#bea rogers

—

The medical bay had transformed into organized chaos by the time we got there.

Agents rushed everywhere while medics patched injuries on the fly.

Natasha sat on one of the benches tightening the straps on her gauntlets while Clint leaned against the wall nearby, newly cleared and looking deeply annoyed about the whole mind-control situation.

Steve walked in first, “Time to go.”

Natasha looked up immediately. “Go where?”

“I’ll tell you on the way. Can you fly one of those jets?”

Before Natasha answered, Clint pushed off the wall.

“I can.”

Steve looked toward Natasha for confirmation. She nodded once.

“Good,” Steve said. “Suit up.”

Everyone moved immediately after that.

Purpose settled over the room like a switch flipping back on.

Tony disappeared toward his armor station.

And I stayed exactly where I was. 

Because unlike the rest of them, I didn’t have a suit.

Natasha noticed almost immediately.

“You’re not moving.”

I looked down awkwardly at my SHIELD uniform. ““That’s because I’m still just a person with a gun.”

Natasha arched a brow. “So am I.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No,” she said plainly, standing. “I don’t.”

Before I could answer, she reached behind one of the lockers nearby and pulled out a folded bundle of dark blue fabric.

“I was saving this for later,” she admitted. “But Coulson would probably haunt me if I didn’t give it to you now.”

Confused, I took it from her carefully.

Then unfolded it.

My breath caught.

It was tactical armor — streamlined and reinforced like Natasha’s suit, except emerald green and silver accents had been worked subtly into the seams. A small star rested near the shoulder.

Somebody had designed it carefully.

Specifically for me.

“What…”

“Coulson designed it,” Natasha said softly. “Or helped design it, anyway.”

I swallowed hard.

“He said they used to call you Lady Liberty,” Clint muttered from the corner.

I looked horrified. “Absolutely not. That was the press doing what they do.”

Natasha actually laughed quietly for the first time all day.

“He was very proud of himself.”

My fingers brushed across the material carefully.

“I can’t wear this.”

“Yes, you can.”

“I’m not—” I looked around helplessly. “Look at all of you. Thor’s a god, Steve’s Captain America, Tony flies in a metal death suit—”

“And you walked into a room full of enhanced egomaniacs and figured out Loki’s plan before the rest of us,” Natasha interrupted.

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

She stepped closer, expression gentler now.

“Bea,” she said quietly, “you keep thinking your value has to look like theirs.”

I looked down.

“You’re useful to this team,” Natasha continued. “You’re smart. You stay calm under pressure. You see things other people miss.”

Then, softer, “And after today? I’d be happy to fight beside you.”

Something in my chest tightened painfully.

Because Natasha Romanoff didn’t say things she didn’t mean.

Slowly, I looked back down at the suit in my hands.

Then nodded once.

“Okay.”

---

The hangar buzzed with controlled urgency by the time I arrived suited up.

Steve stood near the quinjet adjusting his gloves. He saw me in my uniform and did a double take. I sent him a glare.

“Not a word Steven.” I said sternly.

Steve raised his hands in surrender. “I wasn’t gonna—”

He paused, “Lady Liberty.”

I punch him in the arm.

Clint checked arrows methodically.

Tony walked toward us carrying the Iron Man helmet under one arm before stopping dead when he saw me.

“Well, look at that.”

I crossed my arms. “If you say Lady Liberty, I’m pushing you out of the jet.”

Tony grinned immediately. “So you have heard the name.”

“Clint told her,” Natasha said flatly.

“Wow. Betrayal everywhere today.” Tony muttered.

Steve looked me over once, then smiled softly.

Not teasing. Proud.

And somehow that meant more than I expected.

The ramp began lowering.

Beyond it, clouds stretched endlessly beneath the damaged Helicarrier.

New York waited somewhere ahead of us.

Loki too.

Steve stepped toward the quinjet first.

“All right,” he said firmly. “Let’s go to work.”

--- 

New York, 2012

The second the portal tears open above Stark Tower, my stomach drops.

Not because of the army.

Not because of the impossible blue light splitting the sky in half.

Because of the woman who comes through first.

For one horrible second, I think I’m seeing things. Recognition hits me hard enough to make my stomach twist — except I know I’ve never seen her before in my life.

Then the Chitauri pour out behind her.

The mothership lurking beyond the portal makes my blood run cold.

“Holy shit,” Clint mutters. 

The Quinjet rocks violently as a blast clips the wing.

“Hang on!” Natasha shouts.

The floor tilts hard enough that I slam against the side of the jet. I grab the nearest strap with one hand and Steve’s arm with the other before he can lose his footing entirely.

The city spins outside the window.

Cars below look microscopic.

The portal keeps growing.

And the army just keeps coming.

Not soldiers.

A swarm.

My brain starts cataloguing immediately.

Patterns. Formations. Weaknesses.

“They’re coordinated,” I say fast, forcing myself to focus. “Hive structure maybe. Look at the flight patterns — they’re moving in packs around larger carriers.”

Steve looks over sharply.

“If we take out the carriers?”

“They may lose direction or support.” I point upward through the windshield. ““Those leviathans are armored everywhere except the underside joints. See where the plating separates?””

Tony’s voice crackles through the comms.

“Please tell me one of you has good news.”

“They bank left slower than right,” I fire back instantly. “Infantry’s driving civilians into open streets. They want panic.””

A beat.

“See? This is why we keep Bea around.”

The Quinjet shudders again.

Clint swears under his breath.

Outside, the woman disappears toward Stark Tower.

Toward Loki.

Toward the center of all of this.

And I can’t even think about that right now.

The ramp drops open the second we crash-land hard enough to throw all of us forward.

Smoke pours into the cabin.

I grab whatever weapon I can carry and sprint after Steve down the ramp.

Then I stop dead in the middle of the street.

I’ve seen bombed cities before. I’ve seen war. But nothing like this.

The portal stretches across the sky like a wound.

The mothership hangs above Manhattan like death itself.

Chitauri stream endlessly from the opening.

Explosions ripple through nearby buildings.

People are screaming everywhere.

Even Steve looks stunned for half a second.

“Stark,” he says into the comms, staring upward, “are you seeing this?”

“I’m seeing, still working on believing,” Tony answers.

My eyes keep moving.

Counting.

Tracking.

Analyzing.

“The flyers are herding civilians into open streets,” I say quickly. “They want panic density. Easier targets.”

Steve turns immediately, “Those people need assistance down there.”

Natasha nods once. “We got this. It’s good. Go.”

Steve looks at me. I’m already moving.

“On your left,” I tell him automatically.

That finally gets the smallest ghost of a smile out of him.

We sprint straight into chaos.

---

New York, 2012

The air inside Stark Tower feels wrong the moment I step through the penthouse doors.

Too loud with intent.

Below me, Manhattan is already burning.

The sky is split open like something has been torn out of reality itself, and through it pours the Chitauri—endless, obedient, perfect in their destruction.

This is not chaos to me.

It is order finally arriving.

I move past shattered glass and overturned furniture until I find him.

Loki stands at the edge of the balcony like he owns the city beneath him.

Like it has already accepted him.

“You’re early,” he says without turning.

“I’m efficient,” I reply.

He finally looks at me.

There’s satisfaction in his eyes. Not surprise. Not doubt. He already assumed I would succeed in getting here.

Behind him, the portal pulses again as another wave of ships spills through.

The ground shakes with distant explosions.

I step closer to the balcony, watching the Leviathans drift like living engines through the skyline.

“They’re arriving faster than projected,” I say.

“Yes,” Loki replies calmly. “Earth resists more than I anticipated.”

I glance at him.

“That wasn’t part of the plan.”

He smiles faintly. “Plans evolve.”

Below us, a Chitauri strike hits a building and the shockwave rolls upward like heat.

I don’t flinch.

“I’ve seen resistance structures before,” I say. “This isn’t structured resistance. It’s coordinated chaos. You’re overwhelming them too quickly for fear to stabilize into compliance.”

Loki’s gaze stays on the city.

“They will break.”

A pause.

Then I ask the question that actually matters.

“What do you want from this?”

That finally earns me his full attention.

Not anger.

Interest.

“I want them to kneel,” he says. “I want them to understand what they are beneath something greater.”

I follow his gaze down to the street where tiny figures scatter like insects.

“And after that?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer immediately.

Somewhere far below, Iron Man streaks through the air like a flare.

Thor’s lightning splits another wave of attackers in half. Something shifts beneath Loki’s composure at the sight of him.

“Your brother is here,” I say carefully.

A flicker.

There it is. Not fear. Not hesitation. Something more complicated.

“I am aware,” Loki replies.

“You’re still watching him,” I say.

His jaw tightens. “Do not mistake observation for sentiment.”

I don’t push further. Instead, I step beside him.

“You’ll need to accelerate the ground forces,” I say, shifting back to strategy. “The Avengers are adapting faster than expected. If they establish coordination—”

“They will not.”

I look at him.

He is certain. That is the problem.

“You underestimate them,” I say quietly.

“I understand them,” Loki corrects.

Another explosion flashes across the city, lighting his face in gold and fire.

And for a moment, I see it.

Not doubt. But calculation adjusting around something unpredictable.

He turns slightly toward me.

“Remain here,” he says. “Observe. Report anything that deviates from expectation.”

“And if they do?”

His smile returns.

“Then we adjust again.”

Below us, the world keeps breaking open.

And I realize Loki isn’t watching the invasion unfold.

He’s watching for the point where it stops being his.

---

New York, 2012

A police barricade is barely holding together when we arrive.

Officers are firing uselessly upward while civilians scream behind them.

One young cop looks about ready to bolt.

“We need to get out! They gotta bring in the National Guard!”

“National Guard?” the sergeant snaps back. “Does the army even know what’s happening here?”

Steve lands between them like a missile.

“I need men in these buildings,” he orders immediately. “There are people inside that can run into the line of fire. You take them through the basement or subway tunnels. Keep them off the streets.”

I step beside him, already pointing.

“You,” I tell another officer, “start redirecting southbound traffic away from the avenue. Create medical triage two blocks over. Keep intersections clear for emergency vehicles.”

The sergeant stares at us.

“Why the hell should I take orders from you?”

An energy blast screams toward us from behind.

Steve pivots instantly, shield coming up just as two Chitauri dive the barricade.

I move with him automatically.

One alien lunges.

I duck beneath the rifle swing and fire point blank into its chest while Steve takes the second one down hard with the shield.

The cops stare in shock.

Steve catches the shield on the rebound.

I reload without looking up.

The sergeant immediately turns.

“You heard them! Move!”

Steve glances sideways at me as civilians start flooding toward safer routes.

“Nice authority voice.”

“Spent years dealing with bureaucrats,” I mutter, firing at another incoming Chitauri. “Scarier than aliens.”

He snorts despite everything.

We move street by street after that.

Evacuating civilians. Clearing buildings. Taking down stragglers.

I stay on comms constantly.

“Nat, you’ve got civilians trapped on forty-first.”

“Copy.”

“Clint, flyer incoming at your six.”

“Seen it.”

At one point, something massive crashes through the upper floors of a nearby building.

Chunks of concrete rain down everywhere.

I barely throw myself behind a flipped taxi in time.

Over the comms Tony says, way too casually, “Heads up.”

“A little heads up about the falling building would be nice, guys!”

“That was the little heads up!”

I hear Clint laughing in the background.

Jerk.

---

The city looked like the end of the world.

Smoke rolled between buildings while Chitauri swarmed overhead in endless waves pouring from the portal above Stark Tower. Every explosion rattled the ground beneath my feet.

“Call it, Cap,” Tony said over the comms.

Steve turned in a slow circle, taking in the chaos around us before pointing upward toward the portal.

“Alright, listen up. Until we can close that portal up there, we’re gonna use containment.”

Orders started flying immediately.

“Barton, I want you on that roof, eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays.”

Hawkeye gave a mock salute. “Wanna give me a lift?”

“Right,” Tony replied. “Better clench up, Legolas.”

Even in the middle of an alien invasion, somehow he still had jokes.

“Thor, you’ve gotta try and bottleneck that portal. Slow them down. You got the lightning. Light the bastards up.”

Thor launched into the sky without another word.

Then Steve looked at me.

“And Bea—you know the most about the Tesseract. Get to the tower and figure out how to close that thing.”

My stomach tightened.

“Got it.”

Steve turns to Natasha, “You and me, we stay here on the ground, keep the fighting here.”

Natasha nods and checks her weapon. 

“And Hulk.” Steve starts.

The Hulk looks at Steve,” Smash.”

The Hulk smiles then launches himself. 

“Tony? Mind giving me a lift?”

Tony landed beside me a second later.

“Alright, Tesseract whisperer,” he said, holding an arm out. “Up we go.”

Before I could argue, he wrapped an arm around my waist and blasted into the air.

The city dropped away beneath us instantly.

Chitauri ships darted between skyscrapers while fires burned across entire blocks below. We banked hard around incoming fire, Tony swearing as something exploded too close to us.

“You okay?” he asked.

“No!”

“Good. Rational response.”

Stark Tower rushed toward us.

And the second my boots touched the platform—

I felt it.

The Tesseract.

The power hit me so hard I physically staggered.

Blue energy pulsed through the machine overhead, through the air, through me.

For one terrifying second, I couldn’t tell where the cube ended and I began.

The cube felt alive. Like it recognized me. Then I saw movement near the console.

Dr. Selvig.

“Doctor!”

He looked disoriented, exhausted, but lucid.

“The portal,” I said quickly. “How do we shut it down?”

“The scepter,” he said weakly. “I built in a safety to cut the power source.”

“The scepter can close the portal?”

He nodded once.

Then another voice spoke behind me, “That seems inconvenient.”

I turned and froze.

For a second, I genuinely thought I was looking in a mirror.

Something deep in my chest reacted before my brain could catch up.

Same face.

Same eyes.

But her energy was wrong.

Mine glowed blue beneath my skin, pulled toward the Tesseract beside us.

Hers burned gold.

Sharp. Violent. Controlled.

The scepter.

We both stared at each other in complete shock.

“What…” I breathed.

Her expression mirrored mine almost exactly.

For one impossible second, it felt like the world had split in half.

Something must have dropped her on a lower platform because suddenly boots hit metal behind me.

Natasha landed nearby and immediately stopped short.

“…Okay,” she said slowly. “Either I hit my head harder than I thought or there are two of you now.”

For a second, none of us moved.

The battle still raged below the tower. Explosions echoed through Manhattan. Chitauri ships screamed past overhead.

But all I could focus on was her.

She looked just as shocked as I felt.

Not just because we looked alike.

Because of the energy.

I could feel it radiating off her now that she was closer. It tugged strangely against my own power, almost magnetic but wrong at the same time.

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

“You feel that too,” she said quietly.

I swallowed hard. “Who are you?”

Her expression shifted almost imperceptibly, like the question had landed somewhere unexpected.

Then Natasha raised her pistol.

“Maybe we do introductions after the alien apocalypse.”

The woman’s attention flicked toward her briefly before returning to me.

Then her expression hardened, “I can’t let you close the portal.”

The wind around the platform suddenly intensified as the Tesseract surged overhead.

I stepped in front of Selvig automatically. “And I can’t let you keep it open.”

She moved before I fully registered the decision.

Gold energy flashed toward me in a sharp burst. I barely got my hands up in time, blue light erupting instinctively from my palms as I blocked it.

The impact shook the entire platform.

Nat ducked immediately. “Right. Cool. We’re fighting evil space twins now.”

“I am not her.”

We both snapped it at the exact same time.

That only made Natasha look more annoyed.

The woman lunged forward, like she already knew where I would move. We hit the platform floor hard, sliding across metal while a knife was thrown past my shoulder.

Up close, it was worse.

The resemblance was identical.

But where my power felt endless and consuming like the Tesseract itself, hers felt refined. Directed.

A weapon. The scepter.

She realized the difference at the same moment I did.

“You’re connected to the Tesseract,” she said, sounding genuinely stunned.

