Author's Note:
To tell the truth… Endgame broke me.
I couldn't get it out of my head, and not just because there are characters that I will never see again, or because all endings, no matter how happy, are sad.
No, Endgame broke my brain.
Because - and this is my opinion alone, do not lynch me - Endgame is like swiss cheese; full of holes.
Listing them out here would be redundant as I am already addressing them in the fic. But there were all these loose, fraying threads of the plot just dangling in the air, and here I am, trying to understand why? Why am I so obsessed? Why can't I let go?
Took me four months to realize that it was unhealthy, poisonous.
So that's what this is… therapy.
I am attempting to fix what is broken, in me and in MCU. And this has been done before, but I'm doing it in a different way, by plugging the holes with bits from another fandom that I adore, and that has just as many plot holes - Mass Effect.
The two fandoms mesh surprisingly well. And I love crossover fanfictions; I've attempted to write a few before, but never got them done for various reasons.
But this one - I'm planning on finishing.
Technically, I'm involving four fandoms in this - MCU, Mass Effect, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and bits from the comics. Only events of MCU until Phase 3 actually need to be known… this is a discovery fic; the world of Mass Effect will slowly open to the characters, as it will open to the readers. I will be providing context for Mass Effect and the comics, highlight the differences between the canon and my fic.
All the Mass Effect characters mentioned in the tags will appear much, much later in the story, but they will appear. Can't have Mass Effect without Commander Shepard after all.
Anything beyond Phase 3 is not considered canon for this fic.
It's going to be gradual, progressive… long. I don't know how many chapters yet, but the first story does span thirty years. And yes, there will be a sequel.
I'm also using the canon established in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. The show and the characters will feature heavily in this fic, which takes the events up to only the Season 4 finale as canon. After that, the timeline shifts drastically. Knowledge, unfortunately, is definitely required. My excuse is that consider the events of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as canon, even though neither Marvel Television nor Disney actually considers it as such.
Probably the most important note of all: My protagonist is an OC.
I tried without one, believe me - but to combine the two fandoms in a way that made sense without breaking the story, I had to create an OC. Couldn't use an existing character to bridge the gap; it just didn't work.
If everything works well, I'll be updating weekly - I've got a lot of buffer chapters. I'm open to feedback and constructive criticism, so please feel free to leave comments; I will be replying to those.
Additional content warnings will be specified on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Tags will also be updated similarly to avoid spoilers.
Disclaimer: The following is a work of fanfiction using characters from Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Comics, and Mass Effect. I do not claim any ownership over the characters present in this piece as they are owned by Marvel Studios, Marvel Comics, Marvel Television, and Bioware.
Hail thou! who on my birth bestowed
Those boons to all that know thee known;
Yet better I sustain thy load,
For now I bear the weight alone.
- To Time, Lord Byron
Isabelle doesn't know how long she keeps her eyes on the wreath, as it drifts further and further away with each gentle lap of the waves. She can barely make out the flowers she and Pepper had chosen from the garden - lilies and carnations and chrysanthemums framing the arc reactor; his very first - and soon enough, they would disappear altogether.
She could probably kneel and let the water run through her fingers, she thinks, and then she'd be able to pinpoint with an enviable accuracy exactly how far the wreath was from the shore. She could even direct the waves gently lapping against the flowers to bring it back, back into her palms, back into safety.
She doesn't give in to the temptation.
"Isabelle," an achingly familiar voice murmurs, right behind her. A voice she has heard only in dreams, and not even those in the past couple of decades.
She turns, and there she stands - Janet Van Dyne, Aunt Jan - a lot older, with deep laugh lines etched across her face - though where she found the inclination to laugh in the Quantum Realm where she has been trapped these past three decades is anybody's guess.
"I see you're not dead anymore," Isabelle blurts, suppressing the automatic, involuntary flinch that rises at that word, that dreaded word, the worst word in the world.
