A/N: So, I'm pretty nervous about this one. Please let me know what you think but be gentle, I'm sensitive. Also, get ready. Things are about to get a little bit complicated.

Tony spent the next 10 hours camped out in Steve's medical room. The Med team was optimistic that the Captain would be waking up soon and Tony wanted to make sure his was the first face Steve saw. Hopefully, he could make the man imprint on him like a baby chicken and he wouldn't have to work so hard this time around to convince Steve to trust him.

He busied himself while he was waiting by searching through as many SHIELD files as he could in hopes of finding a trace on where exactly Pierce had been keeping Barnes. If the knowledge that his lover was alive wasn't enough to get Steve to trust him, the fact that Tony was willing to help Steve find him would be.

It was time consuming work and difficult to do while only using a laptop, so after a few hours of hunching over a tiny screen in a very uncomfortable chair, Tony relented and had some people bring in a small workstation for him. If nothing else the travel size holographic display and Jarvis's disembodied voice would help to convince Steve that he really was in the future.

Tony was just beginning to worry that he wouldn't have anything concrete to give Steve about his lost love when he finally found a file that mentioned a building that looked promising. It was supposedly a project that hadn't been a priority in almost 10 years, but yet the building was heavily manned and used an unusual amount of power each month.

It was difficult to tell for sure, as most of the files related to the project were highly classified which meant a lot of the information on the files had been redacted, but after a quick check through the heavily edited paperwork, Tony was reasonably positive he had the right place. The project was headed by Alexander Pierce, and after a lot of digging, Tony also noticed that Brock Rumlow was the current Agent in Charge.

Conveniently, just after he had noticed this, but before Tony had had a chance to actually do anything about it, Steve opened his eyes and sat up straight in the bed. He spent a few seconds looking around the room in confusion before his eyes landed on Tony.

Tony pretended the Captain's sudden movement hadn't scared the shit out of him and did his best to seem reassuring. He abandoned the holographic files he had been reading and approached Steve slowly with both of his hands out. "Take it easy Cap. You're okay. I'll explain everything-"

"Tony?" Steve asked, carefully detaching himself from the medical wires and standing up. He braced himself with a hand on the bed when his legs wobbled a bit from the years of disuse. "What happened? And why do you look so young? Where are the others?"

Tony was having trouble making sense of things. He knew he needed to answer Steve, but he was too surprised to speak. So far, no one else had known anything about the future. What could it possibly mean that Steve did? He had used the stones alone. There was no way Steve could have come with him.

While Tony panicked, some of the confusion on Steve's face turned into wary suspicion. "Wait. This is impossible." He said, walking towards Tony and looming threateningly over him. Tony wanted to back away, or to defend himself by explaining that he was just as lost as Steve, but he was still having trouble thinking past the panic. "Tony Stark is dead. Who are you? Where am I? I was-" Steve stopped again and took a step back. The suspicion clouded with confusion once again. "I remember now. I used the Stones. Then I woke up in the plane, headed for the ice. But this isn't right. You weren't there the first time I woke up. How is this different? I didn't change anything yet. This doesn't make any sense."

Tony gasped in a breath and tried to organize the chaos that was going on in his mind. Steve finally noticed Tony was having trouble and went into his sensitive caring mode. "Tony?" He laid a consoling hand on Tony's shoulder. "Are you okay? Sorry, here, sit back down and try and breathe normally." He said, leading Tony back to his seat.

Tony took a few slow breaths and tried to slow down his thoughts. This was okay, he reminded himself. This was a good thing. Steve would be able to help him stop Thanos. After a few moments, Tony was finally calmed down enough to speak. "Sorry Cap. Really wasn't expecting you to know me yet. I had this whole speech planned. I was gonna properly introduce you to the 21st Century the way that SHIELD failed to do before. It was gonna be fun. Oh well. So. My story is: I'm from the year 2023. I snapped a glove filled with Magic Stones and accidently ended up 13 years in the past. I'm in the process of gathering the troops early to try and stop a giant purple alien from snapping half of all life out of existence. Which is why I took a team and dug you up early and defrosted you without any help from SHIELD. I thought I understood how I got here, but if you know me, then maybe I was wrong. Which means I'll need to do some recalculations."

"I really hope that isn't how you explained things to the rest of the team you're gathering." Steve said wryly.

Tony rolled his eyes. "Of course not, I was much more detailed with them, but none of them had knowledge of future events. I'm assuming that since you know me by name and even though it's only 2010, that means things are different for you."

