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Chapter 4

Steve and Bucky went out early in the morning, before anyone else left the house, and silently Bucky watched as Steve carefully leaned his shield, still in its case, against the bench that overlooked the lake near the site of the Quantum Tunnel.

They stood there for a while, looking at it. Steve hadn't expected to feel this much peace about leaving it behind. He had loved his second life; he had loved being Captain America, but this felt right. It was time to let go.

He looked over at Bucky. His friend was intently scanning the surrounding trees.

"I don't see anyone," Bucky said. "Shouldn't someone be here by now?"

A breeze stirred up, ruffled their hair, and died back down.

"Steve?" Bucky called out loudly, his voice echoing across the lake.

They waited. The only reply was the distant honking of geese flying overhead. Bucky looked at him, almost accusing.

"Someone will come," Steve said.

It didn't take long to make the final preparations. When everything was ready, Steve went back to the lake house, said goodbye to Pepper, Happy and Morgan, and picked up the case with the Infinity Stones in one hand and Mjolnir in the other.

Wanda followed him outside, but they hadn't gone far when she suddenly stopped in the middle of the path.

"Steve-" Wanda said, and he turned toward her. Quickly, she embraced him tightly. "I can't watch you go," she said brokenly in his ear. "Good luck." Kissing him on the cheek, she released him and then swiftly walked down the path back to the house.

Bruce was there in the clearing when Steve arrived.

"I think we're about ready," Bruce said, glancing up from the bank of arc reactors he had just connected. "Where's Wanda?"

"Not coming," Steve said.

"Steve... I don't know. I'm having second thoughts about this," Bruce said. "Maybe I should come with you after all. I don't like the idea of you taking this on alone."

"I won't be alone," Steve said, raising Mjolnir meaningfully. "Thor is going with me."

He meant it in more than just a symbolic way. Mjolnir might channel the power of Thor, but there was more to it than that. When Steve held it, he could feel a tugging on his mind. It wasn't just a weapon, it was almost... alive, and it wanted to cooperate with him. It wanted to show him how to do whatever he wanted to do. Using it for the first time had been surprisingly intuitive. Most of all, there was a distinct Thor-ness to the feel of the hammer. As though Thor's personality had been imprinted on it after so many years of use.

"Mjolnir likes you, Steve," Thor had said as they said their goodbyes before he left with the Guardians of the Galaxy. There had been no trace of his old possessiveness over his beloved weapon; Thor had changed so much in the years they had known each other. "It suits your hand. I wish I could give it to you to keep, but it will have to go back to Asgard with the Reality Stone. It will have to be there for me when I need it."

"You're going to have to leave it after just a couple stops," Bruce pointed out now.

"You don't have to worry, Bruce," Steve said. "I'm not going to rest until I have everything back where it needs to be. I won't fail."

Bruce sighed and shook his head. "Of all the mysteries inside you, Steve Rogers, I wish I knew where you pull all that confidence from."

"The same place you found the courage to do that," Steve said, gesturing at Bruce's body. "When we don't have what we need to do what has to be done, we create it."

Bruce was mollified, and he thumped Steve's back in a rough farewell, hard enough to make him stagger a little. Inwardly, Steve smiled. Of course, today it was more than just his boundless optimism that told him he would succeed. He wouldn't dream of going home before he completed his mission, and since he already knew he had gone home...

Sam and Bucky joined them in the clearing. Steve set down the case and the hammer.

"Remember," Bruce said. "You have to return the stones at the exact moment you got them. Or you're gonna open up a bunch of nasty alternative realities."

"Don't worry, Bruce," Steve said. "Clip all the branches."

"You know, if you want, I can come with you," Sam offered.

Steve smiled. "You're a good man, Sam. This one's on me, though." He looked over at Bucky. "Don't do anything stupid 'till I get back."

"How can I?" Bucky asked, trying to smile. "You're taking all the stupid with you."

They hugged, and Bucky murmured for his ears alone: "Gonna miss you, buddy."

"It's gonna be okay, Buck," Steve replied quietly. He stepped back and touched his wrist controls. The Quantum Suit's nanoparticles deployed, flowing like liquid over his clothing. He picked up the case and the hammer, and stepped onto the platform.

"How long is this gonna take?" Sam asked.

"For him? As long as he needs," Bruce replied. "For us, five seconds." He stood by the controls and glanced over at Steve. "Ready, Cap?" Steve nodded. "All right. We'll meet you back here, okay?"

"You bet," Steve said, locking eyes with Bucky.

"Going quantum," Bruce said. "Three... two... one..."

The helmet snapped shut, and the clearing vanished from sight, along with all his friends.

Steve jumped off the Chitauri chariot he'd "borrowed" and somersaulted onto the Sanctum's rooftop's garden, landing on his feet with the case for the Stones firmly gripped in one hand. In the distance, a Leviathan surrounded by a swarm of Chitauri were laying waste to the blocks surrounding Stark Tower, but here in Greenwich Village the chaos was only a distant clamor.

