23 – Back to the Future– May 24th, 2023
Seeing Bruce for the first time in years was not what Steve had expected. It had been disappointing not getting a positive reaction from Tony the day before, but Steve wasn't really surprised. It hurt that he wouldn't help when he knew what Steve and Aspen had lost, but he understood for the very same reason. Bruce was the next best hope, but Bruce was not looking particularly...Bruce-like at the moment.
They'd arranged to meet up with Bruce the next day for lunch at a cafe, but Steve had not expected to find Bruce looking quite so Hulk-like. It was as if he'd combined their personas so that he looked like the Hulk but spoke like Bruce. And he was wearing glasses. And a shirt.
Aspen was openly gawking, so Steve nudged her in the side. She snapped her jaw shut and threw him a bewildered look.
"Take a seat, take a seat," Bruce said, motioning for them to one of the booths inside the cafe. Everyone seemed familiar with Bruce here, and he was brought a large stool to sit on in the aisle. Steve slid in next to Aspen who was still staring at Bruce.
"The usual?" a waiter asked, coming up to their table.
"Please!" Bruce said. "You guys want anything?"
"Just some water, please," Steve said. They hadn't come to eat and chat, but Bruce seemed oblivious to their serious demeanor.
"How have you been Bruce?" Aspen asked. Steve could tell she had so many other questions, but she kept them to herself for now.
"Great, really great," he said, and he sounded genuine. "So, you said you guys had something important to talk about."
"We do," Steve said, glancing at the others. "Scott thinks there might be a way to go back, to change things and get everybody back."
"What like time travel?" Bruce asked, looking doubtful.
"Exactly time travel," Scott said enthusiastically. "Like a time travel do-over."
"We already talked to Tony, but he's not going to help us on this," Steve said.
"So, how are you going to pull this off?" Bruce asked. Steve turned to Scott who reiterated his story of being trapped in the Quantum Realm for five years and how he thought they might be able to control it and go back in time.
They broke off discussion as Bruce's food was delivered-heaping plates of eggs, sausage, and some breakfast burritos the radius of Steve's arm. "Come on, I feel like I'm the only one eating," Bruce said after he dug in. He pushed the plate toward them. "Try some of that. Have some eggs." Aspen's hand darted out to steal a piece of sausage.
It was Scott's turn to gawk at Bruce. "I'm so confused," he said.
"These are confusing times," Bruce said, not understanding what Scott was getting at. It was a shock seeing him accept the Hulk as a part of him after fighting him for so many years. It had rarely been an amenable cohabitation, though they'd learned to work better together in the last few years the team had been together.
"Right. No, no that's not what I meant," Scott amended.
"No, I get it. I'm kidding!" Bruce told him, his tone so much less serious than Steve was used to. Bruce had always been one of the more serious members of the team. He'd always kept a level head when Tony came out with some of his crazier ideas. This was a new side to him. "I know. It's crazy. I'm wearing shirts now." Not exactly the most shocking revelation to come out of all this, but it was new. Steve wanted to get them back on track, but he didn't want to trip up Bruce's good mood.
"Yeah!" Scott said with bewildered enthusiasm. "Wh...How? Why?"
"Five years ago, we got our asses beaten. Except it was worse for me. Because I lost twice. First, Hulk lost, then Banner lost. Then, we all lost."
"No one blamed you, Bruce," Natasha said.
"We were all too busy blaming ourselves," Aspen muttered, tapping her fingers against her glass of water.
"I did," Bruce said. "For years, I've been treating the Hulk like he's some kind of disease, something to get rid of. But then I started looking at him as the cure. Eighteen months in a gamma lab. I put the brains and the brawn together. And now look at me. Best of both worlds…"
Aspen and Scott looked as if they still had questions, exchanging quizzical looks. Aspen opened her mouth to put one of her questions into words but before she had the chance to ask it, three kids came up behind Bruce exchanging nervous glances.
"Excuse me, Mr. Hulk?" a girl asked in a small voice.
"Yes?" Bruce returned with a smile. He seemed so at ease in his own skin now. In the past, he had been considered a monster by the government, and children would never have gotten this close to him. At the best of times, he was somewhat approachable as the Hulk, and at the worst…
"Can we get a photo?" the girl asked. As Bruce asked Scott to take the photo, Aspen nudged Steve's arm.
"It's like we're invisible," she whispered. "We're boring now. Civilians. We can blend into society and never be seen again."
