Well, that just won’t do. Fuck it, Stephen thinks, and he hears the pleased hisses and shrieks of all those demons and magical creatures and cosmic beings in his mind as he does so. The last creature he’d absorbed, the one he sometimes has the hardest time controlling, the many-angled one, is begging to be let loose, so Stephen gives in, and lets it. A tentacle jerking the soul stone out of Ultron’s grasp while he counters the android’s time stone with his own is easy enough, but concentrating those tentacles, that power, on grasping an Ultron that is growing in size is – it’s way harder.

He feels Peggy Carter’s eyes on him, on those tentacles, and has the briefest moment to remember that she fought a many-angled one, in her universe – summoned by HYDRA to consume the world. (She survived, too – not many can say that.) Oops. Everyone is watching now, as he feels the façade crack and give way.

Well, he’ll have to deal with that later, if he has to. The raw power this form lends to his magic his useful, and he uses it to chain Ultron – and Gamora is able to give the soul stone to the Infinity Crusher, and the machine zeroes in on its target and does its job.

There’s a moment of silence, but then –

“I'm honestly surprised. Didn’t the Watcher warn you?”

No, the Watcher didn’t, thanks.

Stephen can feel the focus on him as the dust from Ultron’s quick, but powerful, energy blast settles again.

“You. It’s you. If I destroy you, you all fall.”

His eyes narrow, and he braces himself. Fuck.

---

Stephen’s first thought once the focus of that searing power suddenly ceased is, Thank fuck. Seeing Captain Carter – Peggy – and the Black Widow – Natasha – stumble across the barren landscape back to the group helps piece together what happened – they’d been blasted so far back, that they were out of the blast radius of that infinite power that had been centered on him when their protection spells failed. Natasha was explaining how she’d used Clint Barton’s bow to fire a special arrow containing some sort of computer virus, when a sharp gasp from Gamora caught his attention and he turned around.

His first thought upon seeing Erik – Killmonger – with those stones is, Aw fuck, not again. Even with the power of hundreds of other beings fueling him, he can only take so many direct blasts from a full set of Infinity Stones while also protecting the others.

His first thought when Killmonger says, “This is it. This is our only chance,” is – well, actually, his first thought is, Christine. He has to push that thought away, because really, while Stephen had a chance to research these people, see what the Watcher saw in them, has heard them tell tales of their pasts in those brief minutes before being launched into this fight, Stephen hasn’t told them shit about himself. The only one he spoke to at all about it had been Peggy, when everyone else was occupied (unless Killmonger overheard that regretful “love” when he was messing with that Ultron-bot head – and oh, that explained so much, now). Regardless of his feelings about it, he is not about to use those stones for himself. Using one stone got him into this mess in the first place – Stephen knows himself well enough to not trust himself (and all his demons) with a full set.

“Hand over the stones, cousin,” T’Challa tries.

“I’m not your cousin,” Killmonger replies. “I’m sorry it has to end this way.”

No you’re not, Stephen thinks, before he’s bracing himself again.

And then Ultron’s body is rising, with Arnim Zola’s face on the body, laughing, and a tug of war begins with the stones.

As Stephen watches, he has a moment of clarity – “We were never meant to win! We were here to separate the stones from the body.” Because that was what they had always planned – get the stones away from Ultron, so they could be destroyed. And maybe the stones couldn’t be destroyed, but – but…

It’ll be worth it, Stephen thinks, as he concentrates his power around Zola and Killmonger and the stones, the same way he did when he resisted the collapse of his own universe. They deserve the chance to go home. It’s worth it.

---

It doesn’t feel like that big of a sacrifice. More like – penance, for what he did to his own universe. (Maybe his universe had to die so Peggy’s, and Thor’s, and T’Challa’s, and Gamora’s could live? No, no. He can’t think about that, not if he wants to stay sane, or as sane as he can be, now.)

“I’ll watch. I have nothing but time.”

“Thank you, Stephen.”

I don’t need your thanks, Stephen wants to say, still a little bitter, still not sure how he feels about the Watcher. Instead, he goes, “Mmm. And besides… what are friends for?”

The Watcher may not be a friend, not yet anyway – still all those bitter feelings wrapped up that need to be untangled – but Stephen would call Peggy, Natasha, T’Challa, Thor, and Gamora friends, despite how little time they spent together. It feels good. It feels right. He’s doing this for them.

(Before the Watcher leaves, Stephen can’t help but sneak in one cheeky question – “Hey, if I’m watching this pocket dimension, does that mean I’m a Watcher now?”

The Watcher definitely rolls his eyes, but the fact that his eyes are glowing means the effect is largely lost. “No,” is the very exasperated reply. Then, a little fonder: “But thank you again, Stephen.”

And so the Watcher goes, back to send everyone else to their home universes, leaving Stephen alone with the tug-of-war pocket dimension. He resists the urge to shake it like a snow globe, even though he and the majority of the creatures sharing his headspace think it might be funny, and closes his eyes. What a hell of a day.)

Chapter Text

After the dust settles, Natasha expects the interrogation from Fury and the rest of SHIELD. She isn’t their Widow, after all. What she doesn’t expect is who they send to get it started.

“Coulson,” she breathes, and has to stop herself from rising to give him a hug. But she can’t quite stop the tears that form in her eyes.

He looks at her, head tilting a bit in that Coulson way. “Natasha? Wow, you really do look like her, at least – if you’re a shapeshifter, this is a really good ruse.”

She laughs, still a bit teary. “Well you look just like my Coulson did, so.”

He catches on to the word, just like she knew he would. “Did?”

With a deep breath, she nods. “Yeah. I only wanna explain this once, though. It’s a wild ride, Coulson, and kind of unbelievable, I’m not gonna lie. Some wounds are also still… very fresh, you know.”

And the first thing she learned, upon being brought to this universe, was that Clint was still dead. Killed by the same man who killed this version of her, and if it weren’t for the fact that she doesn’t know how to break in to an Asgardian prison, she would probably kill Hank Pym herself. (She’s an Avenger, after all.) It stings, a little, that she still doesn’t have him, but at least… she has Coulson, now. Fury. Steve. And if she’s cleared, she can go and see Laura and the kids, give them some small amount of comfort.

Coulson, though – Coulson understands, in that Coulson way she’s missed. “I know the boss wanted to have us do this separately, make sure your story checks out, but – I’m sure he can make an exception for you, Nat.”

She nods, and he goes. It isn’t long before Coulson returns, but Natasha is glad for the breather, the chance to gather her emotions and thoughts.

Fury follows Coulson in, and after him is Maria Hill. Steve trails in after – not unexpected, really – but then is the glowing woman Natasha saw on the battlefield. Carol Danvers, also known as Captain Marvel. Natasha never met her in her own universe, so she has no clue how the other woman fits in to all of this, but if Fury trusts her here, then Natasha is willing to as well. (She’s trusted weirder people with less thought, and oh, how that makes her wonder what the others are up to in their own universes.)

“Alright, Widow,” Fury says, and she can’t read the expression on his face, but she knows that’s intentional and doesn’t think much of it. He was a spy too, after all. “Let’s hear it.”

And so she tells them.

---

“Wait, so… I died?”

“That’s what I just said, Coulson.”

“Oh, no wonder you looked like you’d seen a ghost when I walked in.”

“Ha, ha. I’d guess you all felt the same way about me.”

“Well, you’re not wrong – ”

“Can we get back on track, people?”

“Sure thing, Fury.”

“Yup, sorry boss.”

---

“Hold on a moment,” Fury interjects. “You’re saying…” his voice drops to a barely audible whisper. “How many of these people are HYDRA?”

“A little less than a quarter,” Natasha replies, just as quiet. SHEILD was full of spies, good and not – no telling if the room was bugged or not, even if most of the people in the room had been trained to notice details like that. “This isn’t what directly led to my world being destroyed, exactly, but there are some details here that helped it happen. But yes. Pierce is the current leader. Sitwell is one of them, as is Rumlow. They’ve got Senator Stern under their thumb too. I can get you the full list when we’re done with the rest of the story.”

Steve catches her eye, just by chance, and she probably shouldn’t, but it’s part of the story, so – “Steve. HYDRA took Bucky Barnes, and turned him into their deadliest assassin, the Winter Soldier. That version of you, you had to fight him, and you couldn’t save him.” A breath. “If it happened there, it’s likely happened here, too.”

