For the trope bingo spot: ALTERED STATES. Title from Snoh Aalegra's Walls. Not mine, no profit garnered. Thanks A! Spoilers for the movie Jacob's Ladder.

Tony opened his eyes. He was alive. He was alive?

"I'm alive?"

"Yes, yes, you are," Bruce said. "We had to resuscitate you, you technically died. In that spaceship."

"Wait, what?" Tony tried to sit up but he couldn't see. He wasn't on the battlefield, he was in the Compound. "What year is it?"

"2019," Pepper said slowly.

"Not 2023?" Tony closed his eyes and tried to picture everything that had happened. He could have sworn it all happened. He said, "I need, give me a pen. Something to write with or get this down."

He tried to get it all down. Then he passed out again.

He opened his eyes again. Still 2019. Pepper said, "So, you had this death vision -"

"Very Jacob's Ladder, you know, entire story happening in a burst of synapses as the brain dies except maybe there was something in there," Tony said. "Did Bruce look at it? What does he think of the science?"

"Tony," she said kindly. "No one reviewed your story. Your dying synapse had a weirdly fatphobic and a little sexist thing going on."

"So you reviewed it and you had notes. Did Nebula - did she tell you the part about Thanos's garden? And I didn't imagine all that about Captain Planet mover, did I? Maybe it was my subconscious solving a problem."

Steve came in the room. "Maybe. We checked, it does seem like Thanos used the stones again. But you were stuck on the ship with Nebula and she knows her father pretty well. That might have informed what you imagined."

"We didn't really talk about him. We talked about a lot, but we pretty much stuck to simple things; trying to live, table games, alien cultures. I told her the entire plot of all the Die Hard movies. She liked the sound of it." He'd told her a lot about Peter and Pepper. Peter, Tony thought. He had to get the kid back.

Natasha came in. She sat down next to his bed and said, "I appreciate that I got the big sacrificial death, Tony. That's very nice of you."

Then Rhodey was there and Thor. The raccoon. Tony said, "Look, fine, I'm not a writer and I have about the average level of subconscious bias of a man my age, maybe less, frankly - but the time travel. We made it work."

Bruce frowned. "I don't see it, Tony. I don't think the science works. But more than that, why are we bringing people back five years later? Aren't we creating huge problems by doing that?"

"I think the time travel is the good part of the story. I Jacob Laddered a narrative built on my own narcissism and self-destructive tendencies, but what if we make it work now? What if we find a way to undo it all?" He was able to sit up now. He knew he had to sound like a maniac.

Thor said, "Is Jane still alive? Did she die? We should talk to her." It looked like it was hard for him to say. Tony got that.

"Excellent idea," Tony said. "Sorry my subconscious didn't think of that."

Rhodey said, "Great. So let's all chill and let Tony recover since apparently we have all the time in the world."

Tony rested. He woke up to Pepper by his side. He said, "We made a great kid. In my head."

"Of course we would," Pepper said. "We should do that."

"You're just humoring me," Tony said. "But we would."

Pepper smiled and looked down. "I'm not humoring you. I agree. I just, it's been a really hard month. There's so much going on. I'm just grateful you're alive. And that seems so incredibly selfish."

"Survivor's guilt," Tony said. "We both got that. But we can do something. Maybe we can do something."

"Everything is falling apart," Pepper said. "What kind of assholes have babies during that?"

"Us. We do," Tony said. "Once I get up out of this bed and other parts of me rise to the occasion, we can get to work on that. She was a great kid."

"You would picture that," Pepper said.

After a week, Tony and Bruce were in a room with Jane Foster. She squinted at Tony. She said, "So this stuff, your bright flash at the moment of death, most of it is true?"

"Everything we can verify," Tony said. "Clint's family, the Pyms. All dust."

She nodded. "Okay, then," she said. "So we need to, we need to figure out time travel. Because you think that might work to save everyone."

"And Nebula will not be going back in time," Tony said. "Sorry, kid."

Nebula shrugged and said, "It won't work anyway."

"This is the beacon of optimism that kept me alive," Tony said.

But they kept getting interrupted. For very important reasons. His Ladder hallucination had skipped ahead five years but Tony had to live every day of it. Planes had fallen from the sky all over the world, cars crashing, boats emptied of all crew, everything bad that could happen. Pepper had started from the day after the snap organizing, and lending all the support she could once she had accounted for all the SI staff.

So much to fucking do. Everything was goddamn chaos. They were rebuilding and everyone involved was shellshocked and had lost at least someone they loved. Between Bruce, Jane, and Tony they got in about two hours a day before they had to fan out and try to help people get fed and somehow keep some of the countries running.

Tony had taken to sleeping in the Compound like Pepper did, like everyone else they could find and gather up. Natasha had gone and gotten Legolas before Tony's twisted nightmare synaptic burst came true. Clint skulked around the area.

Thor really wanted to kill Thanos but they talked him out of it. "Right now, there's no purpose," Steve said.

"You have a village of Asgardians still to help out. Part of your family is still here," Natasha said.

"That isn't technically true," Thor said. "I should have vengeance at least."

"At what cost?" Tony said. "At what gain, also?"

Thor clenched his fist and lightning crackled somewhere in the room. But then he just looked sad. "I want to do something."

"We all do," Steve said. "We can do something. While we work on the next step, we can help out the people who are here now. Whatever happens, there are people who are here now."

