alexs_storybook (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexs_storybook) wrote2018-11-24 08:30 am
alexs_storybook) wrote2018-11-24 08:30 am
FIC: Cap-Iron Man Big Bang: Tie Your Heart to Mine, Part 3
Title: Tie Your Heart to Mine, Part 3
Author: alexcat
Artist: KakushiMiko
Universe: MCU
Rating (both fic and art): Fic - Explicit, Art - General
Word Count: 27804
Warnings: Heart attack, one violent but not too graphic death
Notes: This story began as a short story and bloomed into something else altogether. Like most fans, CW and IW left my heart broken so I decided to fix them. This is my fix (or one of them anyway).
I’d like to thank my hubby for letting me bounce ideas off of him and for putting up my frantic writing in the last days. I also want to thank him for reminding me that it was MY story to tell.
I also want to thank both of my betas. It was such a hot mess, that I needed two: athletiger and [personal profile] nuinzilien. It reads more like a story now, thanks to you two!
My artist is KakushiMiko and you’ll see her great stuff throughout the work and at her link! Thanks so much, Flo!
Fic Summary: Tony wants Steve Rogers and sets out to get him. The relationship they begin is more than either is ready for as the events play out from the aftermath of the attack on New York to the attack by Thanos and its fallout. Can their love survive? Can they survive?
~~
Part 3
Part Three
All over the globe, people had turned to ash.
Tony and Bruce joined Shuri in studying the ashes and talking about the science. Thor and Rocket were going to search out Stephen Strange’s colleague, Wong, to explore the elements of magic employed. Rocket felt he’d be of more use helping work on weaponry, but Thor was quite insistent that the ‘rabbit’ come along with him. Rhodey was returning to what there was of SHIELD to try to find out what he could. Steve and Natasha were going to work with the Wakandan military and intelligence to find out about and stop homegrown threats and assess new ones as they came along.
“Strange was sure that we could win. He said there was a one in fourteen million six hundred and five chance. And when he gave the Time Stone up, he said it was the only way. That’s a damned slim chance, but it’s all we’ve got,” Tony told them all.
“But what does it mean?” Thor asked.
“It means that Strange set us up to win, and we have to find out what he meant for us to do.”
“How the hell do we do that?” Natasha asked.
“That is where Wong comes in. He might know something about time travel.”
Bruce held up a hand. “You know, I remember some talk years ago about Hank Pym’s wife, Janet van Dyne, and some sort of Quantum Realm or something.”
“Wasn’t Pym the guy who made the original Ant Man suit?” Tony asked. “I remember my father mentioning him. He used to be with SHIELD, too.”
“Yeah, and he got Scott Lang to test the modern version,” Bruce answered.
“Anyone seen Lang since Thanos?” Steve asked. “He was under house arrest, but his sentence was about done.”
”We’re going to see Wong. We can do some investigating on that as well,” Thor said.
And so it began, another heroes’ journey to save the world. Each person began to work on his appointed task.
*
There was so much pain and sorrow in the remaining world. Bad news came in every day, along with some good news as well. Some governments were failing, while others stepped up to help not only their citizens but those of other countries as well. Much of the world lived in terror that another disaster was looming.
Tony and Bruce believed that reversing the damage done by the Gauntlet and Thanos might be the only answer. The trouble was that it would take time travel and no one really knew how to do that.
Yet.
Not knowing how to do something had not stopped any of them from trying to do it before, and it wasn’t going to this time either.
Steve spent a lot of his time with Bruce and Tony simply because the Wakandans did not need his expertise to train. They were expert warriors already. He was much more interested in what Bruce, Tony and Shuri came up with anyway.
“I tell you, Tony, there has to be some way that we can manipulate time. Strange could do it,” Bruce said.
“He had the Time Stone, though. I agree that we need some way to go back in time and do something with those Stones. We know where some of them were in the past, all but the Soul Stone. Nebula might know that,” Tony said.
“Thanos is going to come after us if we try to reverse what he did,” Steve told them. He might not know much of the science, but he did know some things.
“That’s why we need our warriors, too. It’ll take all of us to pull this off. All we need is a jumping off place,” Tony said.
“A way to time travel?” Steve asked.
“Yep,” Bruce answered. “Simple, isn’t it?”
Shuri spoke for the first time. “I heard you mention a Quantum Realm, is that right?”
Bruce nodded. “Yes, there were rumors back in the 80’s, when I was a student, that Janet van Dyne was lost when she shrank so small that she was lost in the Quantum Realm. The only person we know for sure who could possibly get there is Scott Lang. He’s Ant Man.”
“I remember him when he was with Captain’s group when they fought Mr. Stark,” Shuri said. “I will check Wakanda’s database for any information on such things. Perhaps this Mr. Wong might know how to travel in time. I have heard that mystics are able to open pocket dimensions.”
Bruce looked at them for a second. “Maybe I’d better go with Thor and Rocket to talk to Wong.”
Tony grinned. “We need you here, Bruce. Thor might not understand our science exactly but he’ll get it. That raccoon is a tech genius when it comes to weapons, though I’m not so sure about time machines.”
“What do we do with the Stones once we get them? Destroy them?” Bruce asked.
“Not sure we can. Remember when Wong said they were created at the creation of the universe? I don’t think we can unmake them.”
“So we can’t throw them into Mount Doom, then,” Bruce said, with a small smile.
Tony looked a little puzzled, but both Steve and Shuri laughed. “What?”
“You’ve never read Tolkien?” Shuri asked. “I see Captain Rogers has.”
“Yeah, I read between fighting, or I used to.”
“You’re nerdy, too?” Tony looked at Steve with a grin.
Shuri made a rude sound. “Watch who you’re calling nerdy, old man!” She laughed, a lovely tinkle of a laugh that reminded them all that there was still hope in the world.
Shuri was such a delight. Steve had gotten to know her when her brother had brought Bucky to Wakanda to hide and to rehab from the trauma of knowing the things he’d done and to help him become Bucky again.
That evening in bed, Tony asked Steve, “Have you really read Tolkien?”
“Yep. I read a lot. Fury basically made me a prisoner until I became an Avenger. I had to find something to pass the time. Sometimes some of the SHIELD girls brought me books.”
“SHIELD girls?”
Steve laughed. “The women who worked for Fury always seem to have an excuse to come see me. I had a lot to make up for.”
“Oh?”
“They all wanted to sleep with the old guy.”
“How many?”
“Five? Six?”
Tony laughed. “And here I thought you were an innocent. Guess I can’t say much. I kinda fucked everything that moved for years. No idea how many.”
“Geez, Tony! I guess I never knew you were such a whore.”
“Like my father before me.”
“Howard was a horny bastard, just like you. He was always after Peggy. And she liked him, too.”
“She loved you, Steve. She loved you and never stopped. You know that.”
“You know, sometimes I see something and I think, for a moment, I want to tell Peggy about that. My heart aches when I realize she’s gone.”
Tony pulled Steve’s head over onto his shoulder. He kissed Steve’s hair. “I can’t even imagine...”
Steve let Tony hold him, letting Tony be strong for him for once.
*
Thor and Rocket met with Wong, who told them as much as he could about pocket dimensions and the mirror dimension as well. He explained about his sling ring to Rocket. Thor was already acquainted with it from a meeting he once had with Dr. Strange.
“Will you come with us? Help us?” Thor asked Wong.
“I am the sole guardian of the Sanctum until Strange returns. I cannot leave that post right now. I will keep in touch by computer and I do have my ring if I need to visit you. I also will search all the books to find out more about time travel. There must be a way to do it without the Time Stone.”
“That is all we can ask, then,” Thor said and bowed to Wong.
He and Rocket had other duties while they were in New York, the first of which was to find Scott Lang. The thing was, Lang had been missing since Thanos as well. Thor and Rocket tracked down his friend, Luis.
“What do you mean, he borrowed your van and disappeared?” Rocket asked the incredulous Luis.