“And you’re connected to the scepter.”

Her hesitation lasted less than a second before she attacked again.

I blocked another blast and shoved energy back at her, blue and gold colliding violently between us.

The force sent both of us stumbling backward.

Natasha took the opening immediately.

She grabbed Loki’s scepter from beside the console and spun toward the woman.

“Let’s test a theory.”

She drove the blade end toward her and nothing happened.

No blast.

No reaction.

The scepter simply fizzled harmlessly against the woman’s energy.

All three of us froze.

The woman blinked once in surprise.

Then laughed softly.

“Well,” she muttered. “You tried.”

Nat stared down at the weapon in disbelief. “You have got to be kidding me.”

The woman kicked Natasha backward before I tackled her sideways into the platform railing.

We crashed hard enough to dent the metal.

For several chaotic seconds the fight became close and brutal.

She fought like someone trained for war from birth. Precise movements. No wasted energy. Every movement felt calculated three steps ahead.

But I could feel the Tesseract feeding power into me the longer I stayed near it.

Every pulse overhead made me stronger.

Blue light sparked violently across my skin as I shoved her backward again.

Her eyes widened slightly at the sight.

Below us, thunder cracked across Manhattan.

Thor’s lightning ripped through the sky while Chitauri ships exploded one after another.

The invasion was starting to fail.

I saw her notice it too.

Her gaze flicked upward toward the portal.

Then toward the streets below.

The hesitation was small.

But it was there.

The woman backed toward the edge of the platform slowly, breathing hard.

I frowned. “Wait—”

For the first time since the fight started, uncertainty crossed her face.

Not fear. Calculation.

Like she was deciding something.

Then her eyes met mine again.

“Now I know what you are.” she said quietly.

Before either of us could react, she jumped backward off the tower.

“Jesus—” Nat rushed to the edge.

Far below us, a passing Chitauri cruiser swept underneath the tower. The woman landed on it effortlessly, barely even stumbling before the ship banked sharply upward toward the portal.

Toward space.

Nat blinked. “Well. That was dramatic.”

I stared upward as the cruiser disappeared through the portal.

Something twisted uncomfortably in my chest.

I didn’t even know who she was.

But somehow watching her disappear through the portal felt like losing something I hadn’t even found yet.

Like something important had just slipped out of reach before I understood what it was.

Selvig’s voice snapped me back to reality.

“The scepter!” he shouted frantically from the console. “It can close the portal!”

Right.

The portal.

The end of the world currently hanging over Manhattan.

I grabbed the scepter from Natasha.

The second my hand wrapped around it, energy surged violently through my body.

Blue from the Tesseract.

Gold from the scepter.

Opposing forces slammed together so hard my vision blurred for a second.

“You okay?” Nat asked carefully.

“No,” I admitted again.

Above us, the portal roared louder.

The comms crackled in my ear.

“I can close it,” I said quickly. “Steve, I can shut the portal down.”

“Do it,” Steve answered immediately.

Then Tony’s voice cut in sharply, “No, wait!”

I looked up instantly.

High above Manhattan, Tony streaked through the sky after something moving impossibly fast.

A missile.

My stomach dropped.

“I got a nuke coming in,” Tony said. “And I know exactly where to put it.”

“No.” I stepped toward the edge instinctively. “Tony, don’t—”

But even as I said it, I already knew he would.

Because there wasn’t another choice.

Static crackled over the comms as he flew higher.

“Stark,” Steve said tightly, “you know that’s a one-way trip?”

Tony didn’t answer right away.

Then quietly, “Save the rest for the return trip, J.”

Something painful twisted in my chest.

Howard.

All I could think about was Howard Stark smiling proudly when he talked about his future son.

Tony disappeared into the portal and the comms went dead. 

Silence. Absolute, horrifying silence.

The kind where your brain starts preparing you for grief before your heart can catch up.

I stared upward, gripping the scepter so tightly my hands shook.

“Tony?” I whispered into the comms.

Nothing.

Below us, every Chitauri suddenly froze. Then collapsed. The invasion stopped all at once.

The missile worked. But Tony still wasn’t coming back.

Nat stepped beside me slowly, staring upward too.

“Come on, Stark…”

Seconds dragged by painfully.

Too long. Way too long.

My breathing started quickening.

No.

No, he was supposed to come back.

Then suddenly—

“There!” Nat shouted.

A figure dropped from the portal high above us.

Tony.

Relief hit me so hard my knees almost buckled.

Steve’s voice came through the comms immediately, “Close it!”

But I waited.

I waited until I saw Tony fully clear the portal. Until I knew he was back on our side of it.

Then I drove the scepter into the beam.

The portal collapsed instantly in a violent explosion of blue light.

And Tony started falling. Fast.

“He’s not slowing down,” Thor shouted somewhere below.

Panic slammed into me again immediately.

“Tony!” I yelled into the comms desperately. “Tony, answer me!”

Nothing.

Then Hulk launched upward like a missile himself and caught Tony out of the air before both of them crashed violently into the side of a building.

“Tony?” I asked again frantically as Natasha and I sprinted towards the elevator doors. “Tony, are you alright? Tony!”

Hulk slammed into the street below hard enough to crack the pavement.

Natasha and I barely waited for the elevator doors to fully open before running out onto the street. Thor and Steve were already there beside Hulk, Tony’s armor scorched and frozen over from space.

For one horrible second, he wasn’t moving.

Thor ripped the faceplate off.

Tony’s eyes were closed.

My chest tightened so painfully I could barely breathe.

No, no, no—

Hulk suddenly roared directly in Tony’s face.

Tony jolted violently awake with a gasp.

“What the hell?” he croaked. “What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me.”

The relief that hit me was so intense it almost made me dizzy.

Steve let out a breath beside him. “We won.”

“Alright,” Tony mumbled weakly. “Alright. Good job, guys. Let’s just not come in tomorrow. Let’s just take a day.”

I let out something between a laugh and a shaky breath, my hands still trembling from adrenaline.

Of course.

Of course the first thing Howard Stark’s son did after nearly dying in space was make jokes.

Tony slowly looked around at all of us staring at him.

“…Why are you all looking at me like that?”

I crossed my arms tightly, mostly to hide how badly my hands were shaking.

“You disappeared through a portal carrying a nuclear missile,” I snapped, voice cracking despite my attempt to sound angry. “You don’t get to act confused about why everyone’s staring.”

Tony blinked at me for a second.

Then grinned weakly, “Aw. You were worried about me.”

“I was considering throwing you back through the portal myself.”

“See? That’s friendship.”

Natasha snorted quietly nearby.

Tony pointed vaguely down the street. “Also, have you ever tried shawarma? There’s a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don’t know what it is, but I wanna try it.”

I stared at him in disbelief.

“You almost died.”

“And now I’m hungry. Near-death experiences really work up an appetite.”

I shook my head, unable to stop the small laugh escaping anyway.

For a moment, standing there in the wreckage of Manhattan with smoke filling the air and alien debris scattered across the street, everything felt strangely light.

We were alive.

Tony was alive.

And somehow, against every impossible odd, we had actually won.

---

New York, 2012

By the time we made it back up to Stark Tower, emergency crews were already flooding the streets below.

Smoke still curled through Manhattan, but the screaming had stopped.

The silence afterward somehow felt stranger.

I followed the others into the destroyed penthouse, stepping over shattered glass and broken concrete. Loki was dragging himself weakly up the stairs when he sensed us.

He turned and immediately froze when he saw me.

Not fear. Shock.

A genuine double take.

His eyes narrowed slightly like he was trying to understand something impossible. For a second, I thought he might actually say something about it.

Instead, his expression smoothed back into that familiar arrogance.

“If it’s all the same to you,” Loki drawled tiredly, “I’ll have that drink.”

Loki’s gaze flicked toward me one last time, lingering for just a second too long before Thor hauled him upright.

I noticed it.

But before I could think too hard about it, exhaustion finally started catching up to everyone.

Including me.

---

SHIELD Helicarrier, 2012

The next few days blurred together.

Medical checks. SHIELD debriefings. Cleanup reports. Media coverage.

I spent most of my time moving between exhausted Avengers and overly curious SHIELD agents while trying not to think too much about the portal.

Or that woman.

Or the way the Tesseract had reacted to me.

The analytical room aboard the Helicarrier was quieter than usual when I slipped inside one afternoon. News clips played across half a dozen monitors.

“…these so-called heroes have to be held responsible—”

The screen switched.

“Captain America saved my life…”

Another clip.

“Superheroes? In New York? Give me a break!”

I leaned back in my chair, watching the endless stream of opinions cycle across the screens.

Some people blamed the Avengers.

Some worshipped them already.

Some were terrified.

Honestly… it could’ve gone worse.

A lot worse.

“You look disappointed,” Tony said from behind me.

I glanced back to find him carrying two coffees.

“I was expecting at least one headline calling us the apocalypse.”

“Oh, give it time,” he replied, handing me a cup. “The internet’s still buffering.”

I snorted softly.

The reports scattered across the table in front of me were half-finished summaries of the battle. Damage assessments. Civilian casualty estimates. Chitauri analysis.

And one very long section labeled:

AVENGERS INITIATIVE — FIELD OBSERVATIONS.

Tony glanced down at it.

“Are you writing our performance reviews? ”

“Yes.”

“And?”

I took a sip of coffee dramatically while pretending to think.

“Banner gets excellent marks.”

“Fair.”

“Thor causes property damage on a concerning scale.”

“Also fair.”

“Hawkeye needs supervision and a bigger quiver.”

“Absolutely.”

“And Steve Rogers has no regard whatsoever for his own safety.”

Tony grinned immediately. “Oh, this I gotta hear.”

Almost like he sensed us talking about him, Steve walked into the room at that exact moment.

“You needed me?”

I pointed at the bruising still visible along his jaw.

“Yes. To explain why you thought launching yourself through a bank window was a good idea.”

Steve blinked once.

“…There were civilians inside.”

“That is not the point.”

Tony leaned casually against the table. “No, no, keep going. This is the best thing I’ve seen all week. I needed this.”

I stood up fully now, slipping into the same tone I used on agents after reckless missions.

“You had a concussion, three cracked—”

“I was fine.”

“You were bleeding.”

“I’ve been bleeding before.”

“That sentence is the problem.”

Natasha walked in halfway through my lecture, “Oh good. Someone else finally said it.”

Clint pointed at me. “This is why she sounds like everyone’s mom.”

“Okay, mom,” Tony added instantly.

“She does have strong disappointed-parent energy,” Bruce murmured.

“I hate all of you.”

I stared at all of them in disbelief.

“Yet you love us,” Tony replied.

“Debatable.”

---

Later that night, Steve found me sitting alone near one of the Helicarrier observation windows.

The city lights below reflected faintly across the glass.

For a while neither of us spoke.

Then quietly, Steve asked, “You okay?”

I let out a slow breath.

“I think so.”

He nodded like he understood that answer perfectly.

There was still so much neither of us had talked about.

Everything after I disappeared.

Everything after the ice.

I looked over at him finally.

“When I heard what happened to you…” My voice faltered slightly. “I thought you were dead.”

Steve’s expression softened immediately.

“Bea—”

“No, listen.” I shook my head. “Howard searched for you for years. Peggy too. Nobody stopped hoping you’d be found.”

Steve looked down at his hands quietly.

“And then when I surfaced in 1995, they told me you were gone.” I swallowed hard. “I remember thinking it wasn’t fair. You survived everything else and then the world just… lost you.”

For a long moment, the only sound was the distant hum of the Helicarrier.

Steve rubbed his thumb against the edge of the railing thoughtfully.

“I didn’t know anyone still remembered me like that.”

I laughed quietly under my breath.

“Steve, people spent decades hoping you’d come home.”

“That’s not really what I meant.”

I looked over at him again then.

Not Captain America.

Just Steve.

The same stubborn kid from Brooklyn who wouldn't back down from a fight.

“You mattered to us,” I said quietly. “You still do.”

Steve smiled faintly at that.

“Some days this century still feels wrong.”

“Yeah.”

Neither of us said the obvious part out loud.

That somehow we’d both been dropped into a future we didn’t belong in.

---

New York, 2012

A few days later, we stood together in Central Park beneath a gray sky.

Thor held the Tesseract securely inside its casing while Loki stood beside him in restraints, looking deeply unimpressed by all of existence.

Everything felt strangely peaceful after the chaos of New York.

Thor stepped toward the portal device.

“We will meet again, my friends.”

“Try not to bring another alien army next time,” Tony called back.

“I make no promises.”

Loki glanced toward me briefly.

Again there was that strange flicker of recognition.

Like he knew something I didn’t.

Then Thor activated the Tesseract.

The air pressure changed instantly. Every instinct in my body screamed.

The energy pouring off the Tesseract felt familiar now in the worst possible way — endless and ancient and far too powerful to belong in anyone’s hands.

Blue light crawled across my skin before I even realized it was happening.

Steve noticed first.

“Bea?”

Tony’s expression changed instantly.

Recognition.

Fear.

He’d seen this before.

“Uh,” I managed weakly, panic rising fast, “guys—”

The energy around me intensified violently.

Steve stepped toward me instantly. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know—”

But I did know.

The Tesseract.

“No… no, not again—”

The pull became unbearable.

Tony’s eyes widened. “Everybody back!”

“What’s going on?” Clint demanded.

Nobody had time to answer.

I looked at Steve helplessly just as the energy completely engulfed me.

The world vanished in blue light.

Steve lunged toward me.

And then I was gone.

---

Sanctuary, 2012 

The Other bows his head low, armored hands clenched tightly behind his back as the throne room falls silent.

“The humans are not what we anticipated,” he says carefully. “They are unruly. Dangerous. The Asgardian fought beside them. The Tesseract has been lost.”

I stand at the base of the throne beside Thanos, staring out across the cold darkness of Sanctuary. The bruises from New York are already fading, but the ache under my ribs hasn’t. I can still feel the strange pulse from the girl on Stark Tower.

Bea.

Even now, I can feel traces of her energy in my mind. Familiar. Opposite. Wrong.

The Chitauri leader swallows before continuing. “And the woman—”

“I know,” Thanos says quietly.

The entire room freezes.

His voice is calm, but somehow that is worse.

“The one connected to the Tesseract.”

I lower my gaze slightly. “She was unexpected.”

“The girl looked at you as though she’d seen a ghost,” Ebony Maw muses from somewhere in the shadows. “And you did the same.”

I ignore him.

“She interfered,” I say instead. “The Avengers would not have succeeded without her.”

The Other Guy shifts nervously. “The human called Stark carried a nuclear weapon through the portal. The fleet was destroyed before we could recover.”

Silence settled across the throne room like pressure against bone.

Then Thanos slowly rises from his throne.

The movement alone makes the Chitauri leader visibly panic.

“You assured me Earth would fall quickly,” Thanos says.

“My lord—”

“You assured me Loki could control the humans.”

The Other Guy drops to one knee immediately.

“My lord, we underestimated—”

“Yes,” Thanos interrupts. “You did.”

His voice never rises.

It doesn’t need to.

I keep my expression neutral as Thanos steps down from the throne platform, golden armor glinting beneath the dim blue light of Sanctuary. He stops beside me.

“Do you believe the mission failed because of the Avengers?” he asks.

“No,” I answer honestly.

His eyes shift toward me.

“It failed because of her.”

For the first time since returning from Earth, the corner of Thanos’ mouth twitches slightly.

“Interesting.”

I force myself not to react.

“I can do better,” I say carefully. “I won’t fail again.”

Ebony Maw studies me from the shadows. “You sound invested.”

“I am correcting a mistake.”

The room goes quiet again.

Thanos studies me for a long moment, weighing every word, every breath.

“You felt it too,” he says finally.

Not a question.

I hesitate.

“Yes.”

That strange pull. That impossible resonance between the Tesseract and the scepter. Between me and Bea.

Two energies that should never have existed together.

Thanos folds his hands behind his back.

