Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1

There was supposed to be more. That was the final thought to race through Steve's head before the world turned upside down. As the sky turned red, he turned a naked blue eye up to see another world fill the sky.

He felt the repulsor blast from Tony's gauntlet tear apart the red, white, and blue armor's shoulder, felt it sear and smelled the stench of his own cauterized flesh as he dropped the shield and tumbled backward, hitting the ruins of a building with a deafening bang. Steve groaned and coughed as he pulled himself up into a crouch, holding a hand up to his nose and mouth as the fragmented remains of cinder block and drywall showered him with a patina of chalky residue.

He tried the command to shut the faceplate again, but heard only the fizzing and sparks of mechanical failure.

In the haze of smoke and building ash, he saw a blue glow approaching. And without his shield in hand, Steve decided that something was better than nothing, physically forcing the silver faceplate down in front of his eyes. It was harder than it would have been, had he been young, and it wouldn't filter out anything in the air, but it would counter some of the force if he took a direct blow to the face.

He used the crumbling wall to push himself up into a ready stance and listened to the repulsors in his palms whine as they readied to fire.

"I suppose I should be flattered," Tony's voice was silky and smug, "that you'd choose to spend your final moments on earth with me. But really, a knock-down drag-out fight? In eight hours everything will be dead anyway."

"Just means I have a deadline," Steve spat.

"For revenge? Seems awfully petty for someone so much better than the rest of us."

"To put a rabid dog down."

Because that rabid dog usually had something up his sleeve. And Steve was damned if he was going to watch Tony get off the ship he'd help scuttle.

The silhouette stopped in its approach, head thrown backwards, and he heard Tony's arrogant laugh. "Oh, will you cry too, like the boy in Old Yeller?"

Steve growled and brought the gauntlets up, firing at the point where the blue glow of the RT hovered. The discharge was bright, reflected and magnified a thousand times in the cloud of ash around them. It seared an afterimage of light and heat onto Steve's eyes. But he could hear Tony -- still laughing. Blindly he kicked off the wall, letting his feet give him initial momentum and trajectory, and using the suit's rocket boots to provide acceleration.

But where he should have hit something -- Tony, or at least a wall -- Steve ran into nothing. He shut off power to the boots, his feet faltering as he skidded to a stop, going down on one knee. Everything in his vision was still white, but when he swung his head around to where Tony's laughter still echoed, he thought he saw the sheen of metal and rivets -- like a much older version of Tony's suit.

And he could hear a voice -- his voice -- calling out something unintelligible. But that couldn't be right because his lips were clamped shut.

And then everything went dark.

#

Midtown traffic was going to be an even bigger mess than usual.

Natasha Stark increased thruster power to 90 percent, only to nearly lose control as she was forced to bank hard right on Fifth Avenue when the hacker in the stolen Iron Man suit took an evasive maneuver. Below, the cars turned into one blended streak of color, though whether that was from the speed or the g-force she'd just taken was hard to say.

"Ms. Stark," GERI's soothing artificial voice drifted over her ear piece, "Commander Rogers is on line one."

"I thought I updated his designation to Captain Sexy."

"You did, but only if he was calling from a private line. Signal trace indicates he's on the helicarrier."

"Well tell him now isn't a good time."

"He is most insistent."

"He's about to lose his present," Natasha said, following the stolen red, white, and blue suit into a climb straight upward.

"Commander Rogers says he doesn't give a flying redacted about presents. He needs to speak with you."

Natasha grinned at the reversal on the filter she'd put in place for her husband's sweet sensitive ears. "Fine, patch him through."

At 10,000 feet an altitude alert automatically brought her Neutralizer online, but she had to fight to keep the rogue suit in her crosshairs. More power, I need more power. If she diverted from life support, she could theoretically stretch the rockets to 110 percent. That would get her closer, but not for long.

"Nat, what the hell are you doing?" Steve's voice was firm and cold, but even still she had missed it so.

"GERI already told you, darling. Your present's gone rogue."

She hit 107 percent thruster power and winnowed the hacker's lead down to 90 meters. Her targeting crosshairs flashed green and in the next split second she fired the Neutralizer. The projectile flew just as straight and true as if Clint had let it loose, a trail of white phosphorus smoke streaming from its burning payload.

The BOOM told her the sticky phosphorus had struck home, igniting what she assumed was the shoulder-mounted missiles. The All-American armor tumbled through the atmosphere -- still in one piece, but singed. Natasha kicked on the thrusters again, diving after it.

It wouldn't do to get more blood on the suit than need be. And she really didn't want to rebuild the thing from scrap.

"Nat, are you even listening?" Steve's anger cut through her concentration.

"Like I said: busy. If you want to call back in ten, we can do this right. Better yet, give me thirty and I can show up on your doorstep with two presents."

"Nat, this isn't about us. We're picking up strange readings over Boston. People are reporting the sky's turned red."

The fingers of her red and gold gauntlet clamped down on blue adamantium-steel alloy. "So scramble a team. I don't pay people to sit around the tower playing video games."

"They're already moving, but I need you to analyze --"

Steve's voice was drowned out by a deep, guttural noise. It was as if the heavens had opened, pouring out the booming voices of a thousand spirits. The unbridled energy of the sound waves rattled her armor, and it felt as though her skin was buzzing with the sound.

"Steve?" If this was related, she wasn't going to have to go anywhere.

But there was only silence on the line. She jacked the speaker to is max output, but there was still nothing.

"STEVE!" She shouted into her mic and her heart began to race dangerously fast. A yellow warning popped up on her suit's HUD, and that was never a good sign, especially when she couldn't bother to pay attention to it. "STEVE!?"

All that greeted her was static and the Oom as she struggled to remain hovering in midair. The added thruster power in her boots helped compensate for the deadweight of the Patriot armor. But she wouldn't be able to maintain it for much longer.

Then beneath her, she watched in horror as Staten Island's coastline began to splinter -- as though a gigantic sinkhole had opened up the maw of a monster, swallowing land and sea alike. The sound of the earth breaking was terrible, like the roar of a beast, but even it couldn't drown out the deafening, all-pervading Oom. She watched helplessly as New York crumbled into the deep.

She switched over to emergency frequency 11. "Hailing Commander Rogers. SHIELD, do you read?"

There was nothing.

The blinking heart rate warning on her HUD turned red.

But Steve had been on the helicarrier, Natasha assured herself. He wasn't down there. She could find him. They'd put everything aside in the face of this...what? A terrorist attack? Alien assault?

"GERI, give me coordinates on the helicarrier and all news reports on this sound."

The AI's female voice managed to be a clarion note above the bass rumble. "Noise has been reported worldwide. Damage to continental crust integrity globally, more ruptures being reported by the minute. Tangier, Athens, Tehran, Bangkok, L.A., Wellington, and the entire island of Hokkaido are gone."

"And the helicarrier?" It was selfish, but she had to know.

"Last signal received was from drydock."

She was shaking, watching as the pit opened further, clawing more and more of her home into its ravenous mouth. And her altitude was inching downward. Thrusters only had 93 percent power.

And that was when the other suit stirred in her hands.

The hacker she'd been so intent on following jerked and struggled against her hold. She would have screamed at him to stop -- because couldn't he see everything prior to two minutes ago didn't matter anymore? But she only had time to register that the phosphorus stuck to his back was still burning, and that he was deploying the helmet's flares--

Everything went white. Everything went quiet. The absence of the Oom rang in her ears.

She heard a man's voice.

Steve?

No, not Steve. This voice was too nasal.

"--don't see what Richards thought was so fascinating about this world."

"It's marked with an exclamation point," another voice said.

"Very well. Doom shall be merciful."

Natasha opened her eyes, blinded by the brightness, and saw a metal mask. Not one from any of her suits, but a furrowed sinister looking one. It seemed to see her, and yet not see her at all, as if she were an ant barely worthy of acknowledgment, as if the mask were the only form with true shape in the listless white void.

"Yea," the second voice said. "So a tenth of this world shall be tithed to Doom, thus a tenth of this world shall be saved."

"So says Doom."

"So it shall be."

2

Steve's world came back into focus in measures. He rolled to his side and dry heaved. That was fortunate; if there had been anything in his stomach, he would have been stuck with the acrid smell of vomit on the helmet's faceplate.

Whatever Tony had hit him with, it had been nasty. Steve's ears were still ringing and the tips of his fingers and toes were completely numb. He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, stiff and sticky with ash and sweat. The haze still hung in the air, but he could see again. He worked his jaw, shook his head to clear it of the lingering fuzziness, and focused on the silver armor lying in a heap of rubble several yards away.

Tony's armor was motionless and lying face down. For half a heartbeat, Steve thought that he might be dead. But then one silver fingered gauntlet stirred, scrabbling at the rubble as the armor struggled up into a kneeling position.

Steve felt his stomach tighten with anticipation as he revved up the repulsors. But Tony just clutched one silver hand to his head. "Oh, come on. I think we have more pressing problems, don't you?"

"No. This is all that is left. And I have no problem if my final act is nailing your coffin shut."

"Dramatic." There was a note of amusement in the mechanical filtering of the voice. "Taking things a little personally, aren't you?"

"How could I not?" Plates lining Steve's remaining right shoulder slid open. It took two seconds to prime the missiles, just long enough for Tony to realize what was happening.

"Huh--"

The puzzled, digitized voice was cut off by the explosion. The silver suit was catapulted backward, end over end along the broken remnants of the street, and the steel alloy shrieked like nails on a chalkboard as momentum caused it to scrape along the pavement. It left a long, cracked fissure in its wake.

"Suit registering 20 percent power," an automated system's voice warned in his ear. "Recharge is recommended at the next available point."

Steve ignored it -- because in eight hours it wouldn't matter -- and used the boots to propel himself in the direction Tony had gone flying through the cloud of ash. He landed a few feet away with a thud that, even with the suit, ought to have jarred him. But he was riding high on adrenaline. Sooner or later this fight would catch up with his frail old body, but if he finished it now, it wouldn't matter. 

The RT, he thought grimly, as he moved to stand over Tony's supine form, looking at the steady blue glow of light. That's what he needed to destroy. It would be quick and painless, like an off-switch.

The scraped and guttered Iron Man faceplate stared straight up, impassive as a Pharaoh's death mask. It had to come off, Steve decided. He wanted to see the other man's face in those final moments. It was the only way he would ever know what had been true. Stooping down on one knee, one primed repulsor ready, Steve reached for the faceplate.

"No!" Tony jerked one hand up, trying to stop him -- but too late. The metal groaned and twisted in Steve's vice-like grip and came away with a pop as the hinges gave up the fight.

The person in the suit threw one silver gauntlet over their face -- a face that unmistakably lacked a black goatee. And while Tony had always had long lashes, the brown, almond eyes that blinked back at him certainly did not belong to the blue-eyed engineer.

She was in rough shape, bleeding from a crooked nose and a split lip. There was swelling above her left-eye and on her right cheek, all of which were quite possibly Steve's fault.

"Who are you?" Steve asked, lurching back to both feet and taking a half-step backward. The repulsor he kept at the ready.

"I could ask the same of you," she snapped back.

Steve pushed his broken faceplate up, and her eyes widened, the arm falling away from her face. "Steve?"

Her voice brimmed with raw relief, but underneath he could hear the deep undercurrent of confusion.

"Oh thank God." The gears of her armor hissed and sputtered as she stood. Steve was so taken aback by the complete change in her disposition -- never mind the fact that she seemed to know him -- that he didn't have the presence of mind to stop her before she had wrapped her arms around his waist, drawing him into a tight hug. "I thought--But what are you doing in the Patriot armor? You weren't supposed to know about it."

Protocol took over his brain before rational thought, and he pushed on her shoulders till she was at arm's length, ready to inform her that they either had a case of mistaken identity or multiverse crossover, when two things occurred to him.

First, if the Illuminati were correct, there was no more multiverse. Something else was at play.

The second was that his reflection, warped as it was in her silver armor, was not an old man's face.

He was young again.

#

"Please tell me everything I saw was you growing a vindictive streak and trying to convince me you'd died in a cataclysm."

Steve continued to stare at her with wide eyes and furrowed brows, as though he couldn't parse what she was saying. A sinking feeling took up residence in her stomach.

"Steve, darling, what happened to you? You said the skies had gone red over Boston. She reached a gauntleted hand out to cup his face. That seemed to jerk Steve out of his reverie, and he caught her wrist before she could touch him.

Her silver wrist.

This time it was Natasha's turn to stare.

She hadn't noticed it before, not with the tunnel vision that accompanied fighting, the panic of compromised identity, or the elation that Steve was alive. She looked from wrist to husband, a cold sensation creeping down her spine as her mind slotted recent events into place.

Steve hadn't recognized her. And yet the reflection she could see in his tarnished, battered chest piece told her that -- though roughed up -- she wasn't bloodied past recognition.

"Well..." Natasha said, and she could almost feel the intensity of Steve's blue gaze boring though her. Some things, perhaps, were universal. "You obviously thought I was someone else before," she gestured vaguely at her lack of faceplate, "or I'm sure I wouldn't be talking at this point. And I obviously mistook you for --" my husband -- "someone you aren't. How about we talk this out like sensible adults?"

Steve let go of her wrist and gave her a guarded nod. "What do you remember?"

"The world ending."

One of Steve's blond eyebrows arched at her. "That doesn't give me much to go on. You said the sky turned red?"

"I didn't see it myself, only heard it reported."

Steve's mouth twisted, the way her Steve's always did when he was pondering something that troubled him.

"Did the sky turn red on your world too?"

"It did." Steve's eyes were distant as he stooped, picking up a piece of ruined brick. It crumbled to dust in his fingers and he frowned. "But there were only two universes remaining then. At least that's what they told me."

This last thought collided with the bit of her mind still digesting her vague, dreamlike memories from just before -- when everything had gone white. The voice she had heard spoke of saving a tenth of the world...of her world.

Bruce had explored other universes. It wasn't that far-fetched to imagine that somewhere out there, there was a perfect replica of her husband who had never met her. If she had been pulled off of her dying world by the mysterious man in the mask, maybe this Steve had been too.

And the silver armor? Side-effect of crossing into another universe? Or had she wound up with some other Natasha's suit due to hers not rating as part of that ten percent? Her ego chafed at the thought before being completely overridden by horror.

What if Steve had been left behind like her armor?

Her heart lurched dangerously at the thought, and out of instinct she tried to pull up the suit's readout on the defective organ. But to her horror, she found only basal heart rate monitoring, and a very unhelpful reading that indicated hers was high for sedentary activity.

No shit, the thing fluttering in her chest felt like a hummingbird's wings beating against her ribs. She needed to stay calm. She needed to focus on understanding what had happened if she was going to find a way to fix it.

"Two? What happened to the rest?"

One of Steve's broad hands scratched at the back of his neck. "Was your world aware of the incursions?" He clearly saw the blank look on her face. "Collisions between Earths. If one wasn't eliminated, both universes died."

Bruce would have brought her in on something that big. "No. Does that mean that your world and mine were the last?"

"Maybe." One of Steve's eyes narrowed in thought as he picked up another brick. This one crumbled to sand just like the first. Brushing the last of the dust grains from his palms, he shook his head. This time when he looked back up at her, he blinked in surprise, his eyes focused far above her head. "Did that come from your world?"

Turning, Natasha felt a sense vertigo sweep over her, just like when she flipped over in flight and the world suddenly seemed suspended above her.

Her feet were firmly planted on the ground. And yet a granite slab -- with sides so sheer it looked like a giant black dagger -- loomed above, drifting like a cloud through the mist, propelled by nothing more than the breeze.

"Definitely not."

A warning light blazed to life in the corner of Natasha's HUD. She only had eight percent power. That was odd. She knew her chase earlier had been draining on her battery, but it shouldn't have brought her that low.

"Are you experiencing --"

Before she could even get the words out, all of the lights on the Patriot armor in front of her winked out. The joints locked, and without stabilizers, Steve tipped over backwards.

"Um..."

"At risk of stating the obvious," Steve stared up at the sky in the powerless suit, "I think there's more going on here."

"Can you stand?" She asked.

Steve grimaced, and a vein bulged at the bit of his neck the damaged armor left exposed. But he wasn't able to budge even an inch.

"It's like being trapped in a frail body all over again." He muttered, so low that Natasha suspected she hadn't been meant to hear.

Natasha frowned. "If you can't move, we'll have to extract you from there."

"Wait--" She could see Steve strain his neck toward the one good side of the suit next to his left ear, straining to hear through the suit's comm.

A moment passed, and then the hydraulics of the flaps hissed, each inch of his suit opening and flexing around Steve in what Natasha recognized as a total reset routine.

"Emergency reboot?" Natasha asked, looking over her shoulder, wondering if someone was watching them, trying to access the armors.

"Must have been a bug," Steve grunted, experimenting by flexing the blue fingers of the suit and relaxing them rapidly. "The HUD said I was at emergency power reserves, but I should have had at least two to three more hours of power. Now it's saying I'm at 100 percent."

Natasha cocked her head at him, offering a hand to help him stand. "Well, until you're sure it won't do that again, you'd better stick to the ground. I'll scout to see where we are and come back to get you."

She saw Steve bristle before she had even finished talking and two things became crystal clear to her: this Steve Rogers did not trust her, and he liked being side-lined even less than her Steve. "No, I'm not going to sit here and wait. I want to know what we're dealing with."

"So I'll sync up our comms," Natasha smiled, but the clipped tone of her voice made it clear she would brook no argument from him. "You'll slow me down."

"I don't have to stick to the ground. I can set the suit's threshold for low battery warnings even higher and --"

Natasha didn't hear what he said next, if he said anything at all.

She didn't have the helmet on, but it was as if the world had been muted of color and sound. She opened her mouth to speak, but knowledge of how to form words had disappeared like a piece of paper put to flame. Her heart began to beat faster, wild and erratic -- or was it the same, and her perception had changed? At the periphery of her vision dark spots swirled. She was going to faint, watching as that same thought dawned on Steve, as he reached out to her as if in slow motion. Perhaps she was dying. It felt an awful lot like it had when her world had died, enveloped in that white glow of light.

But this time it wasn't the shine of a metal face she saw. Instead it was the ebb and flicker of a blue light in her chest, coming back to life. And with each flicker, as the light became stronger and steadier, her senses came back one by one, last of all her hearing.

"--you okay?" Steve was asking, his steel fingers clamped tight around the silver metal of her shoulders. She could feel the pressure of his grip. "You lost all power too."

Natasha checked the readings on her HUD. They told her she was back to full power.

"I think," she said reluctantly. "That we are both walking."

#

Inch by inch, they picked their way through the rubble strewn remnants of the city block. The ground was torn and uneven, as if a giant had stomped all over the ground, leaving huge craters that had to be traversed or navigated around. Sometimes when Steve brushed against the fallen, twisted masonry it crumbled into ashes like the bricks. Sometimes it just shifted, the dry rumble of stone on stone grating ominously.

The thick fog hampered even Steve's ability to see anything farther than a few dozen feet out, and when they scouted for the best path through the rubble, he would often look up to wipe sweat from his brow and find the woman had vanished.

But it was the absence of all sound aside from the scrape of their boots over the broken asphalt that unnerved Steve. Even on the busiest, blusterous New York days, his sensitive hearing could pick up the quorking of crows fighting over the scraps of an abandoned lunch, the high pitched squeal of the subway brakes far below ground, or the susurrus of thousands of voices melted into one.

At one point, Steve saw a glint of silver armor appear across the other side of a ravine, gesturing for him to follow it. He'd worked his way back toward her, though the sagging building she stood in front of looked like the last place he wanted to venture inside. It had a sign, half torn away, proclaiming "-er's Fine Meats" in faded gold script.

As he neared, Steve heard the woman's voice call, "This way."

In the emptiness and horrible quiet of the place, those two brief words were a balm to his ears. So, misgivings aside, Steve followed her into the butcher's shop -- and realized with acute embarrassment that, if they were working together, he really ought to know her name.

He cleared his throat. "What should I call you?"

She glanced back at him with the flick of a chin, a tuft of black hair had come loose from the suit's helm, half hiding her bruised brown eye. "Natasha. Or Stark, if you like. I come to either."

Steve studied the back of her head and wondered if, on this woman's world, Natalia Romanova had been born to a different family. But something in his gut told Steve otherwise -- the dark hair, the set of her eyes, her nose -- they all bore another resemblance.

"You didn't have a brother, did you?"

She gave him a curious look. "No. Only child."

He'd guessed as much, and with the Iron Man suit moving like molten silver over her, the similarity was uncanny. Even without the goatee, the woman was such the spitting image of Tony, she could have been his long-lost sister.

"Look," she said, before Steve's mind could go farther down that rabbit hole. She was pointing to a battered case along the back wall, its glass cracked and half gone. The smell was terrible, like a cross between fermented fish and manure baking under a hot sun.

"Is this retaliation for the shoulder mounted missile?" Steve asked, burying his nose as deep as possible into the crook of his elbow.

"No, but that's a nice thought," she said with a smirk before gesturing with her chin at the case again.

From the smell alone, Steve approached with caution, half expecting to find a corpse behind the butcher's counter.

In a way he did. The back case had a light that flickered erratically. It would have been significant if only for being an electrical thing that worked. Aside from their suits, nothing else they had discovered seemed to have power. But the butcher's case was illuminating something odder -- what appeared to be cuts of beef, raw and as red as if they'd been cut from the bone no more than an hour ago.

"Even assuming that thing was cold --" Natasha's voice came from behind him, "-- and it isn't -- those should be oxidized to a nice leathery brown by now. Or half-way to sludge, from the smell of things."

"There aren't any flies in here, either," Steve said, backing away.

The light flicked off for several seconds, plunging the room into near darkness, before wavering back on again.

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark..." Natasha agreed as they backed out of the butcher's. "But it's not the meat. My nose says magic, but I've never encountered anything like it on this scale. Thoughts?"

"Meat that smells rotten but looks fresh, batteries that are dead one moment and full the next, floating islands..." Steve mused. "Chaos magic would fit the bill. But I've never seen Loki or Wanda wipe a city of every single living thing clean down to the insects.

"Maybe they weren't wiped. Maybe they just weren't brought along for the ride." The silver of the suit flowed like water over her face, warping her voice into androgynous electronic output. "I want an aerial view."

"We agreed anything above a second-story fall was a bad idea."

"We also never defined what 'second-story' was," she chimed back in a sing-song voice before taking to the sky in a roar of rockets.

"Stark--!" but she was well out of earshot already. Steve grumbled, checking his power -- 68 percent -- and took off after her.

It was a bad idea, but he wasn't keen on the idea of scrambling over rubble by himself. His suit power dropped to 44 percent from take-off alone as he crested through the low lying clouds and pursued the silver glint up toward one of the strange floating islands. He saw that she was angled to land on i, and tried to readjust his course to follow, but the command didn't take. Steve had just enough time to realize his entire interface had frozen, and that his trajectory was taking him up, over the island, and down again on a parabolic collision course with the ground.

He must have shouted something -- what he had no idea -- as he rocketed overhead her, because he saw the silver -- now above him -- in pursuit.

Brakes! Brakes! His hindbrain was yelling. There must be some sort of analog backup system. Tell me there's something analog in this piece of tin trash.

He felt his momentum angle outward, parallel to the ground, as something heavy half-caught and half-collided with his suit. His face, in absence of a proper helmet, was smashed up against cold metal. That was good.

The rate at which they were still descending, however, was bad.

They crash landed in freezing water. And for a brief panic-stricken moment Steve felt his chest compress and his mouth fill with sea-water. He was drowning again, just like in the Arctic --

Until he felt his head lifted above the waves, a strong solid arm wrapped around his chest where the glow of his suit's reactor glittered, and he felt himself shielded as Natasha cut a wake through the waves, propelling them back toward the shore.

They rolled up onto the sand, Steve a spluttering wreck on his hands and knees, soaked thoroughly, and shivering. Natasha, the glittering fluid metal of her Iron Man suit peeling back, was dry and utterly unfazed by the incident.

"It's amazing," Natasha said, eyes bright and full of curiosity.

"What, the fact we're still alive?'

She gave him a cold look. "Did you not see anything up there besides my shiny ass?"

Steve felt his ears burn.

"Whatever is going on, it's even bigger than we thought. It looks like two cities shoved together up there. The buildings on the periphery look like a deck of cards being shuffled together."

"Great," Steve grumbled, opening a pressure purge valve on the heel of his boot to drain the saltwater that had seeped in. "But I don't see how that helps at all."

If Natasha heard him, she gave no sign of it. In fact, she seemed content on ignoring him, walking up the beach to yet another set of ruins. These looked strange and alien compared to the familiarity of the broken, albeit recognizable, block of New York. These structures were curved, composed of arches carved from a shimmering white marble, and each bore a golden capstone.

He had seen those arches before somewhere. Steve was certain of it.

For a moment he contemplated just sitting in the sand and letting Natasha part ways with him. A headstrong Stark -- did they come in any other flavor? -- was something he could do without.

Instead, Steve looked out over the waters, deceivingly placid and crystal blue from this vantage. Clear of the ruins of the city, the mist had given way to cloudless sky and the sun blazed high overhead. Too hot, he thought dimly, shielding his eyes, for the spring New York day he had left. This was Arizona in the middle of a summer heatwave. Never mind that the mist over the city block shouldn't have been possible with so much radiant heat -- chalk one more thing up on the list of oddities.

As he squinted, scanning the horizon for any sign of life besides themselves, he spotted the white wings of seagulls pin-wheeling against the deep blue sky.

They drifted toward him now and again, but every time the winds buffeted them near one of the floating islands, they avoided them, working against the sea breeze to go back out over the ocean, repelled by some invisible force.

Which told Steve two things: the fact that they wouldn't land on the floating rocks meant the birds had come from somewhere else (Sam would be so proud of him), and the fact that they actively avoided this place meant he and Natasha should leave. Now.

It would be risky, and the thought of losing power out at sea, doomed to let the weight of the suit carry him down to a watery grave, made Steve's skin crawl. On the other hand, maybe when they reached the gulls, the odd power fluctuations would stop. As long as it didn't stop while he was on low battery...

He was going to need the Stark after all, much as it galled him.

Natasha hadn't wandered far. He found her in a white marble courtyard with a huge, gnarled willow tree at its center. The area was ringed in statues so lifelike he almost expected them to take a breath. Steve brushed past one, almost nose to nose with its long white marble beard. The intensity in its carved eyes was discomfiting.

Natasha was kneeling, analyzing script carved into a smooth white wall in broad blocky letters. The wall it was inscribed on was bent. Not cracked and toppled to one side, Steve realized, his head beginning to ache, but curved like a reed beneath heavy winds.

"Can you make out what it says?" He asked, and she jumped, despite the fact he'd made no attempt to mask the sound of his footsteps.

"I've never seen anything like it," she said. "Or rather, not in this century. Or outside the fairytale books my father refused to let me read. It almost looks like --"

Whatever she had been about to say was lost by a deep, agonized groan.

She looked up sharply at him. When the second groan came, she could plainly see Steve had his mouth shut.

It was coming from an alcove off the courtyard -- in actuality little more than one wall leaning against another. A shift in the sand beneath the supporting wall looked like the only thing necessary to seal the opening off.

Steve's ears were better able to pinpoint the sound, so he was the first one through the opening. Consequently, he was also the first one to see Heimdall.

In the back of his mind, Steve told himself that of course that was where he had seen this all before. After Norman Osborn's siege on Asgard, the Gods' city had looked much like the scattered remains he had just walked through.

But everything that Osborn had done in his reign of terror paled in comparison to this.

"Good god," he heard Natasha whisper behind him.

Asgard's gatekeeper, the god able to see everywhere in the seven Asgardian realms, couldn't see them. His golden eyes were heavily lidded, and his great head lolled from side to side, awake, but caught within a waking dream. Perhaps it was a mercy, enacted by whatever had brought them all to this place, because Heimdall's lower half and everything below his elbow was frozen in place. Everything below the golden Yggdrasil that stretched across his breastplate was made of the same glittering white marble that surrounded them.

"The stars," he mumbled, and let out another deep groan.

Natasha pushed past Steve in the small confined area, close enough that he could smell a faint sweetness that clung to her hair.

"We have to help him." She had moved to stand in front of Heimdall, eyes wide and full of horror. She had a hand outstretched too, scanning the god with what looked like a red laser. "He's progressing."

Even as she said it, Steve could see the marble hue ebb upward over Heimdall's chest, engulfing the root of Yggdrasil like a tide: slowly but surely rising.

"How?" While he didn't disagree with the sentiment, short of divine or magical intercession, Steve didn't know any way to turn marble into flesh. He certainly had neither. But the look that he received from Natasha -- he might as well have told her to slit the man's throat.

Heimdall let out a whimper. "The stars, there are no stars here. They are all gone. All gone, save for this..."

"What do you mean?" Natasha pressed.

The great sentry opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Instead the rictus scissored in silent agony. Through sheer strength of will, it seemed, the gleaming white marble receded down his arm, replaced by golden armor and ebony skin, till he was able to stretch his fingers, prising them open to reveal a crystal orb the size of an egg. It glowed a soft blue, and the interior was cracked, like a sphere of ice with streams of bubbles frozen inside.

The prospect of being cursed to an existence of slowing cycling between flesh and marble permutations made Steve ill. And the thought of all the statues he had passed in the courtyard nagged at the back of his mind.

"I found the last, the one that fell. Saved it from them," Heimdall's voice grew urgent, and he held the sphere out blindly to Natasha's voice. "They cannot find it. They cannot."

Natasha took the sphere gingerly from his fingers. No sooner had it left his palm, than the ivory overtook his hand again, creeping back up his body, and crawling across his face, freezing his tortured features in place.

For a moment both Steve and Natasha were still, shocked by how sudden the change had been.

Steve touched Natasha's shoulder, snapping her from her reverie. The helplessness of the situation galled, he could see it written plainly on her face. But she was also intelligent enough to know what he was thinking. There isn't anything we can do for him now.

"What do you you think he meant by, there are no stars," Natasha said, her voice hushed as they left the alcove, looking down at the sphere in her hands.

Steve opened his mouth the reply, steering them through the ruins, back toward the beach. Then he paused -- out of the corner of his eye he thought he had seen a figure, gold and horned. But he blinked, and it was gone.

They cannot find it. Heimdall's warning rang in his ears.

Definitely time to leave.

Steve glancing up at the too hot sun. "I have no idea."

3

"By sea. If both suits fail, at least we can hold our breath until one reboots."

Natasha's eyes narrowed. "What if something's down there? There's a magical kingdom smashed against a New York block on a beach. Who knows what's underneath the waves?"

"The impact with the water--"

"My suit can withstand the impact of a moderate fall into water."

"Can it walk away unscathed?" Steve pressed.

"Sure." She said with the kind of confidence Steve couldn't muster.

"Fine. You get to test that out then," Steve grumbled, taking off.

He flew just above the waves, the spray of the ocean on his tongue. He'd decided to forgo use of the ruined faceplate in favor of clearer visibility.

"Battery status?" Natasha's voice came in his ear.

"Holding at 50 percent," Steve pulled up to avoid the crest of a large wave. "How's the turbulence up above?"

"Smooth sailing."

"So, uh--" Steve wasn't sure what he ought to say, but the prospect of a silent flight (for who knew how long) seemed intolerable. And for someone he was going to depend on to save him from a watery death, he knew precious little about the woman. "You're a Stark, does that mean you're also an engineer?"

Her laugh sounded like the tinkling of bells. "It's more of a hobby these days. I usually tell everyone I'm a former engineer who goes to meetings all day."

"You own a company too, then?"

"Sometimes I feel like it owns me," A beat of silence, and then the voice was wistful, with just a touch of regret. "Or I did, anyway. Hard to believe it's gone. I'd been working there since I turned thirteen."

"Thirteen? Did your world not have child labor laws?"

He heard the laugh again, but it held more bitterness than amusement. "You sound like my Steve," Something in the way she emphasized that word made Steve's stomach flip. "Sure we did, but there are exceptions when you're a genius and working for family. Project meetings with the old man were the closest I ever got to playing catch."

"Sounds like the Stark I knew."

"You and she weren't close, I take it?"

Was that disappointment Steve detected? Steve brought the suit into a roll, while increasing his altitude half a dozen feet -- well above the water. On his back, the sting of the saltwater spray in his eyes lessened. High overhead, the glint of the sun off Natasha's suit made it stick out against the sky like a full moon against the night.

"He. And no, I wouldn't say that."

Natasha made a humph and pulled ahead. "I'm a man where you come from? I guess that explains the weird fit of this thing's codpiece."

So much like Tony, Steve mused, fairly certain he was blushing. The old Tony at least, the one he'd loved so much.

"Okay. Please tell me I'm not an evil genius then. Your arch nemesis is Red Crossbones, right?"

"Red Skull--" Steve had time to get out, just before a shockwave sent him reeling. He increased power to the stabilizers, narrowly avoiding plunging face-first into the ocean. When he'd righted himself, Steve realized there was not just one other dot in the sky now, but three. "Trouble?" He said, climbing.

"With a capital T."

As he approached and the shapes resolved themselves into distinct forms, Steve felt strange realization overtake him. He knew the uniform that both of the newcomers wore: the red cape, the mailed cuirass, and winged silver helm. But while one had the long blond hair and full beard he had last seen Thor wear, the other was entirely foreign to him, a patchwork of runic blue tattoos covering  his smooth skin.

Why there were two, Steve couldn't guess. "Thor?"

Both heads turned to him as he reached their altitude.

"You are trespassing," the tattooed one said in a booming voice that all but rattled the metal suit around Steve's body. "Turn back or be condemned to a life beyond the wall."

"What?" Natasha spluttered. "It's an ocean. How is this trespassing?"

"You are crossing borders without the express consent of His Holy Majesty."

"What borders?" Natasha demanded, as a terrible sensation began to flood Steve from head to toe.

"The borders between realms, you insolent wench," Tattoos barked, raising his hammer in what could only be taken as warning. "Now turn back or be turned back."

"No thank you," Steve heard the whine of Natasha's repulsors warming up.

"Wait--" he said, appealing to the bearded one. "Thor -- it's me, Steve," with difficulty he pulled off the broken red, white, and blue helmet. "We don't mean any harm. We're just trying to figure out what happened."

"Happened?" the bearded Thor frowned. "The border edict has stood for years. If you are seeking to leave the Valley of Flame, you must petition God."

Steve cast a glance at Natasha -- for all the good it did him. Her faceplate was down, presenting a cold mask. "We weren't in a valley--"

"Brother," the tattooed Thor interrupted, "they do not look like natives of the Valley of Flame. Do the exo-suits not conjure Baron Stark's ilk to mind?"

Bearded Thor frowned. "They would be very far from home indeed."

"Far," Tattoos agreed, "or fugitives -- from the Wall, or beyond."

Steve felt the air hum around him and his hair raising.

Shield--was the only conscious thought to flit through his head as he reached for the round piece of vibranium on his back. The bolt from the hammer struck the shield seconds after, the vibranium absorbing and dissipating the heat and charge of the strike.

The beam of Natasha's repulsors sliced through the air, taking Tattoos by surprise, sending him tumbling backward. Bearded Thor's blue eyes widened.

"Cease--"

"Sorry, old friend," Steve grit out, hurling the shield. It struck the wigned helm with a clang that was bound to leave even the Asgardian with a nasty ringing in his ears. "Come on," Steve said, catching the shield on its return arc, and angling himself east again. Hopefully Natasha was following -- he didn't waste time in pouring on the speed. "They won't be down for long."

"You knew one of those guys?" Against the whipping roar of the wind, her voice was faint in his ear.

"Something like that. But they didn't seem to come from any universe where either of us existed."

"No, didn't you hear? They knew a Stark. A Baron."

"Which sounds as ridiculous as two Thors playing border control."

Steve felt the air just above him suddenly supercharged with heat. For a few moments, the thunder deafened him, and his entire being was reduced to raw, heart-stopping fear. Thankfully the thrusters didn't pay any heed to his quivering hindbrain. He wanted to avoid a no holds barred fight with two Thunder Gods at all costs.

"I think you made them mad."

"Whatever gave you that impression?" Steve flipped onto his back, lined up the repulsors, and fired. Beared Thor not only deflected with his hammer, he also shortened the distance between them. "I'm at 20 percent power. Please tell me you have something up your sleeve. Cloaking device, gravity well..."

"Land."

"On what?"

"No, I mean I see land ahead. Put all your reserves into your thrusters, maybe we can lose them there."

"I'm already at max."

