Chapter Text
Steve watched as Thor carefully set the six most powerful objects in the universe into an unremarkable metal briefcase.
“You’re certain you wish to return them alone?” asked Thor. “If we but wait another week, Dr. Pym can provide more than enough of the Pym Particles for someone to go with you.”
“No point risking it,” said Steve. “And the more people go with me, the more chances there are for something to go wrong and more timelines to splinter. I can handle going alone, Thor. Putting the Stones back should be a hell of a lot easier than taking them in the first place.”
Thor hummed and nodded, closing the briefcase. He set Mjolnir on top of it, the only necessary security measure. After all, only the two of them could lift it.
“And is that all you’re going to do?”
Steve met Thor’s mismatched eyes. They were solemn and sad, but full of fondness too, and weary understanding, and that gave Steve the strength to answer honestly.
“No. I’m going to try to get Natasha back.”
Thor raised an eyebrow. “Not by meddling with time, I hope.”
“Of course not,” Steve said. He had no intention of depriving some other timeline of its Natasha, not that any version of Natasha herself would ever allow it even if he tried. “I—I was going to try to use the Soul Stone. I know everyone says it’s not possible, that it won’t let us bring Natasha back, but if it’s so powerful, there has to be something I can do. I have to try to get her back.”
He was trying to sound like he knew what he was doing, but the certainty and steadiness of his Captain America voice wouldn’t come. This was just Steve, bare of the shield and the cowl, desperate and furious, unwilling to believe that Natasha was truly dead and gone. And Thor, Thor who had lost even more than Steve and gotten none of it back, did not say anything kind and condescending about the denial stage of grief, or about accepting Natasha’s death.
No, Thor frowned and said, “The Soul Stone is the most mysterious and fickle of all the Stones, Steve. It won’t easily relinquish a sacrifice made to it. Have care before you attempt to use it, lest you lose more than you have already lost.”
That wasn’t a no. Hope began to flower, sending up fragile buds through the stone of Steve’s stubborn denial. He leaned towards Thor, eager for any clues.
“But is it possible? Are there any stories, is there anything to suggest—”
“There are tales, yes, of people undertaking quests with or for the Soul Stone, but they are cautionary ones. There is a reason the Soul Stone, of all the Stones, has remained hidden and unused for so long,” said Thor, disconcertingly solemn. “You know how high the cost was to gain it, to use it. It demands much, and from those who fail to provide what it demands, it takes much. You need only see the Stone’s current guardian to see that.”
From Thor of all people, this was a grave warning. Steve wasn’t about to let it dissuade him though.
“I have to try. I can’t give up on her, Thor. Natasha helped save the whole damn universe, I can’t—she deserves to have someone fight for her. If we could bring all the others back, then we have to—she should be here too.”
Steve had made the mistake of giving up once before. He wouldn’t do it again.
Before:
“So you’re giving up?” asks Natasha.
The Avengers Compound command center hums around them, never wholly silent as it continues with its programmed routines and scans, searching for energy signatures and threats and the impossible miracle they would need to save the lost. The number of the lost—the dead—is a constantly increasing ticker on one of the command center’s many screens. Steve doesn’t know why they bother to keep it up; the number is too big to fathom, and they know what it represents anyway. Half of Earth’s entire population. More than half, even. The collateral damage of Thanos’s genocide grows every hour.
“I’m not giving up, I’m facing reality.” He points to the still slowly climbing number of the dead. “We lost, Natasha. It’s over. Thanos is dead, the Infinity Stones are gone, there’s no fixing this.”
“Not with that attitude,” she says, a shaky and hurt attempt at her old sly humor. It doesn’t sit well on her pale and haggard face. Steve had long since seen behind the facade of effortlessly cool Agent Romanoff, but even so, it’s a bit of a shock to see it so thoroughly destroyed now.
“It’s over, Nat,” Steve repeats. “The war’s over. There’s no one and nothing left to fight. Sam, Bucky, Wanda, Fury, all the others—we lost them. And we’re not getting them back.”
Just saying the words turns him hollow, ravaged—tearing something out of him that will not heal, that will not grow back. Steve had almost wanted this, once: the end of fighting. Talk about a wish on a fucking monkey’s paw.
