Summary: Endgame spoilers! While replacing the Infinity Stones from the other timelines, Steve is faced with a choice.
Time Frame: The last scene of "Endgame," various times in the alternate timelines, and AU.
Rating: T, for language and themes.
Disclaimer: None of these characters belong to me—I'm just exploring a path untaken.
Archiving: Sure, as long as you let me know.
AGAIN—ENDGAME SPOILERS FOLLOW—STOP HERE IF YOU'RE AVOIDING THEM!
NO MAN LEFT BEHIND
Steve vanished, and Bruce, Bucky, and Sam held their breath as they counted down the time to his return. Right on schedule, Steve appeared, and the three waiting men sighed in relief—then stared in concern as they saw the new arrival clearly.
Captain America's shoulders were slumped, and his eyes were shining with tears. Without acknowledging his friends, he stepped off the platform and walked back toward the house.
Bucky found his voice first: "Steve—what happened? Did you fail to get the Stones and Mjolnir back where they needed to be?"
Steve turned, and Bucky shuddered at the desolation on his oldest friend's face as he replied in a dull whisper, "Got them all back—mission's done." His mouth twitched a little, then he turned back and walked into the house, opening and closing the door quietly.
The three Avengers looked at each other, and without words they followed Steve into the house. They found him sitting on the couch in the living room with his face in his hands. Pepper stood nearby, her expression showing extreme concern. She looked over at the new arrivals and was visibly relieved.
By unspoken agreement, it was Bucky who spoke again: "You know we're not going to go away until you tell us what happened, right? I've never seen that look on your face before, and it scares me a bit."
Steve looked up, and his eyes were red, though he managed a touch of the old cheerful optimism as he replied, "Nothing I can't get past, Buck. We won, and we didn't let down the people in the places we had to go to get that win. That's all that matters."
"With all due respect, old friend—that's not all that matters." Bruce rumbled, the gentle words somewhat tinged with the rumble of the Hulk as he walked over to crouch next to Steve. "The fact that we have completed our last obligation related to the aftermath of the Snap—aside from helping the world recover from the mess it made—means that we have time to deal with a member of the family who has obviously been traumatized. Something happened, and we need to know what."
Steve blinked, then shook his head briefly as he muttered, "Family. . ."
"You realize that this isn't making any of us want to go away and leave you alone, right?" Sam's tone was gentle, but his expression was implacable. "You need to tell us what happened, and what we can do to help."
Steve sighed, then looked up at Sam and smiled slightly as he replied, "Nothing to be done. Just need to get back to the mission."
"The mission will wait, Steve." Pepper walked over and squeezed Steve's shoulder. "We've all sacrificed so much to make things right—leaving you alone with whatever did this to you isn't going to be added to the list."
Steve locked eyes with Pepper, then nodded once before beginning: "I arrived at the first destination with no problems-"
Steve felt drained, and relieved that his mission was almost done.
Replacing most of the Stones had been relatively easy—knowing exactly where and when they had been extracted made it child's play to put the Tesseract, the Mind Stone, and the Power Stone back at the points where they had been extracted. He had been pleasantly surprised to find Frigga waiting for him in Asgard with a smile as she took the Reality Stone and the device to inject the Aether back into Jane's body before giving him a respectful nod and leaving without a word. After leaving Mjolnir sitting in the middle of the corridor—knowing that no one but Thor would be able to retrieve it-he departed for Vormir, a bit sad that he would never see the Queen of Asgard again.
Vormir had been far less pleasant. He had been warned that the Red Skull had been the Guardian of the Soul Stone, and it took a few moments of deep breaths and muttering to himself before climbing the ominous mountain and reaching the alcove near the top.
The Red Skull looked at Steve for a moment, then intoned, "Steve, son of—well, we both know I know exactly who you are, Captain Rogers—and why you are here."
Steve extended his hand and opened it palm upward—the Soul Stone rested there. "I have the Stone. Return the price that was paid for it."
The Red Skull shook his head, chuckling a bit as he replied, "It doesn't work that way, and I suspect you knew that. Naughty boy." The arch-villain turned involuntary guardian seemed to be lost in thought before adding: "Though I suppose you could just fling yourself into that chasm over there."
Steve hesitated. He couldn't do that now—he still had to return the Time Stone. But perhaps he could return, and-"Would that bring back Natasha?"
The Red Skull seemed to struggle for a moment, as if fighting a compulsion, before gritting out: "No, Natasha cannot be brought back by any means." He relaxed, then openly laughed before admitting, "But it would have been very enjoyable to watch you do it." He gestured once, and the Stone disappeared from Steve's palm. "Your purpose here is done—may I never have the displeasure of seeing you again."
Steve's vision had faded, and he found himself lying on the ground near the foot of the mountain. He ignored the distant sound of laughter and pulled himself to his feet—there was still one more stop to make.
He arrived on the rooftop, and was not surprised to see The Ancient One waiting there with a gentle smile on her face. He handed her the Time Stone without hesitation and she replaced it inside the Eye of Agamotto. Steve nodded in acknowledgment, and was surprised when the Ancient One reached into her robes and pulled out a notebook and two high quality fountain pens. She handed them to Steve—who reacted with a puzzled question: "What are these for?"
The Ancient One smiled. "You will know when the moment comes." She looked at him for another long moment, then added, "You have had a stressful journey—perhaps you should rest for a few moments now that your tasks are done. You are welcome here for as long as you need to stay." She summoned a glowing gate, then concluded, "Safe journeys, Captain Rogers," before stepping through the gate and vanishing.
Steve paused in his story, and everyone was quiet for a moment before Pepper said quietly: "But you weren't done, were you? Finding out that Natasha was gone for good would have been terrible—but it wouldn't have affected you like this."