There was a brief pause. Then a warning alert started flashing across his HUD, "Output Safety Override Alert."

 "Did you do something to my suit?" Steve asked, incredulous.

"I've done everything to that suit. I designed the thing," Natasha scoffed. "Now keep up."

Even with Natasha's intervention, keeping up proved challenging. The Thors were well behind him, but his HUD was flashing a warning about the heat sync, and he was almost out of power by the time the skyline began to resolve into distinct buildings.

They were almost there though -- one final push to put even more distance between himself and the pursuers, and then Steve broke hard, looking for something soft to crash land into.

Unfortunately, the only option that presented was a beach: nearly deserted as the day faded to twilight. Sand was still a hard landing, and even braced for it, Steve felt like a blob of jelly tossed around inside the suit. Something snapped, and pain blossomed in his arm as he came to a complete stop -- but at least it wasn't his neck.

"Come on," Natasha's hiss seemed fuzzy in his ears.

Steve tried to right himself with his good arm, but the joint refused to move. Lodged with sand, great. Natasha looked so much better than he did. The metal parts Steve could make out on his suit had been scraped of their paint, lines garroted in the metal from where sand grains had been driven against the suit at high speeds. 

Steve hissed as Natasha hoisted him into a standing position, leading him off of the beach and away from the wide eyes of the few remaining beach goers.

The closest private place she was able to find, it turned out, was an alley between a surf shop and an ice cream parlor. It was littered with boxes and trash bins, and it smelled sickly sweet.

"I hope you're wearing something under there besides the red, white, and blue mail," she said as she pulled off the armor's chest piece

"Sorry to disappoint," Steve tried to approximate a grin, his uniform now clearly visible, as she piled the armor pieces next to him.

He grit his teeth when she came to the arm, but he couldn't help the sharp intake of breath and soft curse when she removed the piece. She slowed then, fingers hovering over the odd bulge in Steve's arm.

"Is it bad?"

"I've had worse."

She continued stripping him of the armor, not meeting his eyes. Even when she had finished she seemed strangely subdued. "You'd better go find something less conspicuous," she said, nodding toward the back door of the surf shop.

"What about you?"

The silver suit retracted and reformed around her body into a gray tank top and khakis. He'd forgotten just how malleable the symbiote was. "Don't worry about me." She began picking up pieces of the Patriot armor and pressing on panels. To Steve's surprise they began to fold in on themselves neatly, like Tony's old briefcase suit. "I'll make sure our trail is well hidden."

#

I look ridiculous, Steve thought, pulling a graphic t-shirt over his head with a combination of his good arm and his teeth. The outline of the wave was more ostentatious than he would have liked, but at least it wasn't neon colored like half of the things in the store. His costume and the shield fit safely into a sporting bag.

He couldn't have been gone more than ten minutes, but the sun had sunk further in the sky. It was now almost dark.

At first glance when he poked his head back out into the alley, he didn't see Natasha. It wasn't until he heard the retching and he walked around the large dumpster next to the door that he saw her, one hand braced against the wall and doubled over.

Something was clearly wrong. Her eyes were bloodshot, and a thin trickle of spit lingered on her lips, and she smelled like stomach acid.

Apparently she hadn't escaped the landing unscathed.

"What's wrong?" Steve reached out with his good hand, only to have her shrug him off.

"Nothing, I --" Steve winced as she heaved. "God, I haven't felt like this since I quit drinking."

"Do you want me to get you something -- water or --"

She shook her head, an adamant no. "There's been no sign of the Thors overhead. I think we've lost them. Might as well --" she faltered as she turned a shade of green again, "-- might as well split up. Go do some recon. Figure out where we are."

While there was truth to what she proposed, it didn't sit right with Steve to leave her like this. He lay his good hand on her shoulder, trying to reassure her.

But instead she snapped, twisting so that her back was against the wall. "Don't."

"I just --"

Before Steve could explain himself, something shifted in her face. The brown almond eyes became smaller and lighter in color, her nose grew more angular, and her chin harder. She was growing taller  as her hair shortened, and the hand that was held up in front of Steve exchanged slender fingers for thicker, blunt digits.

The goatee was the last bit to emerge, and with it came a cruel, evil smirk.

Somehow, in seconds, Tony Stark had replaced Natasha before his very eyes.

"Nice to see you again, Steve."

"Wish I could say the same, Tony," Steve gripped the shoulder strap of the bag with his shield a little tighter.

"Oh?" Tony stuck out his lower lip in a feigned pout. "You don't want to finish the conversation we were having?"

"Not really." Steve just wanted to figure out what the hell was going on.

"That's a real shame," Tony flashed his teeth at Steve. "Because locked up in that woman's head, I've been dying to."

The silver Iron Man suit slipped out without a sound, molding around Tony so quickly that Steve had precious few seconds to react. The repulsor blast just barely missed his head. A shrug, and Steve brought his bag into a spin by the strap, and put his shoulder into acceleration. A muffled clang echoed off the alley walls as shield and bag collided with Tony's chest as one, knocking him into the wall.

Steve scrambled to snatch up the bag, but he was too slow --

Once, what seemed like ages now, Tony had given Steve a run down on his suit's specs. Steve couldn't recall the exact power output on the boots, but he did remember Tony boasting about stopping a commuter train with only one working.

All that power was turned on Steve in an instant, and he stifled a scream that tried to claw its way out of his throat as as he felt the impact and heard a something snap in his chest where Tony's boot made impact. Steve hit the opposite wall of the alley from the force of the kick, and lost his breath, this time unable to cry out as his bad arm collided with brick.

Then he felt smooth, metal hands at his throat, lifting him up, scraping his back along the alley wall.

"Curious how you failed to mention to the woman the other anomaly. When were you planning to tell Natasha that you're looking better these days?"

Steve's fingers clawed at Tony's, and he felt a trickle of blood drip from his nose. "What do you care, Stark?" He heaved, bringing a knee up, doing his best to crack the RT node, but Tony caught it with his other hand.

"Under different circumstances, I bet you'd enjoy this," Tony smirked.

Not Tony, Steve grit his teeth. This man was a pale shade of his best friend. His fingers became a vice on Tony's gauntlet, trying to force the hand open. "Don't flatter yourself. You're a sick man. How could anyone ever want you?"

He saw a flash of bright anger, and then felt himself flying through the air again, tumbling out into the street. Somebody screamed, high and shrill, but Steve had seconds to regain his composure before he felt the sear of the repulsor beam.

It burned, felt like a current was being passed through his body. If he could just get his shield...

Tony leaned over him, leering at where he had fallen. Perhaps he said something that Steve couldn't hear above the ringing in his ears. He felt a boot come to rest on his cheek, heavy and threatening.

"Would you like to play a game, Steve?" Tony's voice was full of cruel delight. And Steve wished the ringing hadn't died down. "Let's run an experiment, see just how well super soldier bones hold up against pressure."

Steve felt the boot grow heavier, and struggled, but Tony only pressed harder.

Until Steve felt a wash of energy. He felt Tony's boot forcibly lifted off him, and when he was able to sit up, bleeding and bruised, he saw that the engineer wasn't in much better shape. Whatever kind of blast he'd taken had left char marks on the silver symbiote, and it hung on Tony's frame oddly, as if shrinking away in terror.

Steve looked up, and his heart soared as he recognized the woman floating above him, he'd recognize the short blond hair and red sash anywhere.

Carol didn't look particularly happy to see either of them, though. She crossed her arms and frowned. "Hello, boys."

#

The cell was small, though not cramped. Steve could take three paces to the back wall, and two from side- to-side. He sat with legs crossed on a Spartan, pale green cot, and tried to ignore Tony through the bars in the cell next to him.

He thought things had been strange on the island. But now there was Tony, who had somehow replaced Natasha. And on top of that, Carol hadn't recognized them. He had thought she hadn't held back her power on Tony because...well because of what he'd become. Now it was obvious that that wasn't the case.

Whatever her power had done to Tony, he still wasn't faring well. He was pale and haggard, like he hadn't slept in days. Medusa -- from the long red hair there could be no mistaking her -- who also failed to recognize either of them, had quarantined the suit in a special containment unit on their arrival to the detainment center. Steve saw the pack with his shield, and the folded patriot armor disappear through the same door, presumably to be held as evidence.

Once Carol and Medusa left, that left just Steve and Tony. And for a long while it was silent.

Until, it seemed, Tony could take the boredom no longer.

"She wasn't entirely honest with you either, you know," Tony said. He couldn't have been more transparent in his attempt to get a rise out of Steve. "I can feel her, squirming around in the back of here." He tapped at his temple.

Steve felt unease roll in his stomach, but clenched his jaw, resolute in his silence.

"Maybe you and I weren't so different from the rest of the things in that flux," Tony pressed, and he approached the bars that separated the two of them.

"Don't lump me in with anything that has to do with you," Steve spat.

The engineer leaned forward, clearly finding the rise amusing. "Why?"

The hairs on the back of Steve's neck prickled from the look the other man gave him. Because I can't stand to see something so unapologetically evil wearing your face. Because I can't fathom how even before it all you used me. Because you did it without a care.

"Because you and I have nothing in common now."

He hated the cold, twinkle that brought out in Tony's eyes. Should have kept your mouth shut.

"Do you know, I can feel her emotions beneath mine?" Tony grinned, the bristles of his goatee brushing against the bars as he leered down at Steve. "She loves her Steve so much. Knowing you're wearing her husband's skin makes her nauseous. They're quite the sickening couple. Exactly what you always hoped we could be."

Steve's hands shot through the bars, whip-like fast, and his fingers closed around Tony's throat.

"You and me, we aren't so different," Tony gasped out a chuckle

"We're nothing alike."

"On the contrary," Jessica Drew interrupted. She had entered so quietly that Steve hadn't noticed. "Neither of you seem to be from around here. So what I want to know is simple," she strode fully into the room, a confident swing in her step. She was fully costumed in her customary red and yellow and her eyes were hidden by the mask, but Steve would recognize her voice anywhere.

Behind her, a teenage girl in fishnet stockings followed with a staff in hand. She looked familiar, one of the Runaways if Steve's memory served.

"Who are you," Jessica asked in a hard tone, "where did you come from, and why did you violate the first law?"

An empty feeling in Steve's gut grew wider. No one, it seemed, would recognize them. He resisted the urge to glance at Tony. Once the two of them might have worked out what to share together. Now...

"The first law?" Steve frowned.

"You mean 'trespassing,' don't you?" Tony said. "What the Thors accused you of," Tony shot narrowed eyes over at Steve.

"Yes, you violated Doom's prime edict. We Arcadians can't just turn a blind eye to that."

"Arcadians? Is that a team name?"

Jessica scrutinized Steve for a few quiet moments. "You can stop the simple act. Arcadia is a realm. The borders of which you violated. And you're going back to wherever you came from as soon as we figure out which realm to send you back to. So where did you run from? Limbo? Bar Sinister?"

"Limbo?" Steve was at a loss for how to process this.

"We came from the island of misfit toys," Tony said. "If you don't understand, then do an MRI on me."

Her head turned toward Tony, and her lips thinned, a silent warning that he ought to keep his mouth shut.

"We've honestly never heard of this edict," Steve said. "Or Arcadia." He didn't look at Tony, but his next question was directed at the engineer. "Is it possible we were pulled into another universe at the collapse of ours?"

"Ours and 1610 were the only ones left. No, I don't think so."

"Other universe?" Jessica looked aghast and yet also intrigued. "What kind of blasphemy are they teaching where you come from?"

"You keep assuming we came from somewhere," Steve shook his head. "But we woke up on an island that was in a constant state of flux, all by ourselves. We hadn't heard of the edict."

"That's a little hard to swallow," Jessica countered, "since it's been eight years. Everyone is taught the first law of Doom's world is that the borders must not be crossed without permission."

"Doom's world?" Steve felt his world turn upside down. And then -- "Eight years?"

"Almost to the day."

Steve glanced at Tony. "There's no way we were on that island for eight years."

"How do you know?" Tony said quietly. "Everything was in flux."

"I don't have time for your stories," Jessica said impatiently. "Make up your minds, or I will hand you over to the Thors who guard the Wall."

"Wait --" the teenage girl piped up at mention of the Wall. She pointed at Tony. "I think he's telling the truth. Something does feel off."

"Nico --"

"There have been too many weird things going on," she insisted. "Like the megalodon. Like the earthquake. What if they're caught up in it too? Let me see if I can tell if they're lying."

"If you think you can..."

"I just need to find the right word."

The teenager's grimaced and her lips parting ever so slightly in focused determination. "Homeland," she said. A moment passed but nothing happened. "Origins." She crossed the room and looked at Tony between the bars. "You said your head wasn't right."

Tony looked balefully back. "There's a woman inside my head."

"Split."

The wan engineer doubled over and let out a hiss of pain.

At first, Steve thought that his vision had blurred. He saw two forms -- but when he blinked, the strange visual was the same. And the doubled, blurred person that half overlapped with Tony looked a lot like Natasha.

Jessica pushed her mask up, eyes wide. "Nico, I think you'd better stop."

"But I--"

"Now."

"Reverse!" Nico tried. "Combine! Stop!"

Steve heard a guttural groan that started out in the deep tone of Tony's voice and rose at the tail end of the noise, transformed mid-utterance into a woman's voice. Tony staggered forward and phased through the bars of the cell.

"Keep them stable," Jessica instructed the teenager, her eyes wide. "I'm getting help."

#

They took Tony -- and Natasha -- leaving Steve by himself. How long he paced, Steve couldn't say, but when the door to the holding room opened, it was Medusa again. She undid the lock on his cell and motioned for him to follow her.

He was led to a domed room with ivy growing on the columns that formed arches all around. A monument stood against the back wall, and in front of it, a group of familiar women were gathered: Carol, Jan, Storm, Dazzler, and Jessica, all solemn and concerned. At the center of them all was a woman in green: none other than Jennifer Walters.

Tony was kneeling on the ground in front of her, the tendons on his fingers standing out white and taut. Crouching in front of him, a woman in furs was muttering something, one of her hands stretched out in front of him, weaving something gold and shimmering in the air around the engineer. Steve had a few moments of vertigo, seeing the gold horned helm. He'd only ever seen one person wear something like it.

It wouldn't be the first time that Loki had taken a feminine form, or worked together with heroes, but it was still a dissonant sight.

As Steve drew to a stop, a tendril of Medusa's hair drifted round his back, curling on the floor next to his ankle, ready to grab him should he make a run for it. None of the assembled women acknowledged their entrance. They were all fixated on Tony.

Before Steve's eyes, he saw Tony melt back into Natasha's form, and then flicker back.

"It's a very complicated entanglement," Loki muttered.

"Can you stabilize her?" Jennifer asked.

"Working on it."

"What went wrong?" Steve asked.

Loki looked up, and something like amusement flickered over her gaunt face. "You didn't mention another one."

"Need to know basis," said Jessica.

Her green gaze drifted over Steve. "The answer to your question is not so simple. Many things happened. If you mean what Nico did, her magic took a wrong channel. It sought to find out who you were, but there wasn't just one thing to discover. Her powers are intuitive rather than directed, and the magic tried to split the two halves of your friend apart so that it could answer the question for both aspects."

Loki squinted at Tony, the glow in her palm dissipating. The engineer groaned and scrubbed at his ashen, clammy face.

"The entanglement between the two people in this body is profound right now, far too complicated for undirected magic."

"What do you mean by right now?" Steve shifted uneasily. Something in Loki's tone worried him.

"The two halves won't coexist in the body forever," Loki said. "Even now I can feel a war going on between them, struggling for dominance."

Tony let out a hollow burst of laughter. "Yeah, and I'm winning."

"You," Loki replied in a clipped tone, "Have an advantage right now, nothing more."

"So eventually, one of them will consume the other?" Steve asked, feeling cold.

Loki nodded.

"Can you separate them?"

This time Loki shook her head no.

Steve felt something desperate well within him. "Then can you erase him?"

Tony's shoulders suddenly drew together tight, and the man laughed. "That it would come to this," he grinned. "But you always did like for someone else to do the dirty work for you, Steve."

Loki ignored Tony's comments, one elegant dark eyebrow rising in astonishment at Steve. "Are you really one to judge your companion?"

"He's a criminal," Steve's jaw clenched, "a genocidal megalomaniac. If one of them has to die, it ought to be him."

Loki looked at Tony with an appraising eye. And Steve wondered what her life had been like -- if it was in any way similar to the Loki's from their earth. "I wonder, would you say the same for yourself?"

The confusion must have been evident on Steve's face. Loki rose and paced across the floor to him. "You are also tangled up in something bigger than yourself. Look," and her fingers drifted to his forehead.

Steve felt his head buzz, and his body go light as a feather. And when he looked down at his hands, they were old and gnarled again, a translucent shade of green. He looked up and saw his own face -- the younger self, blinking, and looking just as tired and haggard as Tony.

"Nat?" he heard his own voice, barely louder than a whisper. "Nat, I--" the eyelids sunk, and the blue eyes rolled back. And then the floating sensation was gone. Steve found himself back in that body, just in time to see Natasha's form ghost outward, creating the strange doubled figure again.

"Steve!"

The sob in her voice was visceral. Steve was ashamed at how relieved he was when Nico knelt next to her, murmured something in her ear, and Natasha and Tony resolved back into one form.

"He's very weak," Loki said. "Even if I could separate you, he might not thrive. Would it be kinder to erase him and let you have the body?"

Steve stayed silent. But he seethed beneath his skin.

"I wonder what Natasha would think of that." Loki pressed. And it was so pointed that for a moment Steve had a hard time believing it wasn't the cruel Loki he had come to know in their universe.

"Is there any way to separate us?" Steve finally asked. "Not you -- but another?"

Loki pursed her lips and glanced at Jessica. She-Hulk didn't look happy, but she nodded.

"God could," the Baroness said. "Or his right hand, Stephen Strange. They have powers that surpass anyone on Doom's world."

Steve shivered at the thought of asking Doom for help. The fact that everyone here so blindly accepted him as their savior pointed to something foul afoot, but he couldn't let on about his suspicions.

"Do we go...stand in line then?" Tony sneered.

Jennifer shook her head. "The only people allowed inside Doomstadt are the holy family, the Thors, and the Barons."

"Then we go to neutral ground?" Steve frowned.

Jennifer shook her head. "They would need to come here. But they will not take kindly to you crossing into Arcadia. When we tell them why you require aid--"

"Then we go look for someone else," Steve said.

"Impossible."

"Because of the borders?" Tony's voice was gradually growing stronger.

"Yes. I can send a petition for you, but be warned, Doom does not take lightly to his laws being violated. If you survive the split, you will probably be sent to live out your days on the Wall."

Steve noted the way that Nico stiffened at that. She didn't seem to like mention of this wall. "Doesn't sound like I have much of a choice."

"And it doesn't sound like you're going to be rid of me anytime soon," Tony added.

Steve bit his lip, and then he straightened his back, looking from Loki to Nico. "Can you make him better?"

Loki cocked her head, the black hair swaying behind her shoulders. "Better how?"

"He used to be...good," Steve said.

Loki frowned. "No. I can't change his personality."

"Then can you do something to keep him from hurting people?" Steve shifted the focus of his appeal to Carol. "You saw what he was like on the street."

"It did look pretty bad."

Loki pursed her lips, then nodded. "I can bind him to you, make it so that he can't do anything but in self-defense."

"That would be good."

"Hey!" Tony protested. "Don't I get a say?" He appealed directly to Jennifer. "Can't I have a trial?"

"You're not a citizen of Arcadia," the green-skinned woman said coolly. "You have the right to petition the guardians of this island for leniency, but nothing more."

Tony's eyes searched the assembled women, hoping to find a shred of doubt in their eyes he could turn in his favor. But Carol's words seemed to damn him.

"Very well," Loki said. And she started muttering again in what sounded a lot like a mix of Asgardian and Latverian. Steve felt something cool sweep from the back of his neck, down to the tail of his spine. He heard Tony draw in a sharp breath of air, and then the sensation became a warm.

"It is done," Loki said. "But remember that in one body, whatever happens to him happens to her. Use your new power wisely."

#

The throne room of god king Doom sparked, a thousand points of light hung in the branches of the world tree throne. Odinson loved the room. It felt grand. It felt familiar. It felt like home.

Today Doom was not holding council. The white marble colored wood sat empty. But beneath the bows of the tree, Sheriff Strange stood, hands clasped together behind his back, deep in thought.

Odinson cleared his throat, and the dark haired man turned, offering him a warm smile in welcome.

"Thor Odinson. Back from patrols along the Wall?"

"Yes, Sir," Odinson took off his helmet and placed it beneath his right arm in a sign of deference to the Sheriff's position. "I came to give you a report. Leif and I encountered something odd out there."

The Sheriff smiled again, his eyes looking tired. "That's the Wall for you. There's a reason service on it is used as a punishment."

"I know, Sir. But this was on the Arcadian side. Out over the ocean. Leif and I encountered a flying man and woman."

"Border crossers?"

"That's what we believed at first. But they insisted they had come from an island."

Strange's gaze grew pointed. "Near Arcadia, you say? What did they look like?"

"They were in mechanical suits. The man seemed to recognize me. And he gave me a name: Steve."

Strange furrowed his dark eyebrows. "Steve? And you said the other one was a woman? Did you take them in?"

Odinson nodded at the first question and shook his head at the second. "Leif and I lost them in Arcadia. We think Baron Walters may be sheltering them. Once the trail went cold, we went back to where we had made first contact and searched the area."

One of Strange's eyebrow rose.

"We found an island out there, just like they said. It was full of unnatural things."

An inscrutable expression flickered on the sheriff's face. "Have you told anyone of this?"

"No, Sir."

A muscle tightened in Strange's jaw. "We must be careful. There are forces at work here, bigger than you or I."

"Surely God should know then."

"Leave that to me," Strange wrapped his cloak tighter about himself. "In the meantime, I want you to hunt down the man and the woman and bring them to me. Take whoever you need. But be quick and discreet about it."

#

After the Odinson had left, Strange unfurled his cloak, a small luminous and ethereal finch in one palm. "Tell me when he returns," he said. The conjured bird ruffled its feathers and took off, through the stony passageways of the citadel.

Then he retreated to his office where he conjured a scrying orb, focusing his mind on the seas just north of the barrier wall -- a place he hadn't been in a very long time.

#

It was well into the night and the lights in the holding room were dark. The only illumination in the room came from the RT and the dim glow of fluorescent lights from beneath the door. Even with the consummate darkness and the stillness of the room, Steve found it difficult to sleep. He kept turning on the pale green cot's pad, the starchy sheets making a static noise as he tossed uneasily and clumsily due to his knitting bones.

"Will you keep quiet?" Tony hissed. He had been uncharacteristically silent since Loki had performed the binding spell, and for a time Steve had wondered if that had been a side effect. "Or is your conscience driving you up a wall?"

"For what?" Steve asked back to the dark ceiling.

He heard more rustling of sheets, and bare feet slapping against the cold concrete floor. "For being a sanctimonious asshole."

"There was nothing sanctimonious --"

"You asked her to erase me," Tony laughed darkly. "And you're the one who gets to make the decision between right and wrong for me?"

"Maybe you should have been more careful, instead of picking fights."

"If you'll recall, we never finished the one that you brought to my doorstep at the end of the world," Tony reminded him.

Steve was about to cut right back, but the room was suddenly flooded with the light from the hall. He moved an elbow up to his eyes, trying to block the glare. The figure that darted through the open door, however, didn't close it, and he was forced to squint against the light.

From the height and the staff, Steve was reasonably sure that Nico had just come to visit. And she had someone with her -- a girl that seemed to suck in the light, and condense it all into a million points of light in her body. She looked like a starfield.

Which brought to mind Heimdall's ominous warning.

She was also, Steve noted, holding a large satchel.

"Please stay quiet," Nico whispered.

Steve nodded.

"I don't think it's right, what they're doing to you," the girl said, and there was steely defiance in her voice. "I've seen good people get taken to the Wall, and it isn't right. They should do more. But if they won't I will."

Steve wasn't sure what to say to that.

"What exactly are you proposing?" Tony sounded amused and interested. But beneath that airy demeanor, which Steve knew all too well now, he also heard suspicion.

"My magic may just make things worse," Nico went on. "But her powers are different. And she's agreed to help." The starry girl's hair floated as she nodded her head in agreement.

"Can you get us out of here?" Steve pushed himself up on his elbows.

Even in the glare, Steve would see Nico's grin. "Oh yes, that will be easy. Rust," she said in an otherworldly, commanding voice. And the locks of the cell doors rotted away. She was able to swing the cell doors open without trouble.

Steve eyed Tony warily as they both moved to stand just outside their cells. "So how does this work?" he asked the girls.

In answer, the starry girl sat the satchel on the ground and began to wave her hands, and the air shimmered around her. It started as a small point, then swelled, becoming bigger, till a wavering flicker, like the distortion in the air from hot metal, was as tall as the two men.

"I'm pretty sure it's a portal," Nico said.

"You're not sure?" Steve asked, the note of worried derision not quite masked.

"Do we have another choice?" Tony asked dryly.

"No, I guess not."

Nico rooted around in the satchel, giving the cannister with Tony's suit to the engineer. Next came the bag with Steve's shield. It felt good to have the familiar weight of it one his back again, even though his cracked rib protested. Last came the sphere.

Nico blinked as she fished it out and held it in her palm. In her hand, the dull blue glow appeared brighter. "Oh..." she said.

"Oh?" Steve asked.

"I've never seen one before. But from the feel of it...I think it may be a relic."

"Relic?"

Nico let out an angry puff of breath. "If they knew you had this and didn't tell you -- you've got more options on the table than they let on. Forget finding God or the Sheriff. Someone with more control over their magic should be able to help you with this."

Steve took the star from her, slipping it into the bag on his back with his good hand. It felt so small, so wildly disproportionate to merely express gratitude in the face of such help and good news. But that's all he could do. "Thank you, Nico" he said.

She gave him a defiant grin, "The worst they can do is send me over the Wall for this. Even that wouldn't be so bad. I'd be in good company."

Brave girl, Steve thought, and held out one open palm toward the portal. "Ladies first," he said to Tony.

Tony flashed his teeth back at Steve. "You always were so chivalrous." But he slipped through without further complaint. After a few seconds, Steve followed.

How exactly to describe the sensation of going through that portal? Steve felt like he was being stretched, pulled impossibly long and thin, and ground to a paste as he was ripped from one physical location to another. Every molecule of his skin felt as though it were rubbed raw, and his healing bones felt as though they'd been broken fresh.

"Ugh--" Steve muttered, and stumbled forward, his knees coming down in dusty earth.

Overhead the sky was a starless field, the only light coming from a horrid, malformed moon. If he had needed any more proof that they weren't in Kansas anymore, the pale, oblong shape in the sky was the final horror, the final proof that the world really had ended.

Even with the light of the monstrous moon, it was dark. Steve hadn't seen a night so dark since the war, when the fronts would be pitch black at night to keep the enemy from finding them. They must have wound up out in the middle of nowhere.

Or -- not nowhere. There were tracks nearby. And on the horizon, Steve thought he saw the twinkling lights of a town. At his feet, Tony moaned, and it was then that Steve realized the engineer had passed out during their trip through Nico's portal and landed silent and dead to the world.

"Come on," Steve said, and even though it made his skin crawl, he offered Tony his good arm. "I think I know which way we should go."

Tony spat at him, and refused the hand. "Okay, well then get going, and I'll head in the opposite direction."

Steve's eyes narrowed. "We're in this together, Tony."

"Sure," Tony sneered, and he grabbed the bag, shield, star and all, and began to rocket away.

"Stop," Steve hissed. And the thrusters died immediately. Tony skidded across the dusty earth like a tumbleweed before coming to rest unceremoniously with his ass in the air.

"Jesus," he swore. "I hate magic. What does leaving hurt anything?"

"Clearly something," Steve alit next to Tony, wincing at the impact. "Now get up."

Tony put a silver arm under himself to flip over, but it gave way, and he collapsed into the dust. "We don't have time for this."

Tony spat out dirt, "I know. But magical compulsion can't work miracles. Something's wrong with the suit's --"

There was a loud rumbling sound, so acute and painful in Steve's ears that he clasped his hand over them. At the same time, the ground beneath them seemed to roll.  But then, like the sensation of vertigo, the odd feelings passed.

Steve frowned, reaching down and flipping Tony over. Where the RT had glowed bright blue before, it was dim, and guttering like a candle.

"The woman's panicking," Tony said, speech beginning to slur, as though he didn't care a wit about what it did to him. He let out a stiff chuckle. "I think she may need the RT too. Of all the things to be universal, apparently it's my heart."

"You haven't rebooted," Steve pointed out, "and my suit is reading as stable."

At first Tony didn't seem to hear him. "That's because your reactor runs off of plain old rhodium. My RT is currently calibrated to an isotope of ruthenium." He blinked. "Which, if my calculations of decay are correct, has a different half-life here."

"But we're miles from the island."

"Yeah," Tony closed his eyes. "This is more than chaos magic." He groaned as his face began to twist and change. Steve looked up in alarm, and saw that the darkness of night was beginning to recede. "Give me your reactor, the suit should be able to quickly integrate it to power life support."

He held out his hand. For a moment Steve hesitated, and Tony's brows shot up. "Oh, Cap. Are you that mad at me you'd kill the woman too?"

Steve knelt next to Tony, the fingers of his good hand closing over the reactor in his suit's chest and twisting it out of the locked position. He felt the legs of the suit go leaden as he handed over the reactor material. With the last of the suit's residual power, he gave the command to disassemble, and the red, white, and blue pieces released, clattering around him, leaving him in only the nondescript cotton pants they'd given him for confinement in Arcadia.

Tony still had use of his arms, but it seemed he didn't even need them. Steve offered the core to the suit and the symbiotic metal flowed like water around the new reactor, fusing it into place, then the suit retreated back into little more than a silver band around Tony's wrist, leaving him nude.

"It'll take some time to recalibrate," Tony's voice pitch got higher, "to assimilate it all and reboot. But for now we have enough power to keep the lights on."

His black hair got longer, the eyes took on a brown tint, and the goatee became progressively lighter and fine. "See you again tomorrow night," he promised with a wink, before giving way fully to Natasha.

Natasha pulled herself up, curling an arm around one bent knee as the rosy hues of dawn arrived. She gave Steve a weak smile. "Fortunately, the byproduct of ruthenium is rhodium. So once the suit adjusts, we'll either have double the harnessed energy or...you know, an explosion."

"Well now," Steve tensed as he heard the hammer of a gun cock behind them. A man in a gray duster and a black hat had stepped out from behind a rocky outcrop and had the pistol trained on him. Three men followed suit, appearing behind him silent as ghosts. "Don't know where you folk are from, but Mr. Fisk gets nervous when guests turn up uninvited on his land. And he really don't care for talk of blowing things up."

4

The man introduced himself as Turk, welcoming them with feigned cordiality, at gunpoint, to the Valley of Doom.

He seemed especially interested in the disassembled armor at Steve's feet. After he had motioned with the gun for them to stand, he made a curt gesture with his free hand for one of the others to pick up the armor.

A grizzled, gap-toothed man with leathery skin approached, grabbed one of the gauntlets, and turned it over with a critical eye. "Damaged," he said, running a finger through the gutted, frayed wiring by way of show to the others. He picked up another piece and similarly shook his head.

Turk clucked his tongue. "Shame." His beady eyes settled on Steve. "What's your name?"

Remembering Jennifer's warning about border crossers, he opted for a white-lie. "Grant."

Turk raised an eyebrow. "You got a last name?"

"Rogers."

"The sheriff's twin has better taste in partners," one of the men snickered.

"Shut it," Turk hissed over his shoulder, shrugging out of his coat and throwing it to Natasha before refocusing the muzzle of the gun on Steve. "See if the Thors noticed any border breaches. But make it sound like we're looking for a bounty. Maybe we can use these two as leverage."

#

Natasha trailed behind Steve, uncomfortable in just the duster. She could practically feel the hot breath of the ugly man behind her on her neck. She certainly smelled the rotten stench of his breath. Where had they landed that dentists seemed in so short supply?

If only Steve were behind her. Not only would the march under the hot sun -- is it summer here? -- be more pleasant, she could also turn, try to figure out what was on his mind.

He's not your husband, she had to remind herself. Maybe a glance wouldn't tell her if she should pull part of the armor out. Integration was still only at six percent, but she was reasonably confident that she could stomp all over these men with a single gauntlet running on reserve power. Steve was the strategist, though. Always had been. And she realized she was unconsciously waiting for his signal. One that might not come.

Taking unilateral action wasn't out of the question. She could do it. But if Steve wasn't prepared -- he was still cradling one arm and the pack with his shield had wound up in Turk's hands -- if he was killed in the scuffle, she'd never be able to forgive herself. She'd seen him from behind Tony's eyes, while immobile and frustratingly mute. Her Steve had been so fragile. But he was still alive.

Natasha bit her lip and focused on the back of Steve's head, willing the prick of tears away.

Now that she knew he was there, she understood the off-feelings and thoughts in the back of her head, and she could feel how amused Tony was by her anguish.

Fuck you, she steeled herself against the foreign feelings. It's no wonder he hates you.

#

The town looked like something out of another time, like one of the old west ghost towns that had suddenly sprouted a bustling population. The county jail they stopped in front was small, little more than a hole in the wall, as though it had long ago been outstripped by the rampant growth of the town. Turk marched the two of them in at pistol-point, and left his posse outside.

Natasha promptly understood what the one man had meant by twin. Yet another Steve was seated behind a desk. He paused, mid-scribble, in an official looking log as the bell on the door tinkled.

He was dressed simply, gray vest, white shirt, and a shiny star pinned to his chest. His blond hair was longer than Steve's, and more unruly, but there was no mistaking the resemblance. Or the temperament. He frowned at seeing Steve, but that was all before his gaze swung instinctively to Turk.

"I don't think you need that anymore," he said, tilting his head at Turk. Natasha heard the pistol slide into a leather holster in answer. "Now then. What seems to be the problem?"

"Your kin was out at the dam in flagrante delicto."

"My, my. Sounds like Fisk will make a lawyer out of you yet," the sheriff remarked with as little conviction as an atheist at confessional, but Natasha noticed a sharpness in his eye at the word kin. "What exactly do you want me to do?"

"Thow 'em in a cell, if your honest enough to see past blood," Turk's face turned red. "They were going to destroy it."

"Were they?" the sheriff scribbled something else in his ledge nonchalantly before looked down his nose at Natasha's bare legs and the bare skin that peeked from under the frayed seams of the duster. Then his gaze drifted to Steve in nothing but the cotton pants. "Oh yes, they look like quite the pair of criminals."

She cleared her throat and stepped forward. "You must be the brother Grant's been so eager for me to meet. Shame to be introduced this way. We'd been on the road for so long, and being newly married, well...your brother just wanted to find someplace secluded."

The sheriff's eyebrows rose again.

"That's a damn lie--" Turk started in. "They were there to blow the thing. I've got three others to witness to that."

Natasha held her head high. "The explosions he heard mention of where of a rather different nature," she gave the sheriff a wink.

Sheriff Rogers looked thoroughly unimpressed by the whole business. To Turk he asked, "I take it you searched 'em and turn up something?"

"Uh--" Turk looked embarrassed.

"Show me the dynamite, and you'll have a case," the sheriff said. Then his attention turned to Steve as he got up. "As for you, I oughtta throw you in a cell for being such a bonehead."

"Couldn't fault you if you decided to," Steve fell into the act seamlessly. With the upstanding reputation Captain America enjoyed, it had once been easy for Natasha to forget that her husband had conducted hundreds of undercover missions.

Once. But that had been a long time ago. So it didn't surprise her that it came just as naturally to her traveling companion.

The sheriff continued sizing Steve up for another moment before pulling him into a bear hug. "It's been too long, Grant."

And the sheriff, she mulled, seemed to be just as quick of a study.

#

"So tell me who you really are," Sheriff Steve said, leaning against an antique dresser in an upstairs room of the saloon. In private, the calm had evaporated, and he looked perturbed by Steve's presence.

Steve pursed his lips together, getting ready to say something that was likely a lie.

Before he could say anything, Natasha spoke up. "Fugitives."

Steve glared at her.

And Natasha glared back. "He trusted us, we should trust him,"

"He's also a law man."

"And standing right here," the sheriff piped up.

But before they could say more, there was a pounding on the room's door. The sheriff frowned before uncrossing his arms and opening it a crack to peek out.

"Natasha--"

The door was pushed open, sheriff and all, as Bruce Banner shoved his way through, glasses askew and string tie only half-done, as though he had been in too much of a hurry to bother.

