Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first thing that tipped Bob off that he wasn’t where he was supposed to be was the confused expression that flickered over Loki’s face when their eyes met.

Honestly, before that, Bob thought he was in another one of those… Shame Memories. Trauma Daydreams. Depressive Shared Flashbacks. Whatever they were called. It’s not like he had a lot of control over them- occasionally he’d still stand a little too close to Ava, or shake hands with Walker, or high-five Alexei, and… whoops. Most of them had taken to standing a few feet away from him. He couldn’t fault them for that.

And sure, if he had thought about it for more than a few seconds, the whole ‘shame visions’ guess sort of fell apart. He was alone in the tower when this particular flashback started. None of his teammates were even in this room right now to be potentially traumatized by this memory (barring the possibility that Yelena wasn’t stowed away in the rafters right now. He wouldn’t put it past her). Also, he had been feeling pretty okay for the day. Nowadays his powers only really set off without him meaning to if it was a Bad Day.

And yet, despite all odds, here he was. In… he supposed it was Stark Tower, at this point in time, considering the giant windows overlooking the familiar carnage of the Chitauri New York attack. And here he was. Making eye contact with Loki.

And that eye contact is exactly what gave him pause. Generally, his Misery Remembrances played out like movies- exactly how they originally happened, without acknowledging the viewers at all. So at first, when Loki looked at him, Bob had turned to look over his shoulder.

Nothing.

So Loki was looking at him.

The Trickster God’s brow furrowed, and he jerked his chin up to gesture in Bob’s direction. “Who…?”

“Nice try, Rock of Ages.” The Back of the Iron Man Suit and Therefore Presumably The Tony Stark snorted. “We’re not exactly going to fall for ‘look over there’.”

“Terribly sorry to interrupt,” a pleasant, vaguely British voice sounded from the ceiling. Bob jumped in surprise, bringing his hands together to worry at the seams of his sleeves. “But it does appear as if there is another in the room. Directly behind you, twenty feet.”

It’s almost impressive how exactly half of the Old Avengers turned towards him. In a split second, he had a bow and repulsor trained at him- as well as the equally-as-threatening calculating gaze of the first Captain America.

“Woah, woah!” He put his hands up in surrender immediately. It had a good track record of helping him not get shot by a ragtag group of superpowered vigilantes in the past.

“Who are you?” Captain America demanded, his grip tightening on his shield.

“Uh.” He gulped. “Bob.”

Iron Man raised an eyebrow judgmentally. “Bob.”

“Uh, yeah. Bob, that’s me, I’m, uh… Bob.”

“‘Tis a trick,” Thor said, not turning his gaze away from his brother for a second. “An illusion conjured by my brother to help him escape.”

“I’m not so sure.” Hawkeye tilted his head. “He seems too solid. And JARVIS probably wouldn’t have mentioned his sudden appearance if he didn’t have a heat signature, weight… or whatever other indicators he can measure.”

“Uh,” Bob raises one of his hands a bit higher to gesture vaguely with it. “I can confirm I’m not an illusion.”

“The possible illusion doesn’t get a vote.” Iron Man scoffed, but he lowered his repulsor to stride forward and gently prod Bob in the shoulder. “But he is, in fact, solid.”

“Alright, new plan,” Captain America took over with a decisive nod, tightening the straps of his shield. “Thor, Barton, Hulk- you three can take care of Loki. Widow, Stark, and I will figure out what’s going on with… Bob, here.”

Obligingly, Thor hauled his brother up by the wrists- and the god had gotten so caught up in the melodrama of Bob’s appearance that, by his shocked expression, he seemed to have forgotten he was being held hostage- and shoved him towards the elevator. Barton picked up the scepter and followed, pointing Hulk towards the stairs, much to his chagrin.

Black Widow and Captain America joined Iron Man by Bob, who had hesitantly lowered his arms as the tension seemed to dissipate a bit.

“So if you’re not an illusion,” Iron Man began conversationally, “how exactly did you infiltrate a high-security, multimillion dollar home built by the best weapons manufacturer of this generation?”

“I don’t.. know.” Bob was starting to feel deja vu at the situation. “I just sorta… showed up here. I’m not sure how.”

“You’re not sure?” Black Widow asked flatly. “You accidentally snuck past dozens of SHIELD field agents and into close quarters with at least two spies, three superhumans, and whatever Stark is?” She gestured to Iron Man, who gave her an unimpressed look.

This close, Bob could see similarities between her and Yelena. The two weren’t physically related, of course, but they shared characteristics- the way they stood. The hand always resting on a weapon. The carefully blank face. Though all those probably had to do more with the traumatic assassin program than the same fake family.

Bob distantly registered his hands were shaking.

He took a single step away from the three Avengers, which instantly put all three on guard. “Sorry! Sorry.” He tugged at the hem of his sweater. “I just wouldn’t stand too close. I’m a little on edge, right now, I think, and I don’t want to accidentally, um-“ he wiggled the fingers of one hand in their direction. “ fwoosh you.”

“Don’t suppose we could get a little more information on what ‘ fwoosh ’ing us means?” Iron Man said incredulously.

“Voiding you.” Bob replied automatically, only realizing how little that specifies or comforts after all three heroes manage to tense up even further. “Look, I realize how weird this and how this isn’t probably comforting but I actually don’t know how much I can say, here. Like, how much is safe to talk about. I think I might have… dimension hopped? Time travelled?” He laughed nervously, looking out the window at the ruins of New York once more. “I’m not from here. And I don’t want to accidentally mess something up by saying something off.”

The Old Avengers exchange an unreadable look, seemingly debating amongst themselves what that was supposed to mean. Eventually, Black Widow nodded decisively and looked back at Bob. “If you are telling the truth- and understand, that’s a pretty big if - then we do need to be careful. And if you’re lying, which is a lot more likely, then we have a pretty different set of questions for you. But regardless, we’re going to take you in.” Her hand came up to rest on her Widow Bites almost unconsciously, not that Bob needed any more convincing. “Whatever your story is, you can tell it to Nick Fury.” 

Chapter Text

John woke up to the sound of gunfire.

This wasn’t unusual. Before he was with the team (the Thunderbolts. What a stupid name.) he regularly woke up on active battlefields, both when he was in the military and during his short-lived run as Captain America. After he joined the team, and they started living together in the tower… well, most of the time the gunfire he awoke to was phantom. It was looped constantly in his ears, along with the sickening crunch of Lemar’s head against the wall, along with the deafening clang of a dropped, bloodied shield, along with the quiet click of the door closing between him and his wife for the last time.

But this gunfire- this was real. Real and active, in a way it hadn’t been in a long time. He heard distant, ever-familiar shouted orders.

John bolted upright like a man possessed, taking in the sights around him. Cots lined the tent walls, neat despite their situation. Nurses and field medics flitted between soldiers with bandages and painkillers and bottles of water.

Oh, fuck no.

Sound blurred as his ears started to ring, and John’s head swiveled to the side to stare at the body he knew would be there. That was always there, with him.

Beside his cot, Lemar was slumped.

For a terrible moment, John was convinced that this was an awful amalgamation of nightmares. The echoes of Afghanistan, populated by the dead body of his best friend.

He had to fight himself to focus. To take note of the steady rise and fall of Lemar’s chest. To recognize the lack of blood, and the army fatigues instead of the Battlestar suit.

It wasn’t a nightmare. But that made it worse. Because that meant John was back in Afghanistan .

“Hey-” John’s voice cracked. He was too quiet. Wherever he had just woken up, his body had apparently not had water in a bit too long. He swallowed, before making out a louder “Hey. Lemar, hey!”

Lemar snapped to attention instantaneously, the way only soldiers could. He took in his surroundings quickly before turning to John. “You’re awake.”

“Lemar.” John said. His voice was trembling. He’s pretty sure it’s never done that. Lemar clearly caught that fact immediately, and he frowned in concern. “This isn’t going to make any sense, and I’m not asking because I think I have a concussion, and I can’t tell you why I’m asking this, but I need to know. What’s the date?”

Lemar squinted suspiciously at him before giving a light shrug. “May 4th.”

Okay. John closed his eyes. He knew the answer, but he had to ask anyway. “Year?”

Lemar’s concern audibly grew. “2012.”

“Right…” Bob. It was the only explanation. John swore that, when the Sentry Project was still in the works, Valentina had been given a form that asked ‘What powers do you want him to have?” And she just wrote ‘Yes.’ on it. Time travel was a new one, but it was definitely not a power that any of the rest of them had. Neither was it one they had confirmed Bob didn’t have. So now John- and presumably Bob, and Bucky, and the rest of them- were back in 2012 of all places. Separated. Alone.

…Able to change things. To fix them.

John had a second chance.

“Right.” John repeated, shifting to the opposite side of the cot that Lemar was sitting at. He swung his legs over and tested his weight, grabbing at the bedframe for purchase as he shakily stood.

“Woah, woah, woah!” Lemar stepped around the cot, catching and supporting John by the arm. “What’s going on with you? Where are we going?”

We . Without question or hesitation. God, John had missed him. “Out. Leaving. I need to get home.” God, he still had a home. Olivia was still there. His son hadn’t been born yet, but he was a possibility. He wasn’t gone, wasn’t taken away. John had a second chance .

May 4th, Lemar had said. The Chitauri attack had just happened. John didn’t know if Olivia was okay, if she had been affected at all by the attack. He had never thought to ask, the first time around. No wonder she had left.

“Right now?” Lemar asked, snapping John back to the present. “You have to go home right this second? Our contract only lasts two more months.”

“Now.” John nodded. “I can’t- I’m not reliving this. I haven’t lost anything yet, I’m not going to again. I refuse.”

“Wh- John.” Lemar hauled him over to a corner cot, more secluded from the previous, and sat him down. John was in no state to fight it. He doesn’t remember exactly what got him this roughed up, but it must’ve been bad. Maybe Medal-of-Honor bad. “John. What are you talking about?”

“I need to go. ” John insisted.

“ John! ” Lemar hissed, panic lacing the edge of his voice. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you need to figure it out fast, preferably while keeping it to yourself. We can not desert. Not two months away from the end of this contract. Not when you , last I checked, were about to get promoted. Isn’t that what you’ve wanted since sophomore year? Where is this coming from?”

John opened his mouth to retort but slowly closed it again as words failed him. This was what he wanted since sophomore year. And he wasn’t US Agent anymore. He wasn’t Captain America, if he ever even was. And he certainly didn’t have the super soldier serum running through him anymore.

In one accidental move, a lot of John’s identity had just been stripped away. Agent. Vigilante. Hero, if he was having one of the few days where he felt good about himself. Thunderbolt . All those labels were gone. But the one he had kept close to his chest, the one he had always put all his self-worth in- soldier . That was still here. That was now.

And he was going to give it all up?

Yes? Part of his mind said incredulously. Of course we are. We saw where this path led us. Olivia, gone. Our son, gone. Lemar, gone. And our team is back here too, we need to get to them.

Why? Another part argued. We don’t need to leave yet. Olivia waited, the first time. Our son doesn’t even exist yet. We can save Lemar. And the team is fine. They don’t need you. And they especially don’t need this version of you, with no powers, less training, no shield.

John blinked slowly, coming back to himself. Lemar was looking up at him expectantly from where he had crouched beside the cot.

“Sorry,” John said slowly. “Don’t know what came over me.”

Chapter Text

Fuck.

Ava’s hand shook as her entire body spasmed with pain. The gun she had been holding slipped straight through her fingers and clattered to the ground. She shouted, keeling over, bracing herself on her knees in a desperate ploy to remain standing.

Everything hurt.

No, hurt wasn’t nearly a strong enough word. Every bit of her was in complete and utter agony, and unfortunately it was an agony she was well acquainted with. Each molecule tearing away from each other, shredding the very fabric of herself, and stitching themselves back together.

She hadn’t felt this pain in nearly 10 years, and she hadn’t quite realized how much she was taking advantage of that.

“Uh-”

Ava looked up. A bloodied, roughed up operative was scrabbling against the floor where he had been slumped up against the wall, doing his best to get up- or maybe just crawl away. He was talking, seemingly half to himself and half to her, interrupted by labored breaths. “You seem- you seem busy. So I’ll just… let myself out, if you don’t mind-” He twisted too far to one side, clearly pulling at where a large red stain was spreading over his torso, and cut himself off with a groan.

Ava took a deep breath and straightened again, reaching over to scoop the gun up from where she had dropped it.

She remembered this guy. May 2012- an assignment to chase down and eliminate a rogue SHIELD agent who was selling information to Klaue. And while she held no love for SHIELD, the specific information that this guy had been selling- home addresses, family names, relationships and connections- were a danger to genuine innocents.

She held no love for SHIELD, but she held no pity for this man, either.

She shot.

A small speaker attached to the neck of her suit crackled to life. “Ghost, report?”

She stared at it incomprehensibly, the situation catching up to her in increments. 2012 mission. Her phasing, out of control again. A distantly familiar voice from one of her SHIELD handlers calling her in.

Damn it. She mentally added ‘time travel’ to the list of bullshit she’s had to deal with as a ‘New Avenger’ or whatever. Then, hesitantly, added it in her other mental list of ‘Bob’s super powers’. That particular list was getting a little out of hand.

She raised a wrist, holding down the button that would start her transmission, and spoke into the speaker there. “Ghost, checking in. Target eliminated.”

“Excellent.”  Her handler sounded smug. She wondered, distantly, if it would mess up the timeline too much to kill him early. He died in a few years anyway. The man was one of SHIELD’s many, many ‘secret’ HYDRA employees, and when his affiliation was revealed sometime in 2014, he had ended up killing himself to avoid capture. “Report back to base, we have a new target ready for you.”

“Of course.” She pulled her helmet back into place. “Any update on that cure?” She asked, barely keeping the sarcasm from her voice. She knew there wouldn’t be.

“No new advancements.” The handler didn’t even have the decency to sound sorry. “We’ll update you when we have them, Ghost.”

“Right.” She cut off the transmission and walked through the wall, clenching her jaw as her molecules essentially disassembled themselves and reassembled on the other side.

The only pro of her fucked-up, unstable phasing was that she didn’t actively have to think too hard and actively turn on and off her abilities. Which was helpful, considering the waves of pain that would crash through her and thoroughly interrupt her thoughts.

She fumbled with her communicator, letting muscle memory take over and guide her to her old base while she focused on pulling up her contacts. It didn’t take too long to find who she was looking for. Her contacts list was embarrassingly short.

The line rang pleasantly twice before the phone was picked up.

“Foster.”

“Bill,” she gasped as a particularly rough spike wrenched her shoulder.

“Ava.” He sounded on guard immediately. “What happened? How can I help?”

“Are you-” Her hand phased out and slipped through the button, turning off her mic for a moment. She cursed, shook it out, and tried again. “Are you still in contact with Hank Pym?”

“No.” Bill said, his voice short and dangerous. “And I understand what he did, but we agreed revenge was not the way to go-”

“This isn’t about revenge!” She hissed. “I’ve got reliable intel that he can help. With my condition.”

“It’s possible.” Despite his optimistic words, Bill sounded very unsure. “But why would he help?”

“He’ll want to.” She promised. “If this intel is correct,” and it was, considering it came from the  future, “then it’ll not only heal me, it’ll bring his wife back.”

The line was silent for so long that for a split second, Ava thought he had hung up. Then- “I’ll contact him. But if this is a trick-”

“It’s not.” Ava would be offended that he thought she’d use Hank’s wife against him, but considering she almost kidnapped Scott’s kid that one time, she didn’t actually have much ground to stand on. “Contact him.”

The line beeped, signaling that he did actually hang up this time, and Ava took a deep breath as she stepped into her old briefing room.

Her handler was waiting with arms crossed and a tablet open, but Ava decided to take a page from her old self’s book and ignore him as she took off the outer layers of her suit and stumbled into her quantum containment chamber. She felt the energy wash over her and exhaled softly as several muscles that she didn’t even remember tensing began to relax.

It wasn’t true relief. Not even comparable, now that Ava knew what life was like without the pain. but it was something, and she would take it.

She turned, arms neatly tucked behind her back, ready to report- and her voice died in her throat. The handler’s tablet was open to a rather familiar file. She snapped her eyes away from it before she got caught staring, her mind caught in a loop repeating the few lines she had seen.

The Asset compromised last mission. Returned to cryo, to be wiped again in 72 hours.

Shit.

She wondered, staring blankly into the eyes of her handler through the glass of the quantum containment cell, if that file happened to have the coordinates of Bucky’s cryo tube.

Chapter Text

Alexei had only blinked, and he was suddenly about to lose an arm wrestle.

The prison around him was loud as his fellow inmates hollered, likely expressing their shock at how far down his opponent had managed to push his arm. Alexei frowned. That just wouldn’t do. He could figure out what was going on later, but for right now- he didn’t lose .

He pushed a small percentage of his serum-enhanced strength into his arm, turning the odds instantaneously and cracking his opponent’s arm against the standard-issue table. The other inmate yelped, pulling his arm back and massaging at his elbow, looking at Alexei with thinly veiled anger. Alexei just smiled mockingly.

The buzz of a makeshift tattoo machine vibrated across his left shoulder. He turned to look at it. The silhouette of an eagle.

His brow furrowed. That… That was an old tattoo. He had gotten that years before he had even left Seventh Circle, and to his memory that was a decade ago. He had gotten it to express a longing for freedom, fifteen years after his false imprisonment-

Fifteen years.

He looked around the prison again, picking out faces of inmates. Afanasy, imprisoned for assassination, had been released 2015. Armen, imprisoned for aggravated assault, released 2013. Ilya, imprisoned for mass murder, tried to escape in 2014 and had been killed in the resulting firefight.

Alexei may have been the muscle in every mission since his serum was administered, but he was far from stupid. He had to have been good enough in the Soviet Armed Forces to get noticed in the first place. So despite it not making any sense, Alexei was pretty sure he had time traveled to 2012. Which he did not know he could do. Which means he didn’t do it. The abilities given to him by his (knockoff) soldier serum had been extensively researched and documented, both by him and the scientists who had given it to him.

He thought back, trying to remember if the Thunderbolts had encountered anything strange recently. To his knowledge, there was no way to time travel at all- but he had also heard that aliens and magicians were becoming more frequent sightings out in the world.

Ridiculous. Aliens, sorcerers, magic . What happened to good old-fashioned enhanced humans. He didn’t need any fancy telekinesis or anything, and neither did the Winter Soldier or Captain America.

Although he had to admit that Sentry’s powers were very cool.

Alexei stood abruptly. He’s lucky the tattoo artist that had been doing his piece was used to him jolting about and moving, because he managed to pull back the needle before a stripe of ink ruined the silhouette.

Alexei needed to get out. It was 2012, he needed to go find his family- Yelena was part of the Red Room again, was chemically subjugated- Natasha was still alive - he had to get to them-

He eyed the exits. His sudden standing had caught the attention of the guards at attention near the gates. several of them had their hands poised to raise and fire their weapons at a moment’s notice.

Perhaps not now.

He slowly sat again, and the tattoo artist began again without a word.

It wouldn’t do to go out into the world with a half-finished tattoo, anyway.

And he needed to remember how he got out the first time around.

From what he remembered, it was going to require outside help. He only made it because Natasha and Yelena had hacked in electronically, and were waiting in the yard with a getaway vehicle. And because Yelena had accidentally chased all of the guards inside with that snow avalanche.

He couldn’t count on them this time. Yelena was indisposed, and Natasha clearly had no interest in reconnecting with him- at this time, or in 2016 when she was essentially forced to free him in search of the Red Room. Not that he was much help with that, anyway. And she hadn’t contacted him again, after. Hadn’t spoken to her again until it was too late.

That was fine. He’d do better this time. She didn’t want to come to him, he would come to her - with her freed sister in tow, ideally. Maybe they could take down the Red Room again, a few years earlier this time. Call it a bonding experience.

But first he had to get out.

Most of his contacts were on Dreykov’s side. Alexei really didn’t think he had said anything too outrageous. A party that kept spouting it was ‘for the people’ should actually be for the people, is that too much to ask? But noo, treason they had said. Treason, they had imprisoned him for.

Treason. Him? The Red Guardian , treasonous, that was the outrageous claim.

No matter.

Who could he contact that would be able to realistically get him out of here?

She was the scientist, the strategist. I was the muscle.

Melina. Melina Vostokova, she had helped them the first time. She could help them again.

He wasn’t entirely convinced he would be able to get her on his side. Natasha had convinced her, the first time. But based on Yelena’s outburst, Melina hadn’t really known what she was doing with the chemical subjugation- and she had the capability to reproduce that Red Dust that saved Widows before.

She could help. He would just have to talk to her.

And… and he did want to see her again. They had broken off, after the fall of Dreykov, but he still held a certain flame for her.

But that would come after. After he was freed, after he got back to his daughters.

He was the one who had delivered them to the Red Room, and damn him if he wasn’t going to be the one to truly free them this time.

“Alexei Shostakov!” The intercom buzzed. “Mail room!”

Yes. Alexei turned his head to watch the tattoo artist wipe away the blood from his now finished eagle silhouette. Yearning for freedom. That he was. And he, and his family, would get it.

Chapter Text

All things considered, the room they were keeping Bob in was pretty nice. Also, rather stereotypical.

No pictures, no screens, just plain white walls and a door that practically blended into the wall. And, of course, a large mirror stretching across the room on his right side- very obviously a two-way mirror, and one he was trying very hard not to continually look into. He had no idea if anyone was watching him through there. Someone was definitely watching through the camera mounted in the corner, though. The Avengers had seemed pretty unsettled by his ‘threat’ of Voiding them- and by his immediate refusal to explain what that meant. He wasn’t handcuffed, though. He supposed he wasn’t very physically threatening.

If only they knew.

Despite his best efforts, he was staring blankly at the two-way mirror when the famous (or infamous, depending on who you asked) Nick Fury swept through the door.

“So,” he placed a hand on the interrogation room table, the other neatly tucked into his trenchcoat. “I’ve been told you think you’ve… time travelled?”

“Yeah, that’s- um. Yes.”

Fury didn’t respond at first, instead giving Bob a critical once-over. Bob resisted the urge to start fidgeting with his sleeves again. It was a long few moments before Fury continued. “A strange choice of cover story. And why should I believe ‘time travel’ even exists.”

“I-” Bob’s voice cracked, and he spread his hands helplessly before trying again. “I don’t know. I think the Avengers did it at some point? It was a bit unclear how they stopped that one guy. And I was…” he trailed off, remembering his hazed, drug-seeking late 2010s and early 2020s, “busy. But I think time travel was involved. Technological, though, not… whatever this was.”

“Right.” Fury said dryly. “And do you have any… proof? Of this claim?”

“I’m not really sure how I would prove that? I didn’t exactly do it on purpose the first time, I can’t just… do it on command.”

Fury raised an eyebrow judgmentally. “Intel.”

“Oh. Oh! Like, future events and stuff! Um… I’m not sure if I can do that.”

“And why not?”

Bob glanced at the two-way mirror again out of the corner of his eye. He wasn’t super lucid for a lot of these years, but even he remembered the monumental leak of SHIELD, the organization behind the Avengers, being heavily infiltrated by Nazi organization HYDRA.

And based on what he had seen the few times Bucky had bad days, he did not want to get on HYDRA’s radar.

“A couple reasons?” He offered weakly. “You guys are a super secret spy organization or something, right? I have no idea what you guys do and don’t already know. Also,” he looked down, “I wasn’t paying attention to the world too much in my… um… original run through.”

“So you have nothing.”

“Nothing I can tell you.” Bob shrugged, and then, quieter, added “ nothing that wouldn’t incriminate me further .”

He couldn’t exactly pull out the information of Natasha Romanov’s family when, as far as he was aware, Fury didn’t know about them- and at this point in time they were all involved with an assassin organization. Mentioning black ops specialist Ghost would make him look like he was digging around in SHIELD files, and mentioning anything regarding the Winter Soldier would absolutely be a red flag. Walker was probably the most normal one he could mention- except that he was just a normal soldier, at this point.

The few big events that Bob did remember wouldn’t work as evidence either. At best, they wouldn’t happen for several more years. At worst, Bob couldn’t remember exactly when they happened. A lot of the 2010s were a blur for him. And all of them, anyway, sounded completely fake. He couldn’t imagine ‘ The Avengers broke up because Captain America’s childhood best friend killed Iron Man’s parents ’ or ‘ A big purple alien from outer space invaded to collect six rocks that gave him the power to kill half the population ’ would go over well.

Although, now that Asgard and the Chitauri have been established, maybe the alien thing wouldn’t be as big of a hurdle as before.

But he definitely didn’t want to give HYDRA any information on the six superpowered rocks that could kill half the world.

“Here’s what I think,” Fury leaned forwards, interrupting Bob’s train of thought. “And stop me if you’ve heard this before.” He took a deep breath, and Bob found himself tensing up unconsciously. “Wayward teenager. Rough past, bad homelife, a mom who passed down her mental illness but no coping mechanisms.”

Apparently Bob was right to have tensed up.

“Turns to drugs and oddball jobs to make it by. Travelling aimlessly to try to find something, some purpose, but always ending up falling short.”

The Void echoed in Bob’s ear. The most shameful thing of all was thinking you could be anything more than nothing.

“Then you get approached. Or found. Or picked. But someone offers that they can help you, that you can be part of something.”

Valentina. I still want you to be my guy. And isn’t that what you want? To be picked? To be chosen?

“And all you have to do is what they ask.”

You need to do what I say, Robert.

Why?

Fury was looking at him expectantly. He was too close to the truth for comfort. Way too close. Bob took a shaky, steadying breath. “You looked me up.”

“I looked you up.” Fury leaned back, a self-satisfied smirk on his face, unaware of how much difficulty Bob was having keeping himself in check. “Now why don’t you tell me who actually sent you.”

“No one!” Bob’s hands were shaking. A little voice in his head was reminding him just how easy it would be to raise a single hand and pin this pompous, asshole know-it-all against the wall. Show SHIELD who he actually was. “Actually, genuinely, honestly, no one sent me, you have to believe me here. It’s not how it looks, I know how it looks-”

“Did they give you something?” Fury interrupted, looking irritated. As if this was just an errand to mark off his to-do list.

“Wh- what?”

“If you aren’t an agent of some kind, you dropped off the radar remarkably well a year back, but even that doesn’t get rid of birth certificates, social security, bank statements- and I’m guessing whatever organization picked you up gave you some sort of super serum.”

Bob’s not sure if he would call OXE’s ‘medical study’ a super serum, but-

“Did it give you some sort of stealth abilities? Endurance? Strength?” Fury sizes Bob up. “You don’t look sixteen, but I’m sure everyone’s seen the ‘before’ pictures of Rogers’ procedure.”

“Sixte- I’m thirty .” Bob said incredulously. Past-him was sixteen right now. That was weird to think about. Next summer, he was going to get that chicken-mascot-twirling-a-sign job.

“Right.” Fury interrupted, fake pity lacing his voice. “Time travel. But I see you didn’t account for the basic ability to run a facial recognition scan or that you have records, despite whatever your organization told you. I’ll leave you for now, and when someone comes back, perhaps we could try giving them a real explanation.”

He swept away, all dramatics and leather, and left Bob staring at the door, a war of emotions in his head, blinking away the gold in his eyes.

Chapter Text

It took a week for John to be patched up well enough that they sent him back again.

During that time, he had gotten his hands on a small notebook, barely the size of his hand, which he used to vigorously write down all the major events that happen that he remembers- the SHIELD data leak, the Avengers breaking up, the arrival of Thanos, the blip, the return. Then, the major events pertaining to himself- his Medals of Honor, his return home, his taking the mantle of Captain America, Lemar’s death, the subsequent loss of the title, Olivia leaving. Everything he could think of, when it happened, how it happened- what he could change to stop it from happening again.

By the time he was done, there were eight pages left in the notebook. Each of these, he dedicated to scribbling down everything he knew about his team members’ whereabouts in 2012.

It didn’t take up the eight pages. His… the team was secretive, a fact only exacerbated by the entire team not being very proud of their past. Yelena was part of the Red Room’s Black Widow program, and mentioned breaking out at some point, but he had no idea when. Or where the Red Room is. Or what it is.

Ava constantly talked about growing up in labs, and he knew she was an ex-SHIELD black ops agent, but it was unclear whether those two stretches of time were concurrent, overlapping, or otherwise.

Bob had vaguely alluded to ‘traveling’ during this time- addicted to meth and aimless, and, perhaps even worse for John’s particular goal, completely unnoteworthy. He would be next to impossible to track down.

Bucky, John knew, was the Winter Soldier right now. That was a whole can of worms that he had no interest in opening.

The only one he could solidly pin down was Alexei, who spoke frequently and freely of his time in Russia’s Seventh Circle Prison.

