Doors Open From Both Sides


"Uhm."

"What?"

"What the fuck?"

Scott looked at Tony in disbelief. He hoped to find any sign that told him Stark's plan was just a very bad joke, but the other man kept a straight face. Panicked screams and loud gunfire in the background interrupted their conversation; numerous aliens flooded the wrecked streets of New York and the blue sky was plastered with those tiny, flying space hover-boards. Scott frowned, seriously questioning Tony's common sense. "Let me get this straight. You want to grab me by the collar, fly me up the Stark Tower – that is, by the way, currently surrounded by a bunch of aliens – to talk to the guy who just so happens to be the leader of said aliens?"

"Yeah, pretty much", Tony confirmed the short summary Scott gave, ignoring the completely flabbergasted look his comrade was throwing at him. "Dude, the freaking Hulk just jumped into the Tower!"

Somewhere in the distance, an angry roar teared through the smoke stained air. The two man looked up in surprise. The Hulk charged through one of the Tower's many windows, debris and slivers raining down at the streets while the massive, green monster clinged to the facade of another skyscraper and striked at the next best Chitauri. Tony stopped for a short moment, blinking a few times before turning to Scott again, an amused smile on his lips. "Now would you look at that, there's just the aliens left. Shall we–?"

Scott opened his mouth in protest, but he couldn't think of any back talk and so he dropped his shoulders, finally giving in with a resigned sigh. "Whatever. Let's do it."

"Great", Tony replied, content with his friend's final surrender, before his nanotech armour crawled out of the housing device and quickly deployed over his body. Scott too pushed a button at the side of his helmet, making it close up around his entire head. "Alright, hold on tight–"

He tightly grabbed the silver belt of Scott's suit and then directed all energy into his repulsors. Tony rocketed upwards within seconds, holding Scott tight in his grip, and then headed straight for the big outside area of the Stark Tower – kindly ignoring the high-pitched, girly scream that had escaped Scott's lips when they had taken off. They floated in mid-air for a moment, before Tony carefully manoeuvred through one of the broken glass windows of the Tower; at the sight of the familiar interior an odd feeling washed over his clenching stomach. As soon as they were above solid ground Tony put Scott down and almost simultaneously his suit disappeared again; beside him Scott's helmet opened with a quiet hiss.

"That wasn't that bad, huh?", Tony darted his partner a questioning look, but the other man only countered his amused tone with a disgruntled stare. With a shake of his head he turned away from Scott and instead went further into the spacious living room of the Tower – in which's midst laid a god, his pale face bruised and scratched up, rammed quite a few inches into the floor. He let out a surprisingly high, almost squeaking sound. Tony walked up to him, looking down at the dark-haired man with lifted eyebrows and an unfazed gaze. "Well, look what the cat dragged in."

Immediately, his green eyes flickered up and eventually stuck to Tony's face with an intent look inside of them; Loki cleared his throat, before trying to sit up in vain. It looked rather miserable. He pressed his hands onto the floor to support himself, right next to the edges of the hollow the green monster had rammed into the floor with his limp body. He remained silent, staring straight into Tony's eyes with an unreadable but somewhat contemplating look, before his barely audible voice started to mumble: "... there is no throne."

"Truly astonishing, now isn't it, to hear me tell you the same thing twice in the past few days", Tony retorted leisurely, pointing at his hair with a fair wave of his hand and then crossed his arms in front of his chest. "And even if this may come to you as a surprise; it's definitely not your little invasion out there making my hair go gray in the span of a few hours."

"You travelled here from the future."

"Reindeer Games finally got it, I see."

Loki slightly slumped to the ground again, sighing exhausted; au fond, he had imagined his trip to Earth to be a little different, if not even much less complicated than it had turned out to be. He glared at Tony again, that human who's dark eyes were still staring at him in silent anticipation, and Loki finally gave in completely – just like that man had foreseen, his invasion had been doomed to failure for a long time now. It seemed like he had nothing to lose anymore.

"If it's all the same to you", Loki couldn't quite believe that these next words were about to leave his mouth, "... I'll have that drink now."


Five months prior ...

or six years and four months into the future


"The Quantum Realm?"

"Yeah", Scott confirmed almost instantly with an excited tone after happily noting that Tony was giving him his full attention, "it is a subatomic area you can only access through continuous diminishment."

"What's your plan, turn Thanos into a quark?", Tony replied, still a bit confused. He eyed the other man with a contemplating look. Scott had reached Wakanda a few days prior, shortly after contacting Clint; before that he had tried to reach Sam, but just like his other countless tries of making contact this one too had been unsuccessful – nobody had seemed to want to tell him why that was, but he eventually had to find out what had happened.

Now he stood in front of Tony, shaking his head and waving his hands around, trying his best to convey the utmost importance of his information. "It's not about the quantum realm per se, but more about its laws of physics. Time and space don't really matter in this dimension."

Tony lifted his eyebrows in surprise. "Time is not applicable there?"

"Nope."