Steve rolled his eyes at her. "I thought you hated having your photo taken."
"Oh, I do. This is a dream come true. No one remembers us anymore. We're down there with heroes like Garbage Bag Man and Doctor Muscle Arms."
"It's a good thing you never came up with a superhero name for yourself after all. You're terrible at it."
Aspen took a sip of her water, quirking an eyebrow. "Says the man who wore spandex booty shorts for a time."
"I'm going to kill Tony for finding those old posters," Steve muttered.
He tuned back into the conversation in time to hear the kids soundly rejecting Scott's offer to take a photo with him. "Don't worry, Scott," Aspen told him. "We'll take a picture together later. The reject heroes. May we go down in the hall of shame."
They'd diverted long enough, and Steve decided it was time to get back to discussing their plan. "Bruce. Bruce." He had to say his name twice to get his attention back on them. He clearly loved being a recognized hero, a loved hero. It was fair after all this time, but right now wasn't the time for attention from fans.
"About what we were saying," he said when Bruce finally turned his attention back to them.
"Right. The whole time travel do-over? Guys, it's outside my area of expertise."
Steve felt his heart sink. "Well, you pulled this off," Natasha said, nodding to Bruce's combined Hulk and Banner persona. "I remember a time when that seemed pretty impossible, too."
Bruce looked between them, and Steve could see him deliberating. "Okay, okay. What have we got to lose?" He finally said. "It's worth a shot. If Tony won't help you, I will."
"That's great, Bruce. Thank you," Steve told him, feeling heartened for the first time since Tony had shot down their plan.
"We've gotta at least try, right?" Bruce said. He lifted his fork in a sort of salute before shoving a wad of scrambled eggs into his mouth. "Really, you guys should try some of this. They make a mean breakfast."
Aspen shrugged, grabbing an extra fork and dipping into the eggs.
The Avengers compound was busy again. With the arrival of Bruce, everything propelled into motion. Aspen tried to keep out of the way as much as possible unless they needed her for anything. Bruce relegated tasks while Scott worked with him on the quantum physics. Steve tended to hover like a worried parent. On their third day of working on their time machine (which was oddly being built in the back of Scott's beat up van), Aspen found Natasha beating up on a punching bag like it was Thanos come back to life.
"What'd that punching bag ever do to you?" she asked, leaning up against the wall. Natasha paused to wipe her brow with her wrist.
"Just...wondering if this is all going to work. Realizing we can't get those five years back. Can't...can't avoid certain things."
"Like Clint going AWOL?" Neither of them had heard from him in ages. He hadn't kept in touch with Natasha the way he'd kept in contact with Aspen. Aspen knew that hurt Natasha, but she also knew Clint was too ashamed to talk to Natasha right now. She knew about his past better than anyone. He'd been given a second chance by SHIELD as had Natasha. He'd redeemed himself for his past, but what he'd been doing for the last five years… Aspen was ashamed of what she'd done, of letting herself go down that path. She understood why she had but looking back, it was a poor way of handling it. She'd abandoned her friends and Steve and for what? To feel better? She certainly hadn't accomplished that. She knew it was a slippery slope, and Clint was still sliding.
"He's never gonna forgive himself." Natasha punched the bag one more time.
"We all have to forgive ourselves at some point," Aspen said. "Even if we don't really believe we deserve redemption." She sighed. "What we all did after Thanos...it wasn't really us. No one just moves on after something like that. We...we break, we try to rebuild ourselves in the only way we know how and sometimes…sometimes we build something we don't recognize, something we don't like. Then we have to start all over again."
"If we could get his family back…" Natasha turned her eyes to Aspen, and Aspen saw they were damp.
"Then he would have a reason to move on from his mistakes, a reason to be the man we both know him to be again."
"I just hope it's not too late. I hope...I hope we really do have a chance and this isn't just another dead end."
"Is false hope better than no hope?" She didn't know the answer to that. She'd already hurt more than she ever thought she could. She hadn't allowed the ember of hope to turn into a spark yet.
"I don't know."
"Well, between Bruce's brains and Steve's determination, we've got to get somewhere, right?" Aspen said, trying to summon up some of Steve's optimism.
"Right." Natasha set aside her gloves, offering Aspen a hopeful smile. "How are they doing out there?"
Aspen shrugged. "Looks like semi-organized chaos to me. I studied astrophysics in college, but this is beyond me."