John kept this little notebook on him at all times and didn’t show it to anyone- including Lemar, who, he suspected, was becoming more and more concerned and suspicious of him. Which wouldn’t be good, in the long run, but at the moment John was more concerned with forgetting anything important- or losing something that was essentially a guidebook to the future. His future, specifically.

It stayed in the very bottom of his pack when he went back to the active field in the 75th Ranger Regiment.

He checked his gear for the thousandth time, running more on muscle memory than attention. A strike team of six- including him and Lemar- were being sent on a night raid to a nearby settlement. When it was first discovered, it seemed to only be families and refugees, but there have since been rumors of them harboring a member of the Taliban.

The US couldn’t have that.

The War on Terror, John figured, was good in concept but exceedingly harsh in practice. Many of the people he’d seen out in the field were innocents, who should have been nowhere near a warzone.

He wondered exactly how many of the people he’d killed even knew they were harboring a terrorist.

He was jolted out of his thoughts by a signal to advance, and he shouldered his gun, stepping out from behind the rock outcropping he was using as shelter and rushing towards the site. The night was quiet.

It wouldn’t be for long.

He carefully opened the door of the second building to the right, his gun barrel first into the building.. Lemar was at his back. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the other two teams of two doing the same to two other tents.

He crept through, his gun trained neatly in front of him even as his eyes flicked around wildly to try to catch sight of anyone who may be attempting to sneak up on him. Lemar split off after the first intersection, checking any spare rooms behind them so there was no chance of a sneak attack.

Room one, clear. Room two, clear. John was barely giving cursory sweeps through each room, glancing once for signs of life before moving to the next, wishing this was over.

Unfortunately, a single glance was all he needed to spot the small family huddled in the corner of room three.

He froze in the doorway, his night-vision goggles trained on the family. The laser sight attached to his gun was hovering on the wall a foot to away from the father, who was crouched over the mother and son, covering as much of them as possible. All three were shaking.The son, who John couldn’t imagine was older than three, was muffling gasping breaths in the bunched fabric of his mother’s dress.

John closed his eyes for a single brief second, centering himself. Distantly, he heard the sound of gunfire from one of the other groups. Based on the crackling report from his earpiece, the terrorist had been found, and had attempted to fight back. The secondary team he had come with was converging on their location to help, with Lemar and John having directions to stay behind and dispatch the harborers.

With prejudice.

John glared at the cowering family as if they were to blame for everything wrong with the world. He was already unhappy enough with being stuck back in one of the worst times in his life, he didn’t want to relive what made it the worst. And he had done a lot of thinking, since his failure as Captain America. Since he joined a group of assassins and found a little too much in common with them. Since Olivia had left him.

He really, really didn’t want to start slipping into justifying atrocities as justice again.

He moved into the room- only about a yard, but it felt like miles- and quietly unlatched the window to his left. It slid open, just next to soundless- certainly not loud enough to alert Lemar down the hall. He retreated back to the window, angling himself perpendicular to the doorway.

The father untensed the slightest amount, one of his spread arms dipping ever so slightly. His brow furrowed. Behind him, the mother was staring wide-eyed at John.

John pointedly aimed his gun further away, and, ever so slightly, jerked his head in the direction of the window.

That was all the sign the family needed, and the father herded his wife and son to the window with a quickness that John has rarely seen. In a flash, the mother was through, and the father was passing the son through. And then the father. And then they were gone from sight.

John sighed quietly. Room three, clear.

He turned, closing the door behind him- just in time to spot Lemar heading towards him from the other end of the hallway.

“Building seems clear. You see anything?” Lemar asked. John really hoped it was just his own paranoia making that question sound more pointed than it needed to be.

“No,” he confirmed anyway. “We’re clear.”

Chapter Text

The debriefing went quickly.

Despite it happening so long ago, Ava had great memory, and rattling off a mission report was second nature. Even if she didn’t remember the specifics of getting to the building, there didn’t need to be much fluff around ‘the target is dead’.

Eventually, her handler was satisfied. The tablet was tucked away under one arm, the agent gruffly informed her that she would be contacted within the week for another mission, and he was gone.

And she was left. Sitting in her old quantum containment chamber. Nothing to do but think.

She assumed the rest of her teammates were back in 2012 as well- more because that would be just their luck than due to any fact-based rationalization. In which case they should all attempt to meet up as soon as possible. The most obvious rendezvous point would be the Watchtower, which was currently (problematically) Avengers Tower. Or Stark Tower. When had that rebrand officially taken place?

Walker and Bob could both get themselves there. Neither had any need to stay under the radar of intelligence organizations, since they weren’t even on the radar in the first place. Walker could… what, fake an injury? And come back to the U.S. from his deployment. Bob… Ava had no idea where Bob was. But besides maybe money, he would have no issues potentially walking onto an airplane and hitching a ride that way.

Alexei and Yelena would likely be more difficult, but inevitably one would break out from their predicament- whether it’s Yelena from the Red Room or Alexei from prison- and find the other.

Which left Bucky as her responsibility.

This isn’t necessarily a problem. Both were working for HYDRA, right now- Ava accidentally and Bucky against his will. But she’d be the most likely to be able to find his location and retrieve him.

The problem was that he was still the Winter Soldier.

Excluding the leaked HYDRA files and some very unpleasant-looking flashbacks from her time’s Bucky, she had no idea about the Winter Soldier. Especially not how to deal with him. Would he try to attack her on sight? Would she need to use his code words? She didn’t particularly want to do that. She didn’t even know Russian.

Bzzt .

She’d deal with that dilemma later.

Ava raised the small comm screen on her wrist. A message from Bill was flashing across the screen.

Contacted. He wants to talk to you .

Figures.

Now? She typed back.

It only took a few moments for him to respond. Ideally .

Ava looked outside of her containment chamber with disdain. She’d have to deal with her phasing again. That would not be enjoyable. And she’d have to be face to face with Hank Pym again. Even less enjoyable.

Her wrist buzzed again, and she looked down to see that Bill sent her an address.

Nothing for it, then.

She stepped out the door, stumbling as a wave of pain washed over her once more, a particularly bad phase ripping through her torso as if revenge for her momentary reprieve.

She momentarily considers getting back into her suit before deciding against it. Unlike her future suit, this one did little to actually stem the pain. It just helped her control it, but thanks to future memories she had that well in hand.

She did put on the boots, at least, and a sweater over her undersuit before she stalked straight through the wall in the direction to the address.

It was only a few minutes walk from her- a small library, mostly empty. She was able to hold herself together for just long enough to send a quick nod of acknowledgement to the librarian before ducking into an isolated study room and waiting.

Hank Pym arrived twenty minutes later.

She had forgotten how harmless he looked. She’d be a fool to underestimate him, of course, but Pym truly looked like the worst he could do was give a disappointed glare and sternly instruct someone to get off his lawn.

She smiled innocently at him. “Pym.”

“I’m not sure what you’re trying to pull,” he said, “but it isn’t funny.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“You used an old SHIELD contact of mine to tell me my wife is alive. If it isn't a poorly-conceived practical joke, I fear for your sanity.”

“Well first of all, that’s not what I said, and definitely not what Bill should have relayed.” She tilted her head. Pym was still standing, likely his attempt at an intimidation tactic, which would probably work better if Ava couldn’t kill him in a second. Also, if his eyes didn’t light up in clear interest when Ava’s phasing got the better of her, and she knew afterimages were following her every movement. “I said that you could help with a way to cure me. Getting your wife back was a footnote in my message, to be honest.”

Pym slammed his hands down on the table. “That’s impossible.”

“Is it?” She studied him. “You’re a scientist, Pym. What do you know of the theory of time travel?”

Confusion flitted across his face. “That’s also impossible.”

“Impossible like turning a human into the size of an ant?” She hummed in contemplation. “Impossible like shrinking billions of billions of billions of molecules smaller than an atom?” She pinches her fingers together in front of her eye in demonstration, using the movement to pretend to squish Pym like a bug. “Nothing seems impossible anymore in 2027.”

“2027. You expect me to believe you time travelled back 15 years .”

“I did.”

“Prove it.” Pym challenged, crossing his arms.

This, Ava could do. She might not remember much about her old missions (they all blurred together) or the exact whereabouts of most of her team (consequence of working with superspies) but she spent years stalking and learning everything to do with Hank Pym.

“Scott Lang.”

Pym’s arms dropped. “Excuse me?”

“It’s 2012, right? He should’ve just pulled off that VistaCorp job. A bit Robin Hood, for my tastes, but it got him on your radar, didn’t it? You’re thinking of making him the next Ant-Man.” She see-sawed her hand. “He’s a fine choice, by the way. A bit unserious, but surprisingly good at it. I certainly underestimated him the first time, and likely would have paid for it if your wife didn’t take pity on me and heal me.”

Pym stared at her for a few moments. Ava could practically see the mental leaps and calculations he was doing.

Eventually, slowly, he pulled out the chair across from her and sat in it. “I’m listening.”

Ava smiled. “Good.”

Chapter Text

It took a bit of bribery for a letter to get out.

Originally, Alexei’s plan was to find out if any of the guards were Red Guardian fans, and use that to his advantage to get one of them to send a letter for him.

None were.

In fairness, he wasn’t totally expecting it to. He had been a bit.. humbled, regarding his past fame, with the Thunderbolts. It’s hard not to, when on a team with the Winter Soldier, and become aware of exactly how short and insignificant his run as a superhero was.

Especially after it ended with that undercover mission that blew up in his face.

Especially after it ended with Yelena and Natalya being sent to the Red Room.

Regrets, and all that. He was fixing it. It’s fine.

But luckily, he did know the Winter Soldier. And the guards were very much fans of the Winter Soldier.

It was a weird kind of hit to his pride to use someone else’s fame to bargain with, but after a week or two, he managed to convince one of the guards that he did actually know the famed super soldier. Sure, he might have lied a bit and said they met during his Red Guardian days, but he figured it was more likely to believe than post-recovery Bucky Barnes blowing up his limo.

Which he was still upset about. He kept forgetting, but eventually, he was going to bill Bucky for that limo. It was his tactical one! That was not cheap. 

Regardless, the guard was convinced, and the letter was sent out to Melina Vostokova’s farm. It wasn’t signed, but it was delivered with one of the few Red Guardian figurines that people who were his fans. Not subtle, maybe, but he was never one for subtlety.

Prisoners of the Seventh Circle weren’t allowed to send letters, unless given special permission. They also needed that permission to meet with people- but while Alexei didn’t have permission for mail, he did have permission to meet with guests.

Sure, technically that permission was only ever used because Dreykov liked to visit and gloat (such a gloater, Dreykov. Sure, Alexei might boast about his accomplishments, but he didn’t do it to the people he had defeated in epic battle. That was just rude.), but that didn’t mean Alexei couldn’t use it to his advantage.

So two and a half weeks passed since he first time travelled before he was sitting across a visitation barrier from Melina.

His love.

Priorities.

Melina was important, but she was safe. She didn’t need help.

His daughters did.

“Alexei.” Melina spoke first, her accent familiar and lilting. They were speaking English- a leftover habit from their undercover work, but they discarded their American accent awhile ago. It was always so annoying. Why did Americans pronounce their vowels like that? “Imagine my surprise when I got your letter.”

“Melina.” He leaned forward against the desk. “How good to see you.”

“You didn’t seem to think so when you never contacted me after our mission.”

He raised a hand to gesture to the prison around them. “Was busy.”

“Yes, I suppose you were.” The corner of her mouth twitched upwards.

“You were busy too, I’ve heard.”

Melina’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Oh?”

“Still working for Dreykov, I’ve heard.”

Melina’s smirk was gone, her expression settled into a frown. “Now how did rumors of that get into Seventh Circle, hmm?”

“Who knows?” He shrugged. “But it’s going around. That and your special.. project.”

“I’ve no clue what you mean.”

“Yelena is one.” He said quietly. Melina stiffened at the name of their pseudo-daughter. “Yelena is in the program, she’s the one they’re using that on. Do you want that?”

Melina looked away, her eyes studying the wall as if searching for something. “Want is a strong word. It’s my duty.”

“Such devotion to a group that has done nothing but hurt you.” Alexei sighed, a clear picture in his mind of the tear tracks down Yelena’s face at the dinner table when she was yelling about her childhood, her world and family being a lie. Natasha leaving them all behind as soon as she was able, dooming her family to their own mistakes. But who could’ve blamed her?

Not when they left her first.

“These are bold words for the famed Red Guardian.” Melina snapped. “You’ve done nothing but be betrayed by the groups whose ideals you endorse.”

“And look where that has landed me.” He ignored her shocked intake of breath. That was probably the closest to actual treason against the communist party that he’s ever gotten. “Tell me, my love, did you enjoy our mission? Truly? Did you ever consider the family yours? Real?”

“Irrelevant.” Melina shook her head. “It was a mission, that’s all.”

“It was not. You know that.” Alexei leaned forwards, pressing his forehead against the plastic barrier. “Natalya is free, she is safe, but Yelena is not. We can help Yelena, родная.”

“You’re speaking of betrayal.”

“I’m speaking of fixing one.”

Melina finally turned to look back at Alexei, making eye contact through the barrier. Her eyes were cold and steely, but he thought- hoped- there was a flicker in there of something. Regret, maybe. Conscience.

The old Melina- future Melina? Had recognized her mistake. But Alexei had never been good with words, not like his daughters or his love. He had always been the brawn- and now, watching Melina’s expression harden into something neutral and unfeeling, he felt a deep fear that it wouldn’t be enough. That he’d failed, again.

The guard stationed behind Melina raised an arm to knock on the wall twice. The signal to wrap it up, that the visitation has ended.

Melina nodded in acknowledgement and braced herself against the desk, pushing the chair back as she stood. “Good-bye, Alexei.”

“Melina.” He backed away from the glass as she stepped around her chair and began to leave. He knew his voice was bordering on desperate, but- “Melina, wait! Stop!”

The guard on his side appeared behind him, putting a hand on his shoulder and pulling him up. He started forward anyway. “Melina! Родная, please-”

Another guard grabbed his arm, and the two began to pull him away, back into the prison. He could, he knew, push forwards. He was still a super soldier.

He did not. He let himself be pushed back, and watched the back of his wife retreat.

She did not look back.

Chapter Text

The next in was Natasha.

At first, Bob didn’t notice her. His gaze was glued to the table in front of him as he tapped out the 4-7-8 breathing patterns that Walker had talked him through one night, when they were both up after nightmares. Walker had stopped calling him Bobby after that night.

It had been a few sleeps since Fury had come in. He had no concept of how long it had actually been, as the overhead lights had been kept on the entire time. He was pretty sure this was considered cruel and unusual torture.

At least, at some point, they had tossed him a blanket. And some granola bars and water bottles. That was nice of them.

But he hadn’t been given anything to do, aside from ruminate on Nick Fury’s words and battle his own nightmares and try to remind himself that he wasn’t invincible and he wasn’t alone either and going Sentry or Void on the Avengers was probably the quickest way to ensure he’d never see any of his friends ever again. Or the quickest way to see if there was an actual surefire way to kill him.

He was trying to not let that last thought become tempting.

4-7-8.

4-7-8.

“Having a good time, there?”

Bob startled, tucking his hands into his lap. “Not really.”

“Not surprising.” She stepped out of the doorway and around the table, sitting in the seat across from him. “You know, we could probably get you in a much nicer room.”

Room. Ha. He wondered if this blank interrogation room was going to show up in the Void.

Probably.

“I’m sure you could.” He laughed self-deprecatingly. “You know, I think this is considered torture. By the Geneva Convention, or something.”

“Being kept in one room isn’t considered torture.”

“Not the room, the-” he waved his hand at the ceiling. “The lights thing.”

Natasha’s brow furrowed, but she didn’t ask. That was… sort of good. Good because it seemed she didn’t know about that, and Bob didn’t want his own psychological torture tainting Yelena’s image of her sister. Only ‘sort of’ good because that really seems like the type of thing SHIELD should be keeping track of.

“Anyway,” he shrugged, “I’m sure that nicer room is dependent on me giving you intel that I don’t have.”

“It doesn’t have to be an organization. Just a name. A description. Whatever you can give us. I’m sure we could help you a lot more than whoever’s digging into SHIELD secrets.”

“Well, that’s just the problem, isn’t it? No one’s digging into SHIELD secrets.” No one who didn’t have them, anyway. HYDRA hardly had to dig into files that they owned. “And I wasn’t sent.” His hands tightened into fists. “Besides, I’m not sure SHIELD help is much help at all.”

“What do you know about that sort of thing?” Natasha’s voice was cold.

Ava, working as an agent in exchange for a cure that will never come.

“Nothing, I’m sure.” He scoffed. “I wouldn’t know anything about being emotionally manipulated to do something for ‘the greater good’.”

“That seems awfully emotionally charged for someone who doesn't work for anyone.”

Bucky, strapped to a chair and tortured by people with the SHIELD logo emblazoned on their gear.

“I didn’t say that.” Bob made eye contact with Black Widow. Her eyes narrowed. He knew his pupils were rimmed with a pale gold. “I said I wasn’t sent .”

“Gotta say, I’m not seeing too much of a difference.” Natasha’s hand was resting on her gun holster.

Yelena, under chemical subjugation after their agents freed one Black Widow and left the rest.

“Your sister misses you.”

“ Excuse me? ” If looks could kill, Bob would be dead twenty times over. If he could die.

“You wanted proof that I’m not from here, didn’t you?” His head rolled to the side casually. A bit mockingly, if he was honest, but why shouldn’t he be a little condescending? “Your sister misses you.”

“I don’t have a sister.”

“Wow.” He snorted. “For a superspy, that was pretty unconvincing. And do not tell that to her when you see her next. As if Yelena needs further reason to feel out of place.”

And there was a gun trained on him.

“How do you know that name?”

“What, you wanted proof that I know things I shouldn’t, and now that I give it to you, I’m a threat?” Bob leaned towards the barrell. It wouldn’t do anything anyway. Tried and true bulletproof. “Sounds about right.”

Natasha’s grip tightened on the trigger.

“I can have my past thrown in my face,” Bob continued, “But yours are off-limits? Not nice to be reminded of things you’re not proud of, is it?”

He stood up. Natasha’s gun readjusted to be aimed squarely at his face. It feels nice, he thought, to be the threatening one in this situation for once.

His mind conjured up a perfect recreation of Yelena, eyes squeezed tightly shut in one of her Void Rooms, as the Red Room training replays over and over again.

“You could’ve helped her, you know?” He said quietly. “When you got out? You could have helped all of them. But you didn’t. Why didn’t you?”

Natasha shot.

The bullet clinked harmlessly onto the table. Sentry looked down at it, then back up at Black Widow. Her eyes widened to an absurd degree. Her hands shook.

“Ow.” He said blankly.

In a flash, she’s moved to the door, fumbling with the lock behind her back as she kept her body facing towards him. He didn’t make a move towards her, just watching as she slipped out through the smallest crack in the door possible.

The door shut, and he was alone again.

Shit .

He slowly sat again, bunching the fabric of his sweater together in clenched hands.

This wasn’t good.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, keeping his eyes shut tightly, willing the gold to go away. He wasn’t sure which was worse, that he was falling back into the Sentry mindset, or that he was doing it while in an observation room that could be accessed by a Nazi organization that has shown historic interest in subjugating super-powered individuals.

He needed someone there. To drag him down, or pull him up- whichever direction he’d end up going.

He wondered if SHIELD would let him phone a friend.

… Probably not, after the show he just put on.

A few hours later, the lights shut off.

Chapter Text

“Walker, John.”

John stood up, shuffling past the two or three other people in the hallway to make his way into the closed-off office.

This was humiliating.

He had received the note earlier today that psych wanted to talk to him. Not a good sign. John had only ever heard of that happening in situations where the soldier in question had already had a psychotic break.

John had not had a psychotic break.

He was pretty sure.

No, he was definitely sure. His memories were far too lucid to be fake.

Crunch of Lemar’s head. Clang of a bloodied shield. Click of the final door.

He was fine. Obviously.

It was a little extra embarrassing that he couldn’t even convince himself.

He stepped into the office.

It didn’t look like any of the shrink’s offices he had seen on TV, and that was really his only frame of reference- unless he counted the psych eval he did way back when he was recruited. Instead, it just looked like a standard office- a man (a doctor, presumably) behind a desk, already impatiently clicking a pen against a clipboard. An uncomfortable looking chair slightly askew in front of John, presumably from when the last person had gotten up and not bothered to tuck the chair back into its spot.

John sat.

“Walker. Do you know why you’re here?”

“No clue.” He scoffed. “I’ve been doing just fine.”

“I’m sure.” The doctor agreed placatingly. “But we’ve had some reports that you’ve been acting strangely, both in and out of the field. Anything to say about that?”

“I’m not sure how much I could say without knowing what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Let’s keep it civil.” The doctor said, looking at John reproachfully. “In the field, we’ve received complaints of low attention, erratic behavior, and even failed mission objectives?”

John’s grip on the plastic armrests of his chair tightened. “I don’t fail missions.”

“They’re only reports.” The doctor soothed. “And even if they were true, the mission objectives were minor secondary. Hardly even an infraction on your record.”

“Infractions I will not receive,” John pointed out, “because I don’t fail missions.”

Except for that family he let escape. Which, technically, they were a mission objective. But no one had seen that.

Right?

“Nonetheless,” the doctor continued, “your actions off the field are what are most concerning.”

John rolled his eyes, leaning back in his chair. He was starting to get the feeling that this was going to be utterly pointless. “Such as?”

The doctor raised an eyebrow at him, before reaching into a drawer in his desk. He tossed something onto the table. John froze.

His notebook.

His gaze flicked between the doctor and the notebook, stock still. Had he-

“I think three medals of honor is perhaps a bit self-congratulatory.”

He’d read it.

John reached for it, only for it to be snatched up and flipped through carelessly by the doctor. “Now, it’s hardly illegal to be prone to flights of fancy, and if you wish to write self-aggrandizing fiction of yourself becoming Captain America, I suppose you can do that. But I do fear it’s more than that.”

“It’s… fiction.” John said awkwardly, wincing internally. Fleetingly, he wondered if that hit to his pride was actually worth it.

“I don’t think it is.” The doctor shook his head. “The beginning, sure- it could look like that. But then the events themselves start to get concerning. Half of humanity’s destruction?”

John sighed. Sure , he figured. Let’s go full send on aspiring author . “What, so horror authors are all on the edge of committing atrocious acts?”

The doctor gave him a pitying smile. “The death of half of the newly titled Avengers?”

“It’s… unrealistic for all the heroes to live until the end.”

“The death of First Sergeant Hoskins?”

John froze.

Crunch. Clang. Click.

“See, most of the beginning of this notebook indicates an overactive imagination, or perhaps some hero revenge fantasy. The death of First Sergeant Hoskins- that seems like something larger. Following it with your disgrace, with the character representation of you losing everything? You can see why it would be worrying.” The doctor closes the notebook and pushes it across the table, tapping it for good measure. John twitches. He’s not sure what to say to that.

“And that’s not even including the rest,” the doctor continues. “The written plans to actively execute preventative measures against these fictional events?” He raises an eyebrow. “Kill Alexander Pierce, the secretary of defense?” To dethrone HYDRA. “Steal something called ‘the Cosmic Cube’ from U.S. government holdings?” One of the few infinity stones he actually knew the location of. His subsequent plan to bury it as deep as possible in the middle of nowhere wasn’t a fantastic one, but it was better than its whereabouts being documented for Thanos and his lieutenants to find.

Okay, yes. John could see how unhinged his notebook would look to someone who had no idea what he was talking about- or even to someone who did. But in his own defense, he had absolutely no resources, power, or authority in this timeline- and even at his peak in the other one, he was still held to the whims of the US government.

John looked up after the prolonged silence. The doctor was looking at him expectantly. John couldn’t do much more than shrug.

He shook his head. “And it does appear that the reports of you being… for lack of a better word, obsessed with this book are accurate. Combined with your behavior in the field? It doesn’t paint a good picture.”

“It’s… fiction.” John repeated weakly.

“I think you know that wasn’t very convincing.” The doctor closed the notebook and slid it across the table towards John, who grabbed it immediately. “Unfortunately, this is starting to look like debilitating paranoia and PTSD. Including the book? Possible delusions, of grandeur and otherwise.”

John tensed. PTSD . That was one that Bucky had thrown his way often. Not out of malice- honestly, out of anything, it seemed to be out of concern- but one that felt like a slap to the face every time anyway. None of the rest of the pseudo-diagnoses sounded good either, but that one in particular struck a nerve “I do not have-”

“Here’s what we’ll do.” The doctor interrupted smoothly. “How about we send you home for the next two months? You can see your wife, regroup a bit- and when your contract renewal date comes back up, we can redo a standard psych eval and see about getting you back on the field?”

John’s heart dropped to the pit of his stomach. He knew damn well that if he went home, he was forfeiting that promotion. They’d probably let him back, of course, but he’d essentially be starting over again with these sorts of notes on his file.

He also knew damn well that he didn’t actually have a say in this. The doctor was staring at him with steel in his eyes, and, undoubtedly, that damning note was already input in the computer.

The military was efficient like that.

“Right.” He forced a polite smile, pushing down the rage behind his eyes that was threatening to jump across the desk and deck this presumptive doctor. “I’ll be back in two months, then.”

“Yes, see you in two months.” The doctor nodded. “Your flight back to the US is already organized.”

Of course it was.

He stuffed his book in his pocket, making his way out of the office.

At least this way, he might have time to come up and implement better plans to stop the future.

Chapter Text

Admittedly, Ava wasn’t able to help for a lot of the actual science part.

She had done plenty of research on her own the first time around, of course- but that was mostly surrounding her own condition and ways to cure it. She was probably (hopefully) going to be the leading expert on quantum phasing for a long time, but the science behind Ant-Man’s suit, the properties and uses of Pym Particles, the quantum realm itself- those were all a bit out of her depth.

Luckily, she didn’t need to have the expertise. She gave all the information she could recall from the first time around- from the coordinates of Janet’s location last time to the search parameters to the shifting quantum fields- and Bill and Hank descend upon their labs like furious gods. If, in this metaphor, the quantum realm was a mortal that had deigned to take things from those gods. In a way, maybe, it was- Hank had never seemed to recover from the loss of his wife, even when she was back; and of course Bill had taken to Ava like she was his daughter- a relationship she had coveted in the decade after she had been healed when she had enough wherewithal to think .

But their newfound scientific brotherhood often left Ava sitting by herself just outside their labs, clicking endlessly through news articles on a borrowed tablet as she tried to ignore the pain shaking her hands.

At first, her perusal of news articles was in an attempt to remember what had and hadn’t happened yet. Slowly, it turned into tracking down her teammates. Searches on the War on Terror and notable soldiers became searches on old Russian heroes and the (unfortunately short) wikipedia page for the Red Guardian, which then slowly became pages upon pages of unsolved political assassinations.

The FBI definitely had this tablet on a watchlist now.

Did the FBI actually have watchlists? In all her years, from operative to black ops to short-lived superhero, she hadn’t ever actually met any FBI agents. Were the FBI real?

… SHIELD definitely had this tablet on a watchlist now.

There wasn’t a lot there, not that she expected there to be. Part of being a black ops agent was staying completely off paper, even in newspapers- not to mention that HYDRA and Dreykov undoubtedly had sway in what did or did not make the papers.

It was one particular time of her getting frustrated in dead-end leads to the Red Room when a shout of success pulled her away. She clicked off the tablet and peered over her shoulder. Bill was celebrating, arms folded over his head in a mix of disbelief and enthusiasm. Hank Pym was standing, slack-jawed, looking at the holographic screen, a point pinging pleasantly at him.

She stood, half-phasing through the chair she was sitting in on accident, and made her way over to them. She crossed her arms, regarding the ping with something akin to satisfaction. “Found her?”

“This is impossible.” Hank Pym said, probably for the thirtieth time since they’d met- but this time it was a bit breathless with hope, something Ava kindly didn’t mention.

“We didn’t have that line back that you said you had last time,” Bill explained hurriedly, “but you said Janet was still wearing her old Wasp suit, and Hank had that signal memorized. We recreated the search mechanic you explained and used those parameters and-” he tapped at the point- a bit of a silly movement, since the screen wasn’t tangible and he was tapping through it, but Ava kindly didn’t mention that either.

She was practically a saint.

“Can we get to her?”

“We’ve been working on and off on a pod to send down and a suit for the pilot.” Bill nodded. “Hank didn’t want to work too hard on it until we had proof she was down there.”

“This is impossible.” Hank Pym said again.

“Yes, I’m sure.” She leaned forward, putting all her weight on her arms to avoid the particularly hard pang that jolted through her legs. “When can we get down there.”

“We can probably rig up a working version by the end of the night- assuming Hank gets his act together.”

“This is impossible.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow, then. About noon?” Ava pushed away from the desk, adjusting her gloves.