It was a very rousing speech. Peter would have loved it. Tony got up and went to the shared lab. Jane was on a conference call but she turned it off. "They think I can help with the stranded astronauts on the ISS," she said.

"We still have contact with the magical space captain that Fury summoned. Maybe she can help,"

"That is, that's a good idea," Jane said. "Is she around? Can I ask her?"

"She's not around, per se, but Natasha is keeping in touch with her," Tony said. "I believe she's in the part of the compound your lightning bolt of an ex is not. So safe to talk to her."

"I'm not afraid of Thor," Jane said. She fiddled with her shirt. "Not like that."

"I didn't think of any sort of that, nothing like that, I just thought you might want to avoid the ex. I always avoid mine. I tried to avoid Pepper when she was my ex, thank god that didn't last," Tony said.

"Lucky you," Jane said. "I think you're right. I don't think we can go back and just kill Thanos because it won't affect us. It's either a loop or it creates an alternate universe. Though probably all those alternate universes exist before we even try to time travel. Maybe they were created when succeed at time travel in the future. But I don't think we can go back and change something and have it change for us. I do think if we want to reverse all of this, we have to do more than just time travel. We have to."

"We just snap our fingers and bring everyone back then," Tony said. "Or do you think we can do more with all the power in the universe? Because, honestly. Now that I say it out loud."

"Yes," Jane said. "We need to think widely and up and down and not just reversing things. We need to do all that. But first, I have to do what I can to save some astronauts." She marched out with her resolve strong.

Barton and Rhodey and the raccoon set off to help restore order in the US and maybe part of Canada. Lots of power mad assholes survived besides Thanos and this being the USA, a bunch of them had entire stockpiles of automatic weapons to use to make themselves a feudal lord. One set of guys was nasty enough that Tony and Steve and Natasha and Thor had to take part in the peacemaking.

Tony still got home in time to go to bed with Pepper. She was exhausted every night. Tony just had to think of one solution to one problem and maybe pitch in on a few more. Pepper was taking on the whole community. Thousands of problems. She was really good at organizing and the world honestly needed that more than anything Tony had done so far.

But he hoped to make a difference. Besides blasting the fuck out of some white power dickheads in Montana.

There was Jane and Bruce and anyone they could roust from the world's remaining quantum physicists. Bruce said, "I wish Shuri was here. She's brilliant."

"More than you and me," Tony said seriously. "But we have to figure this out to get her back."

They moved away from Tony's original fever idea to something different. It involved theories of multiple universes and timelines and how to influence the present and beyond. It was hard to dumb it down enough to explain to the other super people and they were all pretty smart. They had a few of the Asgardians pitching in and they got it straight away so maybe Tony, et al, lacked the requisite science and magic background. If they'd only gotten better STEM education.

They were going to go to the past, get some of the stones and use those stones to change how time was running. That was the simplest way to explain it. They sent Steve, Thor and the raccoon to get the stones from the past.

Tony had the enviable task of explaining what needed to happen next to Captain Carol. She was a pilot, she'd lived with aliens, she had to understand some things. She kept saying, "What do I need to know to do this?"

"Apparently more than you currently do, or I do," he said. "But you survived the tesseract and it made you super awesome, so you're the best to do this."

She had to understand the flow of the time and space and everything else and twist it the way they needed. He had to drill her on the specific moment of time they needed her to snatch and fix. "Then, after that, you send the stones we have back and take the ones from Thanos and destroy them. And kill him. It'll be fun."

Carol looked at him steadily. "Do any of you have any idea what happens to me and all of us after I do that?"

"We forget. We never knew. We all go back to wherever we were when you changed everything. Probably only you remember. Maybe even you don't."

"What about the people who died in the battle? Like your friend Vision or Thor's people?"

"That's why we're being so specific about the time you need to act. Unfortunately, there's only so many people we can save," Tony said. "So we're maximizing that. I swear, it'll be fun."

"You don't have to keep promising that, I'll do it even if it's boring," she said.

Steve and Thor and even the trash panda came home looking very serious but none of them were dead and they had the stones they needed. Carol reached out her hand and said, "Time for me to work?"

Tony and Bruce navigated the inevitable back and forth as Steve and Thor jockeyed to be the ones to do it, but they eventually convinced the two of them. "Carol is definitely worthy," Tony said.

"So now we sit tight and let her do it," Tony said. He sat on the couch next to Pepper and took her hand. He was trying not to betray his absolute crushing fear. Jane looked nervous since even after seven months she still seemed awkward around Thor. It was probably just that. Probably not their attempt to change the fabric of existence. "I feel good about this," Tony said softly.

"Okay," Pepper said. "I love you."

"I love you, too," he said. He squeezed her hand. "For us, it'll be nothing. Like falling asleep, you don't even consciously realize it's happening."

"Okay," Pepper said.

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Tony was in New York when the ship with the Asgardians did their equivalent of beeping him. "And we have a wonderful escort," Thor said, bubbling. "Her name is Captain Marvel. She really wants to meet with you!"

"She can come to the wedding, too," Tony said. "Just like you! And at least some of those Asgard people. I can not invite Loki, I'm sure you understand."

"He will not be coming, no. I understand," Thor said. "But I have wonderful people for you to meet. This will be a great day."

"Sounds like it," Tony said.