Steve’s eyes have widened to saucers. “Bucky?” he whispers. He turns to Fury, who looks confused. “Fury? That true?”

“I’m not one hundred percent sure,” Fury says slowly. “I’ve never met the Winter Soldier face to face. But he killed Hope van Dyne, in Odessa, and that caused this whole mess.”

At that, Natasha straightens. “That’s the thing, then,” she says, “that separates this universe from mine. In my universe, we were never able to recruit Hope van Dyne. I was the one on the mission in Odessa. I managed to make it out, even though the Winter Soldier shot through me to get to his target.”

“Fascinating as that is,” Hill cuts in, “we can revisit the differences between your history and ours later. Natasha, you’ve been very helpful with this so far, and if the information you have tracks, even with the differences, we will be extremely grateful. But you said your universe was destroyed, and that’s why you came to ours. What, exactly, led to it? Who do we have to watch out for?”

Natasha breathes in, then out, and continues on.

---

They’re all staring at her, gobsmacked, as she finishes the story.

“So,” Fury eventually says. “You decided that the best way to fight a killer AI was to use a different killer AI?”

“In our defense,” Natasha retorts, “Clint and I were literally the last people alive on the planet. I think we were the last people alive in the whole universe, at that point. Ultron had gone off into space to purge other planets. I remembered that Zola’s AI was analog, not digital, and I figured that if he’d spearheaded this whole HYDRA infiltration, then HYDRA would’ve kept more than one copy of him. It took a bit of digging through the KGB archives, but I was right, and it worked out in the end.”

“After people from yet more universes showed up,” Hill points out, and Natasha shrugs.

“Well, they were a very helpful distraction.”

“I have a question,” Carol says, speaking up for the first time. The entire rest of the conversation she’s been quiet, a looming presence in the corner. “Why not contact me?”

“I literally didn’t know you existed until I got to this universe,” Natasha replies honestly. “My Nick Fury never told anyone else about you, or how to contact you. He likely died in the nuclear minefield that Ultron set off before he could call you himself.”

Carol nods, looking pensive. “But if Ultron was able to start hopping around the multiverse unopposed,” she says slowly, chasing a train of thought, “that means he would’ve had to eliminate everyone who could oppose him. Assuming a version of me existed in your universe, this Ultron, powered by the Infinity Stones…”

Natasha shrugs when Carol trails off. “Yeah. To be fair, we had an Eldritch-powered sorcerer on our side, and he barely held in long enough for us to get the job done. Even with your powers coming from an Infinity Stone, when he had all six, you were probably no match. You could’ve caught him off guard, maybe, but once you were in a head to head, one on one fight with the guy, it would’ve been over.” Carol leans back with a nod, at the explanation. She’s obviously not too happy about it, but…satisfied, Natasha thinks.

“There’s another question I wanted to ask,” Coulson interjects. “You’re saying these other people came from different universes, from across the… multiverse. Should we be expecting them at our doorstep, too?”

“I don’t think so,” Natasha says, “unless Doctor Strange gets bored hanging out in that pocket dimension of his. The rest all had intact universes to go home to.”

“Aside from that Killmonger guy, you mean,” Hill snorts.

Natasha nods. “Yup. In his own pocket dimension, with Zola, playing tug-of-war with those stones for… forever, I guess. I wonder how a pocket dimension inside a pocket dimension works? Ah well. Like I said, that version of Strange is powerful enough to contain them if either of them ever wins and tries to break out. And if he couldn’t contain them, then the Watcher would probably be there in a heartbeat.”

“So just to be clear, this… Watcher, he’s just constantly… watching everyone?” Steve asks.

“I mean, I guess so,” Natasha shrugs. She wonders if he’s watching this conversation, but doesn’t voice that out loud. Instead, she says, “It’s literally his name, but he has…I don’t know, probably millions or even billions of universes that he can watch. He was alright.” She’s still a little mad that the Watcher couldn’t fix her world, that he hadn’t interfered sooner, but she’s come to realize that while he’s got incredible power of his own, it’s dedicated to maintaining realities, and travelling between them, not fixing worlds that broke because they were destined to break (depressing as it may be).

“Creepy as it may be,” Fury says, bringing her focus back to the here and now, “the Watcher isn’t an obvious threat. What we do have to worry about is our little…infestation. And maybe this Convergence thing that your Thor mentioned dealing with.” A sad sigh. “Guess we won’t have to worry about Ultron, at least.”

“No,” Natasha says, “but Gamora brought up a good point – in most universes, her father, Thanos, hunts down Infinity Stones. He only destroys half of all life – some thing about ‘balance’ – but it might be a good idea to start planning for him too. After all, we’ve got quite a few of them here on Earth right now. Who knows when he’ll come calling?”

(And Natasha is so, so very glad for the tip from Gamora. When they were all saying their goodbyes, Gamora had warned everyone about it – and seeing her face when T’Challa told her how he’d talked Thanos out of his plan, and gotten him to join the Ravagers instead, was honestly priceless.)

“So keep an eye out for weird magic activity in the next few years, after Doctor Stephen Strange has a car accident, because he and his magic order have the time stone,” Fury confirms. (Again, Natasha is so glad she managed to get this information from these people. Peggy had looked relieved, as well as Thor – it was good to know what they all might have to face, but also to know that there might be different versions of the Guardians they could find in their different universes.) “We’ve got the space stone in the Tesseract, and Loki’s scepter has the mind stone.” He pauses. “Are you sure we have to let… you know who… get their hands on it?”

“Well, it did give the Maximoff twins their powers, and they could be useful,” Natasha muses, “but no, we probably don’t have to, since we won’t have an Ultron to lead them back to the side of good. Keep an eye on Sam Wilson, though. He was good in a fight, especially with those Falcon wings. And it’s no replacement for Tony, but if Rhodes got his armor in this universe – ”

“He did,” Coulson confirms, and Natasha nods and continues.

“Alright, so see if he’d be willing to be on-call for a big emergency like this again. But, that’s all I’ve got for ideas.”

“It’s a big help, Widow,” Fury says. “Thank you again. Weird as it is to see you alive, and so different – well. Welcome back.” He makes towards the door, Coulson and Hill and Carol rising to follow. “We’ll make sure you get settled, before we get back to work.”

“Looking forward to it, boss,” she says, and Fury gives her a nod.

As the rest start to leave, satisfied, Natasha smiles at Steve, still sitting in his chair. “Now, Steve, I’m sure you’re begging to ask,” she leads, and Steve takes the opportunity.

“What was that version of Peggy like?” He’s so eager, it rushes out all at once, and Natasha can’t keep the smile from her face.

“Loyal. Kind. Brave. A great leader during that whole situation. Really fucking resourceful, too, and quick on her feet. A lot like you, Steve. It was the main reason I trusted her. She had her own version of me, back in her universe, and she knew me well enough to prove it.”

“If you ever see her again, tell her I said hello?” Steve asks.

Natasha’s smile softens. “I’m not sure if I will. The Watcher was kind of vague about…a lot of things. But if I do, I’ll tell her. Or,” she adds, a cheeky grin forming, “you can tell her yourself, maybe.”

Steve smiles, a genuine smile, and it lights up his whole face. Natasha missed this – missed seeing fresh-out-of-the-ice Steve, naïve to the modern world, ready to trust, ready to find a family again. (She thinks she’s ready to find a family again, too.)

Chapter Text

“Where’s Stephen?” T’Challa is the one to ask the question on everyone’s mind. “He vanished after doing… whatever it was he did to end things. Is he alright?”

“He is fine,” is the Watcher’s answer. When he doesn’t elaborate, Peggy can’t help but follow up.

“Are you sure?” she asks. “We all, you know…. were planning to say goodbye. And we wanted to thank him.”

“Indeed,” Thor chimes in, “without his protection spell, we all would’ve been toast!”

“He was the key member of our team, our plans,” Gamora adds. “He deserves thanks.”

Natasha nods. “We owe him our lives,” she says softly.

The Watcher is giving them a curious look, like he didn’t expect them to…to want to say goodbye? (Wow, what kind of assholes did he take them for?)

“Please,” Peggy adds. “We just want to say thank you, before we go back to our worlds.”