“The girl is tied to the Space Stone,” he says. “You are tied to the Mind Stone. Two fragments reaching for one another across existence itself.”

The words settle uncomfortably beneath my ribs.

“She is inexperienced,” I say quickly. “Emotional. Attached already. Stark and Rogers both protect her.”

“And yet,” Ebony Maw says softly, “she defeated you.”

Heat flashes through me instantly.

“I was outnumbered.”

“You retreated.”

I turn sharply toward him, energy flickering faintly beneath my skin.

“I survived.”

Thanos lifts a hand slightly.

The room stills immediately.

His gaze settles back on me.

“One final chance.”

My breath catches.

“If you fail again,” he says evenly, “I will consider the experiment concluded.”

Cold settles into my stomach.

Experiment.

Not daughter. Not warrior.

Experiment.

I lower myself to one knee anyway.

“I understand, my lord.”

Thanos steps closer, placing two fingers beneath my chin and forcing me to look up at him.

“Do not disappoint me again.”

His presence presses against my thoughts like gravity.

“Yes, my lord.”

He releases me.

Behind us, Sanctuary stretches endlessly into darkness while the shattered remains of the Chitauri fleet drift through space beyond the windows.

Earth survived.

The Avengers survived.

Somewhere out there, the other half of that impossible signal was still alive.

I can still feel her energy.

Faint.

Distant.

Waiting.

---

New York, 2012

The tiny shawarma place is almost completely destroyed.

Half the lights flicker overhead. One of the windows is cracked. Dust still drifts faintly from the ceiling every time something rumbles somewhere outside.

And yet somehow, Tony had still insisted on coming.

So now the six Avengers — plus me — sit silently around two pushed-together tables in exhausted defeat.

No one talks.

Not Bruce.

Not Thor.

Not even Tony.

We all just sit there covered in dirt, ash, blood, and exhaustion while the workers slowly clean around us.

I sit beside Steve in the far corner booth, absently pulling apart a piece of pita bread while staring at the untouched pile of shawarma in front of him.

“You gonna eat that?” I ask quietly.

Steve blinks slowly like he didn’t hear me the first time.

“Hm?”

I point at his plate.

He looks down at it like he forgot it existed.

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

He picks up the wrap, takes one bite, chews twice and his eyes nearly close immediately afterward.

I snort softly, “You look awful.”

Steve barely opens one eye at me.

“Thanks.”

“No, seriously. You’ve got soot on your face, your suit’s ripped, and I think there’s alien slime on your boot.”

“You’re one to talk.”

I glance down at myself.

My jacket is burned at one sleeve. There’s dried blood near my collar. My hair is an absolute disaster.

“…fair.”

Across the table, Tony slowly raises one finger without opening his eyes.

“For the record,” he mutters, “we all look terrible.”

“Speak for yourself,” Thor says around a mouthful of shawarma.

Everyone looks at him.

Thor pauses mid-chew.

“…Perhaps a little terrible.”

Bruce lets out a tired laugh into his drink.

Beside me, Steve’s shoulder suddenly bumps against mine.

I glance over.

His eyes are half closed now.

“You falling asleep?” I ask.

“No.”

A beat.

Then his head tilts slightly forward.

“…maybe.”

I laugh quietly under my breath before reaching over and stealing the rest of the shawarma from his plate.

Steve barely reacts.

“You are the worst,” he murmurs sleepily.

“You weren’t eating it.”

“M’thinking about it.”

“You’ve been thinking about it for ten minutes.”

Another long pause.

Then Steve mutters, barely awake, “Pretty sure this counts as theft.”

I take another bite.

“Pretty sure saving New York earned me a free pass.”

Steve huffs out the faintest laugh beside me, eyes finally slipping shut for a second.

Across the table, Tony is half asleep upright.

Bruce looks seconds away from faceplanting into his food.

Clint quietly steals fries off Natasha’s plate while she pretends not to notice.

For just a moment, the city outside is quiet.

No explosions.

No screaming.

No portals.

Just exhausted heroes crammed into a tiny restaurant after an alien invasion, trying very hard not to fall asleep in their food.

And honestly?

It feels kind of perfect.

---

---

I stayed on the Helicarrier.

Part of me wanted to go. Every instinct I had as an SSR agent screamed at me to grab a gun and jump into the field beside Steve, but someone had to stay behind and keep working the problem, and apparently the giant flying fortress full of spies had decided I was more useful alive and researching than getting thrown through a building by a god.

Fair enough.

Still, I watched.

One of the side monitors in Banner’s lab showed the exterior feed from the Quinjet. Grainy night vision flickered across the screen as the aircraft cut through dark storm clouds over Germany. Every few minutes, I glanced up from the scattered SHIELD files and Tesseract reports spread across the table.

The rest of my attention was buried in eighty years of classified history.

Turns out the SSR had eventually evolved into SHIELD. Same paranoia. Better funding.

I sat cross-legged in one of the lab chairs, scrolling through file after file on a sleek tablet that still felt too thin to be real. Peggy Carter’s name appeared everywhere.

Founding Director.

Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.

I stared at the screen a little longer than necessary.

“She really built all this,” I murmured.

Banner glanced up from where he was calibrating spectrometer data. “You knew Peggy Carter?”

I barked out a quiet laugh. “Knew her? She used to threaten to shoot me when I stole her paperwork.”

Banner paused. “I honestly can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“She usually missed on purpose.”

A tiny smile tugged at Banner’s mouth before he returned to his work.

I kept reading.

Peggy’s records had notes attached under my own file. Agent Beatrice Rogers: Active Status Maintained. Clearance Level Seven Authorization Retained Pending Recovery.

My chest tightened unexpectedly.

“She kept me active,” I said softly.

Banner looked over again. “What?”

I turned the screen toward him. “Most missing agents get declared dead eventually.” I swallowed once. “Peggy never did.”

For a second, neither of us spoke.

Then Banner nodded once, quiet understanding settling between us.

The monitor feed crackled, pulling my attention back to Germany.

Loki appeared on screen like something out of an old myth dragged violently into modern day.

Gold armor. Horns. Entire crowd kneeling before him.

I leaned back in my chair slowly.

“Well,” I muttered, “Red Skull would be having the worst ‘I told you so’ moment in history.”

Banner snorted softly.

The feed flickered as Loki’s duplicates surrounded civilians.

Then Steve dropped from the sky.

I straightened immediately.

“There he is.”

On screen, Steve’s shield caught the blast from Loki’s scepter in a burst of blue light. The impact rattled the camera feed hard enough to distort the image.

Banner looked over. “You worried?”

“About Steve?” I scoffed lightly. “No.”

A beat.

“About everyone around Steve? Constantly.”

Banner smiled despite himself.

While the fight unfolded onscreen, I went back to researching.

SHIELD databases had entire files dedicated to Thor and Loki now. Not mythology. Actual documented extraterrestrials.

Asgardian civilization. Einstein-Rosen bridge travel. Energy manipulation. Unknown lifespan. A Dr. Jane Foster.

I rubbed my temples.

“So there’s just gods now.”

Banner didn’t even look up from his equations. “Apparently.”

“Hm.” I scrolled farther. “Honestly, that explains a weird amount of human history.”

“Careful,” Banner warned dryly. “Give SHIELD another week and they’ll start funding archaeology departments.”

I laughed quietly before opening another file.

Norse mythology comparisons filled the screen beside modern encounter reports.

Thor. Loki. Odin. The Nine Realms.

I frowned thoughtfully. “You know, if half of this is accurate, ancient civilizations probably weren’t worshipping gods.”

Banner glanced up.

“They were documenting aliens.”

That got his attention.

I pointed at the files. “Think about it. Advanced beings arrive with impossible technology, absurd strength, near immortality—”

“Primitive civilizations interpret them through religion,” Banner finished.

“Exactly.”

Banner leaned back slightly, considering it. “Arthur C. Clarke would love you.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Science fiction writer.”

“Oh.” I shrugged. “Then he’d probably hate me for proving him right.”

Banner laughed under his breath.

The monitor suddenly blasted AC/DC through the speakers.

I looked up just as Tony Stark crashed dramatically into the middle of the fight.

Even through the grainy feed, the entrance somehow felt smug.

I sighed.

“Yeah. That tracks.”

Banner looked confused. “What does?”

“That Howard Stark somehow raised a son with all his ego and none of his restraint.”

On screen, Tony landed in front of Loki.

Make your move, Reindeer Games.

I barked out a laugh before I could stop myself.

“Oh, Howard would’ve adored him.”

The footage shifted as Loki surrendered far too easily.

I narrowed my eyes.

“No way that’s genuine.”

Banner nodded absentmindedly while typing. “Agreed.”

I turned back toward the equipment laid out across the lab tables.

“What exactly are we looking for with the gamma tracking?”

Banner perked up slightly at the question. Scientists loved when someone actually understood what they were saying.

“The Tesseract emits low-level gamma fluctuations when active,” he explained, pulling up a holographic model. “Most people focus on the energy output, but the radiation signature underneath it is more consistent.”

I leaned closer to the display. “Background interference?”

“Exactly.” He pointed toward a cluster map. “If we isolate recurring gamma anomalies and remove known radiation sources—nuclear plants, satellites, military testing—we can narrow possible locations.”

I studied the algorithm scrolling beside it.

“You’re using cluster recognition to predict movement patterns.”

Banner blinked at me. “Most people just nod politely when I explain this.”

“I worked with Howard Stark and Abraham Erskine. You think I survived that by being pretty?”

Banner actually laughed, “That explains a lot.”

I grabbed a stylus and adjusted one of the equations on the side panel.

“You’re weighting population density too heavily,” I said. “If Loki knows we’re tracking energy signatures, he’d avoid concentrated infrastructure. Less noise in rural areas.”

Banner stared at the revised calculations.

“…That’s actually better.”

“Thank you.”

“No, I mean significantly better.”

I grinned a little. “See? Pretty and useful.”

Banner stared at the revised projections a second longer before slowly entering them into the system.

Then thunder cracked through the monitor speakers.

My stomach dropped slightly, “What now?”

Then Thor appeared.

The room went quiet except for the storm pounding through the feed.

I watched Steve jump out after Tony and Thor without hesitation.

Of course he did.

“Your brother has absolutely no survival instincts,” Banner commented.

“He does,” I replied. “He just never backs down from a fight.”

Banner huffed a laugh.

The feed dissolved into absolute chaos after that. Forest. Lightning. Explosions. Iron Man getting thrown through approximately every tree in Europe.

I rubbed a hand over my face.

“I leave him alone for one mission and he starts fistfighting gods.”

“You say that like this isn’t normal.”

“For Steve?” I pointed at the screen. “Honestly? Kinda.”

The camera stabilized just in time to catch Steve stepping between Thor and Tony, shield raised.

Then Thor brought the hammer down.

The shockwave burst across the monitor hard enough to distort the feed entirely.

Banner stared.

I blinked slowly.

“…Okay,” I admitted quietly. “That one surprised me.”

Somewhere overhead, the Helicarrier engines hummed steadily through the night while the future kept getting stranger around me.

And somehow, against all logic, I was starting to settle into it.

---

The briefing room was quieter than it should have been for a flying fortress full of armed agents and world-ending problems.

Bruce sat closest to the monitor feed, absently rubbing at his wrist while readings from the scepter scrolled across the nearby screens. Natasha leaned against the far wall with her arms crossed. Steve stood near the table, posture rigid in the way that meant he was thinking too hard about something. Thor stood apart from everyone else, staring at the black screen with a tension in his shoulders that hadn’t eased since Loki’s capture.

I sat sideways in one of the chairs, boots hooked against the table leg as I watched the live feed from the detention corridor.

Dozens of SHIELD agents escorted Loki through the helicarrier halls in handcuffs.

And he was smiling.

Of course he was.

The camera angle shifted as they passed the briefing room. Loki’s gaze flicked lazily across the room.

Then stopped. Right on me.

His expression changed for barely a fraction of a second.

Confusion.

Not fear. Not recognition exactly.

Something more unsettled.

Like for half a second, he thought he was looking at someone else entirely.

Interesting.

Bruce glanced up from the monitor. “He’s staring at you.”

“I noticed.”

Loki kept looking even as the agents pushed him forward again. His brow furrowed slightly before he smoothed the expression away beneath another grin.

Thor finally looked over at me then.

And froze.

Not because he recognized me.

Because he recognized something.

His eyes flicked briefly between Steve and me before something softened unexpectedly across his face.

Not recognition exactly.

Something older.

Grief wrapped tightly around affection.

I tilted my head slightly.

Thor looked away first.

Steve noticed none of it.

Typical.

He was too busy muttering at the damage reports on one of Hill’s tablets.

I leaned over to glance at the screen. “Did you really have to level a forest in your fight?”

Steve looked offended immediately. “I didn’t level anything.”

“You literally knocked down a forest with the blast from the shield.”

“He swung first.”

“That is not an excuse you can use after the age of twelve.”

Natasha snorted quietly from the corner.

Thor’s mouth twitched slightly.

The detention feed crackled back to full audio as Fury entered the containment section.

Loki stood inside the massive glass cell, finally freed from the cuffs. Hydraulic restraints hummed beneath the floor. One button from Fury would drop the entire prison thirty thousand feet into the ocean.

“In case it’s unclear,” Fury said evenly, “you try to escape. You so much as scratch that glass—”

The hatch beneath Loki’s feet opened.

The roar of wind filled the speakers.

“Thirty thousand feet straight down in a steel trap. You get how that works?”

Loki glanced downward without concern.

Then back up.

“It’s an impressive cage,” he said smoothly. “Not built, I think, for me.”

“Built for something a lot stronger than you.”

Loki smiled faintly at that.

“Oh, I’ve heard.”

His gaze shifted again.

Toward the camera.

A strange feeling crawled down my spine.

Not fear. Recognition.

Not from him. From the scepter.

Even through reinforced walls and multiple floors of a flying aircraft carrier, I could feel it faintly humming in the back of my mind.

The Tesseract had always felt cold and endless. Ancient space folded into itself.

The scepter felt different. Closer somehow.

Like standing near distant family you’d never met but somehow knew belonged to you.

Related the way lightning was related to stars. Dangerous in completely different ways.

Fury eventually left Loki in the cell. The monitor switched back to the briefing room feed.

Silence settled for a beat before Bruce sighed.

“He really grows on you, doesn’t he?”

Steve crossed his arms. “Loki’s gonna drag this out. So, Thor—what’s his play?”

Thor pulled himself back into the conversation slowly. “He has an army called the Chitauri. They are not of Asgard or any known world. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth in return for the Tesseract.”

“An army?” Steve asked. “From outer space?”

Bruce shrugged slightly. “At this point that barely cracks the top five weirdest things this week.”

Thor continued, “Loki needs Selvig. He means to build another portal.”

“Exactly,” Bruce said. “That’s why they needed the iridium.”

The doors slid open behind us.

Tony walked in with Coulson beside him.

“I’ll fly you there,” Tony was saying to Coulson. “Keep the love alive.”

Tony barely paused before jumping into the conversation.

“It’s a stabilizing agent,” he said, grabbing a tablet from the table. “Means the portal won’t collapse on itself like it did at SHIELD.”

He pointed casually toward Thor.

“No hard feelings, Point Break. You’ve got a mean swing.”

Thor looked deeply unimpressed.

Tony continued anyway. “It also means the portal can stay open as long as Loki wants.”

As Tony wandered around the room talking, my attention drifted toward the scepter readings still running on the side monitor.

The energy signatures bothered me.

Not because they were unfamiliar.

Because they weren’t.

I stood and crossed toward the monitor Bruce had left running earlier.

“You’re still looking at that thing?” Tony asked.

“Yes.”

“You find religion?”

I ignored him, staring at the fluctuating readings.

“It feels wrong,” I admitted quietly.

Bruce looked over immediately. “Wrong how?”

I struggled for the words. “The Tesseract has a very specific energy pattern. This…” I frowned. “This feels similar. Not identical. Related.”