Natasha recognized him, but in the same way that she had initially "recognized" Steve. The scientist's face looked familiar. It wasn't until he took her hands in his and pleaded with her, "Remember? Remember MIT and theoretical physics? Remember our work on quantum space warping?"

"Bruce," she was slack-jawed. "How? I thought--" that everything on my world had died. "How long have you been here?"

"Since the beginning," Bruce said, grim. "Eight years at least, though the beginning's hazy. I didn't remember at first, and when I did -- well, it was sacrilege. Not even the few border jumpers that have wandered through town remembered a world before Doom's. I thought it would be best to continue keeping my head down and pretend to fit in."

Natasha pulled him into a tight hug. "You don't know how good it is to see you," she said.

"Believe me, I do."

Over Bruce's shoulder, Natasha saw both Steves wearing perplexed expressions, and glancing at one another. The sheriff, in particular, looked like he'd just seen a housecat grow a Lion's head.

Natasha drew back to arm's length, hands still on her friend's shoulders, as if she let go he would fade away back into memory. "Did you hear it too then?"

"The chanting sound?"

"That too -- but after the silence -- the voices talking about a tithe --"

Bruce nodded vigorously. "That was God. That was Doom."

"Tithe?" Steve asked. And she thought she could detect resentment there.

In the back of her mind, she felt Tony shifting, reminding her of what he'd said: the woman is hiding her own secrets.

And Steve hates secrets. She could practically feel Tony's grin.

"But you're from Timely," the sheriff protested. "Your family's been in the county for generations."

"Maybe a Banner was," Bruce shrugged. "But not me. Which is lucky for you. Or didn't you ever wonder why I never said a thing about you and Stark?"

The sheriff's mouth opened to protest, and then snapped shut. His gaze swung to Steve. "Maybe we should start at the beginning. Why are you two fugitives? Getting on Turk's bad side got your foot in the door. And if Banner'll vouch for you, you're fine by me. But if Turk suspects what you really are, you'd better get moving. The town will be swarming with Doom's men soon."

"How?" Natasha crossed her arms and leaned against the windowsill. "The last way we crossed a border was by magic. Before that we didn't have a choice. We were on an uninhabited island and didn't know about the law. We were almost fried by two Thors."

"Is that still powered by a radioactive isotope?" Bruce asked, motioning to the glow from Natasha's chest.

She blinked. "Yes, but without the supporting tech--"

He gave her a sad smile, with just the smallest flicker of pride. "Nat, I've travelled to other universes. And I've had eight years to deal with the tech of this place. I've become something of an expert. Between the two of us we can find a way."

#

After Natasha and Bruce had left for his hidden workshop, Steve loitered in the open area of the saloon's upstairs, just outside the room.

"You don't happen to have any powerful sorcerers in Timely, do you?" Steve asked, leaning on the bannister that circled the upper floor, and looked down on the tables and bar. A group of men were playing poker, and from his vantage, Steve could see the youngest of the group was going to get fleeced for all he was worth.

"If there's any here, they've kept as quiet as Banner," the sheriff said, watching the poker game beside him.

"You really had no idea about Banner?"

The sheriff shook his head. "So if you say you remember a different world and so does Banner, then I believe you. There are other memories we--that I have that don't quite fit. So if Banner wanted to keep his head down because he was worried, then I believe that too."

"If only we all could," Steve said glumly. The youth went out with a pair of nines. Steve shifted and watched the sheriff out of the corner of his eye. "What did Banner mean, lucky for you?

"I'm not really sure."

"You seemed to catch his meaning well enough."

As it so happened, the saloon doors swung open at that point, letting in a disheveled looking man in a gray suit, shirt half undone, wearing only one shoe. Though his goatee was still trimmed, he also sported a bristly neck beard.

He was the spitting image of Tony in his worst drinking days.

"Is that--" Steve couldn't even bring himself to finish the question.

Tony stumbled past the card players, hands out before him like a blind man, a safety precaution in the event of a fall.

"Stark?" the sheriff supplied. "You know him?"

"I did...once," seeing Tony grope a stool out and order a scotch on the rocks twisted something horrible inside of Steve. He'd seen Tony drink recently -- at the baseball game, with all the glitz of television and the control he always exerted over any publicity image. But this was different. This was visceral. Steve hadn't seen Tony so deep in the bottle in years. "You let him--?"

"Let?" The sheriff shot him a disapproving scowl. "I'm not the man's keeper."

"Are you his friend?"

"Were you?"

I could have been so much more of one, Steve wanted to say. "For a time."

"I--" something of the hardness from the moment before went out of the sheriff and his shoulders sagged. "I don't know what to do about it." He looked down on Tony with blue eyes full of misery and regret.

And love. Steve had seen that heartsickness in the mirror.

"You two are frowned on," Steve ventured.

"We're nothing," the sheriff's voice was resolute. Publicly, Steve filled in the gap on his own. And for an agonizing few minutes, the sheriff was silent. "It's hard...not knowing how to help someone. I wake up every day hoping it's a good one. But it seems like they're scarcer and scarcer these days."

Steve watched as Tony drained the tumbler and ordered another. And he thought about his own Tony, and how he didn't know how to help him either...then or now.

#

Strange was standing, hunched over his desk with hands spread, keeping a scroll spread flat. He had been pouring over the list of spatial anomalies and their location for some time when the bird returned, alighting soundlessly on his right hand.

Strange let a slow breath out through his nose and straightened up, composing himself in quiet of his deserted sanctuary. Then, as the conjured bird flitted back into the air, he fixed the collar of his cape and went out to meet the High Priest.

#

The red robes of the Black Priest's order swirled in the breeze of the courtyard, and the golden mask glittered in the sun, the single eye shaped into the metal glinting, cold and impassive. The High Priest moved at a brisk walk, striding toward the soaring towers of the library with a bulding dun leather satchel on one arm.

"Good hunting in the deadlands?" Strange called to him, and the scuff of his black boots stopped.

"You might say that," the man's voice was deep with amusement. As Strange closed the distance between the two of them, he swung the flap of the bag up so that the sorcerer could peak inside. The sheriff cast a curious eye over a jar of viscous, bright yellow liquid that glowed gold. "Celestial blood," the priest said by way of explanation. "Very potent poison with a slow onset. A thimble full could probably drop Doom himself."

Let us hope that it is locked safely away, Strange thought.

"In the deadlands?"

The priest cinched the flap shut again. "I wasn't the one who made this world."

"Neither did I," Strange pointed out.

"No, but you did help scavenge the old. You might have done a better job of keeping all of your relics in the ark though."

Strange's eyes darted around the courtyard, but they were alone -- there wasn't even a Thor on duty nearby. "You certainly seem to have enjoyed being out on the chase, lately."

"The wicked profit from the sloth of the righteous man." The masked face was impossible to read, but the voice was smug.

"Oh indeed," Strange agreed. "But one might also argue the righteous cause is in the eye of the beholder."

"Surely that is heresy," the priest said. "The righteous cause is Doom's."

You cannot lie to me, Strange though savagely. "You and I both know better. You and I both remember." Other worlds, other homes. And this man was risking it all. "What have you been doing on the island?"

The priest calmly removed the glittering gold helm, and eyes the same gray as Strange's emerged -- goatee and white hair around the temples the same as his. As Strange's twin emerged, his face  was open and seemingly genuine. But the sheriff recognized it for what it was: manipulation. He had learned long ago that his counterpart, who went by Stephen Sanders, was just as adept as it as he was.

"The island? We gave up on that."

"I did," Strange's eyes narrowed. "But after my Thors brought back reports of a shifting landscape -- after I looked for myself -- I have certain doubts. There was nothing there but rock and soil."

"And your experiment." The Black Priest kept his gaze level and cool.

"What did you do with it?" He demanded, because even though it was what he was looking for, he hadn't seen it.

"It's safe," the priest replied cryptically. "So tell me, what do you plan to do with those reports?"

Strange held his tongue.

Sanders grinned. "Don't worry, Strange. Where you failed, I will succeed," and he patted the bag at his side ominously. "But in the mean time, I'm sure you would agree that it is in our both interests if God does not find out about the things you've been doing behind his back."

He began to walk away, then paused, asking over his shoulder, "Oh, on my way in I was told there have been odd power fluctuations in Arcadia. You haven't heard anything about that, have you?"

Strange kept his face a careful mask. "A power flux? No, that's your realm, Sanders."

The high priest smiled. "Yes, of course. But do let me know if your Thors find out anything worthwhile."

#

"What has it been like?" Natasha asked, rifling through the schematics on Bruce's workbench.

Bruce just shrugged, twisting a screw into the wire frame from where he sat cross-legged on the floor. "Different. Lonely."

"Lonely? Seems like you have a town full of people."

"No one with the same memories," Bruce said wistfully. "Everyone here remembers a time from shortly after the civil war. And none of them remember what it was like to live on an earth before Doom became God. It's all crisscrossed in their minds."

"Steve knew a Doom. He didn't seem to think very highly of the man. Seemed even less thrilled at the prospect of him being a God."

"Can't say that I blame him," Bruce said. "What kind of a God steals people's memories? I think he's more of a tyrant than anything else."

"Can be brought down?"

"A man with the powers of God?" Bruce's face twisted into something inscrutable. It might have been carefully controlled rage, or it might have been sadness. "I think the only thing that might do the trick is a mass uprising. But things have been so volatile lately, it's hard to see that happening any time soon."

"Volatile how?"

"Earthquakes, wells drying up over night, people hallucinating strange things out in the desert and swearing they were as real as flesh and blood. I'd just dismiss the latter as superstitious folk, only there have been too many Thors sniffing around without saying what's actually going on."

Natasha swallowed, thinking back to Nico's comments as Tony and Steve had left Arcadia. She'd said something weird had turned up there too: a prehistoric shark. And she'd also mentioned an earthquake.

"How long has it been going on?"

Bruce shrugged again and resettled his glasses on his nose. "A month and a half? Maybe two?"

It was cold comfort to know the odd occurrences predated herself and Steve.

Because she couldn't shake the awful suspicion that they were part of a strange set of symptoms.

#

Exhausted, Natasha rubbed at her eyes and set down the drafting paper. Bruce had done so much of the work already, driven by an almost singular desire to make contact with another world again. She glanced over at the physicist, who was still happily working on the coordinates system, and did a rough estimate of the time her body had been awake in one form or another.

She stood and stretched, "I think that's about all I have in me today."

Bruce pushed his round glasses up on his nose and smiled. "Lot of progress though."

"Indeed," she agreed. "But I should get back to Steve, see how he's doing with his doppelganger."

"Back here tomorrow?"

"You know it."

Natasha made her way back to the saloon at a brisk pace. She'd lingered longer than she'd realized, and the sun was setting again. Two Rogers could plausibly be twin brothers. But two Rogers and two Starks would stretch credibility. So they had decided it would be best for Natasha to excuse herself to bed early for as long as their stay lasted.

Of course, the prospect of being locked up in Tony's mind wasn't a comforting thought. But maybe the both of them would sleep for the better part of it.

God, that would be such a relief.

She let herself into the room, and only when she'd taken two or three noisy steps did she realize that a form was lying in the double bed. Immediately, her steps became lighter, and when she sank down on the soft sheets she tried to keep the springs from squeaking. She wasn't entirely successful, but the tousled blond hair on the pillow didn't stir.

With difficulty, she kept herself from running her hands through the hair and settled under the covers, feeling Tony stirring in the back of her head, becoming stronger with each passing minute. It wouldn't be long now.

How must it be for husband, trapped in the other man's mind all the time? Could he see and experience everything too? And part of her wondered too what he had thought about her disappearance for the afternoon.

"Steve," she whispered softly. The form beside her didn't stir. "Darling, I wish I could talk to you again so badly. But if you can hear this, I'm trying. And I won't give up, Steve. Not till you're safe and sound again." She wondered also, if he could hear her, whether or not he would choose to listen.

"I know I don't deserve another chance," she said more softly. "But I hope you'll be able to forgive me someday."

#

Whereas Natasha didn't seem to even think twice about sinking under the covers next to him, for Steve it was a struggle to maintain the guise of sleep. His heart was thundering in his chest and deep within him something stirred to life.

The other Steve, he realized. And for a moment the urge to run a hand along the dip and curve of Natasha's hourglass waist overwhelmed him.

For me, the other man seemed to be urging. But Steve couldn't tell whether he was referring to Natasha as off-limits, or urging Steve to do it so that he could feel the sensation of her skin beneath his fingers again, if only through the lens of another's eyes and body. Steve tried to probe the sensation, but the flicker of life that had flared when both men had been intent on the same thing had died.

After Natasha's breathing had turned to soft whispers on the pillow next to him, Steve rolled, turning over so that he could look at the sharp cheekbones and dark lashes.

And the guilt he felt for looking at her like that burned deep inside the pit of his stomach.

As did a nagging sensation, fueled by recent revelations about a different Stark.

What had she meant by, I don't deserve another chance?

Chapter Text

5

Steve woke with a jolt to the slamming sound of something heavy downstairs.

Beside him, Tony stirred, rubbing the heel of his hand against red, puffy eyes that were just barely cracked open. His black hair stuck up at odd angles, and as he fumbled to get to his feet, Steve held up a hand, indicating that he should stay. Whether from magic or sheer exhaustion, Tony sank back down in the pillows with an arm thrown over his eyes.

Steve pulled on the pair of pants he'd discarded earlier, as well as the duster that had been bequeathed to Natasha, and then slipped from the room, silent as a shadow.

A cold chill ran up and down his spine at the sight of the four Thors in the saloon below. So the sheriff's prediction wasn't wrong. If anything, sheriff Rogers had underestimated the amount of time it would take for them to show. They had all crowded around the bar, and the barkeep, Dugan, was looking harried in his white cotton pajamas.

Steve studied the group with the critical eye of a combat tactician.

They were all dressed alike in gray mail, red capes, and winged helms. That seemed to be the de-facto uniform of the Thor force. None of them appeared to have the blue tattoos of their previous attacker, nor did any of them look like of his partner -- like the Thor Steve had known back on Earth-616.

One had long, flowing blond hair, but from the curve of the breastplate, and the cupid's bow lips, this Thor appeared to be a woman. The second Thor had a red Mohawk, and an ugly scar across the right side of his upper lip. The third looked utterly inhuman -- like a horse standing on two legs. And the  fourth was a man with darker skin. He had four ethereal white wings, feathered, almost like the depiction of a seraphim. They puffed up, ruffling every few moments, as twitchy as a bird's.

And when the seraphim removed the helmet to raise a glass with the horse-faced thor, it was Steve's turn to feel a pang of recognition.

Prudence told him he ought to stay where he was. Prudence told him that just like nearly everyone else they had met, Sam probably wouldn't recognize him. But the memory of Bruce's tearful reunion with Natasha was still fresh in his mind. If there was even a chance --

As the wood stairs creaked beneath his feet, the assembled group of Thors turned their gaze toward him. Steve pulled up every last bit of training he'd received from SHIELD and continued down the stairs, as if the fact that there were four Thors looking at him, in the middle of the night, in an old west town lit by gas lamps, was the most normal thing in the world.

He nodded, bellied up to the bar next to Sam, and ordered a gin and tonic.

"Evening," he said conversationally.

Sam gave him a cursory, sideways glance as Dugan slid a tumbler across the bar to Steve. It looked comically small next to the seraphim's stein. Steve held his glass out, in show of solidarity, raising it as a toast. Sam arched an eyebrow at him, before returning the gesture.

"Late night for you?" Sam asked, the suspicion in his tone unmistakable.

Steve wondered just how late it was. "Trouble sleeping. Nothing a tonic can't fix."

"Mmm," and from the tone of his voice, Steve was certain he didn't recognize him. He and Sam had a much more relaxed rapport. Disappointment twisted at something deep inside of Steve.

"So what brought you to Timely this late?"

Sam seemed bored by his questions. "Reports of disturbances in the desert. Nothing to worry about." But he leveled a suspicious eye on Steve. "We were planning to ask a few questions tomorrow. But as long as you're here...You haven't seen anything suspicious, have you, sheriff?"

Deciding to play along, Steve just shrugged. "I'm only the sheriff's brother. I don't know much about the town."

The doubt in Sam's eyes was naked. But he sniffed and went back to his drink. "Investigation will just have to wait till morning, then."

It was then that the saloon doors swung open, and the bearded Thor with long flaxen hair strode in through the doors, Mjolnir hefted high in one hand over his shoulder.

He cast a baleful look at Steve, and for a moment the super soldier's throat went dry. But this man couldn't possibly recognize Steve. Could he?

The blue eyes regarded him coolly and Steve felt a chill. Because Steve realized, with a jolt, he'd taken off the helmet. But if there was another version of himself here, surely there were more. And perhaps there were more Thors with similar faces.

Surely a Thor couldn't pass judgment from looks alone?

The large hand flexed on the grip of the hammer, and Thor brought it down to his side in a gesture that was not quite menacing, but also not friendly.

"Are you the pitiful excuse for law around these parts?" He asked, his voice deep and booming.

Falling back into character, Steve held up his hands. "That would be my brother."

The bearded Thor snorted. "Well then, if you see him before I should, warn him that the festering rot in this town has not gone unnoticed. I would have words with him tomorrow. Doom is not pleased."

"The five of you stopped out of your way to this backwater town to say that and poke around in the desert?"

"We go where we are commanded," Thor bit back, sharp and with all the panache and fury of a thunder god. He pushed past Steve, resting his hammer on the counter with a dull, metallic thump.

But something about what he had said rang hollow to Steve. He took another look at the thors, seeing that their boots were caked with mud. They had tramped in from somewhere other than Timely, which was as dry as prohibitionist. Steve was certain about that. There wasn't a drop of water beyond the wells in this land and the dam. Steve had seen firsthand how parched the land was around the town on their way in.

He wanted to press further, but it was around that moment that the doors to the saloon creaked again. The stench of cheap alcohol flooded Steve's nose more acutely than anything on the bar. He didn't even need to turn to correctly guess who it was, but of course Steve did.

He'd looked away once. Never again.

A particularly drunk Tony stumbled into the saloon, muttering about how he thought the place had closed up for the night already. He blinked dull blue eyes at the assembled, but didn't seem to register any particular problem.

Swaying past the abandoned tables, he came to a stop at Steve's right elbow. As he leaned in, the smell of alcohol on his breath grew even more overwhelming. And it was made all the worse as he hovered close, trying to discern who Steve was.

"I've been looking all over for you," he mumbled, so close that Steve could feel his breath on his cheek, and a hand came up, wrapping into the collar of Steve's duster, far too close for propriety. "You wouldn't mind a quick word, would you?"

Steve glanced at the group of thors. But, with the exception of the long haired one, they seemed disinterested. So he allowed Tony to pull him around the corner, next to the stairs.

And then things took a turn for the worse. To Steve's intense embarrassment, this drunk Tony leaned in and his arms circled Steve's waist.

"Tony--" Steve sputtered, not sure how to articulate that he was not the person this Tony obviously thought he was. He was pretty sure the sheriff wouldn't appreciate their liaison so dangerously close to public eyes, no matter what the case was.

But Steve almost died, almost melted right through the floorboards in shame, when Tony kissed him, hard and passionate. The tang of the alcohol was sharp on his tongue. Despite it, Steve felt a thrill run through him, head to toe at that intimate gesture, and then regret, knowing it had been meant for someone else. He pushed at Tony's shoulders, willing him back.

Tony's fingers scrabbled at the lapels of this duster. "I don't care what anyone thinks --" he slurred, and his throat bobbed. "It's been weeks since it was last 'safe to meet.' " He looked positively delighted when he parted the folds of the duster and found nothing but bare, goose prickly flesh beneath. "How naughty of you --"

Steve caught his wrists in his own, holding them away from his body. But every fiber of his being was screaming at him, telling him he was an idiot.

He had, after all, wanted this for a very long time.

But Tony hadn't.

And this wasn't his Tony.

"It's not what you think," he hissed, shoving the engineer away. "I'm not what you think."

"I wish you cared less about what they think," Tony tried to cup his cheek, and Steve recoiled.

He really couldn't do this. The longings that had welled up for Natasha were bad enough. But this was a whole new level of hell. "You need to go home," he pleaded. Because if Tony kept throwing himself at him, he wasn't sure he would be able to keep his composure.

Tony pursed his lips, squinting, before looking up, as though putting on a stiff upper lip. But then the whole of him froze, shocked and immobile. And sobered. And when Steve looked up, he saw the other Tony standing at the rail, looking down on them, an evil grin on his face.

#

Steve knocked on the jail's door and was shortly greeted by his double in ruffled white pajamas.

"Something amiss?" The sheriff asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

"You could say that."

Rogers moved aside, allowing Steve to enter the darkened office area.  "Anything you need me to help with?" he asked, grabbing a canteen from his desk and ushering Steve farther inside, past the office and away from the cells and to the living quarters. "Quarters" was generous. Really, it was a simple room with a bed and a wardrobe at one end and a small stovetop and table at the other. Rogers dumped the contents of the canteen into a teakettle, along with a generous scoop of coffee.

"I'm just looking for a place to sleep that doesn't have a Tony," Steve settled into the chair the sheriff waved him off to. "And I get the impression he isn't around here much these days."

The sheriff cracked an egg, sifted the yolk out, and tossed the white and the shells in with the coffee before putting it on to boil. The yolk he simply ate raw.

Rogers cast an eye at him over his shoulder as he found two tin mugs. "There's a cot under the bed." A pause. "I take it you had a run in with Tony."

"He made certain displeasures known." Steve preferred to gloss over the rest.

"I've seen that look before in the mirror," Rogers said, pouring a cup of coffee and holding it out in offering. Steve accepted, since caffeine never did much to him anyway, and the sheriff poured himself another. "You've got a piece on your mind."

Steve weighed his words carefully. He wasn't insensitive to the need to be discreet. That had been ingrained in him firmly before the ice. But damn if he didn't feel a measure of jealousy. "I think you're luckier than you realize," he tried to keep the bitterness from his voice, with only partial success. "You keep him at arm's length, but there was a time I would have done anything to have what you have."

He hated the shade of Tony that lingered in that room of the saloon.

The sheriff made a noncommittal noise as he swirled his cup as he leaned against the stove. "Sometimes I think it would be kinder to him if we just gave up."

"To him, or to you?"

Steve felt the other man's piercing blue-eyed stare boring a hole through him. "To him. I know he wants to leave. And the truth is, he'd probably be happier crossing the border to somewhere with better tech, or somewhere we wouldn't have to worry about neighbors seeing comings and goings. But I can't leave these people to Fisk. And I don't think he would either. I also won't go to the same measures he's put on the table. So we wait and wait. And I think a bit of him withers up more each day."

Steve chewed on his lip. "You think you'd honestly be okay if he was gone?"

The sheriff just shrugged. "You saw him the other day. If I could rid him of that, even if it meant ridding him of me...well, there wouldn't really be an option. There isn't, no matter what he insists. It really would be for the best. For him, and for me."

"And you'd just move on?"

The sheriff looked thoughtfully into his mug for a moment before crossing the room and digging something out of the wardrobe. The floorboards creaked under his feet as he returned, handing the black and white photo to Steve.

"My old partner."

And Steve was smart enough to read the subtext there.

Two young men stared back at him, stiff and formal in suits and ties. But was that was par for the photography of the day. There was no mistaking his younger self, or the chestnut haired man beside him.

"Bucky?"

Rogers nodded, an antsy thumb tracing the curve of the tin mug's handle. "Taken a few months before we came out here."

"What happened?"

"Officially? He went out to see the silver mine and settle a dispute. There was a collapse."

"Unofficially?"

"They never gave me a body," Rogers grimaced. "And there was a man who swore he heard shots...right up until he quit town suddenly." He pursed his lips together looking at the photo in Steve's hands. "Would have been me, but I was out with a case of pneumonia, and the Doc all but chained me to the bed."

Steve handed the picture back. "I'm sorry."

Rogers took it back, lovingly, and Steve saw that there was a glisten in his eyes as he looked at the portrait. "I don't think you ever really move on," he said. "You just go on the best you can."

#

Steve never came back. Natasha woke the next morning to empty sheets beside her, cold with the chill of dawn. She scrubbed at her eyes, trying to remember what had gone on. She'd been so tired behind Tony's eyes.

Between Steve, the sheriff, and Bruce, they'd managed to scrum together something that looked passingly decent for a lady to wear in the small western town. It was decidedly uncomfortable, though, and did no justice for her broad shoulders. The high collar and long sleeves trapped heat, and the skirts were voluminous. How she avoided tripping over them in Bruce's lab was a miracle.

She briefly entertained the thought of asking Dugan if he had seen Steve that morning. But he looked tired and frazzled. Instead, she decided to seek out Banner and go back to their work on the portal.

But she only got as far down the street as the main square, where the stocks were publicly visible.

"There was a bright flash in the sky," a horse-faced Thor said. He had a pale, trembling man that Natasha recognized as Ben Urich locked into the wood frame. The padlock to keep the hinge down was missing. Instead, the top piece was kept shut by the thor's immovable hammer.

"Please," Urich said in hardly more than a whisper. "I didn't see it."  

"But you have been prospecting along the river bed, looking for something."

"A man's got a right to try to make his fortune other ways," the reporter rasped.

"You have no rights, but for the grace of Doom," and the Thor backhanded him. Natasha heard a gasp. "You certainly have no right to withhold information from Doom's enforcement. So, one more time: what did you see?"

"I felt a rumble, but that's it," Urich mumbled, his lip split and bleeding from the strike.

The Thor tilted his captive's chin in one brown, furry hand, seemingly examining his handiwork. It couldn't have been later than ten in the morning, but the sky darkened, strange clouds gathering above. Natasha felt the hair on the back of her neck begin to prickle with electricity.

"You have no proof! You can't just kill him!" A blonde woman with short hair threw herself between the stockade and the behemoth thor. She was the spitting image of the woman they had encountered named Carol.

The Thor seemed surprised, latching one of its huge hands around her neck and shoving, sending her sprawling in the dirt before refocusing its ire on Urich.

Carol pulled herself up, seething, and looking like she was ready for a fight, no matter how outmatched, when a voice hollered out.

"Perhaps there's another," the snide voice came from behind Natasha. She craned her neck around, just as a dirt encrusted hand came to rest on the shoulder of her egg-shell blue dress. "You're quite a different sight with clothes on, ma'am," Turk grunted, and a shiver of revulsion ran through Natasha.

A Thor Natasha recognized, the bearded thor, fixed his gaze on Natasha and Turk, and suddenly Turk's grubby hand was one of the least horrible thing she was facing. "What is your meaning?"

"Only that I just recently caught this lady and the sheriff's brother out near the dam. Last morning, actually. That's roughly the area you're looking at, isn't it?" The shit-eating grin on Turk's face was so infuriating that Natasha almost punched him.

"Aye," Thor looked thoughtful. "Mr. Urich was...stubborn." He cast a warning glance at where the reporter remained sandwiched under the weight of the uru hammer. "But perhaps we can find out what we need without having to resort to such measures." He held out his arm, indicating that Natasha ought to walk with him.

As they began to travel in the wrong direction -- away from Bruce's lab -- Natasha felt a queasy feeling settle in her stomach. What she wouldn't give to be down in the hidden basement instead.

And where, exactly, was Steve? The thought of him in those stocks like Ben -- and he was certainly stubborn enough to land himself there -- scared her.

"I am not as short-tempered as some of my brothers and sisters," Thor started, his jaw set squarely. "But I warn you that if you try my patience, you will wind up in the same predicament as you saw earlier. Did you see or feel anything unexpected or odd the previous night?"

Of course, she wanted to say. I found out I was inhabiting the same body as psychopath.

Instead, she said, "I'm afraid I wasn't paying very close attention to the scenery."

"The flash would have been very bright," Thor insisted.

"I--don't know about a flash, but I did hear a buzzing sound," Natasha offered, trying to stick as close to the true story as possible without incriminating herself or Steve.

"Feelings of nausea?"

"A little, though that might have had more to do with the company on the way into town."

The joke fell flat on the thor, and he made an unconvinced noise in the back of his throat.

"Interesting," and the way he said it, the way he looked at her, she knew something was off.

Back down the street, Turk tipped his hat to the Thor from the doorway of the saloon.

It would have been nice to feel relief as the beared Thor parted ways with her. But as she watched him disappear into the saloon with Turk, a surge of dread swept through Natasha.

She set off toward Bruce's lab at the fastest walk she could manage. Because the sooner they had a way out of the town, the better.

#

He'd thought that getting out of town would help.

After all, Natasha and Bruce were holed up in their lab working on the portal. The Thors were crawling over the town. And the sheriff had been in a rotten mood ever since their chat the night before -- Steve knew that pinched expression well enough on his own face.

Following the water had seemed like the most natural course, based on the mud caked boots he'd seen on the Thors and the strange rumbling he and Natasha had heard out by the dam.

Of course, getting out there on foot wasn't easy. And even with the serum, the sun was high overhead by the time he summited the last hill just south of the dam.

He felt a tingling sensation on his skin as he crossed some sort of threshhold, and looked out over the river trickling out from the dam. Seconds ago, the river bank had appeared flat, red sandy hills rolling beyond its banks. On the other side of the invisible veil...

Steve shielded his eyes with one hand, blinking, not quite sure what he was looking at. It shimmered like a mirage, and for a moment it was too implausible to believe. He suspected that was why the Thors (or whoever else had been out here) had put up a magical field to mask it.

By all appearances, it looked like a giant sequoia tree, toppled to one side and twisted. And yet, for it to be that size, at the distance Steve was at, the thing would have to be enormous. But in the world of super heroes, there was always something stranger. In this instance, Steve also noticed a gray shining object near the spot the root erupted from the parched soil. And the gray metal thing was moving.

Steve shifted his pack higher on his shoulder, thankful that he was a quick healer. His rib and arm still ached, but he was well on his way to being back to normal. No excuse not to have a closer look.

Mind made up, Steve started looking for a place to ford the river.

#

As Steve hauled himself up the muddy riverbank, he marveled that the thing looked even more unbelievable up close.

Definitely covered in bark. This close, he could also see that it wasn't just one mass of wood. It was a network of tendrils, wrapped around one another like a bundle of wires that periodically had an offshoot, like a branch budding from the limb of a tree.

Or a root.

Steve did a mental reassessment and moved closer to looked at the cracked, broken ground the root had clawed its way up through. The broken mounds of dirt were hills in their own right, and as he climbed up one, getting closer to the rough surface of the giant root, he heard a lazy, familiar voice tinted with a drawl.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Sober Tony was a lot more relaxed than the night before, a lot less overt, and seemed to be suffering from a hangover. He was also wearing a bulky gray Iron Man suit, and under the hot sun it looked like it must be miserable to be inside of it.

"Why--" Steve started, only to have the ground shift beneath him -- or rather, to have the root shift.

He stumbled back toward Tony and reassessed from afar. Was it what he had thought it was? Roots weren't supposed to move like that. Then again, he'd also never seen one so big.

"I take it that this isn't normal around here?" He asked Stark.

"Definitely a new addition to the landscape. Though...underground perhaps not. I think I can see why wells may have been drying up." He took a scan with a device on his wrist. "If this is just one of the roots, this thing must need an incredible amount of water."

"Enough water that someone might dam a river to help it grow?" Steve didn't believe in coincidence.

"Could be. But what would Roxxon want with this?"

"Well, if this is just a root," Steve pointed out, "then where's the trunk?"

#

"It's been more fidgety since you showed up," Tony said as the giant piece of root shifted again.

 The way the root lurched like a worm was eerie and unnerving. Tony had been taking readings for nearly half and hour and had no more conclusive data on what the thing was.

"If this thing really is draining the water around here, wouldn't it make sense to cut it off?"

Tony made a low noise in the back of this throat, the kind he always made when he was busy and not really paying attention.

So Steve drew the shield out and decided to try his own experiment. The vibranium disk whistled through the air and stuck deep in the woody pulp of the root with a satisfying fwunk. He had expected the root to lurch, to respond somehow, but instead the earth twisted beneath their feet as though it were writhing in pain.

Tony let out a startled noise as he lost his footing. He rubbed irritably at his head, "Dammit, I already had a headache--"

"Well," Steve muttered, "I guess that answers the question of whether this will be straightforward."

But things got stranger still when Steve planted a hand firmly on the rough bark, intending to give himself leverage in pulling his shield out of the root. His hand immediately felt hot, and so did his pack -- or rather, a specific spot on the pack did.

He ripped his shield free, then swung the linen sack from his shoulders and pulled Heimdall's star out. Its glowing was still dim, but the shell, which had previously been hard as crystal, felt loose and pliable beneath his fingers.

He heard Tony gasp and looked up. A woman and a man were standing arm in arm, in clothes that looked old even by Timely's standards. Her head was thrown to the side, gazing up with adoration into his face, and they were so enamored with each other that it seemed nothing of their odd arrival or surroundings bothered them.

There was nothing ghostly about them, but as they whispered to one another and started to stroll away, they got dimmer, as if disappearing into a fog.

No sooner had they left than a big man appeared -- stepping right out of the root. The bark might as well have been thin air, for all the physical barrier it appeared to be. He was wearing a blue union uniform and had a full, graying beard.

"Obie?" Stark asked, eyes wide.

The engineer actually reached out, touched the yellow tassels on his shoulder. At physical contact, the man seemed to snap from a reverie, and he looked directly at Tony. "Tony Stark!" He clapped a hand on the engineer's shoulder. "Has taking over your father's business really been that bad? You look like you've aged into an old man overnight."

Tony was at an utter loss for what to say.

"Listen, you ever need help running the thing, you let me know," the man said, then looked up, hearing something that neither Tony or Steve could. "Best get to the high ground if you're going to watch. Lines are forming up. Not that we need to worry with your rifle in our hands, eh?"

The engineer visibly paled as Obie gave him a wink and trudged off the way the man and woman had gone, fading into a wisp.

"What did you do?" Tony's voice shook.

"I didn't do anything --" Steve protested.

And then the reason Tony was so unnerved clicked. The next person who stepped out into the land of the living was a young man, no more than twenty years old, with short chestnut hair and a wide honest smile. Steve had seen the man's picture the night before in the sheriff's bedroom.

"Bucky."

The man turned to him at the sound of his name and his eyes lit up with misplaced recognition.

"Steve!" The young man sized him up and down. "You look good as new! I thought you were on bed rest for the rest of the week." Then he pulled Steve close by the collar of his linen shirt and pressed their lips together. Steve was so caught off-guard by the sudden affection that he allowed himself to be dragged away by the feel of the gentle kiss.

It was a split second decision to kiss him back. Seeing how the others had faded away, Steve couldn't abide the thought of Bucky leaving hurt and confused.

Bucky let out a soft moan and twisted his arms around Steve's neck.

"Well, I know what I'm doing with you when I get back from the mines," he said in a throaty whisper that made Steve's heart ache.

"Yeah," he agreed, trying to keep the emptiness out of his voice as Bucky pulled away. The man shot him a mischievous glance as he faded away.

When he looked at Tony again, the engineer's face was inscrutable. For several minutes after, the two were silent, trying to digest what they'd just seen.

#

"You can bring back the dead," Tony said as they waded back across the river, back toward the valley.

"That's news to me."

"But you don't deny it -- that that's what we just saw?"

In truth, Steve was still trying to make sense of what he had just seen and experienced. Whatever it was that had come through, it had been as real as flesh and blood, and the "ghosts" had the memories of the dead. It was so impossible that it made Steve's head ache.

Tony, on the other hand, was elated and fascinated now that he had overcome the initial surprise at seeing his dead parents and family friend. "You don't understand --"

"I'm not sure I understand anything that just happened back there."

"No, no, not that --"  Tony was breathless. "If the dead can be saved, there are so many mistakes -- so many wrongs that I could fix."

Instinctively, Steve clutched the bag a little tighter as they stumbled down a hill and back to a road. Maybe it wasn't fair -- he didn't know this Tony like his own. But the deep gashes from the last time Tony had taken it upon himself to fix things were still too raw.

"Steve--please. For a long while now my Steve has been hinting that I'd be happier if I left this town. But I haven't got anything to go to. If I just left without something, I'd be running with my tail between my legs. But this, this could be big. What we saw back there could be my ticket to making right all my mistakes."

He wasn't running away from Tony, Steve told himself. But that's what it felt like. Away from the schemes, away from the plans.