“You’re- you’re leaving? Where are you going? Did you get another mission?”

“Another mission, no- but I am going to go meet with my handler.” She grinned, reaching up and tapping the switch that cued the formation of her helmet. “Quit, maybe. Find a friend, definitely.”

Bill squinted at her. “Don’t take this wrong, but I wasn’t aware you had friends.”

“It’s a new development.” She admitted, glad her embarrassed flush was now covered by her helmet. “Maybe. I suppose we’ll see if we’re still friends when he comes out of the ice.”

“Out of the- who, exactly, are you getting?”

“Someone very dangerous.” She stretched, turning towards the wall in the direction of her debriefing room. “Hopefully not to me.”

She walked through the wall, gasping a bit as she reformed on the other side with a pain in her abdomen. She put a hand over it, as if that would help, striding towards the SHIELD/HYDRA lab. Amusedly, she thought back to the first limo ride with the Thunderbolts, and Alexei’s awkward question regarding if everything always reformed in the same place. She wouldn’t be surprised if one of her ribs or organs had shifted a bit. Hopefully it’d fix itself in her next phase.

The pang of loss hurt almost as much as the physical pain, likely because she didn’t expect it. She didn’t think she’d actually miss her team as much as she was, and yet… their constant presence, annoying as it could be, had also seemed comforting.

Particularly with the phasing pain.

She had been healed, of course, but her weird abilities were hardly an exact science, and sometimes… yeah, things wouldn’t reform quite right. Or her molecules would ‘get sore’ for a lack of a better way to describe it, and using her abilities would make her entire body ache. Not as much as it did now, not constantly like it was now, but certainly unpleasantly. And the few times it had happened in the Tower, someone always found her. And they always sat with her, or got her water, or a heating pad, or whatever else she needed as she tried to fix it.

She veered a bit out of her path to purposefully walk through a bus stop advertisement, breathing a sigh of relief when whatever the problem was reassembled in the correct way.

She was going to get her team back, she decided. Starting, hopefully, with the Winter Soldier.

Chapter Text

Alexei awoke to the sound of his cell door sliding open.

He blinked the sleep out of his eyes, trying to get them to adjust to the dim lighting. There were no clocks nearby, but based on the moonlight streaming through the barred window, it had to be close to the middle of the night.

A heavily armored silhouette was standing in the doorway, a knife hanging by the thigh in a loose grip

Alexei cursed, kicking off the thin sheet from his cot and rolling off the bed into a fighting crouch as best he could. He could feel his own slow reaction time. As much as he wanted to pretend he was still in his prime during his prison days, he was far from being as young and spry as he was during his Red Guardian run- and somehow even farther from the trained consistency he maintained when he became part of the Thunderbolts.

The figure in the doorway lunged while he was still a bit unbalanced. He kicked, trying to sweep their legs out from under them and get them on a level playing field- a move that the attacker easily stepped over. They dropped into a crouch almost quicker than Alexei could follow, pinning the loose prison pant leg to the floor.

He jerked at his leg, summoning a bit of super strength to rip through the fabric and pull his leg free. He took a moment to study the knife in confusion- the floor was concrete, how did they manage to sink the knife in the ground even a little- a moment he couldn’t afford as his attacker rushed him. They took advantage of his imbalanced, twisted position to pin him like that- one knee pressed just under his rib cage and a second dagger poised just over his sternum, right at the sensitive skin at the base of his neck.

He froze.

The attacker leaned over him, breath ghosting over his face as a familiar voice hummed at him judgementally. “Sloppy.”

His brows furrowed. “Родная?”

“My love.” Melina stood, offering a hand to Alexei. “You’re going to be better than that to save our girls.”

“We’re getting them?” His face broke out in a grin as she helped pull him up.

“You’re not the only one who reached out.” She resheathed her dagger in her thigh-holster and moved to retrieve the other one- which, now that he had more than a few seconds to look at, he recognized as the standard issue blade for high-tier Widows, lined with vibranium.

“No?” He straightened his clothes, suddenly aware of exactly how ragged he probably looked. “Who else did?”

She studied him from the corner of her eye, her gaze cold and calculating in that way Alexei used to fall over. The way he still does. “I received a message. Encrypted, no sender identified. But I believe it was from Yelena.”

“‘Lena.” The nickname left his mouth without him really thinking about it. “Is she okay?”

“She is part of the program.” Melina started to make her way out of the cell, and Alexei followed without question. “Like you said. But she asked me to get you.”

She did?

But that didn’t happen before.

Unless… Unless Lena was back too.

All the more reason to get her back.

But, wait- “She asked you?” Alexei repeated, backing Melina as she swept the hallway. “To get me ?” Even when they were part of the Thunderbolts together, Yelena always made it clear that she tolerated him at best. Why would she do that?

“If it was her, then yes. She did.” Melina turned the corner, taking a running start to bringdown a guard with ruthless efficiency and fishing through his pockets for keys. “Just as you asked me to help her.”

He couldn’t help but smile as she unlocked the door, sliding it open with a surprisingly quiet creak despite the rusted hinges. “Are we getting her next?”

“Soon. We have one more task before that.”

“Do we?” He stepped over the guard’s unconscious (possibly dead) body.

“My… project. The one you were speaking of. After we spoke, I began thinking of ways to synthesize a cure of sorts. I don’t believe I’ll need to.” She pulled a phone from one of her pockets, tossing it to him.

He swiped it open. It was already open to the anonymous message.

Seventh Circle. Free Alexei. Red Room. Free the Widows. Free me.

Oksana in Morocco has the cure.

Please, Mom . It was real.

“It was real.” Alexei murmured. That was definitely from Yelena. The family argument and Yelena’s subsequent breakdown at the farm still echoed through a lot of his nightmares. “So we go to Morocco?”

“We got to Morocco.” Melina agreed, swiping a key card through the front door. Alexei’s not sure when she swiped that. Before she got him, most likely. “And then the Red Room.”

She stepped through, holding the door for him. He walked out. Just… walked. Out of a prison that had held him for decades. Through the front door .

Unbelievable.

It was a bit less of an impressive showdown than Natalya and Yelena had orchestrated, but Melina had never been one for theatrics. The quiet prisoner disappearance in the night was much more her style. And, likely, would be covered up- the higher-ups at the Seventh Circle proudly proclaim it to be an impenetrable fortress, they’re not going to put out news that one of the prisoners there disappeared with next to no evidence of struggle. And Melina was too smart to leave behind people who could identify her, and too technologically sound to leave behind video proof. No, there would be no evidence, no fuss. Clean. Like their old missions had been.

Outside, there was a soft breeze. Alexei watched it kick up the snow into soft white clouds, each illuminated by the moonlight. He hadn’t been in the prison again for very long, but he had spent far too long there the first time. It had taught him to appreciate the little things of freedom, when he could.

Melina was already in a waiting helicopter, starting it up. Alexei let out a loud laugh as he swung himself in the back, thinking of the accidental parallels to the first time.

The helicopter lifted off, and Alexei leaned out to watch the prison disappear behind him.

Ah, wait. Shit. That artist never finished his tattoo.

Chapter Text

Bob recognized this guy, and not in a good way.

Unlike Black Widow’s more lithe suit, mostly used for ease of movement (and, undoubtedly, distraction tactics), this guy was in full tactical gear. There was a patch over his shoulder sporting SHIELD’s logo, with the word ‘STRIKE’ arcing overtop it. 

And he was familiar.

Bob squinted, trying to figure out where he recognized this guy as he pulled out the chair opposite him, letting it screeeeech loudly across the floor. He sat, tossing a loaded gun on the table between them. Manspreading.

Ew.

“You know that’s not going to do anything, right?” He nodded towards the gun on the table. “It doesn’t- I don’t… hurt.”

“I’m sure we could figure something out.”

“Wh-” Bob huffed an unsure laugh. “What is this?”

“You know good cop, bad cop? You chased off the good cop. Now you get me.”

“Black Widow was supposed to be the good cop? She shot me.”

“You seem fine to me.”

“He seems fine to me.”

A sharp face entered his view. Rumlow, his mind supplied. Bucky panted, exhausted. In pain. He jerked at the restraints holding him in place.

“Желание.”

Please…

“Ржавый”

Stop.

“Семнадцать”

Rumlow stood up, turning to look at the scientist behind him who was reading from the notebook.

That fucking notebook.

“Give it.” Rumlow tugged it from the scientist, flipping it to read it himself. “Рассвет, Печь, Девять.”

Bucky screamed as electricity coursed through his veins. Again and again and again and again.

“Добросердечный.” Rumlow watched Bucky with malice in his eyes. “Возвращение на Родину.”

Bucky closed his eyes, wishing he could stop thinking. Stop feeling.

“Один.”

The metal arm twitched.

“Товарный вагон.”

The Winter Soldier opened his eyes. 

“Я жду приказов.”

Bob recognized this guy.

He had only accidentally set off Bucky’s Void Rooms once. Bucky hadn’t come near him again for the next two weeks. And he only started coming near again when Yelena had confirmed that Bob had a lot more control. And was a lot more stable.

But the star of the show in that Void Room? That had been this guy.

Rumlow.

“Oh, you-” Bob pointed at Rumlow. “I don’t like you.”

“Aw, why?” He smirked. “We’re just getting to know each other.”

“Yeah but- oh, what were those phrases-” He mentally apologized to Bucky. “Longing. Seventeen. Daybreak. Sorry, I might have the order wrong, I don’t speak Russian.”

Rumlow’s smirk was gone. His hand was resting on the gun.

Stupid. Bob just told him that wouldn’t work.

“What do you know?” Rumlow asked, his voice dark.

“You really want me to say?” Bob’s gaze wandered nonchalantly up to the camera in the corner. “Out loud? I can.”

“ How do you know?” Rumlow corrected.

“You, your whole group? Not so secret anymore.” Bob shrugged. “Haven’t been for awhile, where I’m from. Found out and crushed.”

“Is that a threat, Robert?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Oh, right- you prefer ‘Bob’, don’t you? How… harmless. It doesn’t matter.” Rumlow slammed his hands on the table, looming over Bob. It’d probably be a lot more threatening if Bob’s hands weren’t steady for once. If his eyes weren’t gold again. But they were. So he returned Rumlow’s gaze with a raised eyebrow. “We’re going to find out what you know,” He said lowly, “And we’re going to use it.”

“I’m sure you’ll try.” The corner of Bob’s mouth twitched upwards. “But I think you’ll have some difficulty with that.”

“Considering what you know, you should know it’s our specialty to get information out of supersoldiers.”

“Is that what you’re calling it? ‘Getting information out of’? How PG. And I’m not a supersoldier.” He stood, matching Rumlow. “I’m the Sentry.”

“What sort of name is that?”

“One that means nothing to you yet, I’m sure. But it will.”

He raised a hand to Rumlow, feeling the familiar rush of power flow through his arm. Rumlow froze as the telekinesis took hold of his body. He flicked his wrist up, and the STRIKE agent started floating. A gentle push, and he’s slammed against the wall, cracking the plaster.

Sentry bolted forwards, closing in on Rumlow. Hmm. His loose clothing caused a lot of drag. Slowed him down. He missed his suit.

“I would kill you,” Sentry mused, “but you’re not a threat to me. Neither is your little organization. And lucky for you, I have other business here.” He clenched his fist. Rumlow clawed at the invisible force closing around his neck. “I have people to find. And I don’t really care about everything that happens here. Honestly, I sort of need it to happen the way it did originally. Need the Bob Reynolds of here to end up in a certain medical study in Malaysia. So you… you get a free pass.”

He threw Rumlow across the room, crashing through the two-way mirror. Black Widow and Nick Fury, in the room behind, took shelter from the glass shattering but kept their eyes on Sentry as he floated through the new opening.

He didn’t… feel quite right. His power didn’t fit in his body. He thought he was unaffected by the time travel, but now he wasn’t so sure. His entire body was buzzing, and not in the good way.

He looked down on Rumlow, before glancing between the other two superspies. “I’d lock him up if I were you. I’m not sure how much you heard, but he’s not on your side.”

“And what did we hear, exactly?” Nick Fury asked, remarkably cool for the situation at hand.

Sentry sighed. “Your precious organization is infiltrated by HYDRA, Fury. Has been since World War II.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I’m sure it is.” Sentry said pityingly. His voice sounded a bit far away to his own ears. That probably wasn’t normal.

“What are you?” Black Widow asked, her gun once again trained on him. Honestly. Guns. Again. Do they ever learn?

His eyes flicked over to meet hers, his shoulders rolling back. “I’m the Sentry.” There was a numbness creeping over his limbs. Not the Void kind, but the regular kind- and he watched with a sort of fascination as he lost control of his own body. “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” he said, and promptly passed out.

Chapter Text

His house looked the exact same.

John shouldered his backpack, standing in the middle of the street in front of his house. It looked the exact same . The exact same as when he’d returned after his original mission in Afghanistan, the exact same as when he came back after his failure as Captain America, the exact same as when Olivia left and he had to live in an empty house, empty rooms, empty nursery-

And now he was back. Standing in front of the same house . He could see Olivia’s shadow through the window, flitting about the living room, likely straightening it up to try to stem her anxiety. John hadn’t been able to give her much explanation for why he was returning home early. He didn’t know if he was going to tell her.

Scratch that. He was. He was going to tell her, but he didn’t know how. But he was going to. He had already lost Olivia once, and he wouldn’t do so again if he could help it. He wasn’t going to be keeping secrets from her. If she decided he was crazy and left again then that… that was a bridge he’d cross if he got to it. But even then, that would be her right, her decision. He wasn’t going to take it from her by trying to hide something this big.

He adjusted the backpack strap again. It was digging into his neck. He’d been standing there for ten minutes.

A car honked to his left. He startled and put a hand up in halfhearted apology, jogging up his driveway.

The same house .

He knocked.

There was only a moment of silence before the door was flung open, and he had an armful of his wife as Olivia hugged him so tight he could barely breathe. He returned the favor, burying his face into her neck. Her hair smelled like that sandalwood and citrus shampoo she’d used since high school. He squeezed his eyes shut to try to avoid crying.

He’d missed her.

He hadn’t even realized how much.

They pulled away from each other at the same time. They had always been uncannily in sync like that. It’s part of what made their marriage so strong, even while John had been away. Too many people had been convinced that they wouldn’t last, high school sweethearts that they were. But they did. They’d lasted for much longer than anyone thought. They’d been convinced they were going to prove everyone wrong, outlast them all, still be old and gray and happy together.

And then John had fucked it all up.

Olivia was looking up at him, and gently brushed away a tear that had slipped down John’s face. He sucked in a shuddering breath. He didn’t know when he had started crying, but he was now, full force. She shushed him softly, wiping at his cheek. He leaned into her hand. “Hi.” He made out behind the tears.

“Hi.” She smiled at him. “Come inside, John.”

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “Yeah. I’ve got something important to tell you.”

“You bet your ass you do.” She snapped playfully. “I expect a full run-down of why you’re back early, mister. But it can wait until after a shower. And maybe some cuddling. And maybe tearing apart one of those shitty horror movies with some ice cream.”

“Did you get that vanilla gelato?”

“Just for the occasion.”

Fuck, he’d never deserved her. “Okay. I need to talk to you first, though. Shower, then talk, then maybe some horror movies.” If she didn’t think he was crazy. Or, worse, if she didn’t think he was telling the truth and hate him for it.

“If you insist.”

His shower was long. Methodic. He stood beneath the scalding hot water long enough for it to turn freezing, and for a few minutes after just to soak in the dread of the conversation to come.

When he finally came out, there were neatly folded new clothes waiting for him on the sink- a black tank top, dark blue sweatpants, and an old flannel. His favorite lounge and sleeping outfit, something Olivia had remembered from before he left and deliberately set out for him.

He picked them up and held them to his face, breathing in the scent of the soft lavender detergent Olivia loves. The scent of home. A pang of loss hit him. He hadn’t bought her kind of detergent after she left. Just used the unscented grocery store brand.

He changed, quickly and efficiently, and ventured into the living room. Olivia was sitting on the couch, bundled up in the crochet blanket she kept hanging over the couch. She had gotten the ice cream out, already digging into hers. John’s gelato was sitting with a spoon on top of it on the coffee table.

He grabbed it, sitting away from her in the armchair rather than on the couch. He could see she was confused by that decision, as she pushed up and made to stand, but he held up a hand to stop her. “I’ll move over later, if you want me to, but I… I really should talk to you first.”

“Okay.” She replied uncertainly, leaning back. “What did you want to talk about?”

John reached into the pocket of his sweatpants where he had stashed his little notebook, straight from his backpack. “Okay. I don’t-” he let out a breathless laugh, flipping through the pages. “I don’t even know where to start. I’m… not from here.”

He paused, and Olivia raised an eyebrow at him. “Not from… Georgia?”

He decided to just bite the bullet. “Not from this time.”

Olivia blinked. She turned, balanced her ice cream carefully on the arm of the couch, and turned back to him, folding her hands in her lap. “What.”

“I’ve time traveled. And I know it sounds insane, I kn- hell, clearly the military knows it sounds insane- but I did, and I can explain.”

“Then explain.” Her voice was as cold as steel.

So he does. Tries to give the most concise summary of the next decade as possible. He stumbles when he gets to his own promotion to Captain America, and she moves over to sit on the armrest of his chair. His breath hitches when he talks about Lemar’s death, and she lays the blanket she had been wrapped in across his shoulders. He tears his gaze away from her completely when he talks about the Flag Smasher’s murder, and she retaliates by placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. He finally breaks off, biting at his knuckles to keep from crying, when he gets to their divorce.

It felt more real than ever. Sitting in a room more warm and comfortable than he had found it for years, draped in a homemade blanket, with the warmth of his wife (ex-wife?) by his side. It was more than he deserved. He had made too many mistakes, and lost everyone, and he had deserved it . 

“Well, that can’t be right.” Olivia’s voice came. “I wouldn’t leave.”

“You would. You did.” He shrugged off her hand, forcing himself to stand and pace the space in their living room. “I can’t blame you for it, either. I became a piece of shit. Still am one, this version of me.”

“Mm.” She hummed, neither a denial nor an agreement. “And I’m still here. So what happened next?

Chapter Text

The handler was sitting in the small office, separated from Ava’s containment cell by a thin wall and an overly-pompous desk- one of those types that had a Newton’s swinging cradle and a framed degree, but was otherwise freakishly clean.

Both were pretty easy to phase through so Ava could get within arms reach to yank the open tablet from her handler’s hands.

He startled, clearly not expecting to see her again, and fumbled for a weapon. She snorted at the attempt, stepping through him and catching him in a chokehold as she looked over the tablet. The handler abandoned his gun to instead claw at her arm, trying to free himself. Unfortunately for him, her inconsistent phasing made it pretty difficult to get a good grip- and even if he could get one, frankly, she was a lot stronger than him.

He had been messaging in a group chat. A fucking HYDRA group chat . Every message she  could see was pretty serious, a mix of English and Russian and clearly talking about a ‘glitch’ with ‘the Asset’, but for a moment Ava humorously wondered if she scrolled up high enough if she would find HYDRA-themed memes or copypasta rants about Captain America.

Then she remembered that the ‘asset’ that they were talking about like an inconveniently malfunctioning tool was one of her teammates, and it wasn’t funny anymore.

She tightened her hold, cutting off the handler’s oxygen completely until his eyes rolled back and his body went slack. She dropped him, not caring for the damaging sounding thunk when his head slammed against the edge of the desk on the way down.

Both hands free, she could swipe a lot quicker. She had seen it so many times that it didn’t take long for her to find the familiar-looking interface of the operative files. There was a ‘recents’ tab. She snorted. Good to know that HYDRA used the same file organizations as the standard Windows laptop.

She skimmed the recents. A few were self-explanatory- her own file, at the top, and just below it a mission log for her terminated target. Two entries down, The Asset; проект «Зимний солдат» . She was about to click into it when the file just below it caught her attention.

непроверенная угроза; ‘Bob’ | Robert Reynolds | Sentry.

That was definitely not good. Not only was Bob on HYDRA’s radar, but apparently Sentry had made an appearance.

She could deal with that later. She would need the others for that, she was far from confident in her abilities to pull Bob back by herself. And… maybe she was fine with Sentry running a bit rampant with HYDRA. They deserved it.

She scrolled back up to Bucky’s file and entered it.

The page was long. Most of it was in Russian, which Ava was silently thankful for. After months of living together, most of the team had talked a lot about their past, with the singular exception of Bucky- and after awhile, Ava had gotten the impression that his tight-lipped silence was more for their benefit than his.

She scrolled through it quickly, trying to get to the most recent updates and pretending she didn’t catch a few English words every time the text slowed enough to be legible.

Reprogrammed.

Electrocution.

Retrained.

Red Room.

Mission Complete.

Mission Complete.

Mission Complete.

Mission Complete.

Ava hit the bottom of the page. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, and focused a bit more on what she could read.

Bits and pieces were still in Russian. A few parts were redacted, which Ava found to be a bit ridiculous considering these were their official files, but she supposed she couldn’t blame them too much. Clearly they weren’t very secure.

миссия 3047; цель [REDACT]

Mission incomplete; недостаточность of programming; fault [REDACT] . Asset снова на льду, Cryo 21; Berlin. Mission returned to [REDACT] , reassignment pending.

найти упомянутое - паук, призрак, старожил, новый парень, засранец.

Ava pressed her lips together, trying to decide whether she did or did not regret never learning Russian. The snippets she could understand didn’t sound great- incomplete mission, fault, cryo.

But most importantly, for once in her life, she had gotten exceedingly lucky- the one part that she actually needed was in English. Cryo 21, Berlin.

She dug her own phone out of her pocket, snapping a picture of the end paragraph of the file. Maybe she could pick up an English to Russian dictionary and puzzle out the rest of it on her flight to Berlin.

Probably not. That sounded like a lot of work that she frankly didn’t have to do. Clearly something had happened, probably her Bucky’s return to 2012, that disrupted the Winter Soldier programming. And while she may have to figure out how to pull him out of cryogenic freezing, she didn’t see any mention of when he would be pulled out and fully reprogrammed again.

Unless that part was in that fully Russian sentence at the end.

She cursed softly, resigning herself to finding a book store or something to pilfer from on her way to the airport. She’d probably just phase onto a plane already leaving for Berlin- there had to be one , it was a pretty major city- and camp out in an abandoned seat or something.

The tablet pinged. She eyed the notification from the HYDRA group chat.

Sentry aware of HYDRA . Terminate threat .

Ah, fuck. Now she had to figure out a way to get HYDRA off of Bob’s back, too. She had to do everything around here.

Well, there was a pretty quick way to do that. She tapped out a response.

Files compromised. Agent 836; Codename: Ghost gone rogue.

There were several pings after that. The first part of her message clearly caused some sort of panic.

Full report. How do you know the files were compromised?

Ava laughed, raising the tablet and positioning it so the newly opened camera caught her- peace sign doubled over itself mid-phase and her tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth- and the unconscious handler crumpled behind her.

Hm. Decent picture. She’d send it to herself except that would absolutely be problematic for her digital trail. She was already going to have to leave behind the containment suit, there’s absolutely trackers in it somewhere.

She sent it to the group chat instead, laughing even harder as several more messages came through in rapid succession, all completely in Russian. Then, for good measure, she turned and slammed the tablet against the edge of the desk as hard as she could. The screen shattered, littering glass over the unconscious handler and his perfectly clean desk.

She could see its wires. That was pretty convincing that they weren’t going to be accessing that any time soon. Certainly not fast enough to stop her.

She stepped back through the desk and thin wall, quickly shucking her suit and laying it over a chair in her quantum containment room. 

Her body screamed in protest, and a particularly hard jolt had her shaking one of her arms out as she stood again, snagging an extra sweater and pulling it over her head. She inhaled deeply. closing her eyes and steeling herself to calm down the phasing.

On second thought, maybe she wouldn’t be able to take a seat on that plane. Surely the flight attendants would have some questions about the half-mirage woman with no ticket. Maybe she could camp out in the luggage area or something. Or the bathroom.

She flipped her hair over the collar of the sweater. “Alright,” she muttered out loud to herself, opening her phone once more to pull up her Maps app. “Bookstore, then Berlin.”

Chapter Text

Melina took them straight to Morocco on the helicopter, which was fantastically efficient of her. Nothing less than Alexei would expect, of course. They didn’t know how long this ‘Oksana’ was going to be there, and if she truly had the cure… it would be a very helpful shortcut for him to get his daughter back.

..Daughters?

He hadn’t really had the time to sit and consider what it meant that Natalya was still alive, here. He thinks, perhaps, that he’s avoiding it on purpose. He doesn’t want to think of the implications, there. That the last thing Natalya remembered of him was the day he gave her back to the Red Room. The day he doomed Yelena to it.

He and Yelena had talked about it, when they were part of the Thunderbolts. It had been a complicated discussion. Yelena hated him for it, struggling to coincide that hatred with his being the only father figure she had ever known. Alexei hadn’t been able to claim ignorance to what the Red Room was- he may not have known the extent of the training, but he knew enough of the basics to know he shouldn’t have handed them over. But he did. In his own desperate bid to keep his power and fame in a white-knuckled grip, not realizing that what he was holding on to had already turned to ash. That he had traded his daughters for that ash.

That conversation had made him distinctly grateful for every second Yelena deigned to spend with him. For the few months between their reunion, the creation of the Thunderbolts, and this time travel mishap, he had spent every moment trying to apologize and make up for what he greatly considered to be the biggest mistake of his life.

With the singular exception of the year after Natalya’s death. Because Natalya… they never had the familial bond, not like he and Yelena had. Natalya knew it was fake. She may have bonded with Yelena in protective streak she never outgrew, but she had always been curt with Melina and Alexei. She knew they weren’t a true family. She knew they were working with the Red Room, even if they weren’t directly in it (anymore, in Melina’s case). And she knew she was going back. Natalya only ever had the hatred, deep in her, and Alexei had never been able to make up for it in any way that mattered. She got the help from him that he needed to bring the Red Room down, and they never spoke again.

He hoped he could apologize to he properly, this time. Take down the Red Room, bring her Yelena, and tell her he regretted his actions. He held out no such hope that she would forgive him, or that they could have a relationship. He had burned that bridge a long time ago.

… Although he did hope Yelena knew he was different, now. He hoped Yelena knew he was coming for her.

He was drawn out of his thoughts by a hand on his shoulder. He looked up, giving his best reassuring smile to Melina’s concerned face. He imagined she didn’t know what to think. The Alexei she knew was brash and assured and talkative. He wouldn’t sit, quiet, for hours on a helicopter ride, staring into nothing as he thought. He would rejoice his freedom to the world.

But the Alexei she knew hadn’t lost one daughter and almost lost the second.

The Alexei she knew didn’t have daughters at all.

“We’re here,” she murmured, patting his shoulder and moving past him. “I have an idea to where Oksana may be.”

“You do?” He stood quickly, reaching up to grab at a preprepared equipment bag from the overhead net.

“There are five standard Widow safehouses in Morocco,” Melina pulled up a map on her tablet. “None of which she would go for, if she were smart and truly out of the system. But there are two decommissioned safehouses- both would be familiar enough to recuperate in while being unlikely to run into active Widows. One was destroyed, the other merely compromised.”

“Ah,” Alexei nodded, regarding the two pinned coordinates on the map. “And we are at the destroyed safehouse.”

Melina smiled up at him. “Very good.”

She left him to get changed into more tactical gear. Not his Red Guardian outfit, unfortunately- he would have a soft spot for that as long as he lived, and was slowly working to redefine the name with the Thunderbolts. But she would not have brought it- they needed to be under the radar for the time being, until the inevitable manhunt for him died down. 

He changed quickly into the solid black, bulletproof gear and joined her outside.

Destroyed was perhaps too light of a word for the safehouse.

Obliterated was more like it.

They picked over rubble, Alexei following Melina’s sure steps. It appeared as if the place had been blown up from the inside, the building collapsed on itself to create mound of debris and strange pockets where the load-bearing walls had managed to hold up the roofs to create small spaces, now underground, that were somewhat safe to shelter in.

And it was one small space where they found Oksana.

She was dressed in Widow gear, still, although the logo patches that adorned the shoulders of this particular uniform had been ripped off- roughly, if the leftover hanging strings of thread were any sign.

She was nursing what looked like a bullet wound on her thigh, but snapped to attention to line her gun up to Melina the second they were in eyesight. The barrel wavered momentarily to Alexei when he stepped into view, but solidified on Melina.

Fair. She was the bigger threat. Didn’t stop him from huffing incredulously, though- something Melina eyed him humorously for.

“Who are you?” Oksana asked, her voice sharp with uncertainty. “What do you want?”

“I am Melina,” she said softly, raising her hand in a clearly choreographed move to gesture to herself and then Alexei, “he is Alexei. We would like your help, if you would give it.”