A woman was standing directly in front of him as though she were waiting for him: completely bald, and wearing saffron-yellow robes. Just as Bruce had described her. Steve tapped his wrist control, and his Quantum Suit's nanoparticles retracted into their housing unit around his wrist, leaving him dressed in the slacks and button-up shirt he had worn underneath the suit.

"Ancient One?" he asked.

"Captain America," she said soberly.

He blinked, surprised that she had recognized him so quickly. It was only after the Battle for New York that his existence in modern times had been publicized, and right now he didn't even have his uniform or shield.

"Did Dr. Banner just leave?" he asked, hoping he had timed his arrival correctly.

"Yes," the Ancient One said. "I was expecting him to return himself. Did he... not survive, then?"

"He did," Steve assured her. "The task of returning the Stones fell to me."

He opened the case and held it out to her. It was empty of all but the Time Stone.

The Ancient One looked relieved to see it. She stretched out her hand, and the green gem rose smoothly into the air, hovering between her thumb and forefinger. A flick of her hand, and it embedded itself into the heavy amulet she wore around her neck: the Eye of Agamotto. "Your mission was successful, then?" she asked, fixing her intense blue gaze on him.

Steve nodded. "Everything is back where - and when - it should be."

"Good." The Ancient One gestured with both hands, and the Eye closed, swallowing up the light of the Time Stone. Steve permitted himself to breathe a sigh of relief. It had been a terrible burden to carry the Stones, and he was glad it was over. With any luck, he'd never see one again.

A sustained roar reverberated in the air, and Steve looked up at the sky in time to see a bright flash of light speed by, high above them. With a start, he realized in that split second that it was Tony in his Iron Man suit, shouldering a nuclear missile. Steve shaded his eyes and gazed into the direction Tony was traveling, quickly spotting the space portal directly over Stark Tower. Tony was headed straight for it.

You're not the guy to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.

Steve had never been more glad to be wrong. 2012 was in good hands. So was 2023. Tony had bought him his chance for a third life, and he would never forget.

Steve set down the empty case, and looked at the spacetime GPS on the back of his hand. A thrill went through him, part anticipation, part worry. This was it. Next stop, 1945. He closed his eyes a moment, willing himself to be calm. He hoped he hadn't miscalculated anything. Suppose he arrived only to discover that he had somehow misinterpreted the information he'd found? Suppose it was all a big mistake?

"Having second thoughts, Captain America?"

Steve opened his eyes again and frowned. The Ancient One was watching him closely, head cocked to one side. Could she know what he was planning? After all, she had been in possession of the Time Stone for a very long time, according to Dr. Strange. She must have seen many things with it.

"You can see the future," he said slowly.

"Some of it," she answered. "Its possibilities, at least."

"And the past?"

"All of it." Her tone was matter-of-fact.

He met the Ancient One's gaze. "If I were about to do something stupid," he said, "would you warn me?"

"Oh, I'd do much more than warn you," she said coolly. "I'd stop you."

Quick as a flash, her hand darted out and yanked the nanoparticle housing unit from Steve's wrist. Before he could even react, she made another quick motion, pressing an unexpectedly firm fist against his chest. She was much, much stronger than a woman her size had any right to be, and Steve felt himself flying backward helplessly through the air.

The next moment, to his horror, he realized that he could see himself falling in front of his own eyes as if in slow-motion, until his body fell to the ground as heavily as a sack of potatoes. He stared at the Ancient One in shock as she stood there in a graceful pose, arm outstretched, gazing at him as serenely as though this were something she did every day.

Steve looked down at his body, lying on the ground with eyes closed as if asleep, and then looked down at his own self, which was translucent and glowing with a strange light.

His feet weren't touching the ground.

There was some part of him that wanted to panic about this fact, but just before he did, Steve noticed something that was so unexpected that he forgot for a moment that he had apparently just been knocked out of his own body. The part of him that was floating, the part of him that was still aware... he was small again. Like the old Steve Rogers. Painfully thin, short and fragile. He even appeared to wearing the old style of button-up shirt and suspenders, like he'd just stepped out of the 1940s.

It pulled him up so short that all he could do was look at the Ancient One and ask her seriously: "How did you do that?"

She looked down at him - yes, she was definitely taller that him now - and said with a hint of bemusement, "Most people go into shock when I push their astral bodies out of their physical forms."

Steve gestured at his supine body laying on the roof of the Sanctum. "I'm used to sleeping through important events," he said. "And I've always known what I really am on the inside." He glanced down at his diminutive ghostly form.

"Which is?" she asked.

Steve shrugged one thin shoulder. "I'm just a kid from Brooklyn."

The Ancient One cocked her head. "Well, not anymore, surely." She fixed her light blue eyes on him, searching his face. "Past, future, present... you're everywhere I look, Steven Rogers. Always changing things, usually for the better."

"I don't suppose you saw me in 1945?"

Her faint smile faded. "You're not going to use the Quantum Tunnel to get to 1945."

"The thing is," Steve said, "I think I already did."

"Yes, that's just what you said last time," she said with a touch of weariness.

Steve creased his brow in confusion. "Last time?"

"The last time you entered 1945 through the Quantum Realm," the Sorcerer Supreme said, her voice rising in tone, "and triggered a spatial paradox, resulting in a branch in the flow of time, in which you inadvertently started World War III in a new and rather unpleasant alternate future."