"Steve--!" He heard the clunky gray suit whir to life and felt a metal hand close over one of his arms, jerking him back. Out of reflex he tried to break the hold. If Tony was going to steal the star --

He felt the air grow hot and charged, and in the space he would have blindly charged into moments ago, a red robed figure stepped out of a hole in space. It's wore a gold mask with curved horns. In place of a face, the mask had a single monstrous eye. It stared at Steve and Tony, considering the two travelers silently as a dry wind tugged at its red cloak, pinned to its robes with a brooch shaped like an omega symbol.

When nothing happened, it seemed to lose interest, heading in the direction Steve and Tony had just come from without a word.

"What was that?" Steve craned his neck to look at its retreating form.

"A Black Priest," and this time it was Tony hurrying him toward town. "They're never a good sign. And I think in this case, it would be particularly unwise to linger."

"Why?"

"Because they hunt down relics. And I don't think there's much else that sphere could be."

#

Despite the urgency, Natasha had trouble focusing on the portal that afternoon. She kept finding herself stuck in mid-motion, staring at the screwdriver in her hand, or the wrench, or paused in tweaking Bruce's rough coordinates into something with more refinement.

Bruce didn't seem to notice. Either she was doing a good job of keeping the discomfort beneath her skin, or he was too excited to notice.

Either way, she was so absorbed in other things that when Bruce tapped her on the shoulder, she jumped.

"I just thought you would want to celebrate too," he said, a soft gentle smile on his face. "It's finished."

 Bruce waved a hand at the hodgepodge of scrap metal and wiring. The whole thing looked like it would fall over if someone so much as even sneezed on it. The prospect of stepping through it into a different place was terrifying.

Unfortunately, it was also their only option.

"I just need to borrow some of the material from the reactor...or whatever you're running these days," Bruce said. He held out a round piece of shiny metal. It had a slot just big enough for a piece of rhodium.

Natasha felt a finger of cold creep down her spine. "How much do you need to power it?"

"Just a little bit," Bruce insisted, his gaze lingering on her chest with that detached, clinical air he always had about him. He ran his fingers through his short black hair and smiled, one of real anticipation. "I've been waiting for this for so long," he confessed.

Natasha undid the buttons of her dress and fumbled with a thin slot on the bottom rim of the RT, and with a click a metal cartridge came free from her chest. "Be kind with my heart."

In only a few seconds the sweats began. Fortunately, Bruce had a pair of tweezers in hand, and plucked the core out deftly and quickly, slotting it into his power converter. She heard a click and a hiss, and in only a few moments, Bruce returned the rhodium so that she could re-seat the cartridge.

In turn, his reactor began to glow a faint green. He inserted it into the machine and began a boot sequence.

"Speaking of...did you ever make a decision?"

Natasha pressed her lips together, tucking herself back into the dress. "There was only ever one conclusion I could come to," she said.

"I suppose I could have guessed based your company."

"That's actually kind of complicated." She buttoned herself back up. "Though I suppose if we are going to power this up, I should find him."

"I'll keep running the startup diagnostics, and keep it warm for the jump."

Natasha laughed. "After eight years, what's a few minutes more?"

Bruce wrinkled his nose, but in good fun. "Ask me again when you've lived in the backwater town that long."

#

As they entered town, Steve felt a gnawing sensation in his gut. The sky was dark. Unnaturally so. "Weird weather for this time of year?" he asked Tony.

"For any time of year here."

"More anomalies?"

"No, I think that would be them," Tony said, as the group of six Thors filtered into the street, all looking pointedly at Steve and Tony.

"Run," Tony hissed. "I'll hold them off."

"No. This isn't your fight."

"After what I just saw, yes. Yes it is," Tony's eyes were earnest, and pleading. And Steve's heart lurched as he realized this Tony honestly believed that Steve could set his wrongs to right. He hadn't been after the star at all.

"I doubt they'll hold back..."

"I know," Tony gave him a disparaging smile.

#

As Natasha left the lab and stepped out onto the dusty street, a hollow feeling seized in the pit of her stomach.

The sky was much too dark for the afternoon -- blacker even than it had been when the clouds gathered above Urich. The air was humid, too, oppressive and heavy on her skin, and a wind whipped her skirt out behind her like a sail as she started to run.

She saw Turk and his gang first, watching the proceedings with both awe and a kind of sick satisfaction.

The seraphim Thor was in the air, his wings beating against the gale, hammer outstretched, and the female Thor was hovering at his side.

Lightning was crackling around the blunt edge of the tattooed thor's hammer where he stood on the ground. Before him, each arm pinned by the horse-faced Thor and the one with the mohawk, Natasha saw Steve, his head raised defiant, watching the electricity arc through the air.

What's he gotten himself into now? She could feel Tony's mind, a layer beneath her own, wonder.

Hell if I know.

The sound of the thunder and brightness of the lightning  was drawing a crowd. More and more townsfolk like herself were coming out of doors, or peeking out of windows to watch what was happening.

Perhaps so theme of the Thors was aware of the eyes on them, because she heard a booming voice call out, "Yield, Leif." The bearded Thor they had encountered over the ocean crossed in front of Tattoos and placed his hand on the other man's chest. "He's subdued."

"You know what he is," the one named Leif snarled and he threw a gauntlet from Steve's battered Patriot armor into the dirt. It struck hard and rolled just past Steve's feet. Turk, the bastards, must have given it to them. Between their faces and that armor, there were no more questions to be asked. "You saw the abominations on that island, Odinson. Better to bring him in dead."

Lightning arced off the hammer. He was going to strike Steve--

"That is not the mission--" she dimly heard the other one say. He was yelling, but it was difficult to hear anything over the rising surge of adrenaline.

Natasha reached inward to pull out the armor, but its response was drowsy and sluggish -- or maybe that was her mind with the way it drew down reserves from life support.

She needed the core assimilation to be done, damn it.

32 percent, Tony supplied helpfully.

Without the suit, Natasha wasn't going to make it in time.

But someone else did.

The suit was little more than a tin can compared to hers. It moved in lurches, but it was quick enough. Tony -- who else, besides Bruce, could have built something like that in this time period? -- barreled headlong into the flying thors, powered by the flare of bright red rockets.

He knocked the woman out cold. The seraphim, not taken off-guard with the tackle, pointed his hammer from Steve to the Iron Man suit. But the surge of energy, instead of frying Tony, made him faster and stronger. He seized the seraphim by the shoulders and poured on his thrusters, crushing him into the dirt. Then he rolled the suit, firing something concussive from his fingertips -- not a repulsor blast, but something sonic, taking out the one with the mohawk, all in a matter of seconds.

The horse-faced Thor struggled to keep Steve in place, bellowing over the sound of the thunder at the two arguing Thors  as Tony charged them.

Natasha wasn't going to get much more of an element of surprise.

Without the suit, her options were limited. Fortunately, there was Steve's. She launched herself toward the gauntlet, grasped it by the metal fingers, rather as if she were holding hands, and brought it down as hard as she could on the crown -- or what she thought was the crown -- of the horse-faced thor's head.

He reeled under the hit, and Steve had the presence of mind to pull his arms free. He landed a punishing kick directly to the horse-faced Thor's throat, and it gasped, choking for air.

"We have to go--" Natasha said. Steve hesitated, just for a moment. Uru clashed on steel -- they both heard it, as well as the grunt from Tony as the Leif and Odinson turned on Tony.

"He won't make it by himself."

Natasha hoped that Steve wouldn't think her a coward for what she said next. "Neither of us will make it if we don't leave."

"No, I can't--"

She saw Odinson send Tony face first into the street and heard the crunching of gears and metal collapsiing on impact.

It was followed by the horrible shriek of metal being torn away, and laughter as the one named Leif  held Tony up by the throat, denuded of armor, a full foot above the ground and the twisted steel remains of his work. "If you thought you could win by casting a poor imitation of an Ultron, you misunderstand Doom's power."

Tony bared his teeth in a grin. "Looks like I got my ticket anyway."

Thunder rumbled, and then Natasha was deafened and blinded as a flash lit up the street. Her sense of smell overwhelmed by hot metal. She didn't hear a scream from Tony.

But she heard the sheriff's.

Leif let the still form drop to the ground, a look of revulsion on his face, and Natasha felt the Sheriff shove past her, picking up Tony's broken form and cradling it.

The wind died down, and the thunder grew distant. And as it did, she could hear the sheriff sobbing.

The stillness, but for those cries, was broken by Odinson grabbing Leif by the shoulder and punched him hard in the mouth, so hard the hammer slipped from his palm. "You could have taken him to the Wall."

Leif wiped at the blood on his mouth. "Death Is a fitting punishment for treason. No one is above Doom's will, and no one will fault me for enforcing it." His eyes glittered at Steve and Natasha. "Now I suggest we resume what we were here for."

Odinson took a deep breath. His eyes still shone bright with fury, but he begrudgingly picked up Leif's hammer, handing it to his partner.

"Steve--" Natasha felt her heart begin to beat erratically, and the still integrating suit had trouble compensating.

He reached over and grabbed her hand..

"Bolt," a woman said from somewhere behind Natasha. She had blonde hair, and a steel look in her eyes. It was Carol, the one who had been at the stocks that morning. "I've seen enough of this. Seems to me that these Thors have overstayed their welcome."

Carols eyes were fixed ahead, but it wasn't Natasha she was speaking to -- it was the man next to Carol, wearing a black cowboy hat and a silver prong adorning the hat's band. He smiled grimly, then opened his mouth.

It was as if the apocalyptic heavens had opened up. Natasha heard things that she had never imaged as sound before -- light and heat, and the end of the earth, all rolled up in that voice. But while the normal fold seemed overwhelmed, the thor's and their sensitive hearing were crippled.

For a moment Natasha was reminded of those awful few moments before the death of her world -- of those impossible loud, otherworldly voices booming across the earth. Then she forced the bits of her that shook and trembled together, and grabbed for Steve's hand, pulling him toward Bruce's workshop.

#

They descended the steps two at a time. The horrible voice has stopped, and while it had made it easier to move -- it didn't feel like all of her muscles were cramping and spasming anymore -- she was sure that it just heralded the return of the thors.

As they burst into the lab, Bruce looked up from the table. One of his hands was still gripping the edge of it, his other rubbed at his temples. He looked waxy, and like he felt just as horrid as Natasha did.

"Is it ready?" she asked, desperate for good news.

He shook his head. "I still need a few more minutes."

All of their eyes widened as they heard the groan and then shriek as the roof upstairs was ripped from its moorings on the walls.

"We don't have time."

Bruce shook his head in dismay before kicking himself into gear. "Not after all this time. It can't come to this."

Steve shouldered his shield uneasily beside her, quiet and watchful, as Natasha began helping Bruce power up the machine. He gave it a dubious once over. "Is that thing actually finished?"

"Close enough," Natasha and Bruce said in unison.

"Oh. Great," he said, as something sparked and fizzled. Natasha glanced at it, decided it was no-critical, and flipped the last switch.

The center of the arch began to glow a luminous emerald. It pulsed once, twice, and then took on a steady, more vibrant color.

"Well, it's stable," she said. "Mind, since the energy source wasn't been fully calibrated, it won't be able to get us far. Maybe just to the next realm."

"Good enough," Steve muttered.

"I'm going to have to adjust the coordinates," Bruce said, moving to the controls.

"Forget the coordinates, anywhere is better--" Natasha shouted.

The wooden floorboards above their heads splintered, and through the cracks Natasha could see the Odinson and Leif.

"No, I'll make sure you get across the border!" Bruce was already positioned himself in front of the portal controls though. "Go!" he shouted.

This time it was Natasha's turn to hesitate. With the portal incomplete, if they didn't go through together, they might end up any number of places, scattered to the wind. And after finding a small bit of home, losing Bruce was the last thing she wanted.

But the portal was already humming. Bruce's fingers were already flying across the keypad.

Natasha smelled ozone and felt the air being ripped apart around her. The portal or the lightning? It was hard to say. She had the chance to register the stricken look on Bruce's face,  the despair at giving up an eight year journey, as the Odinson crashed down onto the floor between the physicist and the portal. The she felt Steve's hand on her wrist, pulling her -- and then the grip of his hand was gone, and she slipped into a place of darkness and quiet.

#

The list of anomalies was growing. Strange rubbed at his goatee with the palm of his hand in frustration. Earthquakes, flooding, fissures cracking open and swallowing towns whole. It was like the world was rattling itself apart and clamoring back to the death throes it had been wrestled from.

A tapestry hung above the stone archway leading to the rest of the court. Strange glanced it and Doom's sigil, silver thread worked into the green velvet in the shape of an iron mask and a white oak tree.

He shook his head. If this kingdom, salvaged from the very cusp of existential twilight, couldn't survive with a God on its throne, then what could? He looked down at the list again, hoping, praying that some sort of pattern would emerge. If he had something that he could just act on --

"Sheriff?"

The High Priest had come to visit, and he lingered at the mouth of the room beneath the tapestry.

Strange tilted his head, indicating to the chair opposite his desk, inviting Sanders in with the bare minimum of politeness demanded.

The Black Priest reclined in the chair, oozing his usual smugness. But there was something else today under that self-satisfied veneer. Enmity? Spite? Strange couldn't put his finger on it.

"I just had word that your Thors had brought back a traitor from the western lands."

"That's possible. They don't inform me of their every move."

"They said they found him with peculiar technology for the realm."

Strange narrowed his eyes. "Who is they?"

"Thor Leif. Caught him in the hall as the others dragged the poor man to the dungeons."

"Border jumper?"

"Presumably." Sanders drew close, and Strange couldn't help but notice the way his eyes paused on his scroll. "But border jumpers usually don't gibber heresies about other worlds like madmen."

Strange drew back in his chair, hands curled into fists. "He's one of the 3490 diaspora."

"Yes. The fruit of your experimentation strikes again."

Ah, the High Priest would rub that in Strange's face again. But it was true -- he was the reason that a handful of people from 3490 had their memories intact. Of course, he was also the reason they were alive to begin with, but Sanders never brought that part up.

"What do you want?"

"Him. I want your Thors to turn him over to my men for re-education."

"Under what pretense?"

His twin looked disgusted. "I don't care what excuse you make up. He's from my world, and I'll look out for my own. You ought to be thankful that I'm covering your tracks."

Re-education, Strange mused, funny way to take care of people.

But what could Strange do? "I'll make sure he's transferred by tomorrow."

6

"Most definitely dead," a deep voice grated on Steve's ears through the darkness.

"What are you talking about? Look. His chest just rose." This one was a higher voice, a boy's.

"Maybe it's one of those creatures."

"Should I raise the alert?"

"No. Tell Strange to hurry, he'll know what to do."

He heard the sound of bare feet running across dirt.

Strange...something stirred in Steve, sluggish recognition. Good. He was trying to find a sorcerer.

But then memory kicked in. Being found by Strange was bad.

And yet, Steve found he couldn't even lift a finger to flee. He hovered, no more than a spirit, his world reduced only to what he could hear: the wind, the rustle of leaves, someone breathing close by.

Not pleasant, is it? Steve felt the something inside of him stir, growing stronger.

Is this was it was like for his counterpart every waking hour?

But you can talk to me.

We're on equal footing now.

Oddly enough, that didn't bring Steve any worry or dread, just curiosity.

So you've been able to sense everything all this time?

He felt a hesitance from the other Steve to answer.

But before Steve could pry anything else from his counterpart, the unpleasant business of being dragged back into the land of the living went forward, full steam ahead. The next sense that came back to him was touch -- a hand on his throat, groping for a pulse. And then his eyes were forcefully pried open by a swarthy, bearded man.

"He's not dead, look Hal -- the pupils are dilating," the man said. "Dead men's bodies stay still."

"Not if they're Faustians." A younger man peered over Steve. He was the one with the deep bass voice, and he had dark hair that stood out against his pink skin. It lined his jaw and cheeks, even though he couldn't have been older than fifteen. His brow was deep set, his chin jutted out past his top lip, and his nose was blunt and broad like a gorilla's.

"Feh," the older man muttered, letting go of Steve's eyelid, plunging him back into darkness. "You've been listening to that woman again, haven't you?"

"She saved us."

"She saved the village. There's a difference. Be glad of it." The man said as he pressed on Steve's chest, feeling for wounds or trauma.

"Why?" came the other boy's voice he had heard earlier, higher, and much more fitting for a teenager. "I wish she had saved us. I hate being a witchbreed --"

"Hush, we're on the King's highway. There could be ears anywhere," the man said, feeling around the of back Steve's head. His fingers traced an ugly, throbbing bump. "Scotius, fetch me the hartshorn salts from my satchel."

Steve wheezed as something acrid and sharp stung his nose, and he gulped in a deep burning breath. He spluttered and coughed, and sat up, pushing the vile salts and the willowy hand holding them away. Even for a normal person, Steve was sure the experience would be unpleasant. With enhanced smell, it was miserable.

He snorted violently and he was lucky. The hartshorn was volatile, and once the foul smelling bag was farther away, the burning eased up.

The person that he had pushed turned out to be the high pitched teenager. His eyes were covered by dark ruby glasses, but his auburn eyebrows were raised in surprise, almost disappearing beneath straggly brown hair. As he backed off, Steve saw he wore a dark blue tunic, and the straps of the two leather satchels he carried formed an "X" over his chest.

Vision readjusting, Steve saw they were in the middle of a dirt road, thick green forest all around. The only other people on the road were the other two he had seen before: the apelike boy and the older man. The latter of which was now leaning on a walking stick, arms folded up, and hands tucked into the sleeves of his simple brown habit.

"Have you lost your way, stranger?" The man asked, a peculiar gleam in his eye.

Steve rubbed at the back of his head, trying to clear his mind. He'd gone through the portal with Natasha...but where was she? "I suppose," he said, which was the truth. Steve had no clue where he was, but from the way the others were dressed, it seemed to Steve that he was still a long way from anything resembling home.

He saw too that the bearded man was studying him. "You don't look like one of the villagers."

"Because I'm not," Steve got to his feet, brushing the sandy dirt from his trousers, and wobbling a bit. The portal had done more to him than he'd first though. "Did you see a woman around here? Black hair, brown eyes, blue dress, and proud like a peacock?"

The two teens turned a bright shade of scarlet, but the man just laughed. "Were you waylaid by a highway woman?"

"No--" he said, a knee-jerk reaction to the assumption.

"Oh, of course," the old man gave a knowing look at his rumpled clothing, one that might as well have been a wink and a nod, and accompanied by, I'll let you save face in front of the boys.

"Well," the old man said, "if you'd like to accompany us, we are no match for brigands, but we're on our way into town and numbers never hurt. Perhaps we'll spot your lady on the way in." From his tone, it sounded like he very much still doubted it. "My name is Friar Strange, and these are Hal and Scotius," he indicated to the hairy one first and then the blind one second.

Steve felt his heart skip a beat.

But surely the Sheriff of Battleworld didn't roam on foot with teenagers.

No, much more likely this was another version of Strange, Steve thought, letting go of a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

And if he was a different version? If he was a sorcerer in this world too? He still had the star in his bag...

The habit looked odd on a man that he'd come to know as a magician. Steve steeled himself for disappointment -- reminding himself that it was possible that this man was nothing but what he presented himself as.

But Steve could hope.

Though first he needed to find Natasha.

"I'd like that," Steve said.

#

The morning was cool, the road flat and easy to walk, though Strange's pace was slow.

"Were that I was ten years younger," Strange said, tapping his bad leg.

"You make the trip often?" Steve asked, privately wondering why he didn't just send the boys.

"When the need arises," Strange grimaced, "which seems to be more and more often. I don't think the boys mind, though."

The two teenagers were bursting with energy, and they alternated between walking beside Steve and Strange and wondering ahead when they became bored. The latter being how they had come across him before Strange had been close at hand.

"Growing wards?"

"Restless wards," Strange amended. "They need something besides their studies."

"Is it common?"

"What?"

"Friars taking on wards?"

Strange snorted as they came to a bridge, and closed in on the boys bent over something. "The answer to your question is no. But," he shook his head as they neared the boys. Hal had a toad trapped between his fingers. "Someone had to look out for these two. Hal, what have I told you about meddling with the small creatures?"

The ape-like boy's shoulders drooped, and he cast Strange a sulking look before letting the frog go into the reeds.

Any further chastisement, however, was interrupted by the sound of horses' hooves pounding along the dirt path. They came hard and fast across the simple wooden bridge, and Steve had just enough time to grab Strange and pull him to the side as they clattered past. They were large horses, too, heavily built. At first he thought the black charger had a mane of molten fire, but then Steve realized it was the hair of the rider, a lithe tall woman with pale skin. At her heels a dark skinned woman with dark, close cropped hair followed. They both wore grim expressions.

Strange frowned as the women passed by. "That doesn't bode well. We should turn around and go home," he told the boys.

"But it's Angela," Scotius protested. "Maybe the village is under attack again. Maybe we can watch her fight the monster this time."

"We're out of coal," Hal added. "And if Doreen doesn't get the candy you promised--" he bit his lip at the sharp glare Strange gave him. Another person, then? One Steve wasn't supposed to know about?

Strange grimaced at the trail of dust lingering in the air. "I don't like it. But I suppose we must. Be on your best behavior, or I'm leaving you by a tree outside of town." He warned.

As they continued, the pace seemed dreadfully slow to Steve. The boys resumed scouting ahead, and while Strange had been talkative before, he seemed tight lipped now, preoccupied with his own thoughts, brows furrowed, and lost in worry about something else.

Which left Steve with his own thoughts.

The fact that he had yet to see Natasha gnawed at Steve. With every passing minute he became more convinced they were getting farther and farther apart. Could they have really come out the portal this far apart? Or worse -- what if when his hand had slipped, Natasha hadn't made it through the portal? His heart beat faster at the thought.

And inevitably, his thoughts turned to what he had just escaped, which left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Because Steve felt like a coward.

Running through the portal, tail between their legs, wouldn't have been his choice for how to leave. But if they had been able to take the people who had wanted another life -- Banner or Tony -- it would have been so much less Pyhrric.

The way Bruce had lost his chance at leaving with them...

Tony--

Steve's throat closed up thinking about the engineer, thinking about the way he had drunkenly kissed Steve and how much faith he'd had in Steve's ability to fix...something...what exactly, Steve wasn't sure.

Some good that faith had done him.

The crack of the lightning still rang in Steve's ears, and the smell of burnt iron still stung his nose.

It should have been Steve. And if they hadn't been out at the dam together, perhaps it would have been.

And the sheriff. Steve's counterpart had been so resigned to sending Tony off. He'd been so adamant that it was for the best...

That had been such a damn dirty lie. If sheriff Rogers really believed it, he'd been the biggest fool of them all.

Or was he? A nasty voice in the back of Steve's mind asked. How long ago was it that you talked of nailing Tony's coffin shut?

That was different. His Tony was different.

Deep down, though, Steve suspected it wasn't different at all.

#

Her dress was ripped, more brown than blue now from the mud, and her black hair clung scraggly to her face. One boot, loose enough to fit Tony's larger feet, squelched with mud as Natasha made her way through cobblestone streets. The stone houses were all thatched, and the eyes the few people she met in the street eyed her with open suspicion.

She almost wished she were back with the cowboys and their foul smelling breath.

Natasha's insides twisted, remembering the sound of wood splintering, the smell of sawdust, and the lost, hopeless look in Bruce's brown eyes. He'd been so close. And he'd given all up.

And for what? Just to get her across a border? He could have jumped with them. Maybe not hundreds of miles, but at least somewhere other than that town. Natasha leaned against the side of a whitewashed building, closed her eyes, and thumped a fist against the wall. Because that was better than crying, damn it, and she was so very close to frustrated tears.

The Thors had seen Bruce helping them. What would they do to him?

They'd needed more time. The portal hadn't been stabilized, and it was probably a miracle that it hadn't ripped them apart.

Or...at least it hadn't ripped her apart. As it was, her side ached, and she had a tableau of bruises painted across her body. She hadn't seen a trace of Steve, and she feared the worst.

Deep inside of her, Natasha felt Tony stir, an inky excitement at the prospect of being free.

Not if I can help it, she thought grimly.

You can't. Tony assured her.

That was when she heard the roar of an angry mob go up. She swung her head up, looking around, half expecting to see the Thors again.

But it wasn't Doom's enforcers she saw. Instead it was an angry group of villagers, herding something in their midst forward with raised rakes, crossbows, and all manner of weapon.

It turned out to be a boy. And as they approached, she saw that he couldn't have been older than fifteen. He was jostled, wide eyed and scared, by the group of men, wearing nothing but ragged trousers that left his torso naked, but for the downy white wings that were folded over his back.

Why didn't he just fly away? As if in answer to his silent question, she saw one of the men yank at something through the crowd of bodies. The boy fell hard, face first on the cobblestones. A length of chain, she realized, had been cuffed to his ankle.

"Another witchbreed?" she heard a woman nearby mutter, and cross herself.

A man patted the woman on the shoulder. "He'll meet Doom soon enough and answer for his crimes."

Crimes? Natasha felt a cold sensation in her stomach, and her feet sent her after the boy and the mob.

#

She followed them down the twisting cobbled streets, to a central square. There was a fountain made of dull gray rock, carved into the likeness of Victor Von Doom. It had run dry, and in lieu of water, kindling was being piled into the basin.

The mob of men wound the chain around the statue, tying the boy amid the wood. Tears glistened on his cheeks, and he was begging them for mercy. But they didn't pay him any mind. The one tightening the chain just pulled harder, wringing a shriek from the boy. Another man, sporting the tattoo of a target on his forehead, ripped a pinion feather from the boy's wings, twisting the quill in his hands.

"Quick!" the cruel man laughed. "Get the scribe before Angela arrives. Tell him he won't have to buy pens for a year!"

Natasha's eyes darted around the square. There were perhaps fifty people gathered, and none of them seemed inclined in the slightest to help. On the contrary, they looked like they were here for a show.

Not a great idea, Tony warned her. The suit still hasn't fully calibrated to the rhodium.

Anything is better than nothing, she thought, pushing her way through the people. With the technology of this realm, even a gauntlet might be enough for her to change the tide.

"What's he been accused of?" She demanded of the man with the tattoo once she had drawn close enough.

Dark glittering eyes turned on her. "It isn't obvious?"

Natasha recoiled as he twirled the feather in front of her nose. She snatched it from him and threw it down. "For being different?"

"For making dark pacts with the faery queen."

"I didn't--I didn't--" the boy cried.

The man backhanded him across the mouth.

"And you call this justice?" Natasha asked. She felt for the suit. It's response was sluggish, but there.

Down the streets she heard the clatter of horse hooves on stone and saw a shock of brilliant red hair.

"No," the man grinned. "But she does."

#

Gray clouds were beginning to roll in fast, pushed by a blustery wind, chilling what had otherwise been a peaceful, cool morning. And given recent experience, the sudden shift in the weather was enough to set Steve on edge.

Leaves skittered across their path, crunchy under foot, and the windows of the simple stone houses they passed were dark. Even without enhanced senses, it was clear to Steve as they entered the village that there was a tension here. The prolonged stares from the locals just reinforced that. Notably, also, was the short man who growled at him. He was nearly as hairy as Hal, with an axe slung over his shoulder. Two hares dangled by their feet in his other hand.

"You here about business, friar?" the hairy man asked.

"As always," Strange replied. Down the cobbled streets, Steve caught the friar's gaze lingering on a group gathered in the main square. "Is something happening today?"

The short man's lips twisted into a grimace, and his glance slid to Hal and Scotius. "Nothing of concern. If you're looking for Doctor Blake, he'll still be in his house on the square. There's a crowd out. Might be wise to head there last."

Steve noted that Strange's expression remained carefully blank. "Thank you, Logan. Hal, Scotius," he snapped his fingers at the two teens. "See if you can't rummage up the coal while we pay a visit to Dr. Blake."

Steve followed the trail of brown robes, the two teens at his heel. A stray villager passed them, a look of poorly concealed disgust on his face as he caught sight of Hal, and Steve heard him mutter something that sounded like, "deformed beggars."

The square was packed, and at the center of it all, in front of a fountain that had been made into a makeshift pyre, the redheaded woman who had rode past them had her hand on the hilt of sword. Her gaze was cast down -- on Natasha --.

Steve drew closer to the friar. "What's going on?" he whispered to Strange, who had also come to a stop in the street beside him to watch the proceedings.

"A trial, most likely."

"That looks like the trial is done."

After the last realm they had wound up in, Steve wasn't surprised at the anachronism. But at least in the last town there had been some sort of law and order. Strange was clearly eying the dress and Natasha's description, putting two and two together.

"Only one thing brings Angela out of the tower," Strange said. "Hunting witchbreed and Faustians."

The sword and the boy tied to the pyre gave Steve a solid idea of just what hunting entailed.

He did a poor job of hiding the stricken expression, and Strange caught it. He could see the subtle shift of understanding in the man's eyebrows, the almost instantaneous reassessment in the dark eyes.

"I think we ought to find Dr. Blake," and Strange took him by the elbow, guiding him through the crowd, to the other side of the square.

He could hear the redheaded woman's voice, guttural and full of antipathy. "Stand aside, or speak plainly. If you would stay my hand, tell me what dark master you serve."

And Natasha's bitter, iron-cold reply: "I don't have a master, you bitch. I know murder when I see it."

There was a collective gasp at that. Even as she said it, Steve found himself considering his vantage, trying to determine how he could help Natasha.

He was too far away to take Angela by surprise. And even if he managed to stun her with his shield, there was still her companion, playing sentry, to worry about. Steve felt the shorter, stouter woman's gaze sweep over him. But apparently he didn't stick out, or draw her attention, not even as he was pulled inside of a dimly lit room overlooking the square.

The shop was stiflingly hot and muggy despite the chill in the air outside, the source of which was five cauldrons boiling along the far wall.

He blinked, his vision adjusting to the dark, and saw that opposite them, a bent man with unruly blond hair and tired blue eyes was looking back at them. He had paused mid-bottling of a viscous yellow syrup.

As Strange shut the door behind him, the friar seemed to lose the need for his walking stick, resting it beside the door and striding across the room to Blake. "You've seen the woman outside, no doubt."

"Heard, her," Blake muttered. "No idea what she's got in mind, though. She's not one of yours?"

"No," Strange said. "But this is her companion. I think they may be sympathetic."

"Sympathetic?" Steve was still adjusting to his companion's sudden transformation from a frail, curmudgeonly friar into a straight-backed man whose presence seemed to fill the room.

"She has powers?" Blake asked, swirling the bottle and corking it before shooting Steve a suspicious glance.

"I wouldn't call it powers," Steve said slowly, weighing his words. "We're from a different era. She has control over certain...machines that might seem like magic." Or corruption. "But she's no witch."

Blake raised his eyebrows at Steve. "Even more so like us, then," Blake agreed. "She is very brave or very foolish to confront Angela."

The room grew dark, and a cry went up from outside. Blake moved to the window, drawing the curtain aside, and Steve saw that it had grown very dark.

It wasn't just the clouds rolling in that had made the afternoon so dark.

They were in the middle of an eclipse.

And Natasha had just turned into Tony.

The engineer just stood there, looking completely out of place in the eggshell blue dress, the shoulders stretched taut by his overly large shoulders. And from the grin on his face, even as Angela's unsheathed her sword, he seemed to be enjoying himself.

How the hell was Steve supposed to explain that?

"And yet there seems to be more." Blake seemed to read his mind, letting the curtain fall shut again. "I'll stick my neck out for a witchbreed -- and for you, Stephen. But Faustian shapeshifters are another matter. Their master is the devil, and even he couldn't convince me to help one."

"She hasn't made a pact with the devil," Steve bristled. "It's a...condition that we're trying to cure. We were actually hoping to find you." He rubbed at the bridge of his nose and looked askance at Strange. "Or a version of you. I'm guessing I'm not wrong in assuming the friar bit is a show?"

Strange chuckled, rubbing his hands together, purple sparks of magic twinkling in his hands. "No, you're not wrong there. I do have a few tricks up my sleeve."

#

The shoulders on the dress weren't nearly wide enough for Tony. Seams stretched and split as he emerged. Taking his first breath of fresh air during day -- or as close to day as he had come lately -- was a refreshing change of pace.

The sky had darkened as the sun was eclipsed, apart from one small bright spot, only warped, oblong halo of light was visible. It caused an eerie sort of dusk lighting to settle over the square, coupled with a sharp sense of tension. Several people swore, and several more screamed.

The red haired woman drew her sword calmly, as though she saw this sort of thing every day. Tony was actually a bit incensed at that. "I'll have the name of your master, after all, Faustian."

Tony reached down for the Iron Man symbiote, felt the quicksilver curling around the palm of his hand, and the thrum of the repulsor revving the life.

"It's me, myself, and I," he grinned, pulling up his palm quicker than she could react.

Please don't count as harm. Please don't count as harm.

The magical spell on him lay dormant, and the repulsor beam hit her in the chest, and she was knocked backward.

With seconds before she was back up, Tony fired the repulsor again, right at the base of Doom's ugly fountain statue, freeing the boy from where he was chained. Then Tony took off at a dead run, threatening any one who didn't move aside with the glowing gauntlet.

If he could only muster the power to bring out the boots too, he could leave this stone-age town.

Since that wasn't currently an option, he opted to dart down the first street he found off of the main drag, looking for heavier artillery or a hiding spot.

What he found, instead, was a robed figure in a golden mask.

He recognized the thing for what it had been before the end of all worlds: a Black Priest. It was an odd sight and reminder. Stranger still was the gesture it made toward him to follow it. Tony hesitated. But absent open hostility, and remembering that they had boasted some sort of magic power before the end of the world, Tony opted to follow it down the alley.

If he was honest, Tony was also more than a little curious to know what kind of a role the Black Priests had assumed on Doom's world.

Once the priest seemed assured that they were alone, it turned to face him.

The part of Tony that had a flare for the dramatic almost expected an otherworldly voice, but it spoke in plain English, though the hushed baritone was suitably mystic, he supposed.

"You seem to be in trouble."

Tony let his back rest against a cool stone wall, listening to the cacophony of the town in an uproar. "I think that is an understatement."

"Do you require aid?"

Tony gave the gold mask a surmising look. "What kind of help are you offering?"

"Magical." The priest spread his empty hands. "Some of us have more sophisticated understandings of magic than the people of this province. Some of us answer to a higher power."

Tony's fingers curled, the pad of his middle finger stroking the quicksilver repulsor node in his palm. "Interesting. Doom?"

"You'll find not all within the rank and file are happy. Some of us remember a time before."

Fingers came up, removing the helm, and a gray face stared back at him. The blue Glasgow smile and the glowing eyes all pointed to one person.

"Apocalypse?"

He couldn't tell how old the mutant was. He was older than Tony remembered him during Red Onslaught's attack. He hadn't gone by Apocalypse then, though...Tony searched his mind, but apparently he hadn't thought it worth noting.

"If that's what I was on your world," the man shrugged. "On mine, I was known as Evan Sabahnur, though most people called me Genesis."

Yes, that was the name he'd been searching for. Trusting Apocalypse was one thing...but Gensis was different.

Tony felt a surge of triumph, and a sense of doom from the woman. But after Steve's display with Lokim, it was finally Tony's turn to solve things his way. And without Steve to stop him --

Natasha writhed under his skin; she knew what he was about to ask. "I assume you saw what happened in the square?"

Genesis nodded.

Now how to put it in such a way as to circumvent the spell?

"I don't suppose you could help rid me of my feminine side?"

"I could..." The priest's hands began to glow, and he took a step toward Tony. When Tony didn't shirk, he drew even closer. "But it would have to be an exchange."

Tony raised an eyebrow at him. "Of what?"

"There's a rumor floating that you've got a relic."

"Not right now, I don't," Tony said.

Genesis frowned. "Then who?"

He was just a little too eager for Tony's liking. The engineer took a half step back. "No idea. Unstable portals are tricky. Could have landed anywhere."

"Or your companion had it. What happened to him?"

"We split up. Couldn't stand each other."

Another step back, and Tony felt himself knock into something solid. He twisted, coming face to face with Stephen Strange, wearing robes just as blood red as Genesis's. Against his will, every muscle in his body froze

"He doesn't have it," Strange's eyes were cold. "But I can feel the power lingering on him." He considered Tony for a few moments. "Hand him over to Angela. See if she can't get something more out of either of him -- or her. If nothing else, I know the woman, and I know her husband. He'll come for her, and he's bound to have the relic with him."

#

In the confusion and the scramble that accompanied the two witchbreed hunters going after Tony, Steve caught sight of Strange giving the boys signals. And he couldn't help noticing the hopeless, angry look that passed from Scotius to the friar.