The gun didn’t waver. “With?”

“The Red Dust,” Alexei cut in. “We have heard you have it. We would like a vial.”

“The Red Dust.” Oksana repeated flatly. “Now why are you looking for that? What makes you think I have it?”

“If you did not, I think you would have attacked me already.” Alexei chuckled. “Dreykov surely has caught wind of my escape by now, I would not be surprised if he sent people after me.”

Melina tilted her head thoughtfully. “Sent people, perhaps not. I do not think he considers you enough of a threat. But sent an alert, certainly.”

“Эй!” Alexei gasped dramatically.

“Dreykov,” Oksana interrupted their banter carefully. “You’re against him?”

Melina looked a bit pained by this. “I am now.”

Oksana raised an eyebrow expectantly at Alexei until he nodded his own confirmation. Her gun slowly lowered. “And you want Red Dust. Why?”

Alexei exchanged a look with Melina. “Dreykov has one of our daughters,” he said as simply as he could. “We are going to get her back.”

Chapter Text

Bob woke up in an unfamiliar room.

For a second, it’s so uncomfortably unfamiliar that he almost expected Valentina’s voice to start talking in his ear.

But no. This room wasn’t nearly manipulatively comfy enough for it to be Valentina.

The interrogation room was gone. This time, he woke up in something much closer to a cell. It looked almost like a sci-fi movie space pod, with a restraining chair in the center. All sides were glass- reinforced, if he had to guess. The room outside of the pod had a lot more cameras than the pitiful one from the interrogation room. Other than a single figure in the middle of the room, it was empty.

The single figure was wearing a familiar red, white, and blue. Holding a very familiar shield in a protective position in front of himself.

At first, when the sleep was still in his eyes, Bob muttered an unsure “Walker?”.

The figure didn’t respond to that. His vision cleared, and he sighed.

“Captain America.” Bob acknowledged, letting out a low groan. His head was killing him.

Cap nodded at him. “Sentry. Who’s Walker?”

“No, no. Not Sentry. Sorry.” Bob shook his head. “Trying, anyway. To not be Sentry. Sorry. Walker is… someone I know.”

“Anyone we need to be worried about?”

“I doubt it. I don’t think he’d come near any of the Avengers with a ten foot pole, if he could help it. Especially not you.”

Captain America frowned. “I feel like I should be taking offense to that.”

“Don’t. I’m pretty sure he idolizes you. Don’t tell him I said that.” Bob blinked hard. The headache was going away, but incredibly unfortunately it was being replaced by a growing impending feeling of dread. “Hey, I know this is an absolutely absurd thing to ask, but can I phone a friend?”

Captain America shifted his shield a bit away from his center. That was nice. Trusting. Bob wasn’t entirely sure he deserved it. “What?” He sounded incredulous.

“I get- sorry-” he gestured towards his head the best he could with the restraints. “I get these highs, sometimes, you know? Feel invincible. Powerful.” He chuckled. “And then when I got these… medically induced super powers? Not like yours, not super serum, just… something. Some study. I don’t remember. And my highs, they become Sentry. I have the powers all the time, technically, but if I use them, they feed into it. He’s not… separate, not really, but he also is. It’s hard to explain. But I’m… I’m okay now. I think. Better. Normal.”

“This is normal for you?” Captain America seemed to not be able to stop himself from saying it out loud, although, to his credit, he did look like he felt bad right after he said it.

“Yeah.” He huffed. “Yeah, this is normal. But uh… after. After the high, after Sentry, I get low. Really low. And that…” He looks up to carefully make eye contact with the original Captain America. “That comes with its own problems.”

“Is this related to that thing you said earlier, in the tower? ‘Voiding’ us?”

“You’re quick. Yeah, that’s the one. The Void.” He tips his head back, gently hitting it against the chair’s headrest. “And I know you think Sentry was pretty bad, but the lows, the Void, he’s worse.”

“So you want to phone a friend?”

“Ideally. I have a few friends, they help… even me out. Pull me back.”

“And why would we trust you about that? Why would we bring a known superpowered individual an unknown ‘friend’, who could probably help break him out of prison?”

“I’m not entirely sure if this is actually comforting or not, but I’m pretty sure you’ve seen what Sentry… what I can do. If I wanted to break out, I don’t think this could stop me.” He nodded towards the reinforced glass. “And you can do… a background check, or whatever. Just… please.”

Captain America took a few steps forwards, analyzing Bob through the panes of glass. Bob tried to look as normal and nonthreatening as possible. Hopefully, it was working. Ava had said before that Bob’s ‘permanent state was adorably pathetic’. A bit rude, but not necessarily untrue, and working in his favor in this particular situation.

“Who are you looking for?”

And wasn’t that just the question.

Yelena would be preferable. She had been the most consistent, steadying rock for him. But she had her own ties to Natasha that would make her difficult to ask after- not to mention that, at this time, she was probably still with the Red Room. And weren’t they chemically subjugated there, too? If she came, there was a pretty high chance she wouldn’t be herself.

His next selection would probably be Bucky. But he was the Winter Soldier right now. And he wasn’t sure what was worse, asking SHIELD to see the Winter Soldier or asking Steve Rogers to see Bucky Barnes.

Ava. A secret operative he shouldn’t know about. He’s probably already let the cat out of the bag on the whole ‘knowing things he shouldn’t’ bit, but, if he’s got his timing right, Ava’s phasing hasn’t even been healed yet. She’s got her own problems. He couldn’t ask for her.

Alexei. A Russian operative, also connected to the Red Room. Currently in prison. Also, another one that would be bad to ask for with Natasha so close to the situation.

Christ.

Alright.

Bob looked up at Captain America, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. “Captain John Walker, U.S. Military.”

“The Walker we were just talking about? The one who wouldn’t come near the Avengers with a ten foot pole?”

“Yeah. He… I think he’ll come. Hope he’ll come. Just… ask if he knows me? And if he does, tell him that Sentry made an appearance. He’ll know what that means. He’ll come.” At this point, Bob wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince Captain America or himself.

The super soldier’s expression flickered between confusion, deep thought, and doubt, but settled quickly on that typical noble determination. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Chapter Text

All things considered, Olivia was taking this shockingly well.

The concept of time travel at all had been a hurdle to get over, but once John proved he was telling the truth (a combination of how serious he was being about it, minor secrets like what she wanted to name their firstborn, and absurd events he couldn’t possibly be making up) she took the possible future with optimism.

Which John was especially surprised by, because it seemed awfully dire to him.

But Olivia, as she was wont to do, focused on the positives rather than the negatives. John’s promotions and achievements in the military eventually landing him the title of Captain America. The promise that eventually, no matter how bad it looked (and the blip looked pretty bad), things would be okay for humanity overall. The existence of their son.

His friends.

John’s friends were a big one, for her. He had hesitated calling them that, when talking about them, but ‘various group of goal-aligned vigilantes (and Bob) who bonded over attempted murder’ was probably even more difficult to explain. So he went with friends, uncertainly. Teammates, more confidently, but she latched on to that first descriptor with a ferocity. Likely because, besides her and Lemar. he had never really been one for friends. He was popular in high school, don’t get him wrong, but people knowing you and people being friends with you were two different circles.

“Where are your friends now? I want to meet them!”

“They-” He blinked. “I don’t know, actually. I don’t know if they’ll even know me, I have no idea who traveled back or how. And even if I did want to find them again, I don’t know where any of them are.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, judgmental. “How could you possibly not know where any of your friends were?”

“One is practically a legend, three are secret black ops agents of some kind, one is probably somewhere in Russia, and one didn’t even remember where he was for a lot of his past to be able to tell me.”

She paused. “You’ve got me there. Is there any way to find them?”

Which is how they ended up, two days later, with a giant corkboard, blurry photos, newspaper clippings, and red string.

It had become something of a bonding project. Olivia would come home from her job, they would eat dinner, watch a horrible movie, and they would work on their conspiracy board. There weren’t any actual conspiracies on it, unincluding the true one about the Winter Soldier’s existence, but Olivia had gotten the idea from one of the cop shows she watches regularly, and it had snowballed from there.

John pinned up a screenshot of a frame from an old Red Guardian propaganda commercial. The only good thing about Alexei’s superhero days, by John’s opinion, is that he was the only Thunderbolt that they could get clear images of. He unraveled a bit of string, wrapping it from the photo to the piece of printer paper that they had written ‘ALEXEI’ on in red permanent marker.

“Black Widow, Black Widow- every reference in the news is to specifically the one from New York!” Olivia let out a frustrated huff behind him.

“The only public one?” He asked. “Besides the singular public Black Widow, the shadow organization pulling government strings behind the scenes isn’t mentioned in the news? Shocking.”

Olivia threw a pillow at him, nailing him in the shoulder with a soft bap . “Shut up.”

“No, no, this is incredible. World-altering. Life-changing. The secret organization is secret? Stop the presses.” He turned, smiling at her over his shoulder. “Not that they were printing news about them, anyway.”

“I’ll kill you.” Olivia stated matter-of-factly.

“You could certainly try.”

“Not now. Just eventually. One day we’ll be watching a movie and sharing a drink, but you won’t know that yours is poisoned.”

“Aren’t we sharing it? Wouldn’t yours also be poisoned?”

“Murder-suicide, then.” Olivia corrected without hesitation.

The two managed to hold it together for all of four seconds before John cracked a grin, and the two were laughing so hard that Olivia had to lean over from her seat on the couch and John had to get off the chair he was standing on for danger of falling.

It was then that the doorbell rang, and John, still slightly stumbling from laughter, went to open it.

And outside was Hawkeye.

John sobered immediately, standing at attention automatically. From behind him, he softly heard Olivia mutter “oh, holy shit.”

“First Lieutenant John Walker?” Clint Barton asked, although it seemed more out of formality than question.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to come with me.”

“Oh.” John’s gaze slid over to look at Olivia, her expression mirroring his own felt confusion. “Am I in trouble for something?”

“Unclear.” Barton stated. “But we have someone in custody asking for you.”

“Someone in custody?” Olivia gasped.

“Asking for me ?” John clarified.

“Yes, on both accounts. Do you…” Barton sighed, sounding like he’s lived three thousand lifetimes compared to John’s meager two. “Do you know a Bob?”

“Bob?” Olivia repeated, looking back to their conspiracy board, which had a space for any Bob updates, but so far had only been graced with a singular sticky note labelled ‘OXE?’

“Bob.” John echoed. “Bob’s asking for me?”

“Yes.” Barton studied John, and John suddenly felt distinctly vulnerable, like the agent could read every weakness, insecurity, and doubt with one glance. “He told us to tell you he ‘went Sentry’.”

John’s blood ran cold, remembering the screech of his shield folded like putty and the team defeated and reprimanded like they were nothing.

“Shit.” He reached over to the coat rack, shrugging on a jean jacket as he sent Olivia an apologetic look. She just nodded at him- he had told her what happened with Bob, and she knew what ‘going Sentry’ meant as well as he did. He stepped out towards Barton, who looked thoroughly confused that it was that easy. “Let’s go then.”

Chapter Text

Ava did end up having to stash away in the cargo hold, curled up in an uncomfortably small space and using her phone flash light to flip through a russian dictionary. She had originally tried to hide away in a bathroom, which wasn’t better in terms of smell but was in space. But it only took one impatient man unwilling to wait for the other bathroom to open before a flight attendant came with a master key, and Ava phased down into the cargo hold before she got caught trespassing.

On a brighter note, the notes from Bucky’s file definitely confirmed that he remembered.

найти упомянутое - паук, призрак, старожил, новый парень, засранец .

Find mentioned - spider, ghost, old-timer, new guy, asshole.

Yelena, Ava herself, Alexei, Bob, and Walker. Bucky had returned to 2012 and apparently immediately asked after them- luckily, seemingly, with enough wherewithal to use nicknames instead of dropping their full legal names in the middle of a HYDRA base.

And he had gotten cryo-freezed for it.

A cryo-freeze she was now standing in front of.

The HYDRA base had been unsettlingly empty. And honestly, she had gotten completely lucky in finding it. She had touched down in Berlin before it had even occurred too her that she didn’t exactly know where she was going beyond the city. It took about four minutes of regretting smashing that tablet before an unknown number pinged her phone. It was unsigned, uncaptioned- just a coordinates link for the middle of nowhere.

So she went.

Okay, sure, maybe not her smartest move. Going to random addresses based on absolutely nothing is a quick way to get killed- especially for a black ops specialist, and especially for one who just put a giant HYDRA target on her back.

Except…

“I do not really do ‘texting’.”

“You don’t do… texting?” Ava raised an eyebrow at Yelena, who was holding a brand new phone the same way one might handle a potentially radioactive material.

“The Red Room was not exactly a proponent of friendly communication.”

“You can’t bring up the Red Room as an excuse for everything.”

“Why not?”

“We all have childhood trauma,” Walker yelled from the kitchen. “Get over it!”

“You cannot be the one to tell me that, Walker!” Yelena yelled back. “You do not have childhood trauma! You were on the football team!”

Both snickered at the disgruntled noises coming from the kitchen, and Ava moved closer to snag the phone from Yelena’s hand. “You don’t need to become internet-savvy overnight, Yelena. I just need you to stop breaking and entering into my room every time you want to ask me something. Just text me, like a normal person.”

“‘No breaking and entering’, says the one who walks through locked doors. Many hypocrites today,” Yelena hummed. “Okay, show me the basics.”

Yelena’s texts had always been short and to-the-point since. Things like ‘help’ or ‘kitchen’ or ‘Alexei on his way’- messages that would have given her a heart attack from someone normal, but from Yelena they typically just meant she wanted a sparring partner or couldn’t reach something in the kitchen or, of course, to abandon the room she was in because Alexei was on his way with more tales of his Red Guardian days.

There was no proof that this text was from Yelena, but she didn’t have any other leads and she knew she was skilled enough to make it out of whatever trap she may get herself into.

Not that she needed that skill, apparently, since the HYDRA base was empty.

Which left Ava standing in front of a cryo tube, the silhouette of the Winter Soldier barely visible against the mildewed, foggy glass.

She tapped through the control panel stationed to its side. This one, luckily, was in German rather than Russian- a language that she could speak bits and piece of thanks to her training. Enough to find the ‘abbrechen’ button and pray that ‘cancel’ meant ‘cancel the freezing program’ and not ‘cancel this guy’s life’.

The seam at the bottom of the cryo tube hissed as the lock disengaged, and the glass raised slowly. Ava huffed out an annoyed breath, stepping away from the control panel. It was as if the glass was rising slowly on purpose to raise the tension. As if she wasn’t tense enough from the time travel and HYDRA and her phasing and everything-

The glass halted at a 90 degree angle, the overhead light in the tube flickered off, and the body inside dropped like a ragdoll. He hit the ground hard, his limbs splaying out in awkward, painful-looking positions.

“Shit,” Ava darted forward, reaching out to help him up- only to stop abruptly when the body shuddered and an arm jolted up to brace against the floor.

“Um… Bucky?” Ava asked hesitantly. There was no response, but he braced up his other arm and slowly pushed, raising himself into a slightly more dignified crouch.

His breathing was labored. Ava found her own breath catching in her throat. She had never known about the Winter Soldier beyond the standard stories most of the public got- and the aftermath and nightmares from Bucky. She knew, logically, that it had to be bad - but bad didn’t even come close to covering it.

The underarmor he had been frozen in was still more tactical gear than anything else, with a dozen empty holsters at his hips, thighs, back… practically everywhere. They were all empty- assumedly, Ava assumed with a grimace, for the handlers’ protection rather than Bucky’s. Wouldn’t want a confused assassin lashing out, armed, before being reprogrammed . He was still shivering from the cryogenic freezing, and hadn’t actually lifted himself any further than a one-kneed crouch. She could see one eye peering out from behind stringy, unwashed locks of hair. He wasn’t looking anywhere in particular, his gaze glassy and unseeing. He was pale and guant, and HYDRA’s specialty half-mask half-muzzle was affixed to his face.

She took an unsure step back, and his eyes swiveled to lock on her immediately. At least he seemed to be somewhat cognizant.

He still didn’t say anything, and not even a flicker of recognition sparked behind those eyes.

“...Bucky?”

Chapter Text

миссия…

миссия…

Where is he?

миссия…

Why can’t he remember anything?

какова моя миссия?

Where are his-

миссия…

Where are his teammates?

Where are-

Oh.

He was on the floor.

The Asse- Buc- J-

He was not supposed to be on the floor.

He pushed himself upwards, shifting his weight back into his standard crouch.

Any minute now, hands would grab his forearms. Pull him upwards. Pull him forwards. To the chair.

перепрограммировать.

перепрограммировать.

перепрограммировать.

какова моя миссия?

Nothing touched him. He’s sure his brow would furrow in confusion if he had enough muscle control to do so. If every bit of energy wasn’t spent shivering, trying to regain his body heat.

Something moved.

His eyes darted upwards on instinct, making eye contact with the scien- handl- teamma- other person in the room.

Fingers twitching. Chin tilted up. Body weight shifting. She was apprehensive. Why?

обработчик?

цель?

“...Bucky?” She asked.

Bucky…

Was that who he was?

это был тот, кем он был раньше?

Теперь он никто.

Just the Asset.

The Soldier.

“Bucky, are you in there?” She moved forwards. He forced himself not to move back on instinct.

That wasn’t allowed.

He wasn’t allowed to move back.

She wouldn’t hurt him anyway.

она бы?

Of course she wouldn’t.

She’s…

Who is she?

She was looking at him critically. She scanned him the same way he often scanned targets; a precise catelogue of body movement and microexpressions.

She wouldn’t find anything. Emotion had been trained out of The Soldier.

She’d find anything there was to find. Ava was as good at reading people as the Asset had ever trained to be.

Ava .

The name hit him like lightning. His eyes widened, just a fraction. He knew she caught it.

“You are in there, aren’t you?” Her mouth pressed into a thin line. Worry. Irritation. Realization. “You just can’t come out. Can you?”

That was a question. Directed at him, clearly, not Bucky. Directed at the Soldier, the Asset. At him.

He was supposed to answer direct questions.

But it was a nonsensical question. What does she mean, he can’t come out? He’s right here.

… верно?

He found himself shaking his head minutely. He didn’t think he did it on purpose.

Ava . He latched on to her name. He knew her, he just didn’t remember how yet.

Nothing beyond flashes of sarcastic smiles and stepping through walls to avoid conversations and punching Walker on the shoulder-

Walker . That was another name. That… that wasn’t a name he liked. Not the same rage-hate-fear that discolored the memories of his Handlers, but a lighter disappointment-annoyance-aggravation.

That was two names.

The Asset didn’t usually remember names.

He wouldn’t mention it unless she asked. Remembering things that he wasn’t supposed to was a surefire way to end up back in the chair.

перепрограммировать?

No.

She wouldn’t. Ava wouldn’t. She wasn’t like them. The memories associated with Ava were warm, and bright, and…

безопасная?

Memories hadn’t felt like that in a long time.

She leaned back.

Ava . Ava leaned back. Her expression hardened to something more reminiscent of his Handlers. He would have flinched back if he was still capable.

“солдат.” Her voice was firm, authoritative. Her pronunciation was a little off. He felt himself snap to attention anyway.

“Come… uh, come with me. Follow.” She gestured as well, which he found dimly amusing. As if he didn’t speak English. He responded to English earlier, didn’t he? And there were few languages he didn’t speak now, since the…

перепрограммировать.

перепрограммировать.

какова моя миссия?

У меня должна быть миссия.

He had a mission. One right now, just given. Follow. He could follow.

He wanted to follow. Ava felt familiar. Ava was…

безопасный?

Safe.

He followed.

Ava flitted around the base with the restless energy of one who either didn’t know much about the space or didn’t know what they were looking for.

It’s both.

He stands in the middle of the base, watching her move about from the corner of his eye. He was going to follow her. He should follow her. He’s frozen. In front of the chair.

The chair that-

перепрограммировать.

перепрограммировать.

His body was wracked with tremors. He was still shivering, so they mixed together. She couldn’t tell.

The Asset had the emotions trained out of him.

He wasn’t the Asset.

Not really.

He didn’t know what he was.

He knew he felt fear.

He said he would never have to sit in the chair again.

Who did?

Я с тобой до конца.

It was just out of reach.

Ava threw something at him, and he caught it on instinct. Bundled up leather.

He straightened it. A jacket. Plain. One of the few in the compound that didn’t have the HYDRA logo, if he had to guess.

He glanced back up at Ava. She was looking at him expectantly.

Right. He could extrapolate. He put the jacket on.

It stopped the shivers but not the tremors. He was tilted away from the chair now, but his back wasn’t to it. He wouldn’t.

If he was going to be put back, it wasn’t going to be by surprise.

Ava nodded approvingly, and made the same follow me gesture as she moved to the exit.

He skirted around the chair, only turning his back to it at the very last moment. When he absolutely had to.

The large metal door slid shut behind him immediately, and he felt his muscles untense.

He regarded Ava, who was now standing with her hands on her hips and observing the forest around them like it had personally offended her.

She turned back to him, startling a bit when she noticed his gaze. “Ah- I don’t suppose you know your way back to the airport?”

He tilted his head. Was that an order? It wasn’t really a question. He wasn’t sure what to do, so he stayed still.

“Figures.” Ava huffed, pulling out a phone and tapping at it hurriedly. “I guess we’ll just… walk in a direction? Until I get a signal, at least.”

She promptly started moving, and his body kicked in to the follow order before he could even realize. She truly had just picked a direction, apparently- if she was looking for the airport, the quickest way as actually about 17 degrees east from the way they were actually going.

He wasn’t going to mention it.

A smirk tugged at his lips- more emotion than he had been allowed to show for-

70 years?

Longer?

He was allowed to show emotion now. He had been for awhile, he-

Ava wasn’t looking back, trusting him to follow.

And he was.

He wasn’t shivering anymore, either. From cold or fear.

“спасибо, призрак.”

Chapter Text

Oksana was very helpful once they managed to convince her that their true goal was the decimation of the Red Room. A more far off goal, perhaps, since Melina was still a bit uncertain on the betrayal of Dreykov at all, and Alexei had no idea how long he would be back in time- but one they intended to start, regardless.

It didn’t change the countdown they all felt pressing on their backs. While Alexei had more of an abstract timeline, they all were aware that Dreykov had eyes and ears everywhere. As low priority as he may be (a concept that Alexei still found offensive), the general would inevitably learn of Alexei’s escape. He likely already knew of Melina’s unofficial defection. Oksana had been a thorn in his side for a few weeks now, managing to either dodge or free any Widow sent after her. They all had targets on their backs, and each needed to complete their mission before it became a sightline.

Oksana didn’t have very many vials of the Red Dust. She only had received a dozen or so from the Widow who freed her, and had used up eight so far in attempts to free her sisters (only six had succeeded, she had informed them gravely, and only four survived). Lucky for them, they only really needed two for their plan.

Melina took one, and would disappear back to her barn. Check back in with Drekov, make an excuse for her absence, likely get punished to some extent for her failings but return to his good graces for the most part. There, she would maintain the illusion of continuing her research while secretly deconstructing, recreating, and manufacturing more Red Dust. Ideally, she would gain enough rapport with Dreykov to gain access to the locations of more Widows. If not, she thinks she could get close enough to at least free his daughter. If Alexei remembered his daughter’s stories and his own brief run-in with her correctly, Antonia Dreykov would be all too willing to help them take him down.

Oksana would take whatever Red Dust vials were left and would create a distraction of some sort- perhaps intercept a nearby Widow mission or two, begin actively chasing down and freeing Widows as opposed to only doing so in defense. She also agreed to be pinned as the main reason Melina disappeared. They had fabricated a story of Oksana attempting to free Melina from the mind control, only to discover Melina was helping of her own free will- where Melina then attacked her and escaped back. It would likely only make the target on Oksana’s back worse, but she was accepting of her role of ‘distraction’ in this infiltration.

They didn’t have Natalya this time. The half-frontal assault wouldn’t work again. They’d have to turn Dreykov’s network of spies against him, one by one.

Alexei, meanwhile, was taking the other vial of Red Dust. He was to chase down and free Yelena, and the two were to go to New York. Technically, Alexei wasn’t lying when he said his plans were to reveal the continuation of the Red Room to Natalya and recruit her in helping them take it down. He was just also not mentioning his own motivations- not only to see Natalya again, but to see if she could help with the time travel debacle.

The original Avengers time-travelled at some point, didn’t they? He felt like he remembered that being established.

He didn’t remember a whole lot during that time period.

Yelena gone, dusted, for five years. Getting her back only to learn that Natalya had died days earlier. Yelena dead. Natalya dead. Yelena back, but they weren’t talking .

He had been… on the run. Very busy.

Unfortunately, it was very difficult to keep his mind from wandering back to those years while he sat in the destroyed safehouse, essentially twiddling his thumbs while he waited for Oksana and Melina to complete the first parts of their missions first. Melina was supposed to get her ‘in’ back with Dreykov, and then find and send Yelena’s location. It was the best plan that they could come up with for finding her, since Black Widows were, by design, impossible to track- but it left Alexei with nothing to do. Except sit.

At first, her tried to convince them that he could help Oksana with undercover sabtatoges, but they both shot him down almost immediately. Apparently he ‘wasn’t subtle’ and ‘couldn’t stay below the radar for the life of him’, which he thought was a bit presumptive. Especially coming from Melina, who he had been on an actual undercover mission with. Although that had been awhile ago. And that had been before prison, where he had put up a bit of a boastful, slightly stupid personality in an attempt to ward off both those trying to ally with him and take advantage of him.

It had been useful in the years following prison too, in the first timeline. Sad about Natalya? Missing Yelena? Yearning for Melina? Unhappy with his life? No, he couldn’t be! He was so busy with his limo business and replaying tapes of his Red Guardian days and recollecting his old Russian memorabilia and…

So what if it was a coping mechanism he had never quite figured out how to shake? The Thunderbolts hadn’t seemed to mind. They liked his homemade commemorative T-Shirts. Sometimes Bob even wore them. And Ava’s always ended up in the laundry, although he never actually got her wearing it…

Day one. Day two. Day three. Alexei was growing bored pretty quickly. His only real activities were reminiscing (something he would very much rather not do) or write on the rubble with the piece of chalk he had dug out of the supplies Oksana had left behind.

He had written out a rough timeline of what he remembered (coded, of course), then immediately wiped it away when it proved both unhelpful and a bit depressing. He had listed all he remembered from Dreykov’s takedown the first time, before once again remembering how much it relied on Natalya and scratching that out as well. He had won fifty-three games of tic-tac-toe against himself.

He was mid-game-fifty-four when a familiar accented voice spoke behind him.

“Loving the mad writing on the wall. Very losing-sanity chic.”

The chalk snapped in half with the pressure Alexei put on it. He dropped the pieces and spun.

And standing amidst the rubble, in full Widow gear despite zero being weapons drawn, was Yelena.

Chapter Text

This old-fashioned, early iteration of the Widow mind-control sucked .

Not emotionally. Well. Emotionally too, she supposed, but Yelena didn’t mean it sucked as in ‘she didn’t like it’, she meant it sucked as in ‘it didn’t work’. She forgot how much of Dreykov’s control over the Widows was based in psychological torture and fear in the early stages. Which was a method both better and worse than the mind control. Less stable, but with a much more difficult escape path. Escaping ingrained personality and reflexes brought upon by being raised in fear required a lot of chances and healing and inner growth . Escaping mind control just required being lightly poofed in the face with the right combination of red-colored chemicals.

Luckily for Yelena, she’d already gotten a lot of chances and healing and inner growth. So when the mind control faltered and dulled to mere suggestion, she was able to claw on to her autonomy just long enough to make some changes before she went under again.

She didn’t think she would be able to full-stop escape the Red Room until the mind control was out completely- something that, unfortunately, required Red Dust. But she wasn’t ever one to sit around and wait to be rescued, either.

The first time she surfaced from the mind control was mostly spent breathing her way through the panic when she realized where and when she was. Being back in the Widow program was perhaps literally her worst nightmare- something she could quantifiably prove based on how many of her Shame Rooms revolve around the training and the program and the missions-

She wasn’t exactly having a good time, back in it.

The second time, she got a bit more of a handle on herself, and was able to make a few actual decisions. Starting with Alexei, Melina, and the rest of the Red Room. She was going to bring it down again if it killed her. But although she was confident in her abilities, she was well-aware that she wasn’t going to be able to take them down alone.

So first came messaging Melina.

It took a minor bit of hacking into Red Room files to confirm that the address was the same from 2016, when she and Natasha ( Natasha’s alive Natasha’s alive Natasha’s alive- ) had contacted her the first time around.

First, saving Alexei.