No. Not the worst word. The worst word would be alone, now, wouldn't it?
Aunt Jan gently places her hands on her shoulders and pulls her in. She goes willingly enough, feeling more like and more like a hollow log of wood than a human being.
The embrace feels like a cold coffin.
Isabelle draws back, retreating into the isolation of the air. She can't stand Jan's touch any longer, so she pulls away completely, taking a step backward.
Jan seems to understand if her saddened smile is anything to go by. "And I see you're still not a hugger."
She can't bear to return the smile, so she nods and lets her eyes rove over the others. Cranky old Hank, with his temper and his irrational dislike of all Starks, including her, she remembers suddenly.
The fact that she had been their goddaughter hadn't lessened the sting of the fact that she was also Howard's firstborn, not in his eyes. She hasn't seen him in almost as long as Aunt Jan.
Scott Lang, the guy whose name she recalls only because he had been somehow instrumental in bringing back the half of the Universe wiped out by Thanos. Which included her.
She should be grateful.
She's not.
Beside Lang is Hope, whom she'd seen two years ago during the debacle with the Accords. The other woman had publicly condemned Lang for his actions at Leipzig. Though judging from their tightly clasped hands, they have clearly moved past that.
"You two know each other?" Lang asks.
Jan turns to him with a confused frown. "Of course we do - I'm her godmother."
"And her Supervising Officer at S.H.I.E.L.D," Hope says with a small smile.
His mouth drops open, and he turns to glare at Hank. "You always told me Starks couldn't be trusted," he exclaims and then flushes bright red in mortification.
Isabelle isn't insulted by Hank's supposed declaration - he'd said that and far worse to both her and Howard the few times their paths had crossed. And nor is she surprised at his protégé's indecorous statement.
She had established long ago that Scott Lang was a bit of a moron.
"I've been trying to make him ignore Dad's prejudices," Hope mumbles. "It hasn't been working so well. Though maybe now he'll get his head out of his ass, considering none of us would be here if not for -," and she breaks off, but the damage is already done.
It is like getting hit by a truck. It sends her mind reeling, and she takes a half-step backward, struggling to gather her splintered thoughts.
There is an awkward pause, in which none of them know where to look, or what to say. While she had been close to the Pyms as a child, all that changed when Hank had elected to become a reclusive old coot in the wake of Jan's disappearance.
She can't blame him.
She feels the same urge to get out of this place, this home that Tony had built for his tiny family - right now packed with people who had been nothing but cruel to him in life, who had hurt him and destroyed him, both personally and professionally.
She counts herself as the worst among them.
"Never listen to an old curmudgeon with a grudge, Scott," Jan says, and the effort is too little, too late and they all know it. But it breaks that awful, awkward silence, and Isabelle is already murmuring apologies and promises she has no intention of keeping even as she withdraws from the Pyms' circle.
Out on the front porch of the cottage, Happy is sitting next to her, his head bent low, face lined with grief and age. Isabelle's feet automatically carry her over to a nearby tree from where she could eavesdrop easily, and she catches the last strains of his conversation with the child.
"I'll get you all the cheeseburgers you want."
It is simultaneously the best thing and the worst thing she could've heard. Because she can echo Happy's sense of loss as he says that, because she knows what he's referring to, what he's thinking of, and she would've crumpled right there…
… if the child hadn't looked up just then and met her eyes.
Isabelle draws in a sharp, shocked breath, her heart thudding in her ears. A week ago, by her perspective, that child hadn't existed. She had known Tony was thinking of children, of legacies - but that's all they were, thoughts, without form, without substance.
That child - Morgan, she had a name - represents everything that Isabelle doesn't want to think about. The five years she'd lost to oblivion, the brown eyes her own shirk away from instinctively.
She is an aunt. Sister-in-law alone had been an adjustment, even though she'd been ecstatic when they'd finally announced the engagement.