Natasha sets her jaw, and meets his eyes. “I’m not going to stop trying to fix this. Someone has to try, Steve.”
“We already tried! We failed!”
“So we try again.”
She’s wan, more desperate and beaten down than Steve’s ever seen her, but resolve is burning in her brighter than any flame. Steve feels like ashes in comparison, the remnants of a fire that ended up burning out uselessly just when it was most needed.
“I can’t. I—I just can’t. I’m done, I can’t—”
Natasha’s eyes widen in fear. “Don’t—you don’t mean you’re going to—to do something stupid, Steve, you can’t—”
“No!” Steve says. “No, I’m not—I’m sticking around, alright?” he reassures her.
This is one promise Steve can make her at least, and if he makes the promise just to hold himself to it, just to have that one last excuse to keep living in this half-ravaged remnant of a world, in this stubbornly unkillable flesh—well, no one else needs to know that.
“I’m just—I’m done Avenging. There’s no avenging any of this. There’s no war left to fight.”
He braces himself for Natasha’s anger, for her disappointment, both of which he more than deserves right now. Instead, he gets her kindness, the rare softness that she usually guards so closely, but that she always gives him when she thinks he needs it.
“I know,” she says, and smiles. It’s a tiny and wavering thing, but it’s still a smile. “It’s okay, Steve. Whatever you need. But this is what I need. And I don’t want to do it alone.”
Her smile falters then, a few tears escaping from her eyes, and for just a moment, Steve’s grief fades, eclipsed and outshined by a bright and searing tenderness. Natasha’s always wrestled strength out of weakness: using her smaller size to her advantage in a fight, using her reputation to keep people off balance, and moments like this, right now, when she’s brave enough to show Steve her vulnerability, when, despite every reason she has to distrust people, she’s strong enough to say she needs them. That she needs him.
And he needs her too.
“I’m sticking around,” he says again, and when she holds out a shaking hand, he goes to her.
He’d kept his promise to Natasha. He’d stuck around, he’d found a way to live in a ravaged world, had even managed to stay useful by running support groups and helping with recovery efforts. But he hadn’t helped Natasha much.
They’d had a few arguments about it, in the five terrible years after the Decimation: Steve telling Natasha she had to stop torturing herself with impossibilities, and Natasha telling him his despair was selfish and useless. Each time, they’d retreat to their respective corners to lick their wounds, then Steve would return to the Compound, and Natasha would smile at him, sweet and sharp and sad, and welcome him back.
She’d been right, in the end, not to give up. She’d been right to chase the impossible. And while it was too late now to make up for not staying in that fight with her, Steve could make the impossible happen for her, Steve could save her, maybe.
Steve had to save her.
Steve checked in with each member of the team who’d participated in the time heist for a refresher debrief on exactly when and where he should return the Stones. He couldn’t risk running into any of them while they were taking the Stones—Steve was pretty sure that was the kind of paradox that would lead to disaster—and he wanted to make sure he had as complete a picture of what he’d be walking into as possible. So Thor, Bruce and Rhodey duly gave him as much detail as they could recall, and Bruce drilled him on the coordinates until they were both satisfied that Steve had them memorized.
Steve left talking to Clint for last.
He didn’t blame Clint for what had happened on Vormir. He knew that, as Peggy had once said about Bucky, he had to allow Natasha the dignity of her choice, and Natasha had chosen to be the sacrifice to win the Soul Stone. And yet, seeing Clint, Steve could only think it should have been you.
Clint could read it on his face, maybe, because he greeted Steve with a bitter, weary smile, and a half-nod that seemed to say, yeah, it should’ve. The return of his family had eased only some of the deep, harsh lines of pain and anger on his face, and his shoulders were still heavy with his guilt and shame.
“I’m sorry, Cap,” he said. “I should’ve been faster, I should’ve stopped her—”
Steve couldn’t listen to this, not if he wanted to keep it together. “It’s alright, Barton. Just—just tell me about Vormir, about the Soul Stone.”