“Uh, he borrowed it to do some experiments with that bossy girlfriend of his and her folks, the grumpy old guy, Hank, and his wife, who’s been gone for like a hundred years or something. Anyway, I found the van. I just didn’t find Scott.”
“Why didn’t you lead off with that?” Rocket asked, getting a little closer than Luis was comfortable with. Talking raccoons were not something he’d seen before.
“You asked about Scott! Hey, I’m helping. Don’t hurt me. The van is out back.”
Luis took them out back and showed Rocket and Thor the equipment that Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne had left behind. After talking to Stark on the phone, Luis allowed them to take the stuff back to Wakanda with them for further study.
In the meantime, Steve and Shuri went to talk to Nebula. Rocket had explained that she, too, was one of Thanos’ adopted band of ‘children’ used to carry out his twisted dream for the galaxy. He said that Gamora had revealed the secret location of the Soul Stone rather than see Nebula further tortured. Gamora had been his shipmate, the girlfriend of Peter Quill and another of Thanos’ stolen children.
“Do you know where the Soul Stone came from?” Steve asked Nebula.
“Gamora had a map with the location and she destroyed it so Thanos couldn’t find it. But she knew and he made her take him there. He sacrificed her to get the Soul Stone. It’s all my fault. I told her not to tell him, to let me suffer, but she finally decided that being my sister was more important than anything.”
“Did you see the map? Do you know?”
“I – I am not sure I do know. Parts of my brain have been replaced with electronic components. Sometimes I cannot remember what is stored in those files. Perhaps you can access them somehow,” she told Shuri.
“We can certainly try. I can get the files without hurting you.”
“I don’t care about myself. I want Thanos dead. He destroyed my planet, my sister and half of the galaxy. I owe him death. If pain and death are my price, I am willing to pay.” Her smile was scarier than any smile Shuri had ever seen.
Steve thought her brave though probably still quite dangerous. He admired her and her single mindedness. He only hoped there really was more information hidden in her brain than she knew about consciously. He also knew that she would be the one they sent to kill Thanos, if it came to that.
She followed Shuri to the lab as soon as their conversation was done. Shuri needed extensive scans to see how much of Nebula’s brain was still organic and how much was computer. She would not harm the woman, even if it meant her brother was lost forever. She was not willing to sacrifice anyone yet, and hoped it never came to that.
Nebula was nervous and Shuri could sense it.
“Why are you afraid? I won’t harm you. I promised.”
“Maybe you will find worse things than the location the Soul Stone came from. Maybe you will find out the awful things I have done and forgotten.”
Shuri looked at her, at the angry, tortured face. “I don’t think I can find things worse than those you remember. What you did before? It no longer matters. Rogers and the others mean what they say. They really only want to set things right. They do not seek revenge.” She stopped, grinned sort of sadly and added, “At least not from you.”
The scans gave them all the information they sought, but the place where the Soul Stone had been was far, far out in the galaxy. Even Nebula wasn’t sure that she could get there.
Meanwhile, Steve went out of the compound and outside the city for a run. He ran on the bloody plain where they’d fought and lost. The cleanup had been thorough, but even so, there was blood in the soil. It was, as Abraham Lincoln said once, ground consecrated by those who gave their lives there. He ran until he grew tired then went to the spot in the forest where Bucky disappeared. He stood at the exact spot, a place burned into his mind forever.
“Are you out there, Buck? If you are, know that we are coming for you all. Whatever the cost, we’re coming for you.”
The forest was quiet, but Steve was sure he felt – something. He didn’t feel alone there.
“I promise - I’ll be there ’til the end of the line, Buck, ’til the end of the line.”
He could have sworn there was some sort of echo as he left the forest.
*
Wong took a journey and found the book in Kamar-Taj, the book with a time spell. He read the pages over and over. It could be done. They didn’t need the Time Stone. He could do it. Should he? What would Strange say? Would he agree?
It didn’t really matter, now, did it? It had to be done.
He picked up the phone and called Tony Stark.
When Steve got back to the compound, Stark met him. “Wong called. He has a spell to travel in time. We can theoretically travel back to get the Stones.”
“Then what the fuck are we going to do with them? Won’t Thanos still take them? Will it bring the others back? And another question that I’ve been thinking about - do we need more than one of the Stones?” Steve had gotten over his original aversion to bad language over time.
“We’re still working on that idea, Steve. Bruce and Shuri are going over the stuff from Hank Pym as soon as Thor and Rocket get back with it.”
“Tony, I swear I felt them out there, the ones who are gone. It was like an echo of – not sound – but life. They are still somewhere, not dead but somewhere.”
Tony took his hands and held them tight, then he put his forehead against Steve’s and looked him in the eye. “I hope you’re right. I can’t bear the thought that -”
“That they’re gone forever,” Steve finished for him.
Steve wrapped his arms around Tony and held him close. “We will get them back, no matter what it takes.”
Steve kissed Tony and headed for the apartment for a shower, while Tony went back to the lab. He needed to talk to FRIDAY about the Quantum Realm and he wanted to talk to Wong again about the ‘multiverse’ as he’d heard Strange refer to it. He was beginning to get an idea.
Late that night, Tony came into Steve’s apartment and tried to be quiet. He figured that Steve was asleep and he didn’t want to wake him. These last few days had been hard on them all and Steve, though he was a supersoldier, still got tired and needed rest.
He needn’t have worried.
“Tony?” Steve was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark.
“Sorry I’m so late. I talked to Wong some more and then sat down with Bruce and Shuri for some theorizing.”
“Did you come up with anything?”
“We believe that we have to retrieve only one of the Stones from their place in time before Thanos got them. Once we have even one of them, that one should reverse the effects of the gauntlet.”
“Doesn’t that open a whole new set of problems?”
Tony sighed. “Yeah, it could. We haven’t solved that yet.”
“Come to bed, then. I can make you forget for a little while and you can do the same for me.”
Tony thought that sounded like an excellent idea.
Steve turned on a little nightlight in the bedroom. He wanted to look at Tony tonight. Tony had barely gotten into the room before Steve was all over him, pulling at his clothes and kissing him, touching him all over and rubbing his own body all over Tony.
It was only then that Tony realized that Steve had been naked all along.
“Tonight you are mine, Tony Stark.” He pushed Tony onto the bed and got in beside him. He grabbed Tony’s wrists and held them over his head as he kissed him, plundering Tony’s mouth with his tongue as he rubbed his hard cock against Tony’s hip. “Tell me that you’re mine. Say it.”
“I’m yours. I belong to you.”
Steve bit his shoulder and moved on top of him. He pinned Tony to the bed with his own body. He reached up under his own pillow for the tube they kept there and hurriedly applied it to himself them he pushed Tony’s legs up toward his head and made Tony ready.
The coupling was fast, feverish, almost desperate on Steve’s part. Though the pleasure was exquisite, Tony worried when it was done. What was Steve so desperate about?
*
The next few days were spent in talking about time travel.
Bruce laid it out. “If we change time, then the future, the NOW will be altered. Only the traveler will remember the past.”
“Which makes me wonder which stone to grab,” Tony said.
Bruce was thinking out loud now. “If we begin with the Tesseract, that might nullify any and everything that’s occurred after it: the battle of New York, Wanda and Pietro gaining powers, Sokovia, Gamora’s death… all of it. Or it might only nullify the things it’s directly associated with.”
“So if we choose a Stone from later, then the horrible things would still happen up to the point we take the Stone?” Shuri asked.
This brought up more questions.
Steve was walking around the table, as was Tony. “Where would we hide the stone or stones that Thanos won’t find them when he comes looking?”
“And could the person who did this traveling ever return?” Bruce asked.
“Where will we find Thanos?” Thor asked.
It made Tony’s head hurt to even think about it all, but they had to. They had to fix this mess. There was simply no other option.
Thor and Rocket had returned to Wakanda with the contents of Luis’ van. Bruce and Shuri began going over each thing, while Tony talked more with Wong about time travel and about the Time Stone. Perhaps if they could get that Stone, they could fix the world without changing everything quite so much.