Those familiar eyes set in a face so utterly alien are enough to send her reeling. She had been wrong - it isn't better, being next to them, the ones who had loved Tony the most - because all they remind her of is him.
She stumbles away, retreating deeper into the woods, but groans into her fist when she hears voices emerging from the shadows.
"The offer's on the table, Barton," Nick Fury murmurs. "S.H.I.E.L.D. could use good people like you."
Clint Barton snorts. "Yeah, I met the Director a few years ago. I don't think he'd appreciate me punching his face in every time he so much as opens his mouth."
"He was just following orders."
"Yeah, yours - and now you got the balls to come and ask me to work for you again? After everything - after how you lied to us? Yeah, that ain't happening."
Fury shrugs, unperturbed. "What are you gonna do, then?"
Isabelle is under no illusions that even at her quietest, she can escape the combined eyesight of Hawkeye and Nick Fury. But she is grateful that they don't acknowledge her, even when twigs and dead leaves crackle loudly beneath her feet as she slips away.
It won't be long, now, she reminds herself. This will all be over soon, one way, or another.
Peace seems to be eluding her today, however, because the last person she wants to face right now is sitting on a camp chair at the edge of the lake, his head held in his arms.
Her heart lurches in time with her feet, and she's torn between fleeing and approaching him when he takes the decision right out of her hands and looks up.
Rhodey's eyes lock onto hers.
His agony is raw, exposed, as though someone has scraped through his wounds with a blunt knife. It's exactly why she has been doing her best to avoid him since the Battle - her own emotions have been programmed into responding whenever he's in pain.
She had known she was being immensely selfish, especially after what he went through during the Decimation, but her own grief had pulled her in so completely, she didn't think she could help him with his own.
But now she's met his eyes - a well of dark-brown - her feet instinctively answer his silent cry.
Her husband buries his face in her stomach. His grip on her hips borders on painful, but she welcomes it - it grounds her, the physical ache, unlike the internal anguish that seems like it'll tear her off the surface of the world.
Her own fingers curl into his shirt, and she holds on just as tightly. She doesn't know if it's helping - she doesn't know anything anymore, even though there had been a time when she'd known him better than she'd known herself.
But he had become different in those five years she'd been scattered into atoms. He is older than her now.
And there are parts of him she no longer recognizes.
He seems to sense that, and withdraws. His eyes search her face, but whatever he's looking for, he doesn't seem to find it. He nods slightly and rises.
The whir of his leg braces distract her, so she doesn't realize what he's planning until his lips press against her temple.
His touch scorches, and all of a sudden it's too much, it's too much, and she stumbles backward. His hands hover, horror and self-loathing widening his eyes, but she can't see that in him - not the misunderstanding that she's somehow revolted by him.
Not that. Never that.
"I'm sorry," she rasps. "It's not…" she can't finish the clichéd excuse. "I… I just can't."
He nods, horror bleeding away into confusion, as though he doesn't know her any more than she knows him. It doesn't make her feel any better. "Okay," he says, swallowing. "Okay… I'll, I'll just go."
She can't do much more than nod and whisper yet another apology as he walks away.
When he's gone, she kneels next to the lake and runs her fingers through the water until they stop trembling. She runs a wet hand down her face and makes her way to the entrance of the cottage. The driveway is packed with cars, and all the mourners are still at the back of the house, but it won't stay that way for long.
She thinks of the watch weighing down her overcoat, the miracle that her brother had created when hoping for one hadn't proved fruitful enough.
The watch that she'd slipped from the dead Nebula's wrist when everyone else had been too consumed with the contradicting emotions of joy and grief.
She imagines running her fingers across its smooth surface, turning the tiny knobs, disappearing to a time and place of her choosing, away from the pain of tomorrow to the escape of yesterday.
She closes her eyes and leans her head on the wood, steeling herself against the memory of those in the now, her loved ones, waiting for her. They'll never forgive her for the choice that she's about to make.