“…Stephen trapped Killmonger and Zola in a pocket dimension,” the Watcher finally says, “and he agreed to watch over it, to make sure neither of them escape.”

The rest of them all turn to look at each other, in various states of confusion. “Okay, and?” T’Challa asks after a moment. “I mean, if he can’t leave it alone, why not take it with him here to say goodbye?”

“Can it not leave his dimension for some reason? Would that weaken it?” Gamora questions.

“Did he just…not want to say goodbye?” Natasha is the one to quietly ask the loaded question no one else wants to think about.

But the Watcher is quick to reassure them on that front. “He’s bad with saying goodbye in general,” he says, and it’s soft, a little sad. (They wonder what the Watcher has seen in Stephen’s life to lead to that tone, but no one asks, not now. That seems like a question for Stephen himself, if he’s willing to answer it.)

“Well, uh, that’s just…too bad, then,” Thor says, a bit more hesitant than normal. “We’d still like to say goodbye to him.”

“See you later, maybe, if he’s bad with goodbyes,” T’Challa adds, before an idea strikes him. “Plus, you called us ‘The Guardians of the Multiverse’! Which, you know, sort of implies that we could all meet again, because we’re a team.”

“I’m pretty sure if we meet up again, it’s going to be because we need to fight another multidimensional threat,” Gamora snorts, but she’s got a smile on her face at the idea nonetheless.

“I mean, the Avengers hang out – used to hang out – all the time outside of missions,” Natasha says, and if anyone notices the way her voice threatens to break upon her slip-up, they’re kind enough to not mention it. She offers the Watcher a one-shouldered shrug. “Come on, man. You want us to beg? I’m not above that.”

The five of them all start to talk over each other, pleading with the Watcher. None of them can say for certain why they do so, but they can feel it’s important. They’re a rag-tag team from different dimensions, different timelines, but they came together in the heat of battle – and in the life of a hero, there’s no better way to bond. Even if they have to part ways at the end of the day, they’ve got camaraderie with each other – who else, in their home dimensions, is going to believe their stories from today, who else would understand?

The Watcher, for his part, looks a bit overwhelmed. He somehow did not foresee these heroes he’d plucked from across the multiverse banding together, just to spend more time with the Stephen Strange who broke his own world. (Not that they knew that…) He shouldn’t – he’s already broken enough rules – but still…

“Alright, alright, fine,” he says, and everyone quiets down. “Give me a moment.”

And the Watcher vanishes, for a split second –

(“Stephen.” Stephen almost drops the pocket dimension but recovers with a yelp, turning to look at the Watcher standing behind him.

“Thought you’d left to send the others home?”

“They want to say goodbye to you.”

“...You’re serious? Why?”

“They’re insistent on thanking you for protecting them.”

“Oh. That’s… that’s nice of them.”

“…So…?”

“Uh. Um. I mean…” Stephen looks around at his crystalline bubble, and then back to the pocket dimension he holds in his hand. He takes a breath. “Yeah, okay.” Goodbye’s are the worst, in Stephen’s opinion, but at least these people aren’t going to disintegrate in front of him after he desperately tried to bring them back to life (Christine, gods, he’s so sorry) – they’ll just be going home. “Uh, can I… bring this with me to the pub?”

The interdimensional pub sits in its own pocket dimension of sorts – between two other collapsed dimensions, outside of time and space and therefore unviewable to Ultron when he had ousted the Watcher from his gateway between worlds.

The Watcher blinks, squinting at the pocket dimension of death. “Hmm. Probably not the best idea, but – ”

“No, no, no sense in risking it after all that hard work, right?” Stephen sighs, fighting the smile trying to form on his lips. “Yeah, sure, bring them here, if they’re so insistent.”)

– before popping back in the blink of an eye. “Bringing the pocket dimension to different universes could destabilize it, so it’s safer staying in Stephen’s dimension. But I can take you there, if you still want to – ”

“Yes, of course we want to!” everyone exclaims at once. The Watcher sighs, but its fond.

“Alright, then.”

---

“Stephen!”

This time, Stephen is a little more prepared for his guests – or he thought he was. He was wholly unprepared for Thor to rush over and crush him in a hug. (As much as he’d learned about his teammates, he hadn’t quite yet learned that this Thor trusted easily, and wholly, and with this trust came backbreaking hugs.)

“Ack! Thor!”

“Ah, we thought something had happened to you! I’m glad to see you made it out alright!” Thor says, finally letting Stephen out of the hug. “And, oh, and we wanted to thank you properly, of course, for those magnificent protection spells! And all that crazy magic you did to stop Ultron, it was quite impressive!”

“Oh, ah, um,” is Stephen’s very coherent answer. He can feel a blush starting to form on his cheeks, and he wants nothing more than to melt into the shadows. He’d never been afraid of the spotlight before magic, when he’d been a doctor at the top of his field, but being the center of attention because you’re receiving an award for a revolutionary new medical technique was vastly different from all your friends teammates surrounding you and thanking you and smothering you in affection.

Speaking of which. As Thor finally left Stephen’s personal space, Natasha promptly invaded it, bumping her shoulder against his with a smile on her face. “Yeah, nice work doc.”

T’Challa stepped forward and clapped an arm around Stephen’s shoulders, eyes sparkling with his grin. “Yes, doctor, while you may be terrible at giving toasts – ” (“Hey!”) “– you were incredible with those spells!”

As T’Challa’s hand slips away, Gamora replaces it with her own. “Thank you,” she says warmly as she pulls away a moment later. “I’m glad to see you’re alright.”

And then Peggy is pulling Stephen into a hug of her own, not as crushing as Thor’s but still full of affection. “We were worried when you disappeared,” she says, pulling away but keeping her hands on his shoulders. “But yes, we’re all glad to see you well.”

“Oh, um. I… the protection spells were no big deal, really, just modified versions of a Guardian Vishanti spell to keep you all alive. And, uh, and I didn’t mean to make you worry – I’m sorry.” (I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry – )

Peggy’s hands are still on his shoulders, and she gives him a little pat, snapping Stephen back to the present moment before he can accidentally spiral into that rabbit hole of despair. “Well, next time, I’m sure you and the Watcher can take a moment to explain before you vanish on us, yeah?” she says, a soft smile on her face.

Stephen tilts his head. “Next…time?”

“Well, duh,” Thor says, leaning on a bemused T’Challa now. “We’re the Guardians of the Multiverse! Anything the big guy can’t handle,” he gestures back to the Watcher, who is watching as he always does in the background, “we’ll have to step in and help, of course!”

“Of…of course,” Stephen says slowly, and his eyes can’t help but dart to the pocket dimension that he’d placed on the ground a few steps away, before his friends (friends, yes, they were friends, how could they not be?) burst back into his life.

Everyone else’s eyes follow his, and Gamora, being the closest to it, goes to pick it up. “You made this?” she asks, holding it gently in her hand and examining it.

Natasha steps up beside Gamora, squinting at it. “Wow, you can even see them in there,” she murmurs. “It’s like a cursed snow globe.”

Stephen snorts at the absurdity of that statement (even though he agrees with it). “I don’t recommend shaking it,” he says, “mostly because I don’t want to break it and let them out again.”

Peggy and T’Challa both eye the Watcher, and they’re sure he can hear them, but they decide to just pretend he isn’t there, for now. “What would happen if they got out?” T’Challa asks as Gamora hands the dimensional snow globe back to Stephen. “If one of them wins that little tug-of-war, and decides to break free?”

“Well, they’d be trapped in here with me, so,” Stephen shrugs. But anyone can hear the twinge of bitterness in his voice, and looking around…

“This is…your universe, then?” Peggy asks, watching the light reflect off the prism-like walls surrounding them on all sides.

Stephen mentally curses himself (though some of the other voices in his head are saying things like ‘no, this is good, they are friends, they care, isn’t that wonderful? They can help you’) but he feels he has to answer with more than just another halfhearted shrug. “Well, it… yeah. It…was.” He prays they don’t ask further, but he knows one of them probably will –

“Damn, your world is way worse than mine,” Natasha says, and it’s not at all the response Stephen had been expecting to hear, and he almost laughs despite himself.

“You want to trade?” he asks instead, because deflecting the pain with humor is a valid response, thank you very much. Natasha snorts, an understanding smile on her face, but doesn’t comment further.