“Don’t know how you’re gonna return the damn thing, to be honest. Toss it off the cliff, shove it up that ghost dude’s ass, I don’t care. Just—bring Nat back, okay?” Steve looked at Clint with some alarm. Did he know what Steve intended to do? But no, Clint continued, “She deserves to be laid to rest here. She deserves the same kinda funeral Stark’s about to get.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I’ll bring her back.” One way or another.
“She deserves to still be alive,” said Clint. “But it was like—it was like she didn’t think she was worth it. Worth dying for. I’d’ve done it though, Cap, I swear I would’ve.”
“I know, Clint, I know. I would’ve too. But you know Nat: she was always thinking about the red in her ledger,” murmured Steve.
Steve knew what she must have been thinking in that moment: of the red in her ledger, and the weight of her life against Clint’s. She’d have thought of Clint’s family, and the family she’d made with the Avengers, and she’d have decided that Clint’s family would need him more, when they returned, a perfectly Natasha calculation, equal parts cold and compassionate. But Steve was Natasha’s family, wasn’t he? And he needed her too. It was an ugly, small thought to have—Clint had young kids, for god’s sake—and Steve hated himself for having it. Still, he couldn’t quite shove that plaintive, raging need down into silence.
“Yeah. I’m no accountant, but I figured—she was even, right? She was in the black? She helped saved the world so many damn times. But me—” Clint broke off with a furious, choked off sob, and hid his face in his hands. He took a couple of shuddering breaths then lowered his hands. “Just—bring her home. She’s—there’s a cliff. At the top, where the ghost guy is, there’s a cliff. And a drop. She’s—she’s at the bottom. You should—you have to—”
Her body. Clint was talking about Natasha’s body. Because Natasha was dead.
Steve tried to imagine it, tried to imagine climbing down and gathering up her broken body, and he couldn’t, he couldn’t, Steve had survived the Arctic ice and losing Bucky again and again and losing Peggy and losing Sam, and the Decimation and so many wars, but he couldn’t survive that, he just couldn’t. Steve had a limit, and this was it, maybe.
“I’ll bring her home,” Steve told Clint.
Before:
“What will you do, when we get everyone back?”
It’s late, late enough that they should be getting what little rest they can, but Steve and Natasha are still lingering in the messy conference room, double and triple-checking research. Steve’s reviewing the surveillance footage of Stark Tower after the Chitauri invasion to try to account for every second of the scepter’s whereabouts, but Natasha’s question is more interesting. He looks at Natasha, his eyebrows rocketing up in surprise as he processes her words.
“When, not if?” he asks.
It’s a far more reckless hope than he’s used to hearing from Natasha, and her face is bright with an almost giddy anticipation, one of her eyebrows lifted like she’s daring him to hope with her. It’s a much more dangerous dare than her usual kind; Steve would feel less trepidation about launching her off his shield and onto an alien spaceship than he does right now, when she’s asking him to hope for the impossible with her.
“Yeah,” she says. “Let’s try some optimism for once, c’mon. So what’ll you do? Let’s take all the hugging and crying and touching reunion stuff as a given, so after all that.”
“I don’t know,” he says honestly, because he can’t even imagine it. “Whatever you’re doing, I guess.”
Natasha laughs and rolls her eyes, then sees that he’s serious. “Oh? And what do you think I’ll be doing?”
“I don’t know,” he says again, smiling now. “I just know there’s no one else I’d rather be with, after.” He expects some kind of dry and arch comment from Natasha after that, maybe something about how he’s such a sap, but instead, Natasha goes pink and pleased, and it’s like her blush is contagious, because Steve feels his own face heat too. He clears his throat and says, “So: what’re you gonna be doing?”
“I have a place in Brooklyn, did you know?”
“A safe house?”
Natasha pauses, tilts her head. “Yeah, I guess. Anyway, I figure we’d go there. Me, you, Sam, Bucky, Wanda, whoever else wants to come. And we’d have, I don’t know, a dinner party. Nothing fancy. Just—all of us, together. No disasters, no being on the run…just us.” She smiles, wry and self-deprecating. “Not exactly on brand, I know.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs. “It’s a pretty boring, dumb thing to want, I guess. No big plan, no huge celebration. Hell, retired or not, Tony’ll probably want, like, a week-long party with parades and fireworks, the full Iron Man treatment.”