She's always known that her brother was the selfless one, and she's been afraid of that truth her whole life - not for him, no… she doesn't even have it in herself to be charitable in regards to that - because she'd always known that one day, he'd leave her alone.
And Isabelle hates him for that. For trading his life for hers, as though it shouldn't have been the other way around.
And she can't… she can't go back to the family that is more his than hers, because they're all just pieces of a puzzle that will never be completed.
They'd be better off.
She's just about to turn the knob when Stephen Strange steps behind her.
She doesn't turn, doesn't acknowledge him in any way. She barely knows him - the first time she met him was three days ago, when she had woken up disoriented on a too-grassy battlefield and was greeted by the sight of a wizard standing in front of a portal made of sparks, his cape fluttering behind him.
But she's heard enough about him. From Pepper, from Banner, from Peter even. Enough to fill in the gaps. Enough to realize what he'd done.
"Time is fickle," he says, and she freezes. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see that he's not actually facing her - he's addressing his words to the driveway. "Looking into the past - or the future - is very different from traveling there. You think it's the same - they're the same people, with the same relationships - but it's not. It never can be."
She says nothing, the pads of her fingers white against the knob.
"It really was the only way," he sighs. "I looked at fourteen billion six hundred and five possibilities."
She has heard this too. Of how he had looked to all the different futures to figure out how to defeat Thanos.
The only one where they win against Thanos is the one where Tony sacrifices himself.
Much to Howard's consternation, his firstborn had never been a scientist or an intellectual in any field he respected. But she understands this about probabilities - even with those odds, there were still thousands of futures where they could've won another way.
"You should've looked at more," she replies.
"It would have killed me."
"Then you should have let it." She feels nothing when she says this, no guilt, no shame.
He inhales a deep, shuddering breath.
"Thanos was only one threat, of many…" he tries.
The lock clicks open as she twists the knob, uninterested in his explanations and excuses of how he's more crucial to the existence of the universe than Iron Man himself. There is little he could say to convince her.
"Isabelle…" he tries, and she wants to strike her name off his lips because he doesn't deserve the intimacy of it. As though they were friends, rather than brief colleagues, and now, strangers with a river of animosity between them that neither could cross.
She's already stepped inside, coldly furious, when he continues.
"Tony Stark's story is not yet finished."
She stumbles to a halt, and whirls around so fast her head spins. "What did you just...?" she starts, but he just isn't there anymore.
Where Stephen Strange stood just moments before, trying his level best to reach her, for the absolution she could not, would not grant him, there is nothing but an empty porch, with not even a sign of a portal that could explain his disappearance.
She doesn't step forward, doesn't search the premises, because she knows somewhere deep in her gut that he's gone somewhere she won't find him. Somewhere where she can't reach to shake the answers out of him.
She feels loose, unsteady on her feet and in her mind, as though all the thoughts she had kept so carefully tamed and contained had broken free of their invisible chains. Her skin bursts into goosebumps at an invisible wind.
What had Fury once said to Romanoff?
No matter who wins or loses, trouble always comes around.
Isabelle stares at the helmet resting innocuously on the desk for an hour before she finds the courage to activate the recording.
His hologram pops into existence, right in front of her. He is silent for a long time, staring at her, his eyes tracking her, even though she knows that it's just a hologram with a semi-advanced AI guiding it, an AI he has built for this alone.
"Izzy," he says, soft and sad, "if you're watching this, I'm - well, you know."
"It's the 16th of October, and we're as prepared as we're ever going to be. I've been making these on the side for everyone, and I know the others have been as well, in their own way. I'm pretty sure Rogers has been writing letters with a pad and pencil," he scoffs, and his voice is, inexplicably, fond and exasperated.
It's getting colder. She can feel her insides freezing up.
"We've planned this to the last detail, but plans rarely survive contact with the enemy. Even though the enemy has been dead for five years," he mutters darkly. "All of us have our own missions, our own plans, but Rhodey and Nebula are going to be taking the most risk. Sorry about that," he says.