Not so blind after all, it would seem.

But before they could start their own search, the two Black Priests emerged with a limp Tony in hand. When the priests joined Angela and Serah in marching their spoils out of town, the sorcerer offered him a sympathetic touch on this shoulder, and offered to bring him back with the boys.

It did not occur to Steve to ask where "back to" was until his feet were already following the friar out of town again.

"Someplace safe. The Roost," was all they told him on the path. And as they walked back, the air grew colder as the darkened sun and clouds persisted. Eclipses on Battleworld, it seemed, lasted a long time.

Strange led the group deep into the heart of the forest. The moment they departed the road, he again shed the frail old man appearance. Steve was glad for it. If he had continued the hobbled gait he had had on the road, it would have taken them hours to reach the glen.

They ascended into said glen via a path cut into the rocks running along the river, climbing stone steps next to a babbling waterfall. Once at the top, Steve gaped. The Roost was aptly named, because it was a copse of trees with ladders and decks built out from branches that towered high overhead. A lattice of rope bridges ran through the canopy, connecting one tree to the next.

It was hard for Steve to fathom how anyone would prefer to live in the village.

A dark, furry shape with an enormous tail bolted down one of the trunks, ignoring the perfectly good ladder nearby, and made a beeline straight for them. She moved fast -- certainly faster than Steve was prepared for, and nearly bowled him over as she snatched up Hal into a great big bear hug.

"You remembered!"

"Of course I did," Hal wheezed. "You threatened me with death by a thousand gnawings."

"I did? Oh. I was...joking," the girl said. Her bushy squirrel's tail puffing up as she took the bag from him, opening it, and sniffed, her eyes squeezing shut in pure delight.

"You must be Doreen," Steve said weakly, remembering how wary Hal had been of her ire earlier. And if she was able to make him wheeze, Steve supposed that it was well warranted.

Her eyes got big. "And who are you?"

"A friend," Strange said, resting a hand on Steve's broad shoulder. "With business. Is the Hawk in?"

"He just got back," she said, digging into the bag.

Strange ruffled her hair. "Then you will have to excuse us. Enjoy the candied acorns."

#

The trees swayed gently in the wind, and all around him, Steve was surrounded by the earthy smells of pine and oak, bark and leaves. It was a pleasant divergence from the dusty town they had first landed in, or the claustrophobic village.

It also reminded him of the afternoon at he dam.

Strange ushered Steve into a large room, built around the trunk of the largest of the trees. A low table, polished by wear and tear sat in the middle of the room and with cushions were strewn about. The Hawk was seated on one, his elbows on the table, chin resting on latticed fingers.

As it turned out, Steve knew the Hawk, even though his face was masked.

Or, at least he'd only known one man to wear that purple mask with its winged eyes. The bow and quiver crooked in the corner only reinforced Steve's gut instinct that it was Clint.

Clint seemed completely unimpressed with Steve. And to be fair, he was still in just the simple button-down shirt and tan breeches from Timely. Clint didn't know him either. Steve, it would seem, still wasn't going to get lucky like Natasha had. Still, it was good to see Clint again.

"Are you going to introduce us, Strange?" Clint sat back on his hands, lips quirking into the beginnings of an amused smirk. "Not exactly like the other witchbreed that have followed you home. Will you be taking care of this one too?"

"No, and no," the sorcerer said, taking a cushion opposite Clint, completely unfazed by the jape. "But he's not so different from the others. Rogers here is sympathetic to our plight, and yours in particular."

Clint cocked his head, the interest earnest now instead of passing fancy with a newcomer.

Strange beckoned for Steve to join them. "The story is yours to tell."

Steve hesitated, glancing around at the wooden walls of the room. A tapestry embroidered with golden silk thread hung on one wall, as did a portrait of a king -- half-finished by Steve's eyes. And all manner of gold and silver sat on the shelves: chalices, crucifix icons, and jewelry. But Steve couldn't help but notice that for all the finery around, there was little on Clint, and Strange wore only a simple chain to fasten his sorcerer's cloak.

In his gut, Steve suspected that the items had not been procured legally. So the question was, had he fallen in league with cutthroats and highwaymen? Or something else?

"You said that you needed my help," Strange pressed. "But haven't told me how, exactly. Come," and he beckoned again to the place between himself and Clint.

So Steve sat begrudgingly. "I'd like to know how you've come to think I'm sympathetic first."

Strange's face was half hidden as he rubbed at his beard, watching Clint. "Let us say for now: your lady is not the only one that's been taken to the Spider's tower."

Clint's jaw clenched, and his fingers drummed on the table, an unspoken conversation passing between himself and Strange.

"And you've brought me here because you think I can help?"

"I think we can help each other. You're not from these lands. You and your friends are border crossers," Strange said. "Otherwise you would know the risks of going near a town when you are...anything but normal. Witchbreed don't have a choice, they're born different from regular people. People like me that study the arcane arts are usually called Faustians, but that's an injustice. There are sorcerers and then there are the things that sell their soul for power. But the common folk don't really like any of the three, and most just call us witchbreed."

"You claim it is a condition, correct? Which leads me to believe she's more of the first. This is a safe haven for people like that. Unfortunately, like you saw with the boy today, not all are lucky enough to come to us before the mob finds them. As I alluded, he's not the only one we've seen carried to the tower."

"So you're proposing a rescue mission."

"Just so," Strange said. "Are you agreeable?"

Steve studied them, weighing what he'd seen. In the end, it was hard for him to believe that Clint or Strange would ever use children as a ruse for banditry. "Yes, I'm in."

"Good, matter one settled," Strange smiled. "Now what was it you were hoping I could do?"

So Steve told them why he was looking for a sorcerer, and finished by setting the star on the table.

#

Afterward, Steve had been allowed to retreat to a room of his own. He settled into a hammock, ostensibly to sleep. He'd been up for hours, but though every muscle in his body was weary and ached,  Steve's mind was abuzz.

He pulled the star out again, holding it in his hands.

It had brought the dead back to life once.

Maybe it can again, he thought, thinking of Timely's blacksmith, trying to will him back into existence.

 But try as he might, the star stayed hard and cold in his hands.

#

They dragged her -- or rather Tony -- by the ankles, through stone corridors lit by blazing torches. The fabric of his blue dress dragged along the floor, ripping even more than it was already. As they delved deeper behind the stones, Natasha started to hear screams from somewhere deeper in the tower.

"Under different circumstances, I'd find this sexy," Tony said, much to Natasha's disgust.

Angela shot Tony a cold glare. Up close she was even more gigantic, intimidating and silent, and the ribbons trailing from her waist swirled, hanging in the air like snakes ready to strike. Ahead of them, her companion Serah had the winged boy hoisted over one shoulder. His blue eyes were screwed shut now, and he was muttering prayers in a language she didn't understand. Natasha felt sorry for him. He was entirely too young to be caught up in such dreadful circumstances.

"Do you think Octavius will be happy or annoyed?" Serah wondered aloud, pulling out a heavy iron key and fitting it into the lock.

"Does it matter?" Angela grumbled.

The room they were dragged into had a low, claustrophobic ceiling. Natasha could feel Tony grinning as Angela pushed him back against a wooden rack, tying his arms in place.

"I always did have a thing for redheads."

Angela snarled at him, cinching the rope she was tying tight, cutting into his arm.

"If you didn't bring me back here to do unmentionable things, then what?" The fact that he was still wearing the dirty torn dress seemed completely irrelevant to Tony.

Angela gripped him by the throat. "I want answers about the thing you serve."

Tony laughed. "And I told you: the only thing I serve is my own ego."

"We all saw you change. Witchbreed or Faustian, it makes no difference. There's little point in pretending you don't serve some dark master."

"Angela--" Serah said, touching the redhead on the shoulder. "This one didn't exactly change into anything monstrous. Maybe it's something else."

The ribbons flicked in annoyance like a cat's tail. "Then she'll burn with the witchbreed."

Sera's pursed her lips. "I'll inform the Spider's steward of the new prisoners, and they can prepare the arrangements. There isn't much point in us staying. We can go hunting for the enclave of witchbreed again. Hunting always cheers you up."

"On the contrary," Tony bristled as Genesis swept into the room, his red robes billowing. The towering helmet of gold was lodged firmly under one arm. "Your skills would very much be appreciated. Octavius requested it himself."

"The recluse actually talked to you?" Angela sneered.

Octavius? Natasha wondered privately.

I knew an Otto, or Doc Oc, who would fit the eight legged motif, Tony supplied by way of explanation.

"Yes," Genesis didn't seem to care about Angela's open hostility. "He even invited me to stay. His health is so poor, I'm sure you know. I was able to lessen the pain for a bit and he was ever so grateful."

The Black Priest crossed the room, one of his sinuous hands gathering in the floral fabric of the dress.

My dignity, Tony thought drolly, and if she had had them, Natasha would have rolled her eyes.

"This one is certainly a trespasser," he said, voice as smooth as honey as he studied the fabric, "thumbing his nose at divine decree. Matches certain descriptions the Thors are passing around of a duo with a stolen relic. If you were willing to help him loosen his tongue over where it might be, perhaps we could strike a deal?"

Angela's eyes narrowed, but tilted her head in such a way that it was plain she was listening.

This isn't going to be good. Natasha thought.

No. Tony agreed.

#

The priest returned at sunset to see Angela's handiwork. His curiosity had been sparked, he said, by Sera's story of the man turning back into a woman as the sun reappeared in the sky. Natasha glared back at him as he surveyed her, black eyes dark and amused.

"He asked me to erase you, you know," Genesis remarked. "I still could. If he were willing to talk and you weren't..." He cast a glance out of the window at the reds and purples of twilight streaking into the sky.

Natasha flexed against the chains. 

"You still have a last few minutes."

Natasha spat at him. It missed, landing next to his boot and he gave it a bored look.

She could feel Tony getting stronger as the light dimmed. And she wondered if this might be it, if her male counterpart would finally be triumphant.

And grovel? Disgust dripped from Tony's thoughts. I'd rather have the torture.

I hope you're telling the truth, she thought, feeling weary, and gave in to the push of Tony's mind before the sun had even set. Slipping underneath the man's consciousness was like hiding behind a veil. The priest's words grew faint, like they came through a wall.

If you're anything like me...

He didn't finish the thought. He didn't have to. Natasha's pride was as much a glutton for punishment.

She heard Tony crack his neck, and watched through his eyes as he met Genesis's gaze. "Couldn't stay away?"

The black priest gave a flicker of a cruel smile, empty of any warmth. He uttered a word that made Tony twist with pain.

And Natasha drifted, aware of what was happening, but distant, like a boat in a harbor during a storm.

#

"So you think it's possible to separate us?" Steve asked, following Strange across a rope bridge to the sorcerer's dwelling, high up in one of the oldest, most gnarled of the trees. The Roost was bustling with midday work. A hulk-like woman he hadn't met was chopping firewood, and several of the younger men were cooking. In the grass below, Doreen was throwing an apple back and forth with Hal. Or was -- until he decided to eat it.

"Possible? Yes," Strange said, pushing aside the canvas flap door. The place was cramped piles of books stacked from floor to ceiling, bottles -- Steve recognized a few that Blake had sent back from the trip to the village -- filled with brightly colored ichor-like substances, and all manner of what looked like occult crafts. "But I don't think I have the power to do it. Maybe a different version of me, as you claim is out there, possesses the ability, but my powers are limited. I prefer illusion to transformative magic. Now if you wanted a Tarot reading..."

"Strange hobby for a friar," Steve snorted.

"You have no idea," the sorcerer said. "But I think there is someone else better able to help you."

"Who?" Steve asked, as Strange pulled an oval mirror framed in gold and ivory down from one of the shelves.

"The lady the Hawk lost to the Spider."

"One of the witchbreed?"

"So much more, at least to the Hawk," Strange set the mirror flat on the table, and motioned for Steve to bring the star close. "Wanda's powers were extraordinary. When they took her, it was a shock to us all."

Steve passed the sphere to Strange, and the mirror seemed to thrum to life in its presence.

"Sometimes the relics that the priests hunt are very powerful, but not by themselves. Sometimes they act as amplifiers," Strange explained. "In the right hands, any relic has the potential to do a lot of damage, which is why the priests guarded them and hunt them so zealously."

"What about someone without any magic?" Steve asked.

Strange's face screwed up in thought. "Difficult to say. I would assume it depends on the relic."

He rolled the star in his hand, and the reflection of the thatched roof's ceiling wavered then disappeared. The mirror's reflection gave way to what looked like a crystal clear picture of a stone hallway. "This relic," he said, "seems to let a parlor trick work from afar."

"Is that the tower?" Steve asked, squinting at the rows of decorative mail armor on display up and down the hall.

"None other. We're mirror walking in the Spider's walls."

Steve grinned. If they could find out where Natasha and Wanda were being held without ever stepping physical foot in the castle, then Strange's parlor trick was a tactician's dream come to life.

#

Serah daubed at the blood trickling from Natasha's nose with a wet cloth that smelled faintly of rosewater. The Black Priest still hadn't lifted a finger to make Tony talk. He hadn't had to. His voice rumbled, deep and guttural in a language where words brimmed with power. The sound was so eerily reminiscent of the "oom" that had broken apart her world, it made the hairs on the back of Natasha's neck prickle. Well, Tony's, anyway.

She hated magic.

And Tony readily agreed.

The priest's patience ran dry in the wee hours before dawn, and he had left, promising someone would be back on the morrow.

With the change back to Natasha, that meant the sun was up again. Steve would have had the night to put miles between himself and the thors, or to plot and plan. Knowing her Steve, and from what she had seen of this one, Natasha was certain it was the latter. It should have been comforting. But  Genesis was expecting it, and the thought of being bait galled her.

The witch hunter had shown up some time after the change had occurred. On her own, Serah was different -- more unsure around Natasha. She pushed a lock of short dark hair out of her eyes and dipped the cloth back into a basin, wringing it damp before moving to clean the crusted blood at Natasha's ears.

"It would be better for you if you just told us what you are," Serah said in a hushed voice.

Natasha wanted to laugh and tell her she was exactly what she looked like.

But wasn't it odd how gentle she was being with a supposed witchbreed? Tony pointed out, and as Natasha studied Serah, she was inclined to agree.

So instead she asked, "What do you think I am?"

"Cursed."

"Do you think that boy with the wings is cursed as well?" She asked, hands tensing against the chain that held her in place.

Serah pursed her lips and scrubbed at Natasha's ear. "That's different. He exalted in his debased form."

In other words, no, Tony groused.

Which seemed extraordinarily bitter for him, circumstances considered.

Strikes close to home.

Natasha took an educated stab in the dark. Steve?

Clever girl.

Well we are the same person.

Knew I liked you for a reason.

"If that man you were with was the one who did it to you, you don't have to worry about reprisals. If you  could give us a name, or a hometown," Serah said, trying genuinely to show warmth, "we could make sure he can't hurt you."

"Are you so sure the priest will agree to that arrangement?" Natasha wrinkled her nose, making it evident she doubted that that would be the case.

Serah's hands twisted the towel tighter in her hands, and the rose scented water beaded from the terry cloth, dripping onto the stone floor with soft patters.

"Priests and Thors think they are the only arbiters of Doom's will," Serah said stiffly. "But they're just as driven by greed and ambition as the common folk. I cannot fathom why you are held on one pretense and questioned -- to the exclusion of the first offense -- about this priests errand."

"So you would risk the priest's wrath, but you wouldn't help the boy when it would incur none," Natasha said.

"I would help you based on my judgment. Because in the end, my judgment is I will answer to Doom for." She set aside the basin and stood to leave. "He'll be back soon. But remember, if you change your mind, you need only say the name."

Natasha closed her eyes as the door shut behind the witch hunter, savoring the quiet for a few moments, even if she did ache all over. Her arms hurt from the way they had been bound out to either side of her without support, and her back stung from the lashes that Angela had inflicted.

Then she looked at the boy, Warren, and was quietly thankful that they had been too preoccupied with her and Tony.

Why did you try to free him? She asked Tony.

We needed a diversion.

It made sense. It fit Tony's calloused personality.

But it also rang hollow. Too matter-of-fact. And then there was the fact that she could feel something casting unease over him.

You're a terrible liar.

No, you just have an unfair advantage. You know all my tells.

Why did you really do it?

Tony was quiet. And for a moment Natasha didn't think that he would answer. But when he did, it was uncharacteristically meek.

I don't know.

#

The doors to the library were immense, easily three stories tall, cast in bronze and gold and adorned with representations of the world tree that rose from the twisted roots that formed Doom's throne. The doors were suitably grand for Doom's repository of knowledge.

But in truth, the place might have been better described as a museum. Like all of Doom's citadel, cases littered the floors with revenant pieces of other worlds. The more egregiously alien to this world, or the more powerful, then the better hidden. Chief among those objects being relics.

The atrium within the library was open to all, and the marble floors sparkled a glossy white under the light filtering through the stained glass ceiling. Twelve stories above, a thousand shards of yellows and blues, purples and pinks, all fit together. Chaos become one.

Below, a long, deep pool reflected the ceiling, its surface broken every now and then by the splash of a carp's fin, or the movements of the aquatic life that called it home.

Strange strode past it, toward the golden filigree gates that separated the atrium of the library with the entrance to the stacks. A wisp of smoke, one of the otherworldly keepers that Doom had conjured to oversee security within his sanctum, turned the sole solid bit of itself -- it's head toward Strange.

"Sheriff," it acknowledged in a voice soft was a breeze. It stood aside for him.

Strange ignored it, his mind elsewhere as he entered the lift and pressed eleven.

"Wait!" A wiry black haired youth called, and slid into the elevator with him. He seemed to pale almost immediately as he caught sight of just who he had joined.

Strange glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. The boy wore a dull gold robe and a red hooded cloak, marking him as an adept amongst the black priests. He wasn't quite to the point where he would be granted the mask and red robes. And that day was still likely far ahead. He tugged at the cloak, and adjusted the pin, looking as though he still wasn't accustom to the adept's clothing.

"What's the significance?" Strange asked, motioning toward his pin. It was the only personal piece a priest was allowed to wear. They were each given one on induction, and the boy's was shaped like a mountain peak.

"Home," the boy said. "My village was at the foot of a mountain."

Ah home.

"Left to serve Doom, then?"

"And to study," the boy seemed flustered. 

As an adept he would be studying one of the thousands archived in the library, proving that he could master the understanding of at least one arcane object before he was trusted to hunt down and carry one safely back to the library.

Strange's hand hovered over the lift's panel of buttons. "Floor?"

"Eleven," the boy stammered.

I don't think I've seen you around the citadel before."

"Billy Kaplan, Sheriff, Sir," he said with entirely too much deference as the doors closed. "I was just recently granted permission to enter the library. Its my second day with a relic."

"Oh," Strange said. "What have they got you studying?"

"The Philosopher's Well. It was said to cure anything."

"We have a well in the library?" Strange mused.

"Oh, no--" Billy seemed embarrassed. "We have bricks that used to be a part of it. But my mentor says the piece of a magic thing can often hold on to the memory of the whole."

Well, Strange thought, your mentor is not wrong.

The boy got a starry look in his eyes, "Finding where it was located would be amazing, though. Supposedly it was used by the First Priests, before Doom struck them down for heresy," he fidgeted. "All the books say Doom destroyed it shortly after."

Strange smirked inwardly. Just like Doom to make up aggrandizing stories. The First Priests were more cautionary fable than history.

As the elevator chimed softly and the gold doors slid open, Strange bid him goodbye good-luck, thinking that he seemed very much like a sweet kid.

He wondered if the threat that the high priest had leveled at him. Whatever enmity Sanders felt, it didn't seem to permeate deeper within the ranks.

Unfortunately, that did nothing to ease the worry preoccupying Strange.

In some ways, it would be easier not knowing -- to have it blindside him. He almost wished that he hadn't confronted the High Priest.

But as he wordlessly wove a spell of invisibility over himself, and moved through the labyrinthine stacks of book shelves, till he came to one in particular, holding a copy of The Love Song of Joshua Prufrock. He withdrew the book, feeling for the keypad hidden in the back of the shelf. Once his fingers found it, he entered a code, and the shelf swung open, no more than a few inches, just enough for him to lever the hidden door further open and slip inside.

The room was windowless and small -- only big enough to hold one person comfortably. It held a set of drawers, plain unvarnished wood, and nothing more. Strange opened the topmost drawer, and the room was illuminated with the rainbow colors of the infinity stones.

He shut it, and opened the next. The red and gold of the Eye of Agamotto glittered dully, the lids firmly closed and slumbering.

Strange opened the third drawer and felt a rush of blood and a feeling of faintness sweep over him.

The third drawer had little more than a faint dusty impression in the shape of a cube.

The cosmic cube was missing.

#

"Nearly sunrise again," Genesis said.

Tony could see the pale grayness of dawn out the window.

"What happens if the woman cracks first?" the priest asked. "What if she and I strike a bargain?"

"You're too late. We made a coalition of Starks already," Tony grinned, tired though he was, and even though the woman had agreed to no such thing. But it seemed like the right thing to say. And he enjoyed the flicker of frustration that flitted across the priest's face.

He had brought a satchel with him today, and he opened it, withdrawing a wand with a horned effigy on either end.

"I didn't want to use this," he said.

"Why?" Tony tilted his head to one side. "Not well-versed with your wand?"

"Because it's the relic I was hunting for before I found you."

"So?"

"Using a relics diminishes its power," the priest explained, unfastening the omega shaped pin that held his cloak in place, and setting it aside -- ready to go to work. "We don't use them lightly. Each object of power has a special magical energy, a signature, if you will. And as long as the relics are strong, they are easy to trace. We could feel when they are used to work big magic. For instance, when you used the relic in the Valley of Doom."

Tony quirked an eyebrow at him.

The priest hefted the wand in his hand. "This one was never very strong to start with. But if it can compel you to tell me where your partner is, what he might be planning..."

Tony had scarcely moments before the wand began to glow green. And then Genesis was muttering something close to Tony, almost in his ear. The engineer found himself frozen, unable to even twitch a finger. The words that the priest spoke weren't English, and even still Tony found he could understand them -- could understand that he was being told to tell the truth -- that he was being compelled to tell the caster exactly everything about himself and Steve, and the relic they had been carrying.

But in that horrible moment, feeling like his insides were being twisted and pulled up through his throat, something clamped like a vice around his throat. Everything about Steve that could possibly be used against him died, stillborn on Tony's tongue.

"He'll tell you he's a dog person,  but I once found him cat sitting for Carol. He fed it tuna and let it sleep on his pillow."

The priest frowned, and in a moment that seemed straight out of an absurdist's tale, stared at the wand, smacked it against his palm, and tried again.

"He says he goes for a run every morning, but I know for a fact he just goes to the coffee shop on Mondays."

This time Genesis drew close to Tony, narrowing his eyes, letting them go slightly unfocused. "There's some sort of enchantment on you.

Tony grinned. At least Loki's spell had been good for something.

Genesis grasped him by the throat. "Tell me where the cube is!"

Tony blinked, no spell needed. "We don't have a cube."

The priest hissed something, one of the words he had used earlier, and Tony shut his eyes, clenching his teeth again the illusory sensation of bone grinding against bone.

Genesis seethed, but let him go of his throat. "No matter. If I cannot compel you, I'll just wait for the woman."

Any idea what the suit integration is at? Tony asked, willing himself to keep projecting a calm, cocky exterior.

94 percent, Natasha replied. Just a few more hours.

I have a plan, Tony told Natasha, seeing the crest of sunrise. But it will only work if you cooperate.

What do you need?

A few more hours, Tony thought. If Steve doesn't switch, maybe it's a matter of willpower. Fight the switch. As long as I'm out, he won't get anything useful about us.

I'll try, Natasha replied. But let's hope this plan of yours works.

7

With the cube, Strange was able to weave a complex spell to disguise Clint and Steve.

Steve picked up a vial of blue frothy liquid and cast a look at template for his disguise, bound and gagged to a tree with his partner. The trader had a closely cropped red beard and beady blue eyes that were trying to burn a hole through Steve's chest.

"I can understand the other things," he said. The trader's wagon was loaded with cured meat, candied fruit, leather and nails. "But not this." He opened the vial and gave it a sniff. It smelled sickly sweet and coppery, and when Steve squinted at the scrawled handwriting on the parchment label and saw, "Blud of Octapus," he shivered.

Clint, now a swarthy, dark haired man under Strange's illusion, was wrapping his bow and Steve's shield in a bolts of linen cloth to conceal them. "The noblemen have odd...tendencies."

"Is that what Octavius is?" Steve asked as he climbed up onto the wagon's bench beside Clint.

 "Depends on what what precedent you feel the title requires," Clint smirked. He reached down, accepting a rolled piece of paper from Strange and waited for the sorcerer to take a few steps back before gathering up the reins."He's certainly not of old blood. And he didn't amass a fortune. The only reason he's in that castle is that Doom's Thors put him there."

"Why did they do that?"

"Because it used to be mine," Clint didn't even blink as he said it. "Or, to be more specific, because I refused to swear fealty to the puppet they put on the throne to guard Doom's interests." And he got a wistful look in his eye. "I probably shouldn't have run my mouth off in front of a whole squad of thors. Wanda was a serving girl back then -- could have done nothing and looked the other way, but instead she stopped them from killing me."

The cart creaked a rattled on the dirt road, and Steve found himself pining for the smooth ride of a quinjet, or flying side by side with Tony, an Iron Man gauntlet gripping him tight about the waist.

But he had to be content with the bumpy ride on a hard wooden bench.

It was almost a relief when the castle appeared, the high tower that the fortress got its name from rising high above the canopy of the forest, sunlight glinting off the windows. Behind one, he knew, was  Tony and Natasha. And behind another, Wanda.

Steve felt heartache stir inside of him, thinking of Natasha trapped behind those stone walls. And he knew that the deep, bitter longing for here was more than just the ache for a travel companion. It was something deeper. And he suspected that his emotions were tangling with Rogers's.

The man loved his wife, and missed her. And there was so much regret, so much misery underneath it all that for a moment Steve found it very hard to breath.

Find her. I have to make it better. The thought rang through him, so loud and clear that it might as well have come from Clint.

The guards at the gates castle gates gave them hardly any trouble. One asked if they had the blue potions. And when Steve said yes, they barked at them to move faster, telling them to rush it up to the Lord's Solar. They were supposed to have been here days ago, according to Octavius's steward, and the Lord wasn't happy.

"Great," Clint muttered under his breath, pulling out one of the wooden crates from the pile of supplies. His fingers lingered over the linen wraps that concealed the weapons. Steve caught his eye for a moment and Clint returned he faintest of nods, pushing one of the crates of bottles into Steve's hands.

 "Go on ahead," he said louder, for the guards' benefit. "I'll be right after."

Steve shouldered another crate full of the blue ichor and let himself be escorted away.

He had seen the castle in Strange's mirror walks, as they planned out where they ought to look for Natasha and Tony. Unfortunately, prisoners were held in the tower, which was part of the south wing. The guards were leading him to a solar, which was on the north.

There were two of them, clad in mail and helms. Steve flexed his fingers against the crates, wondering whether or not it would be worth it to just knock them out now and blow his cover. He warred with himself over the decision, because without Clint in tow, the archer wouldn't have any warning if word spread through the coalition of guards.

Ultimately, his mind was made up for him as he passed across the thresh hold of the solar and came face to face with one of the Black Priests.

"Interesting enchantment," The priest waved his hand, and a large glowing runed circle appeared on the floor, centered directly under Steve's feet. Steve knew the instant the disguise from the way one of the guards inhaled sharply. "Poorly crafted, though." The priest removed his helmet and regarded Steve coolly. "Imagine my fortune when the very thing that I am looking for waltzes through the door."

"Me?" Steve raised one eye brow.

"Yes. And I'll even give you one chance to cooperate. Tell me, where is the relic?"

"Safe."

The priest sighed. "Wrong answer."

But Steve was quick. And he happened to be armed, albeit unconventionally. He put all of his strength behind throwing one of the crates at the priest.

Unfortunately, he disappeared in a puff of pink smoke before it could strike. The glass vials shattered against the stone wall, and the room filled with a sickening sweet, coppery smell.

Steve whirled, catching the nearest guard by the wrist, and wrestling the longsword out of his hand. It had been years since he last swung a sword, and the weight of it was poorly balanced. But weapons training was like riding a bike for a super soldier. The man struggled to win it back, and screamed as Steve broke his wrist.

Another of the other guards was foolish enough to come in swinging without backup. Blocking the blow was easy, and Steve used the rebounding force to knock the guard back. Steve's foot connected with the man's chest, sending him sprawling into the wall. His helmet smacked against the stone with a loud metallic clang, and he slumped to the floor.

Which still left three guards standing.

Wherever Clint had gotten to -- and Steve hoped that he had managed to make his way to the tower -- Steve hoped he was having better luck.

#

They had both been dozing. It was day, and Tony was still in control of the body, though the constant strain of exerting willpower to remain so, even with Natasha exerting as little of hers as possible, was taking it's toll. He was tired. And he was beginning to slip.

Refusing to grovel is one thing, Natasha seemed just as tired as he was. But now you're actively fighting. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth...but why?

Tony caught himself thinking of Steve. There was no question in his mind that the super soldier would come for Natasha. There was also no question that he wouldn't bother if it were just Tony. Or what Steve would think if he came and found Natasha gone.

He'd never forgive me.

Tony only realized his slip because Natasha fall so silent.

I was under the impression that there was already a lot he wouldn't forgive.

Tony sighed, his vision blurry, and his whole body aching, as though he were training for a marathon. And what the hell? Talking to Natasha wasn't that different from talking to himself. I tried to get him to understand. I wanted him to understand. But there are some things we will never see eye to eye on.

Is there no way to be good again? The woman wondered, and he sensed a deep melancholy in her.

Was there with yours?

She was silent for some time. I'd like to think that there is.

As Tony considered how to answer that, a sensor went off, and a buzzing sound started in his ear.

Integration complete.

The silver flowed over Tony's form, and it was like being embraced like an old lover, so comfortable, so soothing to have the casement protecting him from the world again. Power output was now registering as an order of magnitude greater than what original capacity had been. Tony pulled at the chains shackling him to the wall, ripping them out of their moorings in the brick and mortar.

In the corner, Warren was staring at him, wide eyed, as if a monster had just emerged, replacing Tony.

Well, Tony supposed that in a way, one had.

He crossed the room in a few short strides, the mutant boy cringing with every step he took.

You might raise the faceplate, Natasha pointed out, annoyed, as Tony ripped out Warren's shackles, and waved for him to follow.

"Please, please don't hurt me--" The boys cringed, and his clipped wings bristled above him like a shield.

Tony raised the faceplate. "Hey--"

The boy screamed.

Tony frowned. Your suggestion doesn't seem to have made things better.

"Hey, look, I'm still human--"

"It's eaten you alive!"

"No," Tony could feel a headache borne of frustration taking root at the base of his skull. "I'm just inside it. It's no different than a knight's armor."

Warren blinked, but he didn't scream again.

"You coming or not?" Tony asked, as he paused at the door, because Warren hadn't moved.

"I can't fly anymore." The sheared feathers that littered the floor were testament enough of that.

"Doesn't matter," Tony offered, ushering the boy out of the dungeon. "I can."

That was uncharacteristically nice of you, Natasha pointed out.

Yeah, yeah...Tony thought. But don't let the word get around.

#

Right, Steve thought. Three guards between him and the door: baby-face, tall and burly, and broken-nosed.

The solar was a long room with high ceilings and golden chandeliers. Large stained glass windows ran along the far wall, which was to Steve's back. To his right, Steve had a long table and chairs, to his left, a fireplace. And in front of him, a bearskin rug was sprawled across the floor.

The guards came at Steve in unison, having seen the error of trying to attack solo. But it was clear to Steve that there was no tactic, no formal training to this approach. They still moved forward cautiously as if in single combat, and they didn't force openings that their comrade's could exploit.

Steve parried a wild lunge from baby-face. Steve felt the slightest twinge off pity for the kid as his free hand seized the back of one of the sturdy chairs, and swinging it in the kid's face. Next he blocked a savage downward slash from the broken-nosed guard with his sword hand.

He heard baby-face groan brokenly, definitely down for the count, as Steve slashed back at broken-nosed and just narrowly sidestepped tall and burly's war hammer. The flagstones where it struck cracked.

Right. That was as good a reason to end the fight as soon as possible, he thought, dancing backward, out of range of broken-nose's blade. The table came up against the back of his thighs, and Steve rolled on top of it and running, scattering silverware and stoneware, with broken-nosed at his heels.

Almost immediately, Steve heard the splintering of more wood, and the dishes started sliding backward toward him as the table was upended by the hulk of a guard.

But he could use this to his advantage.

The table tipped farther up as Steve reached the end, and he jumped, leveraging the increase in height to grab on to a chandelier. Momentum carried him in an upward arc for a few seconds, and Steve twisted himself in midair to face the way he had just come, kicking his feet like an acrobat at the height of the arc, and gaining speed on the way down.

"Oh f--" broken-nosed realized what he was doing too late, eyes wide as Steve smashed the butt end of his sword's hilt into his face.

Of course, now Steve was sliding down the slippery polished wood toward the angry, burly guard.

He flung himself off before he got within grabbing distance and rolled, covering his head with his hands as the table crashed to the floor. He heard the last guard bellow, and he had just a few seconds to scramble to his feet, grab his sword, and vault over the tipping table as it was heaved -- toppled completely upside down - where Steve had just fallen.

The burly guard was breathing hard, his shoulders rising and falling quick.

He also happened to be standing with his back to one of those large windows, on the bearskin rug, the head of which was now at Steve's feet.

As the guard's hands went white knuckled around the handle of his warhammer, Steve bent, hands grasping the gaping bear muzzle firmly, and yanked with all his strength.

The guard toppled backward, and the weight of his hammer, still clutched desperately in one flailing fist tipped him back further still.

The glass shattered, and like that, he was gone.

But Steve had no time to contemplate or savor what he had just done. He turned, and red headed woman was there, blocking his path out of the solar. Angela looked angry, and her sword was drawn.

Compared to the glimmering white steel of her weapon, Steve was practically wielding a rusted fireplace poker.

He cast a glance through the broken window with a flick of the head. It would be a long fall. He'd probably break at least something if he took that way down.

But as he parried Angela's staggering blow, Steve realized that she was stronger than he was.

He backed up, one hand grasping the lip of the window. Shards of glass cut into his palm, making his grip slick.

Maybe this was a horrible idea.

Maybe the guard's body would break his fall.

Time to hope for the best, he thought, slipping over the edge.

#

The heavy oak doors splintered outward with the concussive force of Tony's repulsors, and he stepped through the ruined fragments of wood and iron, pleased with his handiwork.

Serah stood at the top of the tower stairs, the basin of sweet smelling water in her hands. Her lips were thin and her jaw set. As Warren followed Tony out of the cell, her dark eyes flickered to him, and back to Tony, full of disappointment.

"I'd hoped I wasn't wrong about you," she said darkly.

"You weren't," Tony said, repulsors flaring to life. "Well -- at least not completely. Stand aside and things don't have to get ugly."

"Leave the boy."

"Not an option."

"Then I'll raise the alarm after you leave," Serah warned him, but she stepped aside, the path to the stairs clear.

"I'd be disappointed if you didn't."

But as Tony led the way down the spiral stone steps, something blue and ephemeral shot past them like a streak of lightning, and a disembodied, ghostly voice whispered in his ear: "I did warn you."

Damn magic.

Ugh, Natasha agreed.

It didn't take long for voices and heavy mailed footsteps to start echoing up the staircase, either. On the next floor down, Tony darted from the stairs and opened the first door he came to. A pair of sewing women paled as he marched through their sitting area and broke their window.

"Grab hold," he told Warren, holding out his hand.

"Uh--" the mutant hesitated.

So, time being as precious as it was, Tony grabbed him.

The mutant boy wasn't exactly light. What with the wings, Tony had assumed hollow bones, or some other special adaptations that would make flight easier. It was a moot point, since Tony had enough thruster power to get them beyond the walls of the castle.

Unfortunately, as Tony kicked the repulsors in his boots to life and left solid ground behind, he noticed that a blue dot across the courtyard that looked very Steve-like seemed to have had the exact same escape plan. He did some quick calculations.

"Hold on," he told Warren as he accelerated sharply, quick enough that even his empty stomach turned with the force.

#

This was a really stupid plan, Steve thought as the ground came up to meet him. He felt his counterpart agree with him, bracing for impact.