Steve nodded and sat back down on the medical bed. "They are. I also snapped a glove with Magic Stones and ended up in the past, and I'm from the year 2023 too. It's weird though. I'm guessing we're from different futures. Is that even possible?"

Tony shrugged. "It could be. I've only been here a few days, and the Stones disappeared as soon as I snapped, so it's not like I could really study up on how they work. If I had to guess, though, we must come from different strands of the same timeline. Like, god this is hard to explain. How much do you know about the multiverse theory?"

Steve looked at him blankly. Tony nodded and continued. "Okay, so imagine time as a piece of yarn. It's not like yarn at all really, but for the purposes of this conversation. Imagine time as a piece of yarn." Before Tony thought to ask him, Jarvis handily switched the holographic display beside him to a picture of a thick, tightly twisted line of yarn. God, he had missed Jarvis. "So, if this yarn is a timeline, frays in the yarn can represent different choices."

Jarvis manipulated the picture to represent the small strands that could sometimes unravel from yarn over periods of wear. "Everyone existing along this line can affect the direction in which it goes. Small differences in decisions can cause frays, strings, if you will. The frays aren't always big enough to result in a full new string though. Some choices are small enough they may not even result in a string at all. The yarn may just get a little bit bulged in some areas. Other choices though, are much bigger. They can result in strings that are just as long as the yarn itself. Still others are large enough that it's almost like the yarn has split completely in half."

The picture changed to give a few different examples. Tony pointed at one, and it enlarged itself for better visibility. "Now, see how the yarn is still together at the beginning, but here further down the line is split in two?" Steve nodded. "Okay. Let's call this a fracture point. I think that like this yarn, our pasts were twined together, then at some point after now in 2010, but before the final battle with Thanos, our line split into different paths. We just both traveled back far enough in our own personal timelines, that whatever caused the split hadn't happened yet, resulting in us ending up in the same past even after traveling from different futures."

"Okay, I guess that makes sense." Steve nodded, still looking slightly confused. "How do we figure out what caused the split though? Would the choice have to be big, or could it be as simple as eating a bagel for breakfast in one scenario and waiting for lunch in another?"

"First of all, shame on you Cap. You should never skip breakfast. It's the most important meal of the day. Secondly, I really have no idea. I would assume that to result in a whole new timeline it would need to be something major enough to affect the whole world, but then again. You're Captain America. If anyone could create a new timeline just based on one simple meal choice it would be you. I guess to find out we could both summarize our pasts for each other. You said you woke up in the plane?" Steve nodded. "Wait, and then you still crashed it on purpose? Knowing you'd be in the ice for nearly 70 years? I'm assuming, just because you needed to still be spry enough to fight Thanos by the time he became a problem? Damn Steve. Gotta say that's pretty metal."

Steve huffed a small laugh and shook his head. "Well, to be fair, I thought I would die for most of America the first time around, which as I understand from the internet was pretty metal in itself. Also, I was afraid if I got out of the plane and tried to swim back to safety, I would freeze somewhere outside of the ship and then they wouldn't find my body when and where they were supposed to."

"Touché, Iceman. Kind of makes me feel better about how we found you though." Steve gave Tony a questioning look and Tony shrugged, busying himself clearing away the yarn holo-pics from the display. "I don't know man. It was just pretty obvious that you'd had time to get out of the plane and instead you'd just decided to lie down and freeze. I was a little worried maybe you were trying to… I guess, take yourself out of play. I mean. I know Barnes fell only a few days before you drove the plane in. And then. I guess I should tell you I saw a couple of things I'm not sure I was supposed to while you were still out." Tony avoided Steve's eyes as he grabbed the compass and the tags from the table and handed them to Steve. "I really wasn't trying to snoop. I guess it makes sense now why you were so unwilling to let me… why you fought me in Siberia. I really had no idea, Cap."

Steve shook his head looking confused. "I think I may have found our fracture point. Tony, I honestly have no idea what you mean about Siberia. Also, you figured out how I felt about Bucky after the first month we lived at the tower. You kept trying to get me to tell him and dropping really obvious hints every time he came into the shop for you to update the tech on his arm."

Tony took a second to blink in confused surprise. "Okay, yeah. We've definitely found it. Or at least some results of it. You and Winterfresh never lived at tower. He and I got off to a really rocky start on account of HYDRA used him to murder my parents and I reacted terribly when I found out. And I definitely had no hand in him getting updates on anything. And then he was snapped out of existence for 5 years. Also, what the fuck do you mean, 'tell him?' You're both a hundred years old and you haven't told him yet? What the hell, Steve? How did you explain the need for you guys to exchange tags if he didn't know? And how did he not notice the picture you carry of him in the compass?"