Isabelle leans against a wall, her limbs incredibly heavy.
"I know you worry, but honestly - he's been more reliable these past five years than all of us put together. The first few weeks after Thanos were… I've never seen him like that. I don't want to see him that way again."
"He never gave up hope. Not once. He threw every conceivable idea at me, no matter how bizarre it was. Time travel was one of the more out-there ideas. But apparently, according to Barton and Lang, it works."
"Anyway, I'm rambling. But - it's been so long since I just talked to you and now that I know that we're so close, it's like I can't stop," he says, and then his lip trembles. "There's so much I want to say, but that's not the point of this. This is more for a worst-case scenario kind of situation."
"No, not the worst. The worst would be that we failed, and I refuse to believe that," he says fiercely. "We didn't come so far just to lose."
"I'm just sorry it took so long," he murmurs and inhales deeply. "And I'm sorry I left you alone."
It plays in her mind yet again - finding him slumped against the rubble of the Compound, half his body charred under the combined might of six Infinity Stones, his eyes lightless. Nausea churns in her gut, and she brings a hand to her mouth.
The hologram shudders out a breath. "But now, for the fun stuff. J.O.C.A.S.T.A. has been coded to your voiceprint. I've already wired her up at the Mansion. DUM-E and U will be with Pepper, as will F.R.I.D.A.Y.; she's too integrated with the armors for anyone besides me to be able to pull her out now. I've also made arrangements for E.D.I.T.H. to be sent to the kid."
"T.A.D.A.S.H.I. is for Morgan. She adores Aquamarine, by the way - she has heard enough stories from her old man to firmly acknowledge that you're her favorite superhero," he smirks. "Good luck keeping up with those expectations."
"Speaking of superheroes - and armors - don't let anyone have them. Nobody else can access them, anyway, I've made sure of that. But if someone does try to - well, pull out a clean slate…"
Out of the corner of her eye, Isabelle tracks a faint movement, and her hand snaps out, trembling fingers brushing against the metallic jawline of the helmet, cutting off Tony's hologram mid-sentence.
A tiny figure stands silhouetted against the corridor lights, and Isabelle should've closed the front door before doing this, she knows this, but her judgement has been sluggish since she awoke in this devastatingly new world, like wading through honey, and her attention has suffered as a result.
She really should've closed the door.
"You shouldn't be here," she says.
It is the first time Isabelle has acknowledged her existence, but she has no idea how to talk to a child - especially one who is the physical manifestation of all that's wrong with the world, with her world.
She's not angry. She's not hateful. She's just… nothing.
"Mommy sent me to look for you," Morgan Stark says, and her voice is subdued.
She hasn't seen her cry yet, but then, the child had been born during the Decimation; she must've been intimately associated with death her whole short life, even if she didn't completely understand it.
"What did she want?" Isabelle knows she's being too abrupt, but all her edges are jagged, and there's nothing inside that remains soft anymore.
Even her heart's hardened, listening to Tony's voice.
The child shrugs. "She didn't say."
She walks over to the child but doesn't kneel. Morgan is shorter than expected for someone of her age - a Stark trait. Those eyes she has spent days avoiding are now locked onto hers.
"I'm Morgan," she says.
"I know who you are."
There's a silence that's almost speculative. Morgan takes a step forward. "Daddy always said I'm your namesake."
She can tell where this is going, and it's yet another light she wants to shy away from. She's running out of shadows to hide in.
Isabelle's eyes slip away from hers, and she shoves her faintly trembling hands into her pockets. "I don't think that's true," she says quietly. "Think they named you after your mom's uncle." She feels no regret when those brown orbs grow dull with disappointment.
It's better for the child to learn to expect disappointment from her.
After all, eventually the only thing Morgan is going to remember about Isabelle Morgana Collins is that she abandoned her, just like her father had.