Bruce’s expression sharpened with scientific interest instantly.

“Related how?”

“Like…” I rubbed at my temple. “Like the same language written in a different dialect.”

Tony blinked once.

“That is either deeply concerning or the coolest sentence anyone’s said all week.”

“Both,” Bruce muttered.

Steve looked between us. “You can actually sense a difference?”

I nodded slowly. “The cube feels massive. Endless. This feels sharper.” I looked toward the scepter. “More invasive.”

Thor finally spoke again, quieter this time. “Infinity Stones.”

The room stilled.

I looked at him sharply.

“You know what these are?”

Thor’s jaw tightened. “There are ancient forces in the universe older than Asgard itself. Objects of immense power.” His gaze shifted briefly toward the scepter readings. “If what you say is true… then the scepter may contain one.”

Before I could ask more, Tony clapped his hands once.

“Well. That’s horrifying. Banner, Bea—you two should keep studying the murder stick.”

“I agree,” I said immediately.

Bruce nodded. “We need more data.”

“See?” Tony pointed at me. “She likes my plans.”

“I tolerate your plans.”

“That’s basically friendship.”

Steve rolled his eyes.

—

The lab already felt more familiar now. Less like borrowed space and more like a temporary command center.

Bruce resumed scanning the scepter while I sat beside one of the monitors comparing energy fluctuations against the residual Tesseract readings SHIELD had recovered from New Mexico.

Tony bounced between screens fast enough to make my eyes hurt.

“The gamma readings are consistent with Selvig’s reports,” Bruce muttered. “But the energy spikes aren’t matching expected decay.”

“Because it isn’t decaying,” I said quietly.

Bruce looked over.

I pointed at the screen. “It’s responding.”

Tony turned immediately. “To what?”

I hesitated, “People.”

That earned silence.

The scepter sat motionless in the center of the lab, blue light pulsing faintly beneath the metal casing.

The readings showed peaks when we were nearby and valleys when we moved away.

Steve walked in not long after, arriving just in time to see Tony jabbing Bruce with a miniature electric prod.

Bruce jumped. “OW!”

I stared at Tony. “What is wrong with you?”

“Relax, I was testing a theory.”

Steve looked appalled. “Are you nuts?”

Tony ignored him entirely. “You really have got a lid on it, haven’t you? What’s your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums?”

“Maybe basic respect for other human beings,” I suggested.

Steve folded his arms. “Is everything a joke to you?”

“Funny things are.”

The atmosphere shifted after that.

Sharper.

More hostile.

The scepter’s glow reflected faintly across the lab screens while Tony and Steve started circling each other verbally like two men arguing over entirely different wars.

“You think Fury’s hiding something?” Steve asked.

“He’s a spy, Captain,” Tony replied. “His secrets have secrets.”

Bruce looked uncomfortable. I felt it too—that growing pressure in the room.

Like everyone’s worst instincts were getting amplified.

Steve defended Fury automatically, still clinging to the structure of SHIELD because Peggy had helped build it.

But SHIELD was still a government agency.

And I’d dealt with enough of those to know there were always shadows underneath.

Tony revealed he’d been hacking SHIELD’s files since arriving.

Steve looked horrified.

I muttered quietly under my breath before I could stop myself, “Since when do we follow directives without questioning the motive?”

Steve glanced at me.

I shrugged slightly. “Peggy didn’t.”

That hit him harder than Tony’s sarcasm had.

Steve didn’t say anything when he left the lab.

That was usually how I knew he was upset.

Not angry—Steve’s anger was loud. Sharp. Immediate.

This was worse.

Quiet disappointment settled over him like a second skin as he walked the helicarrier corridors with his jaw clenched and shoulders tight. Agents moved around us quickly, alarms and status updates crackling through overhead speakers, but Steve barely seemed to notice any of it.

I caught up beside him near one of the lower access corridors.

“You’re brooding again.”

“I’m thinking.”

“Dangerous hobby.”

That earned the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth before it disappeared again.

The corridor lights dimmed slightly as the carrier adjusted altitude. Metal groaned around us like the ship itself was tired.

Steve slowed near a secured blast door.

SECURE STORAGE 10-C.

“Well,” I muttered, “that sounds healthy and transparent.”

Steve reached for the wheel-lock but stopped halfway through the motion.

“You know,” he said without looking at me, “it would’ve been nice if you had my back in there.”

I blinked once. “What?”

“In the lab.” He finally looked over at me. “With Stark.”

Oh.

There it was.

Not anger. Hurt.

I leaned against the wall beside the door. “Steve—”

“You jumped in every time I said something.”

“Because you were escalating.”

“So was he.”

“Yes,” I agreed immediately. “He was.”

Steve crossed his arms tightly. “You made it sound like I was wrong.”

I stared at him for a second before sighing softly.

“You weren’t wrong.”

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“That doesn’t mean Tony was wrong either.”

Steve’s jaw tightened.

Of course that was the part he reacted to.

“You actually agree with him?”

“I think Fury’s hiding something,” I said plainly. “And I think Tony’s right to question it.”

Steve looked frustrated immediately. “He hacked classified SHIELD files.”

“And?”

“And you don’t see a problem with that?”

I gave him a look. “Steve. You grew up during wartime propaganda, punched Nazis, and broke into military compounds because you thought the government was making bad decisions. You do not get to suddenly become the poster child for respecting authority.”

“That’s different.”

“Is it?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Steve opened his mouth. Then closed it again.

I folded my arms. “You don’t trust institutions either. You trust people.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No, the difference is you want to believe this SHIELD is still Peggy’s SHIELD.”

That hit harder than I intended.

His expression shifted immediately.

I softened a little, “Steve…”

“She built this,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

The hurt in his voice twisted something in my chest.

Because I understood it.

Peggy Carter had been one of the few things Steve had managed to hold onto after waking up in a future that had stolen almost everything else from him.

SHIELD was one of the last connections he had left to her.

And now cracks were starting to show.

I stepped closer, lowering my voice slightly.

“Loving what something used to stand for doesn’t mean you stop questioning what it became.”

Steve looked away.

For a second he looked less like Captain America and more like the skinny kid from Brooklyn sitting on our apartment fire escape after getting into another fight he couldn’t win.

“You still sided with Tony,” he muttered.

I sighed dramatically. “Oh my God, are you jealous of Tony Stark?”

That startled an actual laugh out of him despite himself.

“No.”

“You sounded jealous. You know that as your sister, it's my responsibility to give you shit, right?”

“I was not jealous.”

“You absolutely sounded jealous.”

Steve rubbed a hand over his face. “Bea.”

“I’m kidding,” I said, bumping my shoulder lightly against his. “Mostly.”

His expression softened slightly.

Then hardened again almost immediately as he looked toward the secured door.

“I just…” He exhaled quietly. “I don’t like the way Stark talks to people.”

“I know.”

“He pushes until people snap.”

“I know.”

“And he treats everything like a game.”

I tilted my head slightly. “You know why he does that, right?”

Steve frowned.

“Because if he stops joking,” I said quietly, “he has to admit how scared he is.”

That shut him up.

Tony hid fear behind arrogance the same way Steve hid grief behind duty.

Different armor.

Same purpose.

Steve glanced sideways at me. “Since when are you defending him?”

“I’m not defending him.” I shrugged lightly. “I just understand him.”

“And you think I’m wrong.”

“I think,” I said carefully, “that you’re trying so hard to hold onto structure right now that you’re ignoring the possibility SHIELD may not deserve that trust.”

Steve stared at the floor for a moment.

Then finally nodded once. Not agreement. Just acknowledgment.

That was enough.

I nudged the blast door with my boot. “Now are we breaking into the secret government warehouse or are we standing here having an emotional breakthroughs?”

Steve snorted softly.

“We’re definitely breaking in.”

“There’s the older brother I know.”

Steve rolled his eyes and finally forced the wheel-lock open.

The metal door groaned as freezing air spilled out from inside.

The storage bay beyond stretched endlessly into shadow, stacked high with reinforced crates and classified markings.

Neither of us spoke immediately.

Something about the room felt wrong.

Heavy.

Steve moved toward the nearest crate stack while I followed close behind.

“Jotunheim recovery,” he read from one label.

Another.

“Pegasus subdivision.”

Then—

“Phase Two.”

There it was again.

Steve crouched beside a sealed crate and ripped the latch open.

Blue light spilled across both our faces instantly.

Hydra weapons.

Rows of them.

Modernized rifles and heavy artillery powered by Tesseract energy.

For a moment neither of us moved.

Steve looked devastated.

Not shocked.

Not even angry yet.

Just deeply, personally disappointed.

His fingers brushed across the faded Hydra insignia hidden beneath fresh SHIELD inventory tags.

“They kept building them,” he said quietly.

I picked up one of the rifles carefully. The energy humming beneath the metal made my skin crawl immediately.

Same source as the cube.

Same unnatural feeling.

“They improved them,” I corrected softly.

Steve looked sick.

“We fought a war to stop this.”

“I know.”

“We lost Bucky because of people like this.”

The words hit like a punch.

I looked over at him carefully.

Steve rarely talked about Bucky directly unless something really hurt.

He stared down at the weapons like he could still see the ghosts attached to them.

Hydra factories. Burned cities. Train tracks in the snow.

All of it sitting here inside a SHIELD storage bay pretending to be protection instead of fear.

“Tony was right,” Steve muttered bitterly.

“Yeah,” I admitted quietly. “He was.”

Steve let out a humorless laugh. “He’s never letting me live that down.”

“Oh, absolutely not. You handed Tony Stark moral victory ammunition. He’s going to be unbearable.”

That earned a reluctant smile from him.

Small, but real.

Then he looked back at the weapons again and the smile vanished immediately.

---

The lab doors slammed open hard enough to rattle the glass walls.

Steve walked in first with a HYDRA rifle clenched in one hand, his jaw set so tightly I thought he might crack a tooth. I followed right behind him carrying an armful of files we’d pulled straight out of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s secure storage.

Tony looked up from the monitor.

“Uh oh,” he muttered. “That’s the we-found-war-crimes walk.”

Steve dropped the rifle onto the table with a metallic CLANG that made half the room jump.

“PHASE 2 is S.H.I.E.L.D. using the cube to build weapons.”

The room went still.

I dumped the files beside the rifle. Photographs and schematics spilled across the tabletop — Tesseract energy signatures, weapons prototypes, HYDRA designs modernized with S.H.I.E.L.D. clearance tags stamped across them.

“And not small ones,” I said sharply. “These are Tesseract-powered. Entire population centers could disappear with this kind of yield.”

Tony slowly rotated the monitor toward Fury. JARVIS had already decrypted the files.

“What were you lying for?”

Fury exhaled through his nose slowly.

“Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract. That does not mean we’re—”

“Building weapons?” Steve cut in. “Because that’s exactly what it looks like.”

“I was wrong about you,” Steve said, voice hard. “The world really hasn’t changed all that much.”

The doors slid open again behind us.

Thor entered with Natasha beside him, Thor’s eyes flicked toward Steve and me automatically, and for half a second something strange crossed his expression again. Something distant. Familiar.

Then the tension in the room swallowed it whole.

Bruce looked toward Natasha immediately.

“Did you know about this?”

“You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?” Natasha asked carefully.

“I was in Calcutta,” Bruce snapped. “I was pretty well removed.”

I noticed his hands immediately.

Too tense.

Flexing too fast.

The scepter sitting on the workstation nearby pulsed faintly blue.

And I could feel it.

Not the same as the Tesseract. But connected somehow.

The cube felt endless. Vast. Ancient.

The scepter felt sharp. Personal.

Like standing too close to a live wire.

“Nobody else feels that?” I asked quietly.

Tony glanced over. “Feels what?”

“The scepter.”

Thor’s gaze shifted toward me immediately.

I frowned at the glowing stone.

“It’s connected to the cube somehow,” I said slowly. “Not directly. But… related.” I struggled for the words. “Like they’re speaking the same language.”

Bruce looked toward the scepter instinctively. The glow brightened.

Natasha stepped subtly closer to him.

“You didn’t come here because I bat my eyelashes at you,” she said.

Bruce barked out a humorless laugh.

“Yes, and I’m not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy.” He looked toward Fury again. “I’d like to know why S.H.I.E.L.D. is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction.”

“Because of him,” Fury shot back, pointing directly at Thor.

Thor looked genuinely stunned.

“Me?”

“Last year Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town,” Fury said. “We learned we are hopelessly, hilariously outgunned.”

“My people want nothing but peace with your planet.”

“But you’re not the only people out there, are you?” Fury countered immediately. “And you’re not the only threat. The world’s filling up with people who can’t be matched. They can’t be controlled.”

“Like you controlled the cube?” Steve fired back.

Thor stepped forward slightly, voice darkening.

“Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it. It is the signal to all realms that Earth is ready for a higher form of war.”

“A higher form?” Steve echoed.

“We had to come up with something,” Fury snapped.

Tony scoffed. “Nuclear deterrent. Because that always calms everything right down.”

“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?”

“Oh, now we’re doing that?” Tony shot back.

And there it was.

The turn.

The room suddenly felt sharper around the edges.

Voices overlapping.

Tempers rising too quickly.

I looked back toward the scepter.

The blue gem glowed brighter.

Almost feeding on the tension.

“Can we not do this right now?” I snapped. “Because everyone in this room suddenly sounds exactly like Loki wants them to.”

Nobody listened.

Of course they didn’t.

Thor and Fury kept arguing.

Natasha and Bruce started circling each other verbally.

Tony poked at Steve.

Steve pushed back harder.

The pressure in the room kept climbing until it felt physically difficult to breathe.

Thor looked disgusted, “You people speak of control, yet court chaos.”

Bruce laughed once under his breath.

“It’s his M.O., isn’t it?” he muttered. “What are we, a team? No. We’re a chemical mixture that makes chaos.”

Fury stepped toward him carefully.

“You need to step away.”

Tony slung an arm around Steve’s shoulders.

“Why shouldn’t the guy let off a little steam?”

Steve shoved him off immediately.

“You know damn well why. Back off.”

Tony stepped right back into his space.

“Oh, I’m starting to want you to make me.”

I moved between them before Steve could fully square up.

“Enough.”

Neither of them moved.

Which somehow made it worse.

Steve glared over my shoulder at Tony.

“Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?”

“Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Tony.”

Steve pointed at him, “The only thing you fight for is yourself. You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play. To lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.”

“I think I’d just cut the wire.”

Steve gave a short, humorless laugh.

“Always a way out.” His expression hardened. “You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”

That one landed.

Tony’s face changed instantly.

“A hero?” he shot back. “Like you?”

The room went dead quiet.

“You’re a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle.”

The words hit me like a slap.

“Hey,” I snapped immediately. “That’s not true.”

Steve went still behind me.

Not calm.

Still. Dangerously still.

“Put on the suit,” he said coldly. “Let’s go a few rounds.”

Thor laughed once under his breath.

“You people are so petty… and tiny.”

“Oh my God,” I groaned loudly. “Are you two seriously still doing this?”

Tony rubbed a hand over his face while Steve looked ready to swing at him on principle alone.

Then Tony looked at me.

Something sharp flashed behind his eyes.

“You know,” he said coldly, “for someone who disappears on people every few decades, you sure have a lot of opinions.”

Silence.

Absolute silence.

Steve’s head snapped toward Tony instantly.

Natasha looked horrified.

Even Fury blinked.

Thor frowned deeply despite clearly not understanding the history behind it.

I went completely still.

Tony realized it the second the words left his mouth.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Steve barked, stepping around me immediately.

Tony looked away, jaw tight.

Something cold settled in my stomach.

The scepter.

It was getting worse.

The glow had brightened again.

Feeding.

Not controlling us exactly.

Amplifying.

Every insecurity. Every fear. Every bad instinct in the room.

Fury turned toward Natasha.

“Agent Romanoff, would you escort Dr. Banner back to his—”

“Where?” Bruce snapped. “You rented my room.”