Thor looks like he wants to comment further, but a swift elbow in the gut from T’Challa stops that before it can even begin. “Whatever happened, we’re…sorry for your loss, Stephen,” T’Challa says, and his tone leaves no room for argument, no room for anyone else to try and pry into what, exactly, happened. But it’s also genuine, and Stephen appreciates that, though all he can muster in response is a slight nod.

“I’m also sorry for bringing it up,” Peggy says after a moment. “Never meant for this to get so depressing – we’d just wanted to make sure you were alright, before we all went our separate ways.”

Stephen manages to crack a smile, though he’s sure it looks strained. “It’s alright.” It’s not, really, but it will be, and that’s enough.

The rest are all collectively nodding and smiling at him, gentle and fond, and – and Stephen hadn’t realized how much he’s missed having friends until right now. These friends, especially – (they’re good for you, a few voices whisper in his mind) – these people are all just so genuinely good and kind, and he wants to cling to them desperately and not let them go, even though he knows he has to. (He’s learned a thing or two about being able to let go.)

But they seem to read his thoughts, and it’s T’Challa who reassures him: “Ah, well, we’ll make sure to make it up to you next time we see you.”

Stephen’s brain stalls a bit, before he remembers – yes, Thor was talking about a ‘next time’ before, but he still can’t quite comprehend that he will be allowed out, will be allowed to leave the pocket dimension and his self-imposed prison again.

Thor’s grin is bright enough to light a solar system as he suggests, “Oh, yes. I can throw us a fantastic party to celebrate our victory!”

Gamora pats his shoulder. “I don’t think a party is the best idea,” she says, and the way she says ‘party’ tells all the reasons why she thinks that, “but I wouldn’t be opposed to more of that Chinese food and some drinks, next time we meet.”

This is a bit overwhelming, and Stephen feels like he’s still trying to catch up with where the conversation has gone. Luckily, Natasha is very observant, and she slides up next to him as the rest get into a debate about the merits of Chinese food versus pizza.

“We really did just want to say thank you, and make sure you were okay before everyone else went home,” she says, and Stephen catches the way she says everyone else and not we, but doesn’t comment. He knows what she’s going through, after all. “We kind of bullied the Watcher into letting us come here, and at the same time we got him to agree to let us meet up, outside of saving the multiverse, and even if it’s just two or three of us at a time. Team bonding is very important, after all.” (Natasha may not have been picked originally, but she’s lost everyone else in her home universe – and like Stephen, she has the urge to cling to these people and keep them close so that she doesn’t lose anyone else.) She shrugs, here. “I’m not sure how we’re going to coordinate getting together, since we’re spread out across various universes, but we’ll make it work.”

Stephen takes all that in, and breathes out. “I almost feel like I should be thanking you,” he murmurs, watching as the other four seem to settle their debate by compromising on having Chinese food and pizza when next they meet. When he glances down to catch Natasha’s eyebrow raised in question, he elaborates, low enough that only she can hear. “I’ve spent the past… however long it’s been in here feeling sorry for myself, wishing I could go back and fix the mistakes I made that led to this. When I made this pocket dimension to end things,” he hefts said dimension in his palm, “and the Watcher asked me to keep an eye on it from here, I figured it was penance, of sorts. I’d just sort of accepted my fate to be alone again. So you all coming back for me, even just to say thank you and goodbye… I’d forgotten what it’s like, to have…people. So, thank you.”

Natasha looks at him, and he knows she understands when she knocks her shoulder into his, a sympathetic smile just lifting the corners of her mouth. “No problem, doc,” she says softly. “Glad we could help you, after you saved us.”

Stephen smiles back at her, before they’re both pulled back into the conversation the rest of the group is having. Gamora has started telling them all about her father, Thanos, and Natasha and Peggy and even Thor are listening with rapt attention. (“Oh, I won’t need to worry about that,” T’Challa says a bit cheekily, “given that I managed to convince Thanos to change his ways a few years ago. He even joined my Ravagers team!” The shocked look on Gamora’s face at what T’Challa says has everyone else in various states of laughter, because they’ve only just learned about the terror of Thanos and yet somehow T’Challa has already stopped the Mad Titan by having a good argument.) Natasha follows this up with what led to Ultron in her universe, and the warning signs to look out for, and everyone listens closely to what she says and compares it to their own timelines, and what they know about the events leading up to it, so they can be better prepared. None of this can affect Stephen, in his broken world, but it’s nice to hear his friends talk, and he only contributes the address of 177A Bleecker Street and the approximate timeline of when alternate versions of himself may go to seek out the mystic arts. (They are his friends, and he trusts them, but the details can change between universes and he still doesn’t really want to talk about it. They don’t seem to mind.)

Eventually, after what seems like forever and yet not enough time at all, the Watcher steps back into view, and they say goodbye, farewell, see you later. And the knowledge that they will see each other later, one way or another, makes it that much easier for Stephen to let them go.

Chapter Text

As much as T’Challa liked the Guardians of the Multiverse – that ragtag team of people from across space and time and reality – he is very glad to be back in his own universe, with his family.

That feeling lasts about 5 seconds before he remembers what he had been fighting before he was pulled away.

T’Challa takes a moment to reorient himself – he was literally put back right at the moment the Watcher picked him up. The man he’d rescued – Peter, judging by the nametag – was looking around, a bit wild.

“Wait, where did that guy go?” he was asking. “You kinda like – blinked? Like I blinked and you and the big cape dude were gone, then I blink again and you’re back! I mean, what is even happening?”

“Listen, Peter, right?” T’Challa cuts in, and Peter nods in affirmation. “Okay, Peter. I need you to focus on the here and now, and perhaps I can explain that ‘blink’, as you call it, once this battle is over.”

“Okay,” Peter breathes, and then with vigor, “Okay. Yeah, okay!”

“So Peter,” T’Challa asks, hearing an angry yell behind him but not yet turning to face it. “Do you know who, exactly, we are fighting here?”

“Oh. Um. Well apparently, that’s my dad.”

---

Peter Quill probably needs therapy, T’Challa decides as he gives the man a blaster to fire at his father. Or rather, the branch of his father. Apparently, Peter Quill is the son of some planetary Celestial, who wants to use him as a battery to turn the whole universe into… himself?

This Ego had been the one who hired Yondu to abduct an Earth boy twenty-odd years ago. Except Yondu had trusted his crew to get it done, and they’d grabbed T’Challa instead of Peter. And Yondu hadn’t gone back to fix this mistake, leaving Peter Quill alone on Earth.

Now, Ego had gotten tired of waiting, and had sent a piece of himself to investigate Earth and find his long lost progeny so his ‘expansion’ could begin. And even this construct was pretty damn hard to kill off – he couldn’t imagine going against an entire planet.

In short, even by T’Challa’s standards, this was weird.

---

It takes a lot of creativity on the part of his team, but they manage to destroy the construct sent to Earth. What to do about the actual living planet hunting Peter Quill down, on the other hand…

“NO! No way in hell,” Yondu was growling, “am I letting you get anywhere near him!”

“Come now, Yondu,” T’Challa tried. “If we do not cut him off at the heart, he will surely come for Peter again – ”

Yondu casts a quick glance at Peter, who is standing awkwardly at the edge of the Ravagers group, listening in with all the others. With a growl, Yondu pulls T’Challa to the side, and says lowly, “T’Challa, why do you think I didn’t go back for Peter when I knew you were the wrong kid?”

T’Challa blinks – he had never thought about it before. Or, well, surely he had, but after years in space with Yondu and the other Ravagers, coming to know them as family, well… he hadn’t had much reason to think on it again.

But. “You knew,” T’Challa says slowly. “Or at least, you suspected.”

“Exactly,” Yondu hisses. “I brought him several kids, over the years. Fucked up my relationship with other Ravager groups for doing that. We don’t usually deal with live cargo. When Taserface and Kraglin brought me you instead of Peter, I figured – I figured I could forget about it. Ego didn’t want you! Hell, he never even checked up on us again after we got you and left the other kid behind. But if I went back to Earth to return you… well, I would’ve had no excuse to not grab Peter Quill when I was back here, y’ understand?”