She's lost in a fugue and forgets that she'd been summoned, so she just stands at the edge of the pier, forcing Pepper to come find her.
"Izzy?" A soft voice breaks through her silent descent into someplace dark, and she turns around as Pepper walks towards her. "What's wrong?"
Isabelle aches as she watches her, this woman - a brilliant, strong, successful CEO of a Fortune 500 company - falling into a stance that should be familiar only to soldiers, to fighters.
To Avengers.
She and Tony had never wanted to drag Pepper into this. The fact that she was involved even peripherally, through association with them and Rhodey, was bad enough. They had promised each other that as long as they both lived, they would never force Pepper to wear a suit.
Well. They had kept that promise.
Because she had worn the suit only after Thanos had turned Isabelle to dust.
"Nothing is wrong," she says, and she is proud that her voice is calm, even, measured. "I… was just looking for Strange."
"Doctor Strange?" she asks, her posture loosening slightly. "Why?"
"Just had a few questions I had to ask. Nothing important. You needed something from me?"
Pepper raises her eyebrows in the way she always does when she knows you are hiding something but is willing to let go. For now. "Nothing important," she unironically echoes her words, " - I was just about to ask you to come in. There's apparently a storm incoming."
She turns suddenly, her eyes zooming to the far side of the lake, her brows furrowed. Isabelle follows her gaze to find a figure, silhouetted against the evening sky, staring off into the unfamiliar Georgia skyline.
"Who's that," the redhead asks, squinting. "I can't tell, my lenses are inside - myopia," she admits when Isabelle arches an eyebrow.
Another change to contend with. A minor one, but, compounded as it is with everything else, it is suddenly too much.
"I'll go see what he wants," she offers, already moving off the pier. "Go in, I'll be by later."
"Be careful," Pepper murmurs.
"Never," she says, and Pepper's eyes soften at the decade-old joke between them.
A bubble of normalcy in an ocean of uncertainty, a fragile bubble that bursts all too readily as she makes her way to the old figure, sitting at the edge of a property that did not belong to him, that shouldn't have been accessible to any outsiders.
Her steps falter as she approaches him because something in her recognizes that back, stooped with age as it is. She stops a few feet away from him, trying to place those all-too-familiar shoulders, the checkered shirt tucked into khaki pants, the white hair parted neatly.
She would've said that she has never met this man before, if not for the bile that rises as she contemplates him. Her heart starts thudding faster in her chest, but not out of danger, she thinks, even as her feet carry her, dreamlike, through those few final steps.
No. This holds the exquisite taste of contempt.
"Rogers," she says flatly.
He has the gall to smile serenely at her. "Isabelle. It's good to see you."
She doesn't respond.
She knows what he did. It's what she herself had been about to do before Strange interrupted her, after all. It's not as if she hasn't pondered over the logistics of it, thought about every permutation and combination of that last battle, pinpointed every instance of it where things didn't make sense, where things could've gone so very differently.
But looking at him now solidifies one very simple, and yet immensely powerful fact.
Going back will not change her own past, will not bring back her Tony.
It will just be a Tony, who will have his own Izzy.
And when she returns home, if she returns home, she would find that nothing has changed, that Tony is still gone in her reality, that Pepper is still a grieving widow, and that Morgan is still a fatherless child, too young to truly understand and yet now forced to grow up too fast.
It wouldn't change anything.
Time travel had fixed the problem of the Decimation. It would fix nothing else.
It infuriates her that she has to learn this from Steve Rogers. Because he had gone back, hadn't he, created an alternative universe where he'd spent decades in the arms of Peggy Car -
His fingers spasm and Isabelle's eyes get caught on a strange glint.
She freezes.
Everything seems to stop. The wind in the trees, the gentle murmuring of the lake, the faint sounds of the birds making their way home for the night. Everything stills to an impossible halt, as though the universe itself had come to a standstill, and nothing matters.
Nothing other than that glint, an all too familiar gold, on his fingers.