“Won’t the Time Stone make it all right again?” Tony asked Wong as they talked face to face onscreen.
“I only ever saw Strange use it one time and he made a time loop to defeat Dormammu, finally striking a deal with him. I don’t think a time loop will change Thanos’ mind at all. It might help you reset the world, but I’m not sure that is a solution. All it would do is set the same thing up to happen once again.”
“We’ll have to add consideration of that to the list,” Tony told him as he said goodbye.
Rhodey returned to Wakanda, fed up with Ross and the UN. All they were interested in was placing blame and prosecuting someone. Unfortunately, the someone they wanted the most was Steve. They were perfectly willing to try to put everything that happened off on him. Rhodey literally told Ross to ‘go fuck yourself’ and left the country.
“Really, they want Steve for this? How the hell did they come up with that?” Tony asked him.
“He’s already a fugitive so he’s easy to blame. Do you all even see the news here? They’re claiming that this was some sort of weapons failure that released a chemical weapon that wiped out half the planet. No mention of aliens, monsters, Thanos,” Rhodey told him.
“And it’s Steve’s fault?” Tony shook his head.
“Yes, he found the weapon when he brought SHIELD down and used it to free his friends.” Rhodey had come to respect Steve, if not like him, over the years. He also knew how Tony felt about Rogers.
“His friends have been free for two years.”
“You know that the UN and the government never let a fact bother their storytelling,” Rhodey reminded him.
Tony sighed. This would hurt Steve. He’d given so much and gotten so little in return. He supposed he should tell him.
He waited until after dinner and back in their apartment.
“Rhodey says the UN is pinning this on you.” Tony was not very diplomatic, but then again, sometimes things just had to be said as quickly as possible, like pulling off a bandage.
Steve shook his head. “I’m not surprised. Ross won’t rest until I’m jailed or dead.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Tony assured him, kissing his cheek. “I won’t let it.”
“You do know that this time traveling that we are discussing – it’s a suicide misson, don’t you?” Steve asked him.
“I hope not.”
Steve didn’t answer, but Tony couldn’t get Steve’s words out of his head.
*
In the next days, Rhodes joined in on the conversation to figure out where to travel back to and what to do. They had several scenarios that they were talking about.
They actually all met in a large conference room, all the people who sought to fix the world and return the lost.
Bruce stood and presented his idea. “We go back six years to New York after the battle with the Chitauri. We take the Tesseract from there, bring it to the future, here in Wakanda. This should undo the disappearing, but would cause the least disruption. It would still leave the world open to Ultron and Sokovia, since the Mind Stone would still be here. I’m not sure we can change that or even sure we should.”
The Time Stone idea was Tony’s favorite one. “We retrieve the Time Stone from Kathmandu before Strange took possession of it and use it redo things back to a point that we can fix them without changing the timeline altogether. We can create a loop and redo time until we fix it, much as Strange did with Dormammu. The shortcomings of this plan are obvious: Thanos is not Dormammu. And he might not ever give up.”
They could turn back time and take the gauntlet from Thanos on Titan, before he got the Mind Stone from Vision. But they’d failed at that once already, Thor pointed out. His point was taken by the rest.
There were more unanswered questions. “What will we do with these Stones? Can we keep them from Thanos? Can any of us really defeat Thanos?” Steve asked.
Shuri and Bruce then made things even more complicated when they reported on what they had gleaned from the equipment and computers in the Luis’ van.
“It would appear that Janet van Dyne did indeed spend thirty years in the Quantum Realm, a place outside of space and time, a pocket dimension of sorts,” Bruce said.
“She used the technology that made her, Hank Pym and Scott Lang small to make herself so small that she was in the molecular level. The problem was that she couldn’t get back on her own and Pym did not have a big enough power source to get her out, until now,” he continued.
“So are they all in the Quantum Realm?” Tony asked.
“No. We’re not sure who is,” Shuri answered. “Luis reported ‘dust’ particles around and in the van, the same kind that were found wherever people disappeared. Someone is probably in the Quantum realm and the rest are, well, dust.”
“Can we get in it?” Rhodey asked.
“We can. Wakanda has enough energy to work the apparatus. We believe that this might be a place to hide the Stones,” Shuri answered.
“Is it a one way trip?” Tony asked, remembering Steve’s words about a suicide mission.
“We don’t think so. We think that maybe Scott Lang is in there. No one has found his Ant Man suit, so it’s logical to think he is the one who went in.” Shuri said.
“Wong will come here when we need his help. He can use his sling ring. He can find us even though Wakanda is hidden,” Bruce said.
Everyone began talking at once. Shuri held up her hand.
“We have many details to work out and we are not even positive that we can do these things. We will have to test time travel itself. We know that Dr. Strange did it, but he had access to the Time Stone.”
“Dr. Banner and I will continue working on the Quantum Realm machine while others of you will research other things. Mr. Rhodes will be in charge of assigning tasks at the request of myself, Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark. Does this work for you all?”
Everyone agreed.
And they all set to work again.
Steve still had no real task. He was at loose ends. And his ghosts came back to haunt him. He thought of the ones he’d lost… all of them, his mother, Peggy, war friends, Bucky… even though he loved Tony, he still felt alone most of the time. Perhaps it was simply that he’d been here too long, was too old. He’d read in the papers that he was a ‘man out of time’ and maybe that was true in all senses of the word.
He came to a decision. He would be the traveler and he would go into the Quantum Realm. His strength and endurance made him hard to kill and he knew there wasn’t a more stubborn son of a bitch anywhere than he could be. He didn’t fear death and he didn’t fear living in some kind of limbo forever either. The monsters he’d met and the ghosts he lived with every day made him sure that there was little out there worse than what he’d already seen.
He started reading Hank Pym’s files. He also convinced Wong to loan him some of the books on multiverse dimensions from the Sanctum. He needed to know about these things if he planned to convince Tony that he was the perfect candidate for the job. Actually, he wanted Tony’s blessing, but he was going with or without it.
Natasha noticed what he was reading.
“You going to do this?” She arched an eyebrow at him.
“You know it has to be me.”
“I figured. Have you told him yet?”
“Tony? No.”
“You know he’s going to try to stop you, maybe by going himself.”
“Yeah. He will, but Shuri and Bruce know. So does Thor.”
“Then you need to tell him.” Natasha had been the voice of practicality to Steve since he’d met her.
“Tell me what, Steve?” Tony walked up and saw the ancient book in Steve’s hand. “That you’re planning on going on at least one of these missions? You don’t have to tell me. I know you that well.”
He didn’t look as angry as Steve had expected.
“Yeah, I’m still pissed at you, Cap, but right now, you are the most capable for this mission out of all of us.”
“So it’s set?”
Tony made a rude noise. “Nothing’s set yet. We have to think about time itself for a bit before jumping into this thing. We don’t want to fuck up things worse than they already are.”
“Is that possible?” Natasha asked Tony, genuinely curious.
“Fucking things up worse than they are is always possible. Whatever we do will change the timeline and only the traveler will know what has been changed when he or she gets back.”
“So we need to choose the one Stone that leaves the smallest ripple,” Natasha said.
“Yes, but which one? And when?”
“If you go far enough back and get the Tesseract, then you can stop all of it,” Steve said.
“We might even stop you from being made.”
“Would that be so bad if we fix the world?” He meant it.
Tony closed his eyes. “Maybe not, but I’m thinking that we’d create less ripples if we come the closest to the present time.”
“Vision and the Mind stone?” Natasha asked.
“Maybe too close there.” Tony looked at Steve. “Been reading up on all this time business?”
“Wong sent me some stuff.”
“Come with me,” Tony said.
Steve looked at Natasha and shrugged. He followed Tony. They went to the lab and there was all of the stuff from Hank Pym. He showed him files about the Quantum Realm. There were schematics for the suits.