Steve sighed and scrubbed over his face with his hands. "We were together in secret for years. Both before and during the war, since we were kids really, but once I got him back from Hydra in 2013 and he finally broke through his programming, he… had some trouble remembering things. I… it felt wrong to push it at first." He shrugged. "I figured we would just fix things when he remembered, but then he never remembered everything fully. Just little snippets here and there. Things about my personality, or my ma, or his sisters, or his parents. He eventually remembered some of our childhood, and a bit of the war, but never anything about us… It didn't matter, though. He was still the same Bucky. Once I realized he probably wasn't gonna remember anything else, I wanted to tell him, but I had let things go unsaid for so long… the whole situation was just really awkward. And then Thanos came." Steve stared absently in front of himself for a moment and then shook his head as if to clear it.

He gave Tony a pitiful excuse for a smile. "The tags were Bucky's idea, actually. My ma died years before the war. His family was the only family I had left. In the war once I found him, he had us switch one tag each. That way if one of us was found dead they wouldn't be able to tell who it was and they would send a letter home for each of us. He said it wouldn't matter because there's no way one of us would let the other one die without ending up dead himself." Tony wanted to puke from the amount of shame he could hear in Steve's voice.

He shuttered and cleared his throat before he resumed speaking. "The compass was easy enough to hide. Look at the back of the picture." Tony carefully pulled the photo free and turned it on its back. Instead of blank white photo paper, another picture was glued to the back. It was the famed picture of Peggy Carter.

"I only looked at the real picture when no one else was around." Steve continued, shrugging. "Once I found Bucky at Azzano it really didn't matter anymore. I could just look at the real thing. I couldn't bring myself to take the picture out completely though. Peggy suggested using one of her to cover it up. She saw it before I even got the serum back while I was still in basic training. I lied and told her it was unrequited to protect Bucky's good name, and she pretended to believe me. Still, I was worried she'd tell someone about me and I'd get thrown from the program, but she was a high-class gal. I'm pretty sure she kinda leaned that way a little too. She married someone she was supposed to in the end though. Most of us did in those days. Anyway. Once Bucky fell… I guess I got a little more openly risky. I turned the picture around and kept it that way."

Steve smiled and rolled his eyes at himself. "I think Colonel Philips spotted it once before the last mission. Peggy protected me until the end though. She even kissed me in front of him before I got on the plane. I'm not sure whether the Colonel was convinced or not, but she tried. When I told her I was gonna put the plane down, she knew the people would want the recording of my final words, so she helped me record what they would be expecting. Only Morita was in the room with her, and by that point I'm sure all of the Commandos knew. They didn't really talk about it, but Buck and I weren't exactly subtle. The radio lost signal almost 10 minutes before I actually crashed though. And that's where I landed after I used the stones. Inside that 10-minute window. I considered landing the plane and going back to find Bucky, but I couldn't risk Thanos winning on the off chance that I could find him. It didn't really matter anyway, considering I still don't know how to properly land a damn plane."

"You mean to tell me you spent all that time as an errand boy for SHIELD and no one taught you to land a fucking plane? What the hell Steve? You could have had Nat or Clint show you!" Tony demanded incredulously.

Steve shrugged. "SHIELD was too busy having me jump outta planes to teach me how to land them. Plus, I'm pretty sure they wanted to keep my list of skills down to punching and following orders on the count of them being mostly HYDRA in disguise. I thought about learning later when it was just the Avengers, but I didn't want to overstep or make it seem like I was doubting anyone's ability to do their job. Besides, it's not like I didn't trust them to get us there safely."

"That is ridiculous Boy Scout. We need to fix that shit pronto. In fact, this time around everyone is getting cross trained as much as possible. What would we do if the Spy Kids were out of commission for some reason? It makes no sense for them to be the only ones who can properly fly and land the jet. They could be injured and need us to fly them to help, and we wouldn't be able to. That's unacceptable." Tony shook his head. "Now. Let's try and figure out our fracture points. How exactly did you and your bionic bestie end up living in my tower?"