“The cell was just in case—”

“In case you needed to kill me. But you can’t.”

The room quieted slightly.

Bruce laughed once without humor.

“I know. I tried.”

That stopped everyone.

“I got low,” Bruce continued quietly. “I didn’t see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth…”

Natasha went completely still.

“And the other guy spit it out.”

The words hit the room like a physical blow.

My chest tightened instantly.

Not pity. Understanding. Concern.

A quiet thought settled heavily into place somewhere in the back of my mind.

Talk to Banner later. If there was a later.

Bruce looked toward Natasha again, agitation building beneath his skin.

“So I moved on. I focused on helping people. I was good until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk.”

The scepter pulsed brighter.

And suddenly the realization slammed into place so hard it made my stomach drop.

“The scepter is messing with us,” I said sharply.

But the argument had already outrun me.

Steve suddenly looked toward Bruce.

“Doctor Banner…”

Bruce froze. Then slowly looked down.

The scepter was in his hand.

Bruce stared at it in horror before immediately setting it back onto the table.

The computer beside Tony beeped loudly. Tony turned instantly toward the screen.

“Got it.”

Bruce exhaled shakily.

“Sorry, kids,” he muttered. “You don’t get to see my little party trick after all.”

Thor stepped forward, “You located the Tesseract?”

“I can get there faster,” Tony said immediately, already moving for the door.

“You’re not going alone,” Steve snapped.

Tony turned back toward him.

“You gonna stop me?”

“Put on the suit. Let’s find out.”

“I’m not afraid to hit an old man.”

“Put on the suit.”

Then Bruce suddenly looked toward the monitor.

And all the color drained from his face.

“Oh my God.”

--- 

The explosion hit like the fist of a god.

One second I was standing beside Steve in the lab, tension crackling between everyone like a live wire, and the next the floor disappeared beneath my feet.

Metal screamed around us.

The world tilted violently.

“BEA!”

Steve’s voice echoed somewhere above me as I fell through smoke and sparks.

Then I hit hard.

Pain exploded through my shoulder.

Debris rained around me while emergency lights flickered overhead.

“Bea!” Steve shouted again from above, panic sharp in his voice.

I looked up through the twisted hole several floors overhead.

“We’re okay!” I yelled back immediately. “Go help!”

There was a split second hesitation.

Of course there was.

Then he disappeared from view.

Because Steve Rogers would always run toward the fire first and worry about himself later.

I shoved a bent piece of metal off my leg and finally took in the room around us.

Natasha was pinned beneath a collapsed beam, jaw tight against the pain.

And a few feet away—

Bruce was on his knees.

Oh no.

His breathing came in ragged gasps, fingers digging into the grated floor hard enough to bend steel.

“Doctor…” Natasha’s voice softened carefully. “Bruce, you gotta fight it. This is what Loki wants.”

I moved instantly toward the beam trapping Natasha and grabbed the edge of it.

It didn’t move.

I strained harder anyway.

Nothing.

“Dammit—”

The lights flickered.

When they came back, Bruce’s eyes were green.

Cold fear curled in my stomach.

“Bruce,” I said carefully, stepping closer despite every instinct screaming not to. “Hey. Look at me.”

He tried.

God, he really tried.

His entire body trembled with the effort of holding himself together.

“I’m trying,” he growled through clenched teeth.

Another explosion rocked the Helicarrier.

Natasha hissed as the beam shifted tighter against her leg.

I looked around frantically before spotting a broken pipe buried beneath rubble. I grabbed it and jammed it under the beam for leverage.

“Nat, on three.”

She nodded tightly.

“One—two—three!”

We shoved upward together.

The beam lifted just enough.

Natasha ripped her leg free and rolled clear as the metal slammed back down.

“Move,” she ordered immediately.

Neither of us took our eyes off Bruce as we backed away slowly.

“Bruce,” I tried again, softer this time. “You’re still here. Focus on my voice.”

For one terrible second, it almost looked like it worked.

He looked directly at me.

Fear. Exhaustion. Shame.

Then his face twisted in agony.

“Run.”

The transformation exploded out of him.

The Hulk roared.

The sound shook the entire room.

Natasha grabbed my arm and we ran.

The Hulk tore through the equipment room behind us like a missile, ripping apart pipes and catwalks like paper. I ducked beneath hanging wires while Natasha slid under a turbine assembly.

“Split!” she yelled.

“No!”

I ignored her and followed anyway.

Splitting up felt like a terrible strategy when the Hulk was involved.

The Hulk smashed through the catwalk overhead. Metal shrieked apart as massive hands reached for us through the smoke.

Natasha fired into a nitrogen pipe.

Freezing vapor burst across Hulk’s face.

It slowed him for maybe half a second.

Then he roared louder.

The corridor narrowed ahead of us.

Heavy footsteps thundered behind us.

Closer.

Natasha turned just in time for the Hulk’s massive hand to slam into both of us.

The impact launched me sideways into the wall hard enough to crack metal. Pain exploded through my ribs as I crumpled beside Natasha.

The Hulk advanced.

Huge.

Primal.

Terrifying.

Natasha shoved herself in front of me despite barely standing.

“Go,” she hissed.

“Not without you.”

The Hulk raised his arm and suddenly Thor crashed into him like a cannonball.

Both of them vanished through the adjoining wall in a deafening explosion of metal.

I stared after them breathlessly while the ship groaned around us.

Natasha slowly pushed herself upright beside me.

“You alright?”

I winced, rolling one shoulder carefully.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Still hate getting thrown into walls though. Never gets easier.”

That almost made her laugh.

Then the intercom erupted in chaos.

“—Engine Three is down—”

“—hostiles onboard—”

“—we’re losing altitude—”

Natasha’s expression sharpened instantly.

“Barton.”

I nodded, “Steve’s on the turbine.”

“Go,” she ordered. “I’ll handle Barton.”

I hesitated for half a second before sprinting for the nearest access corridor.

By the time I reached the turbine platform, gunfire was already echoing across the exposed port side.

Steve crouched behind damaged railing firing at incoming agents while Tony flew circles around the ruined engine in the Iron Man suit.

“Little busy here!” Tony shouted.

“You think?” Steve snapped back.

I slid into cover beside Steve and immediately fired at two advancing hostiles.

Steve glanced over sharply.

“You okay?”

“Hulk threw me into a wall.”

Steve grimaced. “You say that way too casually.”

Another burst of gunfire forced us both back down.

“I gotta get this super-conducting cooling system back online before I can access the rotors!” Tony shouted over comms.

Steve opened the exposed control panel and frowned immediately.

“It seems to run on some form of electricity.”

Tony snorted. “Well, you’re not wrong.”

I leaned over Steve’s shoulder, scanning the circuitry.

“Oh. Okay. No, I see it.”

Steve blinked at me.

“You understand this?”

“A little.”

“A little?”

“Howard liked teaching me things.”

Tony’s helmet tilted toward me.

“Finally. Someone else on this death trap speaks fluent Stark.”

I ignored him, already tracing damaged relays with my fingers.

“The overload’s cascading through the secondary conductors,” I said quickly. “If you reroute through the auxiliary relays, you might stabilize the rotation long enough to restart propulsion.”

Tony paused, “Why werent you here earlier?”

Tony started rattling off instructions while I translated them into something Steve could actually work with.

“Okay, that relay there—no, your other left—”

“I know my lefts!”

“You punched the console five seconds ago!”

“It was in my way!”

More hostiles stormed onto the platform firing wildly.

Steve and I fired back together automatically.

Perfect sync.

Like always.

Then Steve stepped backward onto unstable metal.

The railing snapped beneath him.

“STEVE!”

He dropped instantly, barely catching a loose cable one-handed.

My breath caught violently in my chest.

For one horrible flashing second—

Snow.

A train.

Bucky falling into endless white sky.

No.

Not again.

“Hold on!” I screamed, dropping beside the ledge and grabbing Steve’s wrist with both hands.

Steve looked up at me immediately.

“I got it—”

“No you don’t!”

Gunfire sparked around us.

“Cap!” Tony shouted. “I need that lever now!”

I planted one boot against the platform and hauled Steve upward with everything I had.

Steve grabbed the railing.

Together we dragged him back onto solid ground.

Neither of us acknowledged how close that had been.

Steve because he compartmentalized terror like breathing.

Me because if I thought about it for more than two seconds, I might actually fall apart.

Then Tony shouted again.

“NOW WOULD BE GREAT!”

Steve lunged for the red lever while I covered him, firing at advancing agents.

Steve slammed the lever down.

The turbine vents burst open.

Tony shot free from the spinning rotors, armor shredded and smoking as he crashed hard onto the platform beside us.

For one second—

Silence.

Then all three of us exhaled at once.

---

The briefing room was silent when we finally returned.

Not quiet.

Silent.

The kind that settles after disaster, when everyone is too exhausted to process what just happened.

I sat beside Steve at the table, an ice pack pressed against my shoulder where the Hulk had thrown me into the wall. Every pulse of pain reminded me I was lucky the arm still moved at all.

Across from us, Tony leaned against the table instead of sitting, arms braced beside him, helmet discarded somewhere along the way. Fury stood at the head of the room looking older than he had hours ago.

No one spoke.

No one really looked at each other either.

Then Fury reached into his coat.

“These were in Phil Coulson’s jacket,” he said quietly.

He tossed something onto the table.

Trading cards.

Captain America trading cards.

Steve froze beside me.

The cards slid across the metal tabletop and stopped near my hand first.

Blood stained the edges.

For a second I couldn’t move.

Then slowly, carefully, I picked one up.

The corners were bent from being handled too much. Coulson probably carried them around constantly, waiting for the right moment to ask Steve to sign them without sounding too excited about it.

My throat tightened painfully.

Steve took the stack from me like they might break apart in his hands.

“Guess he never did get you to sign them,” Fury said.

Steve stared down at them silently.

The room stayed heavy with grief.

Fury finally continued.

“We’re dead in the air up here. Our communications, location of the cube, Banner, Thor.” His jaw tightened. “I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye. Maybe I had that coming.”

Tony looked away at that.

I stayed quiet.

Because underneath the exhaustion and pain and grief, my brain still wouldn’t stop working.

It never stopped working.

Fury admitted Phase Two.

Admitted the weapons.

Admitted he’d been trying to build something stronger because the world was changing faster than SHIELD could control.

And now Coulson was dead.

The irony sat bitter in my stomach.

“There was an idea,” Fury continued. “Stark and Bea knows this. Called the Avengers Initiative.”

Tony’s face hardened slightly at the name.

“The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people. See if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes.”

Tony gets up and walks off. The door slid shut behind Tony with a soft hiss.

“Well, it's an old-fashioned notion,” Nick says, looking at Steve and I. 

I adjusted the ice pack against my shoulder with a wince, feeling the bruise underneath throbbing harder now that the adrenaline was gone. Across from me, Steve still stared at the trading cards in his hands like he couldn’t quite process them.

Blood stained the edges.

Coulson’s blood.

My stomach twisted.

Steve finally set the cards down carefully, almost reverently, but I could see the guilt sitting heavy on his face already. Steve carried responsibility like it was stitched into his skin.

I reached over quietly and straightened the top card where it sat crooked on the table.

None of us spoke.

Fury lingered another second before turning toward the door himself.

The room fell silent again except for the low hum of the Helicarrier engines.

Or what was left of them.

Steve leaned forward, elbows on his knees, rubbing a hand over his face.

“We should’ve seen it sooner.”

I stared at the blood still drying along the edge of Coulson’s trading cards.

Maybe we should have.

Maybe none of us were ever as in control as we thought we were.

Instead, I reached for the tablet still sitting abandoned near the center of the table and pulled up the surveillance footage from Loki’s containment cell.

Steve glanced at me.

“What are you doing?”

“Thinking.”

The video flickered to life.

Loki paced inside the glass cell, hands folded neatly behind his back, calm as ever even in captivity.

I watched him carefully.

Not his words.

Him.

People always focused on what Loki said. They missed what he avoided saying.

The pauses.

The expressions.

The reactions he couldn’t fully control.

Beside me, Steve leaned back tiredly. “You’re profiling him.”

“Yes.”

“He’s a literal god.”

I paused the footage without looking away from the screen.

“No,” I said quietly. “He wants everyone to think he is.”

I replayed the scene between him and Thor again.

Thor standing outside the cell.

Loki pretending not to care.

Then—

“Your brother,” Thor had said.

Nothing.

Mocking smile. Deflection.

Then Thor mentioned home.

Their father.

Still nothing.

But when Thor spoke about their sister—

There.

Tiny.

Barely noticeable.

Loki hesitated.

Not physically at first.

Emotionally.

His expression softened for less than a second before he buried it again beneath sarcasm.

But it was there.

I rewound it again.

Steve frowned slightly. “What is it?”

“Thor mentioned a sister.”

“So?”

“So Loki didn’t react to Odin. Or Asgard. Or power.” I tapped the screen lightly. “But he reacted to her.”

Steve watched the footage more carefully this time.

“He paused.”

“Yeah.”

Not fear.

Not anger.

Something worse.

Grief.

My chest tightened unexpectedly.

Because I recognized that look.

Someone carrying around an open wound so long they forgot it was bleeding.

Loki didn’t want power because he enjoyed ruling.

He wanted it because he thought it would finally make him worthy of being loved.

I hated that I understood it.

“He’s lonely,” I realized quietly.

Steve looked at me strangely, “He’s homicidal.”

“Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”

I replayed the footage again, studying every movement.

Loki isolated people deliberately. Manipulated insecurities. Pressed on fractures until teams broke apart from the inside. He understood people frighteningly well.

Which meant he understood himself too.

And people who understood themselves usually had very specific wounds.

I leaned back slowly, ignoring the protest from my shoulder.

“He needs an audience,” I murmured. ““Everything he does is performative. Grand entrances. Speeches. The dramatics.” I glanced toward Steve briefly, “He wants people watching him.”

“Because he’s narcissistic?”

“Because he’s desperate.”

Steve stayed quiet at that.

I scrubbed backward through the footage again.

Another thing.

Loki never actually looked comfortable holding the scepter.

Not once.

Even when he used it.

My connection to the Tesseract stirred unpleasantly at the memory of standing near it earlier in the lab. The energy had felt familiar but wrong. Related in the way lightning and fire were related.

Same family. Different nature.

The scepter amplified things.

Fear. Anger. Resentment.

It pushed gently enough that people mistook the emotions for their own.

Which meant the fighting in the lab—

I sat up straighter suddenly.

“Steve.”

He looked over immediately.

“I don’t think all of that was us.”

His brows furrowed.

“The argument?”

“The scepter.” I rubbed my thumb absently against the edge of the tablet. “When I got near it earlier, it felt… connected to the cube somehow. Not the same, but close enough.” I searched for the right words. “Like cousins.”

“That’s your scientific explanation?”

“I’m working with alien magic rocks, Steve. You’re getting metaphors.”

Despite everything, the corner of his mouth twitched faintly.

Small. Exhausted. But there.

Then his expression sobered again.

“You think Loki planned all of this.”

I looked back at the frozen image of Loki smiling calmly through the glass.

“Yes,” I said quietly, “I think we’re still playing exactly where he wants us.”

---

I followed Steve down to the detention level mostly because I knew if he went alone, he and Tony were going to end up arguing again.

The Helicarrier still groaned around us, damaged metal creaking beneath our feet. Smoke lingered faintly in the air.

Everything felt bruised.

Including the three of us.

Tony stood in front of the empty glass cell with his hands braced against the railing, staring at the wreckage Loki left behind.

For once, he had nothing to say.

Steve slowed beside him.

“Was he married?”

Tony huffed quietly through his nose. “No. There was a… cellist, I think.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said honestly. “He seemed like a good man.”

Tony finally looked over his shoulder.

“He was an idiot.”

I frowned immediately.

Steve crossed his arms. “Why? For believing?”

“For taking on Loki alone.”