She wasn’t technically sure that the entire team had come back, but it felt like a safe assumption. If the time travel was caused by an artifact or mission (unlikely) they all went on those together, minus Bob. If it was caused by Bob (extremely likely), it wouldn’t make sense for him to only bring her- if he did it on purpose at all. More likely he did it on accident and dragged the team with him- ever since the New York Void, his powers had always seemed a bit… extra connected to the Thunderbolts team.

She couldn’t exactly stage a prison escape by herself while half-under the Widow programming. Natasha… Natasha was unreachable. And even if she wasn’t, Yelena didn’t exactly want to address that quite yet. Or think about it at all, if she could help it.

Which left Melina.

The only option that Yelena really had was to send a message. She tried to make it succint but convincing, and ended up falling back on the saying from her infamous breakdown at the barn in the first timeline.

It was real to me.

Next time she surfaced, she got to work on Bucky. Of all the Thunderbolts, she knew his background was rough enough that he might need help.

But who could help?

She settled on Ava, halfway through skimming the Black Widow program intel files for HYDRA connections. They weren’t too hard to find. Dreykov lent out Widows plenty of times for various political movements, and HYDRA was hardly the exception. She used a communications log to locate and hop into HYDRA servers, found the Winter Soldier file, and was sending a location to Agent 836’s registered phone number. No note, with that one. Ava would know it was her.

If Ava came back.

It was a pure stroke of luck that Oksana ( Oksana was alive too-) started stirring up trouble early, and Yelena was sent on a mission to neutralize her- along with two to three other Widows, but it wasn’t difficult to ditch them under the guise of reconnaissance and meet up with Oksana early.

Who, predictably, panicked at the sight of a Widow and Red Dust-ed her right to the face.

Yelena reared back and shook her head a few times to clear it. “Whew,” she whistled. “Thank you. That was getting very annoying.”

 Oksana blinked a few times. “Y- Yelena?”

“Yes.” Yelena agreed before pausing. Did Oksana know her name the last time? She didn’t think so- she didn’t remember most of the names of the Widows she helped. Those that didn’t contact her after the collapse of the Red Room, at least. “You know me?”

“Not personally.” Oksana admitted. “But I have been told about you. Alexei has been looking for you.”

Oh. He’s out. She hadn’t heard. “Do you know where he is?”

Oksana studied her warily for a few moments. “Why?”

“I would like to meet up. I have not seen him in… years. But we were close.”

“Close how?”

Ah. A test. Alexei must have mentioned. “We were part of the same mission when I was younger. Technically my first. He was- is like a father to me.” She didn’t like admitting it out loud. Not that she wasn’t comfortable with the emotional connection- she was well past that particular emotional hurdle- but admitting it out loud, particularly to a well trained assassin- was something else altogether.

Oksana responded by nodded slowly. “He’s at the old Widow safehouse.”

Yelena furrowed her brow. “No one has thought to look there?”

“Not yet.”

“Disappointing. Amatuer.” She huffed. “Thank you, though. Good luck.”

Oksana allowed a small smile. “You as well.”

Which led to now. Where Yelena was standing amidst decimated concrete, glancing around at the chalk-covered walls with faux nonchalance.

“‘Lena.” Alexei breathed out in shock, which all but confirmed he was back from 2012 too. He hadn’t called her ‘Lena prior to 2016, originally. It was after they got close again, after the breakout.

Before Natasha died.

“Alexei.” She greeted. “How has 2012 been treating you?”

He froze for a moment before guffawing loud enough for Yelena to duck instictively as it echoed around the grounds. “Much better than the first time. Yours?”

“The same.” She reached out to gently graze the scribbled-out timeline adorning a wall. “Made many changes?”

“Planned them. With Melina. But mostly I was looking for you.”

Yelena turned. Alexei was looking a bit too earnest for her tastes. “And… Natasha?”

His face shuttered. Perfect. She didn’t feel bad about that at all. “Nothing. Would you… do you want to talk to her?”

She tilted her head. “We have little choice. She and her friends are the only ones who may be able to help us.”

“But are you prepared to?”

She bit the inside of her lip. “No.”

Alexei just nodded, like that’s what he was expecting. Maybe it was. “That was the plan I told Melina and Oksana. Melina left me contact information for a pilot at the airfield to the west.”

She stepped closer. “Then we should go.”

“Oh, before that-” He reached into his bag and dug out a vial of Red Dust.

“No need.” She put a hand up. She would address his lack of security later. “Oksana got me.”

“Ah. I will just…” He set it down awkwardly amidst the rubble. “Leave it here then. For her.”

“Will she come back for it?”

“She knew I had one for you. So if she used one on you, than most likely.”

She sighed. That’d have to be good enough. “Fine. Leave it. Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

Bob was softly humming to himself, tapping out a beat on the armrests his wrists were strapped to, when Walker entered the room. He was being escorted by Hawkeye, who looked torn between analytical and confused. The SHIELD agent’s bow was in his hand, but it wasn’t nocked.

Small victories.

He raised his fingers in the closest gesture to a wave that he could manage. “Hey, man.”

“Hey, Bob.” Walker said, stepping a tad closer. Hawkeye’s grip shifted on his bow- something Walker seemed equally aware of- and he stopped again, instead using his nervous energy to shrug off his jacket and ball it up in his arms. “You’re looking… thirty.”

“You’re not.” Bob craned his neck forward and squinted to try to get a better look. “How old are you?”

“24. No, uh, abilities yet either.” Walker’s gaze strayed to Hawkeye behind him, carefully avoiding naming his own super serum. “But you got to keep yours, I take it?”

“Uh, yeah.” He nodded. “Woke up in Avengers Tower awhile ago.”

“Avengers Tower?” Walker asked incredulously. “I was back in Afghanistan , how is that fair?”

“Sorry.” Bob winced.

“No, don’t be.” Walker raised a hand to massage the bridge of his nose. “I’m guessing you don’t know what happened anymore than I do.”

“So you time travelled as well?” Hawkeye asked casually.

Walker’s grip tightened on his jacket, but his eyes stayed on Bob. “You told them?”

“I… Sentry…” Bob sighed. “ I may have… held future knowledge over their head.”

“That knowledge being…?”

“Black Widow’s sister.”

“Shit, Bob.” Walker whistled appreciatively. “You don’t hold back, do you?”

“I don’t think Sentry knows the meaning of ‘holding back’.”

“Okay,” Hawkeye interrupted. “I’m getting confused. Is Sentry you, or someone else?”

“Uhhhh-” Bob and Walker exchanged glances.

“Me.” Bob decided. “Sort of. Before my powers, I was never exactly the most… emotionally stable? Family history of mental illness, childhood trauma, made worse by addiction- I’m sure Fury gave you the entire rundown when he dug into my past.”

“He what ?” Walker said sharply.

Bob ignored him, trying to finish his explanation before he lost his courage. “The highs, they became Sentry. I explained this to Captain America, I thought?” He steadily kept his eyes on Hawkeye to ignore Walker’s flinch at his old title.

“Cap is a strong believer in confidentiality.”

“Tell him he can tell you guys,” Bob said. “I don’t want to have to go over it with every separate Avenger.”

“Have you met all the Avengers?” Walker asked.

“Uh, sort of. All at once. When I first got here. But I’ve only really talked to Black Widow and Captain America.”

“Right.” Walker sighed. “Her sister.”

“Okay, but you’re not Sentry at the moment.” Hawkeye attempted to drag them back on track. “So right now, you’re… what, off your high?”

Bob huffed a laugh. “Pretty much. But the highs are always followed by the lows.”

“The Void.” Walker cut in grimly. “Not pleasant.”

“No,” Bob agreed. “And I learned, somewhat recently, that my teammates.. my friends. They help. Hence,” he nodded towards Walker. “Captain John Walker.”

“First Lieutenant."

“First Lieutenant?" Bob raised an eyebrow at Walker’s correction.

Walker shrugged. “I would’ve gotten a promotion in a month or so.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Bob said awkwardly. “Did I pull you away from that?”

“No.” Walker grimaced. “I got put on… medical leave, sort of? Apparently, I’ve been acting odd and irrational. Lemar took notice.”

“Oh my god, Lemar.” Everyone on the team knew at least vaguely of Lemar Hoskins. His death haunted Walker, and it only took a few bad nightmares, dissociative episodes, and quiet explanations from Bucky for them to get the gist of the story. “How is he? Is he okay?”

“Last I checked.” Walker gave a hint of a smile- clearly trying to go for reassuring but missing by a mile. “Still in Afghanistan, too. And on track for his own promotion.”

“Well.” Bob shifted uncomfortably under the restraints. “That’s good.”

“Alright, so you’re steady? You got your emotional regulator? No Sentry or The Void?” Hawkeye sounded inherently confused, like he wasn’t sure what he was even saying. Bob imagined that he didn’t, but he nodded anyway.

“Wait-” Walker stalled. “You called me in to be your emotional regulator? How am I not your last choice?”

“Uh, no offense, but you were.” Bob probably would’ve felt bad for saying this if Walker didn’t bring it up first. “But you’re probably the least alarming person I could have asked for.”

Walker fell silent, probably running through the same mental track Bob had. Russian prisoner, Assassin #1, Assassin #2, Assassin #3. Their team was truly stacked in the worst way possible.

“You make a good point.” Walker conceded. He turned back to Hawkeye. “Any way we could let him out of that cell?”

“No can do.” Hawkeye shook his head. “He attacked a SHIELD operative, and threatened the Avengers and the Director.”

“You attacked a SHIELD operative ?”

“Rumlow.”

“Oh.” Walker visibly recoiled. He knew more of Bucky’s background than anyone else on the team, and clearly recognized the name. “And they threw you in a cell instead of giving you an award?”

“His allegiances weren’t previously known.”

“And are they now?” Walker asked, turning to clearly ask Hawkeye the question rather than Bob.

“They’re being investigated.” Hawkeye replied stiffly.

“And yet you referred to him as a SHIELD operative.” Walker sounded judgemental. Bob suspected he was a little too familiar with bad guys being forgiven because they were from government authorities pretending to be good guys. It was an oddly specific situation, but one truly too common in the past timeline.

“Innoccent until proven guilty.” Hawkeye said, but he did look like he was tasting something particularly sour as he said it. “But no, we can’t let him out.”

“Okay.” Walker nodded. “Can I get a chair, then?”

Bob startled. He thought Walker would come, sure, but he wasn’t really expecting him to stay .

Walker seemed to notice this out of the corner of his eye, and nodded at Bob. He felt himself breathe a sigh of relief as Hawkeye slipped out of the room to grab a chair for Walker.

Chapter Text

Hawkeye did return with a chair, but he didn’t let John stay immediately. He let John put down his stuff, then called in a separate agent. They needed to verify Bob’s statement, he said, so now John was being put through an interrogation.

Again.

All of John’s life just felt like a series of mistakes, mission reports, and interrogations.

He was sitting in a blank room, across from two Avengers- the most agreeable ones, Walker assumed. Probably in an attempt to earn Walker’s trust.

Unfortunately, the ones deemed ‘the most agreeable’ were Banner (not problematic) and Rogers (extremely problematic).

He was staring more at Banner than Rogers. It was probably extremely obvious that he was avoiding Captain America. Banner seemed put off by this, but Rogers didn’t.

“So. Time travel.” Banner was wringing his hands. “That’s real.”

“Apparently.” Walker spread his hands. “This was a surprise to me as well.” He blinked, thinking back to the government reports about how the Avengers stopped Thanos. “Kind of.”

“Kind of?” Rogers asked.

“Scientific time travel has already been discovered, by my year.” He nods at Banner. “You and Tony Stark invented it, actually. But this particular case wasn’t scientific, from what I could tell. It was… magic?”

“Magic’s not real.” Banner replied. It sounded like an automated response.

Walker snorted. “Tell that to the future. There’s a very prevalent cult of wizards.”

“A cult ?”

“I don’t think they’re actually a cult.” Walker frowned. “Pretty sure.”

“We’re getting off track.” Rogers shook his head. “Time travel. Can you prove it’s real? Corroborate Bob’s story?”

“Probably.” Walker said. “What did he tell you?”

“That sort of defeats the purpose of corroboration.”

John knew that. But damn if he didn’t want to avoid this conversation. “I can fill you in on what happened to me.” He offered. “You can check that against Bob’s story. But I don’t want to go revealing anyone else’s secrets.”

The two Avengers exchanged a silent conversation before they gave the smallest of nods.

So John told the story again.

It wasn’t like when he had told Olivia. He skimmed over a lot more of the details. His military history, his achievements. The rising fame of the Avengers, their split over the Sokovia Accords (although he skipped over Bucky’s return. That wasn’t something he was going to throw at Captain America if he hadn’t been told yet.), Thanos, the blip, the time travel solution, the return.

He hesitated after that. Steve Rogers was considered one of the lost from the Infinity War, even though he was still alive- albeit very old. And he wasn’t sure how to touch on the passing of the shield without going into Bucky’s story. So he settled, awkwardly, with “You retired, and I became Captain America for a bit.”

“Really?” Rogers did look surprised at that. “No offense, soldier, but you don’t exactly seem like the type I’d pass the mantle onto.”

John laughed self-deprecatingly. “You didn’t. The shield was surrendered to the government as a historical artifact. They appointed me as Captain America. If it makes you feel better, sir, I didn’t last long with the title.”

“Why not?”

Crunch. Clang. Click.

“Not a good fit.” He managed to choke out behind flashes of blood behind his eyes- splattered against a column, splattered against a shield, dripping and covering his hands- “I made mistakes. Too many, too big, too quick. The thing about Captain America, in the future, is that he’s a pillar of the community. He’s good at heart, not just good at what he does.” He loosely shrugged, trying to feign nonchalance. “I didn’t fit the qualifications. Don’t worry though, the next guy- the real next guy, not including my two week stint with the title- he’s good. Hand-picked by you, I heard.”

“You don’t seem that bad.” Rogers offers, although it’s halfhearted at best.

“With due respect, sir, you don’t know what I did.” He replied quietly. “And how I reacted to it. I lost just as much as I deserved to, for my actions. But I’m here, and I’m working at it. Best any of us can do, right?”

“That’s surprisingly deep and poignant of you.” Banner said. He was looking at John differently, now. He probably had some familiarity with coming to terms with a darker side of himself.

“Has Bob told you about the others on our team?” John deflected.

Banner shook his head.

“It’s a complicated group of morally off, fucked up misfits.” He said. “And that’s something I say affectionately. Besides us two- the failed Captain America and the overpowered mental illness, our other members are a washed-up supercommunist, a man previously brainwashed into being a weapon, a black ops theft specialist, and an assassin with more red in her ledger than she’d like.” Rogers crossed his arms and Banner’s brow furrowed at the phrase ‘red in her ledger’ especially. He’d borrowed the phrase from articles and reports written about Natasha Romanoff. He wondered if they’d known her long enough by this point to recognize it. “We all got lucky enough for a clean slate, in the future. A fresh start. And by God, we’re trying to do our best with it.”

He folded his hands neatly in front of him, forcing himself to stare down the two Avengers. “We might not be a beacon of hope for the future like you guys were, but we’re doing our damned best- and we’ll continue doing so when we get back. But right now, the most I can do is go try to keep Bob stable so we don’t have a repeat of a catastrophic event that happened in our time. So were my answers satisfactory? Can I go back and do my job now?”

Rogers put his hands behind his back, falling into a more casual version of parade rest that John had often found himself doing instinctively. “Of course. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, First Lieutenant Walker. We’ll look in to what you and Bob have told us, but for now, feel free to return to his room. I trust you remember the way.” For a moment, Walker was shocked at the amount of trust he was being shown, before Rogers tilted his head towards the camera in the corner. “And if you don’t, I’m sure JARVIS can remind you the route.”

John stood, pushing his chair in out of habit even as he asked “JARVIS? Tony Stark’s AI, he’s in this building? I thought SHIELD owned this building.”

“I think JARVIS is inherently in any building Stark has ever set foot in.” Banner muttered.

“A bit of an overexaggeration, sir.” A crisp British voice echoed from the speakers. “I am only in any building Stark has set foot in that has an internet connection.”

“Right.” Rogers chuckled to himself. “Be on your way, then. We’ll check in tomorrow?”

“Sure.” John nodded stiffly, looking warily at the cameras before turning to the door. “Good luck with HYDRA.”

The door closed behind him, but not before he could make out Banner’s bitter “I’m sure we’ll need it.”

Chapter Text

“Wait here.”

Bucky was looking at her blankly. Ava held out a hand in the universal ‘stay’ motion. “Wait.”

One of his eyes twitched below the mask.

She moved backwards. Bucky stayed put.

Thank fuck. She wasn’t sure exactly how much he understood her. He seemed to get anything that she phrased as an order, which was great for getting him back to New York but supremely awkward in essentially every other aspect. Bucky had always been the de facto leader of the team, so him following her around like a lost duckling was not something she was enjoying. And he only ever responded to her in Russian.

She moved further back.

“Um,” Bill raised his hand from over by the quantum pod he and Pym had built while she was gone. “Please don’t leave him here.”

“Why not?” Ava turned to him, smiling innocently. “He’s friendly!”

“ Ne lgi, prizrak .” Bucky said. The mask distorted his voice unnaturally and made it come out as a monotone growl.

“See!”

“He’s an infamous assassin,” Pym interjected.

“A friendly infamous assassin.” Her smile spasmed as a sharp pain shot up the side of her neck. “How’s that pod going?”

“Nearly complete,” Bill nodded along with the change in topic seamlessly. “Should be up and running in a couple hours.”

“Perfect timing. I need to go check on something.”

“It won’t end with you bringing back another fugitive assassin, will it?” Bill asked dryly.

“Um…” Ava squinted, mentally calculating the likelihood of running into Alexei or Yelena. “I don’t… think so?”

Bill stared at her, radiating fatherly disappointment. Ava shrugged helplessly. She couldn’t help that all of her friends had dark and checkered pasts.

Not including Walker. Because Walker was not her friend.

Although she did suppose, if it could be considered far enough in the past, that his stint as Captain America could count. It was definitely checkered.

“Anyway, he shouldn’t move from this spot, so just watch him and make sure he doesn’t go anywhere! Thanks!” Ava turned and jumped through the wall before she could hear Pym and Bill finish their incredulous shouts.

Luckily, unlike in Berlin, Ava didn’t need a map to figure out where to go. Avengers Tower was looming over the other skyscrapers. The logo had long since been repaired from a broken ‘Stark’ to just the iconic ‘A’ that had become a symbol of the group. Ava wasn’t sure whether to credit the reconstruction efforts to the amount of time she had been there or to Stark’s technology.

… She wasn’t even entirely sure how long she’d been back in 2012.

The days had all been blurring together- on the plane, jumping warehouses, searching for every scrap of information possible to get Bucky back.

She was exhausted.

She was also, she decided, not going to think about that. She wasn’t done yet. She’d worry about rest when she was done.

Unfortunately, Avengers Tower was a maze- and very few of the rooms had retained their function from 2012 to 2027 when the Thunderbolts had moved in. She remembered the general layout, but rooms she thought were storage turned out to be barracks and rooms she thought were barracks turned out to be laboratories and-

She was lost. In short.

Fortunately, her phasing appeared to make her extremely difficult to track through the hallways. Although this assumption was based purely on the lack of SHIELD guards chasing her down in the corridors or Stark’s AI voice following her.

It took far too long to find someone.

And when she did, it was simultaneously someone she was looking for and exactly who she wasn’t.

“Woah!” Steve Rogers reared backwards as Ava phased through the wall right next to him. He fell into a defensive stance.

“Good instincts.” She complimented.

“Uh. Thanks.” His fists unclenched a bit, lowering. “Who are you?”

“A friend. Black Ops SHIELD Operative, Agent 836.” Technically gone rogue. But how would he know that. “I’ve been sent in for my specializations regarding a new containment, possible threat. Happen to know where the new guy is?”

His brow furrowed for a moment. “A black ops agent, you say? And your specialty is in interrogation?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” She said impatiently.

He glanced between her and the wall that she had just walked out of. “...Not theft?”

Ava stiffened. “I’m not sure what you’re implying.”

Rogers raised his hands in self-defense. “Nothing bad. Just trying to figure out if you’re looking for the Sentry-” he raised an eyebrow at her. “- or Bob Reynolds.”

Ava winced. “So he is here.”

“Oh good. You are who Walker was talking about.” Rogers relaxed completely, which caught Ava a bit off guard. That was not the usual response to people confirming her identity. Usually it was fear, if they actually knew who she was. “Looking for him?”

“... No.” She hadn’t even known Walker was here. “I was looking for Bob.”

“Helpfully for us, they should be in the same direction.” He held out a hand to shake, the picture of a good Samaritan. “Steve Rogers.”

She made no attempt to reach out. It was all too likely that she’d phase through him anyway. “Ava. Walker’s been talking about me?”

“He has.”

“Figures. He never really got the concept of secret identities and black ops work.” She sighed, running a hand through her hair.

“I’m sure he wouldn’t need to be familiar,” Rogers said easily, dropping his hand, “since he was pretty publicly Captain America.”

Ava froze. “Are you kiddi- how much did he tell you?”

“Quite a bit.” Rogers looked like he was repressing a laugh. “But he wasn’t even the first to tell us. Bob dropped the whole ‘time-travel’ concept on us. Walker just corroborated.” He began walking, and after a moment Ava followed. Might as well see where this goes. “But,” Rogers continued, “I suppose we didn’t really believe Bob until Sentry.”

“You’ve seen him?” Ava felt cold all over. She’d seen the name in the files and made her assumptions, of course, but the idea that Steve Rogers had actually met Sentry made it all the more real. “That’s not good.”

“Bob seemed to agree. That’s why Walker is here. He needed… ‘emotional support’, he said?”

“And he chose Walker ?” Ava laughed harshly.

“Hey!” A familiar voice snapped.

Ava blinked, turning her attention ahead of them- where they had caught up, it seemed, to Walker.

“You stupid idiot.” She scoffed. “You told them?”

Walker threw his hands up in exasperation. “They already knew!”

“And don’t give me that, you can’t deny it’s weird. Out of everyone, Bob called you ?”

“Thanks.” Walker said flatly. “Glad you have so much faith in me.”

“I have exactly none.” Ava confirmed. “Why didn’t he call Yelena?”

Rogers raised a hand beside her like a schoolkid with a question. “Who’s Yelena?”

“You don’t think,” Walker interrupted, “that there could be potential problems with asking the Avengers for Yelena ?”

“Wh- oh.” Ava winced. “I guess I didn’t think of that.”

“Clearly.”

“Shut up. Have you met up with the others?”

Walker’s small smile faded. “No. No one besides Bob. You?”

“Yeah, I’ve got-” Her eyes darted over to the current Captain America. “I’ve got the, uh… congressman.”

Walker snorted. “ Congressman . Dare you to call him that to his face.”

“Absolutely not.”

“And how is the congressman?”

Ava lightly tapped her forehead with her middle finger. “Under. But getting better. I think he woke up too, under the program.”

“Yikes.” Walker winced. “You should take the Boy Scout over there to him.”

Steve Rogers startled as Ava and Walker turned to him as one. “Wha- who?”

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Ava asked, ignoring him. “He’s not all there yet.”

“Cap dragged him out of it last time, didn’t he?” Walker shrugged. “That’s the way he described it, anyway.”

Ava nodded decisively. “I’ll try it. How about it, Captain America? You willing to go on a little field trip to help a friend of mine?”

“Uh,” Rogers frowned. “Do I get more information than that?”

“Not yet.” Ava replied. “Don’t want you acting irrationally. But you can bring a friend or something, if that makes you feel better.”

Rogers seemed to ponder this for a moment before nodding. “Alright. I’ll grab a comm, let the others know I’m going out. They’ll still be in reach if things get dicey-” He looked at them pointedly, as if it would be Ava’s hypothetical fault that things got hypothetically dicey. “-but if I can really help someone, I’ll go.”

“Great.” Ava nodded. “Walker, can you tell Bob that I was here? Maybe… don’t let him know about my friend yet, though. I don’t want to get his hopes up in case we can’t break him from the programming. Not while he’s already heading towards a drop.”

“Probably a good idea.” Walker nodded. “Meet up with us when you’re done.”

“Of course. Rogers?” She returned to the wall she came from, intending to walk straight back through. “I’ll meet you out front.”

He smiled grimly. “Meet you there.”

Chapter Text

The scientists that he was left with were very uncomfortable, but, to their credit, they were clearly trying to ignore him.

Not that he was making it easy for them. The longer he was out of the ice (and away from that chair -) the more was coming back to him.

Ava, Walker. The new guy, the spider… the old-timer.

His memory wasn’t perfect yet. He knew he had a team. семья. But they felt so far away. They didn’t echo in his mind like-

Я с тобой до конца.

He shook his head- a movement that had the scientist closest to him (Pym. тот, кто сжимается. Ant-Man?) sending him wary looks.

He leans back against the wall that Ava had left him at and tries to look nonthreatening. Based on the tense back of the other scientist (Foster. контрактный оперативник ЩИТ .), he was not succeeding.

Pym left the room muttering to himself. Foster didn’t look terribly worried by that, so he figured that was probably planned.

The holographic screens were blinking ominously. He watched them, trying to decipher the symbols floating across.

Math wasn’t his strong suit, but he would recognize a tracking map anywhere.

He wondered who they were looking for.

Pym reappeared, now in the separate room that held the quantum space pod. He was wearing an astronaut-esque suit, still muttering with a worrying sort of intensity.

The tracking map ping ed.

Foster and Pym’s heads snapped up simultaneously, eyes locked on the pinging coordinate point.

“We found her.” Foster breathed out. Eyes wide. Shaking hands. Awe.

“We found her.” Pym repeated. Fists clenched. Chin down. Determination.

Pym opened the door to the futuristic-looking pod, swinging himself into the pilot seat. “The coordinates should have transferred already and been locked in.” He told Foster gruffly. “I’ll go down and get her. If I’m not back within the next twenty minutes, lock it down. The quantum field would have moved by then already, and-” his eyes seemed to lose focus. “-I’d rather be trapped down there with her.”

“If you’re not back within the next fifteen, I’m yanking you out.” Foster countered with a growl. “You have a daughter, Pym. I’m not letting you leave her.”

“She doesn’t need me anymore.”

“You’d be surprised.”

Pym glared at Foster- a stare that the other scientist met evenly. It took a few moments of tense silence before Pym scoffed and conceded, clicking on the safety belt.

“See you on the other side, Pym. With your wife.”

Pym just responded with a half-smile, half-grimace. Foster flicked a few switches and the pod shrunk in increments, disappearing in between the molecules.

тот, кто сжимается, indeed.

Foster turned slowly to face him, seeming to realize he was now, technically, alone in the room with him.

White knuckles. Forehead creased. страх.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to attempt comfort. A mere moment before Pym disappeared, a familiar face phased through the wall.

“So I have- oh, is Pym gone?” Ava blinked at the emptier lab. “Good. I need this phasing to stop. So anyway, I have good news.”

“Did you find your friend?” Foster asked, relaxing now that he had his own assassin in the room.

“Yes. Sort of. And I brought someone back! And he’s not an assassin!”

Foster sarcastically pumped a fist in the air. “The bar is on the floor!”

“Bad news, though. It’s Captain America.”

“Bad ne- why is that bad news?”

Ava was no longer looking at Foster. She was looking at him, and he had felt every nerve go on edge at the name.

That sounded familiar. Why did that sound familiar?

Я с тобой до конца

“Because,” Ava continued, her gaze stuck on him. “Captain America right now is Steve Rogers.”

Steve Rogers.

Я с тобой до конца

Я знал его.

с каким Баки я разговариваю?

до конца.

до конца.

Steve Rogers.

“Woah, now.” Ava had crouched to meet him on the floor. His legs had given out, he didn’t know when, and his hands gripped his hair like he was trying to pull the memories out of his brain. She gently took his hands, and he unclenched his fingers so he didn’t accidentally claw at her. It was strange. Like muscle memory. It couldn’t be muscle memory, though. Wrong body.

Не то тело?

“He’s coming up the elevator,” Ava continued. “Should be here in a minute or so. He can help.”

“He can help.. your friend there? The one who seemed to have an attack of some kind on his name alone?”

“Yes,” Ava hummed. “Trust me. Future time travel stuff.”

Foster didn’t seem to have a response to that.

Bu- The As- He sat, crumpled on the floor, next to Ava. Each second felt like an hour as she held his wrists to stop him from pulling at his hair again. His breathing felt labored, and he couldn’t tell whether it was the anxiety or the mask cutting off oxygen.

The elevator dinged.

And out stepped-

Я знал его.

с каким Баки я разговариваю?

Я с тобой до конца.

Steve.

Bucky gasped like a dying man, turning his hands in Ava’s grasp to grab at her forearms. She looked at him in concern.

“Призрак. Ghost. Ava.” He tightened his grip. Ava smiled.