“I do,” T’Challa says softly, glossing over the fact that Yondu also wouldn’t have wanted to come back to Earth because it would’ve meant having to return T’Challa to his home. It went unspoken, but Yondu clung hard and fast to his family, a trait that T’Challa loved about him. “I understand, Yondu. But now we should do something!”

“Like what?!” Yondu’s voice has risen in volume, and the other Ravagers are listening in now. “What are we supposed to do against a freaking living planet?!”

T’Challa thinks for a moment, two, three, before an idea grabs him. He grins at Yondu, and suggests, “Why don’t we just blow it up?”

---

By some insane miracle, they actually manage to pull it off.

It’s no easy feat, of course – Ego controls the entire planet, but they have to somehow get into the core to really, truly destroy it. Luckily, Peter can also control the surface of the planet because of his lineage, and he seems happy to test his insane new powers against his actually insane father. The young woman they find on the planet, Mantis, seems happy to help as well – her empathic powers have been used by Ego to help him rest, to drain his emotions, but now she sees her chance for escape and turns those powers against him.

As he slips the small bombs in through the holes they’ve managed to blast through Ego’s core, though, T’Challa has a brief, fleeting thought: maybe I should have taken those Infinity Stones. It would have made this so much easier – But he shakes the thought away. He’s seen, now what the Infinity Stones can do, and he knows that by leaving them behind he made the right choice.

(The Infinity Stones still exist in his dimension, of course. He’d just stolen the power stone a few weeks ago, before the ruse with the Collector that led to him coming home to Earth again. He doesn’t doubt that he could find them himself, if he wanted, and stop this with a snap, with a thought – but he doesn’t. He knows better. He’s seen what absolute power like that does – it corrupts absolutely. (There’s always another way.))

T’Challa then briefly wonders if this is a situation that would warrant calling in the other Guardians of the Multiverse. Stephen, especially – the man not only deserves to get out of his destroyed, desolate universe every once in a while, but he is incredibly powerful and could probably put up an amazing fight against Ego. But no. They’ve all just barely come out of the whole Ultron debacle – the others deserve a chance to settle into their own universes again.

So T’Challa sets the small remote bombs, which float down to Ego’s core on vibranium drones – he has his sister Shuri to thank for this technology – and gives the signal through the comms channel to get clear of the planet’s surface.

They grab Peter, and T’Challa hits the button.

Ego the planet explodes brilliantly.

---

T’Challa finds her in her quarters on the ship, as he expected.

“Nebula,” he says, after a light knock on her door. “May I ask you a…strange question?”

“You just did, Cha Cha,” she says playfully, a little smirk on her face as she looks up. “But you can ask another one.”

He smiles at her banter, but then focuses. “Have you ever…been in contact with your sister? Gamora, right?”

He’s taking a risk, here. He knows that. The Gamora he met is likely very different from the Gamora of his home universe. But – Nebula had told him of her, a few years ago, a few years after he’d convinced Thanos to stop, to change. She’d gone off on her own, no indication of what exactly she planned to do, but had needed space, last he’d heard.

She will probably be different, T’Challa knows, but he can’t help but ask anyway.

Nebula blinks at his question, looks down at her hands. “I… haven’t.” She says after a moment. “…Why do you ask?”

T’Challa bites his lip. “Ah,” he says. “I suppose… meeting my family, my sister, again. Helping Peter with his family. It just… got me thinking.” He walks into her room, sits beside her on the bed. “I know… I know you don’t have the best relationship with Thanos. But from what I remember, you and your sister… you tried. She likely tried. You were both kids, trying... trying to survive.” He shrugs, not sure where he meant to go with this. “I don’t know, Nebula. The thought crossed my mind, and I figured I would ask rather than let it stew.”

She blinks at him, and brushes her hair behind her ear. (The metal shines around her eye, a stark reminder about why she still feels the way she does about Thanos.) “I reached out once,” she finally admits. “Gamora said she was fine, and that was it. Neither of us has contacted each other since.”

The tone sounds almost bittersweet, to T’Challa. He almost wants to push it, but – it’s a different universe. A different Gamora. He can be fine with the Gamora he knows, out there in another universe living her own life. This world’s Gamora can continue to live hers. (If they cross paths eventually, so be it. If they never do, that’s fine too.)

“Sorry to have brought it up,” T’Challa finally sighs. “Like I said, reconnecting with my family on Earth… just made me think.”

“It’s fine, T’Challa,” Nebula says, looking at him with the barest trace of a smile on her face. As he stands to leave, she reaches up and squeezes his shoulder. “My family wasn’t the best. But I’d be happy to get to know yours some more.”

T’Challa can’t help but smile.

---

They make it back to Earth. Peter Quill decides that it’s his turn to explore the galaxy, and T’Challa is happy to officially invite him to become part of the Ravagers. (In another universe, Peter Quill was taken that night. In another universe, Peter Quill has been part of the Ravagers for years. What a bizarre thing to know.)

And while they go off, T’Challa decides to stay, and spend more time catching up with his family. (In another universe, T’Challa was never taken. In another universe, T’Challa is the Black Panther, crown prince of Wakanda, living happily with his family. (In Killmonger’s universe, T’Challa is dead. Best not to think too hard about these things.))

Nebula, as promised, stays behind too. She’s curious about how Earth families work, about how Earth in general works. Shuri is all too happy to show her around the lab, and she introduces both of them to the wonder of Internet memes.

T’Challa doesn’t bring up the multiverse to any of them. He’s not really sure how he would go about doing so anyway. Even for Wakanda, even for space, it’s a strange tale and hard to believe without having been there for yourself. But maybe one day he’ll be able to introduce both his space family and his Earth family to his multiversal friends.

For now, though, he’s content to learn about the viral sensation known as cat videos.

Chapter Text

Natasha is standing over Batroc, jokingly asking Peggy if he’s her type, but Peggy’s mind is focusing on Natasha.

Its her Natasha, too – not that the other Natasha she’d met in the apocalyptic wasteland of an alternate dimension wasn’t good, wasn’t a sight to behold, but this Natasha is familiar in a way the other wasn’t.

(Other Natasha – gosh, how was Peggy meant to keep track of this? – Other Natasha was from a world where Steve had received the serum, and become Captain America, and gone on to crash a plane carrying Red Skull and the Tesseract into the arctic ice, freezing himself in time for seventy years until he was found and thawed. Freeze-thawing like that, though, sounded unbelievable even to Peggy – much simpler to just be on the other side of a portal where time and space are a disaster, so seven minutes there equates to seventy years in the real world. But anyway.)

Anyway. She really, really is happy to see her Nat again. Because this Nat is her best friend – and this Nat is safe (or as safe as any Black Widow can be). This Nat hasn’t gone through an apocalypse and come out the other side as the only survivor. Peggy doesn’t have to worry (as much).

Or, well. She does. But right now, she can just be glad to be back in her own universe.

---

Nat shows her the Hydra Stomper – obviously upgraded with more modern technology, but otherwise looking almost exactly as Peggy remembers.

For a brief moment, she wonders if Steve is in there too, before she remembers – no, that’s not possible.

One of the first things Peggy did after arriving in the twenty-first century was look up her old friends from the War. Seeing that Howard and his wife Maria had died in a car crash was terrible to see – but their son, Tony, reminded Peggy of Howard in a way she hadn’t realized she’d missed. The snark and sass, it was such a mirror image of Howard that she almost hadn’t understood why Tony seemed bitter every time she compared him to his father – it had finally clicked, one day in the gym, that Tony and Howard would have been too similar and therefore clashed, and once Peggy had that final puzzle piece, she’d been better able to connect with Tony and find the tings that made him Tony.

Bucky Barnes and the rest of the 107^th had retired and lived relatively peaceful lives after the war ended. Bucky was still alive; Peggy went to visit him once, just to have that closure. He’d smiled, the same smile she remembered even if it was on a face with far more lines than before.

But Steve Rogers – Steve hadn’t made it into the new century either. Even with the advancing of technology, Steve had grown up with a myriad of health problems. Peggy knew this – it was what had prevented him from being able to join the army, and was why he’d wanted to take the super-soldier serum. (The serum she’d taken, because he’d been shot and was bleeding out, and could the serum have healed those gunshot wounds? Well. No use thinking about it now. In other universes, Steve Rogers had become Captain America; here, she was Captain Carter, and Steve Rogers had been the Hydra Stomper.)

