Neither Safety Nor Certainty

Dr. Strange had stepped through a portal and gone back to the Sanctum. Bucky walked through the dark, quiet halls of the HQ alone. He took the sky-bridge between Combat and the Commons, just so he could look through the glass roof at the stars.

I wonder if those stars will still be there tomorrow, he thought.

He shuddered. No good thinking about that. He didn't even want to imagine what would happen if they screwed this up.

But...what if they succeeded? What would happen after that?

He'd been so dead-set on getting everybody back that he hadn't even considered what they'd do afterwards. The world was still a mess—society was in upheaval, nations had dissolved, the global economy had collapsed—and they were about to inject three and a half billion more people into that mess. And that's if things went well.

He stopped on the sky-bridge and put a hand to his forehead, gripping the railing with the metal hand so he wouldn't fall over.

Whoa, Barnes. One day at a time. That's what Ma always said, whenever Pa got all worked up about how they'd manage to feed their son and three little daughters after the Stock Market crashed. One day at a time...pray, trust, and hope. That's what she always said.

Bucky looked up at the silent, distant stars, shut his eyes, and took a deep breath.

Lord, let me see those stars with Steve tomorrow.

It was bright and early in the morning. Nobody had gotten much sleep for nerves and excitement. The morning sun was shining through the laboratory windows...and a pitched argument was echoing off the glass and concrete.

Bucky had ducked out for a drink and came back with a mug of coffee. "They still at it?" he whispered to Peter.

"Yep," Peter whispered back with a frown.

Bucky sighed into the mug and took a long sip.

"Come on, man!" cried Scott. His hands were flying everywhere. "We wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for me. This was my idea, I know all about the quantum stuff—"

"You went on one journey into the Quantum Realm and came back with a hare-brained hypothesis," retorted Dr. Strange. "You can't take the credit for just noticing how the universe works."

"I've been the guinea pig this whole time! You can't let even me go on the big bust?"

"I've made my decision, and that's final."

"Look, Strange, come on, man..." Scott's voice dropped, and he slid closer, making pleading motions with his hands, and Dr. Strange stepped back. "You don't know what this means to me. If I can just get the chance to see her again..."

"That's the exact reason I don't want you to come along." Dr. Strange's thin lip curled. "We can't afford to risk any emotional distractions. I need a team that's dependable."

"But he gets to come along?!" Scott pointed wildly at Loki.

Loki pressed his lips into a line and was visibly trying not to look smug.

"I need his powers for disguises!" snapped Dr. Strange.

"I literally did heists for a living!" cried Scott. "You think I don't know how to not get caught?"

"Considering they managed to throw you in jail, yes."

"That was one time!"

"Hey, hey." Bucky broke into the middle of them, gently pushing both men apart with his arms. "We're losin' daylight here. We can't keep arguin' about this forever."

"Hey, dude," Scott stage-whispered to Bucky, "do me a solid, make him let me come along."

Dr. Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme, eloquently rolled his eyes.

Bucky moved his mug over and put his flesh-and-blood hand on Scott's shoulder. "You're right, Scott. We wouldn't even have this chance without'cha. And I promise, we'll do everything we have to, to get her back."

Scott sighed and slumped with his arms crossed. "But?" he asked petulantly.

"But," Bucky echoed, "if the guy who literally wore Time as a novelty necklace says 'no', I'd be inclined to listen to 'im. And look—" He shook Scott's shoulder. "I need you here at the lab. If something goes wrong, we need somebody who knows the Quantum Realm in and out to help get us outta there."

Scott didn't uncross his arms, but he was visibly having a harder time looking put-out. "So I'm Plan B."

"No," Bucky said with a grin, "you're the only guy we can trust to save Plan A's ass."

Scott barked up a little laugh. "All right, all right, I'll give you that."

"Good man." Bucky patted his shoulder and walked away. As he passed by Dr. Strange, he muttered over his mug, "Would it kill ya to be civil?"

"Chalk it up to nerves," Dr. Strange muttered back as he fell in step beside him.

The retrieval team that Dr. Strange had selected was himself, Loki, Bucky, and Nebula. The Guardians had been in and out for the past few months, and Nebula had contributed every piece of information she had about which of the Stones could be found in space and when. Bucky represented the Avengers and was more than comfortably familiar with stealth operations (thank you, HYDRA). Loki, as aforementioned, was needed for disguises, but he was also valuable for his Asgardian knowledge of the Stones. And Dr. Strange, as the Time Expert, was their leader.

"Time is like a living body," he said, his red cloak swishing around his heels as he paced the time machine platform. "It grows and changes, and where it's wounded, it is capable of healing itself." He extended his hand, and a little flower appeared in his palm in golden lines of sorcery. "You can go back in time and pick a flower in a forest, and sure, maybe some animal won't get a meal, but that's no worse than a paper cut. The timeline can heal from that.