"If it does work, can we really fix this?" Natasha asked.
Aspen closed her eyes, imagining it. A do-over. A second chance. "It's not going to be easy," she said. "It will be the hardest thing we've ever done because we have already done it, and we failed. But we know things we didn't know then. We can go in better prepared. I just...I don't know how we'll do it. I guess we'll get to that step later." She felt a pulse of fear in her veins at the thought of going back. "Why don't we go see how they're doing?"
Natasha nodded and followed Aspen out to the hangar where Bruce was building the machine. It didn't look like much of anything at this point, mostly schematics and pieces of metal strewn about, but it wasn't something they were going to throw together in a day or even a week. Aspen was anxious-anxious that it would work, anxious that it wouldn't work. She wanted to somehow speed the whole process up, but she also dreaded it, dreaded what might go wrong.
"Kind of feels like old times, doesn't it?" Aspen asked as she and Natasha entered the hangar. Bruce was directing Scott while Steve watched, arms crossed.
"Missing a few players, but I'm glad you guys are here," Natasha said. Steve turned at their voices.
"How's it going?" Aspen asked him.
"I'm honestly not entirely sure," Steve told them. "I think well?"
"Well, nothing's on fire, so I guess that's a positive sign. Do we have an estimation on how long until it's done?" It seemed like something that would take a decade or two to make, but with Bruce and Scott working on it, Aspen thought it might cut down the time significantly.
"Three weeks if everything goes as expected," Bruce called out.
Three weeks. It was sooner than Aspen had expected. She didn't know if she was relieved or terrified. Perhaps both. She wished she had Phoenix there to purr in her ear and make her feel as if everything was going to be all right, but she had left a neighbor in charge of her, not wanting the cat to be in the middle of the chaos. She put a hand to her stomach, nausea rising as she thought of going back, of facing Thanos again. Despite the openness of the hangar, she felt the walls closing in on her. She needed fresh air, needed to get out of there. As Natasha went to speak with Bruce, Aspen darted for the door, breathing in deeply when she got outside. She leaned against the wall, taking steady breaths to quell the nausea. She felt as if she couldn't get enough oxygen in her lungs, like something was squeezing around her ribcage.
"Aspen?" Steve had followed her outside.
"I feel like I can't breathe," she choked out, wrapping her arms around herself. "Why can't I breathe?"
She felt Steve's arms circle her, warm, protective. "You're okay. You're safe. Just breathe." She relaxed at his touch, leaning back into him.
"I feel better," Aspen said after a moment, her frantic breaths slowing. The tension on her ribs let up, and she didn't feel so ill. "I don't know what just happened."
"I think you just had a panic attack," Steve suggested gently. He ushered her to the stone bench outside the hangar, and they sat together. "What was going through your mind when you started feeling that way?"
"What is this, a grief session?" Aspen asked with a wry smile.
"Humor me." She could hear the concern in his voice and felt bad for teasing him.
"I was thinking about going back. About facing Thanos again. When Scott first showed up and proposed his crazy idea, I was so excited. It was this incredible miracle, this second chance that we never thought we'd get. But now that we're close...now that we're actually doing this...I'm terrified. I feel this viceral terror when I think of going back. What if we mess up again? What if Thanos wins again and everyone else dies? I want this to work so badly, but all I can think about is what happens if it doesn't?"
"We're all scared. You're not alone in that. I've been having nightmares about that day five years ago when we lost. I have nightmares where we lose again, nightmares where I lose you."
This was the first time he had voiced that aloud. "I didn't realize." She took his hand and now she didn't know who was comforting who.
"I try not to think about them. They don't matter. What matters is that we're going to do everything we can to make things right, to bring Mara back. She needs us to be strong."
"What if I can't be?" What if she had another panic attack? What if she broke down when it counted the most?
"You can be," Steve told her. "For everything you've gone through, I've always seen you get back up. This time is no different."
She nodded, letting his words calm her. "Okay." She met his gaze, met those blue eyes that always made her feel like everything was going to be all right. "I can do this. We can do this."
"Then let's get back in there," Steve said. He kept his hand in hers as they went back inside. Three weeks. Three weeks and they could start testing the machine. Three weeks and they would be that much closer to seeing Mara again. She didn't ask what it might cost them. After all they'd lost, she didn't dare ask what more they might lose even if they won.