There it was again.

Guilt.

Tony wore it differently than Steve did. Steve carried guilt inward, letting it settle heavy in his chest. Tony pushed it outward until it became irritation and sarcasm and anger.

“He was doing his job,” Steve said.

“He was out of his league,” Tony snapped. “He should have waited. He should have—”

“Sometimes there isn’t a way out, Tony.”

“Yeah?” Tony shot back quietly. “How’d that work out?”

The words echoed harshly in the empty corridor.

I saw the second Tony regretted it.

Steve stiffened but didn’t bite back.

Instead he asked quietly, “Is this the first time you’ve lost a soldier?”

Tony barked a humorless laugh.

“We are not soldiers.” He pointed between himself and the room. “I am not marching to Fury’s fife.”

“Neither am I,” Steve shot back. “He’s got the same blood on his hands as Loki does. Right now we put that aside and get this done.”

I stepped in before either of them could spiral again.

“Enough.”

Both looked at me.

Tony dragged a hand down his face tiredly while Steve exhaled slowly through his nose.

Steve continued more carefully this time. “Loki needs a power source. If we can figure out where he’s going—”

Tony wasn’t listening anymore.

He stared at the blood still smeared against the wall from Coulson’s death.

“He made it personal.”

“That’s not the point,” Steve argued.

“That is the point.” Tony pointed sharply. “That’s Loki’s point.”

And suddenly I understood where Tony’s brain was going.

I stepped closer. “He doesn’t just want victory.”

Tony looked at me instantly, catching on.

“Exactly.”

“He wants attention,” I continued. “An audience.”

Steve frowned slightly. “To tear us apart.”

“No,” Tony and I said together.

We looked at each other.

Tony pointed at me. “See? She gets it.”

I rolled my eyes a little. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

Tony ignored that entirely, pacing now as his thoughts accelerated. “Loki attacks emotionally first. He isolates people. Makes them unstable. Makes them reactive.”

“He needs spectacle,” I added, thinking back to Stuttgart. “Public fear. Public submission.”

“He wants people watching him kneel the world,” Tony said.

Steve’s expression shifted slowly as he followed the logic. “That’s why he was in Stuttgart.”

“Preview performance,” Tony agreed. “Opening act.”

“He’s building toward something bigger,” I said.

Tony snapped his fingers at me. “Exactly. Full-tilt diva behavior.”

Despite everything, I snorted softly.

Tony kept going, energy finally returning to him as he worked the problem instead of drowning in grief.

“He wants flowers, parades, worship—”

“A monument,” I said suddenly.

Tony froze. Our eyes met.

“Son of a bitch.”

“Stark Tower,” I said immediately.

“The arc reactor.”

“Unlimited power source.”

Steve looked between us. “You think Selvig’s there?”

“He has to be,” Tony said, already moving. “Loki needs enough energy to stabilize the portal.”

“And he’d absolutely choose somewhere symbolic,” I added. “Big skyline. Center of attention.”

“His name in the sky,” Tony muttered darkly.

Steve was already turning toward the exit. “Then we move now.”

---

---

Sanctuary, 2012

Darkness stretched endlessly around us, interrupted only by distant stars and the cold blue pulse of Sanctuary’s engines. Beneath the metal groaning of the ship, I could feel the Chitauri below shifting in formation—thousands of minds moving toward the same violent intent.

I stood near the edge of the platform, arms folded behind my back, watching them gather in formation.

Thousands upon thousands of them. An army engineered to consume worlds.

The floor beneath my boots trembled as entire battalions shifted at once. The sound rolled upward through the ship like distant thunder.

Beside me, Loki remained perfectly still.

Which usually meant his thoughts had become dangerous.

“The Tesseract has awakened,” the Other said from somewhere behind us, his warped voice echoing through the chamber. “It is on a little world. A human world.”

I kept my eyes forward.

“The humans would wield its power…”

The Other moved around us slowly, robes dragging across the metal floor. Even after years working beneath Thanos, I still hated the sound. It reminded me too much of graves being dug.

“But our ally knows its workings as they never will.”

A Chitauri servant approached carrying the scepter carefully in both hands. Blue light pulsed from the Mind Stone at its center, reflecting across Loki’s armor.

I felt it immediately.

The whispers.

Not words exactly. Thoughts. Pressure. Like a thousand voices speaking just beyond understanding. Not language but in intention.

Most people touched the Infinity Stone energy and saw power.

I heard noise.

My jaw tightened instinctively.

Loki noticed.

His gaze flicked toward me for half a second before returning to the weapon. “Still unpleasant?”

“That depends,” I muttered. “Do you enjoy migraines?”

His mouth twitched faintly.

The servant offered him the scepter. Loki wrapped elegant fingers around the handle and the glow sharpened instantly, illuminating the sharp lines of his face.

For a moment, the chamber went silent.

Then the ground shook.

Below us, tens of thousands of Chitauri slammed their weapons against the floor in unison, the sound deafening enough to rattle the walls.

The Other spread his arms wide toward the army beneath us.

“Our force, our Chitauri, will follow.”

The blue glow from the scepter flickered across Loki’s face. Across mine.

“The world will be his,” the Other continued. “The universe yours.”

The pause afterward lingered too long.

“And the humans,” he finished softly, “what can they do but burn?”

Silence settled over the platform.

I should have felt victorious.

Instead, all I could think about was how many worlds must have sounded exactly like this before they died.

Earth spun in the distance beyond the viewing glass, small and painfully blue against the endless dark. Fragile looking. Human.

Loki stepped beside me, the scepter spinning once lazily through his fingers before he rested it against the floor.

“You disapprove,” he said lightly.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.”

I glanced sideways at him. “Careful. You almost sound like you understand people.”

“That would be horrifying.”

Despite myself, I snorted quietly.

Loki looked back toward Earth again, expression unreadable. “You’ve gone quiet.”

“So have you.”

“That is because I am planning a conquest.”

“I’m considering contingency plans.”

“You mean escape routes.”

“Those too.”

That earned me an actual laugh under his breath.

Small. Brief. Gone almost immediately.

The Other watched us both carefully from the shadows. Nothing escaped him. Not the familiarity between us. Not the ease that had formed over months of fighting side by side.

Not friendship. Never that.

But trust on a battlefield was sometimes more dangerous.

“You fear them,” the Other observed suddenly.

The chamber fell still.

Loki’s posture changed almost imperceptibly beside me. “I fear no mortal.”

The Other’s gaze shifted toward me instead.

I met it without flinching.

But I said nothing.

Because fear was not the same as doubt.

And deep down, beneath the armor and knives and years of surviving under Thanos—

Somewhere along the way, conquest had stopped feeling inevitable.

---

???, ???

The first thing I felt was cold.

Not air. Not temperature.

Space.

It wrapped around me the second the portal opened, vast and endless and wrong in a way human language still couldn’t properly describe. My stomach lurched as blue energy tore across the laboratory, the force of it rattling steel beams overhead.

Then my feet hit solid ground.

Hard.

The first thing I noticed was the smell.

Burnt metal. Ozone. Electricity biting at the back of my throat.

The second thing I noticed was the cube.

The Tesseract sat suspended in the middle of the room like some kind of terrible star, glowing brighter than I had ever seen it before. Blue light pulsed through the massive machine surrounding it, throwing strange shadows across polished floors and steel walls.

My knees nearly buckled as the teleportation sickness hit me again, sharp and sudden. I caught myself against a railing tucked along the side of the chamber, hidden partially behind a stack of equipment crates. No one looked my way. No one even noticed me appear.

Good.

I stayed low immediately.

The room around me looked nothing like the SSR labs I knew. Cleaner. Brighter. Stranger. The glass panels alone probably cost more than Howard’s first workshop. Men and women rushed around in dark tactical uniforms with sleek weapons strapped to their bodies. Monitors glowed across every surface.

And the clothes.

God, the clothes.

The uniforms had gotten sleeker since the forties. Less military. More corporate intimidation.

I pressed myself farther into the shadows and tried to think.

Okay. Not dead.

Definitely not 1945.

Not 1995 either.

The Tesseract had thrown me somewhere else. Again.

Fantastic.

A man in a long black coat strode into the center of the chamber, barking orders. Another scientist stood nearby looking increasingly panicked as the cube crackled violently.

“The Tesseract is misbehaving,” the scientist muttered.

I almost snorted despite myself. Some things apparently never changed.

The machine began to shake harder. Blue rings of energy burst outward.

Every instinct in my body screamed at me to move.

The beam hit the platform. The portal opened. And then the room exploded into chaos.

A gust of freezing wind tore through the chamber as darkness split open in the center of the platform. Not darkness exactly—space. Endless stars stretched beyond the opening like the universe itself had been ripped apart.

Then someone stepped through.

Tall. Lean. Armored.

The man rose slowly from one knee, smoke curling from dark green leather and gold armor. A staff gleamed in his hand, fitted with a glowing blue stone.

The room went dead silent.

He lifted his head.

Blue eyes. Sharp features. Calm in a way that immediately made me uneasy.

Not because he looked angry.

Because he looked completely certain.

“Sir, please put down the spear,” the man in the trench coat ordered.

The stranger answered by blasting half the room apart.

Gunfire erupted instantly.

I ducked lower behind the crates as agents opened fire, bullets ricocheting uselessly off the intruder. He moved fast—faster than any normal man should have been able to. Elegant almost. Like fighting was choreography to him instead of survival.

Knives flashed in his hands. Bodies hit the floor. The blue glow of the staff lit the room in violent bursts.

Gods.

Red Skull had been right.

The realization landed cold and heavy in my stomach.

Not metaphorical gods. Not propaganda or delusions or ancient myths twisted into HYDRA fantasy.

Real ones.

A blond agent dropped from the upper catwalk, weapon raised, only for the stranger to grab his wrist effortlessly.

“You have heart,” he said softly.

The tip of the staff pressed against the man’s chest.

His eyes turned black.

I stared.

Mind control.

Well. That was deeply horrifying.

The possessed agent straightened immediately and stepped beside him like a loyal soldier.

The stranger continued through the room, touching more agents with the staff. One after another fell under whatever influence the glowing stone carried.

I stayed perfectly still.

Observe first. Survive second. Panic later.

That had always been my rule.

The trench coat man—Fury, someone had called him—grabbed the Tesseract case and slowly backed away.

“Please don’t,” the intruder said smoothly. “I still need that.”

“This doesn’t have to get any messier,” Fury replied.

The man actually smiled at that.

“Of course it does. I’ve come too far for anything else.” He spread his arms slightly. “I am Loki of Asgard. And I am burdened with glorious purpose.”

Asgard.

Right.

Sure.

Apparently gods were real.

I did not care for that development.

The scientist beside him blinked rapidly. “Loki? Brother of Thor?”

Thor.

Wonderful. There were multiple of them.

“We have no quarrel with your people,” Fury said carefully.

Loki tilted his head. “An ant has no quarrel with a boot.”

I grimaced slightly from my hiding spot.

Well. Someone certainly enjoyed hearing himself talk.

The room trembled again overhead. Dust rained from the ceiling as the portal destabilized.

One of the mind-controlled agents stepped forward immediately. “Sir, Director Fury is stalling. This place is about to blow.”

Efficient. Cold. Completely different from the man’s earlier posture.

The staff really did rewrite people.

Loki looked almost amused by the destruction building around them.

“Well then.”

The possessed archer raised his gun and shot Fury clean through the shoulder.

I moved before I fully thought it through.

The second Loki and his little parade started toward the exit with the Tesseract, I broke from cover and sprinted toward Fury.

The trench coat man was already trying to push himself upright despite the blood soaking his jacket.

Stubborn. I respected that.

I slid beside him and grabbed under his arm before he could reach for the wall.

“Easy,” I muttered automatically, hands pressing against his wound.

His gun snapped toward me instantly.

Fast reflexes. Good training.

His eye narrowed sharply. “Who the hell are you?”

Reasonable question. I was still dressed for bed.

“Currently?” I hauled him upright as another explosion rattled the room. “Someone trying to stop you from bleeding out on the floor.”

His gaze flicked rapidly over me. My clothes. My face. 

Recognition hit almost immediately after confusion.

Not recognition exactly. More like disbelief.

Another violent tremor cut through the facility. The ceiling cracked overhead.

Fury grabbed my wrist and started dragging me toward the exit before I could ask anything else.

“No time,” he barked. “Run first. Existential crisis later.”

Under the circumstances, I couldn’t argue with that.

I followed Fury because, at that particular moment, he seemed like the safest option in a rapidly collapsing underground science bunker full of mind-controlled agents and alien gods.

The entire facility groaned around us as we pushed into a long concrete corridor. Red emergency lights flashed overhead while alarms screamed through the bunker.

“Move!” Fury barked at a passing group of agents.

I kept pace beside him automatically despite the lingering ache in my chest from the teleportation and the ill-fitting slippers I was given back in 1995. My body still felt wrong. Loose around the edges somehow. Like reality kept trying to place me somewhere permanent and failing. 

The ground shook violently beneath us. Dust rained from the ceiling.

Somewhere behind us, something exploded.

“Well,” I muttered breathlessly, “this feels familiar.”

Fury shot me a sharp look as we turned another corner. “Are you always this calm during an apocalypse?”

“No,” I answered honestly. “Usually there’s more paperwork first.”

That almost got a smile out of him. Almost.

We burst out into the open desert air just as a convoy of black vehicles tore from the tunnel entrance ahead of us. I immediately spotted Loki standing in the back of one truck like some kind of theatrical nightmare, coat whipping dramatically in the wind while he blasted pursuing vehicles apart with the glowing staff.

Loki, apparently, preferred spectacle.

I stared for half a second too long at the sheer scale of the facility around us.

Massive concrete structures stretched across the desert landscape under floodlights, larger than anything built during my time. Helicopters roared overhead. Armored vehicles screamed across the sand.

Even the bunker doors looked expensive.

Howard would’ve tried to improve half the systems before breakfast.

The tunnel behind us suddenly collapsed inward with a deafening roar.

A shockwave burst across the desert.

The ground trembled so hard I nearly lost my footing.

Fury grabbed my arm before I could fall. “Come on!”

We sprinted toward a helicopter as flames erupted from the tunnel entrance behind us. Agents swarmed everywhere, shouting over radios while debris rained from the collapsing structure.

The helicopter barely lifted before half the platform gave way beneath it.

I grabbed onto the interior railing as we shot upward into the night sky.

From above, I watched the entire facility implode into itself in a violent bloom of blue light.

My stomach dropped.

The Tesseract.

Even from miles away, I could feel it.

Not physically exactly.

More like pressure behind my eyes. A pull deep in my chest. The same strange sensation I’d felt every time it had dragged me through space and time.

I turned sharply toward the convoy speeding through the desert.

“There,” I said immediately.

Fury looked over. “What?”

“The cube.” I pointed toward the fleeing trucks. “I can feel where it is.”

That got his full attention.

“You can track it?”

“I can try.”

Good enough apparently.

The pilot banked hard toward the convoy.

Below us, Loki looked up slowly as the helicopter descended overhead. Even at a distance, I could feel how furious he was.

Fury slid the helicopter door open and immediately started firing downward at the trucks below.

Fury fired like he intended to win through sheer stubbornness alone.

There was something almost inspirational about watching a middle-aged man with a gun decide to personally fistfight an alien invasion.

I grabbed a rifle from the rack near the door and leaned out beside him.

“You know,” I shouted over the roar of the wind, “I only got here twenty minutes ago!”

“Bad timing,” Fury answered.

“No kidding!”

I fired toward the truck tires.

One shot hit metal.

Another shattered a windshield.

Below us, Loki raised the scepter.

“Oh, that feels ominous—”

Blue energy exploded upward.

The helicopter burst into flames.

The pilot shouted something deeply unprofessional as the aircraft spiraled sideways.

“Jump!” Fury yelled.

I didn’t hesitate.

Training took over instantly.