“Can you make one?” Steve asked him.
“Shuri says she thinks we can. I am inclined to agree with her. We think someone is in there, in the Quantum Realm. Maybe Scott Lang. We can’t find his suit. We did find a woman’s suit. It seems to be a wasp and there is an older suit, maybe the one Pym made thirty years ago.”
“What are we going to do once we’re in there?” Steve asked.
“Hide the Stone.”
“One way trip?”
“It might be. I sure hope not.”
Tony grabbed him and pulled him into a smaller room off the lab, a small storage room of some sort. He shoved him up against the door. “You planning on being a dickhead and doing all of these things, aren’t you?”
Steve nodded.
“Why? Any of us are willing.”
“I’m expendable. The rest of you aren’t.”
“How do you figure that?”
“You scientist and engineers have to figure things out. If any of the smaller ships got away, Thor will have people to take care of. Natasha has Clint and his family. Bucky may even be back.”
Tony made a face, almost like he was in pain then he turned away for a moment.
“I don’t want to give you up! Don’t I count?” he asked Steve when he turned back toward him.
“The world needs you.”
Tony threw his arms around Steve as if he were a toddler. Steve held him. Tony didn’t cry, but he held Steve tight. “I can’t talk you out of any of this, can I?” He murmured against Steve’s neck.
“No. Figure out how to bring me back.”
“I’ll devote my life to it.”
Steve held him out at arm’s length. “No. I want you to marry Pepper and have a couple of little Starks before you’re too old. Name one for me.”
“God, you’re serious.” He didn’t know whether to laugh at the absurdity or cry.
“I want you to be happy and I want to save the world. I was made for this, Tony.”
*
There was one more detail they needed to pin down. A big one. Thanos needed to be found and destroyed.
Nebula was ready to kill her ‘father.’ All she needed was an opportunity. That meant they needed to either figure out where he was and go after him or draw him out. Either way, they had to figure out just how to kill him.
Tony had some ideas. He had been to Titan and he thought maybe that Thanos would rest there, maybe remake it like he wanted it or go back in time to a time before it was used up. If he had gone back in time, then they’d need to draw him out. Or if they got all the Stones, he’d be trapped where he was.
The plan was looking to be a three part one so far.
Go back and steal some or all of the Infinity Stones.
Take them into the Quantum Realm.
Kill Thanos.
Could they do it? Maybe.
The real question was did they have a choice? And the answer was no.
*
Wong had read all the texts. He talked to the guardian at the Hong Kong Sanctum. He had even experimented with small time jumps and they worked. He had gone back to last Tuesday and on a bolder note, he had gone back to before it all happened and watched himself and Strange eat dinner. Time travel was possible.
He had to open a new dimension and making a time corridor to travel through. He hoped he could teach one of the others to do it. He knew he could do it himself, but they needed one of the Avengers to go back to the battle of New York.
He knew that Rogers was probably the best candidate because he was not as entrenched in science and logic as the others. Maybe Thor would suffice, too. He understood magic as well as science.
Wong traveled to Wakanda via his ring to talk to the Avengers and give them all his findings.
“Good to see you, Mr. Stark.” Wong bowed to Tony and shook Steve’s hand. “I’ve read a lot about you, Captain Rogers. Ah, Dr. Banner, nice to see you again as well.” He turned to Shuri and did a small bow. “Your majesty. It is an honor.”
“I am pleased to meet you, too, Wong. We practice some mystical arts here in Wakanda but vibranium has given us most of our technology. Our magic and our faith gives us strength and wisdom.”
Wong was very impressed with the young woman.
“This is my mother, Ramonda. She is our queen,” Shuri said as he introduced her mother to Wong. He took her proffered hand and kissed it.
“My daughter tells me you are here to help set this world to rights. I do hope you are able to help all these children here.” She indicated the room full of Avengers. “They are lost without their companions. I, too, am lost without my son. So is Shuri.”
“I shall do my best, madam.” He bowed again.
“Shall we get to work then?” Shuri urged them all to the conference room to discuss things first.
Tony asked Wong, “So you’ve tested this spell?”
“It’s not exactly a spell, Mr. Stark, but yes, I have tested it on a small scale.”
“Will it work for us?” Steve asked.
“You would have to be trained, not as extensively as Strange was, but you’d have to learn to open a mirror dimension and to have your own ring to do it with.”
Steve nodded.
“At this time,” Bruce said, “we think that the Space Stone is the one we should go after. It would need to be retrieved from Thor before he takes it back to Asgard. The thing is, this could change the future so much that whoever gets it won’t come back to a world anything like it was before he left it.”
“Why don’t we just keep the Mind Stone from Thanos?” Stark asked.
“Because he handed us our asses when we tried to do that,” Steve answered. “Only a fool would do it again and expect a different outcome.”
“Is there any way to travel to where Thanos is?” Shuri asked. “Perhaps you could destroy him and take the gauntlet away.”
“That might work but we’d have to locate him in space and time,” Bruce answered.
“He will got to Titan!” Nebula said loudly. “He will go home.”
“But will he fix Titan or will he go back in time to when it was beautiful?” Tony asked.
“So many questions, so few answers,” Steve said. “I can leave a message for us from the past. Instructions what to do when we have the Space Stone. They can be encrypted in some way that proves to Stark or Banner that they’re authentic.”
“But how will we find Thanos?” Rhodey asked.
Nebula spoke again. “If you remove the Space Stone and it undoes what he has done, he will come for it. We won’t have to find him.” Her smile was frightening. “He will find us.”
“So we get it and take it to the Quantum Realm and whoever takes it, stays. Back here, you destroy the devices and the science to get to that Realm so it’s lost forever,” Steve said.
“And when he comes, I will kill him!” Nebula said.
“Won’t you need help?” Tony asked her.
“Yes, we will need magic and science to trap him and destroy him. We must get the gauntlet and do something with the rest of the Stones, too,” Bruce said. “Since we cannot unmake them, we must hide them.”
“I am the best bomb and weapons builder in the galaxy,” Rocket told them. “I can build a gun that will kill the bastard!”
“Rabbit and I will aid Nebula! He killed my brother, Loki, and I owe him a death,” Thor said.
“So who is doing these things?” Tony asked. “I volunteer to go back to New York.”
“No. I will,” Steve said. “The world needs you, your science and your wealth. I am a soldier. I need to do my duty.”
Tony wanted to argue with him, to demand he not do it, but he knew Steve was right. Steve was a soldier. He would complete his mission or die trying. And a supersoldier was hard to kill.
“We’d better get to work then,” Shuri said. “Mr. Wong, can you train Captain Rogers here in Wakanda?”
“No, I would prefer to train him in the old training facility in Kamar-Taj. I can take us there.”
“Who will deliver the stone to the Quantum Realm?” Bruce asked.
Steve spoke up. “I’ll do that as well. When I return from the past, I’ll take the Stone away.”
Again Tony had to bite his tongue from arguing with Steve, even though he knew he was right, that Steve was truly noble and felt like he was the right one to make the sacrifice. Tony knew also that he didn’t want to lose him. Ever.
They would begin Steve’s training the next day. It gave him one night to be with Tony before he left.
“Can I talk you out of this?” Tony asked him as they sat on the sofa after dinner.
“No. It has to be me.”
“You’re going to leave me like you did Peggy?”
That made Steve stop and consider. “The rest of you need to be here. You’re important.”
“You’re the glue, Cap. You hold us all together.”
“You have to be the glue after I go. They all look up to you.” He laughed. “You and Rhodey are the old guys anyway.”
“Gee, thanks.”
They both were putting off going to bed, going to sleep because that would bring tomorrow.
“You do know if the timeline changes enough that if I come back, when I come back, you and I won’t be together?” Steve asked Tony. The thought that all they’d shared would be erased made his chest hurt, as if his heart was already breaking.
“I think you should take a note back with you…leave it for me. I can’t imagine not loving you.”