“There you are, Buck.” She said. Steve startled behind her. She ignored him. “Welcome to 2012.”

“ 2012?”

“Bob.” She offered as explanation- which, if the memories filtering back in were anything to go by, was honestly enough. “I think we got some of the shorter sticks out of it.”

As if on cue, his hands slipped through her arms, and she grimaced. He cringed in solidarity.

“I’ll leave you with your friend, here.” Ava stood, backing up and gesturing for Steve to take her place. “I’ll go catch up with Foster, get myself healed.”

“Fix your phasing, Призрак.” He nodded, raising himself to a slightly more dignified sit rather than crumple, turning his eyes to Steve. The past (current?) Captain America stepped towards him as if pulled by a magnet. “I think I need to have a discussion with Cap.”

Я с тобой до конца.

Chapter Text

If Alexei had to guess, he would say that he and Yelena were equally anxious about the prospect of meeting Natalya again. Unfortunately for both of them, they dealt with this anxiety in opposite ways.

Yelena went silent, retreating into her head. Alexei would be a lot more worried about this a few months ago (2027’s ‘a few months ago’. So… a few years in the future?). Right after the Void, Yelena had been a bit more open about her mental struggles. Alexei had tried to be there for her, but he didn’t think he did very much. Mostly her other friends helped. Alexei… he tried, but he was really at a loss for how to help with that.

Yelena had said he was doing fine at it. He didn’t know if he believed her.

Alexei, meanwhile, was talking about anything and everything. Mostly their team, telling useless random stories from around the tower. The time Ava had spent half a conversation standing in the middle of a table because she couldn’t be bothered to move until she absolutely had to. The time he caught Bucky pulling his metal arm out of the dishwasher (which Alexei agreed was a good idea, but Bob, who had been with them, had insisted Bucky run separate loads rather than put it with the rest of the dishes). The time Walker had pulled an ‘act busy’ on Alexei in an attempt to avoid war stories, which then became a game of how long Alexei could make him pretend to read a book that was obviously upside down (17 minutes).

Yelena didn’t seem to mind too much, but she wasn’t responding either. Which made Alexei talk more. Which surely got on her nerves a bit, but she was kind enough not to mention it. She knew that was how he dealt with whatever was going on with him.

The pilot they had convinced to take them to the New York- thanks to plenty of threats from Yelena- landed on a nondescript airstrip that Alexei was going to choose not to question. Yelena would let him know if it was dangerous, and he didn’t really want to know if it was morally dubious. The team had been trying to move away from shadier business.

.. Theoretically.

In practice, he doesn’t think Ava or Yelena particularly cared. And neither did he, in some cases. Or Walker. Or…

They weren’t great at sticking to that rule.

He and Yelena disembarked, only to pause in tandem at the sight of the New York City skyline. 

He could guess what they were both thinking. “She’s there. Alive.”

Yelena smiled. “She is. We have a second chance.”

Alexei exhaled. “We do. How do we talk to her?”

Her smile faltered. “That will be a problem. She won’t want to talk to us based on when she last saw us. She nearly killed me when I saw her again the first time, after I escaped the Red Room.”

Yelena definitely hadn’t told him that. “What?”

“Doesn’t matter.” Yelena waved a hand dismissively. “I tried to kill her back. What is a little attempted murder between sisters?”

Alexei opened his mouth for a moment. Closed it. “I do not think that’s right.”

“Yes, well, the Red Room wasn’t big on learning emotional communication.” Yelena snapped. Alexei winced minutely, all to aware of his own part in Yelena’s past. She clearly noticed from the corner of her eye, muttering a small “sorry.”

“So if she does not want to talk to us… how do we make her? Do you know where she lives?”

Yelena barked a sharp, bitter laugh. “No. I think the only time I ever found out where she lived was by accident.” She sobered. “I do think I have another way.”

Alexei hummed in interest, starting down the road to find a cab service of some kind.

“Hawkeye. Clint Barton,” she amended almost immediately. “I searched for him, after Natasha’s death. I know the location of most of his safehouses in the city. If we find him, we can get a message to Natasha.”

“Clint Barton… that is Natalya’s friend, yes?”

“Best friend, you could argue.” She went quiet. Alexei glanced at her, wondering what she was thinking of. A cab pulled up, and he hesitantly opened the door for her.

“And Hawkeye will be able to help us talk to Natalya?”

His question broke her out of whatever reverie she was indulging in. “Undoubtedly.” She slipped into the cab, rattling off an address to the driver that Alexei could only assume was of one of the safehouses. He followed her in, halfheartedly patting at his pockets. He knew he didn’t have any cash on him, but he hoped Yelena did. He liked to tip drivers of all kinds well, after his own limo business had sunk.

Yelena seemed to read his mind, passing folded bills up to the cabbie that looked like it had an extra $20 in it. He would’ve grinned at this if the weight of the impending reunion was not on his shoulders. Lena seemed to agree, as the half hour drive was spent in tense silence.

The car pulled over to the side of the road. Yelena got out and started up apartment stairs with a confidence that had Alexei following her automatically. She buzzed in by faking a package delivery and took the stairs up to the top floor (he would’ve preferred they take the elevator, but she didn’t actually tell him how many flights of stairs they were going up when she started) and knelt to pull out a lockpick at the door.

The lockpicking took a bit longer than Alexei expected. He had seen her break into rooms with just a quick jiggle from one tool in her extensive set, but this door took closer to ten minutes. He supposed it wasn’t that unusual- Clint Barton was a superspy. Maybe he should’ve been shocked there wasn’t more security on the door.

Although there’s only so many locks someone can add before the landlord starts to get suspicious.

But it did leave him awkwardly standing guard, leaning against the wall and watching the hallway for witnesses.

Thankfully, there weren’t any, and the door clicked open.

Yelena stowed her lockpicks and entered, Alexei following closely. He closed the door behind, relocking everything he could.

He turned to see Yelena beelining to the kitchen and going through Clint Barton’s cabinets, her lips pursed in concentration. “Are you hungry, ‘Lena?”

“Not really,” she replied distantly. “I was going to make something anyway but… he has no boxes.” She slammed shut the cabinet she had been digging through, tsking. “Health nut.”

He bit back a quip about how she could probably stand to eat a bit healthier anyway- a lot of her diet consisted of absurd smoothie blends and boxed pasta- but a majority of his own drink consumption was alcohol, so he couldn’t really ‘Dad’ her without being extremely hypocritical.

And Yelena always got a bit touchy when he tried to ‘Dad’ her.

Alexei joined her in the kitchen, directing her to sit at the counter as he dug through the cabinets. While Clint Barton did not have any of the add butter-add milk-add water pasta boxes that Yelena favored so much, he did own pasta noodles and sauce, and before long he was making an extremely simple spaghetti. He would’ve liked to add some protein (he had an excellent food diet, thank you. The alcohol was the only problem), but he didn’t have the time to defrost anything.

Which led to him scooping a serving onto a plate right as the locks began to open once again, and a very tense superspy opened the door. His hand was clearly itching towards his bow, but he didn’t quite reach for it as he cursed exasperatedly at the sight of the two intruders.

Yelena brightened at his irritation. “Clint Barton! Sit, sit. Would you like some pasta?”

Chapter Text

Frankly, Yelena was offended that Clint Barton did not have any boxed macaroni and cheese. After deciding on this course of action, she had been quite amused by her own idea of mirroring her meeting with Kate Bishop by greeting them with macaroni.

And.. wow. Kate Bishop. She hadn’t actually thought about her since getting back to 2012, and she wasn’t sure whether she was purposefully blocking the memories out. In this timeline, they hadn’t even met yet. Kate Bishop was not even a vigilante yet - of any sort. If she remembered correctly, it was the very same New York attack that had just happened that had even inspired Kate Bishop to take after the original Hawkeye at all- not that Yelena ever understood the appeal.

A shame. They had… gotten along well. 

And Yelena would have to settle with greeting the first Hawkeye with spaghetti instead.

Clint Barton stepped in the room fully, dropping his keys into a bowl. He was feigning nonchalance, closing his door and taking off his jacket to hang up, but Yelena could spot the tightened muscles and even center of weight and critical gaze from a mile away. Clint Barton was sizing them up- and, based on what he was seeing, felt at least a bit confident in his ability to take them on. And sure, even semi-confident would be far too overconfident if they had intention to hurt him, but Yelena was specifically trying to radiate ‘harmless and nonlethal’.

“So. Who are you and how did you get into my apartment?” Hawkeye sighed more than he asked.

Alexei set down the plate of spaghetti he was holding. “Do not freak out.”

“Not a promising start.” Clint Barton arched an eyebrow, visibly reassessing Alexei at the accent. Yelena wasn’t sure how he missed it. Alexei looked Russian.

“We are looking for Natasha.” Yelena ripped the bandaid off, not even flinching as the bow was suddenly nocked and pointed at her at the name drop of his even-more-secretive partner. She raised her hands to show her lack of weapons, angling her head towards Alexei to indicate she was talking about both of them. “We are her family.”

“Natasha doesn’t have any family.” He retorted, clearly forgoing any attempt to pretend he didn’t know what they were talking about.

“No,” Yelena muttered with defeat, “I imagine she would say she did not.”

She frowned, trying to figure out a way to prove herself before she got shot. Alexei had frozen as well, shrinking in on himself to also try to appear less threatening. She really didn’t want to, but…

She pursed her lips, whistling softly. High-low. Sliding note.

The arrow aimed at her dipped. Clint Barton was staring at her. Slowly, he whistled back. Sliding note. Low-high. “How do you know about that?”

“They made it up as children.” Alexei replied. An uncharacteristically soft expression was on his face. “Would call and response all the time.”

Hawkeye nods slowly. “She uses it as a standard all-clear now, but wouldn’t tell me what it was from.”

“Yet,” Yelena muttered under her breath, a hint of reproach in her voice. Clint locked onto it anyway.

“Yet?”

“I am sure she would have told you eventually,” Yelena covered. “You seemed close. On the news, and all.”

Clint was staring at her. “You knew each other as children.”

“Yes.”

“Natasha spent her childhood in the Red Room.”

Yelena grit her teeth. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Alexei white-knuckle the edge of the counter. “Yes.”

Hawkeye nodded slowly. “I’m guessing you have red in your ledger?”

Yelena didn’t bother to reply, her eyes narrowing answer enough.

“Hm.” Clint loosened fully, stashing his arrow back into his quiver and turning to Alexei. “And which are you? The washed-up supercommunist or the guy brainwashed into being a weapon?”

There was a moment of silence before Yelena barked out a laugh, quickly slapping her hand over her mouth and silently cursing Hawkeye for making her laugh. Alexei was frozen, open-mouthed. Yelena was not, removing her hand after her laughter slowed to croak out “what?”

“A certain First Lieutenant John Walker informed us of his team of vigilantes in the future. SHIELD has encountered three so far, it doesn’t seem to far of a reach to assume you might be part of it- especially with Walker including a very specific phrase that Natasha uses often.”

Alexei beamed. “Walker! Yes! He is here too?”

Simultaneously, Yelena frowned. “His team of vigilantes?”

“Regardless, I’ll have to take you in to SHIELD.” Clint Barton said casually, as if he had any ability to force Alexei and Yelena to go anywhere. She was tempted to remark on this, but her voice died in her throat, and instead-

“Natasha will be there?”

“At the Tower? Most likely.”

She and Alexei exchanged solemn looks. Alexei nodded to Clint Barton. “We will go.”

“Excellent.” He pulled out a phone. “Hang tight. I can’t just let you wander through the streets, but I’ll need backup to convoy you to the Tower.”

Yelena was torn between grudgingly respecting Hawkeye’s assessment that he couldn’t take them and being mildly offended that he thought any amount of backup would be able to hold them if they chose to run- at least, until she heard Clint Barton greet who he called with “Stark? You’ll never believe it, we’ve got two more. Can you come by in a suit-?”

His voice faded as he left the room, retreating back into a bedroom, seemingly trusting that their desire to see Natasha would make them stay put until Tony Stark came to escort them (and Hawkeye) back to the tower.

And… well, he wasn’t wrong.

Alexei and Yelena stared blankly after him. Alexei looked down to the plate he had set before picking it up and halfheartedly offering it to her once again. She took it, and he began to serve up another.

The shower started, and Yelena and Alexei sat at the kitchen counter eating spaghetti while waiting for Iron Man.

Chapter Text

“So they just.. asked you about the future?”

“Pretty much. It was kind of boring, to be honest.”

Bob hummed thoughtfully. Walker had finally returned from his interview of sorts, and had returned to see the chair Hawkeye brought him facing Bob. He had scoffed a bit, walked over, and dragged it to Bob’s side. The change made it so they were sitting facing the same way, and if Bob ignored the seams in the glass between them, and his own restraints, he could almost pretend they were back on the couch at the Watchtower. Now he just needed Yelena on his other side, Alexei sitting on the floor in front of them, Ava sprawled across an armchair, and Bucky standing ominously with his arms crossed behind them in that ‘I’m pretending to not pay attention’ dad stance, and they’d be primed for their semi-regular movie night.

It would be a very uncomfortable movie night, though. Since Bob was not on the couch, and was in fact trapped in a pod cell in an attempt to contain Sentry.

“And Ava’s here too? She remembers?”

“I’m pretty sure. If she didn’t, then I guess she might just be predisposed to hate me, since she insulted me the second she saw me.” Bob covered a laugh- badly, apparently, since John shot him an unimpressed look. “She disappeared pretty quick, though. Said something about needing Rogers. She’ll be back, though.”

Bob nodded, and they fell into an uneasy silence. Bob fiddled with the part of his wrist restraint that he could reach for a few moments before breaking the silence with a sigh. “I really am sorry about this.”

“It’s really not your fault.” Walker insisted. “You didn’t know you could time travel, and you especially didn’t know you could time travel all of us.”

“No- well, yes, I’m sorry about the time travel, but I’m also sorry to pull you away to just sit in a room with me so I don’t go all… weird. I’m sure you had something you were doing.”

“Kind of. Mostly, I was just trying to find the rest of you.” Walker tilted his head. “I told Olivia, though.”

Bob sucked a breath between his teeth. “About the future?”

“Yeah.”

Olivia was almost as famous of a name in Walker Lore as Lemar. Her leaving him had knocked his self-esteem down a ton- maybe a few too many notches, combined with his disgrace under the Captain America mantle. A few of the Thunderbolts, Bob being one, were still trying to find the fine line between playfully bullying Walker and finding him three hours after a conversation, still leaning against the kitchen counter, disassociating.

They didn’t really talk about Walker’s dissociation. They probably should, eventually. He did it often enough that all of the Thunderbolts had each found him out of it a few times, and now had a rough protocol of what to do depending on how bad it was. Maybe, after all of this, Bob would actually make an attempt at therapy- if only to join Bucky in trying to convince the rest of the team it was a worthwhile endeavor.

“So you think they actually… y’know, believed you?”

“Either that, or they think I sound just as crazy as you.” Walker let out a self-deprecating laugh, and Bob couldn’t help but flinch a bit.

Crazy.

Not a word he liked being thrown around.

There hadn’t been many people in his life who called him that, per say- he never tended to stick around long enough for them to catch wind of exactly how bad his highs and low were. It was however, a word used against his mother by his father.

Now that he was older (and had something of a support system), he was able to recognize that his mom wasn’t exactly the best parent- but comparatively, she was… better. And he was all too aware of how his own mental state reflected hers, so when she was called crazy- well, that was just calling him crazy with extra steps. And the extra curveball of his (comparatively) favorite parent being insulted.

And sure, he was aware he wasn’t the most stable of people- he wouldn’t have called Walker if he thought that. Or be as worried about the appearance of Void or Sentry. Or, probably, have a Void and Sentry to worry about. But…

There was no but.

He knew he wasn’t stable. End of sentence.

“Sorry.”

Bob blinked out of his thoughts, turning to look at Walker, who seemed to have sensed his little shame spiral. “You’re not crazy,” the former Captain America offered. “Shouldn’t have phrased it like that.”

“Oh, yeah-” He tried offering a reassuring smile, but had doubts about how comforting it actually was. “No worries.”

Walker offered an unsure smile of his own before slumping against the back of his chair, a soft “Olivia’s going to kill me.” uttered under his breath.

Fuck. It hit Bob for a second that he had just dragged Walker away from Olivia. The Olivia. It was Bob’s fault he was here in the first place, and Walker had found a silver lining anyway in reconnection with people long dead or gone. And now Bob was fucking it all up even worse by dragging him away from that.

He looked down at his lap, his mind racing. Earlier, they had asked him who he should call, and he- what, only thought about who it would be least suspicious to ask for? When they were all dealing with their own shit in 2012? Yelena and Alexei were probably looking for Natasha Romanov at this very second. Bucky would be able to reconnect with Steve Rogers. Ava… well, Ava didn’t really talk about her past, besides the whole ‘growing up in labs’ thing, but he was sure she had found a silver lining. Or at least a purpose in this new time. She was practical like that.

And here Bob was, selfishly wishing they were here to help him even out.

Because he couldn’t even do that.

“Bob?” An unsure voice to his right asked. It sounded familiar. Bob couldn’t really bother to look up at it.

Shit, he was probably impossible to deal with. Not only could he not actually keep himself from something as simple as ‘don’t go God Complex on the literal Avengers’, but he didn’t even consider what his friends could be dealing with thanks to the mess he dragged them into.

“Bob- hey, Bob, snap out of it.” A tapping sound. Insistent. It felt a million miles away.. Bob wished it would stop.

He closed his eyes in a useless attempt to stop them from blurring up.

He kind of wished everything would stop.

“Shit- shit- Bob, I’m here, hold on- Barton, open the pod-!”

Chapter Text

Fuck, if Olivia wasn’t going to kill him for accidentally insulting one of his friends, she was definitely going to kill him for accidentally sending him into a depressive episode that threatened the entirety of New York. Possibly farther. They had gotten incredibly lucky, stopping the Void as early as they did last time.

Double fuck. If Olivia didn’t kill him, Yelena definitely would. Or Ava, since she was more conveniently nearby. Or Bucky. He seemed like he had been itching to put John in the ground since he took on the stars and stripes.

Okay. Little to real there.

His tapping against the glass pane of the pod had turned into pounding against it with his fist, trying to get Bob to open his eyes, to look up, to anything. The familiar inky black was slowly making its way up his legs, entwining with itself and pulling Bob deeper and deeper into the Void.

“Barton!” He backed away from the glass unsurely, torn between running to find someone who could open this stupid fucking restraint pod and staying here with Bob. Abandoning his friend versus being utterly useless. What exciting decisions his life had led to.

What he wouldn’t give for his old super strength.

Cursing, John stumbled away from the glass and turned into a run, bursting through the doors outside.

There were guards stationed outside. Figures. He grabbed the nearest one’s shoulders. “You need to get the Avengers. Now.”

The guard attempted to shrug off John’s white-knuckled grip, but wasn’t very successful. “Sir, please calm down-”

“No,” he snarled. “The whole thing I’m here to prevent is happening and Bob needs help, now.”

The other guard shifted his pistol into a more active position. “The prisoner is becoming a threat?”

“No, he’s not a- Sure! Yes! Whatever will get an Avenger here faster, or someone else who can unlock that pod!”

“If he’s becoming a threat, they won’t free him.” The guard he was holding on to brought up nervously.

“Forget that,” the other snapped, turning to push the door open in an all-too-familiar barrel-first move. “Protocol states us as the first line of defense-”

In a blink, he was disarmed. He hadn’t planned for melee, seemingly having counted John out as a threat with Bob’s superpowers in the mix. His hold on the gun was light from having just changed stance, and John easily grabbed the barrel and jerked it up and away, stepping into his space.  He twisted, taking the guard’s arm with him until it was overextended and pinned underneath his own arm. He pressed down, watching the guard’s hand shake in an attempt to keep his grip, before the pistol clattered to the floor. John released him, and he stumbled backwards, cradling his arm where John had gotten a bit too close to breaking it.

“Stand down!” The other guard yelped, fumbling his own firearm into position.

Too slow.

John only had to take a step to be within armsreach of the modified machine gun, grabbing hold of the stock and yanking it out of the other guard’s grip. The guard stumbled forward with the momentum, and John took advantage of it to elbow strike him across the jaw. His neck snapped to the side- not enough for lasting damage, but enough to disorient- and John followed it up with a quick knee to the torso and kick at his leg. The second guard went down, and John spun to hit the other guard on the head with the butt of the machine gun before he could retaliate.

For a moment he just stood there, staring at the guards. Shit. This probably made him an official enemy of the state.

Well, what else is new.

He took a quick moment to discard the clip from both guns before casting all the weapons aside and rushing forwards, trying to remember the path Barton had taken him on to meet with the other Avengers in the interrogation room. He wasn’t entirely confident that any of them would still be there, but it was his best lead.

Luckily, he didn’t need to go far. It only took two more turns before he was confronted with Widow Bites in his face. Thor was standing behind Black Widow, his hammer at the ready, and behind both was a nervous-looking Bruce Banner.

“Stand. Down.” Romanov said coldly.

John’s hands were up in surrender immediately. He knew better than to try to fight a Widow. Yelena had kicked his ass in sparring often enough for that lesson to sink in. “Fine, that’s fine. I’m not trying to- Can one of you open the pod?”

“That your super-powered friend is in?” Romanov raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think so.”

“Look, you brought me here to be his emotional stabilizer, right?” He hissed. “I need to emotionally stabilize him. But he’s not responding to my voice, I need to touch him before he goes full Void.”

“What is this ‘Void’, exactly?” Thor spoke up, swinging his hammer perhaps a bit too casually for the situation.

“That’s the lows, right?” Romanov hesitantly lowered her Widow Bites, but John didn’t lower his own hands. Her weapons didn’t need to be right in front of his face for her to take him out in seconds. “Show us.”

John took it for what it was. He turned, retracing his steps as quickly as possible while also keeping his body language as non-threatening as possible. He could think about how embarrassing this was later, for now he needed to get Bob out of his head- preferably before the entire city goes down again.

Banner gave him a judgemental eyebrow raise at the sight of the two guards, still lying prone outside the door, but John just shook his head. He could explain later, for now-

He opened the door, and immediately stumbled back.

Bob was gone.

The entire room was pitch black, the darkness slowly creeping towards the doorway as if eating the last bits of light cast on the ground from the hallway.

“What the hell,” Romanov muttered, her hand resting on the holster at her side. She made to step forward, but John threw an arm out to stop her.

“Bob?” He called into the room. His voice was wavering a bit. He couldn’t bring himself to care.

“No,” a low voice echoed from the room. Romanov’s gun was officially out. Thor had settled back into a defensive stance, hammer at the ready. Banner was nervously twisting his hands, the smallest bits of green tinging his neck. “He’s not here right now.”

The barest bit of light appeared deep in the darkness of the room. John took another step back, recognizing the glint of the Void’s eyes.

“He was… alone. Like always. But aren’t we all?”

The Void spilled out of the doorway, seeping across the floor to them. It seemed quicker than it had been the first time. Maybe it remembered him.

He looked back at Romanov, Thor, and Banner. They were too close to the doorway. So was he. “Sorry,” he offered weakly. “Too late. We’ll get you out.”

“Get us out-? Wait!” Romanov reached forward, probably to get more answers from him, but John had already shifted forward and fallen into the Void.

Chapter Text

It didn’t take too long for Rogers to actually crouch down and join Bucky on the floor, since it was pretty clear that he wasn’t getting up any time soon. Ava did her best to tune them out. She had her fill of emotional reunions for the next fifteen years.

Well. Maybe she shouldn’t say that. Since presumably she was about to witness another when Janet and Hank reunited.

Maybe she’d get lucky, and they’d get all the mushiness out in the quantum realm where she didn’t have to see it.

Besides a short catch of breath and furious hushed whispering, the two were pretty easy to ignore. Instead, she laser-focused on the little pinging dot that represented Hank Pym’s ship as it neared the coordinate they had found for Janet.

“Are you sure this will work?”

Ava looks at Bill from the corner of her eye. “I thought we were past the whole not-believing-me thing.”

“I believe you. About the time travel. But still, are you sure?”

She crossed her arms uncomfortably. “Fixed it last time. Why wouldn’t it this time?”

“I mean,” he hesitated. “You might be different, on a quantum scale. We don’t know the extent of how much time travel might have affected you beyond just consciousness. What if the quantum energy has changed? Can Janet heal any sort of quantum entanglement?”

Ava’s fingers dug into her arms. She hadn’t considered that. At the time, the healing had been a blessing that she didn’t dare question, and had never learned the actual science behind. Maybe Pym had, or Foster eventually, but she had never asked. She had taken their mercy for what it was and disappeared, fully intent on never seeing anyone related to the Pym family ever again.

“It will work.” She grimaces, the stress agitating her condition. “It has to work. It wasn’t exactly a delicate scientific process last time, she just sort of… touched me. Gave me excess quantum energy. And it stablized me. How different could the quantum energy be?”

Bill sent her a look that told her she definitely didn’t want to know the answer to that question.

“Besides,” Ava brushed past it, “I’m pretty confident that my condition is the same. If I’d brought back some of my quantum energy from my time, wouldn’t it at least heal it a little? Make the pain less severe?”

“It’s possible.” Bill acknowledges in the way that made Ava think it was extremely unlikely, but he was trying not to upset her.

Which did not work, so. Fantastic job on that one, Foster.

She bit the inside of her lip, glaring at the pinging location trackers like they held all the answers but refused to tell her. The two blips had met. Hank Pym was re-meeting his wife after some 30 years- and, Ava thought halfheartedly, hopefully getting all the mushy sentiment and kissing out of the way. And then they’d be back up.

And then Ava would be healed, no matter what Bill said.

She felt a prescence at her back and took a deep breath, exhaling as she turned. Bucky was standing in front of her- her Bucky, 2027 Bucky- mask off and hair pushed back and out of his face as best as possible. Messy eye black still streaked his face, and Ava kindly chose not to guess whether it was from the freezing cryo or whether he had started crying at some point during his conversation with Rogers.

Who, speaking of, was hovering behind Bucky protectively in a way that almost made Ava laugh aloud. Sure, Captain America was built like a brick, but Bucky was Bucky. He hardly needed the protection.

Bucky nudged her shoulder and broke her from her thoughts. “Ready for your phasing to be healed again, prizrak?” She could hear how raspy his voice was from disuse, now that the mask was off- especially in comparison to when he was a Thunderbolt, and had been free for over a decade.

“God, yes.” Ava huffed, turning back to the holographic map and watching the Hank Pym blip begin its ascent back up. “I can’t wait to fix it again.”

“You sure?” Bucky asked, his dry sarcasm front and center. “You could probably show Walker up by phasing for more than one minute at a time.”

Ava groaned, rolling her neck to look up at the heavens for patience. “Don’t you start, or so help me I’ll tell Alexei the Winter Soldier program messed up your memories and you need a refresher on all of his Red Guardian war stories.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” Bucky said, real horror in his voice.

Bill and Rogers’s eyes ping-ponged between the two of them, confusion openly visible. It must be very different, Ava muses, hearing about hypothetical time travel as opposed to watching two people who you know have never met speak like they’ve been friends for years.

Which they hadn’t, quite. Been friends for years. A strong four months, maybe, but the Void really did wonders for trauma-bonding.

The air seemed to shimmer on the pod’s landing pad, and- yep, there it was. Hank Pym’s pod grew back to its original size and hovered for a few moments before landing with a decisive thunk.

Two passengers.

Thank God.

Ava surged forward, walking straight through the glass that separated the lab from the pod (to the startled yelp of Captain America) in an effort to get to them faster.

Hank Pym forced open the door, turning to lend a hand to his wife as she exited after him. She straightened, every bit the same scavenger, vaguely-alien look she had the first time around. Ava halted in front of her.

“Oh dear.” Janet’s smooth voice sounded from behind the scarf wrapping, and her hands came up to lift her goggles. Her eyes were full of concern as she looked Ava up and down. “Hank told me you had a quantum problem up here, but this isn’t quite what I expected.”

“Please,” Ava whispered, holding out her hands in the space between them. “Can you help? Can you fix me?”

Janet’s brow furrowed, and she grabbed Ava’s hands. “I can certainly try.”

Ava closed her eyes, sighing with relief as a familiar warmth spread over her, and every cell finally went quiet again.

Chapter Text

Я с тобой до конца.

 “I think I need to have a discussion with Cap.”

Ava had nodded with efficiency and turned away to her scientists, leaving Bucky staring up at Steve Rogers.

Captain America.

Bucky didn’t realize how much he had come to associate the name with Sam until Steve was standing in front of him, wearing the original star-spangled uniform.

“Uh…” Steve shifted from foot to foot. “She said I coud… help you?”