Even more modern medicine couldn’t save Steve – he’d caught a particularly nasty strain of flu in the mid-1970s, and gotten a secondary pneumatic infection along with it. Flu and pneumonia have never played well with asthma, and Steve hadn’t lived to see his 60^th birthday.

She’d visited his grave once, after SHIELD had cleared her once she’d returned through the portal, after the Avengers had formed, after they’d cleaned up the mess Loki had made. Natasha and Clint had been with her for support. And she knew Steve’s body was in the ground – when she’d visited Bucky, he’d confirmed that he’d been there with Steve until the end.

So – so this ship had the Hydra Stomper armor. But there was no one inside the armor, no Steve Rogers waiting. Peggy breathed in, breathed out.

(She’d hoped. She did. She’d just come back from the insanity of the multiverse, after all – nothing was impossible. And other-Nat – Peggy needed a better way to distinguish the two – other-Nat had briefly told Peggy about what was about to happen, after this Lumerian Star mission. How in her timeline, Bucky Barnes had been presumed KIA after attacking that Hydra train, but had really been captured by Hydra and brainwashed into the Winter Soldier. How Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD, and sent the Winter Soldier to kill Nick Fury and Steve Rogers and Natasha as well. But in her own universe, Peggy knew Bucky was alive and well, and that Steve Rogers – well, if she didn’t know for certain that he was dead, she would’ve thought that he could have been her Winter Soldier. But.)

“Sorry that there’s no one inside,” Natasha was saying, snapping Peggy back to reality.

“No, it’s… it’s all right,” Peggy sighed. “If he’d been inside, it…it would’ve been worse, wouldn’t it? He would’ve been a prisoner for all this time… I wouldn’t have wanted that for him.” She blinks, looks at the Hydra Stomper again before turning back to Nat. “Let’s just… let’s get it out of here, yeah?”

---

Peggy gets back to her apartment in Washington, DC, after the Lumerian Star mission, and has to sit and just process it all.

Bloody hell, is it a lot to process.

Other-Nat had given everyone the rundown of the events leading up to Ultron’s creation, but Peggy knows now that a vast majority of that information was for her – was a warning for her.

There is no Winter Soldier in this timeline, of that Peggy is almost certain. Hydra will likely be enacting a plan similar to the one they did in Other-Nat’s universe – Peggy has already seen Project Insight, she knows what’s coming next. The fact that there will be no Winter Solider or equivalent to slow her down is something, but the minor changes can sometimes have the biggest consequences.

(She thinks of Stephen, of T’Challa, of Gamora – even of Killmonger. She thinks of the other Thor, so much younger and jubilant and naïve compared to the Thor she knows here. She thinks of Other-Nat, battle weary and so, so tired...)

She’s already met Sam Wilson, the man Other-Nat said helped her and Steve put a stop to Hydra’s plan. Sam Wilson seems like a good man, one Peggy could become friends with. (And maybe she’ll take him up on his offer of veteran’s counseling, once this is all figured out.) She’d just gotten done yelling at Fury about Project Insight, something she hadn’t known the details of before the Lumerian Star – but she does now. She knows now that Fury has figured out Hydra’s infiltration, and that Hydra are about to attempt to kill him because of it.

Peggy breathes in for four seconds, holds it for seven, exhales for eight. She calms herself, gets her thoughts in order.

Some of the players are different, but she’s forewarned of the events to come. She is confident that she can get everyone she cares about out of this alive.

---

Nick Fury shows up at her apartment later, injured, just as Other-Nat had said. He gets shot, just as Other-Nat had said – but it isn’t Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, who does it. It isn’t Steve Rogers either. It isn’t even the Hydra Stomper suit. It’s just… an assassin, she supposes. She pursues, briefly, but loses them before she can even throw her shield.

Secretary Alexander Pierce confronts her after Fury is pronounced dead. She tells him that Fury told her not to trust anyone, and leaves it at that. She’s cornered in the elevator, and fights, and runs. She meets Natasha, with the data stick and that damned algorithm, and they head to a mall to hack into it, then to trace its source. (She already knows that it’s Zola, that it’s Hydra, but she hasn’t had a free second to tell Natasha about it, about the multiverse – and she’s not sure if Natasha would even believe her, best friends or not, not while this shit is actively going on. So Peggy has to let this play out.)

Rumlow and a strike team pursue them, and Peggy finds herself on the escalator with Natasha, riding down, and Natasha spots Rumlow riding up.

“Kiss me,” Natasha says, and Peggy feels her cheeks heat up with the intensity of her blush. “Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable.”

“Yes, they do,” Peggy squeaks, and then her brain is short-circuiting as Natasha pulls her forward and kisses her. (She’ll revisit this after they’re safe from Hydra. Things like this – a woman loving another woman in the way Peggy thinks she might love Natasha – weren’t openly talked about in the 1940s. It’s different now, she knows, but she and Natasha have a job to do before Peggy can sort out her feelings.)

---

They make it to Camp Lehigh, and find the computer banks of Arnim Zola.

Seeing him again, hearing him again, makes Peggy’s blood boil. She and Natasha barely survive the strike, but she’s glad that this base is gone. (When she has a minute – again, after this is all over – she plans to head straight to Siberia, where Other-Nat said another copy of Zola was stored, and torch the place so that he can never come back.)

Sam Wilson, saint that he is, lets Peggy and Natasha stay and recover and regroup. They target Sitwell, and Peggy lets Natasha kick him off the roof to her immense satisfaction. Sam and his impressive Falcon wings catch Sitwell, and drop him back on the roof, where he spills everything they wanted to know.

“Zola’s algorithm is a program… for choosing… Insight’s targets. … You… a high school valedictorian in Iowa City… Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange, anyone who’s a threat to Hydra, now or in the future.”

And Peggy – Peggy’s brain stalls at the mention of Stephen Strange. It’s only 2014 here, and Stephen had told her his accident occurs in early 2016. He’s not being targeted because of his magical abilities; he’s just being targeted because he’s an intelligent doctor who could still, somehow, threaten Hydra.

“How could it know?” Peggy demands, pushing the worry from her mind as best she can.

“How could it not?” Sitwell retorts. “The twenty-first century is a digital book. Zola taught Hydra how to read it. Bank records, medical history, voting preferences, emails, phone calls, MSAT scores! Zola’s algorithm evaluates people’s pasts to predict their futures.”

“What then?” Peggy finds herself asking, even though she already knows the answer.

“Oh my god, Pierce is gonna kill me,” Sitwell mutters, before he replies: “Then the Insight Helicarriers scratch people off the list… a few million at a time.”

---

Maria Hill saves their asses after they get into a car chase and subsequent shootout with Hydra operatives who are still posing as SHEILD. They’re led to a super secret and super run-down base, under a dam, where they find Nick Fury – alive. (Not well, but – alive.)

Peggy doesn’t like it, but – but she does understand. She might have pulled something similar, in his position – fake her own death, because you can’t kill someone who’s already dead.

They have override chips that will take down the carriers and stop Hydra. They come up with a plan – Peggy and Sam will insert the chips, while Maria assists from the ops center and Natasha infiltrates the Security Council meeting. They plan to dump Hydra’s files out onto the Internet for all to see – but that includes dumping everything of SHIELD’s as well.

(“It worked, but it also hurt a lot of our own agents that were out in the field,” Other-Nat admits to Peggy, when the others sidetrack into a different topic as they all prepare to go home. “At the time we were panicked, honestly – didn’t know who to trust, and that clouded our judgment. We should’ve brought in Tony, or at least gave him a heads up so he could have done damage control on those files earlier.”)

Peggy suggests they call Tony – JARVIS has never been able to be hacked by SHEILD, not unless Tony told JARVIS to let them in. But really, who else can they call? Peggy can’t, in good conscience, let things play out the way they did in Other-Nat’s universe.

And the plan works. Peggy and Sam get the chips in, and Maria sets the Helicarriers to fire on each other, and Peggy and Sam are able to make it out without major injuries (it helps that there is no Winter Soldier to worry about). Natasha dumps the SHIELD files, but Tony has JARVIS ready and they’re able to prevent anything unnecessary from leaking out into the world. Hydra is destroyed – for now.