"But each of the Stones," he said gravely, and the image shifted to six colored gems, to scenes of battle and magic, "were involved in events that changed history—events that shaped the fate of the world. Those are the bones of the timeline. It can't regrow that.

"And we'll have to put things back just the way we found them," he said, closing his fist, "or time will lose its structure forever, and collapse."

"So if you take it," Bucky surmised, pinching his face as he shoved the helmet on his head, "you put it back. Got it."

"And we have to do it quickly." The visor closed on Dr. Strange's helmet, and now Bucky heard his voice coming through the helmet's inner speaker. "Stay hidden, stay inconspicuous, and keep the Stones separated from each other. No paradoxes. No temporal fissures. No black holes."

"No pressure," Nebula deadpanned.

Bucky chuckled. "No kidding."

"Are you quite finished?" Loki was trying to sound bored, but there was a little bit of nervous annoyance under his words. "I'd like to get this over with."

Dr. Strange nodded to the technicians. Behind the control panel, Hank, Eric, and Shuri flipped switches and turned dials. The machine whined and hummed. The cluster of mirrors shifted into position.

"Your first stop is the Battle of Manhattan," Hank called out over the noise of the machine. "That's May fourth, 2012. In T-minus five..."

Bucky took a deep breath and let it out, slightly fogging the inside of his visor.

"Four..."

Loki leaned his head from one side to the other, cracking his neck.

"Three..."

Nebula just looked up at the ceiling.

"Two...one."

SZHHHHOOOOOOM.

Chuitari ran amok through the streets of Manhattan. Pedestrians ran, screaming, for their lives. Overhead, armored space whales snaked between skyscrapers, and the Hulk bashed Chuitari warriors into the windows of Grand Central Station.

Bucky raced down a street scorched with laser burns and clogged with overturned cars. Beside him ran Nebula. Both of them were disguised as nondescript S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and their destination was the then-called Stark Tower.

"Quill would have things to say about what that tower looks like," Nebula said in her hilariously dull voice.

Bucky laughed between his strides. "Yeah, I've heard that one before."

They had duck into an alleyway to slip around a police perimeter. The yowls of the Chuitari and the whine of the laser blasts were getting louder. When they popped out the other side, a bolt of blue at the edge of Bucky's eye and the bark of a familiar voice made him stop in his tracks.

Steve.

There he was, standing on a dingy car hood, issuing orders and slinging around a red, white, and blue shield. The bright blue spandex was almost cartoonishly squeaky clean, but grime was beginning to climb up his boots and cling to his fists and helmet. It made him seem young, bold, and vibrant—like something that didn't quite belong in this world, but was quickly making an impression—something larger than life and stranger than fiction but real as real could be.

He didn't see Bucky. He was facing the other direction, and more than preoccupied with the Chuitari mooks, but Bucky couldn't help but smile wistfully at his back.

We'll get you back, Steve.

No time to linger. Not even to watch the battle that he'd heard the stories of so many times. After pausing just half a second to commit the scene to memory, he took off running to catch up to Nebula.

A blue portal gaped open like a wound in the sky over Stark Tower.

They wordlessly slipped into the team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents (actually, it was a HYDRA team, but hey, they wouldn't find that out until 2014). Bucky carried the Scepter in its case. Nebula stood watch beside him. They stood obediently in the elevator and walked past the reception desk with no incident, but when a portal sprang to life in the wall of a nearby hallway, they silently slipped away and disappeared.

If anyone fleeing for their lives down Bleeker Street had bothered to look up at the sky, they might have been surprised to see the golden lines of sorcery and the rippling fractals of the Mirror Dimension that shot through the air and made the little Chuitari speeder pods either fall to pieces or crash into one another or disappear altogether. Dr. Strange, however, was not surprised. He knew she'd be doing her part to help.

He slipped into the alleyway, where no one would see this seemingly average-looking businessman suddenly float into the air, carried by a cloak disguised as a raincoat. His feet touched down gingerly on top of the Sanctum Sanctorium. A woman stood at the edge of the roof, dressed in simple, yellow robes, with a lopsided scar down her bald head.

The Ancient One turned, looked over her shoulder, and smiled at him. "Stephen."

He struggled to smile back.

"You're early." She clearly meant more than she let on.

He nodded. "It's good to see you again."

Her voice changed to concern. "Something very desperate must have brought you back to me." She crossed the roof in a few quick steps and took his broken hands in her pale ones. "What has happened?"

"It's been destroyed." She'd know what he meant. "I need it."