“Already did, Stevie.” Bucky sighed, reaching up to unclasp the mask and pull it away from his face. It felt inconsequential. Anticlimatic. Especially after the last time.

But Bucky hardly wanted a repeat of what happened last time.

Steve gasped and stumbled forward, half-falling forward. “Buck?”

“Hey.” He smiled. “Long time no see.”

“What- how-”

“Long story. And not a pretty one.” He finger-combed his hair back. It desperately needed a wash. And a cut. “The short of it is that HYDRA picked me up after I fell from that train.”

“Oh god.” Steve’s hands were shaking where they hovered over his shoulders. He whispered something that sounded suspiciously like “brainwash” before cutting himself off again. “Buck-”

“It’s fine.” Bucky shook his head. “I’m good. Went to therapy and everything.”

Steve retracted his hands, searching Bucky’s face. It took a few seconds, but whatever he was looking for, he seemed to find. “You time travelled too.”

Bucky’s brow furrowed. “How’d you know about-” He paused and glanced over at Ava. She was leaning over the schematics, staring intently at a descent into the quantum field that (if his 2027 memory served correctly) wasn’t supposed to happen for another two years at least.

“Man.” He said, almost impressed. “We suck at this.”

It surprised a laugh out of Steve. “You suck at… time travelling?”

“Apparently. You’d think I’d have practice, with the jump from the 40s to now.”

“I’m not sure if that actually counts as time travelling.” Steve sounded like he was still in disbelief.

“Yeah, probably not. I was awake too many times in between.”

“You were.. awake?”

“That’s part of the long story.”

Steve frowned. “Based on some of the bits and pieces I’ve gotten from John Walker, I’m not sure I’ll want to know.”

Bucky couldn’t help the expression of irritation that flitted across his face at the name. “You know Walker?”

“Briefly met. He got called in to serve as an emotional regulator for the Sentry.”

“You know Sentry?” Bucky let his head gently hit the wall he was leaning against. He needed a nap. Maybe twenty.. “We really suck at this. You know I tried to retire? Should’ve known I can’t get two weeks without something new coming up.”

“You? Retire?” A hint of a smile tugged at Steve’s mouth, a welcome relief from his previous dour expression. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Not completely.” He amended. “I’m only.. what, 90 right now? That’s too young to retire.” Steve huffed a laugh. “Just from the heroics. You were always more in it than me anyway.”

“Ah.” Steve nodded seriously. “Congressman.”

Bucky raised his eyebrows. “What?”

“When Ava and Walker were talking about you- I think they were trying not to freak me out.” He turned and sat next to Bucky against the wall. “So they kept referring to you as Congressman.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I wouldn’t dare joke about that.”

“Congressman.” He repeated in disbelief. He looked back at Ava, who was doing an excellent job of ignoring them. “She’s done for. I’m revoking her блинные privileges.”

“Her what?”

“It’s like these little pancakes? You can put toppings on them? I make them for mission debriefings sometimes. Or, no-” He nodded decisively. “I’ll make hers with raspberries. She hates raspberries.”

Steve chuckled, and Bucky saw him relax fully next to him. “I can’t explain how good it is to see you, Buck.”

Bucky gave a small smile of his own. He still visited his Steve, after Thanos. When he was still alive, that was. He died about two years after he gave Sam the shield. “I missed you too.”

Steve sighed, but it sounded resigned. “So I’m not there anymore, where you’re from. I figured as much, when Walker said he was Captain America. But it’s different to know.”

“No, you’re not. But don’t worry, you live a long and fulfilling life.”

“Do I?”

“Time travel.”

“Time travel.” Steve repeated. “This really is just a normal Tuesday for you, huh, Buck?”

“Long way from Brooklyn.” Bucky agreed. “Any way we could meet up with Walker and Bob?”

“After this?” Steve glanced over at Ava. “Probably. I’ll have to warn my team there’s more incoming.”

“Warn Natasha first.” Bucky said immediately. “We met. While I was under. I might have shot her.”

“You’ve shot her?”

“Don’t say it like that, you make it sound like I had a choice.” Bucky chuckled, then immediately regretted it when Steve looked like he swallowed something sour. “Just let her know. Tell her I’m awake now. I think she knew that I wasn’t all there the first time.”

“I will.”

“The Winter Soldier.”

“What?”

“That’s who I was. Tell her that. ‘The Winter Soldier is awake, a time traveller, and on the way to the Tower.’” He tilted his head. “I’m sure she can inform whatever authorities need to know that too, so I’m not shot on sight.”

Steve stared at him uncomprehendingly. “I’m starting to get the feeling that Walker might’ve missed some things with his recap of what happened between our years.”

“He probably left out a lot more than some.” Bucky shifted forwards and stood, brushing himself off and starting towards Ava.

Steve followed. “Do I want to know how you got onto a shoot-on-sight basis with SHIELD?”

“Probably not. Actually-” He stopped. “We might have to meet somewhere else. If SHIELD knows I’m awake, that might be just as bad as if they thought The Winter Soldier was coming. Might have to make it need-to-know.”

“Why wouldn’t SHIELD like it if you’re awake?” Steve shot him a look of pure confusion before realization crossed his face and his jaw clenched. “HYDRA.”

“You know about that?”

“Sentry may have sent Rumlow through a window and revealed his alignments.”

“Hm.” Bucky forced himself to unfreeze and meet up with Ava. “Extra блины for him.”

Chapter Text

“So exactly how many of you are there?”

Tony Stark had arrived a few minutes after Hawkeye had retreated to the shower, and had joined Alexei and Yelena in eating pasta at his counter.

“If all of us came back?” Yelena chewed thoughtfully. “Six.”

“Right,” Tony Stark snapped with his free hand. “Walker practically gave us a list.”

“Yes, Clint Barton did mention this.” Alexei nodded sagely.

“Christ, do you always talk like that? Just call him Barton.”

He frowned. “But that is his name, yes?”

“Do you only call him his full name to prove you know it?” Tony Stark asked dryly, twirling spaghetti around his fork.

Yelena snorted, covering her mouth with her hand. “Sorry. Deja vu.” She paused. “Is it deja vu if it happened in the future?”

The room was silent for a moment, pondering, before Tony Stark waved his hand. “I don’t want to think about that.”

The shower shut off.

“So what’s the plan?” Tony Stark continued conversationally. “Meet up with your team, sure, and then what?”

“We are not sure.” Alexei admitted. “Our team does not do well with plans.”

“Bob may know what to do.” Yelena said, her expression bordering on wistful. “He sent us here, he may send us back.”

“He didn’t seem to know how he got there when we met.” Tony Stark pushed his finished plate towards Alexei, who obligingly started scooping more spaghetti on. “But that was a pretty quick intro. We didn’t get a lot of time to talk before he was being handed off to Fury.”

“We will figure it out.” Yelena said confidently. “We always do.”

Alexei hummed in agreement, pushing back the full plate. Stark started eating it immediately. “This is crazy good, by the way. What did you put in this?”

“Boxed spaghetti.” Alexei deadpanned. “And canned sauce.”

Stark stopped eating for a second to stare uncomprehendingly down at his plate. “What brand does Barton buy that it tastes this good?”

“I do not remember.” Alexei turned uncertainly to the garbage can. “Do you want me to look…?”

“No- no. Don’t go digging through Barton’s trash.”

“Who’s digging through my trash?” Barton appeared at the door to his bedroom. He had changed out of his Hawkeye uniform into more casual athleisure, a towel slung around his neck that he was using to dry his hair. He took in the scene before glaring at Stark. “Are you eating my pasta?”

“It’s good!” Stark defended. “Why aren’t you getting mad at them for eating your pasta?”

“They are Russian assassins who broke into the place. I didn’t expect them to have manners.”

Stark leaned back in his chair. “I’m not sure whether to comment on if I should be making sure my cabinets are stocked when Romanov inevitably drops by my tower, or on you apparently expecting me to have manners.”

“Take your pick.” Barton walked over to join them, stealing Stark’s plate in the process- an action only met with an indignant scoff- and taking a bite of his pasta. “Wow, this is good.”

Alexei smiled tightly. “So now that we are here, can we get back to meeting with Nataly-”

“Ope, hold that thought.” Stark raised a hand in a ‘halt’ motion as his phone pinged, and he peered at it. “Text from Cap to Romanov.”

Barton raised his eyebrow. “You have our phones bugged?”

Stark lowered the phone to look judgmentally at Barton. “I have everyone’s phones bugged. Fury let me in a helicarrier full of tech, what did you expect?” He looked back down at the message. “‘Two more time travelers located, taking them in shortly. First is a rogue SHIELD Agent, some sort of matter shifting abilities. Second is The Winter Soldier. He said to tell you he’s awake.’”

Alexei and Yelena breathed twin sighs of relief. Barton, meanwhile, became so tense he appeared to become a statue. “The Winter Soldier?”

“Not anymore.” Yelena snapped protectively. Alexei let himself smile a bit as he began searching Hawkeye’s cabinets for tupperware.

“How is he not The Winter Soldier anymore?” Barton snapped right back. “He has over two hundred assassinations.”

“What was your saying?” Alexei asked, pulling a plastic tub from a cupboard. “Guy brainwashed into becoming a weapon.”

Barton untensed slowly. “That you admitting to being a washed-up supercommunist?” He joked lightly. Stark looked over at Alexei in pure delight. Alexei began scooping the remaining pasta into his tupperware.

“I am sure you guessed already.”

“Supercommunist?” Stark asked, his voice rising in pitch in his excitement.

“Yes, yes, make fun of the stereotyping later.” Yelena waved her hand. “So Captain America  has found Ava and Bucky?”

Stark’s head whipped around to stare at her now. “Bucky? Bucky Barnes? He’s alive?”

“Your team is not the only one who can have a fossil super soldier on it.” Alexei laughed.

Yelena smacked him lightly on the arm. “Glass houses, Alexei.”

“Yes, this is true. We are winning! Two fossil super soldiers!”

“Where’s Cap?” Barton interrupted. “We should meet up with him beforehand. Make our way back together.”

“There’s coordinates. JARVIS, look ‘em up.” Stark sent his phone down flat on the table, and a holographic screen projected above it. A map zeroed in on the sent coordinates, zooming in to a nondescript lab building, only labelled by a small logo printed on the glass door.

“Pym.” Alexei reads. “That is.. Ant-Man, yes?”

“Ant-Man’s real, too.” Stark says, a bit nonsensically. “Any news on the Tooth Fairy where you’re from? Santa Claus?”

Barton gasped dramatically, a hand to his chest. “Santa Claus isn’t real?”

“Well, actually-” Yelena began, a mischievous glint in her eye.

“No. No, you’re fucking with me. Stop it.” Stark pointed at her, and she dissolved into laughter.

“But Pym is right? Your friends will be there?” Barton clarified, looking at Alexei.

“Most likely. Ant-Man and Ava knew each other, I would not be surprised if she were there.” He paused. “I am not sure why the Winter Soldier would be, but undoubtedly they met up like we did.”

“Okay, then.” Barton took the towel off his neck and tossed it over a chair. “Let’s go.”

“Yes, let’s.” Alexei agreed, opening the fridge with the tupperware in hand and peering at the shelves, stocked full of takeout containers and miscellaneous ingredients. “Where would you like me to put your spaghetti?”

Chapter Text

Ava was waiting for them when they walked into the Pym Lab, her arms crossed and leaning against what looked to be an abandoned secretary desk. “Oh good,” she said, focusing on Alexei and Yelena. “I was worried I’d have to search Russia for you two.”

“Wouldn’t have found me.” Yelena countered. “I was in Germany when I woke up.”

“What? Why?”

“Mission.”

“So I could’ve met up with you the same time I got Bucky?” Ava sounded exasperated.

“Mm, no, I had left by then. But how did you think I got his coordinates?”

“Uh, yeah, hi,” Stark raised his hand like a kid waiting to be called on in class. “Tony Stark, or Iron Man. Great to meet you.”

“Yes, I’ve heard the name.” Ava snarked. “Apologies if I’m not all that impressed.”

“You are not forgiven.”

“Aren’t the rest of you supposed to be spies?” Ava said, ignoring Stark totally. “You set off every proximity alarm in place. Bill and Pym knew you were coming from two blocks away.”

“Oh, sorry, were we supposed to be sneaking in?” Barton gestured behind him. “We can go back and try again. I’m sure we could make it in without them knowing.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Captain America stepped out from a room behind Ava. He dipped his head in greeting. “Barton. Stark.”

“Cap.” Stark saluted mockingly. “Out of curiosity, are you already aware of the Winter Soldier’s identity?”

“He’s Bucky.” Rogers confirmed. “We’ve had a heart to heart already.”

“It was very sappy.” Ava cut in.

Stark nodded. “Just checking. You want to grab him, we’ll head back to the Tower?”

“I will.” Rogers dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out his phone, frowning at it. “No response from Romanoff yet, though.”

Alexei and Yelena shared concerned glances.

“We’ll reconvene with her when we get to the Tower.” Barton glanced at Yelena and Alexei. “Probably… before we introduce the new time travellers.” Rogers sent him a questioning glance, and he waved towards the two assassins in answer. “Meet her sister and father.”

Rogers’s expression went through a complicated series of emotions at that. “Romanoff has family?”

Yelena’s eyes narrowed at him. “Yep.”

“Huh.” He seemed to take it in stride. “Great. We’ll warn her about you guys and the Winter Soldier, then, since apparently he shot her at some point.”

Stark frowned, mimicking Rogers from earlier, “Romanoff can get shot? At this point, I thought she was immortal.”

“Might still prove to be true,” Rogers quipped. “She hasn’t died yet, has she?”

Yelena flinched violently at that, and from the corner of her eye could see Alexei and Ava do the same- although Ava’s seemed to be from sympathy more than anything else. Rogers caught it anyway. “Are you kidding me? Her too?”

“Too?” Stark echoed.

“According to Buck, I die sometime in the next fifteen years. Seemingly, Romanoff does too.”

“Oh.” Stark’s face darkened. “Do I- nevermind, actually. I don’t want to know.”

“You don’t.” Alexei agreed.

“Oh come on! I die too?” His voice is joking, but Yelena can see the flicker of genuine panic in his eyes. “Does anyone survive?”

Yelena’s eyes strayed to Barton. She could see his shoulders slump in relief.

“That’s just great.” Stark continued, his hands fiddling with his phone as if that would hide their shaking. “Resident normal guy survives.”

“Despite my best efforts.” Yelena muttered.

Barton turned towards her slowly. “Pardon?”

Luckily, she was saved from having to explain that little one liner by Bucky emerging from the same room Rogers had. “Steve, is everything-” he caught sight of them and the tension in his body language eased. “Yelena. Alexei.”

“Winter Soldier!” Alexei crowed loudly, speed-walking over to scoop Bucky in a hug- much to his distaste.

“Glad to see you back to yourself.” Yelena acknowledged with much less outward affection. Based on his grin, Yelena assumed he caught on to the fondness in her voice anyway. “I was worried we’d have to break you from your programming.”

“Could say the same about you, Black Widow.” Bucky said, worming his way out of Alexei’s super-powered hug and moving to stand next to Rogers. “Is it time to move to the Tower?”

“That’s the plan.” Stark said, clicking through his phone. “I’ll add all of you to JARVIS’s database for now, and we can have reunions abound. Sisterly, fatherly, teammate-erly.”

“Don’t suppose they could come here?” Bucky asked. “I’ve got enemies of all kinds in SHIELD.”

“Not if Nat doesn’t respond.” Barton frowned. “She always answers her texts.”

“Can you contact her?” Rogers asked. “See if she can come here?”

“Yeah, I’ll comm her.” Barton agreed, turning to step outside before stopping dead. “Uh… actually, I think I just found the problem.”

The group turned as one towards the street-facing windows. Rogers, Stark, and Barton were all looking on in confusion, but the Thunderbolts all wore matching expressions of dread.

Dark shadows stretched across the street. They were growing, silent but steady. Civilians were running for cover. As they watched, a couple reached for the door handle to Pym’s Lab before the inky black reached their feet, and in a moment they were gone- silhouettes imprinted on the glass like nuclear shadows.

Yelena heard all three Avengers jump more than she saw them.

“What the hell,” Stark hissed.

“Oh, Bob.” Yelena whispered.

“Bob.” Barton looked at her. “He’s doing this?”

“Not him.” Ava shook her head. “The Void.”

“The Void? That’s ‘fwoosh’ing? That’s what he meant by ‘fwoosh’ing us?” Stark whistled. “He really undersold it.”

Yelena stepped forward. “If Natasha is in there, we have to save her.”

“We will.” Alexei put a comforting hand on her arm.

“They can be saved from that?” Rogers stepped back as the shadows seeped out from the door and quickly amended his statement. “We can be?”

“You can. You will.” In contrast, Ava stepped forward, into line with Alexei and Yelena. “Hold yourself together, we’ll be there soon.”

“Hold yourself together?” Stark asked. “What does that even-”

“God damn it.” Bucky interrupted, joining the line of Thunderbolts. “I just got out of that chair, too. You guys better hope I don’t get one of the rooms where they say my code words.”

“I’ll just drag you out again if you do.” Ava smiled innocently.

“Not funny.”

“A little funny.” Yelena disagreed. She tilted her head as the shadows reached towards them, ignoring Bucky’s glare. “See you all on the other side.”

To the protests of the others, the Thunderbolts all stepped into the Void at once, and everything went black.

Chapter Text

Bob opened his eyes face-to-face with the Void.

Damn it.

“Failed again.” The Void crooned. “There’s no escaping me. I will always be here, inside you.”

Bob squeezed his eyes shut again, stepping away. The imprints of the Kuala Lampur OXE laboratory were etched in his mind- including the two shadows of the doctors from when he had first lost the battle to the Void.

4-7-8.

Man, New York. Again. Why couldn’t he go all Void in the middle of an abandoned desert or something? At least then he wouldn’t be dragging other people into it.

“You can’t escape the Void forever. I’ll always come back.”

4-7-8.

At least Walker was nearby, this time. He’d know what to do. He’d come find Bob.

“Everyone gives in eventually.”

4-7-8.

Ah, but Walker was probably thrown back into his own Shame Rooms. He’d have to go through the Olivia thing again, if not something worse.

“You won’t be able to- hello?”

4-7-8.

Or Bob could just get off his ass and go himself. Find the others. He doesn’t remember exactly how to get out of the Void, but the others do. They could help.

“Hello?”

Bob opened his eyes again. The Void was staring at him, looking as irritated and incredulous as a shadowy silhouette could. “Oh, yeah, s- sorry.” He hunched in on himself a bit. “I’m sure you were giving a very impressive evil speech.”

“Is it evil if it’s the truth?”

“Yeah, see, that. Great evil line. But see the thing is, I don’t actually have to listen to you.”

“What?”

“You’re just. Thoughts. You can’t actually do anything to me.” Bob squares his shoulders. “Yelena said so.”

“Can’t I?” The glass walls all around the lab splintered and shattered, racing in a whirlwind around Bob. The glass cut through his clothes and skin, and he drew into himself in an attempt to get away from it.

4-7-8. 4-7-8.

“Where is Yelena now? You’re alone again. You’ll always return to being alone.”

4-7-8. 4-7-8.

Bob looked up, using his arms to shield his eyes from the glass.

There was a window behind the Void that remained intact. In a blink, its transparency was replaced with a dark midnight sky. Stars twinkled in the distance.

“You’re right.” Bob said, focusing on the window. “I am alone. But I don’t have to be. I’m going to go find my friends.”

He braced himself, running through the circles of shards and crashing through the window.

It was silent all at once. Too late, Bob wondered if the lack of atmosphere would steal the breath from his lungs, but he was breathing fine- although he didn’t know whether to attribute that to the Void Room not being real, or to the magic, hue-shifting rainbow bridge he was now standing on.

He spun around. The window that was once behind him was gone, and so was the Void.

For a moment, he nearly collapsed in relief.

Then he heard a scream of despair behind him.

He was off running towards it before he could think. For a moment, he doubted himself- he was hardly a hero, especially without Sentry powers, especially in the Void- but it was too late now. He could already see figures in the distance.

And Yelena had already proved to him you didn’t need to be a hero to help someone. You just needed to be there.

He slowed as he neared, the figure resolving itself out to be none other than Thor- his signature red cape billowing behind him, his hammer held loosely in his hand.

He was staring down at something, which Bob only could see as he came closer to the edge. It some sort of.. chain. Of Gods.

The one kneeling on the bridge looked similar to Thor, but older, wizened. A metal eyepatch was somehow affixed to the God’s face- which made Bob identify him to likely be Odin.

He was holding on to a younger Thor’s foot, where the God of Thunder was dangling precariously off the edge of the bridge. The Void version of Thor was reaching out with one hand- the other held tightly onto some sort of polearm weapon.

And on the other end of that weapon was Loki.

“I could have done it, Father!” Loki yelled up desperately. “I could have done it! For you! For all of us!”

“Don’t let go,” The Thor standing on the bridge was murmuring- almost chanting, his eyes never leaving the scene. “Don’t let go, Loki, don’t-”

“No, Loki.” Odin said grimly. Loki’s expression cooled into something carefully blank.

“Don’t- Loki, no, please don’t let go, Loki-”

The Void version of Thor echoed him. “Loki, no-”

Loki let go.

“NO!” Both Thors screamed in sync as Loki fell deep into space, some sort of glowing explosion below them.

The real Thor collapsed to his knees, reaching a hand out like he’d be able to reach Loki from the bridge.

The scene reset.

Loki glared up with mixed contempt and hope at Odin. “I could have done it, Father!”

“No- what-?” Real Thor’s hand retracted in confusion. “Don’t- what?”

“I could have done it! For you! For all of us!”

“How-”

“No, Loki.”

“You can’t- don’t-”

“Loki, no-”

Loki let go.

This time, Thor curled up, wincing and looking away as Loki fell. Instead, his gaze locked on Bob, standing just behind him.

Bob waved. “Hey, man.”

“The Sentry?”

“Uh, no.”

“I could have done it, Father!”

“Bob! It is Bob, yes? Can you help? Can you stop this?” Thor stood, rushing to him and gripping his sweater tightly.

“Not really,” He scrambled apologetically. “I don’t.. control the Rooms. Sorry. We can leave, though. But no promises it won’t get worse.”

“The Room. What is it?”

“It’s the Void.” He shrugged helplessly. “It’s what the Void does. Yelena calls them Shame Rooms- they repeat your biggest regrets and fears. I didn’t-” He looks away. “I didn’t mean to start this again. I’m sorry.”

“No…” Thor slowly released Bob’s sweater, setting him down from where he had begun to lift off the ground. “No, this is my fault. I.. I couldn’t save him.”

“Who, Loki?”

“Yes.” Thor flinched at his Void version’s scream as Loki fell again. “I didn’t reach him in time.”

“Yeah, but…” Bob leaned around Thor to watch Loki reappear at the bottom of the polearm. “I mean, I’m no expert, man, but it seems like he let go. That doesn’t really seem like… a failure. That seems like he wanted to fall.”

“He didn’t think he had a choice.”

“Maybe, but that’s not really on you, right?” Bob squinted. “You seemed to make it pretty clear you wanted him there, trying to save him and all.”

“Well, yes, but…” Thor trailed off. Bob looked back at him. His gaze was distant, his expression vaguely bewildered, trying to rationalize.

“And he’s fine, right? I mean, he just attacked New York.”

“He did.” The God agreed slowly, focusing once again on Bob.

Bob shrugged. “So not on you.”

“You follow an interesting path of thought, Bob.” Bob frowned, opening his mouth to apologize again before Thor cut him off with a small gesture. “I would like to choose to follow it. Thank you.”

“Oh, yeah! For sure, man.” He smiled. “Now, uh… I was actually looking for my friends-”

“I will come with you.” Thor stated, as if Bob was going to leave without him.

“Yeah, of course! Maybe… Maybe we could find yours too? If they’re in here.”

“Most likely they are. I was with the Black Widow and Bruce Banner when I was trapped.”

“Great.” Another Black Widow, probably sent back to memories of the Red Room because of him. And whatever nightmares Bruce Banner has been through.

Thor frowned. “It is not great.”

“I wasn’t- nevermind. Yeah, let’s find them. You see any reflective surfaces around here? Or anything that looks like it leads to a… different room?”

Thor silently pointed.

Past the chain of Gods (that has once again reset), a bright, round window was embedded in the glowing explosion below them.

“Just great.” Bob said, defeated. “Well, we need to get down there, so-” He shuffled towards the edge of the bridge, looking down uncertainly.

Thor joined him, crouching down. He raised a hand, offering it to Bob.

Yeah, alright.

Bob took it.

Thor leaned forward, falling off the edge just as Bob stepped off, and both fell for the window below.

Chapter Text

John fully expected to wake up in his old living room. Or the Latvia Resettlement Camp, standing over Lemar or the Flag Smasher, seeing his bloodied old uniform. Or, hell, in Afghanistan since it was so fresh in his mind.

He certainly didn’t expect to find himself on top of a moving train in the snow.

He cursed, dropping quickly and grabbing onto a handrail before the wind swept him away. His boots scrabbled against the metal, and he struggled for a moment before getting a comfortable foothold.

Gotta give the Void points for realism.

But also… this was not his memory. He would definitely remember this sort of mission. So where exactly did the Void decide to drop him?

As if on cue, he heard a commotion from the other side of the train. For a moment, John just rested his forehead against the cool metal, wishing he had just stayed at home with Olivia.

But then Bob would’ve just spiraled into the Void faster.

For a moment, he contemplated whether his decisions made any difference at all.

He shook it off. That was the Void talking. His own self-deprecation talking. He wouldn’t fall for it. Sure, this situation didn’t go how he had hoped- but he could always move forward.

One foot in front of the other.

One change after another.

He dragged himself across the top of the train until he was in sight of whatever was making so much noise, and, oh man. That was Captain America.

Two Captain Americas.

A large rip in the wall decorated the side of the train, and one Captain America was half-hanging out of it. He was in an older uniform, one John knew he had seen in a museum somewhere. 

The second Captain America, what John would guess was the modern Steve Rogers, was watching listlessly as the first reached out hopelessly to a young Bucky Barnes, clinging to the side of the train.

“Hang on!” Captain America said, reaching along railing to scoot tantalizingly closer to his childhood best friend. In a similar fashion, John shuffled his way closer to Steve Rogers, who was holding on to the train with a mere one hand and one foot. Must be nice to have that supersoldier serum on a speeding train.

“Grab my hand!” Cap yelled, reaching towards Bucky. And Bucky reached, but just as he lifted a hand, the railing he was holding detached and swung downwards, loosening his grip. It didn’t stop Bucky from reaching.

The last of the screws snapped.

“No!”

The other side of the railing dropped, and Bucky with it.

John reached Rogers and grabbed at his arm, attempting to pull him away from the scene. He didn’t succeed (not that he expected to), but he did catch his attention. Slowly, Rogers looked away as the scene reset- the Void Captain America disappearing back into the train and Bucky falling back onto his temporary handhold.

And now Rogers was looking at John, but he didn’t seem to register him at all.

“Hey.” John snapped his fingers in front of Rogers’s face, trying to get anything from him at all. “Hey, Rogers! Snap out of it.”

Rogers slowly started to turn back as the railing loosened again.

“HEY!” John yanked Cap’s shoulder to keep him facing away from the fall. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“I dropped him.”

“Hardly.” John scoffed, even though he was inwardly cheering at getting a response at all.

“I didn’t reach him in time.” Rogers corrected.

Well, he couldn’t factually deny that one. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“He was taken after this. Wasn’t he? HYDRA took him, he was the superweapon.”

John really needed Rogers to stop making observations that were factually impossible for him to deny. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“It’s feeling a lot like it is.” Rogers said, the barest trace of humor interlacing his despair.

“But it wasn’t,” John urged. “Sometimes… sometimes people just die. Or they get hurt.” He swallowed the lump suddenly growing his throat. “Not being able to stop it doesn’t make it your fault.”

Rogers blinked. It seemed like he was slowly coming back to himself. “I should’ve looked for him.”

“You did look for him. When you found out he was alive, the first time around, you wouldn’t drop it. And you did. Nothing could’ve stopped you from finding him, then. And nothing will stop you now.” He steeled himself. “Come on, Cap. Snap out of it. You always get back up. That’s what I looked up to so much.”

Rogers met his eye for the first time, and visibly gathered himself. There was a momentary falter as Bucky’s scream sounded behind him, but he did it. Dragged his composure back together. “Walker.”

“Hey, Cap.” A smile tugged at his lips. “Can I call you Cap?”

“After this, I think you can call me Steve.” He reached and hauled himself up onto the top of the train, joining John rather than continuing to hold on to the side.

“That’s absolutely not happening.”

“Where are we? What’s going on?”

“Exactly what you brought me in to stop.” John admitted. “This is the Void.”