Steve stood and reached for Tony’s hand. “Come to bed. I want to give you something to remember.”
Tony took Steve’s hand and followed him to the bedroom. It was near dawn before they slept.
Author: alexcat
Artist: KakushiMiko
Universe: MCU
Rating (both fic and art): Fic - Explicit, Art - General
Word Count: 27804
Warnings: Heart attack, one violent but not too graphic death
Notes: This story began as a short story and bloomed into something else altogether. Like most fans, CW and IW left my heart broken so I decided to fix them. This is my fix (or one of them anyway).
I’d like to thank my hubby for letting me bounce ideas off of him and for putting up my frantic writing in the last days. I also want to thank him for reminding me that it was MY story to tell.
I also want to thank both of my betas. It was such a hot mess, that I needed two: athletiger and [personal profile] nuinzilien. It reads more like a story now, thanks to you two!
My artist is KakushiMiko and you’ll see her great stuff throughout the work and at her link! Thanks so much, Flo!
Fic Summary: Tony wants Steve Rogers and sets out to get him. The relationship they begin is more than either is ready for as the events play out from the aftermath of the attack on New York to the attack by Thanos and its fallout. Can their love survive? Can they survive?
~~
Part 3
Part Three
All over the globe, people had turned to ash.
Tony and Bruce joined Shuri in studying the ashes and talking about the science. Thor and Rocket were going to search out Stephen Strange’s colleague, Wong, to explore the elements of magic employed. Rocket felt he’d be of more use helping work on weaponry, but Thor was quite insistent that the ‘rabbit’ come along with him. Rhodey was returning to what there was of SHIELD to try to find out what he could. Steve and Natasha were going to work with the Wakandan military and intelligence to find out about and stop homegrown threats and assess new ones as they came along.
“Strange was sure that we could win. He said there was a one in fourteen million six hundred and five chance. And when he gave the Time Stone up, he said it was the only way. That’s a damned slim chance, but it’s all we’ve got,” Tony told them all.
“But what does it mean?” Thor asked.
“It means that Strange set us up to win, and we have to find out what he meant for us to do.”
“How the hell do we do that?” Natasha asked.
“That is where Wong comes in. He might know something about time travel.”
Bruce held up a hand. “You know, I remember some talk years ago about Hank Pym’s wife, Janet van Dyne, and some sort of Quantum Realm or something.”
“Wasn’t Pym the guy who made the original Ant Man suit?” Tony asked. “I remember my father mentioning him. He used to be with SHIELD, too.”
“Yeah, and he got Scott Lang to test the modern version,” Bruce answered.
“Anyone seen Lang since Thanos?” Steve asked. “He was under house arrest, but his sentence was about done.”
”We’re going to see Wong. We can do some investigating on that as well,” Thor said.
And so it began, another heroes’ journey to save the world. Each person began to work on his appointed task.
*
There was so much pain and sorrow in the remaining world. Bad news came in every day, along with some good news as well. Some governments were failing, while others stepped up to help not only their citizens but those of other countries as well. Much of the world lived in terror that another disaster was looming.
Tony and Bruce believed that reversing the damage done by the Gauntlet and Thanos might be the only answer. The trouble was that it would take time travel and no one really knew how to do that.
Yet.
Not knowing how to do something had not stopped any of them from trying to do it before, and it wasn’t going to this time either.
Steve spent a lot of his time with Bruce and Tony simply because the Wakandans did not need his expertise to train. They were expert warriors already. He was much more interested in what Bruce, Tony and Shuri came up with anyway.
“I tell you, Tony, there has to be some way that we can manipulate time. Strange could do it,” Bruce said.
“He had the Time Stone, though. I agree that we need some way to go back in time and do something with those Stones. We know where some of them were in the past, all but the Soul Stone. Nebula might know that,” Tony said.
“Thanos is going to come after us if we try to reverse what he did,” Steve told them. He might not know much of the science, but he did know some things.
“That’s why we need our warriors, too. It’ll take all of us to pull this off. All we need is a jumping off place,” Tony said.
“A way to time travel?” Steve asked.
“Yep,” Bruce answered. “Simple, isn’t it?”
Shuri spoke for the first time. “I heard you mention a Quantum Realm, is that right?”
Bruce nodded. “Yes, there were rumors back in the 80’s, when I was a student, that Janet van Dyne was lost when she shrank so small that she was lost in the Quantum Realm. The only person we know for sure who could possibly get there is Scott Lang. He’s Ant Man.”
“I remember him when he was with Captain’s group when they fought Mr. Stark,” Shuri said. “I will check Wakanda’s database for any information on such things. Perhaps this Mr. Wong might know how to travel in time. I have heard that mystics are able to open pocket dimensions.”
Bruce looked at them for a second. “Maybe I’d better go with Thor and Rocket to talk to Wong.”
Tony grinned. “We need you here, Bruce. Thor might not understand our science exactly but he’ll get it. That raccoon is a tech genius when it comes to weapons, though I’m not so sure about time machines.”
“What do we do with the Stones once we get them? Destroy them?” Bruce asked.
“Not sure we can. Remember when Wong said they were created at the creation of the universe? I don’t think we can unmake them.”
“So we can’t throw them into Mount Doom, then,” Bruce said, with a small smile.
Tony looked a little puzzled, but both Steve and Shuri laughed. “What?”
“You’ve never read Tolkien?” Shuri asked. “I see Captain Rogers has.”
“Yeah, I read between fighting, or I used to.”
“You’re nerdy, too?” Tony looked at Steve with a grin.
Shuri made a rude sound. “Watch who you’re calling nerdy, old man!” She laughed, a lovely tinkle of a laugh that reminded them all that there was still hope in the world.
Shuri was such a delight. Steve had gotten to know her when her brother had brought Bucky to Wakanda to hide and to rehab from the trauma of knowing the things he’d done and to help him become Bucky again.
That evening in bed, Tony asked Steve, “Have you really read Tolkien?”
“Yep. I read a lot. Fury basically made me a prisoner until I became an Avenger. I had to find something to pass the time. Sometimes some of the SHIELD girls brought me books.”
“SHIELD girls?”
Steve laughed. “The women who worked for Fury always seem to have an excuse to come see me. I had a lot to make up for.”
“Oh?”
“They all wanted to sleep with the old guy.”
“How many?”
“Five? Six?”
Tony laughed. “And here I thought you were an innocent. Guess I can’t say much. I kinda fucked everything that moved for years. No idea how many.”
“Geez, Tony! I guess I never knew you were such a whore.”
“Like my father before me.”
“Howard was a horny bastard, just like you. He was always after Peggy. And she liked him, too.”
“She loved you, Steve. She loved you and never stopped. You know that.”
“You know, sometimes I see something and I think, for a moment, I want to tell Peggy about that. My heart aches when I realize she’s gone.”
Tony pulled Steve’s head over onto his shoulder. He kissed Steve’s hair. “I can’t even imagine...”
Steve let Tony hold him, letting Tony be strong for him for once.
*
Thor and Rocket met with Wong, who told them as much as he could about pocket dimensions and the mirror dimension as well. He explained about his sling ring to Rocket. Thor was already acquainted with it from a meeting he once had with Dr. Strange.
“Will you come with us? Help us?” Thor asked Wong.
“I am the sole guardian of the Sanctum until Strange returns. I cannot leave that post right now. I will keep in touch by computer and I do have my ring if I need to visit you. I also will search all the books to find out more about time travel. There must be a way to do it without the Time Stone.”
“That is all we can ask, then,” Thor said and bowed to Wong.
He and Rocket had other duties while they were in New York, the first of which was to find Scott Lang. The thing was, Lang had been missing since Thanos as well. Thor and Rocket tracked down his friend, Luis.
“What do you mean, he borrowed your van and disappeared?” Rocket asked the incredulous Luis.
“Uh, he borrowed it to do some experiments with that bossy girlfriend of his and her folks, the grumpy old guy, Hank, and his wife, who’s been gone for like a hundred years or something. Anyway, I found the van. I just didn’t find Scott.”