She draws in a breath that doesn't seem to reach her lungs, and she can't tear her eyes away from that simple band, and now her heart is beating in earnest now, the bitter buzz of adrenaline flooding her veins.
She has never seen that ring before. Of course not.
But she has seen that specific sheen of gold.
He has caught her staring, and age might have dulled his super-soldier senses, but not much, so she knows that he can hear her heart galloping away in her chest. His eyes turn soft, sad, and a little knowing.
He nods, and it's such a tiny thing she can't quite tell whether it was really, truly a nod or just a tic.
"It's all going to be okay, Isabelle," he says with a firm conviction that spoke of decades, and now, almost two centuries, of experience.
And suddenly she can't stand it anymore. The uncertainty, the ambiguity of it all. The train that is her life going off the rails so spectacularly she has no chance of mitigating damage.
She doesn't care what his ring implies. She can't care.
"Not all of us get to steal a happy ending, Rogers," she said, her voice dripping with frosty disdain. "Some have it stolen from them."
Her words chill him, she can see that as his smile slips away, the all too familiar frown overtaking it.
Not waiting for a reply, she just turns around and heads back to the house.
Pepper had been right.
There's a storm incoming.
And if she isn't careful, she would get swept up by it, never to be seen again.
Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes are standing next to the humongous figure of Professor Hulk. They are arguing with him from the looks of it, but they fall silent as she approaches them.
"Hey, Isabelle," Wilson smiles slightly when she nods. They had never known each other well - so his betrayal during the Accords hadn't particularly stung. She doesn't bother acknowledging his other companion, who is standing just slightly behind Wilson, metal arm aligned carefully out of her view.
The old fury that she had felt towards Barnes is muted - melting snow instead of a raging blizzard. She is too overwhelmed to spare anything for a man wearing the face of the monster who had murdered her parents.
"Weather reports claim a storm's coming. We should head inside," she says shortly and turns to go when her eyes catch on the silver briefcase in Bruce's green hand. "What's that?" she asks, even though she knows.
"Too much power is what it is," Bruce exclaims. "The secrets of time-travel should be buried." He breaks off when he notices Rogers approaching from around the back, eyes widening at the sight of his aged appearance.
"What's going on?" Cap asks.
"Banner wants to destroy all the watches," Wilson says. "The Time Platform has already been dismantled. I'm thinking that yeah, they're dangerous, but what if something much worse than Thanos comes along, and we need them again? The only guy who could make them is gone, and we'll be left with nothing if these are destroyed."
Rogers slips his own Time-Space GPS from his bony, wrinkled wrist, and hands it over to Bruce, who sighs in relief and opens the vibranium case which holds all the watches. There are two hollow molds in the foam, and Bruce slides the watch into one of them.
"Where's the one that went in there?" Barnes asks, pointing to the empty mold.
Bruce shrugs. "It belonged to Nebula. We didn't find it on her doppelgängers' body and trust me, we looked."
Isabelle carefully doesn't react.
"You're saying it's missing?" Wilson asks. "See, this is why we should have one of our own. God knows what the thief is doing with that damn thing."
"I disagree," Rogers says, voice hoarse and gravelly with age. "They should all be destroyed."
"Steve," Barnes starts.
"That kind of thinking is what led to the Chitauri Invasion, Buck," he says, slashing a wrinkled hand through the air. "Using technology SHIELD didn't understand to create weapons is what allowed Loki to open the door to Earth. Just because they have big guns doesn't mean we should mess around with stuff that we don't understand, that we can't understand, not without…" he stutters off, sighs.
The two soldiers have no answer to that, but Barnes still looks pensive as Bruce snaps the case shut.
Wilson's head snaps to somewhere beyond Isabelle's shoulder. She follows his gaze to find Thaddeus Ross determinedly striding over to them, his beady eyes fixed on Bruce's new form.