Steve raised his eyebrow. “I can see why Bob was eager to evade it.”

“Yeah. Not pleasant for anyone. He’s not exempt, by the way, he’s probably trapped in a Shame Room too.”

“Shame Room, huh? Apt name.” 

“I’ll tell Yelena you thought so.” John looked around. “There should be a way out of here, into a different Room. We need to go through them until we find Bob. If we can, we might be able to get him out- along with everyone else.”

“I doubt we’ll find one out here.” Rogers said, which. Point. There nothing around that could change their surroundings, unless they dropped off the train- which they would most certainly not be doing, if John could help it.

“Inside?” John offered.

“After you.” Cap gestured behind him, where the nearest break between train cars was.

Awesome. Cap could watch as John fought to not get thrown off a train.

He was glad he had the military (and superhero) training to not struggle as much as he might’ve, and instead he successfully made it to the gangway and dropped onto the platform.

He heard the clunk of boots behind him and reached for the door.

And found himself in Latvia.

Oh, he jinxed himself. He jinxed himself bad.

He (and Captain America, oh fuck, Captain America was going to see-) were at the back of the crowd, and he numbly pushed himself forwards through the phone flashes and recording cameras.

Clang.

He still couldn’t see, but the sound of the dropped shield was deafening. It rang in his ears, and he pushed forward still, even though he knew what he would see.

“What th-” He barely caught Captain America’s intake of breath over the rushing of blood.

“Like I said before, Cap.” He heard himself say. “You don’t know what I did.”

He got lucky, all things considered. It was all he could think when he emerged from the front of the crowd. Insanely lucky.

The Shame Room wasn’t showing the actual murder.

Oh, it implied enough. The Flag Smasher, collapsed and bloodied with a concave chest on the steps. John Walker himself, in all his mantle-failing glory, heaving and red-eyed and standing over the body with blood flecked on his shield, his uniform, his hands, his face-

The shield dropped.

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

“Walker.” His vision was blocked by a different blue uniform. One that felt less like gory dread and more like young wisps of hope. “Walker, you need to snap out of it.”

“Out of what?” He asked, his mind absolutely elsewhere. “I’m right here, Cap.”

“No, you’re not. You’re not looking at me. Snap. Out of it.”

John dragged his gaze to Rogers’s face. 

“Shit. We’re moving, alright? We’re going to the next room.”

“Sure.” He agreed, feeling a hand close around his wrist and start dragging him.

“We’ll find one of your friends.”

“Sure.” He agreed again. “Gotta help Bob.”

“Gotta help you, Walker.”

“I’m good.”

“No, you’re not.”

John just hummed, closing his eyes and trying to ignore the Clang. Clang. Clang. in his head.

“Here- we’re going through here-”

And he stepped through to somewhere new.

Chapter Text

Ava was in a gas station.

Which was certainly not what she expected. Sure, bad things can happen in unassuming places, but there were a few problems with this particular location appearing in the Void.

Most notably, she’d never been here.

“We’re diversifying.” She mumbled to herself jokingly. “Get your own traumatic memory, relive someone else’s for free.”

She wandered through the aisles, watching the only employee (owner, maybe?) shuffle around behind the counter for a few moments before the door swung open.

A kid entered.

He looked nervous. His eyes were shifting around, his hands tucked into his pockets. The owner of the store didn’t even look up until the kid had made it to the end of the aisle, reached up, and knocked over a few cans of Tab, sending soda fizzing all over the floor.

The owner jumped in surprise and started making his way over. “You gonna pay for those, kid?” He asked, sporting the dry sense of humor a customer service worker takes when they know they’ll be blamed for a situation.

“I’m sorry, mister,” the kid said, instantly putting on an innocent countenance, “but I don’t know where my mom is.”

“Well, that’s not even remotely related to what he asked.” Ava quipped to herself, rolling her eyes- looking away for just long enough to notice a woman sneaking over the counter behind them.

Ah. Mom.

“Okay, now- where was your mom?” The owner waved a hand, his tone torn between concern and irritation.

“I had to go to the bathroom, and we’re going t-” The kid scrambled for an answer as the owner started to turn back to the register.

“Okay, just stay right here-”

“I WANT MY MOM!” Shouted the kid, trying remarkably hard to keep the owner’s attention on himself.

“Okay, alright-” The owner looked resigned- right as the woman began loudly rummaging through the drawers.

Ava winced at the noise she was making on instinct. Unless this was the first time they’ve ever stolen something, that was an unacceptable amount of noise to be making. She’d never been that loud on a mission. And sure, maybe she had an advantage as Ghost, but she had also been extensively trained on stealth too- HYDRA (or SHIELD, for that matter) had never been one to rely exclusively on super powers.

Sure enough, the owner turned instantly, his vague worry immediately turning to anger as he rushed to the counter. “Hey! Hey, what the hell are you doing- what are you doing?”

The woman reached under the counter and pulled out a rifle, raising it just in time for the owner to reach the barrel and force it aside, wrestling her for it. Ava raised an eyebrow, leaning casually against a rack of candy. This was escalating quickly.

The gun skittered out of both their hands, and the owner grabbed the woman. “You ain’t going nowhere-”

“Clint!” The woman shouted, and Ava held back a gasp, glancing back over to the kid, who had picked up the gun and was now aiming it squarely at the struggling duo. “Clint, come on! Come on, we gotta get out of here.”

Clint. Clint Barton.

What luck did Ava have that she got stuffed into an Avenger’s Void Room?

The kid (Clint Barton-) hesitated, the barrel of the rifle shifting ever so slightly to aim between the man and woman. Between his mother and the owner of the small store she was robbing.

A knot tied itself in her stomach. What a shitty choice.

The owner was trying to convince him to put the gun down while his mom egged him on, trying to convince him to shoot. Clint’s gun wavered.

Ava felt the moment he made his decision. He aimed, just a little too far to the left, and pulled the trigger. The window shattered. In the near distance, the passenger’s side of a parked sheriff’s car got shot, and the sheriff ducked for cover before turning towards the store.

The mom’s face darkened in betrayal and fury. Clint slowly lowered the gun.

It didn’t take long after for the sheriff to make it to the gas station. The owner of the place kept a close eye and grip on the mom. Little-Kid-Clint was sent outside to sit on the pavement.

Ava went with him.

She probably shouldn’t have been surprised when Adult-Clint was sitting outside, fiddling with an arrow. He shifted over as Kid Clint came out, until he was sitting side by side with his past self.

Ava opened and closed her mouth a few times as the Sheriff entered the gas station, not sure where to start. Eventually, she stuck with what she had been thinking. “Shitty choice.”

Hawkeye chuckled, seemingly unsurprised with Ava’s appearance in his memory. “Yeah, it was.”

“Seems like you made the right move, though.”

He shrugged helplessly. “It wasn’t right, what she was doing. What she made me do.”

Ah, guilt. Her old friend. “Sure it wasn’t.” She agreed, maneuvering around the Sheriff as he brought out Clint’s Mom to shove into his car. “But did you know that then?”

The mom was glaring at Clint. The kid swallowed, his voice still young enough to be a bit squeaky. “Mom? I’m sorry. I missed.”

“You never miss.” She said coldly. Out of the corner of her eye, Ava could see Hawkeye mouthing the words along with her.

They just sat, for a few moments. Well, the Bartons sat. Ava leaned against the door frame.

The kid slowly faded as the Sheriff’s car drove away. Another car pulled up- one that Ava could distantly see was being driven by the mom. The scene had reset.

“I figured it out, eventually.” Hawkeye said finally. “Should’ve figured it out sooner.”

Ava scoffed. “You were a kid.”

"Doesn't excuse it.” He frowned bitterly. “I knew it was wrong.”

“You were a kid.” Ava repeated. “You could hardly make a choice about it. She was all you had, right?”

Barton looked at her judgementally over his shoulder.

“Sometimes people are raised wrong.” Ava continued. Little-Kid-Clint went into the store, his mother following mere moments later. Ava scrutinized her as she passed. She looked far too casual for what she was about to make her kid do. “That’s not the fault of the kid, that’s the fault of the guardian.”

It was quiet again, for a bit. They listened to the muffled sounds of the fight inside.

“She didn’t… take advantage of my innocence, or whatever you’re thinking. I knew what I was doing.”

“Don’t doubt it.” She smiled softly. “You seemed like a smart kid. Which is why you did that.” She jerks her head in the direction of the window. As if on cue, the rifle sounded and the glass shattered. The sheriff started running towards them.

Clint hummed noncommittally. “So this is getting ‘fwoosh’ed, huh?”

Ava graciously didn’t mention the abrupt change in topic. “Yeah. This is the Void.” Kid-Clint came back out the door to sit once more, and this time, Ava joined them. “Reliving shameful memories. We’ll need to find Bob, and pull him out. Remind him that he is not the worst parts of himself.” Clint gazed out over the nondescript midwest fields, lost in thought. She leaned over and nudged his shoulder, snapping him out of it. “None of us are.”

Clint stood, holding out a hand to help Ava up. “So how do we get to Bob?”

Ava snorted. “As much as I personally like to subscribe to throwing yourself into work to avoid emotional problems, that might not be the move this time.”

“Mom? I’m sorry. I missed.”

“You never miss.”

“I know.” Clint said. “But I think… I think I made my peace with this already. I just didn’t know I had.”

Ava reached up and grabbed his hand. He pulled her up to her feet. “Alright. To the next room, then.”

“There’s just… endless rooms?”

“Pretty much. We keep going through them until we find Bob.”

Clint gestured vaguely. “Lead the way, then.”

“Now, see, that’s the hard part.” Ava bit her lip, looking around. “I think… I think it might be back through here.” She hesitantly opened the door to the convenience store. The room beyond looked familiar. A living room, plastered in papers. Her throat was suddenly dry. “

Oh.”

Clint raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“This one’s mine.”

“Oh.” He echoed. “Well. Keep going through, huh?”

“I guess.” She inhaled deeply and walked through.

Void Ava stood, glitching, staring at the turned back of Void Bill Foster. She was out of her containment suit, in a grey hoodie with heavily worn sleeves from where she pulled at loose threads. It was a habit she used to share with Bob- one that, luckily for all her sweaters, she had slowly stopped as her phasing pains got more manageable.

Void Ava looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks.

“We’ve got to get that lab back,” Void Foster murmured, mostly to himself. He was still facing away from her, but both current and past Ava knew he knew she was there. He always could tell.

“What?” Void Ava asked nervously.

“Ah,” Ava said at the same time, realizing where she was. “Quiet room.”

Clint sent her a quizzical look.

“My team, we’ve been sent into the Void a few times. Not full-blown ‘taking over New York’ like this, that was just the once. But Bob doesn’t have the best control of his powers, so sometimes he accidentally sends us in when he’s having a rough day and we touch.” She holds up a hand demonstratively, her eyes never leaving the Void versions of herself and her pseudo-father as they discussed the dangers of her phasing worsening. “We’ve categorized them,” She continued, keeping her voice as level as she could. “Violent rooms are usually particularly traumatic. Quiet rooms are more shameful.”

“So mine, that’d be a quiet room?”

Ava dipped her head in agreement, closing her eyes as the Void version of her voiced one of her darker thoughts. “Lang. He has a daughter, right?”

She felt more than saw Clint go rigid next to her as Void Ava began to storm off, Foster chasing her. “You can’t mean that… Ava?”

The Void version of her turned, a desperate sort of dedication written on her face.

“I tolerate a lot of the things you do out there, but I won’t be a part of anything like that.”

“You’re not the one who’s about to fade away into nothing, Bill. I am!”

“You didn’t-” Clint spoke up, his voice faltering.

“I didn’t.” She confirmed, before the accusation was out. “But… I wanted to. At the time. I’m glad I didn’t, now, but-” She huffed a laugh that sounded a bit more like a sob. “I was in so much pain.” It all felt closer, now. She had felt it again. She’d thought it was over, but she felt it again. “I thought I’d do anything to make it stop. I don’t know if I would’ve gone through with it.”

“You lay one finger on that little girl, I won’t help you. And we’re done.” Void Foster was saying sternly.

“Fine.” Void Ava’s mouth twitched up into a smile, just shy of manic. “There are other options.”

“What did you do instead?” Clint asked, watching Void Ava storm out of the room- through a wall, of course.

“Found his friends. One of them had been dosed with truth serum, we weren’t the only ones looking for the lab.”

“Truth serum!” Clint exclaimed, dropping the last of his uncertainty in his surprise. “That exists, in the future?”

Ava smirked. “Depends who you ask. We should find the door.”

“Right, right.” Clint nodded, and the two began making their way around the room as the argument reset.

“You’re not the one who’s about to fade away into nothing, Bill. I am!”

“So, uh. What did you mean by that?”

Ava stopped from where she was opening a closet door. “Are you… are you making conversation in the middle of my shame memory?”

“Excuse me if I thought you might want to drown it out.”

“No, that’s fair.” She finished opening the door, closed it again, and opened it futilely. No helpful passage to the next room. “My phasing wasn’t exactly stable. It was literally tearing my molecules apart, and they weren’t coming back together right. It was only…” She paused, turning towards a cabinet. “Recently in this timeline, I think another four years in the original timeline, that I got it fixed.”

“But you can still phase.”

Ava waved a hand. “Science bullshit. That’s Foster’s job to study, I was just thankful I wasn’t in pain anymore.”

Clint didn’t seem to know what to say to that, and there was a short silence before he broke it with an “Aha!”

Ava turned. The room’s archway, which Void Ava had entered from and stormed out of, was now glowing white.

“Perfect.” She walked towards it in sync with Clint, but he stopped her the moment before she was about to go through.

“Thank you.”

“What?”

“For not going after his kid.” Clint sighed. “I’ve got kids. I can’t even imagine how I’d feel if they got targeted.”

The knot in Ava’s stomach tightened. “I think that was the absolute least I could do, actually.”

“Yeah.” Clint allowed. “Thanks anyway.”

He stepped through before she could respond. Hesitantly, she followed, a tight smile on her face and anxiety worming through her core.

Chapter Text

It was… dark. And warm. Not any comfortable sort of warm, but a humid sort of heat from stagnant air.

Bucky turned slowly, taking in his surroundings.

The unfortunate part of having a spotty memory from constant brainwashing sessions was that he didn’t actually know if he’d ever been in a random cave. It seemed like the type of place that he would have had a mission.

Or did Void Rooms only count if he remembered them enough to be ashamed?

Honestly, probably not. It would be just his luck if being thrown back into the Void let him uncover new and buried traumas that he’d have to contend with.

Doesn’t matter, he realized as he spotted none other than Tony Stark, half-bandaged and sitting on a table, staring resolutely at a wall. Not mine.

An older man with glasses was with him, shifting scrap metal and papers around- organizing, or maybe just fiddling with them.

Bucky hadn’t ever appeared in someone else’s Room before without leaving his own, but hey. First time for everything.

The sliding peephole cover in the door slammed open, and Bucky froze on instinct as yelling echoed through the room- a language he distantly recognized as Arabic, but unfortunately just enough of a different dialect that he couldn’t translate it.

“Come on, stand up, stand up!” The older man rushed over to Stark, urging him to stand. “Just do as I do.”

Stark- Past Stark, Bucky figured, Void Stark, so where was the current one?- was slow to move, bogged down by confusion as the older man nudged his hands. “Come on, put your hands up.”

A troupe of armed men opened the doors, fanning out.

“Those are my guns,” Stark said, his voice carefully neutral. “How did they get my guns?”

Now that he mentioned it, Bucky could see the glinting ‘Stark Industries’ branding printed neatly across the sights. He didn’t have much time to think about it before the older man snapped, “Do you understand me? Do as I do!”

Stark fell obediently silent as the frontman of the group started monologuing. Bucky stepped back from the scene, the translations background noise as he searched for the Tony from now.

“He says, ‘Welcome, Tony Stark, the most famous mass murderer in the history of America’.”

“He is honored.”

“He wants you to build the missile.”

“The Jericho missile that you demonstrated.”

“This one.”

The crinkling of paper, presumably as a photograph was handed over. Bucky wasn’t paying attention to the scene that the Room was playing out for them anymore. He was focused on Tony, the real Tony, crouched behind a work desk with his eyes squeezed shut and a hand clutching at the arc reactor in his chest.

Bucky knelt next to him, hands hovering.

At one point, Sam had walked him through what to do in a few basic trauma responses. They were common enough in their line of work, and Bucky had paid attention even before he had found himself getting back into the hero life with the Thunderbolts. Maybe he always knew he wasn’t cut out for politics.

But Tony seemed to be having a pretty clear-cut panic attack, and Bucky wasn’t actually sure if he would welcome the help.

“I refuse.” Stark’s voice echoed through the room. There was a moment of silence before a short command was barked out, and the sounds of a struggle broke out.

Tony gasped like a dying man, his free hand coming up to cover one ear while the other remained pressed on his arc reactor. His head tilted oddly, his shoulder raising to cover the other ear. On the other side of the desk there were the unmistakable sounds of water sloshing around in a basin.

A short struggle, and then the splash of someone being submerged.

Oh, shit.

“Stark,” Bucky said, leaning closer to him. “I can cover your ears, do you want me to?”

Tony’s eyes shot open, studying Bucky in the darkness. There was panic in his gaze, but also a sharp clarity that Bucky couldn’t help but admire, just a bit. Slowly, he nodded.

Bucky reached forward, trying to ignore how awkward this was with someone he barely knew (with someone who hated him in the first timeline-), and covered Tony’s ears. Tony relaxed miniscully, righting his head and slipping his own hand out from under Bucky’s to clutch at his shirt.

Bucky staunchly ignored the sounds of Stark being waterboarded behind him. His eyes stayed on Tony as he took an exaggerated breath and slowly let it out.

Tony’s brows furrowed in confusion. Bucky took another. Tony’s hands loosened their white-knuckled grip on his shirt as amusement flickered across his face- but, despite making fun of him for it, he did start mirroring Bucky’s breaths.

The splashing and heaving breaths from the other side of the desk disappeared all at once.

Slowly, Bucky lowered his hands. Tony looked around. “What-” He croaked, taking a moment to clear his throat. “What is this?”

“The Void.” Bucky said grimly. “Replays your worst memories. The ones that hurt the most, or cause the most shame.”

“It’s shit.”

“Yeah.” He huffed a laugh. “It is.” He peered over the desk at the stoic, younger Stark, staring up at a camera. “I can see why this memory might make the cut.”

“No, you don’t.”

“No?” Bucky raised an eyebrow.

“No, it’s- I mean, sure, torture wasn’t exactly how I was expecting to spend my time, but-” The doors slammed open, and Tony jolted in surprise.

“Come on, stand up, stand up!”

“It’s him.”

“The other guy?”

“Dr. Ho Yinsen.”  Tony said the name gravely, like it was one he had been repeating for years.

Bucky’s throat was dry. “I didn’t hear anything about you being captured with someone.”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t have.” Tony scoffed, harsh and bitter. “When there’s a miraculous rescue of a billionaire, the media usually likes to cover up the people who didn’t make it out.”

“Those are my guns. How did they get my guns?””

Tony’s face seemed to spasm as that line was repeated, his expression closing off. Bucky sighed. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

It sounded empty. Tony shrugged. “Yeah, thanks.”

The discussion stopped as the Void’s memory repeated. When “I refuse.” cut through the air again, Bucky raised his hands in invitation. Tony obligingly leaned forward, and Bucky blocked out the noise of the water. Tony’s hands stayed firmly clenched into fists and pressed against the ground.

This time, Bucky let his mind wander as he tried to think of how to get out. The Void Room exits liked to be in doorways or reflective surfaces- neither of which were very present in the room. His best guess would be that they’re behind the doors, but that would require getting Tony to move. As much as Bucky could probably just pick the engineer up and move him, it certainly wouldn’t help with Tony’s mental state- and they both needed to be prepared as best they could for whatever the Void might throw at them next.

The sounds of struggle cut off again, and Bucky released Tony, who sat back. His mask of self-importance was reinstated securely on his face. “You looked like you were thinking hard. Care to share with the class?”

“Trying to find a way out.” Bucky replied bluntly.

“There’s a way out?” Tony asked, a flicker of hope in his voice- probably entirely against his will.

“Should be.” He peered at the door as the sliding peephole slammed open once more. “Probably through there. Leads to the next Room.”

“The next Room.” Tony deflated. “So not ‘out’.”

“Out, relatively speaking.”

“Great.”

“If we go through enough, we find Bob. We find Bob, we can get out out. That work for you?”

“Better plan than I have.” Tony shrugged.

“Those are my guns. How did they get my guns?””

Tony flinched.

Bucky frowned at him. “What?”

“What what?” Tony repeated innocently, squaring his shoulders.

“That’s the second time you’ve reacted like that. Why are you so bothered by that?”

“By my captors having my brand on their weapons? Gee, I wonder.”

“It’s more than that, though, isn’t it.” Bucky leaned forward- perfectly matched by Tony leaning away. “What?”

Tony just glared at him.

“Look,” Bucky leaned in as the confrontation got louder, “the exits to these usually show up faster if you’ve dealt with the scene. Emotionally. And you haven’t. So what is it?”

Tony pressed his lips together, reluctant to share- but of course, he leaned forward again for Bucky to help when the sound of water reappeared.

He was utterly silent as the scene finished. And then while it replayed once. But it was the heavy, expectant sort of silence- the one that told Bucky that Tony was going to tell him, he was just… building up to it.

Gathering courage.

“My weapons.” Tony said eventually. “They had my weapons.”

Bucky nodded. “They did.”

“I didn’t sell to them. I didn’t- it was under the table. I never knew.”

He just nodded again, urging Tony to keep going.

“I don’t know… who got hurt. I don’t know who got killed by a weapon with my name on it.”

Bucky frowned. “What did you think your weapons were doing?”

Tony grimaced, but Bucky didn’t feel too bad about it. It was something he was going to have to come to terms with eventually. “Yeah, I know. It was always theoretical in my head. Didn’t really click that there were people on the other end. I always rationalized it by my supplying to ‘the right side’, but-” he raised a hand to gesture to the kidnappers as they burst through the doors again. “Then they weren’t. Wish it didn’t take them being pointed at me for the kill count of my inventions to gain meaning.”

His voice was filled with a certain self-loathing that Bucky was deeply familiar with. He sighed- he was so unbelievably not cut out for this. Maybe he could connect Tony to Dr. Raynor. Had she started practicing yet, in 2012?

The sound of water came again, and Bucky blocked Tony’s ears again as he thought.

Compared.

The guilt Tony was dealing with was familiar. The weight of deaths- the genuine loss of life, the realization that those were people that didn’t exist anymore because of something you did- that was hard to just brush off. 

But it wasn’t something you did.

It was a statement that Dr. Raynor had repeated often, in their sessions. Every time Bucky expressed guilt for the lives he took- “But you didn’t take them. You may have completed the mission, but it was one you never had a choice in. That guilt will be hard to work through, and we’ll do it together. There are steps that you can take to personally atone for the guilt you feel. But don’t go putting the blame where it doesn’t belong. You may have been the weapon, Bucky, but you aren’t the one who aimed and fired.”

You may have been the weapon, but you aren’t the one who aimed and fired.

Tony made the weapons. But he wasn’t the one who aimed and fired.

The Void Room reset. Bucky released Tony, who immediately drew back and into himself. Bucky cleared his throat. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“Really. It seems pretty cut and dry to me,” Tony chuckled, falling back into his mask of narcissism- though the effect was somewhat lost with him curled into a defensive position.

“You were trying to help your country.” Bucky shrugged. “I can’t fault you for that. Me and Stevie did the same, though in a different way.” He looked up towards the ceiling, mostly as a way to avoid Tony’s intense stare. “It turned into… something else. You can’t be faulted for that.”

“It’s not like your thing.”

Bucky blinked and looked back down at him. “What?”

“You were brainwashed, right? Into being an assassin. The other two assassins mentioned.” He rolled his eyes. “But my thing isn’t like yours. You literally didn’t have a choice. I could’ve stopped making weapons a long time ago.”

“You didn’t know this was happening a long time ago.” Bucky countered. “You thought you were helping. And the second you found out what really was going on, you stopped. Turned your company around, started making it up immediately.” He swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. “The Stark I knew was a good man.”

“Was I?” Tony asked. “That doesn’t sound in-character for me. I’m notoriously full of myself. It’s one of my best traits.”

Bucky looked at him. His desolate expression didn’t match his words. “You did your best.” He said simply. “That was always enough.”

He didn’t speak for a few moments. And when he did, he was back to usual Stark-levels of snark. “That was a really good one, Dr. Phil. You practice that in the mirror?”

“Sometimes.”

Tony just gave him a Look, which Bucky figured was probably fair.  He chose not to engage with it in favor of watching the kidnappers burst through the doors yet again, shouting and aiming weapons.  He scanned the place for the thousandth time, looking for a way, any way, out of the room.

Eventually, he settled on the hallway that led out to the rest of the caves.

He turned back to Tony, who had been shockingly quiet during the Void’s repetition of the confrontation, and jerked his head towards the entrance. “Want to get out of here?”

Tony’s lip twitched upwards into something vaguely reminiscent of a smile. “You coming on to me, Manchurian Candidate?”

“Absolutely not.” He deadpanned. “But at least there’d be less noise out there while we find a way out.”

There was a moment of hesitation before Tony nodded, slowly following Bucky as he made his way around the desk and out the door.

Luckily the Void’s replications of Tony’s past tormenters got out of the way by the time they got there, so they didn’t have to brush past them. 

Unluckily for Bucky, the second they made it through the cave was gone. Instead, it had been replaced by something a lot more familiar- a clean metallic building, lights flickering on reserve power, with a distant alarm blaring.

And a booming, rhythmic sound of thud, thud, thud reverberating along the hallway.

Bucky and Tony shared a concerned look and continued on.

The room where the sound was coming from wasn’t hard to find- the door creaking open as the lights disengaged, and as they got closer they could see shattered glass littering the floor.

And then, even worse, the low and disengaged tone of The Winter Soldier.

“я готов отвечать.”

“Shit.” Bucky said.

Tony glanced at Bucky, bewildered, but he couldn’t exactly provide an answer- instead, he was flinging himself backwards and covering his own ears in a sick repetition of how he had helped Tony, hoping to block out the sounds as the scene reset and Zemo began to repeat the Winter Soldier trigger phrases.

It didn’t quite work.

“Желание.”

Bucky shook his head, shutting his eyes. He couldn’t imagine Tony’s expression right now, but his only priority at the moment was keeping out those words. He had been joking when he told Ava this would be bad; it was just his luck that he’d actually end up in a room that said the trigger words in their entirety.

Or maybe it was purposeful. The Void was probably cognitive enough to understand that these would work on him again.

“Ржавый.”

“No, no, no, no-” Bucky stepped further away, but it didn’t seem to do anything to quiet the words.

“Семнадцать.”

The noise of the Room fell suddenly silent, and warmth enveloped his hands. His eyes shot open in surprise, and he looked up at Tony- his hands over Bucky’s, helping him block out the words the same way Bucky had helped him.

Some of the tension bled from his shoulders, but he kept his hands where they were. Eventually, they would need to figure out how to get out. But for now, they just needed to make it through.

Tony was purposefully looking away from Bucky, his eyes instead locked on the Void Room scene, barely visible throughout the door. The Bucky formed from the Void was punching the glass pod he was trapped in (thud, thud, thud-) as Zemo taunted him, walking closer and closer with that damned book.

And then the glass broke. And it wasn’t Bucky anymore.

And Tony’s face contorted for a moment, flipping through multiple expressions as Zemo spoke- confusionrecognitionshockfearbetrayaldisgust- before his eyes met Bucky’s, his face set on dread. His hands loosened, and for a moment Bucky was terrified that he’d let go. He could see the eerie blank look on the Void’s version of him, the cold and hard expression that he’d fought against for a long time.

He didn’t remember exactly what Zemo asked him to do after this. It had been lost in the programming. But Tony was hearing it, and now he was moving away, and for a split second Bucky was overcome with the terror that he wouldn’t actually make it out. That the Winter Soldier would chase someone out from his life again, leave him alone again, and he’d be dragged back into the past he had been so desperate to escape from.

He pressed his own hands against his ears even harder, fingers tangled and tearing at his hair for purchase- before he watched the scene reset, and Zemo started anew with the words, and finally, finally, Tony closed his eyes in resolve and helped Bucky cover his ears again.

And the scene reset. Zemo with that book again, open and reading.

Bucky closed his eyes again. The loop was too short. They wouldn’t have enough time to formulate a plan, to get out, before the Winter Soldier was back.

They’d have to wait for the others to find them.

Bucky could feel the thud, thud, thud vibrating through the ground. The red alarms became the only light in the hallway outside of that room, flashes just visible through his eyelids. The words repeated, again and again.

Bucky and Tony sat against the wall, trying to block it out.