“Yeah, sure, but that’s not your style,” says Steve.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. A boring dinner party where we try to actually cook something nice is your style. I know you.”
Natasha goes still for a moment, looking at him closely the exact same way she had years ago, during the whole mess with HYDRA and SHIELD and Project Insight, when they’d first decided to trust each other: surprised, searching, a little afraid. Then all that falls away to leave a wondering and almost shy smile, as lovely as spring’s first bloom, and as hopeful. He wishes, for a moment, that he could cup that smile gently between his palms, shelter it against their long winter’s lingering bitterness. Natasha herself doesn’t often need protection, but her happiness, rare and precious as it is, does. Steve wants her to be happy, Steve wants both of them to have reason to be happy.
“You do know me, don’t you,” she murmurs, and then, before the oddly bright and crystalline moment can transform into something Steve doesn’t understand, she continues, “So, you going to help me cook for this dinner party? We’re gonna have to make something that won’t make Sam disappointed in us.”
Indulging this dream hurts almost too much to stand, like hope is a muscle that he’s let atrophy and he’s straining it now. He tries, for Natasha’s sake.
“Bucky too, he helped out in the village kitchen in Wakanda a lot, he’s gonna be tough to impress. And yeah. Yeah, of course. Should be easy, after saving the universe,” he says, and tries to believe it can happen. He doesn’t quite succeed.
Natasha must see his doubt, because she takes his hand in hers, and squeezes it hard. “We can do this, Steve. We can get them back.”
Well, Steve’s not sure how much of a contribution he can make here. His shield and his body don’t feel like enough; they sure as hell hadn’t been before. But Natasha has faith and hope enough to share with him, so he squeezes her hand right back.
“We can do this,” he echoes.
After the Avengers said one last goodbye to Tony, it was time to return the Infinity Stones.
As Steve walked back to the lake house to gear up for the trip, Bucky fell in step beside him, a silent and steady comfort. The reality of him, of his return, was almost too much for Steve to handle. He had to look at Bucky sideways, in quick glances, as if, like staring at the sun, looking at him too long would blind Steve. Even when they got to the lake house and Steve began to strip off his funeral suit and gear up for the mission, he could scarcely look at Bucky. Because if he looked, what if he saw, what if Bucky wasn’t real and solid and alive after all, what if—
Before Steve could get the quantum wristband on, a tremor started in his hands, then travelled up his arms and down his spine and into his chest, until his lungs were heaving with it.
Bucky stepped in front of Steve and grasped his shaking hands. Bucky’s hands were warm and solid—one smooth, dense vibranium and one living skin—and Steve held onto them tightly, too tightly.
“Hey, you’re alright, Steve,” he said, and his voice was so calm and certain that Steve could almost believe him.
“Bucky, I—”
“Shh, you’re okay, we’re okay,” Bucky said, and then he held Steve, as easy and unselfconscious with his affection and his support as he’d been before all their wars. It was a miracle. Everything about Bucky was a miracle. “Dunno why you always try to white knuckle your way through this kinda thing. It’s okay to cry, Steve. I’ve got you.”
Steve couldn’t manage it, at first. Grief was a well that never ran dry, but at some point in the last five years, it was like his body had given up on processing it, like the grief was a bullet his body had taken in, a barrage of bullets, and had never bothered to try to push back out again. It was still inside of him, a heavy leaden lump that weighed him down, but of course, here was Bucky too, taking some of that weight in his strong arms. So Steve let go.
Bucky and Sam and Wanda and so many others were back, and yet Steve’s grief for their loss was still inside of him, jumbled up with his new mourning for Tony and Natasha, and all of it together came out of him like it was breaking him apart. Bucky held fast against the onslaught, holding him close and tight, murmuring soothing words, until some of the terrible grief of the last five years eased and made room for the loss of Tony and Natasha to grow roots inside of him.