"Okay, c'mon", Tony retorted immediately after he had processed the information Scott had just told him; his brain cells ran on full speed and he could sense the distant feeling of hope burgeoning inside his chest. Time was not applicable there. He had to talk to Bruce immediately, ideally have a chat with Shuri and Rocket, too – maybe they still had a chance, maybe there was another way to make things right, just like the Doc had foreseen on Titan.

He hurried through one of the demolished hallways of the royal palace, Scott following close behind. They reached one of the many conference rooms that they had been using for endlessly long political discussions. Some of the remaining Avengers were seated around the large table – Bruce, Natasha and Steve kept close together, just sat there in silence, one looking worse than the other. Tony let Scott enter first and ignored the surprised and startled gazes his former comrades eyed them with.

"If there is a place where time is not applicable", Tony immediately began, his voice thoughtful, as his eyes searched for those of Bruce, "then we should be able to manipulate it from there."

Bruce frowned, contemplating, slowly crossing his arms in front of his chest. "Provided there is such an alternative dimension allowing something like that."

"And apparently there is one", Tony replied instantly before looking over at Scott, who stood beside him, seemingly not at ease; of course, since the last time they had met they had been beating each other up in a rather brutal manner. He cleared his throat and took a step further into the big room – and then he began to tell them about everything; the Quantum Realm, the Pym Particles; simply everything he could think of. Natasha and Steve exchanged an uncomprehending gaze, eyebrows raised in stunned silence, but Bruce's eyes seemed to widen with every other word.

"If we manage to get into this dimension, then maybe we can open a gateway back to our dimension in the right spot– ..."

"–and if it works out, ideally a few years in the past, because conveniently time doesn't play a role in the Quantum Realm, right", Tony added, slowly nodding his head in agreement. Bruce looked at him with wide eyes and Tony could only mirror his friend's bewildered gaze. If they did it right, if they managed to pull off this crazy plan, then maybe a trip to the past could be possible, even without using the Time Stone. Fucking hell, Tony thought with a silent snort, time travel – they could go back, just wind up the clock; change everything. They could just save every lost life.

"And what about the timeline? Are we just going to wind up our own one or will there be more than just one? Will they overlap?", Natasha suddenly asked, her green eyes wandering over Tony to Bruce. The scientist bit his lip, contemplating, and wearily wiping his face with both hands (barely noticing the soothing look Natasha gave him). "If we use the Quantum Realm, ... then it won't be a time travel like it would have been with the Time Stone. Thanos did not reduplicate, when he–"

Bruce cut himself off and closed his tired eyes for a moment; he did not want to finish his sentence and according to the deeply saddened looks on his comrades faces they did not want to either. He quickly cleared his throat, forcing his thoughts away from what had happened. "Thanos can wind back time in a closed space without changing the entire timeline. That probably won't be possible in our case, I assume the timelines have to duplicate."

"Something we'd have to take into account?", Tony tore his gaze off of Bruce and looked over at Scott, who nodded his head. "Ever watched Harry Potter? We should not cross paths with our past selves, they probably won't know how to handle something like that; it could change very important and very fundamental elements of the future in a way we wouldn't want it to change."

"And then?", asked Steve, who up until now had been silently listening to the conversation. "If we made it, what are we going to do then?"

Cluelessness arose amongst the remaining Avengers, hanging in the humidly warm air of the suddenly silent conference room. Nobody had really thought about any further steps yet – how could they, if even the sheer possibility of travelling back in time was this utterly mind-blogging? And then, all of a sudden, the sound of a deep voice broke the never-ending silence: "Then we shall bring all the stones to Earth and secure them there until Thanos arrives."

Their heads simultaneously turned to the entrance of the conference room to face Thor, who stood in the door frame; he had been for quite some time now, quietly following their conversation without being noticed. His eyes seemed determined, his voice deep and firm: "The Tesseract should have never been brought to Asgard. Thanos stared his search for the stones after the death of my father – I highly doubt this to be a coincidence. That would leave us with some years of time to collect the stones on Midgard. Then, maybe, we could beat him."

"So, the Tesseract stays on Earth, got it", Tony confirmed curtly and looked over at Scott yet again, "but, say we'd managed to change our past enough to make a difference, what exactly is going to happen to us? Can we just come back to our own timeline?"

"Then our bodies will travel through the Quantum Realm to the last equivalent point of both the timelines; that's the last point where the timelines cross. If we miss it ...", Scott hesitated for a moment, contemplating and avoiding the Avenger's stern gazes, "... well, then we would be trapped in the subatomic space. But if we don't make any mistakes, that's very unlikely to happen."

"And then? When the key event happened and we travelled back to the last congruent point, what are we going to then?"

Scott looked at Tony again, who perseveringly continued to stare at his face; and if he wasn't mistaken, he could make out a weak glimmer of hope in the other man's eyes. Scott took a deep breath before laying all of his assurance, all of his confidence in their plan, into his final gaze. "And then ... then we are going to rewrite history."