Her hand closed over the Eye of Agamotto on her chest. "It has not yet fulfilled its purpose. If you fail to return it—"

"I know," he said simply. "But this is the only way."

She searched his face with her eyes, peering, probing, looking for something. "You're certain?"

"Yes."

She paused. Then, slowly, and with great reluctance, she took the amulet by the string and lifted it off her neck, gently placing the Eye itself into his palm.

After a moment, she closed his twisted fingers over it and pressed it against his chest, her hands over his. "Do not use it," she whispered in a trembling voice. "Not here. Not while you are meddling in things that have already come to pass for you. It's unstable; I can feel it. Your presence alone festers like an open wound. If you cut any deeper—"

He shut his eyes. The screams of four-dimensional beings and the things trapped outside time rattled in his head. He'd seen those futures—temporal collapse, dimensional fissures, and the horrors beyond the boundaries of time and space—the worst of the fourteen million futures that he'd witnessed. Just being here meant running the risk of bringing those dangers into this reality.

But he wouldn't let that happen. Not here. Not now. Not while a single living thing in this universe still drew breath.

He opened his eyes and said solemnly, "I'll be careful."

She smiled, but there was something broken in it, and her eyes filled up with mist. She cradled his chin in her hands. "I always knew you'd be better than I."

His smile felt pained. As far as the timeline was concerned, he wouldn't even meet her for another five years—and yet, she already knew him. She already had faith in him.

He just hoped he could live to deserve it.

She bent his head down toward her and kissed his forehead like a blessing. When he straightened up, he saw that her eyes were red with tears. "Promise me you'll forgive me," she whispered in a trembling voice.

He frowned. He knew she was begging forgiveness for all the things she'd do in her future—the things that she'd already done in his past. For dabbling in the dark arts—for dying when he needed her—for failing as the Sorcerer Supreme, and for leaving the hard work to him.

And yet, he'd decided long ago that he didn't want to hold any of it against her.

He just smiled. "I already have."

And slowly, shakily, she smiled back.

He bent his head, like a low bow of respect and submission for his mentor, and stepped away towards the edge of the roof.

"I cannot see your future, Stephen Strange," the Ancient One called after him. "Where you walk, there is neither safety nor certainty."

He looked over his shoulder.

"I'll be back," he said.

It was a simple promise, but all the weight of the world rested on it.

She nodded. "And in that," she said softly, "I must trust."

He turned, opened a portal just below the edge of the roof, and, taking a single step, dropped through.

The four travelers regrouped in an alleyway some distance away from the center of the battle. Loki emerged from a portal, holding the Tesseract, but when he dropped his disguise, there was a big purple welt on his forehead.

He tossed his hair to get it back into place. "We may have a problem," he said, out of breath and annoyed.

Immediately, alarm bells went off in Bucky's head. "What the hell did you do?"

Loki growled, licked his lips, and thought for a long moment about how he was going to word this. "Let's just say," he answered emphatically, "that the past incarnation of me was not terribly inclined to relinquish this. And I may have..." He winced. "I may have had to incapacitate him to acquire it."

"You knocked yourself out," surmised Nebula.

Loki paused. "Yes."

"Will that cause a problem?" Bucky asked Dr. Strange.

The Sorcerer didn't answer, but turned to Loki. "Would having a fight with yourself stop you from going ahead with your plans of taking over Asgard?"

Loki paused for a moment, as if he was thinking this over.

"No," he finally said.

Dr. Strange lifted his wrist and began to calibrate the device for their next jump. "Okay then, don't worry about it."

The other three took that as a cue to prep their own suits, but as he was twisting knobs and pressing buttons, Bucky heard Loki mutter to himself, "Burdened with glorious purpose. Did I really sound that obnoxious?"

"You seemed pretty annoying in all the stories they told me," Bucky said with a wide grin and whacked the last button on his wrist.

Loki rolled his eyes and groaned, "Allfathers save us."

Bucky snickered, and Loki scowled at him, but he could have sworn that a smirk crossed Loki's face a moment before the face-plates shut.

A/N: Doot doot it's a chapter! One with probably my favorite title out of the whole fic.

Scott absolutely got the shaft in Endgame. Unfortunately, he kiiiiinda also gets it here. Mostly because I have no idea how to write him. Sorry. But at least Bucky takes the time to acknowledge his contribution to the team so maaaaybe that makes up for it?

Anyway, the only hot takes I have for this chapter are: Doctor Strange was a good movie and I really liked the Ancient One; the Battle of Manhattan sequence in Endgame is utter ridiculous garbage that should have kept the TVA busy for the next few timelines; and the first Avengers movie is the best one.

I would have written the battle between the Lokis, but figuring out how to do the dialogue tags would have been a nightmare, so I decided against it. Besides, this way is funnier.