2023

I pulled out my apartment keys as I climbed the stairs, cursing the broken elevator. Five flights of stairs were not fun to walk up.

I sighed with relief when I finally reached the fifth floor. Apartment 5A, that was where I lived now. A small apartment building in the rebuilt country of Sokovia.

My home country had been through a lot in the past decade. It was always a poor country, and then it was blown up. The people were almost done rebuilding when Thanos happened.

But after five years, it was basically restored.

After Thanos was killed, I left the Avengers. I thought I would just be gone for a few months to figure my life out. I came here, and I helped rebuild. I had gotten a job at a coffee place, I had an apartment, and I was doing alright.

So I decided to stay away from the Avengers.

Natasha used to drop by every now and then, but she stopped coming three years ago. She probably had better things to do.

As I was unlocking the door, I telepathically sensed that there was someone in the room. I quickly opened the door, ready to face whoever broke in.

Steve Rogers stared back at me.

I sighed, closing the door behind me.

"What do you want?" I asked, hanging up my coat and throwing the keys on a table. He sat in a small armchair, and I plopped myself down on a stool.

"Can't I just come by to check on a friend?" He asked.

"I guess you could, but you wouldn't." I replied. "I'm not worth the trip."

"Pipes, we think we found a way." Steve said. "A way to bring them back." A way to fix our failure. I wondered if it was really possible.

"A-are you serious?" I managed to choke out. He nodded. "That's impossible."

"We can do it." He insisted. "We can travel back in time, and we can get the Stones."

"Time travel?" I scoffed.

"I know it sounds crazy, but we can do it." Steve said. "We can snap our fingers, we can undo what happened."

"Even if you can, I don't know why you're coming to me." I said. "I'm no hero. I'm just a failed experiment, trying to survive in a broken world."

"Piper." Steve said, dead serious. "You are not a failure. I know you blame yourself for what happened-"

"Because it was my fault." I interjected.

"-but now we have the chance to make things right." He finished. "Will you help us?" I hesitated to answer. What if we ended up making things worse? What if we failed yet again? What if-

No. No more what if's.

"I'm in." I said, a grin spreading on my face.

…

I walked though the Avengers Compound. The team was there (at least, the ones that were still alive), and things felt almost normal.

Everyone had changed, although some more noticeably. Thor had, uh, gained a whole lot of weight, his beard grew a lot, and his hair was long, ratty, and tangled. Clint had been enacting vengeance on the world for the past five years after his entire family died when Thanos snapped.

I was talking to Bruce, Steve, and Rhodey when Scott walked in, wearing the time travel suit. It was white and red, similar to his Ant-Man suit.

"Time travel suit?" I said. "Not bad." Bruce moved to put the Pym Particles in the correct compartment.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Scott said, stepping away. "Easy!"

"I'm being very careful." Bruce said.

"No, you're being very Hulky." Scott retorted.

"I'm being careful!" Bruce insisted.

"These are Pym Particles, alright?" Scott said, holding them up. "And ever since Hank Pym got snapped out of existence, this is it. This is what we have. We're not making any more."

"Scott, calm down." Rhodey said.

"Sorry." Scott replied. "We've got enough for one round-trip each. That's it. No do-overs. Plus two test runs." Scott pressed a button, shrunk, and came back to normal size. "One test run." I sighed.

"Alright, I'm not ready for this." Scott said.

"I'm game." Clint said from behind us. "I'll do it."

He put the time travel suit on, prepared to go.

"Wait a second, let me ask you something." Rhodey said to Bruce. "If we can do this, you know, go back in time, why don't we just find baby Thanos, you know, and…" He made a hand gesture suggesting that we should strangle baby Thanos.

"First of all, that's horrible." Bruce said, disgusted.

"It's Thanos." Rhodey said in a tone that suggested we were all thinking of that. I'll admit, it did cross my mind a few times.

"And secondly, time doesn't work like that." Bruce said. "Changing the past doesn't change the future."

"Look, we go back, we get the Stones before Thanos gets them… Thanos doesn't have the Stones." Scott said. "Problem solved."

"Bingo." Clint said.

"That's not how it works." Nebula explained, exasperated.

"Well, that's what I heard." Clint said.

"What? By who?" Bruce asked. "Who told you that?"

"Star Trek, Terminator, TimeCop, Time After Time-" Rhodey listed off time travel movies.

"Quantum Leap-" Scott added.

"A Wrinkle in Time, Somewhere in Time-" Rhodey continued.

"Hot Tub Time Machine-" Scott interjected.

"Hot Tub Time Machine, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." Rhodey finished. "Basically any movie that deals with time travel."

"Die Hard?" Scott muttered. "No, that's not one…"

"This is known." Rhodey said.

"I don't know why everyone believes that, but that isn't true." Bruce said. "Think about it" If you travel to the past, that past becomes your future. And your former present becomes the past. Which now can't be changed by your new future." Um, what?

"Exactly." Nebula said.

"Yeah, you lost me at… well I didn't understand that at all." I said. My head hurt from all that logic thinking.

"So… Back to the Future is a bunch of bullshit?" Scott asked.

Bruce turned to Clint, who was standing in the center of the time machine."

"Alright Clint." Bruce said. "We're going in 3… 2… 1." Clint disappeared into the quantum realm. "And returning in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1."

Clint rematerialized on the glass, breathing heavily. We all ran on, Natasha reaching him first.

"Hey, hey look at me." She said. "You okay?" He held up a baseball glove in response.

"It worked." He said. "It worked."

We could actually do this. We could bring them back.