There was no way to save Tony, but Natasha—maybe Steve could save her. What was the point of all the damned power of the Infinity Stones if Steve couldn’t save Natasha? She had fought so hard for the world, had never given up on hope. And she was still so needed. Steve needed her, this team needed her. All those kids she’d helped after the Decimation had left them orphaned needed her. The proof of death’s impermanence was right here in Steve’s arms, in the miracle of a life Bucky had snatched from death at least three times running. Was Steve just being unforgivably greedy, to hope for yet another miracle?
Maybe so. But he’d do a hell of a lot worse for Natasha. She deserved to live in the world she’d saved. She deserved to come home.
He pulled away from Bucky, murmuring, “I’m okay now. Thanks.”
Bucky made a dubious kind of humming noise, but he let Steve slip away to the bathroom to wash up, and he was still there when Steve came back.
“You know, I could go with you,” said Bucky.
The thought was too tempting: Bucky at his side, helping him return the Stones, watching his back. Him and Bucky, unstuck in time together for once, instead of apart. He couldn’t risk another mess like the first Time Heist though, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to risk Bucky.
“Thanks, Buck, but it’s best if I go alone. Least chance of messing with timelines that way.”
Bucky accepted this with a furrowed brow and a frown. “Time travel,” he muttered to himself, and shook his head.
Steve finished gearing up, and Bucky helped him get all the buckles and snaps of the quantum suit tightened up, turning Steve with a touch to his shoulder so he could secure the straps that would hold Steve’s pack in place. When Steve turned back towards Bucky, quantum suit fully buckled in and secure, Bucky went very still, his clear-eyed gaze going sharp and searching.
Steve swallowed hard and tried not to fidget. He still wasn’t quite used to this look from Bucky. Oh, Bucky had always had keen eyes, and an unerring ability to see through Steve’s bullshit. But before, Bucky had covered that sharpness with sly teasing and distracting smiles. Now, Bucky didn’t bother. He hid nothing in the lambent clarity of his eyes, and didn’t let anyone else hide either. Bucky, Steve began to suspect, knew exactly what Steve was planning to do.
“There you go,” said Bucky softly. Steve murmured his thanks and braced himself for some horribly insightful comment that would lay Steve bare, or even for the beginning of an argument, but instead Bucky asked, “That a new uniform? Can’t say the white’s really a good look for you, Steve.”
“I—it’s new, yeah.” He swallowed hard against the fresh grief rising in his throat. “Tony made us the quantum suits.”
Bucky’s stillness didn’t ease, and his expression was inscrutable. Just as Steve began to worry that something was wrong, all that stillness melted away and Bucky nodded, almost as if to himself.
“Alright. Just—be careful.”
“Of course. I’ll be back before you know it.”
Sam was waiting for them at the quantum tunnel platform. He still had a faintly bewildered and overwhelmed look about him, and Steve’s heart ached for him. That Sam now had to deal with even this milder version of Steve and Bucky’s own displacement in time hurt. Five years wasn’t so long, in the grand scheme of things, but Steve knew from experience: the loss hadn’t hit Sam yet. Not of the last five years, and not of Natasha. Steve really hoped he could render that particular loss moot, at least. For now, Sam was putting on a brave face, doing his best to be strong and steady, and he was mostly succeeding.
“Sure you don’t want to wait a bit before going all Bill and Ted? You’re time traveling anyway, the Infinity Stones will keep if you take a few days or a week to, you know, take a breather,” Sam said. His tone was light, but he was frowning in concern. “Hell, are you sure you don’t want a Ted for this excellent adventure?”
“I don’t understand that reference,” lied Steve with a somewhat strained grin.
“Yeah, yeah, sure, old man,” said Sam.
It got harder and harder to say no to each person who offered to go with Steve on this trip through time. The desire for someone to hang onto, for one stable point when even time was out of joint, made Steve’s heart pound with something close to panic. He wanted, desperately, for Sam to come with him, to have Sam’s humor and sense of purpose and kindness at his side again. Sam made even heavy work lighter, and so often in the last five years, Steve had asked himself what would Sam do? Steve could never hope to match Sam’s warmth, but god, he’d tried, and now, selfishly, Steve wanted to keep that warmth with him, to have someone help him carry this weight of grief and responsibility.