"Think you should hide, Cap," he mutters. "We don't want to have to explain you to Ross."
"Go with him," Isabelle says. "I'll handle Ross."
"You sure?"
"Yeah. I have a few questions for him."
"Holler if you need anything," Wilson says as they all swiftly walk away.
"I won't," she promises, before making her way over to the former Secretary of State.
"Ross," Isabelle greets, making no attempt to keep the revulsion out of her voice.
"Collins," Ross says, his eyes still tracking Bruce's form. "Where is Banner going with that case?"
"Don't know, don't care, don't see how that's any of your business. What are you doing here, Thaddeus? This is a family-and-friends-and-invitation-only service. And you don't qualify for any of those."
"I go where I'm needed, Collins," he sneers. "I had some things to discuss with Mrs. Potts-Stark. I see Stark had a daughter," he says, looking over her shoulder, no doubt zeroing in on Morgan still sitting on the back porch. Isabelle can imagine her now, seated on the bench with Happy, legs swinging as she munches on a burger he'd managed to procure for her.
"Here's hoping she inherits her father's brains, and not her mother's… poor taste in men."
Isabelle takes a step forward, her hands in her coat pockets, keeping her posture light, relaxed. The cold rage that had burned when Strange was talking to her makes a comeback, but that's nothing new.
She has always had to resist the urge to give the Secretary a well-deserved kick in the balls.
Ross' eyes snap to hers, and she can see in his eyes the clear disdain mixed with greed he has for her and hers. She doubts he has ever figured out what she truly is, where her abilities come from, but that certainly hasn't stopped him from trying to collar her.
She takes another step forward, crowding him until he's forced to step back. The ice creeps into her eyes, and she watches the blue-green of her irises reflect in his own.
"I'm assuming Pepper denied you whatever it was you were begging her for," she says mildly. "So I think you should get lost before you push someone into throwing you out. Or worse."
Her breath is misting over, and it isn't because it's October in Georgia, and fall is just beginning to segue into winter. There's a slight wind, but it certainly isn't cold enough for his skin to burst into goosebumps.
But she is.
"That sounds almost like a threat."
"When it comes to you, it's a prophecy." After a long, tense moment, she lets the ice retreat into her bones, and he relaxes as her eyes turn brown again.
He sneers but does as she says, his suit flapping in the wind as he hurriedly rounds the corner of the cabin and disappears out of sight.
Isabelle activates her comm. "F.R.I.D.A.Y., you there?"
"Always, skipper," the AI replies dully.
"Make sure he leaves, and then track him as far as you can. I want to know who sent him."
"Yes, skipper."
It is twilight, and she spots two dark silhouettes standing by the woods. One of them lights up brilliantly and launches herself into the sky, shooting further and further away until she's nothing more than a distant comet.
Isabelle approaches the other figure.
Fury is staring up at the sky, watching Captain Marvel with a strangely wistful expression. He snaps out of it when she is close enough, his single dark eye calculating.
"Decided where you want to go next?" He asks as she falls in with him.
"I had an idea - but I'm not sure about it anymore," she admits, thinking of the watch she'd finally hidden in her room. "Your offer to Barton - that stand for me too, Director?"
He snorts. "I'm hardly the Director. Not anymore. But… ," and then he silently withdraws a leather badge and holds it out to her. After a brief moment of hesitation, she accepts it, her thumb brushing over the familiar eagle logo. "... I can point you to him."
She doesn't open it. She doesn't need to. She knows what she will see.
She just nods.
"You sure you don't want to spend some time with them?"
She looks over at the porch, at the bulbs humming to life in anticipation of nightfall. Silhouetted figures hover behind curtained windows, and if she concentrates, she can catch faint wisps of conversation.
"They're better off," she admits quietly.
"Your call," Fury says, before letting out a slow, even breath that carries just the subtlest hint of relief to it.
"Welcome back, Agent Collins."
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
- Fire and Ice, Robert Frost