Steve stared at her in shock. "I did all that?"

"Oh, yes," the Ancient One said. "Well, that is what happens when you muck about with time, not knowing what you're doing."

Steve shifted uncomfortably, or maybe it was just the breeze that was making his soul undulate. "Sorry."

The Ancient One's face softened a bit. "Yours was hardly the first terrible future I had to unravel," she said, "and it won't be the last. It comes with the territory, as keeper of the Eye."

"What did I do wrong?" Steve asked. "Stephen Strange told us he traveled backward through time. He reversed the destruction of Hong Kong. And nothing like that happened."

The Ancient One held his gaze steadily. "Did he use a Quantum Tunnel?"

"I guess not. He probably used the Time Stone."

"And presumably, he knew what he was doing."

"Well-"

"Time is a delicate thing," she said sternly. "Any time you tamper with natural law, you risk breaking it. Your science-" She held up the nanoparticle housing unit she'd taken from him, holding it between two fingers as though it were something distasteful. "-can't put the pieces back together. Returning the Stones was one thing. For each trip you made, there was an Infinity Stone present to return the flow of reality to normal. Now you're trying to take a trip without anything to heal the dimensional breaches you're about to create."

"Oh," he said, crestfallen.

"On the other hand," she continued, her voice a little softer, "you weren't wrong to try. After all, it is the time you were meant to live in."

She made an imperious beckoning gesture with her hand, and abruptly Steve felt himself rushing back into his body. The Ancient One stooped to give him a hand back up. He dusted himself off, grateful to be back in one piece.

"But if you won't let me-" Steve began.

"I won't let you use this," the Ancient One said, waggling the nanoparticle housing unit at him, and then tucking it out of sight inside her sash with an air of finality.

"However..." she continued thoughtfully, pacing around him, "if you were to return via the Time Stone, the Stone could simultaneously be used to seal any dimensional cracks that may open in the process."

Steve's eyes flicked down to the Eye of Agamotto hanging around her neck. "I wouldn't really know how to do all that."

"Well, I wasn't offering to let you try," she said with a hint of amusement. "This sort of thing is best left to the professionals, don't you think?" She made a graceful gesture, and the Eye slid open once more, revealing the emerald light within.

The Ancient One cupped her hands loosely, and a green latticework of glowing runes formed around her wrists. She stepped close to him, focusing the green disc in her hands toward him.

"Once it's done, it's done," she said. "There's no changing your mind."

Steve nodded firmly. "I'm ready."

"No mistakes," the Sorcerer Supreme said. "Don't attempt to do anything you already know you didn't do in the past."

Steve narrowed his eyes. "Such as?"

Her mouth tightened. "Such as rooting Hydra out of S.H.I.E.L.D. too early. Or rescuing James Barnes from the Soviets before his time. You must respect natural law. Just because you're a time traveler doesn't mean you get to deny the rest of humanity their free will, no matter how much you want to prevent suffering." She paused to emphasize her next words. "A wise man once said, 'Every time someone tries to prevent a war before it starts, innocent people die.' You don't want to see that principle in action on a cosmic scale, believe me."

Steve nodded. "I understand. I promise."

"Good."

Slowly, she rotated her wrists, and the runes encircling her wrists turned in sync with her movements. An emerald haze descended over Steve's vision, and when it cleared, he was standing alone on the rooftop of the Sanctum.

Blinking, disoriented, he looked around. The Chitauri were gone from the sky, but the atmosphere wasn't exactly peaceful. He could hear honking horns on the street below. He strode over to the edge and looked over.

It was a busy day in New York City. People crowded the sidewalks, and cars passed back and forth along the road. But the cars were... Steve leaned over the railing and breathed faster in excitement. He could see a Hudson Commodore. And a Ford Super Deluxe. In fact, all of the cars were antiques. And there was the 3rd Avenue El, which had long ago been decommissioned, chuffing along on its elevated tracks. And yes, there were definitely some buildings missing from the skyline now.

A smile slowly spread across his face. "I made it," he whispered.

"Ah. Right on time."

Steve whirled around. The Ancient One was emerging from the stairwell and coming toward him. But she was wearing a different robe this time.

"Ancient One," he said, bowing his head slightly. "I can't thank you enough for what you've done for me."

"Captain America," she said. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. I'll look forward to seeing you again, in the future." She looked him over seriously. "Well, if you'd like, I can help you get a bus pass to New Jersey. But if you're in a rush..."

She produced a small metal bar from within her robes, and slid two fingers into the loops attached to it. Turning to point her hand at the empty space on the rooftop, she moved her other hand in a smooth circle, and a sparking golden circle opened up in midair. Satisfied, the Ancient One turned back to him.

"First door you see," she said.

"Thank you," he said, and very nearly gave into the impulse to give the venerable and dignified Ancient One an enthusiastic hug, pulling himself back just in time and seizing her hand in a tight handshake instead.

"Oh, go on," she said, gently shoving him away.

Taking a deep breath, he stepped through the portal, and into his third life.

TO BE CONTINUED

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