“Why didn’t you lead off with that?” Rocket asked, getting a little closer than Luis was comfortable with. Talking raccoons were not something he’d seen before.
“You asked about Scott! Hey, I’m helping. Don’t hurt me. The van is out back.”
Luis took them out back and showed Rocket and Thor the equipment that Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne had left behind. After talking to Stark on the phone, Luis allowed them to take the stuff back to Wakanda with them for further study.
In the meantime, Steve and Shuri went to talk to Nebula. Rocket had explained that she, too, was one of Thanos’ adopted band of ‘children’ used to carry out his twisted dream for the galaxy. He said that Gamora had revealed the secret location of the Soul Stone rather than see Nebula further tortured. Gamora had been his shipmate, the girlfriend of Peter Quill and another of Thanos’ stolen children.
“Do you know where the Soul Stone came from?” Steve asked Nebula.
“Gamora had a map with the location and she destroyed it so Thanos couldn’t find it. But she knew and he made her take him there. He sacrificed her to get the Soul Stone. It’s all my fault. I told her not to tell him, to let me suffer, but she finally decided that being my sister was more important than anything.”
“Did you see the map? Do you know?”
“I – I am not sure I do know. Parts of my brain have been replaced with electronic components. Sometimes I cannot remember what is stored in those files. Perhaps you can access them somehow,” she told Shuri.
“We can certainly try. I can get the files without hurting you.”
“I don’t care about myself. I want Thanos dead. He destroyed my planet, my sister and half of the galaxy. I owe him death. If pain and death are my price, I am willing to pay.” Her smile was scarier than any smile Shuri had ever seen.
Steve thought her brave though probably still quite dangerous. He admired her and her single mindedness. He only hoped there really was more information hidden in her brain than she knew about consciously. He also knew that she would be the one they sent to kill Thanos, if it came to that.
She followed Shuri to the lab as soon as their conversation was done. Shuri needed extensive scans to see how much of Nebula’s brain was still organic and how much was computer. She would not harm the woman, even if it meant her brother was lost forever. She was not willing to sacrifice anyone yet, and hoped it never came to that.
Nebula was nervous and Shuri could sense it.
“Why are you afraid? I won’t harm you. I promised.”
“Maybe you will find worse things than the location the Soul Stone came from. Maybe you will find out the awful things I have done and forgotten.”
Shuri looked at her, at the angry, tortured face. “I don’t think I can find things worse than those you remember. What you did before? It no longer matters. Rogers and the others mean what they say. They really only want to set things right. They do not seek revenge.” She stopped, grinned sort of sadly and added, “At least not from you.”
The scans gave them all the information they sought, but the place where the Soul Stone had been was far, far out in the galaxy. Even Nebula wasn’t sure that she could get there.
Meanwhile, Steve went out of the compound and outside the city for a run. He ran on the bloody plain where they’d fought and lost. The cleanup had been thorough, but even so, there was blood in the soil. It was, as Abraham Lincoln said once, ground consecrated by those who gave their lives there. He ran until he grew tired then went to the spot in the forest where Bucky disappeared. He stood at the exact spot, a place burned into his mind forever.
“Are you out there, Buck? If you are, know that we are coming for you all. Whatever the cost, we’re coming for you.”
The forest was quiet, but Steve was sure he felt – something. He didn’t feel alone there.
“I promise - I’ll be there ’til the end of the line, Buck, ’til the end of the line.”
He could have sworn there was some sort of echo as he left the forest.
*
Wong took a journey and found the book in Kamar-Taj, the book with a time spell. He read the pages over and over. It could be done. They didn’t need the Time Stone. He could do it. Should he? What would Strange say? Would he agree?
It didn’t really matter, now, did it? It had to be done.
He picked up the phone and called Tony Stark.
When Steve got back to the compound, Stark met him. “Wong called. He has a spell to travel in time. We can theoretically travel back to get the Stones.”
“Then what the fuck are we going to do with them? Won’t Thanos still take them? Will it bring the others back? And another question that I’ve been thinking about - do we need more than one of the Stones?” Steve had gotten over his original aversion to bad language over time.
“We’re still working on that idea, Steve. Bruce and Shuri are going over the stuff from Hank Pym as soon as Thor and Rocket get back with it.”
“Tony, I swear I felt them out there, the ones who are gone. It was like an echo of – not sound – but life. They are still somewhere, not dead but somewhere.”
Tony took his hands and held them tight, then he put his forehead against Steve’s and looked him in the eye. “I hope you’re right. I can’t bear the thought that -”
“That they’re gone forever,” Steve finished for him.
Steve wrapped his arms around Tony and held him close. “We will get them back, no matter what it takes.”
Steve kissed Tony and headed for the apartment for a shower, while Tony went back to the lab. He needed to talk to FRIDAY about the Quantum Realm and he wanted to talk to Wong again about the ‘multiverse’ as he’d heard Strange refer to it. He was beginning to get an idea.
Late that night, Tony came into Steve’s apartment and tried to be quiet. He figured that Steve was asleep and he didn’t want to wake him. These last few days had been hard on them all and Steve, though he was a supersoldier, still got tired and needed rest.
He needn’t have worried.
“Tony?” Steve was sitting at the kitchen table in the dark.
“Sorry I’m so late. I talked to Wong some more and then sat down with Bruce and Shuri for some theorizing.”
“Did you come up with anything?”
“We believe that we have to retrieve only one of the Stones from their place in time before Thanos got them. Once we have even one of them, that one should reverse the effects of the gauntlet.”
“Doesn’t that open a whole new set of problems?”
Tony sighed. “Yeah, it could. We haven’t solved that yet.”
“Come to bed, then. I can make you forget for a little while and you can do the same for me.”
Tony thought that sounded like an excellent idea.
Steve turned on a little nightlight in the bedroom. He wanted to look at Tony tonight. Tony had barely gotten into the room before Steve was all over him, pulling at his clothes and kissing him, touching him all over and rubbing his own body all over Tony.
It was only then that Tony realized that Steve had been naked all along.
“Tonight you are mine, Tony Stark.” He pushed Tony onto the bed and got in beside him. He grabbed Tony’s wrists and held them over his head as he kissed him, plundering Tony’s mouth with his tongue as he rubbed his hard cock against Tony’s hip. “Tell me that you’re mine. Say it.”
“I’m yours. I belong to you.”
Steve bit his shoulder and moved on top of him. He pinned Tony to the bed with his own body. He reached up under his own pillow for the tube they kept there and hurriedly applied it to himself them he pushed Tony’s legs up toward his head and made Tony ready.
The coupling was fast, feverish, almost desperate on Steve’s part. Though the pleasure was exquisite, Tony worried when it was done. What was Steve so desperate about?
*
The next few days were spent in talking about time travel.
Bruce laid it out. “If we change time, then the future, the NOW will be altered. Only the traveler will remember the past.”
“Which makes me wonder which stone to grab,” Tony said.
Bruce was thinking out loud now. “If we begin with the Tesseract, that might nullify any and everything that’s occurred after it: the battle of New York, Wanda and Pietro gaining powers, Sokovia, Gamora’s death… all of it. Or it might only nullify the things it’s directly associated with.”
“So if we choose a Stone from later, then the horrible things would still happen up to the point we take the Stone?” Shuri asked.
This brought up more questions.
Steve was walking around the table, as was Tony. “Where would we hide the stone or stones that Thanos won’t find them when he comes looking?”
“And could the person who did this traveling ever return?” Bruce asked.
“Where will we find Thanos?” Thor asked.
It made Tony’s head hurt to even think about it all, but they had to. They had to fix this mess. There was simply no other option.
Thor and Rocket had returned to Wakanda with the contents of Luis’ van. Bruce and Shuri began going over each thing, while Tony talked more with Wong about time travel and about the Time Stone. Perhaps if they could get that Stone, they could fix the world without changing everything quite so much.