Cut off one head, and two more shall grow. Peggy is sure there are other Hydra cells out there – after all, that’s what leads to Ultron, according to Other-Nat. That’ll be what she has to worry about next.

But for now – well. There’s a lot of information in those SHIELD and Hydra files that even Peggy didn’t know about.

Tony calls her, not even a week after the Helicarriers have crashed into the Potomac. “Thanks for bringing me in on this,” he says, but his voice sounds off – strained, maybe like he’d been…sobbing? “There was…yeah, there was a lot of shit in those files that shouldn’t be out in the world.”

“You managed to keep all of the active agents safe?” Peggy asks, because that is probably a relatively safe question.

“Yeah, oh yeah,” Tony replies. “They’re fine. The ones who were on missions linked with Hydra, but who were actual SHIELD agents, we got them out just fine. A lot of them are coming to SI now, did you know that? Hill’s joined in, even.”

“That’s…good. I’m glad to hear it,” Peggy says. She doesn’t know if she should ask about what has him upset, because – she doesn’t know Tony Stark that well, not really. They’d butted heads, when they first met during the forming of the Avengers. He’s too much like his father, and the reminder of Howard throws Peggy off – because Tony is also so different from Howard, and she sometimes forgets that, but she’s trying to do better.

“Hey, you wanna know something – something crazy that I found on those files?” Tony asks suddenly, but it feels like he’s going to tell her regardless of her answer, so.

“I’m not sure I want to, the way you sound,” Peggy says slowly, “but…what did you find?”

“My parents were murdered,” Tony says bluntly, but she even over the phone she can tell he’s trying not to break down sobbing. “They – I guess Hydra decided to see if someone else could pilot that stupid Hydra Stomper suit, and dad had something they wanted, so they killed him, and they killed mom too just because she was with him that night.” He takes a deep, shuddering breath. “And they covered it up. Obadiah was in on it, though now that doesn’t surprise me. For all these years I thought – I thought my dad was drunk, and that he killed mom, and I hated him for it, and it turns out it was all a lie.”

“Oh, Tony, I’m so sorry,” Peggy says, because what else can one say to a revelation like that? And no wonder Tony had always taken it badly when she’d compared him to Howard, if he’d thought Howard killed Maria Stark because he drove while drunk. “I…I’m so sorry. I…is there anything I can do for you?”

Tony laughs, but it’s bitter, humorless. “Thanks, Cap,” he says, “but I’ll be okay.”

“If…if you’re sure,” she says hesitantly, because that doesn’t sound like a man who’s okay. But – Tony is an adult. Technically, he’s older than her.

“Yeah,” Tony sighs, and ends the call. Peggy looks at the phone in her hand, bites her lip.

This is different, she’s sure. She thinks Other-Nat would have mentioned something like this, if it had happened. But Tony hadn’t been involved with the downfall of Hydra for Other-Nat – Peggy called him in, which led to him getting access to all of Hydra’s and SHIELD’s files as they were dumped, which led to him finding out that his parents were murdered by Hydra.

She sighs, falls back into her couch and tossing the phone onto the coffee table. Now that Hydra and SHIELD have fallen – this is where it starts for real. She has one year, or maybe less, before Ultron is created. She has one year to figure out how to tell Natasha and Tony, and Clint and Bruce and Thor, about the multiverse, about what she’s learned from Other-Nat – and from Gamora, because if they survive Ultron, they’ll have to contend with Thanos, hunting down the Infinity Stones – at least two of which are on Earth. The mind stone, still in Hydra’s hands, currently being used to give Wanda and Pietro Maximoff powers – and the time stone, protected by sorcerers – including Stephen Strange, once he delves into magic here.

That has her pausing. Peggy wonders if she should reach out to this Stephen Strange, become his friend before the accident, so that he has someone to turn to after it’s all said and done. Stephen didn’t tell her or the others much about what, exactly, led to him becoming a sorcerer – just that there was an accident, and that it somehow involved someone he loved. (She has no way of knowing that in this universe, Stephen Strange and Christine Palmer have just broken up. They will remain friends, even if their friendship is still a bit rocky, but no one else will be with Stephen the night of his accident – so he will lose his hands, not his heart.) Stephen Strange, Peggy thinks, could use a friend during that time – if she can even figure out how to become his friend.

Okay. She has the outline of a plan, now. Step One: the next time she can get all (or most) of the Avengers together, she tells them about the multiverse. (Maybe she can get the Watcher or Stephen to pop by and help her convince them? Actually, she wonders if this is even allowed. Oh well – she’s going to do it anyway, consequences be damned. She’s fairly certain the outcome will be better in the long run.) Step Two: make contact with Stephen Strange if possible. Step Two A: if contact with Stephen Strange goes well, become his friend, support him after the fateful accident, but let him go on his journey to becoming a sorcerer. Step Three: deal with Ultron, if he is still created after revealing the multiverse to Tony, as well as deal with the Maximoff twins. Step Four: somehow establish contact with T’Challa, prince of Wakanda. (T’Challa had told them all that he was likely not a Star-Lord in other universes; he was born Prince of Wakanda, destined to become the Black Panther, a King. The space thing was a unique accident for him.) Step Five: figure out how to contact Gamora in space; may not be possible before step six. Step Six: figure out how to deal with Thanos when he inevitably comes to find the Infinity Stones located on Earth.

Well, alright, it’s not a perfect plan, but at least it’s something. Peggy can edit it as she goes.

For now – for now, Peggy rolls off the couch and heads to her bed. For now, she just wants to sleep.

Chapter Text

Natasha sits in her car, staring at the farmhouse ahead.

It looks like any normal house out here in the countryside – there’s nothing too remarkable about it. There’s a barn next to the house, a field beyond that, and some toys left scattered about in the front yard and driveway. By all standards, it’s a perfectly normal house.

Except to Natasha, it’s not.

Natasha looks at this house and sees ghosts – the ghosts of the Barton family she knew, back in her old universe. (It’s the same house, after all.)

(She and Clint never went back to the house after Ultron launched the nukes. The two of them had had to stay in the air for as long as possible, until they were so low on fuel they had to land. Was it luck or preparedness that led Tony to put radiation gear in the Quinjet? Regardless – the Earth was nothing more than a nuclear wasteland, now. So many dead… Even in rural isolation, the fact that there were no calls from the Barton homestead in the days that followed were the clear sign that none of them had survived. Why go back when all that waited was more heartbreak?)

She’s gripping the steering wheel tight enough that she can feel it start to creak, and she has to take a deep breath and force her hands to unclench.

She doesn’t know why she thought she could do this, and yet she knows exactly why she’s come.

Laura and Cooper and Lila – they’re alive, here, but Clint is dead. Clint died here, framed for murder by an insane Hank Pym, and Clint died there, sacrificing himself to give her and Zola a few precious moments to escape and form a new plan. (It’s not fair that she’s alive. In another universe, Clint Barton thinks it’s not fair that he’s alive and Natasha is dead – but that’s another story altogether.)

The Bartons deserve closure. Coulson had told them about Clint’s death – and the death of Natasha’s original counterpart here – months ago, when it had happened. And he had told them about Natasha’s arrival, too. That was just a few weeks ago – and Natasha had been cleared to visit the Barton farm since then – but she just…

(“Does it ever bother you?” Stephen asks, breaking the easy silence between them.

Natasha looks over at him – they’re both just laying on their backs in Stephen’s broken dimension, watching the lights dance on the prism walls. She visits him whenever the Watcher lets her, even when all they do is sit in companionable silence and stare at nothing for a few hours. She understands what he’s gone through, better than any of the others. And she thinks she knows what he’s asking, but she lets out an inquisitory hum anyway.

“That you’ve taken the place of a dead you,” he clarifies.

Natasha looks back up at the sky of nothing. “Sometimes,” she admits. “Even now, people still look at me like they’re seeing a ghost. But I look at them and see the ghosts of the versions of them that I knew, too.” She pauses, and then sighs as she sits up, hands around her legs and resting her chin on her knees, all one fluid motion. “I still sometimes think it’s all a dream – that even you’re a dream, and that I’ll wake up back there, before you all came, with Clint dead and a crazy AI that used to be a man on a USB-arrow, alone.”

Stephen sits up too, just as graceful as her. They’re not looking at each other, but they’re sitting just close enough to reach out and touch each other, should they want to or need to.

