The Uncut Branch- A What If Story

by Cash1122

Captain America went back to cut all the branches after the time heist. However, he wasn't able to set one timeline straight. This is the story of what changed, and how it led to Thanos finding his way back to the main timeline twenty years after the Avengers defeated him. This takes place in the Erskine to Ellis universe, however, it can be read as a standalone story. Rated M.

12. Part 2 Prologue

Sarah Rogers inhaled sharply as her eyes began to flutter open, waking up from her trip to the Soul Realm. James smiled softly at his little sister and she squeezed his hand. "They say hi, and they miss you."

James dropped his head, nodding, "At least one of us can still see them." He murmured as he looked up at his sister, expression melancholy.

"Well? What did they say?" Doctor Strange barked, leaning over the conference table to get closer to the pair. Sarah turned from her brother to look at the man, but she didn't look optimistic.

"The only real change that they can think of is Loki escaping. Aside from that the only thing that happened was they met each other a year early." Sarah shrugged, looking from the Sorcerer Supreme to her brother, "The issues must have stemmed from Loki getting away."

"No. No Thor captured Loki in mid 2013 in this new timeline. While I was waiting for your parents to be available for questioning, I cross referenced the events involving the Tesseract and the Scepter, but because Thor was able to retrieve them both, their places in the timeline re-converged. But there's still a shift in the multiverse. Something they did is threatening our world." Stephan insisted, eyes darting between the two siblings, "What I'm saying is even though they lost the stone, they eventually found themselves into the branch reality before there was a problem."

"So what is the problem?" James asked, waving his hand around questioningly, "If you can peek into the branch reality, why can't you figure out what's wrong? And what does that have to do with us?"

"In this new reality, the Avengers aren't able to stop Thanos." Doctor Strange explained, preparing to continue but James cut him off.

"Yeah, in this actual reality they weren't able to stop Thanos either. Thus," he gestured down to himself, "snap baby."

Doctor Strange clamped his teeth together, willing himself to not knock the boy's Astro-form out of his body to get him to shut up. "No. In this new reality, they weren't able to bring everyone back. They weren't able to kill Thanos, and he's still alive and well, and he's getting closer to figuring out how to bridge the gap between his world and ours."

"I don't understand, what could have changed? Why weren't they able to fix it?" Sarah asked worriedly, but Stephan just lowered his head, knowing she wouldn't like his answer.