But Steve just took a breath and found his resolve again. Steve couldn’t endanger Sam, or any other timeline, with this insane mission. For five years, Natasha had been Steve’s stable point. Natasha had been the one who’d kept him alive, kept him going. If he had to go it alone to get her back, he would.
So he said his goodbyes to Sam and Bucky, hoping they’d only be goodbyes for him, that however long this took Steve, Sam and Bucky would see him again in a few seconds, none the wiser.
When Bucky said, soft and sad, “I’m gonna miss you,” Steve’s doubts really took hold.
His hand spasmed on Bucky’s shoulder in a brief impulse to hang on to Bucky and never let go. It was Bucky who let Steve go though, and there was nothing but a sorrowing kind of understanding in his eyes as he did it. Bucky knew. Steve didn’t know how, didn’t know what, exactly, he knew, but Bucky knew. And he wasn’t stopping Steve. Was that Bucky’s faith, or his resignation? Steve couldn’t tell.
They shared their usual call and response, and Steve wasn’t sure if the echo of their words from so many decades ago was a good omen, or a bad one. Doubts or no doubts though, Steve still had to return Mjolnir and the Stones. So he took one more look at Sam and Bucky, fixing the sight of them in his heart, a bulwark against doubt and grief, and activated the quantum wristband.
To Steve’s relief, returning the Stones was a hell of a lot easier than stealing them in the first place. He had an easy time of it and managed to get most of them back without anyone the wiser, until it came to returning the Power Stone and Mjolnir in Asgard. Returning Mjolnir at least was easy enough: he only had to set it down somewhere out of the way. It would come to Thor whenever he called it next, no matter where he was on Asgard. So Steve found a suitably shadowy alcove in one of the palace hallways, and set Mjolnir gently down. He gave it one last fond and wistful stroke—calling down the lightning had been a hell of a rush, and there was something comforting about the steady knowledge that he was worthy of that kind of power, that Mjolnir only let him wield it because it deemed him so—then set off in search of Jane Foster. Which was when he ran into some trouble.
He almost made it: he’d just returned the Power Stone in its Aether form back into Dr. Foster, and was about to key in his next destination when a woman’s quiet voice made him jump and whirl around.
“Well, Asgard is getting all manner of interesting visitors today, I see,” she said.
She was a beautiful Asgardian woman with kind but keen eyes, her honey-colored hair braided into an elaborate almost-crown. Thor’s mother Frigga, maybe? Thor had mentioned speaking to her, during his own trip to the past.
“Ma’am,” he said. “I’m just—returning something. Sorry for the intrusion. I’ll be on my way now.”
She smiled, and while her smile had Thor’s warmth in it, there was something like Loki’s sharp cunning alight in her eyes.
“To return the rest of the Infinity Stones to their proper time and place?” Steve swallowed hard and didn’t answer. “My dear Captain, it is very obvious to any with eyes to see that you are carrying objects of immense power,” she said, still smiling. “Think carefully before you use any of them.”
“I’m only returning them, ma’am,” he said, and she raised an eyebrow. “I’m not—I don’t intend to do anything bad. I just have to try to get my friend back. She sacrificed herself so we could get the Soul Stone, and everyone else came back, but not her. It’s not right, it’s not fair. She helped save the universe, she should—”
Frigga shook her head. “The Stones do not concern themselves with fairness. Like gravity, they simply are. And the Soul Stone especially is not to be trifled with.”
“What does that mean?”
“That should the Soul Stone offer you a way to get what you desire, you must be careful of what it will demand in return. Because it will not demand something so straightforward as a fight, Captain, and the games it plays aren’t concerned with fairness.”
“Will it demand a quest or something, or another sacrifice?”
“Perhaps. Or some manner of trial. I speak not out of foresight, but simply...there are tales, Captain. And nearly all of them end in sorrow, even when they’re love stories.”
Nearly all wasn’t all.
“I—I think I understand, ma’am,” he said, though he wasn’t sure where love stories came into it. “Thank you.”
Returning the Time Stone was next, and here too, Steve couldn’t just return the Stone and leave, because the Ancient One was waiting for him, serene despite the destruction of the Chitauri invasion still raging nearby.