“The Watcher offered me the same deal,” he admits. “It was only – ah, who the hell knows how long ago it was, I kind of stopped keeping track of time in here.”

“Ironic,” she says with a small grin, nodding to the Eye of Agamotto holding the time stone around his neck. He snorts, amused, and turns to look at her.

“I said no,” he continues in a more serious tone. “I said no, partly because of the same thing you just said – I don’t want to look at ghosts of what once was, and have them look at me the same way. I also… don’t want to risk making the same mistakes I did here. And, plus,” he sighs, looking down at the arm closest to her, which has morphed into a bunch of tentacles on its own accord. “There’s that.”

“Is it a big taboo, to…do what you did?” she asks, as the tentacles find her hand and wrap around it. She gives them a squeeze – it’s the same as any other time she’s given Stephen a reassuring squeeze or nudge, aside from the suckers that try to cling to her skin.

“Well, it was in the ‘do not try this at home’ section,” he quips. There’s a smile on his face as he says it, but his eyes are still haunted and filled with guilt, and the smile falls away quickly as he looks at the tentacles gripping her hand. “No, most of the other masters at Kamar-Taj would…not approve, to say the least. Plus – well. Ghosts, like you said.”

She knows what he means – she’d gotten bits and pieces of his story, over time, enough to piece together the full thing, or something close at least.

“Yeah. I’m…going to finally visit my ghosts, I think. I got the clearance for it, anyway.” She gives his tentacles another gentle squeeze. “If it weren’t for the fact that there’s still a Stephen Strange, alive and well and very successful at neurosurgery, in that world, I’d invite you to come with.”

“Why?” His question somehow comes across as both genuinely curious, and also extremely full of self-loathing – ‘why would you want someone like me there?’

“Well, the selfish reason – you’d be moral support for me. The other reason – you need more positive human interaction.”

“Gee, thanks,” Stephen deadpans, and Natasha tries to cover her giggle with a snort.

He finally pulls his tentacle-y appendage away, and shakes it back into a human hand. (She’s impressed that he left it for so long, honestly – it doesn’t really bother her anymore, but she knows he hates when he can’t keep better control of it.) “Natasha, I don’t know how you do it there, sometimes. You see all those ghosts and yet you keep on living with it. I don’t…I don’t think I could do it.”

“Sometimes I don’t think I can do it either,” she admits, shifting so that she can lean on his shoulder. He doesn’t say anything – she knows it helps to ground him, too. “But...if I don’t, then what was it all for, you know? It may not be quite like home, but I still think I can make it better. It’s what Clint would have done, what he would have wanted me to do, so when I don’t think I can do it, I do it anyway, for him.”

He absorbs that, and while he does so Natasha lets out all her tangled emotions in a sigh. The Watcher is going to take her back to her new dimension soon, but for now she and Stephen can continue to just exist together – two survivors from worlds long destroyed.

“Good luck, when you go to talk to them, Natasha,” Stephen says before she goes. She turns to give him a smile, and then, just for the hell of it, she gives him a quick hug. He’s only stiff with surprise for a second before he’s hugging her back. (If the shadows around her flicker, as though great wings are trying to enfold her in a hug too, she doesn’t say anything.) She leaves him with a promise to be back in another three weeks or so of her time, and a renewed confidence and hope in her chest.)

Natasha reaches for that confidence she had when she left Stephen that day, and digs for the honesty that she could always express with Clint and Laura, and finally gets out of her car and walks to the door.

---

To say Laura Barton had been having a rough time was putting it lightly.

She always knew, in the back of her mind, that she could lose Clint on a mission someday. But as time moved on, it became less of a constant worry, only popping up when he was unable to call or text at their agreed-upon times. The longest she’d had to go without hearing from him was 2 days – but he had brought Natasha Romanoff back with him, and Laura couldn’t stay mad at him for that.

But this time, it wasn’t Clint who had called, offering apologies and jokes and reassurances. This time, it was Phil Coulson, and… and…

Telling Cooper and Lila had been the hardest part. That they’d not only lost their father, but their Auntie Nat as well.

But – well. Life had to go on. Laura picked up the pieces and did her best to figure out where to go next.

Then Phil had called again, but with…stranger news.

“This is going to sound so, so weird,” he’d said, “but Natasha is alive. But she isn’t the Natasha you know, Laura.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Phil?” she’d spat after taking that in. “If this is – is some sick joke that you guys are playing at SHIELD – ”

“No joke, I promise,” Phil said, and he was so sincere that it had calmed Laura down. “I… I couldn’t believe it either, not until I had seen it.”

“Will I get to see her, then?” Laura had asked.

“Now that you’ve been informed, she’s got the clearance,” Phil replied. “She’s been... settling in, the past week. That’s all she’s been here, really – a week and a day. She showed up during that fight with Asgard, literally out of nowhere – but she knows everything Natasha should know, and more. It’s… it’s weird, Laura, I won’t lie. But – do you not want her to come?”

Laura… didn’t really know, truthfully, and yet she said, “No, of course she can come here – if she wants to, of course.”

“Of course,” Phil had said, before he wished her and the kids well, and hung up. So Laura had to figure out how to explain to her kids that Clint was still dead, but Natasha was back, but not the same – and Cooper and Lila were bright, but this was confusing enough for Laura; she couldn’t imagine what her kids were thinking.

It had been almost two months since that conversation with Phil, and Laura was beginning to wonder if this Natasha had changed her mind about coming, when there was a knock on her door.

“I got it, kids!” she calls as she hears the thunder of footsteps racing to get to the stairs. She gets to the door and pulls it open just as Cooper and Lila appear behind her –

And they all freeze, taking in the ghost standing in the doorway.

“Hi, Laura,” the ghost of Natasha says, a watery smile forming on her face. “Hey Coop, hey Lila. Can – can I come in?”

“Natasha?” Laura breathes, stepping forward. The ghost nods, composure cracking, and Laura takes her in – how this ghost still stands the same way as the Natasha she knew, but this one is a bit older, and has new scars, and a weariness in her eyes. But those eyes – Laura would still recognize them anywhere.

“Natasha!” And Laura is rushing forward and embracing Natasha in a hug – a hug that is eagerly returned. She’s getting tears on Natasha’s shoulder, but she’s pretty sure Natasha is crying too, so who really cares. “Natasha, it…it’s really you?”

“It’s me, Laura,” Natasha says, almost choking on a sob. “It’s me – and you’re here.”

“Auntie Nat?” That’s Lila, eyes watering and lip quivering, looking so hopeful and yet so unsure. Cooper shifts behind his sister, biting his lip, but his eyes look wet as well.

“Yeah, Lila, c’mere,” Natasha breathes, pulling out of Laura’s hug but not moving away. She instead bends down to catch Lila in her arms as Lila breaks out into tears. With a beckon from Natasha, Cooper rushes forward to embrace Natasha as well.

---

It’s almost eerie, seeing Laura and Cooper and Lila without Clint. There’s a hole missing in their dynamic that isn’t just due to Natasha being from another universe – but with time, she thinks it could slowly heal.

They ask. She tells them. They all cry together about their losses across both universes.

Even with these differences, Lila and Cooper take to Natasha just like they always had before. Natasha stumbles a bit, but quickly falls back into the familiar dynamic she had with Clint’s two kids as Auntie Nat.

She had been worried that it would be different with Laura, because now they didn’t have Clint there as their middleman, their glue. But she falls back into their dynamic with surprising ease.

It helps Natasha, and she can tell it helps them too. Clint is gone, but they can all still cling to each other and push forward. So Natasha makes it a point, after that first visit – she goes back to the Barton family farm, at least once a month, or calls Laura and the kids if she can’t go. It becomes part of her routine: work with SHIELD, train with Steve and Carol (and more recently, Rhodes and Wilson), visit Stephen and whoever else is able to show up in his dimension, and visit the Bartons. It settles something in her, a bit.

She leans on Laura’s shoulder, now, watching Lila and Cooper fire arrows from their own little bows at targets posted on trees in the yard. (“To remember dad,” they’d said when Laura had asked them why they wanted their own bows, and, well, neither Laura nor Nat could argue with that.) Laura adjusts so their heads rest together, too.

It’s not perfect – it can never be perfect – but this is her new home, now, and that’s good enough.