And then Steve felt something hard and metallic collided with him -- felt another force tugging him up and aloft, though it seemed to be struggling. Steve twisted his head, and saw the silver and blue of the Iron Man suit.

"You're really heavy," the digital voice said. And it was day, so he assumed Natasha was beneath the suit.

Steve ignored the snark. "Aim for the highest part of the tower."

"What? Are you crazy?" Steve saw they were clearing the castle wall. "I'm getting us out of here."

"No, we need to recover two others."

The voice sighed, and they rolled in midair to avoid a crossbow bolt from one of the men on the castle wall. They were losing altitude, coming down several yards away.

"Natasha--"

The suit's hand opened up as they hovered a dozen feet of the forest floor. The boy with the angel wings tumbled unceremoniously into the grass.

"We'll look for you here afterward," the digital voice advised. "But if you want to split, no one's going to blame you."

Then Steve felt himself being rearranged from the sack of potatoes position he'd been caught in, into the old standard hug-and-fly.

"You do this with your Steve too?" he asked.

The silver Iron Man faceplate melted away, revealing a goatee and a wicked twinkle in Tony's eyes. Steve felt his blood run cold.

"Well, we found it worked even better than when he rode me like a pony, but it raised lots of eyebrows," Tony winked as he dodged more bolts on the way back to the castle. "What's on the upper floor?"

"The answer to our problems, I hope," Steve replied.

"Good enough for me," Tony said, holding out his free hand. The repulsor node whined as it charged to full capacity. Steve winced as it went off right next to his ear, and for a few moments all he could hear was ringing.

The engineer had probably done it that way on purpose.

He didn't get a chance to call Tony on it though. Something exploded behind them, the sound was deep and booming -- a cannon that had been turned inward to point at the courtyard. Steve had just long enough to curse their luck before the tower shook and he blacked out.

#

This time, Steve's hearing came back first. There were shouts and screams from the courtyard below. And in the tower itself, rubble shifted and the compromised wall groaned.

Steve opened his eyes and sputtered, hacking at the dust and debris that had filled the air.

"The repair work on this place is going to be hell," Clint muttered, as he slipped over one of the larger pieces of rubble. He had a cut on his forehead that was trickling into his left eyes, but he had a satisfied smirk on his face. "Took you long enough to get here."

Tony grunted as he pulled himself up onto one knee. The armor's mask slipping back, revealing the amusement in his eyes. "Is that who I think it is dressed up like Robin Hood?"

Clint raised a blond eyebrow. "I don't wear a hood."

"Not now, Stark," Steve groaned, levering a wooden beam off of his chest and pulling himself up. Clint offered him first a hand, and then his shield. Steve was so happy to have it back in his hands that he almost kissed the red, white, and blue vibranium disk.

"So anyone want to tell me what we're doing here?"

Clint pointed to the huge stone doors, carved in relief with dragons and thorns. "You have the relic still, I hope."

Steve pulled it from where it had been nestled safely in one of his interior pockets.

"Is using that wise?" Tony asked.

"It's the only thing powerful enough to break the wards," Clint said, handing over the rolled Strange's rolled piece of paper to the super soldier.

But as Steve walked to the slab-like doors, he felt a buzzing in his head, and a feeling of dizziness. And he heard a voice, deep like thunder.

Tony recognized it first. "There's a priest here. Running a full scan --" the engineer swung his head around. "Son of a--" he raised his hands to fire a shot at something Steve couldn't see. But before the engineer could let off a repulsor blast, he was knocked back so violently that the symbiote faceplate cracked for a second before the quicksilver flowed back into one piece.

Clint didn't bother with anything fancy. He pulled his bow, quick as bolt of lightning. He didn't aim, just nocked an arrow and let it fly at where Tony had been looking.

The air shimmered to Steve's right as the arrow exploded harmlessly in midair. But it had the a nice side effect. The Black Priest materialized, a shell of raw magical power around him, Serah and Angela beside him.

"There it is," Genesis hissed, pointing at Steve.

His hand curled around the star. They were so close. To be stopped here would be unconscionably cruel.

The priest stepped through the rubble toward him, and the shell of energies swirled around him,   smoke-like eddies curling in the air around it.

"Game over," the priest said smugly, hand extended to take the relic.

Steve ignored the feeling of nausea that the magic cast over him. He raised his shield, Strange's paper gripped between his palm and the handle, the star in his other. He hoped that if they flung something at him, that vibranium would be enough to counter it, and lunged for the door.

He succeeded.

He felt something hot, like flame, as the paper in his hand erupted with Strange's simple opening spell. It it raced through Steve, like a conduit. The star responded, growing soft and malleable in his hands, just like it had that day by the massive root. Exactly the sort of thing he had tried in vain to replicate.

The whole tower shook as something magical dissipated, and the stone doors swung open. They made a grating, high pitched squeal as they moved over the stone floor.

"What the--" he heard Clint mutter and the man crossed himself.

"What in the nine hells?" Even Serah was perturbed.

The room within was round, a single space at the heart of the tower. Inside a woman hovered, suspended in a bubble, not unlike the one that the priest had used. Around her monstrous, shiny metal tentacles filled the room. And at the heart of them was a deformed man -- if he could even be called that. He  had an amorphous, pink gelatin body with arms like an octopus jutting from his lower back.

He was grotesque, but what turned Steve's stomach was the smell. The room reeked of a familiar sickeningly sweet coppery tang. The floor, he realized, was strewn with puddles of the blue octopus blood. The man -- if he could be called that -- was clutching an empty vial, and his skin had a faint sheen of blue wetness.

"Otto?" Angela demanded and the creature hissed at them.

"And you call us the monsters," he heard Tony mutter to Serah.

Clint didn't bother with questions. He loosed an arrow at the monster. But one of the metal tendrils reared up, protecting Octavius. The arrow struck the metal instead, and it writhed in pain. Then all hell broke free as the other metal tentacles came alive with their sights set on Clint.

To Steve's surprise, Angela was the first to counterattack, running through the door and slicing the first metal tentacle she discovered clean in two.

Maybe jumping out the window hadn't been so stupid.

Serah, on the other hand, didn't move to attack the monster. She rounded on the priest, flames crackling in her palms. "If you priests have anything to do with the Faustians in this realm, you'll meet your end at the either the edge of her blade, or my fire."

The priest sneered back. "Brave words. But I wonder what the Thors will think once they hear word of the strange goings on here."

A gout of flame flew from Sera's fingertips, but just as earlier, he disappeared into thin air. The witch hunter growled in frustration, and then charged through the stone doors too.

At first it seemed like the fight would be straightforward. It seemed like Angela had handily dispatched one of the eight tentacles.

Why couldn't it ever by simple? As Steve stepped through the doors, he saw the hacked metal  appendages stir, saw the sleek articulated components flow like quicksilver -- just like Tony's suit -- healing themselves into two distinct new arms under the monstrous count's control.

"Hydra!" Steve shouted. "It's a hydra!" Just as one of them slammed into him, knocking him off his feet and pinning him to the ground by his throat.

"Free the woman!" He heard someone yell.

"The force field is too strong!"

Steve struggled against the cold tentacle's grip, clawing at the metal grippers at the end of it that held him down. The thing was as wide as his whole body, and strong as an elephant, and it had enough power to crush is windpipe.

Just as dark spots began to encroach on his vision, Steve felt the prickle of a repulsor beam, and the heat of its ionizing blast. He heard a beastly scream, and then he could breath again. He rolled, fingers grabbing for the shield, and then looked up to see Tony grappling with the tentacle that had held him.

The sphere was still soft in his hands. What had worked for the door might work again, even without another of Strange's charms. With nothing to lose, Steve sprinted at full speed for the center of the room. He leapt over a hacked tentacle that was in the process of reforming itself, he slammed another out of the way with his shield, and sliced the end off of a third by letting the shield fly in a wide arc.

Wanda was feet away --

He felt something slimy latch on to his ankle, tripping him.

No! Steve's rage at being stopped consumed him. And it felt wrong to let the star out of his grasp, it felt like a risk.

But there was no other option.

Steve threw the sphere at Wanda's magic prison, willing it to break through.

The star pinged as it bounced off the the force field. For a moment Steve despaired, thinking that it hadn't done a thing.

The sphere hit the stone floor and rolled, coasting to a stop in one of the blue puddles. In the next instant the star blazed bright.

Then the energy field cracked. A fissure appeared, dime size at first, as though the field of energy were a physical, solid material. It was like watching a crack run through water. And yet there it was: progressing into a spider web of fracturing -- racing across the yellow ball of energy until it shattered under the stress.

In the next moment, a wave of something pink swept through the room, and a horrible screeching filled the air -- only for seconds -- before the metal tentacles coiled up and ceased to move.

Otto looked similarly stricken. Though he was alive, his octopus-like tentacles hung like useless weights from his body. "What have you done to me?" he asked, as Wanda's feet touched the ground.

"Nothing," she said. "You did it to yourself. But my power is no longer yours." She looked long and hard into his black eyes, her own burning with the sort of fervor Steve had only ever seen in the mirror. As her hands began to glow, the lifeless tentacles strewn about the room began to disintegrate.

And then it wasn't just the metal, but also the stone floor beneath them, and the wall around them. For a brief, heart-stopping moment, Steve thought the tower would crumble around them.

"Wanda--" Clint's hand came to rest on her shoulder, and she blinked. The tower's trembling stopped abruptly.

She turned, her face flooding with relief and happiness, and she clasped a hand to his face. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."

"You have that little faith in me?"

"I didn't expect you to find friends. Least of all from Doom's angels."

"I'm full of surprises," Clint muttered, as Wanda pulled him close for a kiss.

To Tony's credit, he waited for them to part before he coughed uncomfortably. "Well, that's just the latest in a long string of things I didn'texpect to happen today."

#

Seriously, Tony thought. When had Clint and Wanda been a couple? Not that he wasn't happy for them...

Steve rounded on Tony sharply -- inhumanly fast. The snide comment had barely left his lips, and he hadn't even had time to process that it might set something off or be in poor taste. But the worst part was the burning anger that was back in Steve's eyes.

For a few glorious moments, thick in the heat of battle, it had felt like old times.

"And seeing you when it's barely past noon was the last thing I expected," Steve said savagely. "Are you that selfish Tony, that you'd use this situation as an opportunity to get rid of Natasha? What have you done to her?"

It was like ice down the back of the suit.

Of course. He'd forgotten in the thick of things. Steve didn't think he deserved to be the one who lived.

And he knew Steve -- knew how single-minded and set in his ways he was.

Nothing would change that.

#

Natasha felt as though she were being swept out to sea by a riptide, her mind and body pulled back to the fore as Tony shriveled up. Moreover, Tony's emotions collided with her own as the exchange occurred: a visceral ache deep in the chest, a certain knowledge, flaring up like panic, that some sins could never be erased or forgiven.         

I thought you didn't love him.

But there was no reply from Tony. His mind seemed to be a million miles away.

Maybe he didn't deserve it. But in the flood of thoughts and confusion, something broke in her and she snapped at Steve. "Hewas helping."

Steve's stunned expression only made her temper flare hotter.

"But you always assume the worst, Steve, don't you?"

The sky began to darken, and she knew they needed to leave. A cruel, cold piece of her wanted to leave Steve to fend for himself. If it was the sort of thing he expected from a Stark, then let both her and Tony live down to his assumptions.

"Can you carry the both of them?" She asked Wanda.

But the Scarlet Witch didn't answer, she had bent down to pick up the star -- the thing that had been the key to her prison. And as she turned it over in her hands, Natasha saw that the star had changed.

It wasn't a sphere anymore. It had become ovoid.

#

Natasha sat in the back of the cart, wrapped up in one of the lengths of linen. Steve had tried to strike a conversation with her, but she had ignored him, and seemed intent on watching the road as it slipped away behind them. The wood of the wagon's bench seat creaked every now and then as Steve kept turned, ostensibly playing lookout -- after all Genesis was still unaccounted for -- but it was more ruse to cast glances at her than anything else.

She tolerated Wanda's presence, and whenever he looked back, he could see them conversing about something, but in voices too low for even his ears to hear.

He still didn't understand her reaction to the concerned that Tony was winning the struggle. So her coldness was puzzling.

Just what had gone on in that tower?

Freeing the three captives currently huddled in the back of the wagon was supposed to have been a victory. And while Clint, Wanda, and Warren seemed in high enough spirits, Natasha's mood dribbled over into Steve's.

Which was unfortunate for Otto's steward.

Not that the trip would have been pleasant for him anyway. Clint had tied one of his feet to the horse, and bound his hands so that he was dragged along road.

He whimpered. "I don't know what he was using the blood for, I swear."

"You never thought it might be related to his odd...condition?"

"He came to the tower that way," the steward insisted. "I was told to be his go-between, to keep him out of sight."

"By who?" Steve asked.

"By the same person who was supplying the vials."

Steve cocked his head at the man. "I'll have the name, otherwise we can take the longer way back."

Clint snorted, "Sure, because what's an extra three miles?"

The man cried. "Please don't make me say it."

"The back way is gravel, isn't it?" Steve asked.

The steward made a strangled sound at that. "It came from God."

Steve hadn't been expecting that. "Doom?"

"I swear it! Octavius said it was succor for being a loyal friend. He said blood was the only way to carry the healing power outside of the well."

Friend? That didn't sound like the Doom Steve knew. And just what kind of a well had the power to reshape magical artifacts?

Steve glanced at Clint and saw that the archer was just as perplexed.

#

By the time they neared the Roost's grove, the sun was setting. The dwellings below, and all the structures strung throughout the trees glowed in the dim light with candles and lanterns. And at the heart of the community, beneath the largest tree, Strange was entertaining a group in front of a fire with ethereal puppets made of conjured energies.

Steve knew the moment he caught sight of them, because a chorus of young, angry voices went up as he stopped the evening's entertainment.

As they all swung down from the wagon, Strange clapped Clint on the back. But he abandoned the archer quickly when Wanda pushed back her hood and he caught sight of her. "Wanda," he drew her into a hug. "It's been far, far too long."

Behind them all, they could hear voices, a burble growing into a murmur as others began to realize who had returned.

She smiled, holding the sorcerer at arms length. "It's good to see you too, you old fool. But there will be time for this later. I'm told we have work to do where our new friends are concerned."

#

Strange's sanctum was dark. Outside, Steve could hear celebrations. Inside, a hush had fallen as Wanda and Strange inspected the misshapen relic.

The moon was up, but the other occupant in the room was still Natasha. Steve had tried to meet her gaze. He wanted to ask so many questions. But her brown eyes stayed resolutely fixed on the the magicians.

After what seemed ages, Wanda's lips pursed and she set the egg-shaped star down on the table. Strange handed her one of the vials of octopus blood, and she poured it over the relic. The star pulsed brighter, just as it had as it rolled across the floor of the tower.

"It's feeding off of something in the blood," she said, wrinkling her nose. "But that's all I can tell. But with the extra power...Yes," she looked up at Steve, "I think I can cast a spell to split you apart."

"Won't that bring the priests here?" Natasha asked.

Strange chuckled. "We thought of that problem when we first settled here. Wanda set up wards to keep us unnoticed a long time ago.  And they've worked flawlessly."

"Flattery does not become you," the Scarlet Witch muttered, before turning serious. "I won't lie, though. The spell will still be difficult, and even with the relic's power it may fail. But if you are still willing, tell me which of you will go first."

"Me," Natasha said automatically.

Steve bristled. "If something is off, if they did something to you--" they both knew that he was referring to the shift in their swapping -- "then it should be me."

"If it will be difficult, then it's got to be us. If we aren't strong enough for it, then my husband can't possibly be."

Steve swallowed, and tried not to read too much into the way she had emphasized her words.

"Then give me your hand," Wanda said.

Steve still wanted to protest. He felt with every fiber that it ought to be him on the line, not her. He was the one that had undergone the stress of experimental procedures before. He was the one who had a strong heart.

And if he did manage to halt the proceedings? She would be even angrier with him afterward. And if the spell didn't work...if her husband was erased, too weak to be cleaved into a new body -- or if it was a painful process, like Nico's spell -- and the other Steve withered away, then he knew that she would never forgive him.

The Scarlet Witch took Natasha's slender pale fingers in one hand, the star in the other.

But even as she began uttering the spell, Steve felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. Something didn't feel right.

The relic's light dimmed, just a fraction for a second, and then a bolt of something blue shot from it. Steve felt an overwhelming sense of dread as Wanda dropped the relic, both hands clasping Natasha, bent over double as she was. Wanda's words switched back to English as she tried to wake the other woman.

Strange meanwhile, had leapt to his feet, muttering something about finding a salve to ease whatever the spell had inflicted.

"I'm fine--" Tony's voice came low and hoarse. And terror gripped Steve, surged through both him and roused Rogers. If Natasha was gone--

"Is she still in there?" he demanded.

"Yes," Tony's voice was still strangled with pain, and muffled as he kept his head down. "The spell just forced the rhythm back into place. She's fine."

Steve stooped to pick up the relic where it had rolled away, turning it over in his hands. His heart sank. It had looked as though the interior had fissures frozen through the center before. Now it looked cracked. An ugly scar stretched over the surface, rough under his fingers.

Strange came back with something moist and green that smelled of thyme and rosemary. He handed it to Wanda, who urged Tony to sit up straight so that she could apply it to the singed, star-shaped mark just below his left shoulder where the bolt of energy had entered.

Tony hissed as they applied it, his eyes opening wide and bright.

"But you're not--" Steve stumbled over the words, his heart beating faster as Tony faced him.

The engineer's eyes were no longer blue. They were brown, just like Natasha's.

Chapter Text

8

"You summoned me, my Lord?" Strange said, entering the throne room.

Doom was not in his customary perch on the throne. Instead he was donning a pair of white gloves, Valeria looking troubled as she held out the next one to him.

"There are reports of trouble in the south," Doom's voice was even, but after years of serving the God, Strange recognized the disappointment in the clipped tone. His Thors hadn't brought the news. Strange would have known before now if they had. Behind Doom, Sanders smiled, triumph glittering in his eyes. An ill-ease and foreboding filled Strange -- like a third sense, nagging at his gut.

"Sir?" Strange felt the full weight of Doom's gaze turn on him.

"Men that can stretch to impossible dimensions. A horde of dark death worshippers. It bodes for the worse, wouldn't you say?"

"Do you know which land they came from?"

"By all accounts, it would appear none. And so I am forced to intervene."

He doesn't want me to spearhead this, Strange realized. He suspects me of being in league with my old friend. Especially because I did not bring the news to him. He thinks that I am concealing something.

Well, he was, but not this.

Strange turned a critical eye toward Sanders. He was certain that it was the High Priest who had stolen the cube out from under his nose -- for what purposes, Strange was still not sure. But it was perhaps the worst of times. And worst of all, Strange couldn't prove it -- couldn't force the priest to hand it back over.

If Doom was killed -- and knowing all that had transpired between Reed and Victor, knowing how Reed must undoubtedly feel about Doom stealing his family -- and knowing how dark some of Reed's multiversal counterparts had been, Strange was overcome by the fear that Doom might not return.

Because if he didn't--

Strange stared at the Yggdrasil throne, each world grafted into Doom's power, each world kept alive by the raw cosmic energy of the Beyonders that Doom had taken for himself.

If he fell, then that cube, a matrix containing a piece of those powers, would be the only bit of that cosmic, life-sustaining energy left.

And then horrible realization swept over Strange.

The two fugitives his Thors and the Black Priests were hunting had come from a mysterious island. And island Sanders and he had toiled on once together. But priests usually only hunted people when they were carrying something important or stolen.

Strange shuddered at the sudden very real possibility that Sanders might have lost the cosmic cube.

Doom motioned for the high priest to walk with him. "Show me the priests you would have accompany me."

#

"Odinson," Strange had decided to summon the Thor he had first assigned to hunt down Steve and Tony. Odinson appeared tired, bags under his eyes. The transit from one part of the realm to another via the rainbow bridge could sometimes have a draining effect, but this was something more. "How is your search?"

"Fruitless," the Thor said. "We were able to find another lead. A Black Priest mentioned that unusual activities had been seen in King James's lands. Or at least stranger than usual for that realm. But the trail went cold at what remained of a broken tower."

Strange drummed his fingers on the desk, his brow creased. "I want you to find them again. But do not engage this time. Offer them an olive branch instead -- anything they want." He slid a magically sealed writ across the table for Thor to take. "Give them that, and promise them there is more. But I need the cube first."

The Odinson gazed at Strange, puzzlement and doubt written on his face.

"Do you have any objections to these orders?"

He shook his head.

Good. The last thing Strange needed at this point was his help getting cold feet. "Be as quick as you can. I fear we don't have much time."

#

Another gray day drifted by over head. And though the skies had threatened to open up for hours, Natasha and Steve were still blessedly dry.

Clint had given them the cart, and a devastated Wanda had sent them on their way the following morning. She apologized -- and Natasha had been downright charming, warm and understanding. As Steve and Natasha left the Roost though, her expression steadily grew icier.

Steve wasn't sure what the cause of her continued coldness was: whether whatever had caused the outburst at the tower still lingering, or if it was because of their failure at the Roost.

Because with Wanda removed from the table as an option, their only recourse now was reaching out to Sheriff Strange somehow. More than likely, that meant finding their way to the Eye of Agamotto. But that was still far off. The rest of King James's lands stretched out before them, mocking them with rolling hills and thickets of forest.

After the forest, they would still need to cross Utopolis, a large patchwork of lands held by Hyperion. And it only got worse the closer they would get to the Eye. Doomgard was also standing between them and the sorcerer supreme, and that was the realm of the Thor corp itself.

And all the while, their time was running out.

Or at least it was for Tony. Wanda had warned them as much. The physical changes would get more pronounced, probably daily.

It had been the very thing that Steve had wanted at the beginning of their journey. He should have been satisfied or relieved. This, after all, was everything that Tony had stood for. It was justice that the man who had rationalized playing God and destroying entire worlds had been rendered so helpless.

But instead of closure, Steve just felt a hollow pit deep in his stomach. He gripped the cart horse's reins tighter and hunched his shoulders.

They stopped for the evening just off the road. Natasha fed and watered the cart horse, and Steve pitched the tent, despairing at just how small the thing was before moving on to set up a fire.

Dinner consisted of chewing on stale bread and tough dry cheese. And at first it passed in silence, broken only by the sounds of their chewing and the forest settling into nighttime.

"You ought to talk to him," Natasha finally said stiffly, a cold breeze nipping through the camp.

Steve glanced sideways at her, as though he hadn't heard right.

"You know time is running out. We all do. But you're willing to hold your grudge until it's too late."

Steve frowned. "You know why I don't want to. You've know better than any of us what goes through his mind."

"Yes. And that's why I'm telling you to talk to him," Natasha snapped. "The changes, they're not just physical. And they were happening before we ever freed Wanda."

That took Steve even more aback.

"What do you mean?"

"He took that mutant boy with him out of the tower." Natasha replied. "And he didn't do it for the diversion, or for selfish reasons."

"Does that excuse everything else he's done?"

"I think it means he isn't the monster you've painted him as," she bit back. "But you're both too stubborn to admit anything, and you don't even realize how fortunate you are that you can still talk to each other."

There it was, the bitterness that had seeped into everything lately. Did she resent them? Was the separation from her Steve finally too much?

Steve nearly asked, his blood boiling with the question. But as it formed on the tip of his tongue, the feature began to reshape themselves. And it was Tony in front of him -- Tony with those strange brown eyes. And Steve couldn't even bring himself to be near the man.

He excused himself. And that night he let Tony have the tent. Instead, Steve slept under a blanket in the back of the cart.

#

Tony still appeared every sunset, but the physical changes were increasing at an exponential pace. Previously, he had stood perhaps an inch or two shorter than Steve and on even footing in the suit. Now he was taller than Natasha's five foot seven, but only barely. His goatee, pride and joy that it always had been, was getting patchier too.

And with his eyes still so strange and wrong, Steve found it hard to look at him directly. It was a blessing that the days on the road were so long and tiring, because as they made camp each night Steve always had an excuse to roll into his sleeping sack in the cart, dead to the world, at least until the next morning.

And so they trudged on, toward what seemed like an insurmountable goal, wondering if the next day would be the last -- one of them irreversibly replaced. Steve checked daily, trying to feel for his counterpart's weak mind. Some days he was able to find Rogers, other days he wasn't so sure there was anything there, because he just felt cold and empty.

But when he did find Rogers, the longing for Natasha was always fierce, just as fiery and passionate as it had been that evening in the saloon's upper room. And Steve would have given anything for Natasha to soften toward him.

The other part of the cart, both blessing and curse, was that he didn't wake up next to Natasha in the mornings. It felt wrong to let his thought linger on her, and he was certain that if they did share the tent, he was bound to do something wrong.

Think of her seemed like the only way he was ever really able to draw the other Steve out, though. So in a somewhat masochistic move, Steve let his gaze linger whenever possible, aware that it probably wasn't right, but if it helped the other Steve...well, he could deal with the gray area, at least for now.

#

The moon had come up, bright and full. From the flap of the tent, Steve could catch glimpses of it as it peeked through gaps in the clouds. A soft, steady rain had finally started, and there was no telling how long it might last. Steve closed the flap, brushing water from the blond strands of hair that fell into his eyes.

No back of the wagon for him tonight. Instead it was his own personal brand of hell.

On the other side of the tent, wrapped in one of the blankets, Natasha had been his companion so far for the night. She was sitting up, the faint blue glow of the RT illuminating the tent. Tony was still taking on more of Natasha's features night after night. But he and Natasha had still been able to keep to the the day and night dynamic through it.

His absence that night was strange. And Steve got a sick feeling thinking about that.

Maybe Natasha had been right. Maybe he should have talked while he still had the chance.

"What happens if this is it?" Natasha voiced the question for him. For the first time in what seemed forever, the chill in her voice had faded. One of her hands was pressed over her heart. "I can barely feel him."

"Doesn't mean his isn't there," Steve reminded her as much as himself. Because the thought that Tony might not be there ripped at something deep within him, something visceral and subconscious that he didn't want to admit to.

How had he ever imagined that this would be easy? How had he ever cavalierly asked for this?

I lost him -- I already lost him. Or I told myself that. I didn't think losing what was left would be just as hard.

"Like my Steve?"

A nod. "He's more feeling than thought, like a sudden burst of a foreign emotion."

Natasha's dark hair hung lanky about her shoulders, and her face was oddly naked in the glow of the RT. "Like what?"

Desire. "Longing, regret..."

She seemed to hang on his words, as if hoping to hear one in particular, one that had some special meaning.

"Frustration," Steve said, and the look vanished from her face.

Steve scooted closer in the tent. His throat tight with the words he ought to say. But it felt so intrusive, for him and for the other Steve. Yet keeping his mouth shut seemed like the greater of the two evils. "He misses you very much. I'm certain of it. And I think he must know you feel the same."

Natasha kept her eyes fixed on her boots for the longest time. Tear tracks glimmered in the RT's light, and seeing them, it felt so natural to move closer and to wrap an arm around her. For a change, Natasha seemed grateful, pressing her face into the crook of his shoulder.

"We haven't even talked about what happens if the worst comes to pass," she said quietly, voice muffled against the cotton of his shirt.

"I think we owe it to the others to keep trying, to cross that bridge when it comes."

As foolhardy as it seemed to keep pressing forward, a part of stubborn part of Steve insisted that if he gave up now, he would be no better than when Tony gave up and wiped his mind.

Natasha looked up at him, eyes bright in the dark, a troubled smile on her face. "Yes, of course. You're right."

She was so beautiful -- all determination in the set of her grim smile. Mostly, though, Steve was overcome by just how earnest she seemed in joining his lost cause, in taking the ship to the bottom of the sea with him, if only so that they could say they ad stuck it out to the bitter end.

And it just felt so good, so wonderful to have someone at his side.

We were always a team, even on the worst days. The other Steve surged within him. And for a few moments Steve didn't feel in control. It felt like he was being dragged beneath the surface of an ocean.

His hands moved, but it wasn't him that drew Natasha into a kiss.

It lasted microseconds. Her eyes went wide and she punched him. Steve was surprised at just how solid the blow was. Then the weight of what had just happened seemed to sink in, and her lips pressed together as she shoved Steve aside and threw the flap on the tent wide.

For a moment Steve sat there in shock, trying to figure out just what had happened.

"Nat--" He called after her, poking his head out of the tent. "Nat, stop!"

But she had vanished. The forest beyond the clearing had a path cut through the trees where branches had been broken, some snapped in two. Steve set off down the trail after her. His bruised jaw ached, and he wasn't entirely sure that he deserved it. He wasn't sure what had come over him.

But he thought it might have something to do with Rogers.

He slid to a stop in another clearing. The silver Iron Man suit sparkled under the full moon, and when it turned to face Steve, he saw that Natasha was gone. She had finally been replaced for the night by Tony. His brown eyes were filled with confusion, and two of his fingers hovered on his lips. He looked as though he were being wrung, torn in two when his eyes locked with Steve's.

"She's asking me to fly away," Tony said. "But I can't. The spell won't let me."

Steve was thunderstruck, and truth be told, heartbroken, because that was such an about-face from minutes ago. "Then go," he said, feeling empty.

But Tony didn't move.

"Nether of you really knows what's going on," he said, voice low. "But how could you?" He covered his face with his hands and took a deep breath. "What happened to you must be what's happening to me."

"The changes?" Steve asked.

Tony crossed the space between them in only a few strides, drawing close to Steve -- so painfully close. "Like she said, its more than the just the physical. I know what it was. I know what you felt. Because I can feel it too."

Steve stood frozen to the spot as Tony's fingers brushed against his cheek, soft and hesitant. This close, Steve could feel the warmth of him, staving off the cold of the night and rain. He was so close, his lips parted --

It was everything that Steve had ever wanted.

And all so completely wrong.

"I don't understand," he said, pulling away, confusion writ into his every muscle. "You never wanted this before."

"It's not just the physical," Tony reminded him. And the repercussions of that slammed home.

It was everything and it was nothing. It was meaningless. Steve grimaced, disgusted with himself, disgusted with Tony too. If Tony had never wanted this, then why? Now that he was being consumed whole, twisted into yet another shade of himself, how could he offer himself up for Steve like this?

Tony took a step forward, reaching a hand out to Steve's should, but the super soldier shrugged it off, turning -- needing to be far away from Tony, or to be someone else entirely. Oh for the luxury of slipping beneath the skin of someone else.

But as he left, he couldn't help but see the broken look that flashed across Tony's face.

#

On the third evening that Doom was gone, Strange entered the throne room, and what he saw was blasphemy.

The Sanders was seated on Doom's throne, sprawled across the seat as though it were his own to do with as he so pleased.

"You are growing bolder and bolder," Strange observed.

The High Priest grinned back at him. "No, I am growing stronger and stronger."

"Even without the missing cosmic cube?"

The priest sat up straight in the throne. "Missing?" He sounded like a cat, circling its prey. "That is quite the artifact to just walk out of the library."

"Don't play stupid with me," Strange growled. "What were you using it for?"

The priest laughed. "I'm surprised you haven't figured it out by now. The island, the hybrids, the way the world seems less and less stable with every passing day." He raised his hands and looked up at the boughs of Yggdrasil. Some of the leaves had turned yellow. "You said it to me yourself once. This twilight kingdom was not meant to be the end. It was supposed to be the beginning of regrowth, the cosmic birth-death cycle begun anew.

"But Doom crippled you. And you've been all too willing to bow your head and accept the bone you're given -- to give up before you've even tried, too cowardly to do anything but keep breathing life into what is already dead."

"The world tree we planted -- your world's tree -- withered," Rage filled Strange. "I tried. And I failed. The power is going out of all of the relics. Magic is leeching from the world, and with it all the memory of the old worlds."

"No," the priest's eyes twinkled. "Soon there will be only me. I was able to succeed where you failed."

"The willow--?" Strange's throat went dry, remembering the gnarled willow tree at the heart of the island. He had missed it, he hadn't recognized it for what it was. He had just assumed that it would look like the oak that Strange lounged on.

"You wanted to know what I used the cube for," Sanders grinned. "It helped the thin little sapling grow into a great tree. And it's thriving, growing stronger by the day. And the stronger it grows, the more comes back." He tapped at his temple. "I hadn't remembered, for the longest time, just how Earth-3490 ended." Sanders looked down at his robes. "The irony is somewhat sickening now."

"If you were able to grow a world tree, then maybe the other seeds can be sprouted too--"

"Perhaps," Strange replied. "But even with a single other world tree rooted on Battleworld, this one earth seems to grow sickly and shakes. Or didn't you wonder about all that strange goings on in the world?"

Strange felt, more than saw or heard, the other priests, circling behind him.

"No," Sanders said shaking his head. "I think, in the end, there can only be one. And its about time my world had a place of its own."

#

It tore at Tony to see Steve walk away. It ripped at a piece of him, a piece that shouldn't have existed, and which his every instinct told him was wrong and dangerous.

And yet it was still a part of him -- just like his brown eyes, just like the longer hair, or the way his body's angles had softened.

 And it hurt, felt like his heart was in his throat to see the disgust in Steve's eyes.

He had wanted it, once. He'd wanted Tony.

But that had been before Tony burned to cinders every bit of faith and goodwill between them.

The weight in his soul was part grief -- for a friendship long past repair. And it was part desolation. At that moment, consumed with heartache, Tony would have done anything to erase the disgust he'd seen on Steve's face.

Maybe he could.

Tony fumbled for the ovoid relic, his finger running along the splintered crack.

Maybe if he finished it, if he gave Steve what he'd wanted all along...If he let Natasha live her own life, unencumbered of him, then maybe Steve would have at least one reason to set aside his ever-present contempt.

And maybe eventually, he'd find it in him to forgive Tony.

Tony focused on the star, on nothingness, and then he heard Natasha screaming inside his head.

#

"Only one Yggdrasil?" Disquiet swept through Strange.

"One," the priest agreed.

"But this one--" Strange protested.

"Is all the more weak because such strange and disparate lands have been grafted into one twisted trunk."

"You're mad."

"No," the priest eyed him, cold and calculating, "I am rebuilding my world. You of all people know what a man is willing to do for survival -- for the survival of his loved ones."

"Without the cube you won't last more than a moment after Doom finds out. Even with it, your creations are flawed -- they're all half of your world, half of mine."

Sanders laughed. "Doom's reign of tyranny is almost done. What Richards doesn't see to, my priests will help finish. As for you," his eyes glittered as he steepled his fingers. The high priest grinned. "Do it."

At first Strange was confused, thinking the words were meant for him. They were not. He heard the whish of something cutting through the air behind him, and felt a sharp pain, a stabbing in his lower right back. He looked down, dizzy, and saw the tip of a spear had run him through.

His mouth opened, but he couldn't find words -- nothing but a rattling groan came out.

"I know what you did to those seeds, infusing them with your magic, trying to make them to grow -- to bring their power back to life." Sanders stood, stepping down off the throne and approaching, lazy and confident. His fingers brushed the gash, in Strange's side. "Watered with blood. Your blood. Life to bring back life."

He looked idly at the bright red blood on his fingers. "But the taint blood created, blood can erase."

Strange laughed, more blood bubbling on his lips. "You'll still have to find the cube if you want to bring the things of your world back."

And in that moment all of the lights suspended within Yggdrasil seemed to fade -- their white-blue light subdued only for a moment -- but just long enough that the priest looked up, amused. " I just did. The fools have used it again."

All around them Strange heard the ripping sound of priests stepping through the void, called to a place where power had emanated.

"Kaplan!" the high priest said, looking at Strange as though he were a stain on a prized rug. A young adept hurried to his side. Kaplan, Kaplan...that name was familiar. "See to disposing of our friend in a manner befitting his station."

Out of the corner of one eye, Strange though he could just see a trace of luminous blue green feathers. His finch. If he could just get a message -- his mind was beginning to slow -- he wouldn't be able to do it here, not in front of the other sorcerers.

"He ought to have a wake," the traitorous Leif muttered. "His Thors will want to pay their last respects."

"Yes," Sanders agreed. "We should show our own respects, let our solidarity be known. We are stronger together, just as we will be stronger as one world once we're free of Doom's yoke. Don't you  agree?"

"Certainly."

"Then go," Sanders said to Leif. "Help my priests bring back the cube and we'll make the arrangements. There will be meat and mead for all. And then after the mourning period has passed, we can discuss rebuilding a unified force with you and myself as its leaders."

Strange saw the sparkle of ambition in Leif's eyes. Blinded by the sparkle, he thought bitterly. He doesn't see that he's being played for the fool. Leif raised his hammer and bowed, before leaving for the bifrost.