“Won’t the Time Stone make it all right again?” Tony asked Wong as they talked face to face onscreen.
“I only ever saw Strange use it one time and he made a time loop to defeat Dormammu, finally striking a deal with him. I don’t think a time loop will change Thanos’ mind at all. It might help you reset the world, but I’m not sure that is a solution. All it would do is set the same thing up to happen once again.”
“We’ll have to add consideration of that to the list,” Tony told him as he said goodbye.
Rhodey returned to Wakanda, fed up with Ross and the UN. All they were interested in was placing blame and prosecuting someone. Unfortunately, the someone they wanted the most was Steve. They were perfectly willing to try to put everything that happened off on him. Rhodey literally told Ross to ‘go fuck yourself’ and left the country.
“Really, they want Steve for this? How the hell did they come up with that?” Tony asked him.
“He’s already a fugitive so he’s easy to blame. Do you all even see the news here? They’re claiming that this was some sort of weapons failure that released a chemical weapon that wiped out half the planet. No mention of aliens, monsters, Thanos,” Rhodey told him.
“And it’s Steve’s fault?” Tony shook his head.
“Yes, he found the weapon when he brought SHIELD down and used it to free his friends.” Rhodey had come to respect Steve, if not like him, over the years. He also knew how Tony felt about Rogers.
“His friends have been free for two years.”
“You know that the UN and the government never let a fact bother their storytelling,” Rhodey reminded him.
Tony sighed. This would hurt Steve. He’d given so much and gotten so little in return. He supposed he should tell him.
He waited until after dinner and back in their apartment.
“Rhodey says the UN is pinning this on you.” Tony was not very diplomatic, but then again, sometimes things just had to be said as quickly as possible, like pulling off a bandage.
Steve shook his head. “I’m not surprised. Ross won’t rest until I’m jailed or dead.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Tony assured him, kissing his cheek. “I won’t let it.”
“You do know that this time traveling that we are discussing – it’s a suicide misson, don’t you?” Steve asked him.
“I hope not.”
Steve didn’t answer, but Tony couldn’t get Steve’s words out of his head.
*
In the next days, Rhodes joined in on the conversation to figure out where to travel back to and what to do. They had several scenarios that they were talking about.
They actually all met in a large conference room, all the people who sought to fix the world and return the lost.
Bruce stood and presented his idea. “We go back six years to New York after the battle with the Chitauri. We take the Tesseract from there, bring it to the future, here in Wakanda. This should undo the disappearing, but would cause the least disruption. It would still leave the world open to Ultron and Sokovia, since the Mind Stone would still be here. I’m not sure we can change that or even sure we should.”
The Time Stone idea was Tony’s favorite one. “We retrieve the Time Stone from Kathmandu before Strange took possession of it and use it redo things back to a point that we can fix them without changing the timeline altogether. We can create a loop and redo time until we fix it, much as Strange did with Dormammu. The shortcomings of this plan are obvious: Thanos is not Dormammu. And he might not ever give up.”
They could turn back time and take the gauntlet from Thanos on Titan, before he got the Mind Stone from Vision. But they’d failed at that once already, Thor pointed out. His point was taken by the rest.
There were more unanswered questions. “What will we do with these Stones? Can we keep them from Thanos? Can any of us really defeat Thanos?” Steve asked.
Shuri and Bruce then made things even more complicated when they reported on what they had gleaned from the equipment and computers in the Luis’ van.
“It would appear that Janet van Dyne did indeed spend thirty years in the Quantum Realm, a place outside of space and time, a pocket dimension of sorts,” Bruce said.
“She used the technology that made her, Hank Pym and Scott Lang small to make herself so small that she was in the molecular level. The problem was that she couldn’t get back on her own and Pym did not have a big enough power source to get her out, until now,” he continued.
“So are they all in the Quantum Realm?” Tony asked.
“No. We’re not sure who is,” Shuri answered. “Luis reported ‘dust’ particles around and in the van, the same kind that were found wherever people disappeared. Someone is probably in the Quantum realm and the rest are, well, dust.”
“Can we get in it?” Rhodey asked.
“We can. Wakanda has enough energy to work the apparatus. We believe that this might be a place to hide the Stones,” Shuri answered.
“Is it a one way trip?” Tony asked, remembering Steve’s words about a suicide mission.
“We don’t think so. We think that maybe Scott Lang is in there. No one has found his Ant Man suit, so it’s logical to think he is the one who went in.” Shuri said.
“Wong will come here when we need his help. He can use his sling ring. He can find us even though Wakanda is hidden,” Bruce said.
Everyone began talking at once. Shuri held up her hand.
“We have many details to work out and we are not even positive that we can do these things. We will have to test time travel itself. We know that Dr. Strange did it, but he had access to the Time Stone.”
“Dr. Banner and I will continue working on the Quantum Realm machine while others of you will research other things. Mr. Rhodes will be in charge of assigning tasks at the request of myself, Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark. Does this work for you all?”
Everyone agreed.
And they all set to work again.
Steve still had no real task. He was at loose ends. And his ghosts came back to haunt him. He thought of the ones he’d lost… all of them, his mother, Peggy, war friends, Bucky… even though he loved Tony, he still felt alone most of the time. Perhaps it was simply that he’d been here too long, was too old. He’d read in the papers that he was a ‘man out of time’ and maybe that was true in all senses of the word.
He came to a decision. He would be the traveler and he would go into the Quantum Realm. His strength and endurance made him hard to kill and he knew there wasn’t a more stubborn son of a bitch anywhere than he could be. He didn’t fear death and he didn’t fear living in some kind of limbo forever either. The monsters he’d met and the ghosts he lived with every day made him sure that there was little out there worse than what he’d already seen.
He started reading Hank Pym’s files. He also convinced Wong to loan him some of the books on multiverse dimensions from the Sanctum. He needed to know about these things if he planned to convince Tony that he was the perfect candidate for the job. Actually, he wanted Tony’s blessing, but he was going with or without it.
Natasha noticed what he was reading.
“You going to do this?” She arched an eyebrow at him.
“You know it has to be me.”
“I figured. Have you told him yet?”
“Tony? No.”
“You know he’s going to try to stop you, maybe by going himself.”
“Yeah. He will, but Shuri and Bruce know. So does Thor.”
“Then you need to tell him.” Natasha had been the voice of practicality to Steve since he’d met her.
“Tell me what, Steve?” Tony walked up and saw the ancient book in Steve’s hand. “That you’re planning on going on at least one of these missions? You don’t have to tell me. I know you that well.”
He didn’t look as angry as Steve had expected.
“Yeah, I’m still pissed at you, Cap, but right now, you are the most capable for this mission out of all of us.”
“So it’s set?”
Tony made a rude noise. “Nothing’s set yet. We have to think about time itself for a bit before jumping into this thing. We don’t want to fuck up things worse than they already are.”
“Is that possible?” Natasha asked Tony, genuinely curious.
“Fucking things up worse than they are is always possible. Whatever we do will change the timeline and only the traveler will know what has been changed when he or she gets back.”
“So we need to choose the one Stone that leaves the smallest ripple,” Natasha said.
“Yes, but which one? And when?”
“If you go far enough back and get the Tesseract, then you can stop all of it,” Steve said.
“We might even stop you from being made.”
“Would that be so bad if we fix the world?” He meant it.
Tony closed his eyes. “Maybe not, but I’m thinking that we’d create less ripples if we come the closest to the present time.”
“Vision and the Mind stone?” Natasha asked.
“Maybe too close there.” Tony looked at Steve. “Been reading up on all this time business?”
“Wong sent me some stuff.”
“Come with me,” Tony said.
Steve looked at Natasha and shrugged. He followed Tony. They went to the lab and there was all of the stuff from Hank Pym. He showed him files about the Quantum Realm. There were schematics for the suits.
“Can you make one?” Steve asked him.