I hit the sand hard beside Fury as the helicopter crashed behind us in a violent fireball. Heat rolled across the desert at our backs while debris scattered through the air. My clothing did little to protect my body as I rolled on the ground. 

I pushed myself upright with a groan. Deep scratches and patches of skin started bleeding. 

“Well,” I coughed, brushing sand from my legs, “that could’ve gone better.”

Fury was already back on his feet, still firing at the retreating convoy even as it disappeared into the distance.

Loki stood in the back of the truck watching us vanish behind them, his expression calm again. Almost amused.

Then they were gone.

The desert suddenly fell quiet except for the crackle of burning wreckage.

Fury lowered the gun slowly.

A voice crackled through his radio. “Director Fury, do you copy?”

“The Tesseract is with the hostile force,” Fury answered immediately. “I have men down. Hill?”

Static answered before another voice came through.

“A lot of men still under. Don’t know how many survivors.”

Fury’s jaw tightened.

“Sound the general call. I want every living soul not working rescue looking for that briefcase.”

Another pause.

“This is a Level Seven. As of right now, we are at war.”

I closed my eyes briefly and pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Not again,” I muttered.

Fury glanced sideways at me.

“You say that like you’ve done this before.”

I laughed once under my breath. Tired. Hollow.

“It’s starting to feel like it’s all I’ve been doing lately.” 

For a moment, neither of us spoke. The desert wind howled around the burning wreckage while the reality of everything settled heavier into place.

Howard was dead.

Bucky is dead.

Steve is gone. 

Peggy was old.

Tony—

I shoved the thought away before it could finish forming.

And now there were gods stealing powered cubes from secret military bunkers.

Wonderful.

Fury finally turned fully toward me, studying me carefully in the firelight.

“You got a name?”

I hesitated.

There probably wasn’t much point hiding it anymore.

“Beatrice Rogers,” I said quietly. “Most people call me Bea.”

His expression shifted instantly at the last name.

Not shock exactly.

Recognition.

Calculation.

“…Rogers,” he repeated carefully.

“Unfortunately.”

One corner of his mouth twitched upward.

“Well, Agent Rogers,” he said, gesturing toward the waiting rescue vehicles arriving in the distance, “ Welcome to 2012. It looks like we can use your help.”

---

Helicarrier?, 2012

The helicarrier was absurd.

That was my first official conclusion after stepping onboard.

Not terrifying. Not revolutionary. Not even impossible somehow, despite the fact that I was currently standing inside a flying aircraft carrier hidden in the clouds.

Just absurd.

Howard would have proposed something exactly like it with the confidence of a man who thought gravity was more of a suggestion than a law.

I was given a change of clothes once we got out of the desert and onto the helicarrier . I finally had a chance to shower and take care of any injuries from the past week of being teleported around and fighting. The clothes feel weird, but at least im not in pajamas anymore. 

“Bucky would’ve loved this,” I muttered under my breath as I stared through the massive glass windows overlooking the clouds below. 

Agent Phil Coulson stood beside me holding a tablet against his chest, looking entirely too calm for someone escorting a time-displaced SSR agent through a floating military fortress.

I liked him immediately. There was something comforting about how normal he seemed compared to everything else happening around me.

“Well,” I sighed, “It can't get any weirder than this.”

Coulson smiled faintly. “Director Fury asked me to bring you up to speed.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It is a little.”

Turns out “a little” meant several straight hours of briefings, archived footage, classified reports, and what Coulson called “necessary cultural context.”

Which apparently included something called Star Wars.

And the internet.

The internet alone nearly killed me.

“You’re telling me,” I said slowly, staring at the glowing screen in front of me, “people voluntarily put personal information into a machine everyone can access?”

Coulson nodded.

“Why?”

“…That’s still being debated.”

Fair enough.

Some things, however, were easier to absorb than others.

SHIELD replacing the SSR. The Cold War. Space exploration. Advanced weapons.

Other things hit harder.

Peggy Carter helping build SHIELD from the ground up.

Howard spending decades searching for Steve.

Searching for me.

Howard dying before he ever got answers.

That one still sat like glass in my chest.

Fury had noticed quickly whenever conversations drifted too close to Steve.

Every single time, he redirected.

Subtle at first.

Then intentionally.

A different file. A different mission. A different subject entirely.

At first I thought it was suspicious. Then I realized what he was doing.

Keeping me functional.

Not cruelly. Strategically.

Because if I let myself fully think about Steve crashing into the ice alone while believing he had just watched me disappear forever— I would stop functioning too.

So instead, Fury handed me work.

And Coulson handed me history.

“Peggy kept your clearance active,” Coulson explained later as we walked through one of the carrier hallways. “Legally speaking, you’re still considered an SSR operative transferred into SHIELD.”

I blinked. “After seventy years?”

“She never closed your file.”

That stopped me cold.

Coulson slowed slightly beside me.

“She listed you as missing in action,” he continued gently. “Not deceased.”

For a moment I couldn’t speak.

That sounded exactly like Peggy. Stubborn until the bitter end.

I swallowed hard and kept walking, “She really thought I’d come back?”

Coulson looked at me carefully. “I think Agent Carter planned for every possibility.”

God. I missed her already.

The psych evaluation came next. Honestly, I’d expected worse.

Instead of some hostile interrogation, SHIELD’s psychological team mostly seemed concerned with whether I understood reality, knew what year it was, and intended to murder anyone with advanced weaponry.

Reasonable standards.

Afterward, Fury authorized full access to the Avengers Initiative files.

That was how I learned the world had apparently started collecting super-powered disasters like trading cards.

Dr. Bruce Banner. Gamma radiation accident. Turns into giant rage monster. Wonderful.

Thor. Actual Norse god. Brother of Loki. Still not over that one.

Tony Stark. Well. That one I already knew. Unfortunately, he went through some stuff after I disappeared. I made a note to myself to reach out once I get the chance to.

And Natasha Romanoff.

That file caught my attention immediately.

Assassin. Spy. Psychological warfare specialist. Exceptionally dangerous.

I was halfway through her assessment file when I heard Coulson make a phone call.

I kept reading while he walked a few steps away.

At first, I only caught pieces of the conversation.

I looked up just in time to hear a woman’s irritated voice say:

“Are you kidding? I’m working.”

Coulson pinched the bridge of his nose. “This takes precedence.”

I blinked slowly. Coulson looked deeply tired.

The woman came back onto the line sounding completely unbothered. “Look, you can’t pull me out of this right now.”

“Natasha,” Coulson said firmly, “Barton's been compromised.”

Silence.

Then calmly:

“Let me put you on hold.”

I heard fighting immediately afterward.

Violent fighting.

Not sloppy either. Efficient. Measured.

Someone hit the floor hard enough that even I winced sympathetically.

I leaned toward Coulson slightly. “I like her already.”

To my surprise, he laughed, “I had a feeling you might.”

A few moments later Natasha’s voice returned to the line entirely composed.

“Where’s Barton now?”

“We don’t know.”

“But he’s alive.”

“We think so.”

I exchanged a look with Coulson. Definitely liked her.

After the call ended, he slipped the phone back into his pocket.

“She’s one of our best agents,” he explained.

“She sounds terrifying.”

“That too.”

We resumed walking through the carrier.

I glanced down again at the Avengers files in my hands.

A billionaire engineer in a flying metal suit.

A god with family issues.

A spy who conducted interrogations while tied to chairs.

A scientist with anger management problems.

And somewhere out there, Loki.

The man with the glowing staff. The god who could control minds. The man who stole the Tesseract.

The beginning of another war.

I rubbed a hand over my face slowly.

“You know,” I muttered, “I was having a perfectly nice evening with Tony Stark before all this happened.”

Coulson looked mildly amused. “That sounds dangerous in its own way.”

“You have no idea.”

---

Brooklyn, 2012

The gym smelled exactly the same.

Old leather. Sweat soaked into worn canvas. Metal rusting beneath too many hands and too many years. The second we stepped through the doors, I knew where we were before Fury even said a word.

Bucky’s gym.

We used to spend hours here before Bucky’s deployment. Sparring. Talking. Listening to Bucky complain while Steve patched up bruised knuckles afterward.

Before everything fell apart.

My chest tightened painfully.

The walls had changed. The city outside had changed. Hell, the entire world had changed. But this place still carried echoes of him. I could almost hear his laugh bouncing off the walls, see him leaning against the ropes with bruised knuckles and that stupid crooked grin while Steve patched him up afterward.

For a moment, I couldn’t move.

Fury noticed.

“You alright, Agent Rogers?”

I swallowed hard and nodded once. “Yeah.” My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. “Just… memories.”

He studied me for a second but didn’t push.

Somewhere deeper in the gym, rhythmic pounding echoed through the empty space.

And then I saw him.

Steve.

He was in the middle of the room, fists wrapped, shoulders tense, hitting a punching bag like it had personally ruined his life. Each strike echoed through me more than the last.

For a second I just stood there.

Because my brain refused to accept it.

It wasn’t possible.

Not after the plane. Not after the ice. Not after I started thinking of him in the past tense.

My chest tightened so hard it hurt to breathe.

Steve hit the bag again, harder this time, and I felt something inside me crack open.

I took a step forward before I could think better of it.

Then another.

And suddenly I wasn’t in control anymore.

“Stevie?”

It came out broken. Barely more than air.

Steve froze instantly.

Not slowed down. Not confused. Frozen.

Like the world had stopped around him.

Slowly, like it physically hurt him to turn, he looked over his shoulder.

At me.

For a second, nothing happened.

Just silence.

Then his face went completely still.

“No,” he whispered.

A beat.

His voice cracked on the next word. “Bea…?”

And that was it.

Steve crossed the room so fast I barely saw him move before his arms wrapped around me hard enough to lift me clean off the ground. 

And suddenly I couldn’t breathe around the relief of it.

“Oh my God,” I whispered into his shoulder. “You’re here. You’re actually here.”

His hands shook against my back. “I thought you were gone. I thought I lost you too.”

“I thought I lost you first,” I said, voice breaking halfway through.

That did something to him.

His grip tightened like he was afraid I’d vanish mid-sentence. It felt like if we separated even an inch, the universe might decide to correct itself and take him away again. His arms were still locked around me, tight enough that I could feel every sharp breath he took trying to steady himself.

I pressed my forehead briefly against his shoulder, just to confirm he was solid.

Real. Here. Alive.

“Bea…” he said again, quieter this time, like he was still afraid saying my name too loudly would make me vanish. “How…?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, voice rough. “I was in the 90s— I was with Tony Stark, Steve, I swear I was just— and then I was here.”

That made him pull back slightly, just enough to look at me properly.

“Tony Stark?” he echoed, confused.

“Long story,” I muttered. “He’s…he’s a whole thing.”

That earned the smallest, disbelieving exhale from him, almost a laugh.

Steve finally pulled back enough to look at me properly, his hands still fixed on my shoulders.

“You’re real,” he said again, quieter this time.

I nodded fast. “I’m real. I’m here.”

His jaw tightened, eyes shining in a way I wasn’t used to seeing on him. His eyes kept scanning my face like he was trying to memorize every detail in case I disappeared again mid-sentence. 

“I thought you died on that plane,” he said.

I swallowed hard. “I thought you froze in the Arctic and never came back.”

Steve let out a shaky breath, forehead almost touching mine for a second like he couldn’t decide if he wanted distance or not.

“I looked for you,” he said.

That hit harder than anything else.

Because I knew what that meant.

Steve Rogers looking for you meant he never stopped.

“I know,” I repeated, softer.

Behind us, Fury cleared his throat loudly.

Neither of us let go.

Finally, Fury sighed. “I hate to interrupt the family reunion, but the world is potentially ending.”

I sniffed hard and wiped at my face. “You have impeccable timing.”

Steve actually smiled a little at that.

Fury stepped forward and handed Steve the file. “We’ve got a hostile force using the Tesseract. Alien hostile force.”

Steve looked down at the folder before glancing toward me instinctively.

I nodded once.

“We’re already in this mess anyway,” I muttered.

Steve exhaled slowly before taking the file.

“Who took it from you?”

“He’s called Loki,” Fury explained. “Not from around here. There’s a lot we’ll need to bring you up to speed on. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know.”

Steve let out a short, humorless breath, almost a laugh that never quite forms.

“At this point,” he says, setting the file down like it weighs more than it should, “I doubt anything would surprise me.”

Fury’s eye lingers on him for a second too long.

“Ten bucks says you’re wrong.”

Steve finally looks up at him.

“Oh, you have no idea,” I muttered under my breath.

Steve looked sideways at me. “You know him?”

“Not personally. He stabbed a lot of people though, so first impression wasn’t great.”

Fury raised an eyebrow. “That’s the report you’re going with?”

“He also talked like a Shakespeare play while blowing up a government facility.”

“That’s more accurate.”

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was asleep for seventy years.”

“And I skipped around time like a malfunctioning radio,” I said. “We’re both having a rough week.”

To my surprise, Steve huffed a quiet laugh again.

Fury looked between us carefully. Probably evaluating whether either of us was stable enough for this mission.

Honestly? Fair concern.

Fury turns slightly toward the exit, already moving the conversation forward like he always does.

“There’s a debriefing package waiting for you back at your apartment. Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract now?” Fury asked Steve.

Steve’s expression darkened instantly.

“You should’ve left it in the ocean.”

---

New York, 2012

The tower came into view through the car window like something out of one of Howard’s old sketches if he’d been given unlimited money and absolutely no supervision.

Which, apparently, had happened.

I tipped my head back as we pulled up to the building, staring at the massive glowing STARK letters stretching across the skyline.

“Well,” I muttered, “that’s definitely Howard Stark’s son.”

Coulson glanced over. “How can you tell?”

“The ego,” I answered immediately.

That earned me the smallest twitch of amusement from him.

The lobby alone was larger than some apartment buildings back home. Glass, chrome, polished marble—everything sleek and expensive in a way Howard would have loved but never had the patience to maintain himself.

Tony, apparently, did.

Or more likely, someone cleaned up after him.

“Still weird,” I murmured as we crossed the floor. “Howard hated modern architecture. Said it looked emotionally unavailable.”

Coulson blinked once. “That sounds exactly like something Howard Stark would say.”

“I know. I was there.”

The elevator ride up was smooth enough to make me suspicious. Howard’s elevators had always sounded vaguely explosive.

The doors opened directly into the penthouse.

And dear God.

The place looked like the inside of a genius’s brain.

Half laboratory, half luxury magazine spread.

Music hummed softly somewhere overhead while holographic displays drifted through the air like ghosts made of blue light. Tools and unfinished projects cluttered nearly every surface in a way that felt strangely familiar.

I almost smiled.

Tony Stark stood near one of the displays while Pepper Potts leaned against the bar with a champagne glass in hand. They were mid-conversation when Coulson stepped inside.

Tony looked up first.

“Agent,” he greeted dryly. “You know, normal people use doors with appointments attached to them.”

Then he saw me.

And stopped.

Actually stopped.

The expression on his face would have been funny if it wasn’t so genuinely stunned.

For a moment, he just stared.

“…No,” he said finally.

I lifted a hand awkwardly. “Hello, Tony.”

Pepper looked between us immediately. “Wait.”

Tony pointed at me like he thought I might disappear if he stopped. “No. Absolutely not. That is impossible.”

“Been hearing that a lot lately.”

Pepper frowned slightly. “Tony?”

He looked at her with the expression of a man actively questioning reality.

“This,” he said carefully, gesturing toward me, “is Bea Rogers.”

I gave a small wave.

Tony continued, “Dad’s disappearing war-era science partner who may or may not have terrified several government agencies.”

“That’s not an official title,” I muttered.

Pepper’s eyes widened slightly. “Oh my God.”

“She vanished in 1945,” Tony continued. “Dad spent years trying to find her.”

I shifted awkwardly. “Technically, I vanished from 1995 this time.”

Tony stared harder.

“…That somehow made it worse.”

Pepper walked forward first, thankfully more socially functional than Tony.