“Ma’am,” he said, greeting her with a respectful nod. “Thank you for letting us borrow the Time Stone.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, and took the Time Stone back from him, tucking it away in some kind of amulet.
Just the Soul Stone left to return now. Steve began to key in the coordinates for Vormir, when the Ancient One lifted a hand to stop him, her eyes narrowing.
“Captain Rogers, what you’re thinking of doing—the Soul Stone is not to be trifled with. It is fickle, and it is beyond human comprehension. To use it is to risk losing things you cannot even fathom.” How the hell did everyone know what Steve was planning to do? Either the Ancient One could read his mind or the frustrated question was just that obvious on his face, because she continued, “It doesn’t take a Sorcerer Supreme to guess why you have left the Soul Stone for last, Captain Rogers. Only consider: there is a reason it of all the Stones has been so rarely sought or used.”
“Thanos used it. Tony and Bruce used it.”
“They used its power. They did not use the Soul Stone itself, they did not manipulate the forces the Soul Stone has power over. Of all the Stones, the Soul Stone’s dominion is...” She paused, seeming to consider, or to search for a word. “Unknowable. Unpredictable. It has some will of its own. Have a care, Captain. To undo a sacrifice is ill-advised, and to bargain with the Soul Stone is to risk losing everything.”
“I’ll take that under advisement, ma’am,” he told her, but judging by the twist of her lips, she knew what he still intended to do. Or at least, what he intended to try.
Three warnings about the Soul Stone and its dangers weren’t enough to sway Steve from his plan to get Natasha back. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Thor or Thor’s mother or the Ancient One, because he did. It was just that when he weighed those warnings against Natasha’s life, it wasn’t even close. Natasha had kept looking for a way to help, to fix things, even after their most crushing defeat. When everything had seemed hopeless, when they’d all thought there could be no recovery much less any kind of victory, Natasha had clawed hope out of the frozen ground of their grief and guilt, and she’d nurtured that hope and grown it like it was a seed she was bringing to full flower. And to Steve’s shame, she’d done a lot of that without him. Because Steve had been too busy trying to move on, and he hadn’t been brave enough for hope. But Natasha had been.
Steve needed to be brave enough to hope now. He needed to believe that he could get Natasha back. Whatever the Soul Stone could do, whatever it would demand of him, it was worth the risk. Natasha deserved that. It was the absolute least she deserved.
But Steve couldn’t stop thinking about Bucky, about that I’m gonna miss you. The doubts and worries raised by Bucky’s reaction to Steve leaving still simmered in him, a slow burn of disquiet. Bucky had known something, Steve was sure of it, Bucky didn’t think Steve would be back in five seconds. And yet he’d still let Steve go. Why?
Fucking time travel, Steve thought. Would his next choice justify Bucky’s reaction, or erase it as if it had never been? Was Steve about to create a new timeline, destroy his timeline, or preserve it? Steve couldn’t be sure. All he knew was that he couldn’t leave Sam and Bucky on their own in the future not knowing what Steve was doing, if Steve didn’t return in time. Steve couldn’t let them think he’d been lost in time, or that he’d failed to return the Infinity Stones, couldn’t take the risk that they would try to find him.
So before going to Vormir, Steve programmed the quantum wristband for a detour. He had enough Pym particles for a couple of extra trips, according to Bruce, and he used one of those trips now.
He picked his destination carefully: a time when he could be sure he wouldn’t run into any other Avenger—early morning, a few days before Thanos’ genocide—and a location he could be reasonably certain Sam and Bucky, or at least one of the other Avengers, would eventually end up in—Natasha’s Brooklyn safe house.
In this moment of time, Natasha was still alive, so it was purely Steve’s morbid imagination that made the safe house feel like it was haunted with the ghost of her. As he walked through the halls, Steve realized that if the house was haunted by anything, it was haunted by Natasha’s wildest hopes, her most wistful dreams. Because it wasn’t a safe house or bolt hole, one of those familiar and interchangeable places filled only with the necessities and as liminal as a hotel room. No, this brownstone was something else: the possibility of home, a place where Natasha could build a life and a family. Steve could feel it, could see it in the careful and eclectic choice of furniture, in the paint on the walls and the signs of planned renovations.