"Well, one of the rules in the Accords was that all super powered beings needed to live in level 10 secure areas. None of us were too keen on the government spying on us, so we all moved into the tower because the security level was acceptable under the guidelines, but it wasn't like they could have access to the surveillance without Stark Industries permission." Steve stated earnestly. "You were really nice about it. I honestly thought you were joking after we fought Loki in New York and you offered the Avengers each a floor there, but apparently you weren't. They sprang the rule on us immediately after we had all signed. You just brought out the specs of the building and pictures of each floor and they had to let us go."

Tony frowned, sitting down, and spinning around in his chair a couple of times while he thought. He had readied all the floors in his timeline too, but the Avengers had never ended up staying there. Eventually they had all lived part time at the compound, but the tower had only ever been used as a location for Stark Industries. Also, Steve would never have signed the Accords in his timeline, and rightfully so. That meant the split was further back. "Okay. That tells me a little bit. Why did you decide to sign the Accords? In my timeline you fought pretty hard against them and you were right. Let's figure out what was different there."

Steve squinted in memory for a second. "The main reason I signed was because it was the only way I could stay near Bucky and keep him out of jail. They were in the process of putting him on trial for the things he had done as the Winter Soldier, and it was really dangerous because they were going to be talking about his activation codewords. He was going to go into cryo sleep again, but then you and Bruce figured out how to deprogram him from the codewords. If I didn't sign I wasn't allowed to be within 900 ft of anyone who had. I was pretty upset at the idea of having to wait for government say so to help people, but you told me to go ahead and sign it and your army of lawyers would fight it later. Then you reminded me that it would be okay if we had to wait a few extra minutes for approval to interfere with threats because thanks to Ultron we would have a head start any way, and he could still interfere on our behalf because he wasn't a superhero, he was just a defense program." Steve looked up as Tony felt himself stop breathing. He needed to sit down. Oh. That's right, he already had. Never mind.

"Ultron-" he croaked. Tony cleared his throat and started again. "Ultron worked in your timeline?"

Steve shook his head in disappointment. "We thought he did. He was fine for years, and then Thanos sent his people. The first thing the U.N. did was send Ultron out for peace talks. They wanted to deescalate the situation, and they wouldn't let us fight yet. It was terrible Tony. He talked to them for about five minutes and then Thanos himself showed up. He told Ultron that what he was doing would decrease poverty and supply limitations of natural resources by 50 percent and Ultron just. He ripped the Mind Stone from his own forehead and let Thanos have it."

Tony blanched and nodded. That sounded like something that a completely logical being without empathy would do. "I'm guessing it wasn't too hard for him to get the Time Stone after that."

Steve closed his eyes in grief. "No. It wasn't. We all fought like hell, but Strange gave it up when Thanos nearly killed you. He said it was the only way we could eventually win. Then Thanos snapped his fingers and he and half of everyone else just turned to dust. Strange, Bucky, Sam, the Maximoff twins. Three of those Guardian people who showed up looking for their friend Gamora. Peter Parker was last. I think he actually felt it coming. They were all just gone. There was nothing we could do."

Tony blinked in surprise. "Wait. You said the Maximoff twins? As in Wanda and Pietro Maximoff? She's weird, he's fast?"

Steve nodded. "Yeah. Wanda and Pietro. They got their powers from the Mind Stone before we put it in Ultron. They lived at the tower with us after we recovered the Mind Stone from Strucker."

A/N: I've finally returned. It's been a busy few weeks for me. For any readers wondering, my little Dachshund dog Magrathea is doing very well. Thank you to anyone who left kind words in the comments, they really brightened my day and helped to reassure me.

She seemed to be mostly healed after the first 10 days, but was emotionally hurt and betrayed that I had allowed the mean doctor man to cut off and steal her nipples for around twice that time at least. She was even more offended when I took her back to him two weeks later and he then stole the stitches he had replaced her nipples with.

She was very sedated for a while as the Vet didn't want her moving around too much, so she wasn't very aware of much at first, but towards the end of her recovery she seemed to realize how concerned I was about her and began subtly manipulating me.

She knew she was hurt and she knew I was upset about it, so any time I even so much as moved her blanket or fiddled with her collar she would yelp and squawk as if she had been killed in order to make me feel guilty enough to slip her a treat. She had me very well trained before my mother noticed what she was doing and pointed it out.

The understanding that she was manipulating me didn't stop the guilt, or the treats, but it was interesting to realize how smart my old girl still is. Thankfully, her favorite treat has always been carrots, so she hasn't yet grown to the size of my house.

She finally deemed me forgiven enough to write some this week, so you can all thank her for this chapter.