So strange to hear your murderers discussing your funeral, Strange thought. The voices seemed very distant as the adept leaned over him, smelling of mint and sage, and not blood.

The elevator in the library. That is where he'd seen the boy. Billy. How could he have forgotten? A lifetime ago he had mentored his counterpart.

Billy Kaplan's eyes were young, wide and terrified. But of course there would be few else remaining in the citadel to carry out Sander's orders. All of the ranking members of the priesthood would be out to slit Victor's throat or take the cube. And how many of them realized what they were doing? How many of them knew that they would be snuffing out every world in existence but one?

Over the boy's shoulders Strange saw the priest hand a vial of something bright yellow, glowing faintly gold to another adept. The celestials blood. A poison... "For the mead," the high priest said with a feral smile. "It will aid the drink in helping our brothers and sisters forget their sorrows for a night."

Strange felt his strength slipping away. Felt his eyes grow heavy. His head fell back, and he saw only the dim blue lights high above in the throne tree.

And that set of blue green finch wings. Wings for a soul to fly away on.

Blood for blood. Life for life.

"I was a sorcerer once too," he muttered, his voice so low that Billy bent down, trying to hear. "I was a damn bit better at magic than I was running a world. Tell me, did you ever finish studying that healing well?"

"The Philosopher's Well?"

"Aye," the word burbled out with blood and more than a little bitterness. "Because it would be nice if something like it could fit this sorry world."

Saving worlds. He'd done that once, when he was a more able man. With Victor, he thought he might be able to again -- thought be might be able to do the impossible and save everything instead of nothing -- instead of cobbling together the ghost of worlds.

Strange felt his arms and legs grow cold, saw a branch dip as the finch fluttered into flight above. He closed his eyes and let his last, shallow breath go.

#

Power went out from the cube, a volley of energy that flattened the trees nearest Tony -- the clearing expanded from a dozen paces to several dozen yards.

He shouldn't still exist, Tony thought dizzy.  It didn't work.

And then a cold fear gripped his heart as he realized just how powerful the output had been. If the priests had sensed it when Steve used it in Timely, like Genesis claimed, there was no way the eruption of power had gone unnoticed.

"Steve, wait!" He called.

But he didn't hear a rumble of thunder this time.

Instead he heard a deep voice, and the ground shook beneath him. The air began to hum with energy too as tears in space were opened up, vomiting robed monsters in gold masks. Tony shot the first one he saw in the face with his repulsors dialed up to max power output. It reeled and went down smoking. Two more quickly followed in their brother's footsteps.

He needed to get to Steve--

Something acidic hit Tony in the shoulder, and the silver symbiote sizzled, trying to fight back against the burning sensation. Tony poured all of his reserve power into his boots, willing them not to rattle into goo from the increase of heat and current.

He saw a flash of red, white, and blue in the clearing beyond, and saw a priest go down hard, just as he heard the clang of vibranium on two more gold helms. The shield sailed perfectly back into Steve's hands, just as Tony angled himself to go through a gap in the trees vertically. He scooped the super soldier up and the two of them barreled through the forest just inches off the ground.

Poor Steve. As bad as the rain was, and at such high velocity, he was sure the droplets pelting them must be stinging the soldier's face..

Tony got to the edge of the treeline, and his heart sank. At least a dozen more priests were waiting beyond the forest, and they were already starting their creepy chanting.

"Can you get us past them and into Utopolis?" Steve asked as Tony braked hard and banked left.

"I didn't realize we were so close to the border."

"That's why I always assigned Clint lookout duty."

A trite comeback died on Tony's tongue. He wasn't ready to dive back into the easy banter.

A luminous, faintly green wall -- the border Steve had mentioned -- loomed behind the priests. Okay, yes, he should have seen that. So that was the goal. Now how to get over it?

Tony was fast, but even so, one of the priest's energy blasts nearly hit them. It shattered a tree instead, turning it into a pile of pulp and dust. Tony stayed just on the inside of the forest, using the trees as a shield, but he also had to dodge around them as he flew due north. And without similar obstacles, the priests were faster.

"Can you get us over?"

"Can you block whatever they throw at us?"

"Do you really need to ask?" Steve hefted the shield in hand and his eyebrows knit in concentration.

Tony spiraled up, briefly obscured by the forest canopy. As they cleared the tree line he was forced to dodge a sizzling projectile of the acid that had hit him earlier. Another glowing beam of something nasty  hit Steve's shield -- and another --

So close -- they were almost clear.

Crossing the divide physically, rather than via a portal, wasn't easy. Something sticky seemed to float in the air, making Tony's movements slower and more labored. He strained, and one of the rockets in his boots actually gave out, tipping them sideways, and sending them into a barely controlled fall over the other side of the wall.

They landed hard, skidding to a stop in the dirt, a tangle of limbs.

Under different circumstance, Tony might have celebrated. And it was still tempting to plant a peck on Steve's lips in the glow of victory.

But then the tell-tale thunder started.

"Crossing the border physically must always alert them," Steve grumbled, getting to his feet and running the shield's edge along the palm of one hand.

Tony likewise got to his feet, dusting the soil off of his shoulders.

The side of the wall they had landed on was desolate compared to the lush forests they had just left. Tony and Steve were on the outskirts of a city -- if it could be called that. Burnt out, gutted building rose before them, wire and rebar poking from the crumbling concrete like metal bones.

"Like old times?" Tony asked, extending a hand to Steve.

A warning started beeping in his helmet. Tony cursed inwardly and had just enough time to throw Steve clear before a bolt of pure electricity hit him. It was a moment of thrilling terror.

Just don't let the RT give out...

"Tony!" Steve scrambled back to his side as Tony's sensor array started to reboot. His left repulsor boot's heel was blackened and smoking where the lightning had exited. He was probably lucky to be alive. The Thors weren't holding back. If not for the symbiote taking the brunt of the damage, he wouldn't be breathing. As it was, the suit was feeding him a constant stream of data -- shielding ability compromised, repulsor output rerouting to life-support systems. Good, keep the RT running.

"Hide or fight?" Tony asked. "I don't think running is an option any more."

Grim determination lined the crease of Steve's eyebrows. But he didn't have a chance to respond. Red caped figures descending from on high to form a loose half-circle perimeter around Steve and Tony. One of them was Leif, by the look of the blue tattoos.

And to make matters worse, they were joined by the Black Priests from the woods..

"There's not much time left," Despite the helm, Genesis's voice was unmistakable. "Hand over the cube."

"We don't take orders from Doom's lackey's," Steve said, and from the way his shoulders tensed, Tony prepared to jump back into a fight. He had his repulsors ready, but with their reduced output, they would barely sting a thor.

In the split second before Steve threw the shield, Tony thought -- maybe this is it.

Maybe there had never been a point in agonizing over whether he or Natasha would live. Maybe this was always meant to be the end of the line. Maybe it was exactly like the no-win scenario he and the Illuminati had been faced with.

Natasha's mind, a warm presence, disagreed. Just because you didn't find the answer you wanted doesn't mean the journey was worthless.

How did I ever manage to get by without you as my personal life coach? he thought, more tongue-in-cheek than sardonic.

The shield left Steve's hand just as the hammer left Leif's, and the Thor had aimed it straight for soldier.

Tony didn't think. At such close range there wasn't time. He just moved as fast as he could to get Steve out of its path.

Instead of Steve, the hammer struck Tony. It hit right on the face of the RT node, and the casement made a sickening cracking sound, Tony went down hard, his vision darkening around the edges. Warning systems blared, but his hearing was muffled..

Disengaging all non-critical support systems -- he thought he heard Natasha's voice.

The symbiote drew back the faceplate and winnowed the shielding on his inner arms and legs to paper thin dimensions. All extraneous pieces of the symbiote were rerouted to repairs or life support. And still it wasn't enough.

All systems still critical.

Tony had just enough wherewithal to register how cold the rain was on his cheek before everything went dark.

9

"Natasha?" Rain was pelting half her face, so cold and driven by the wind that it stung.

She came to in a suit still blaring warnings, lying on her side, the other side of her face rough and abraded from where it had been scrapped against a broken concrete street. She couldn't move, she was pinned by something unimaginably and terrifyingly heavy on her chest.

"Natasha?" The voice that had roused her spoke again, this time more worry crept into the deep timbre. It was deeper than Steve's comforting voice, but it seemed so very familiar.

A Thor bent down over her, knocking the hammer aside with shockingly little effort. His long hair was soaked, and water dripped from his smooth chin as his green eyes searched for something in her face.

Not just any thor, Natasha realized.

Her Thor: the man she'd once known as Sigurd Jarlson.

"Is it really possible?" she asked, hand shaking as she reached out to touch his chiseled cheek.

"Oh, aye," he said, with the hint of a smile quirking his lips. "Though I had not thought to see your face here."

"Jarlson, explain yourself," Genesis barked.

"I know this woman," Sigurd said. "Whatever transgressions she may have committed, I am sure there is an explanation."

"Stand away."

"She is injured," Sigurd objected. "And by your hand."

Leif's patience with them grew thin. "She is a fugitive from Doom!"

Sigurd looked between Leif and Natasha, his loyalties plainly torn. "Why are you running, beloved?"

"If you remember me, then you remember a time before this world," she spoke as quickly and quietly as possible. "The people I travel with remember another world too -- a world where Doom was cruel and unjust. Believe me when I say, if you deliver us into his hands, we are as good as dead."

Sigurd nodded, the hand draped over his bent knee tensing into a fist. Then he seized Leif's Mjolnir, lifting it above his head. The air pulsed with energy and the hair on the back of Natasha's neck stood on end.

But this time it wasn't from electricity filling the air. She heard shouts and saw a vortex of light and colors, pulling half of the Thors and priests away. Bifrost. Sigurd had opened up the Bifrost -- or whatever the equivalent was here on Battleworld.

"Traitor!" Leif roared, leaping to avoid being sucked up into the rainbow bridge. He snatched a spear out of one of the priest's hands, and used his momentum to drive the point deep into Sigurd's chest.

"No!"

The scream came from Natasha as her Thor made a horrible, hollow wet noise, sinking to his knees beside her. Leif nudged the fallen Thor with his boot, and Sigurd fell motionless on his side.

Then Leif turned for her.

But in those few seconds, Natasha had fumbled for the star out of instinct and anger and hatred. If it could feed off of things, if it could draw power from blood and trees, then let it feed off her anger too -- she didn't care what shape the power took -- she just wanted him to feel the pain she felt.

The ground began to shake and lurch beneath them and Leif let out a strangled, bloody howl as he bent double.

Let it hurt. Natasha thought viciously.

She was so focused on vengeance that she didn't hear Genesis's approach from behind until he lurched directly behind her, one hand curling over the star and wrestling it out of her hands with brute strength. Leif raised his head to look at her, murderous intent emerging as the fog of pain lifted from his bright eyes.

"Enough." Genesis said. "We..." he trailed off, seemed surprised when the energy didn't dissipate. Instead the star glowed all the brighter in his hands, a tendril of ghostly blue energy creeping out of the crack toward Natasha, the grass beneath the energy withering blades that were little more than charred husks.

As the tendril neared her, two things happened: Steve's shield intercepted the spell, cutting the tendril in two. But as it did, the vibranium disc lost all momentum, hovering in the air as though caught in the irresistible pull of a tractor beam. Then it shattered -- broke apart into hundreds of shards, before each disintegrated into little more than the shimmer of dust.

That was almost me, Natasha's thoughts were hazed as she looked up at Genesis and Leif.

In the thick of it all, she had forgotten about Steve, and she saw him now -- wrestled to the ground with two Thors on top of him, arms behind his back.

The second thing was that the earth dipped. Trees around them cracked and splintered. One nearby had its roots torn up from the ground as it toppled over with a deafening crash.

"Hurry," Leif said, addressing Genesis. "Let's be done with these two. We have more pressing things to worry about."

But the priest was turning the star over in his hand, paying special attention to the crack, which was even wider now, deep and running the circumference of the ovoid shape. He blinked and looked up at the trees, then at Natasha and Steve, before smiling.

"Soon it won't matter," his voice was smug. "The boy's research is almost done and we have the cube now. Doom's ability to sustain this world won't last much longer. Let them watch as their world burns and is replaced."

He touched a hand to Leif's shoulder, and the two disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

The ground lurched again, and several yards away dirt and rock split, opening up a chasm, and the ground contorted, wracked with convulsions. The remaining priests all began vanishing, just like Genesis, and Natasha heard the whirl of hammers as the Thors fled into the air.

The chasm was swallowing up the earth, creeping steadily toward were Natasha lay, helpless and weary. The suit still wasn't responding to anything but the most basic of commands, and horror was creeping up in her throat as she remembered the last time she had seen the world folding in on itself, being devoured from inside out.

Just when she was sure that she was finally going to die -- to go out like her world had, Steve was by her side, scooping her up, and running.

"Thor--" she said, looking over his shoulder at his fallen form, heart twisting at the thought of his body being swallowed up by the earth, alone and forever gone without a trace. But Steve was struggling as it was with just her in his arms.

He deserved better.

We all did, Tony's mind was weak and feeble beneath her own. But he was still there, and that was a comfort, even though his words weren't. Sometimes there's just no way to win.

#

Utopolis was anything but a paradise. Or perhaps it was inside the walls -- its gleaming skyscrapers certainly suggested as much. They towered high above the slums which were cut into channels around the city, creating both the illusion that Utopolis sat on a hill, and creating a kind of moat consisting of under city: a twisting maze of tents and flimsy scrap buildings, populated by beggars, thieves, and undesirables.

Steve carried Natasha through the crowded, smelly streets. The symbiote had retracted to little more than a small silver bracelet again. Mending, she'd said. And he desperately hoped that it was mending her as well. She'd been silent for most of the trip, her face twisted into his shoulder.

Sullen, sunken eyes watched them go. And even though the streets were teeming with people, all ragged-faced, weary, and looking just as tired as he felt, Steve was still very conscious of the stares, and that high above in the sky, Thors were patrolling the airspace.

Maybe he didn't need to worry. Genesis's parting words in the forest clearing seemed to hint that, with the star finally in their hands, they were done with Steve, Natasha, and Tony.

Steve took a sharp turn down an alley knocking on the first door he saw. He heard a snarl inside and moved on to the next, and the next, before he came to one sitting ajar. The space was more shed than house, and the creaky tin floor had a thick patina of grainy dun colored dirt. But it was vacant.

As Steve lay Natasha down, he saw that her face was streaked with sweat. Steve stripped off his jacket, bunching it under her head to keep her nose and mouth out of the grime, and give her some measure of comfort. Her entire body felt hot, and Steve swallowed, fingers lingering on her button down shirt.

"How bad is it?" He asked.

In answer, Natasha pulled the two halves of the shirt apart, just enough so that he could see the ugly crack through the soft blue glow of the RT. He did his best to focus on the problem at hand and ignore the soft curve of her breasts.

"Will the symbiote be able to fix it?"

She shook her head. "It's part of our biology. The suit can interact with it, but it will need to be fixed the old fashioned way."

"What do you need?"

She shut her eyes, whether from pain, focusing, or consulting with Tony, Steve had no idea. "I think the crack is just in the outer clear resin. Anything that can keep dust and debris out would work. A plate of stainless steel would be best, but I can make do with any metal." She grinned weakly, "Just won't glow pretty."

"That was a design consideration?" Steve lips quirked, despite the seriousness of the situation.

She gave him a pained smile. "You know us. Vain to a fault."

And flippant through and through.

"I'll look around. Be back soon," Steve promised. He hated to leave them in such a state -- worried what he might come back to. But there was no one else, and at very least he needed to find provisions for the night.

#

When Steve returned, Natasha had drawn herself up into a seated position, her back to him. As the door creaked, she crossed her arms and wrapped the shirt around her like a robe. Brown eyes met Steve's as she glanced over her shoulder at him.

"This was all I could find," he said, holding up a square sheet of iron. It had bits of rust in spots, but it was fairly thin and light.

Natasha took it from him with one hand and studied it, the symbiote trailing along her wrist and hand, questing out toward the piece of metal like a curious snake. "We'll make it work."

"How is he?"

"I can still feel him."

Steve bit his lip stoically, sitting down next to her. He found, if he was honest, he'd been hoping for better news.

"That hammer was meant for you, you know," Natasha said, twisting around to face him.

"I know," Steve grunted.

"Then would it really be so hard for you to show something other than disdain?"

"It's not disdain --"

"Then what?"

Steve struggled to find the right words. How could he convey just how deep Tony's betrayal had cut? He hadn't just taken a different side from Steve. He hadn't just undermined Steve. He'd excised Steve from the equation and robbed Steve of ever knowing what they were really up against. He'd let Steve  live in foolish, blind bliss while the multiverse burned at his hands.

"You and your Steve love each other. I don't know that you could understand how thoroughly he betrayed our years of friendship."

Natasha stiffened, and her brown eyes grew frosty. "You'd be surprised."

I know I don't deserve another chance, she'd said that one night as she slipped into bed beside Steve.

"What happened?"

For a moment, the emotion on Natasha's face shuttered, turning into a slate blank of emotion, though Steve could see in her eyes that something was warring deep inside of her.

"Steve became the world's Top Cop." Her expression cracked and she smiled bitterly. "And after that, he all but lived on the Helicarrier or in the field. I don't mean metaphorically. There were weeks at a time I didn't see him while he was running covert ops. At first I told myself I should suck it up. He was saving lives. I knew how fulfilling that was."

She sighed and ran a hand through her scraggly black hair. "But the missions seemed to get more and more common. When I brought it up, he dismissed it, said it couldn't be helped. How could it not be when he was watching out for the whole world? And then I found out the agent he'd been running missions with was named Antonia Romanov..."

Natasha looked miserable. "I should have done more homework. I didn't find out until much later that she had a long-standing relationship with Kate Barton. I didn't know when I laid it all out for Steve and accused him of being married to his job instead of me." She swallowed, "Or of fucking his coworkers."

"He was livid. And I think he and you forget how terrifying you are when you're mad. You forget that under the armor we're just human. I didn't have it that night because I thought it might help drive home that the issue was between the two us, notCaptain America and Iron Woman."

A human with a broken, patched-together body. And God -- the way her eyes were sunken with dark bruised circles beneath -- the way her skin looked so waxy in the light filtered through the dirt covered windows -- it had never been more clear to Steve just how true those words were.

Steve thought of red and gold armor shattering beneath his shield, of seeing Tony lying immobile under him, how that hadn't stopped him from bringing the vibranium disk down again and again.

"Did he hit you?"

Natasha shook her head. "No, he asked how I could be so damn selfish. How I could turn this into something about me when people were dying everyday at the hands of evil men and women. He asked if I wanted him to just turn his back on that."

"Of course that wasn't what I wanted. I just wanted him. I just wanted more than the scraps that were left over after everything else had taken their piece and parcel from him. And then when I thought he was getting...companionship...elsewhere...well, I looked elsewhere too."

Information clicked into place. The Thor that had been killed for helping them had called her beloved. "Thor?"

"I have a type," Natasha smiled sadly "Tall, blond, and far too noble for their own good. As high profile as we were, it didn't take long for a reporter to catch the scent of blood. So it didn't have time to escalated into more than companionship. But I know me. I would have let it." She looked down, jaw clenched. "And I never apologized properly to Steve. I had these ideas...ways to apologize without my pride having to admit I was wrong..." She trailed off, stretching the shirt more tightly about herself. "That suit you were wearing was one of those stupid ideas. I should have said it properly. The idea that I'll never be able to now is unbearable."

She paused before looking up at Steve again. "So you see, I do understand. I understand it from the other side. And he may not be willing to admit it, but I can tell you that what I feel is what Tony feels too."

#

Odinson landed on broken ground, ground that looked like it had been torn apart by the grasping claws of a giant. He'd been scouring King James's holdings, the last place there had been sightings of people matching Steve and Tony's descriptions, but he had had no luck in finding them.

When a border breach alert had been sent out near his location, he had headed for it. Others would know his movements if he went by bifrost, so he stuck to the air.

 Whatever had happened in the grove, it had been nasty.

Odinson had just begun to despair at finding his quarry -- perhaps they had been captured in the scuffle, or fled to new part unknown -- when he heard a deep moan.

He slid to the bottom of one of the deep gashes in the earth.

And found a thor, a spear piercing him clean through.

"Brother, who did this to you?" he asked.

"A priest," the Thor said, speech slurred with weariness and the rattle of death. He gasped for each breath, and Odinson knelt beside him, taking his limp, bloodless hand in his own. "You cannot trust them."

"That I know," Odinson said.

The dying thor's eyes flashed. "Then people they were chasing had a relic. They were keeping it from the priests. The woman was a...friend. If she was unwilling to turn it over, then I think the priests must mean to use it for evil. Help her, please," he begged. "They went toward Utopolis. Find them and help them."

"I have every intention of doing so, brother," Thor said, squeezing his brother's hand.

"Good," the Thor closed his eyes, and something went out of him -- worry or perhaps fear. "I thought she had died. Nothing grieved me more than that. Knowing she is alive is good. Knowing she will have aid is better."

His eyes closed and the rigid set of his jaw relaxed. Then he breathed no more.

Odinson stay, long enough to say the thor's rite, releasing his brother from his duties.

Then he took to the air again.

On to Utopolis. On to the answer to Strange's problem. On to a triumphant return home, and putting the infernal priests back in their place.

#

Tony was somehow still alive and a separate consciousness from Natasha.

Sundown was strangely tense. They had been working on the metal plate, reshaping it as best they could with the other tools that Steve had scavenged. Natasha had stopped punching holes in the metal plate, and Steve had seemed preternaturally fixated on her as the sun slipped below the horizon.

This time when Tony emerged, the goatee was completely gone. He ran his hands over his smooth chin, mourning his facial hair. It was absurd in the the greater scheme of things. But it was like shearing a lion. In the warped, crude reflexion of the metal plate, Tony couldn't even recognize himself anymore.

And much as he did not want to admit it, he was scared.

It had been so much easier under the inversion spell. That was something neither Steve nor Natasha would ever be able to understand. Natasha had her sins buried a little less deeply now, but she had and always would feel remorse for them. For months Tony had been blissfully light and free of the weight that had been taking Steve's memories, or what he had done behind Steve's back -- of murdering trillions.

And it had all started with such a small, quick decision.

It was what they had had to do to survive.

But it had eaten him, kept him up, gnawing at his gut. It had woken him in the night with cold sweats. And godless heathen that he was, it had driven him to pray to whatever mute gods might be out there. Not for forgiveness -- he was beyond that -- for a better answer.

Of course, now he knew those "gods", the Beyonders, heard neither prayer nor appeals to reason. They were the root cause of all the sufferings the multiverse had been through -- them and their unquenchable desire for death and destruction. Boredom had led them to end the multiverse. What did they care if an unfathomable number died?

Under the inversion spell, Tony hadn't cared. He hadn't cared as the world came crashing down, he hadn't cared about all the blood on his hands for once in ages, and he certainly hadn't cared as his best friend tried to kill him.

And now, looking back into Steve's cool blue eyes, the guilt and remorse hung from his heart like a lodestone, making it hard to breath. Maybe soon he wouldn't have to feel anything, like he'd hoped back in the clearing. Or maybe, he thought with trepidation, he would linger, doomed to a life as a shadowed fragment in Natasha's mind, fading bit by bit, cursed to bear his guilt. The thought made the fine hairs on his arm prickle.

"Is what she said true?" Steve finally asked.

"She said a lot of things."

"About you."

Tony ran a hand over his chin again. "It was easier to be a monster." When he saw frustration in the lines of Steve's mouth at his evasiveness, he caved. "Of course it's true. This spell, or whatever curse we were brought to this world under, is erasing everything --" he resisted flippantly looking down his pants. "Chiefly, the inversion spell. But as of yet, not my memory."

A cruel joke, that.

"Is it so bad?" Steve asked. "Removing the inversion spell?" he clarified when Tony's eyes narrowed. "You saved me back there. And you wouldn't have done something like that...before." Tony knew they were both thinking about that last day on their earth as the sky turned red. "You may look different, but you're more like your old self than you have been in ages -- more like the friend I have missed and mourned."

Steve reached out toward Tony, as if to take him by the hand. But Tony recoiled.

"That man is dead, Steve."

"I refuse to believe that."

Ah, good old fashioned stubborn Steve Rogers.

"What you think is the old me, isn't me at all," Tony explained. "It's Natasha, bleeding over. She loves her Steve enough to put herself in front of a spell for him. She's the one who would free innocent bystanders. She --" Tony reached out a hand, tracing the hard contour of Steve's cheekbone with one thumb, "is the one who wants to spend every night in your bed."

The look of heartbreak in Steve's eyes was as fresh and as deep as the first time Tony had told him he didn't feel the same way. And it was so startlingly similar to the look Tony had seen seconds before Strange's mind wipe overtook Steve that Tony's heart twisted.

"But you're different," Steve insisted. "You aren't her."

"Every worthwhile part of me is."

"Surely there's something--"

Tony let out a bitter laugh. And he found he wanted to prove Steve right. He wanted to be worthy of that undying faith in goodness. "There's one thing -- she'd hate it, but that's why it would prove it's me, not her."

"What?"

"Give up. Find a way to erase myself," -- this time, a way Natasha wouldn't be able to stop -- "find a sorcerer to do it and let her have the body. Remove any pretense of guilt." He could keep her from carrying the kind of burden he had had to shoulder fighting for their world'ssurvival.

Don't you dare-- Natasha's mind frothed.

"I think that would be enough," Tony said, half nodding, as if to convince himself, and looking at the sheet of metal in his hands. He'd been thinking of it ever since the clearing. "I think it would prove I was a better man."

When he looked up, he was surprised to find Steve's face had shifted again. His chin was pillowed deep in one palm, and his eyebrows were knit. No doubt he was assessing probabilities, no doubt he saw the reason behind Tony's plan. Without the relic, they're only plan had shriveled up.

There was so much Tony wanted to say, and so little time.

Natasha was right. Tony thought. We should have talked sooner.

"For what it's worth Steve, I'm sorry."

"So am I."

The admission was shocking, so much so that Tony started making holes in the metal plate again, not brave enough to look Steve in the eye.

A thought turned over in his head. Once he asked it out of malice: Will you cry like the boy in Old Yeller?

Now...

You want to know if he'll miss you, Natasha thought.

"Steve, if you go on to fix this world...if you find a way to back into the multiverse it's supposed to be -- if it's possible --" Tony faltered, and almost didn't have the nerve to ask. "Could you make sure that I'm not forgotten?" 

Steve blinked. "I don't know that I'll be there," he confessed. Tony tilted his head again at him and Steve bit his lower lip. "I had been thinking...well, that we could be better men."

Tony swallowed, felt Steve slide his hand into his, warm and wonderful. And it was so nice not to be alone. So nice to have the angry and silence lifted. Tony pressed his lips together, searching for the right words, to tell Steve how much it meant, how much Steve meant to him.

He never got the chance.

The world started to go gray, then black, and he felt himself being pulled down, sucked into the earth. No, not earth. He was changing. He and Natasha were switching. But it had been barely an hour...and before, even in the of worst times, he'd been able to sense the outside world. Usually he could see it through Natasha's eyes.

But here it was dark and all he could feel was a deep permeating cold.

It seemed he had finally run out of time.

#

The second morning in the Utopolis slums was bone cold. Unfortunately, Steve didn't have the luxury of staying inside their makeshift cabin. He was trying to find more screws for Natasha and Tony. So far he had a handful in his pocket of varying shapes and sizes. They might do, but since reinforcing the RT, and by proxy the Iron Man suit, was the key to their mobility and their plan to go back to either Wanda or Loki, Steve wanted to be sure he had enough of a selection to get them up and running as soon as possible.

So Steve grit his teeth against the cold and kept digging his numb fingers through what seemed like piles of garbage -- castoffs from the city above. It was open season for any scavenger who had the gumption to shift through the shrift, or the ability to go toe-to-toe over anything valuable. Steve eyed one of the big men working off to his right, wary.

He thought he was being careful. He thought he was paying attention.

The shadow that fell over him as he poured through the trash completely surprised him.

Worse, it was a thor. Not just any thor, either. From the knowing look in his eye, it could really only be the Odinson.

So they weren't done with him.

Steve straighted, his muscles tense. He ached for the familiar weight of the shield in his hands, but that was gone. Didn't mean he was going down without a fight, though.

"They told me someone of your description was in these parts," Odinson offered by way of introduction.

They probably being the loose gathering on the periphery of the dump -- the people who bought form the scavengers  and sold to the people too timid to venture into the shifting landscape of garbage.

Steve cocked his head.

"You seemed to know me once," Odinson pressed. "You once treated me as a friend. All I ask is that you hear me out, in the name of that friendship."

"I'm listening," Steve said.

#

Steve felt as though he were bringing home the world's oddest puppy. Natasha's eyes certainly went wide as she saw the hulking, seven-foot frame enter their hiding spot. But Odinson held his hands high, by way of showing he entered in good faith. And it went a long way. Or at leat Natasha's lack of outright attack suggested it did.

"I thought Doom had what he wanted," she said, suspicion lingering in her brown eyes.

"I do not come on behalf of Doom," Odinson said, "but for Stephen Strange. He said that you would remember he was once a hero like you."

Steve made a small noise in the back of his throat.

"He sent me with a relic he personally kept close on him, to show good faith," Odinson explained. He produced what was clearly the Sorcerer's an old, battered Avengers ID card.

"I had no idea we gave him one of those," Steve said, uncrossing his arms and taking the card from Odinson, flipping it between his fingers. "You had one of these once, Thor."

Odinson blinked politely, not sure of the significance.

"If Strange is still good deep down, if he's not Doom's dog after all," Steve said to Natasha. "He could split us."

"You and Tony wouldn't be able to go through with your horrible pact," she agreed.

"Aid for aid," Thor confirmed.

"Then what does he want?" Steve asked.

"The priests are planning something, and the seems to center on your relic. That is why they have pursued you so doggedly."

"Yeah. They're planning to replace this world with their own," Natasha said. "And if the star really is a cosmic cube, like they think, they'll either succeed, or blow this world to bits trying."

"You no longer have it?" Thor's face fell.

Natasha shook her head no. "Problem?"

"I think Strange hoped to convince you to give him the relic."

"I guess that deal's off, then," Natasha said as she twisted the yellow handle of a screwdriver, tightening the last few screws needed to bolt down the metal plate covering her chest.

"No. If anything that means the need for help is all the more dire. You two are the ones I was tasked to turn to. Let us consult with the Sheriff."

"How?" Natasha looked perplexed.

Thor's fingers twisted around Mjolnir's handle as he brought it up. "In person. I may not be officially sanctioned by Doom in this matter. But I can still open the bifrost for us all to pass through."

"Oh," Natasha said, twist the screwdriver one last time before standing up straight. "Useful trick. Wish we'd befriended you sooner."

#

The ground shook beneath her feet, and her senses flooded with light and the smell of earth after the rain. Thor's grip on the crook of her arm eased, releasing her, and she nearly fell to her knees onto the runed stone floor.

"I can't imagine why that's not a more popular form of travel," she grumbled, staggering after Thor and Steve.

"We shouldn't dally," Thor advised, scouting the room beyond the bifrost's alcove before waving them forward into a cavernous room. A large fire roaring at the end, and three vacant long tables ran the length of the room, set and ready for a feast with heavy silver plates and glittering crystal goblets.

Natasha paused, only for a moment, picking up a fork that gleamed as gold as her second Iron Man suit. "Do you always eat so well here?"

"No--"

Thor didn't get a chance to elaborate. No sooner had Natasha set down the fork, than they heard a roar of laughter.

"I bet its Beta Ray, come to make excuses for not showing up to help," a man said.

"Can you blame him? If I could have weaseled out of taking orders from you in the kitchen, I would have," said a woman.

"See if it's Gundel with the mead," a third, booming voice grumbled.

A grinning giant of a Thor with amber eyes and blue skin came through one of the arched doorways and promptly stopped in her tracks, blinking at the trio. "Odinson. I thought you were on assignment." She stared hard at Natasha and Steve, and there was no doubt in Natasha's mind that she knew something was amiss.

It only got worse when Leif came through the door after her. Under different circumstances, the grease and flour covered man would have been comical, but the scowl he had for Odinson was an ominous sign that, despite having worked together, there was no love lost between the two. Unlike Angela and Sera, there seemed no chance of him becoming a strange bedfellow.

Not that she was surprised. Her Thor had burned his share of bridges too.

Lecture on people skills after this is all over, she made a mental note.

As if the kitchen crew wasn't trouble enough, the Bifrost began humming behind them. Natasha turned, and saw four more Thors at their back. A cold sensation crept over her arms as the Iron Man suit slipped out, silent and hidden, like a silver liquid streaming down toward the inside of her wrist.

Wisps of her dark hair began to float, prickling with electricity.

Fortunately, it was Odinson's doing. He aimed his hammer -- and the strike of lightning -- directly at his former partner. That seemed as good a signal as any to let the Iron Man suit snap into place, sealing her away under the silver alloy in seconds. Her repulsors came online in the next two, and she took down two Thors on the bifrost platform, one with each hand.

That still left them four on three, as the last Thor was drawn from the kitchen by the ruckus. He was heavy set, sported a bushy red beard, and carried a meat cleaver the size of an axe. Volstagg took one look at the room and went for Odinson.

Meanwhile, two of the remaining Thors seemed to have assessed Natasha as the more prescient threat. One of them barreled at her in a flurry of silver scale mail, lightning arcing off his armor. The blue thor, sans hammer, but still plenty tough, came her from the side.

And the last thor, a skinny green-around-the-gills type who hadn't left the bifrost platform, tried to power up the bridge - to run and get help. The buzzing of the bridge abruptly died, however, when he was knocked unconscious by one of the heavy silver plates.

"Nice throw," Natasha told Steve as she kicked on the thrusters in her boots to avoid the blue Thor. She plowed a shoulder hard into her other attacker. He had more momentum than she did though, and rather than slam his head hard into the stone wall like she had intended, he sent her toppling over the end of one of the tables, dishes and glasses crashing beneath her.

From her vantage, as she tumbled through the air, she saw Odinson take a punishing blow to the stomach with the flat edge of the cleaver. The air around her buzzed and she had just long enough to initiated a shielding protocol for the RT before the shock hit the suit. It stung and burned. But in the short window after the discharge, the Thor attacking her would be vulnerable. Natasha hit him with the unibeam, taking a sour sort of satisfaction from the way he screamed.

She got up just in time to see Steve kick the blue Thor into one of the room's wooden pillars so hard that Natasha heard the wood splinter and smelled the dry aroma of sawdust.

And then there was one.

Odinson had managed to knock the cleaver out of Volstagg's hands in the melee. But even without a weapon, the warrior was able to grapple with the Odinson. The two Asgardians had each other locked hand in hand, each trying to throw the other off his feet.

Natasha's repulsors flared, a none-too-subtle warning that drew both of their attentions. By her side, Steve brandished one of the silver plates.

"A knife would have been more intimidating, you know," Natasha said as imminent defeat dawned on Volstagg.

The look Steve gave her managed to be both long-suffering and adorable as Volstagg spread his fingers wide, releasing Thor and raising his hands in defeat. "Steak knives don't have the right balance."

"Does that?" Natasha nodded at the kite shield emblazoned with a facsimile of a silver mask, hanging over the mantle of the fireplace.

Something bright lit within Steve's eyes as he pulled down the shield. "It just might."

"You look ridiculous wielding a shield with Doom's face plastered on the side, though."

Steve smirked. "It will be ironic."

"We shouldn't delay," Odinson interrupted, waving Volstagg back through the kitchen door. Natasha and Steve helped drag the unconscious Thors from the dining hall as well.

"No, you shouldn't," Volstagg laughed, his great heavy arms still held above his head in surrender -- or as far as he could reach them up, anyway. "But I suspect you are out of time, no matter what you do."

Natasha cast her eye over the multiple spits, five or six huge carcasses that didn't look terrestrial, pies, piles of bread, a great cauldron of something bubbling away on another hearth. "Those Thors that came in, they were coming to a feast, weren't they?"

"They were coming to help with the preparations," Volstagg said. "The whole corps is due here tonight."

"Great." Natasha muttered as they barred Volstagg inside one of the kitchen's larders with a fireplace poker wedged between the door's latch.

As they made their way out of the dining hall, keenly aware that at any moment they might round a corner and run into more thors, Natasha noted how troubled Odinson looked.