With each room of the brownstone Steve explored, he realized: this was meant to be their home. Natasha’s and his and Sam’s and Bucky’s. Four bedrooms, enough space for all of them, a little yard that could become a garden—Bucky would like that—and a family room that could house the kind of cozy, huge couch that Sam always loved to sink into with an appreciative groan, and up on the attic that made up the third floor, a wide room whose dusty and cobwebbed walls were mostly windows, big enough to serve as another bedroom—for Wanda, when she visited, maybe—and where Steve just knew the light would be perfect, good enough that he could set up an easel and spend half the day painting.
This wasn’t a safe house, and it never had been.
Natasha had mentioned it sometimes, when they were on the run, staying in abandoned buildings or sleeping in the quinjet or camping: would you want to go back to Brooklyn, when this is all over and we’re not fugitives any more? He’d put her off with his usual quip about not being able to afford it, and she’d smiled, a twist to her lips that was simultaneously sincere and wry. We could all be roomies, she’d said. It’ll be a regular sitcom.
A sitcom, huh? What would it be called?
I don’t know, the Brooklyn Codgers? She’d waggled her eyebrows. Get it? Because you and Barnes—
Because of course she’d made room for Bucky in her dream, in her home, despite not knowing him all that well, because Bucky was Steve’s family, and Steve was hers.
Steve wanted to fall to his knees and scream at the unfairness of it all. He wanted to double over and weep, howl with grief and fury, until the neighbors started to think this place was haunted. He wanted to use the Soul Stone right here, right now, and demand it give Natasha back. He wanted to go to the Natasha who was alive in this time and warn her about what was coming, wanted to beg her to make a different choice, when the time came.
Steve didn’t do any of that though. He just took deep, shuddering breaths until the urge to scream and cry passed, until he got a hold of himself. He had work to do, if this was going to be the home Natasha wanted it to be.
He set out into Brooklyn, and acquired the supplies he needed: an old video camera and a blank tape from a dusty and maybe abandoned junk store, then a TV and VCR. He carted it all into the family room of Natasha’s waiting, unrealized dream, set up the camera on a tripod improvised out of cans of paint, and recorded a message.
“Hey. So, if I’ve done this right, I’m hoping Bucky and Sam are the ones watching this, and I hope you’re watching this in Natasha’s house. If you’re not James Buchanan Barnes or Sam Wilson, please either get this tape to them, or leave it where you found it.” Steve paused for a moment to take in a deep breath, then he smiled softly into the camera, imagining he was looking right at Bucky and Sam. “Hey Buck, hey Sam. Hope you two are doing alright and looking out for each other. I’m sorry I can’t be there with both of you right now.” Whenever now was for them. Hopefully not long after Steve left with the Stones. “You got no idea how much I’ve missed both of you, the last five years. But I’ve got something to do before I can come back home, and I’m not willing to risk either of you.”
Steve paused again, finding his firmest resolve, his most steadfast, wild hope.
“I’m getting Natasha back. Whatever it takes. I’m still gonna return the Infinity Stones, don’t worry. And, hopefully, I’m not gonna fuck up our timeline while I do it. But I’ve got a plan to save Natasha, and I—when I have, when I find her, we’re gonna come home. I promise. Keep a light on for us, alright?” he finished, and turned the camera off.
Plan was a generous word for what Steve had right now. But he’d been here before, kind of. After Phillips had told him that Bucky was MIA, presumed KIA, Steve had refused to accept it, had gone after Bucky with little more than stubborn denial and the desperate need to find Bucky. And he had found Bucky, he’d saved him. For a little while, anyway.
Steve could admit that this was a pretty different situation. This was no fight or battle, no simple extraction. This was undoing death, probably.
Well, why not. Even death was impermanent, Steve had learned, and miracles could be clawed out of the universe’s greedy grasp, if only you fought and hoped tenaciously enough. Natasha had proved that, once. Steve would prove it for her all over again.
Just let me win this one last fight, let me have this final miracle, thought Steve. I won’t ask for anything more.