Steve shook his head. "No, it wouldn't have. I sat down on that quiet rooftop, and I started to consider possibilities."
Steve sat in silence, ignoring the occasional pigeon that landed nearby looking for a morsel. He had an abundance of Pym Particles, thanks to the efforts of a grateful Hank Pym who had been briefed on the situation and how the trips to the past had gone before—it made no sense to skimp on resources in case something went wrong. He could go anywhere in history that he was aware enough about the details to know what a safe "landing point" could be. Meaning that he could arrive back in 1945 in New York, come up with some cock and bull story about how he had survived the plane crash and swum back to shore, and continue his life there—find Peggy there and live their lives as they should have been. He felt a moment of pure joy as he contemplated the plan—then stopped.
He saw a frozen man at the bottom of the ocean, doomed to lie there until someone found him decades later. But with "Steve Rogers" being alive and well and living a happy life back in the US, no one would be looking for him. He could be down there for even longer—maybe centuries—or he could simply perish when something unknowable happened, with no one ever having known that he had been trapped there. If Steve chose to go back and replace that Steve Rogers, he would be leaving a good man to continued imprisonment and possible death when he could prevent it. He closed his eyes in pain and shook his head.
No sacrifices. No man left behind.
After a moment, he opened his eyes and looked down at the notebook still in his hands. Now he knew what it was for. After a moment to gather his thoughts, he opened the notebook and began to write.
Howard Stark sat in the comfortable chair in the center of his living room, sipping on a martini and thinking about recent events. With the war over, we're definitely going to have to consider new approaches. Most of the world is bombed to rubble—they'll need to rebuild and there's plenty that we can do to help them get things going again. . .
There was a sudden flash of light in the living room, and Howard blinked before his eyes focused enough to register that there was another person in the room. It took only another moment to recognize that person: "Captain Rogers? Steve? What the devil-?"
"I know we haven't seen each other for a while, Howard—but I'm fairly sure I'm not the Devil." Steve was relieved that he managed to come up with a relatively normal sounding reply—because he sure as hell wasn't feeling normal at that moment. Howard blinked, and Steve walked forward, extending his hand. "It's good to see you, but we don't have time for chit-chat. I can't stay for long."
"Stay for long? We thought you were DEAD! FDR held a posthumous Medal of Honor ceremony on the White House lawn for you before he died in April!" Howard shook his head in disbelief, then added, "Never mind that now—you can watch the damned newsreels later. The war's over and you're alive—wait until Peggy-"
"NO!" Howard took two steps back from the shock of hearing the anguish in Steve's voice—he hadn't sounded that pained when the Vita-Rays were zapping him during the Super Soldier procedure. Steve took a moment to calm himself, then continued, "Peggy can't know—at least not yet. If I saw her I couldn't bear to-" He stopped again, then handed Howard the notebook in his right hand: "I've got a doozy of a story to tell you, and I'm here because you're the only person I know on this Earth who might understand it and believe me."
Howard was already flipping through the notebook, seeing densely written text along with a number of drawings of things and people that he didn't recognize, but knew that they didn't exist on the Earth as he knew it. He looked up and replied quietly, "All right Steve—I'm listening."
"It took a few hours—and when Jarvis walked in we had to swear him to secrecy—but I explained the whole thing to him, and gave the most brilliant scientist on Earth a road map to the future, along with the exact coordinates of the Tesseract and the chunk of ice that their Steve Rogers was resting in." Steve sighed again, and his expression turned desolate as he continued, "Both Jarvis and Howard did their best to raise my spirits—they could see that it was killing me to leave this time behind. Howard insisted that I write a letter to pass on to Peggy, so that she would understand why I did what I did. It was harder than anything I've ever done, but I finished it, said good-bye to Jarvis and Howard, and you know the rest."
"That time line is going to be twisted completely out of its prior path." Bruce got up, the floor creaking from the Hulk's massive body moving on it. "You repaired the other timelines, but that one will be going off in a completely unknown direction."
Steve shrugged. "It will just be that one timeline, and if I had gone back and stayed myself it would have made a mess of things even if I had just faked surviving the crash—the difference would have been that I was stealing another man's life, and deceiving the woman he loved along with all of his friends. Not me." He shook his head and added, "I gave them plenty of warning about what was likely to follow, even though once they started changing things the notebook would probably be less and less useful going forward. Maybe they decided the Tesseract wasn't worth the risk and figured out a way to destroy it—or one of them held it up and yelled for Heimdall to open the Bilfrost to let Odin decide what to do with it. Maybe they succeeded in wiping out Hydra forever before it could do any harm, or maybe they failed trying. I gave them a shot to make a better world instead of trying to take it for myself. I can live with that."
There was a knock at the front door, and Pepper went to answer it. She opened the door, and gasped in pure shock. The others quickly got up and rushed to assist Pepper—only to stop in their tracks and stare in shocked silence.
A tall man stood on the doorstep—he appeared to be about seventy years of age, though clearly very robust for his age. Intense blue eyes shone from the aged face, and the smile was immediately recognizable. The woman standing next to him looked a few years older, but she stood straight and her own eyes blazed with the same intensity as her companion's. Everyone in the room had read enough history books to know Peggy Carter by sight—even a rather elderly Peggy Carter.
Behind Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter stood seven other people. A man and a woman who appeared to be in their early fifties. Behind them, two men and two women who appeared to be in their mid to late twenties, with one of the women holding the hand of a girl who appeared to be about seven years old. The elderly Steve Rogers on the porch smiled a bit more broadly, then said simply, "Hello Steve—we thought you'd like to meet some of the family you helped to make possible, and we wanted to meet your family."
Steve was overcome with a thousand clashing emotions, and it was left to Pepper to say while tears streamed down her own cheeks:
"Welcome—please come in."
As always, comments are accepted and welcome.