"Did you forget about the gathering?" she asked. Surely they would have chosen to meet under more clandestine circumstances if he had remembered.

"No. I had not heard. There are no special feast days in this month --"

They rounded a corner into a larger, drafty hall. High windows above let bright light trickle through dusty motes onto the cold white marble floor. An ebony table had been placed at the center of the room, and a glass coffin rested on top of it, sparkling in the shafts of sunlight.

"No," Thor murmured. Even at a whisper, his voice boomed in the stillness of that empty, cold room.

"It's a funeral feast," Natasha said what they were all thinking, moving closer and resting her hands on the edges of the box where the glass had been cut and formed into scallops, suns, and the all-seeing-eye, just like the priests carried on their masks.

Natasha turned to Steve, who had come up beside her. He looked so lost and sad seeing Strange. Even though she had not known this sorcerer, and had trusted him for even less time, she shared in Steve's despair.

She didn't mourn for the sorcerer so much as she mourned for herself and Steve -- for their last glimmer of hope being dashed on the rocks.

She took Steve's hand, gripping tightly, and felt him clutching back. "What do we do now?" she asked.

Without Strange, their last hopes were scuttled. But it went beyond just them now. Without Strange, they had no clear path forward. Did they try to go to the island? Would the priests have taken the relic back there? What did they plan to do with it that they hadn't tried already?

"I confess, I do not know," Odinson said.

"We should go," Steve's voice was hard and his face was stony. She wanted to ask Steve what this man had meant to him. "We'll be pinned down -- assuming the citadel isn't swarming with Thors already." 

But as she opened her mouth, something blue-green darted through her, a wisp of feathers, and she heard chirping that echoed off of the stone walls. The thing -- the bird -- arced through the air and landed on the glass box in front of her hand.

It chattered at her, the feathers puffed up, wings spread wide.

"Is that normal on your world?" She asked Steve.

"No."

"I have seen that creature before," Odinson peered at it. "It was one of the sheriff's." The spectral bird hopped around and then took to the air, careening down the hall. It had seemed excited by Thor's recognition.

Odinson moved to follow it. Without a word, Natasha and Steve followed -- out of the hall, down a dark corridor -- and right into a pair of Thors -- the horse-faced one and the seraphim they had last seen in Timely.

"Odinson?" The seraphim was carrying a spear today, and he raised it. "What is the meaning of this?"

The blue-green bird twirled in the air and landed on his head.

"Did we just walk into a trap?" Natasha wondered aloud.

"Looks like it," Steve muttered.

The seraphim frowned and tried to brush the ethereal sprite off his head. But it was to no avail. His arm passed directly through the spectral bird. It was almost comical watching the Thor twist his head, trying to shake the thing off.

"Sam, what --" the hose-faced Thor grabbed him by the upper arm.

"It's talking to me--" Sam said, eyes wide and confused. And angry. "They've cast a spell, or some other dark magic. They're using the Sheriff's voice." And then he froze, his whole body going stiff, mouth opened wide.

"I apologize for the strange circumstances," Sam's lips didn't move, but the voice came loud and clear, and it was unmistakably Strange's. "But there are limitations to this body, and I had few choices in front of me at the time."

Natasha blinked, deeply confused. "But you're dead."

There was a odd snorting sound that might have been laughter. "Merely an inconvenience. The real setback was communication. Fortunately, Sam here universally has a knack for speaking with birds. And it's the meaning of the words that matter with communication spells. Beta Ray, put down your hammer, there are more imminent threats to worry about. We need to hurry. They're planning to poison--"

The horse faced Thor took on a glassy eyed look, and his hand shook, but he was willful. Instead of complying, he kicked the seraphim hard, and Sam went down like a ragdoll. The connection between Strange's astral-form severed, Sam pulled himself up and hurled his spear at the closest person -- Steve.

The gold weapon struck against the kite shield with a loud clang, and Steve was forced backward.

"If word isn't out about us yet, it will be soon!" the super soldier called. "We need to find a more defensible place."

"Agreed," Natasha said, falling back with him, Odinson at their heels.

But they didn't make it far before they were stopped in their tracks.

Two bodies, men dressed in Thor raiment, were slumped in front of a barrel. The wooden lid was slightly ajar, and they both had blue lips and a thick foam around their mouths. Their eyes were glassy.

"What was Strange saying about poison before?" Natasha asked as she just narrowly dodged Beta Ray's hammer.

Sam froze at the sight of his brothers. "If you three are responsible--"

"We aren't," Steve said vehemently, catching Sam's wrist with the hard edge of his shield. "Volstagg's trapped in the kitchens. He was there when we entered from the bifrost."

Sam's eyes narrowed at him from beneath the silver helm, but he jerked his hand away, the spear coming to rest at his side. "Then who?"

"The priests," Natasha said. "They want you out of the way."

"Why?"

"Because you might stand in their way," she said, stringing together the data she had. They had mentioned the end of this world. But to accomplish that, they would have to bring down God himself. "Where is Doom?"

"Gone," Sam said. "He went with a contingent of priests to put down unrest in the south."

"No thors?" She asked, a chill running through her.

"No, he was displeased with the Thor corp at the time."

They were planning to aid in Doom's downfall, sweep up the pieces, and rebuild in their own image after he fell. They were cowardly, opportunist vultures, and they'd sacrifice anything they wanted to get their way. She was certain of it, especially looking at the two fallen thors.

"I think," she said to Sam as the blue-green sprite landed on her shoulder, "you had better help us talk to Strange again."

10

Among the group, a dark mood had fallen. Beta Ray and the Odinson carried their two fallen brothers in their arms through the corridors, past dark wooden columns carved with lions with silver teeth and eagles with gold inlaid beaks.

Sam, now cooperating with them, was able to form a kind of conduit between them all. So while they made their way back to the main hall to confront the assembled thors, Strange linked their minds and was able to explain the situation to them. It all made Steve's head ache awfully.

"They're going to kill the world tree?" Natasha asked, clearly under the impression that she had not heard correctly.

"Yes, and sever each of the realms from existence."

"The priests always struck me as a haughty," Sam shook his head, grim and dour. "But this is madness."

The seraphim led them into the main hall -- a loud, boisterous room that abruptly became hushed. At first, Sam said nothing. He swept a spot on the nearest table clean with his spear -- metal goblets and plates falling to the floor with clangs and the crash of broken glass. Beta Ray and Odinson lay the cold, stiff bodies of their brothers down respectfully.

"Those are the fugitives that came in earlier," the blue skinned Thor they had tussled with earlier shouted, and a murmur went up among the crowd.

"What is the Odinson doing with them, then?" someone else wondered aloud.

Sam ignored the burble of discontent and the growing tension. "Is Linda here?"

Almost immediately, a dark haired Thor made her way from the group. She took one look at the two men on the table before going to their sides.

"How long have they been gone?" Sam asked.

She checked the one of the dead men's eyes and felt around his jaw, then lifted one of his hands, testing how stiff the muscles had become. "A few hours at least," she said.

Sam's stoic gaze hunted for Volstagg. "And you encountered these," he made a vague gesture toward Natasha, Steve, and Odinson, "coming through the bifrost recently?"

"Not more than an hour hence," the large man confirmed.

"You doubted us?" Steve asked.

"Had to be sure before I do what comes next," Sam replied in a low voice. Then he cleared his throat and started addressing the packed hall in a booming voice. "Brothers and sisters! Two of our own have fallen, but their lives have spared you all. They were felled, not by these three, but by men who came to us under the guise of fraternity. These Thors died drinking mead our priestly friends provided -- mead sent in a show of sympathy and solidarity, but which was clearly meant to strike us down as we grieved. I fear a new generation of priests has turned to heresy. They mean to take this world as their own while God is at battle, and while they think us impotent."

A cry went up, fierce and angry from the assembled thors.

Sam paused, and Steve could see that every eye in the room was on the seraphim. Even though it wasn't truly his Sam, in that moment he was so much like the man Steve had called friend -- the man he'd trusted his mantle to -- that it warmed his heart.

"We need to strike back," Sam said. "We must meet them on both battlefields. Beta Ray," he turned to the horse-faced Thor at his right hand, "take a group through the bifrost, search for Doom and put a stop to whatever treachery the priests are plotting. The rest of you, with me!" he shouted, raising his spear up.

Another cry filled the hall, defiant and unified.

Hundreds of footsteps rang off the stone corridors as they marched en masse from the main hall. But as they reached the the large oaken double doors, Sam's eyes narrowed. "These are never closed."

"Aye," Thor agreed, testing one of the giant brass handle, but the door refused to budge. "And they are never barred."

"Where do they lead?" Steve asked.

"The great courtyard -- which is how we would get to the throne room and the world tree."

"Is there any other way in?"

Sam shook his head. "The bifrost won't allow travel within the citadel. The skies above are patrolled by sentinels and have wards cast by Doom himself."

Natasha's repulsors whined as they powered up, and Steve was momentarily blinded by the bright explosion of light in the small space. He blinked, then rubbed at one eye as she ran a gauntlet over the singed bit of wood. "Do you have a battering ram?"

By her tone, Steve took it for a joke. But the Thors clearly didn't. The Odinson studied a nearby pillar, a pack of carved wolves circling its circumference. It led up to a scaffolding of wood that held lanterns that lit the corridor. He seemed to consider whether it was of structural importance for a few moments before gripping its base tightly and ripping it from where it stood.

"It would seem we do now."

The doors were strong, and probably, Steve reflected, enchanted. It took six Thors more than a dozen swings to start the first splintering in the wood. They began to buckle after the next dozen swings. As the first rays of afternoon light began to pierce through the tattered doors, he heard voices on the other side -- something that sounded like, "alert," and saw a flash of gold.

"Priests," he hissed to Sam and Odinson just before the battering ram hit again with a deafening crunch. "Better make this quick."

A violet colored spell breached through the widening hole between the two doors, hitting one of the battering ram thors. She fell to the ground spasming, and the Thors behind her pulled her back. Not one to sit on the sidelines, Steve stepped in to fill the void, putting every ouch of muscle he had into flinging their impromptu battering ram against the warded doors.

On Steve's third heave, something gave. The wood where each door met caved and finally broke apart, and the great heavy doors were thrown wide by a surge of thors.

Unfortunately, the priests were prepared and waiting for them. Spells of all sorts of colors began flying, and Steve knew they were at a disadvantage -- their enemies had the perfect choke point to hold them with barely a handful of men. But there wasn't much else they could do. Steve deflected a nasty looking green hex with his shield, and led the charge, and he heard the roar of Natasha's repulsors as she passed overhead.

Steve locked on to one of the casters. The man saw him coming, and he let out a high pitched screech that rapidly fell into a bass note.  that rumbled. The earth beneath Steve's feet began to crack and heave wildly, tossing him to the ground.

He scrambled to grab his shield --

But before he could retaliate, he heard a whistling sound in the ai, and heard the heavy impact of metal on metal. When Steve looked up again, the priest was on his knees, clutching desperately at his throat. The golden helm had been dented, so severely it must have been crushing his throat, preventing him from uttering anything more than terrified, choked sobs.

It was then that Steve pulled back, took a breath and forced the frenzy of the battle churning through his veins to be still. The courtyard was full of Thors now, but more priest were joining in. It might be a long battle, and time didn't seem to be a thing they had.

At the other end of the courtyard, a bright column of blue light, not unlike the blue glow of the relic -- was emanating from one of the towers.

I think I know where they took the artifact, Steve thought through Strange's telepathic link.

The library, Strange confirmed.

#

Unfortunately, getting to the library proved harder than Steve anticipated. The citadel was set on a hill, and while the library was visible to them from the courtyard, a marble wall ringed the lower compound that the thor's hall opened up on. The library was situated on the ring above, and to get there meant passing through a well-guarded gate held by the priests.

And while they had fliers, the wards seemed to extend inside the citadel as well. Neither Strange nor Odinson were able to warn her before Natasha hit one head first. Steve could only watch helplessly as she plummeted to the ground. Fortunately, Odinson caught her.

Watching them land, the Thor setting her delicately on the ground, Steve couldn't help noticing the twinge of jealousy and regret. Now that he understood where it was rooted, he didn't feel so guilty.

Any ideas on how to get in? He asked the two citadel residents. He would have asked Sam too, but as more priests joined the fray, it was clear the Thors would need someone to organize them.

I could weaken the wards, I know them almost as well as Doom, Strange said, the blue-green finch wings climbing upward in the sky. Not for long, though, and I would be useless to you after.

Do we have any other option?

"Then why bother putting it forth as a decision?" Thor's voice boomed beside him.

Steve felt Thor's hand curl around his waist and felt the the ground falling away beneath him -- he never had become accustom to the dip in his stomach, that moment of being impossibly light and buoyed upward, that came with every take-off. This time it was his turn to feel a twinge of regret. Natasha took to the air beside them, amd although her flight path was slightly wobbly, he knew he would rather be in the arms of an Iron Man suit instead.

He didn't have long to ponder that, though. The air around them hummed with magic; Steve felt it dancing across his skin like rivulets of water. The link in his mind that had connected him with Strange, Natasha, and Odinson fizzled and died, and his mind became quiet. He looked down, still able to see the battle beneath, but that too was muted, the rush of the wind buffeting around his ears the only audible sound.

Until Odinson told him to tuck his head in.

"Why--"

A white marble tower loomed close, a giant mosaic of a valley and river made from colored glass glittering in front of them. Steve quickly squashed any qualms he had of tucking his head as tightly into Odinson's chest as they crashed through the window in a spray of shards. Something crunched beneath them as they hit the floor hard.

 Natasha followed closely behind, alighting behind them more gracefully. Last came the green bird, gliding through the broken window more than it flew. Natasha caught Strange, his feathered chest rising and falling in rapid gasps of air as he lay in her hands. Whatever magic had allowed them to talk, the spell had been broken. He might as well have merely been a bird.

"Just once, I'd like to enter a tower through the front door," Steve said, allowing the artist in him a few seconds of grief for the window. His foot shifted, and he frowned at a round disk with several smaller silver circles housing delicate gears.

"HERBIs," Odinson supplied by way of explanation. "The librarians of this place."

"Are they alive?"

Thor shook his head. "They aren't connected to a body, if that is what you're worried about," he nodded at the metal piece.

"Oh," Steve felt a sense of relief flood through him.

"Unfortunately, that means they are much harder to stop in a conventional sense. Every time the body they are in is destroyed, they return to the spawning pool. And they can pass on their memories. So we should leave before--"

A group of HERBIs rounded a shelf. Their bodies were made almost enirely of gray smoke wisps. The only solid piece they had was the geared metal piece, which appeared to function as a face.

They were hardly a match for the bolt of lightning that sparked from the Odinson's hammer.

"There will be more," he warned, setting off at a brisk pace. "And they grow wiser every time."

Steve followed, passing shelf after shelf, lined floor to ceiling with all sorst of books, bound in every shade of leather imaginable.

The next wave of HERBIs was bigger, at least twelve, and it hit just as they caught sight of a cast iron bannister and a brilliant, bright blue glow. The glow was so bright, that they nearly didn't see the HERBIs until it was nearly too late. Natasha was the one who realized it first, registering them on on her thermal sensors as cold spots, she took half of them down immediately with her repulsors.

One of the HERBIs reached for Steve, and he shuddered at the chill that passed through himas he reached for the metal piece, crunching in his fist. His shield took down the the rest.

The way clear, they made their way to the bannister, and Steve saw that they were on the twelfth floor, looking out over a great atrium. Each floor opened up similarly, and he could see more HERBIs on the floors below, putting back books, seemingly blissfully oblivious of what was going on below.

On the ground floor, Genesis was standing in front of a long pool, the star in his hands. The length of it's crystal blue waters glowed with the strange light, and the water frothed. Carp and other large fish lay scattered around the edge of the water. Some were already dead, others twitched in death throes.

"Steve," Natasha pointed, and he saw an blue, shimmering octopus crawl out of the pool, its legs spasming, just like the fish.  "Could that be the well?"

"Well?" Odinson sounded perturbed.

Steve felt a prickle of understanding creep over him.

"I'm getting crazy readings," Natasha said. "Energy fluctuations are going haywire. Whatever is down there, it's got the same emissions as the star..."

Raw, unharnessed energy, the kind that the Beyonders controlled like Gods -- Steve felt cold and hollow. If a trickle of that power on mortal men's tongues gave them a fraction of the ability that Doom had to twist reality to suit his needs, then harnessed in the cube -- given direction and focus -- Apocalypse really would be able to reshape the world to his whim.

"Get it away from him, whatever the cost," Steve said.

But even as he said it, Steve knew that they were too late. Even as Thor and Natasha took the plunge through thin air, and Steve followed, twisting and climbing down the metal railings like an acrobat, he could see that Genesis's hand was dipping beneath the bright blue water.

For a moment his hand gleamed gold and metallic beneath the surface. Then the cube flared, the space inside the library going blinding white. Steve felt a heavy force collide with him. If he hadn't had a firm grip on one of the metal railings he would have been ripped from his mooring and crushed into the floor.

After the sensation passed, he levered himself down the last few stories to the marble floor. Natasha and Odinson were down. In the air they hadn't been as fortunate as Steve. They'd had nothing to hold on to.

Please be breathing, he prayed, straightening up and running full tilt at Genesis, who was still crouched over the the pool.

But before he could reach the priest -- just as he leapt in the air with shield poised for a blow to the back of his enemy's head, Steve felt an icy sensation creep across him, slow at first, then spreading with alarming speed, an invisible force freezing him into place. He strained against it, but he was powerless to so much as wiggle a finger.

Genesis stood, his dripping hand still strangely gold. The priest looked at it briefly with some measure of curiosity, and turned the perfect, flawless cube over in his hand, studying it with unbridled glee. Then turned his eyes back to Steve. "You're too late," he said. "You couldn't save your world, and you can't save this one. It is ours."

Behind the priest, a group of HERBIs stopped shelving books and started to stalk toward Steve. "But know that you will be remembered fondly." The man's eyes glittered and two of the HERBIs grew in size, till their heads easily reached the third floor. "You get to be the first test," Genesis said, striding through the hall, leaving Steve helpless.

The HERBIs peered down at him, and one wispy tendril extended toward him, wrapping around Steve. The air in his lungs turned as icy as the force holding him still, and it was hard for him to breath. He was choking --

Then the HERBI let out a piercing shriek, and both their attention turned away from Steve.

To Steve's surprise, it wasn't Odinson or Natasha who had saved him.

It was a mousy-haired priest that looked a whole lot like Billy Kaplan. Yellow energy was still swirling around his hand, and as the gigantic smoky forms closed in on him, he let off another blast, that staggered the monster.

"Get out of here!" The boy yelled, lashing out and forcing a ring of smaller HERBIs back with an arc of fire.

Steve would have, if he could have moved.

"Oh God, my head --" he heard Natasha moan -- but anything from her at that moment was music to his ears.

"Go!" the boy repeated, pointing a finger at Steve, and whatever had held him in place evaporated. He fell to one knee and flexed his fingers, trying to work sensation back into his stiff digits.

"Why?" Steve managed to croak at the priest as one of Natasha's arms snaked beneath his to help him up -- to carry him.

"Because I saw what they did to the Sheriff," the boy said, his voice haunted.

And that was as good an answer as Steve would ever get. Natasha's grip on his was firm and comforting as they rocketed out of the library, away form the HERBIs, leaving the apostate priest to fend for himself.

This time the gates to the next tier were unguarded -- in fact, they were ominously thrown wide in silent invitation -- as if to announce that any counterattack here would be hopeless, more nuisance than anything else.

Challenge accepted, Steve though.

#

"I thought the Philosopher's Well was just a story --"Odinson's deep, steady voice was unusually hushed as they raced through an open-air hall that opened up on beautiful courtyards.

Some had fountains that sparkled with crystal clear water, others had bronze statues that towered larger than life. And if the realms they had traveled across comprised a cobbled, patchwork of worlds Doom had saved, then the upper ring of the citadel was a veritable museum of strange, alien things Natasha had never seen before.

"I thought it was an old tale the priests passed around," Odinson muttered.

Natasha frowned, "Why would they do that?"

"Ritual. Among the Thors we have a ceremony to lift a hammer, to take up arms with brothers and sisters, as it were. The old order of priests had a ceremony too. They would draw water from the Philosopher's Well, to be remade as Doom's instruments."

"It was supposed to be the source of their powers -- supposed to purify them of imperfection. There was tell of one priest who drank the waters and regained his sight. But the well was supposed to be lost when Doom destroyed the first priests."

"Another uprising?" Steve asked.

"Or a warning."

"It's hard to imagine we're actually helping Doom," Natasha muttered.

"The enemy of my enemy," Steve muttered, hefting the kite shield near his shoulder, tense and edgy.

Odinson seemed altogether unimpressed by their concerns. "He may have been a man to you, but here he is God. If we can delay long enough for the others to find him and bring him back..."

"Speaking of..." Natasha felt extraordinarily uneasy as they drew up in front of a pair of tall bronze doors, so big that they looked like they had been made for giants.

She had been about to comment that it seemed strange, and altogether too easy to make their way to the throne room. If the priests were concerned, and if they were even the least bit interested in their own self-preservation, then it seemed odd that they would be so thoroughly inept at detecting their enemy's moments in the citadel.

So when the doors groaned and clanged as Odinson pushed them open, allowing the three to slip inside, it came as no shock to her that one of the Black Priests was waiting for them.

Sitting on the Yggdrasil throne, robed in the black and red of the priesthood, but mask removed, a Doctor Strange look-alike leered at them.

"Natasha," he said, warmly. "It's nice to see you again."

So her Doctor -- Steven Sanders.

Odinson's anger flared before she could reply, seeing what no doubt amounted to sacrilege. "You dare? You will burn when God returns."

Strange grinned. "I'm afraid you may be disappointed there. I'm not expecting him to return."

"What have you done with him?"

"Nothing...yet. He left under his own volition. Grave trouble in the world abroad -- threats to his supremacy that are best not left ignored."

Steve narrowed his eyes. "You laid a trap."

"If you mean that I've helped in the deposition of a tyrant, then yes. The help I've given Richards will come as a nasty surprise."

Natasha had a brief moment of existential crisis, because it was Doctor Doom, after all, that they were talking of overthrowing. But if he was the lesser of two evils, then so be it. "You're not doing this out of the kindness of your heart," she said.

Strange's eyes narrowed, and he tapped his lips with his steepled index fingers. "No. But our world will nevertheless have a grave injustice against it righted. Wenever knew -- never had a chance. I'm going to fix that."

"Never knew what?" Natasha asked.

"What we were fighting. That we were fighting anything in the first place. I'm sure you heard the sound too, the magical voices that ripped our world apart." He stood, robes draped loosely on his thin form. "I went years as this" he gestured at his robes, "before I knew the awful truth of what I had become -- that Doom had raised me up to be the very thing that destroyed us."

Natasha's silence, if anything, made him angrier.

"Do you know why I learned what I did, Nat? Why I remember our world? Why the handful of us scattered around Doom's world are cursed to know the awful truth?" Strange drew a dagger from the sleeve of his robe, the shine of the steel dulled by dried, brown blood stains. "The Sheriff felt guilty. He tried to bring back a world apart from Doom, and when that failed he wanted to confess. And who better to confess to than yourself?"

Sanders stepped down from the throne. "He wanted to fix his sins. Survival wasn't worth it, he told me. But what would anyone who hasn't lost it all know?"

Natasha shook her head. "So you're planning to destroy this world out of spite? Out of a hatred for Doom?"

Sanders smiled, oddly serene, "No. I am going to remake this world in our image. As soon as I tie up the loose ends. Genesis?"

The gray skinned man entered, the cube shining bright like the star Heimdall had first named it.

Strange greeted him with outstretched arms. "The world tree we planted on the island was weak. What it brought forth was always corrupted by the Sheriff's meddling magic, always paired with something from his world.

"With Strange dead and his corruption lifted, there are precious few barriers left to our world's return," and he looked up at the knotted world tree. "The power that holds this world together isn't strong enough to sustain two. There can only be one. And once Doom's protections are gone..."

The shimmering blue lights that hung in Yggdrasil's bows suddenly dimmed. Sanders raised his head to watch as they flickered, then died. "It would seem Richards has done it. Today the Sheriff's dreams are realized. Today the twilight kingdoms die, and new worlds are born. Destroy the tree."

"No!" Odinson took a step forward, but Sanders flicked a hand at him, and Odinson was rooted mid-step, his feet and legs turned to marble. "You'll kill us all."

"On the contrary," Sanders said. "Just the chaff that isn't from my world," and his eyes sparkled as he flicked a finger. The marble encasing Odinson's feet spread, quick and ruthless, turning him into a smooth, white statue, face frozen in horror.

Sanders's gaze turned to Natasha and Steve. "After all, killing seemed justifiable enough for the heroes of Earth-616." He titled his head toward Genesis as the air around him began to rip open. "If I leave for the island, I trust you can finish the job?"

Genesis's fingers ran over the perfectly shaped cube thoughtfully, and then one touched the omega shaped pin at his shoulder. "I have a different idea."

Sanders face went white, his mouth opened --

The cube flared and the High Priest dropped to his knees. The portal he had opened sealed with a hissing noise and he screamed for a second before his voice dissolved into gurgles. His clawed hands scratched at his throat as he writhed in agony. Then his flesh began to  bubble and twist, losing the form of a human, decaying in an instant into a pink, misshapen thing that looked eerily like Octavius.

"What have you done?" Sanders croaked.

"I've burned the power from you, just lie Doom burned it from the First Priests."

Genesis took the pin from his shoulder, throwing it in Sanders face as he towered over the fallen priest. "I have no interest in reviving the old world. It was a miserable, frozen thing, clinging to ashes. Our world died because it couldn't evolve."

Genesis circled the tree, studying it, and ran one hand over the gnarled roots, the cube clutched tight in the other. Everywhere his fingers lingered, the white bark blistered and peeled, as if under heat. "I will make a new world, I will make a better one."

Something gold glimmered in his eyes, just for a moment. Then he seized one of the large twisting roots. At first Yggdrasil's leaves seemed to brighten. But the effect passed, and in seconds the leaves began to wither into crisps of brown, just as the grass had the night they had lost the priests.

The walls of the citadel shook, and Genesis paused, twisting his head, as if trying to hear something no one else could. The cube flared brighter, and something ghostly and horned twisted away from him. A torso emerged with an omega symbol stretched across the chest.

Steve gasped. It was finally his turn to see someone he knew. "That's Ex Nihilo."

"A friend?"

"What felt like ages ago." Steve called out to Genesis. "You were brought into Battleworld on the island too, weren't you? You're like us."

Genesis ignored him, dark energy circling his hands. They passed through the ghostly image, and the specter disappeared.

"Gardner!" Steve called. "You can fight him!"

The tendrils of inky power kept swirling around Genesis's hand. High above Steve heard the crack of wood as a branch splintered and broke under its own weight. Then Genesis focused on the cube, till an aura, not unlike the one Natasha had coaxed forth, started to seep from the the relic.

"You fools are already too late," Genesis said. A blackened leaf the size of Natasha's head floated to the ground, followed by another, and another, like an autumn rain. Beneath them, the floor still trembled, and Natasha could hear the marble walls shearing, as the magic tore stone fromstone. He set the cube in the seat of the throne. "You won't be able to stop it now."

Maybe not. Steve recalled the way that the cube had reacted after Genesis had taken it. The power hadn't dispersed. But he'd been able to redirect it. He'd been able to save Natasha at the cost of the shield. But that had been when it was cracked, broken, and warped. Now that it was a cube, and soaked through and through with the Beyonder's power...

Steve hurled his shield at the cube. It hit the growing shroud of energy, but unlike the last time, the shield was vaporized, and the energy was only dampened, not stopped.

It needed to be something bigger, then. And he didn't have very many options there.

He felt the other Steve stir. If it means saving everyone, then it's worth it.

"I have an idea," he muttered to Natasha. "But you won't it."

She put a hand on his arm, "Steve?"

"It doesn't have to be the world tree."

She caught his meaning. "No--"

"I don't see any other way."

"It could be me," she said. "Or--"

"Neither of us," he tapped his head, "wants that."

He'd wanted to give her back her husband. He'd meant it when he'd said he and Tony could be better. He felt like he was reneging on a promise. And the stricken look in Natasha's eyes only made it worse.

He closed his eyes, pushing himself down, trying to be nothing. Trying to buoy the other Steve to the surface.

The least I can do is help you say goodbye.

#

When Steve opened his eyes again, he was different. He stood up a little straighter, and his eyes softened. Her husband's hand came up and cupped her chin.

"Steve," Natasha nearly choked for joy and anguish seeing him again.

"Sorry it took me so long," he said, brushing a strand of dark hair out of her eyes with a thumb and kissing her, soft and light. She savored every second. "But I'm here now," he whispered, leaning his forehead against hers.

She wanted to cry -- to have gotten him back, only to lose him again. She buried her nose in his shoulder.

"I've missed you so much."

"I heard," he said.

"I am so, so sorry," and she felt her chin being lifted so that she could see his smile.

"And I think you've more than earned my forgiveness." His brows knit together, the smile turned sad. "You were right. I should have spent more time with you."

Then he kissed her, and pulled away, walking toward the cube.

But even Steve, serum and all, seemed to be no match for the cube's power.

"What are you..." Genesis trailed off as he realized what Steve had in mind. Then he laughed. "You really think you can stop it?"

Steve ignored him. He struggled forward slowly, as though his feet were made of lead. And as the power washed over him, he seemed to fluctuate, shifting from an old man then back to his younger self. The change cycled, slowly at first, but then faster, till it was hard to tell who was in control of the body, Steve or her husband. He reached out to it and faltered.

Maybe one wasn't enough.

I guess Tony was right, she thought. There really was no point in agonizing over who got to live.

Energy washed over Natasha, cold and heavy, as she made her way to Steve's side. And once they were close enough, she picked the cube up, feeling herself unraveling its presence, stretched impossibly thin, and brittle, all at once. She folded herself around the cube, tucking it tight in her arms, and Steve's arms circled her.

The heat radiating from the cube was intense, acute and searing. But somehow not painful. And when it let out the explosion of energy that had been building, the wave buoyed her upward, higher, out and above her body. The world grew soft and gray. Beside her she could sense Steve, and their ghostly fingers stretched out, catching one another.

Then she felt something rough and warm on her skin, abrading away the cold, clammy feeling. Something tugged at her ankle, and her vision was filled with light.

#

"Steve--" Someone was calling to him. The super soldier opened his eyes and found Tony inches away from his face. He groaned, sitting up, and caught sight of Natasha and her husband several feet away, very much alive, and very much in their own bodies, albeit looking as disheveled as he felt.

And at the foot of the Yggdrasil, green threading its way back into the leaves, Ex Nihilo, gold and bright as the sun was examining the tree, mending it with his powers.

A flesh and blood Odinson, freed from his marble prison, was standing over a broken, bleeding Genesis. Behind them, the High Priest lay still. He was alive though; Steve could hear him groaning.

"Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but...how are we here?" Steve asked.

"I am no expert," Ex Nihilo said, "but I am learning. I think it destroyed whatever magic held you in the same body first. And I think effect must have rippled to me."

Steve blinked. "And the fact that we're alive?"

Ex Nihilo smiled. "You weren't. Your bodies -- all four of you -- absorbed the energy. But once I had the cube, that was easy enough to fix with the world tree."

"And them?" Tony pointed a thumb at Natasha and Rogers.

"I am not sure. The four of you went together, and the four of your came back together. You're split now, but my guess is there there is still some sort of entanglement." He rapped on the world-tree trunk.

Tony blinked at Steve. He looked more like his old self. He was taller, the goatee was back, but Steve couldn't help but notice that he still had the brown eyes. As for Steve, he'd retained the youthful body of his Earth-3490 analog.

Entanglement indeed.

#

Natasha tapped her fingers rhythmically on the wrought iron bannister, surveying the great atrium of the library. It smelled significantly better now that it had been cleaned of the fish. And where once it had been empty and quiet, it was full of people these day. She frequently saw Strange, alive once more and back in his sorcerers robes. She had also run into Billy and Wanda on more than one occasion.

Ex Nihilo alternated residence. He was frequently in the atrium too, where he was close to the Beyonder's power. Bt he could also be found under the boughs of the Battleworld Yggdrasil and in one of the courtyards were the seeds of other world trees were sprouting -- experiments that had brought other dormant memories back to life. Bruce -- she'd been so relieved to see him well and whole -- had been monitoring them closely.

And Strange wasn't the only one who had been brought back to life. Natasha had been delighted to see that the Tony from Timely had appeared one day, somewhat slack jawed at the grandeur of the citadel.  She knew Steve had been happy to see him too -- she'd spied on them having a long and intimate conversion on one of the verandas.

Reed's return to the citadel had been bittersweet for Tony and his Steve. There was still so much to resolve there. But in the interim, they were happy to collaborate on research toward rebuilding worlds, and Reed had a lot to contribute to the library's already vast wealth. It was a pity that for eight years Doom had insisted on keeping his world rigid, that he hadn't tried to do more.

Strange had been methodical in what he and Doom saved, using his magic to create a trove of books and artifacts for a museum the world would never see.

And to think that Sanders and Genesis had almost erased it all. Natasha fervently hoped they were enjoying their stay in the citadels dungeons.

"Are you busy?" a familiar voice asked, strong arms snaking about her waist.

"I have a feeling I'm about to be," she said, rubbing her nose into the side of he husband's cheek.

"You know me so well," he murmured.

"Have I told you lately how good it is to have you back?" She asked.

"Yes," there was humor in his voice. "Many times."

Natasha smiled. "Well, it hasn't stopped being true."

#

With all the energy -- all the freedom that had come with Doom's downfal and the rise of such a strange coalition of people from across the multiverse, it had been all too easy for Steve to get caught up in the fervor of discovery.

It was so late that it was early, the last vestiges of moonlight spilling through the atrium's glass ceiling. As the sky began to turn purple and rosy pink, Steve entered the library, on his way to retrieve a book on the reptilian fauna of Earth-311 for Strange.

A dark figure was standing in front of the pool, and there was a dim blue glow on the surface of the water. Not from the well this time -- the figure turned and Steve saw that it was Tony.

"Still admiring the goatee?"

As Steve approached, he realized that it may have been the wrong thing to say. To the untrained eye, Tony's grin might have signaled that all was well. But Steve knew him well enough to notice the way Tony's brown eyes shone just a bit too brightly, glittering with bottled emotions, or the way his smile was pulled just a bit too taut.

The brown eyes still startled Steve -- still reminded him of the circumstances that had given them to Tony. They were warmer than the old blue color, and -- Steve thought -- just a bit more vulnerable looking.

"In a way, it was kind of nice, not worrying about shaving everyday," Tony said, scratching at his stubbly neck. "But it just isn't the same without it."

Steve nodded, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he came to stand beside the engineer. "Are you back to burning the midnight oil?"

A brief war with himself played out in the way Tony's lips thinned and pursed as he looked back at the pool. "I was thinking about what Thor said about the well, about it purifying people." When Steve didn't reply, Tony ducked his head. "I was wondering if I threw myself in, whether there would be anything left after I came back out."

"Tony," Steve's voice was soft. That kind of admission -- especially to him -- couldn't have been easy. "You know what I said in that shack still stands."

Tony's smile grew bitter. "He gave me a choice -- Ex Nihilo, I mean. Last night he offered to return me to the way I was before I was entangled with Natasha."

"You turned him down?"

Tony vaguely gestured to the pool again. "So far. I was afraid of what would be left if I agreed."

"Why?"

"Because it was nice, however briefly, to know you thought I was worth something again."

Steve felt his throat close up hearing those words, knowing all the bitterness and heartache that lay beneath them.

Tony let out a puff of breath. "And because I didn't want to be the person fighting you anymore. Because all the things that she felt felt so right."

And Steve's heart felt like it was stopping. "That night in the glade..." The night he'd walked away from Tony.

"Nothing's changed."

"Would you change it if you could?" Steve asked.

Tony swallowed and met Steve's eyes. "No. I wouldn't."

Steve drew close hesitantly, and Tony but on a brave smile as he fit himself into Steve's arms. But this close, Steve could feel the quick rhythm of his heart.

For a moment they hovered, faces inches away from one another. Then Tony leaned in, and his mouth was warm, his lips soft and insistent. It was something Steve had yearned for, wanted for so long. And it was more, too -- better -- because once he had thought the best friend he had loved for so long was lost forever.

Steve kissed Tony again, sweet and tender, as the first rays of morning began to spill into across the floor.