“Shuri says she thinks we can. I am inclined to agree with her. We think someone is in there, in the Quantum Realm. Maybe Scott Lang. We can’t find his suit. We did find a woman’s suit. It seems to be a wasp and there is an older suit, maybe the one Pym made thirty years ago.”
“What are we going to do once we’re in there?” Steve asked.
“Hide the Stone.”
“One way trip?”
“It might be. I sure hope not.”
Tony grabbed him and pulled him into a smaller room off the lab, a small storage room of some sort. He shoved him up against the door. “You planning on being a dickhead and doing all of these things, aren’t you?”
Steve nodded.
“Why? Any of us are willing.”
“I’m expendable. The rest of you aren’t.”
“How do you figure that?”
“You scientist and engineers have to figure things out. If any of the smaller ships got away, Thor will have people to take care of. Natasha has Clint and his family. Bucky may even be back.”
Tony made a face, almost like he was in pain then he turned away for a moment.
“I don’t want to give you up! Don’t I count?” he asked Steve when he turned back toward him.
“The world needs you.”
Tony threw his arms around Steve as if he were a toddler. Steve held him. Tony didn’t cry, but he held Steve tight. “I can’t talk you out of any of this, can I?” He murmured against Steve’s neck.
“No. Figure out how to bring me back.”
“I’ll devote my life to it.”
Steve held him out at arm’s length. “No. I want you to marry Pepper and have a couple of little Starks before you’re too old. Name one for me.”
“God, you’re serious.” He didn’t know whether to laugh at the absurdity or cry.
“I want you to be happy and I want to save the world. I was made for this, Tony.”
*
There was one more detail they needed to pin down. A big one. Thanos needed to be found and destroyed.
Nebula was ready to kill her ‘father.’ All she needed was an opportunity. That meant they needed to either figure out where he was and go after him or draw him out. Either way, they had to figure out just how to kill him.
Tony had some ideas. He had been to Titan and he thought maybe that Thanos would rest there, maybe remake it like he wanted it or go back in time to a time before it was used up. If he had gone back in time, then they’d need to draw him out. Or if they got all the Stones, he’d be trapped where he was.
The plan was looking to be a three part one so far.
Go back and steal some or all of the Infinity Stones.
Take them into the Quantum Realm.
Kill Thanos.
Could they do it? Maybe.
The real question was did they have a choice? And the answer was no.
*
Wong had read all the texts. He talked to the guardian at the Hong Kong Sanctum. He had even experimented with small time jumps and they worked. He had gone back to last Tuesday and on a bolder note, he had gone back to before it all happened and watched himself and Strange eat dinner. Time travel was possible.
He had to open a new dimension and making a time corridor to travel through. He hoped he could teach one of the others to do it. He knew he could do it himself, but they needed one of the Avengers to go back to the battle of New York.
He knew that Rogers was probably the best candidate because he was not as entrenched in science and logic as the others. Maybe Thor would suffice, too. He understood magic as well as science.
Wong traveled to Wakanda via his ring to talk to the Avengers and give them all his findings.
“Good to see you, Mr. Stark.” Wong bowed to Tony and shook Steve’s hand. “I’ve read a lot about you, Captain Rogers. Ah, Dr. Banner, nice to see you again as well.” He turned to Shuri and did a small bow. “Your majesty. It is an honor.”
“I am pleased to meet you, too, Wong. We practice some mystical arts here in Wakanda but vibranium has given us most of our technology. Our magic and our faith gives us strength and wisdom.”
Wong was very impressed with the young woman.
“This is my mother, Ramonda. She is our queen,” Shuri said as he introduced her mother to Wong. He took her proffered hand and kissed it.
“My daughter tells me you are here to help set this world to rights. I do hope you are able to help all these children here.” She indicated the room full of Avengers. “They are lost without their companions. I, too, am lost without my son. So is Shuri.”
“I shall do my best, madam.” He bowed again.
“Shall we get to work then?” Shuri urged them all to the conference room to discuss things first.
Tony asked Wong, “So you’ve tested this spell?”
“It’s not exactly a spell, Mr. Stark, but yes, I have tested it on a small scale.”
“Will it work for us?” Steve asked.
“You would have to be trained, not as extensively as Strange was, but you’d have to learn to open a mirror dimension and to have your own ring to do it with.”
Steve nodded.
“At this time,” Bruce said, “we think that the Space Stone is the one we should go after. It would need to be retrieved from Thor before he takes it back to Asgard. The thing is, this could change the future so much that whoever gets it won’t come back to a world anything like it was before he left it.”
“Why don’t we just keep the Mind Stone from Thanos?” Stark asked.
“Because he handed us our asses when we tried to do that,” Steve answered. “Only a fool would do it again and expect a different outcome.”
“Is there any way to travel to where Thanos is?” Shuri asked. “Perhaps you could destroy him and take the gauntlet away.”
“That might work but we’d have to locate him in space and time,” Bruce answered.
“He will got to Titan!” Nebula said loudly. “He will go home.”
“But will he fix Titan or will he go back in time to when it was beautiful?” Tony asked.
“So many questions, so few answers,” Steve said. “I can leave a message for us from the past. Instructions what to do when we have the Space Stone. They can be encrypted in some way that proves to Stark or Banner that they’re authentic.”
“But how will we find Thanos?” Rhodey asked.
Nebula spoke again. “If you remove the Space Stone and it undoes what he has done, he will come for it. We won’t have to find him.” Her smile was frightening. “He will find us.”
“So we get it and take it to the Quantum Realm and whoever takes it, stays. Back here, you destroy the devices and the science to get to that Realm so it’s lost forever,” Steve said.
“And when he comes, I will kill him!” Nebula said.
“Won’t you need help?” Tony asked her.
“Yes, we will need magic and science to trap him and destroy him. We must get the gauntlet and do something with the rest of the Stones, too,” Bruce said. “Since we cannot unmake them, we must hide them.”
“I am the best bomb and weapons builder in the galaxy,” Rocket told them. “I can build a gun that will kill the bastard!”
“Rabbit and I will aid Nebula! He killed my brother, Loki, and I owe him a death,” Thor said.
“So who is doing these things?” Tony asked. “I volunteer to go back to New York.”
“No. I will,” Steve said. “The world needs you, your science and your wealth. I am a soldier. I need to do my duty.”
Tony wanted to argue with him, to demand he not do it, but he knew Steve was right. Steve was a soldier. He would complete his mission or die trying. And a supersoldier was hard to kill.
“We’d better get to work then,” Shuri said. “Mr. Wong, can you train Captain Rogers here in Wakanda?”
“No, I would prefer to train him in the old training facility in Kamar-Taj. I can take us there.”
“Who will deliver the stone to the Quantum Realm?” Bruce asked.
Steve spoke up. “I’ll do that as well. When I return from the past, I’ll take the Stone away.”
Again Tony had to bite his tongue from arguing with Steve, even though he knew he was right, that Steve was truly noble and felt like he was the right one to make the sacrifice. Tony knew also that he didn’t want to lose him. Ever.
They would begin Steve’s training the next day. It gave him one night to be with Tony before he left.
“Can I talk you out of this?” Tony asked him as they sat on the sofa after dinner.
“No. It has to be me.”
“You’re going to leave me like you did Peggy?”
That made Steve stop and consider. “The rest of you need to be here. You’re important.”
“You’re the glue, Cap. You hold us all together.”
“You have to be the glue after I go. They all look up to you.” He laughed. “You and Rhodey are the old guys anyway.”
“Gee, thanks.”
They both were putting off going to bed, going to sleep because that would bring tomorrow.
“You do know if the timeline changes enough that if I come back, when I come back, you and I won’t be together?” Steve asked Tony. The thought that all they’d shared would be erased made his chest hurt, as if his heart was already breaking.
“I think you should take a note back with you…leave it for me. I can’t imagine not loving you.”
Steve stood and reached for Tony’s hand. “Come to bed. I want to give you something to remember.”
Tony took Steve’s hand and followed him to the bedroom. It was near dawn before they slept.