“Pepper Potts,” she introduced warmly, holding out her hand.

I took it with a grateful smile. “Bea Rogers. It’s very nice to finally meet you.”

“Finally?” Tony echoed.

“You came up in conversation,” I admitted.

Tony looked deeply offended. “I was discussed behind my back?”

“Constantly.”

Pepper laughed softly while Tony put a hand dramatically over his chest.

“I don’t know if I’m emotionally prepared for this.”

I looked between them once before pointing lightly.

“So… you two are together?”

Pepper blinked.

Tony grinned immediately. “Oh, Don’t worry. She approves already.”

“I do,” I admitted. “You look sane enough to manage him.”

Pepper snorted into her champagne.

Tony looked personally betrayed.

“I’m standing right here.”

I gave Pepper an awkward thumbs up.

“Good job.”

I regretted the gesture instantly.

Tony stared. Pepper stared.

I sighed. “That looked less embarrassing in my head.”

Pepper laughed fully this time, warm and bright, and something in my chest loosened a little.

Good. Howard would have wanted that for him.

Coulson stepped forward then, slipping neatly back into business.

“We need Mr. Stark to review the Tesseract situation.”

Tony’s expression shifted slightly at that.

More focused now. Less joking.

He pulled the files from Pepper’s hands before glancing back at me.

“You staying?”

“Depends,” I answered. “Am I being held hostage?”

“Only conversationally.”

Pepper squeezed Tony’s arm gently before grabbing her coat.

“I’m going to head out before the science starts becoming dangerous.”

Tony pointed after her. “See? That’s healthy relationship behavior. She knows when to evacuate.”

Pepper rolled her eyes fondly before looking back at me.

“It was really nice meeting you.”

“You too.”

Then she leaned slightly closer and lowered her voice.

“For the record, I thought Tony was joking about the disappearing godmother.”

I blinked.

Tony looked absolutely delighted by my expression.

“I told you that’s what you are.”

“I am not old enough to be your godmother.”

“You fought Nazis with my father. That automatically makes you at least spiritually seventy.”

“That is unbelievably rude.”

“And yet accurate.”

Pepper laughed again before finally heading for the elevator with Coulson.

The doors slid shut behind them, leaving the penthouse quieter.

For a second, neither Tony nor I spoke.

Then he looked at me again, the humor softening around the edges.

“You disappeared right in front of me,” he said quietly.

The joking tone was gone now.

I leaned against the workbench beside him.

“I know.”

“One second you were there,” he continued, eyes fixed somewhere past me now, “and then you just… vanished.”

“I didn’t choose it.”

“I figured.”

“I never know when it’s going to happen,” I admitted softly. “Or where.”

Tony nodded slowly.

“I waited a while after,” he said. “Thought maybe you’d come back.”

Guilt hit me harder than I expected.

“I’m sorry.”

Tony glanced sideways at me immediately.

“Hey.” His voice softened slightly. “I’m kidding when I give you grief about it.”

“I know.”

“No, seriously. I know you wouldn’t leave on purpose.”

I swallowed hard.

“I should’ve stayed,” I admitted quietly. “You’d just lost your parents. You were barely older than a kid.”

Tony let out a slow breath through his nose.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “That part sucked.”

“That’s one way to phrase catastrophic emotional trauma.”

“That’s the Stark method.”

Despite myself, I laughed softly.

And for one strange moment, standing there surrounded by holograms and impossible technology, it almost felt like being back in Howard’s workshop again.

The same energy.

The same rapid-fire intelligence moving three steps ahead of everyone else.

The same humor covering things neither of them liked talking about directly.

Tony noticed the look on my face.

“What?”

“You think exactly like him sometimes.”

Tony groaned immediately. “Please don’t curse me like that.”

“You do.”

“I’m cooler.”

“You are louder.”

“That’s genetically unavoidable.”

I smiled faintly, looking around the tower again.

“You know,” I said softly, “he would’ve loved this place.”

Tony’s expression shifted at that.

Not defensive.

Just quieter.

“…Yeah?”

I nodded, “He would’ve bragged about you constantly.”

Tony huffed a laugh. “He already did that.”

And somehow, hearing that made missing Howard ache all over again.

---

Somewhere Over The Ocean, 2012

The Quinjet hummed steadily around us, low and mechanical, nothing like the roaring war planes Steve and I were used to. Everything about modern aircraft felt too smooth. Too quiet. Even the turbulence seemed organized somehow.

Steve sat near the front of the cabin staring at a tablet with visible distrust.

I sat nearby pretending not to watch him struggle with the touchscreen while Coulson stood beside him like an overly eager museum tour guide finally meeting his favorite historical figure.

On the screen, a massive green figure tore through military vehicles like paper.

Steve frowned slightly.

“So this Doctor Banner was trying to replicate the serum that was used on me?”

Coulson nodded immediately.

“A lot of people were. You were the world’s first superhero. Banner thought gamma radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine’s original formula.”

Onscreen, the Hulk roared and threw a jeep hard enough to make me wince.

Steve tilted his head slightly.

“Didn’t really go his way, did it?”

“Not so much,” Coulson admitted. “When he’s not that thing, though, the guy’s basically a Stephen Hawking.”

Steve blinked once.

Coulson corrected quickly, “He’s like… a very smart person.”

I looked down quickly before Coulson noticed I was trying not to laugh.

Steve noticed immediately.

“You’re enjoying this.”

“A little.”

Coulson straightened slightly, trying to regain composure.

“I just— I have to say, it’s an honor meeting you. Officially.”

Steve softened at that in the way he always did around genuinely decent people.

“Thanks.”

Coulson kept going.

“I sort of met you already, technically. I watched you while you were sleeping.”

A beat.

I looked up slowly.

Steve looked up slowly.

Coulson realized what he’d said approximately three seconds too late.

“I mean—not in a weird way,” he corrected rapidly. “You were unconscious. From the ice. I was assigned to the recovery team.”

I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek.

Steve looked deeply concerned, “That explanation somehow made it worse.”

“I know,” Coulson sighed.

I lost the fight against my laughter.

Coulson pointed at me immediately. “You are not helping.”

“Oh no,” I managed between laughs, “I absolutely am not.”

Steve was smiling now too, small and tired but real.

Coulson cleared his throat with what dignity he had left.

“It’s just… a huge honor to have you on board.”

“And what am I? Chopped liver?” 

Coulson just shook his head.

Steve stood then, closing the tablet carefully before walking toward the side of the jet. The movement felt familiar—restless energy he never quite knew what to do with unless someone handed him a mission.

“Well,” he said quietly, “I hope I’m the man for the job.”

“Oh, you are,” Coulson answered immediately. “Absolutely.”

Then, after a moment, “We’ve made some modifications to the uniform. I had a little design input.”

Steve looked over cautiously, “The uniform?”

His expression shifted immediately toward suspicion.

“Aren’t the stars and stripes a little… old fashioned?”

Coulson hesitated only briefly.

“With everything that’s happening,” he said carefully, “the things that are about to come to light… people might just need a little old fashioned.”

Steve considered that quietly.

I leaned back in my seat and lifted a hand.

“Are you talking about him,” I asked, pointing toward Steve, “because I’m with the times now.”

Steve snorted softly.

Coulson looked politely horrified, “You called the internet ‘wizard electricity’ yesterday.”

“I stand by that observation.”

“You tried to turn on a touchscreen by knocking on it.”

“And it worked didn't it?”

Steve shook his head, smiling into his hand now.

Traitor.

I pointed at him immediately.

“You are not allowed to laugh. You thought the automatic soap dispenser was broken for ten minutes.”

“It wasn’t dispensing soap.”

“You were standing at the hand dryer.”

Coulson made a noise suspiciously close to choking back laughter.

For a second, it felt dangerously easy to pretend none of this had happened.

Steve rubbed a hand over his face. “This is a nightmare.”

“You missed seventy years,” I informed him. “I missed maybe fifteen. I’m basically a local.”

“You asked if Bluetooth was a dental condition.”

“That name is misleading and you know it.”

For the first time since waking up in this century, Steve laughed properly.

Not forced. Not strained. Real.

And honestly?

I thought the whole plane relaxed a little when he did.

---

Underground, 2012

The underground lab smelled like metal, oil, and fear.

I stood near the far wall with one of the Chitauri rifles strapped across my back, watching the humans scramble around the warehouse beneath flickering fluorescent lights. None of them spoke unless spoken to. None of them looked at Loki for too long.

Smart.

Selvig worked feverishly over the strange Midgardian machinery while Barton directed the others with sharp military efficiency. Even under the scepter’s influence, he moved like a soldier. Controlled. Dangerous.

Loki sat apart from them all.

Still.

Too still.

Most people thought silence meant calm. It didn’t. Not with him.

I leaned one shoulder against a support beam, sharpening one of my knives against a whetstone while I watched him from across the room. His fingers flexed once against the head of the scepter. His jaw tightened.

Then the blue light came.

The room vanished beneath my feet.

—

The throne room was colder than death.

Dark stone stretched endlessly beneath us while stars burned in the distance like open wounds in space. Chitauri lined the lower levels in endless rows, unmoving except for the occasional twitch of armor or weapon.

Every visit to Sanctuary left something cold beneath my skin.

Loki appeared several steps ahead of me, armor gleaming green and gold beneath the dim light. His helmet cast long shadows across his face, but I still caught the irritation in his expression before he buried it beneath arrogance.

The Other descended slowly from the throne platform.

“The Chitauri grow restless.”

Loki tilted his head lazily. “Let them go at themselves. I will lead them into glorious battle.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.

He always sounded taller when he spoke to them.

“Battle?” The Other’s voice slithered through the room. “Against the meager might of Earth?”

“Glorious,” Loki corrected smoothly, “not lengthy. If your force is as formidable as you claim.”

Dangerous.

I straightened subtly against the pillar behind me.

The Other did not like being challenged.

“You question us? You question Him?” the creature hissed. “He who put the scepter in your hand. Who gave you ancient knowledge and new purpose when you were cast out, defeated?”

Loki’s composure cracked for half a second.

“I was a king,” he snapped. “The rightful king of Asgard. Betrayed.”

The room seemed to darken around him.

I knew that tone.

Pain dressed up as fury.

The Other stepped closer. “Your ambition is little, born of childish need. We look beyond Earth to greater worlds the Tesseract will unveil.”

Loki’s grip tightened around the scepter.

“You don’t have the Tesseract yet.”

The Other lunged.

My hand moved before the decision fully formed, they dropped to my knife, knees bending slightly as I prepared to move between them if necessary.

Not to save Loki.

Not entirely.

If the Other killed him, Thanos would simply send someone worse.

The scepter lifted.

Blue light reflected across black stone as Loki pointed it directly at the creature’s throat.

“I don’t threaten,” he said quietly, “but until I open the doors, until your force is mine to command, you are but words.”

Silence.

Heavy. Violent silence.

Then the Other smiled.

It was somehow worse than anger.

“You will have your war, Asgardian. But if you fail—if the Tesseract is kept from us—there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where He cannot find you.”

Even after years beneath Thanos’ shadow, the warning still made cold crawl down my spine.

The Other moved closer until it towered over Loki.

“You think you know pain?” it whispered. “He will make you long for something as sweet as pain.”

I caught it then.

A fracture beneath the anger.

Fear.

Tiny. Buried deep beneath Loki’s pride and fury and desperate need to prove himself, but it was there.

The same fear I saw every time the Mad Titan’s name was spoken aloud.

The Other reached out, clawed fingers pressing against Loki’s temple.

Blue light exploded through the room.

I stepped forward automatically as Loki vanished—

—and then I was ripped backward through space beside him.

The underground lab slammed back into existence around us.

Loki staggered once before catching himself.

No one else noticed.

Humans kept moving. Machines kept humming.

I watched him carefully from across the room.

His breathing was uneven.

Anger radiated off him sharp enough to cut skin.

Without a word, I crossed the room and flipped one of my smaller knives through the air toward him.

The blade spun end over end.

Loki caught it instantly without looking.

His eyes lifted to mine.

For a second, neither of us spoke.

Then his gaze dropped to the knife.

“My sister used to carry blades balanced like this,” he said quietly, turning it once between his fingers.

The words surprised me enough that I answered honestly.

“I’m not your sister.”

A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth. Tired. Crooked.

“No,” he agreed softly. “You would stab me faster.”

“Depends.”

“On?”

I sheathed another knife at my hip. “Whether you deserve it.”

That earned a quiet laugh from him. Real this time.

Small but real.

The sound faded quickly as his eyes drifted back toward the glowing machinery Selvig worked over.

“You should rest,” I said eventually.

Loki scoffed lightly. “And miss all this?”

“Your dramatics are exhausting.”

“And yet you remain.”

I looked away first.

Because the truth was ugly.

Because damaged things recognized each other.

Because we were both creatures shaped into weapons by people far crueler than ourselves.

In a universe built on fear, familiarity became difficult to distinguish from comfort.

---

Helicarrier, 2012

The Quinjet doors lowered with a hiss, and Steve stepped out beside me into the whipping wind of the landing strip. Agents moved with practiced precision around us while enormous engines thundered beneath the deck.

I tilted my head back slowly, staring up at the structure towering above us.

“Well,” I muttered, “that certainly screams Stark funding.”

Steve huffed softly beside me. “You can tell?”

“The dramatic flair gives it away.”

Ahead of us, Coulson approached with a woman in a black tactical suit beside him. Red hair. Sharp posture. Watchful eyes.

Dangerous.

I liked her immediately.

“Agent Romanoff,” Coulson greeted. “Captain Rogers.”

Steve gave a polite nod. “Ma’am.”

“Hi,” she replied easily before glancing toward Coulson. “They need you on the bridge. Fury wants a briefing.”

Coulson nodded before looking back at me. “Agent Rogers, you’re welcome to come along after orientation.”

“Orientation,” I repeated flatly. “That sounds threatening.”

Natasha’s mouth twitched.

Coulson walked off, leaving the three of us standing near the railing while the deck crew scrambled around us.

“There was quite the buzz around here finding you in the ice,” Natasha said to Steve casually. “I thought Coulson was gonna swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?”

Steve blinked. “Trading cards?”

“Oh, they’re vintage,” she said seriously. “He’s very proud.”

I snorted before I could stop myself.

Steve looked over. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, already laughing. “I’m just trying to imagine your face on a collectible card.”

Natasha crossed her arms. “You should see Coulson’s prized possession.”

“Oh no,” I said immediately. “There’s a prized possession?”

“A mint condition Lady Liberty.”

I pressed a hand over my mouth dramatically. “Not the Lady Liberty in mint condition.”

Steve looked horrified. “There were different editions?”

A nervous looking man nearly walked straight into Steve while staring at a tablet in his hands.

“Dr. Banner,” Steve greeted.

Bruce Banner looked up quickly. Tired eyes. Gentle face. A man perpetually bracing for disaster.

“Oh,” he said. “Hi. They told me you’d be coming.”

Steve shook his hand. “Word is you can find the cube.”

Banner hesitated. “Is that the only word on me?”

“Only word I care about.”

Banner looked genuinely surprised by that.

His gaze shifted toward me next. “Bea Rogers.”

I blinked. “You know me?”

“Your wartime neurological studies,” he admitted awkwardly. “The trauma conditioning research.”

I blinked at him. “You’ve actually read those?”

“Some of it’s still referenced,” Bruce said. “Your work on stress compartmentalization was ahead of its time.”

I pointed at him immediately. “Steve, I like him.”

Bruce actually smiled a little at that.

Natasha glanced upward as the entire deck began vibrating beneath our feet. “Gentlemen—and Bea—you might wanna step inside in a minute. It’s gonna get a little hard to breathe.”

The Helicarrier shuddered violently.

Steve frowned. “Is this a submarine?”

Bruce looked mildly horrified. “Really? They wanted me in a submerged pressurized metal container?”

“Nobody mentioned the flying part last time I was here.”

Then the engines activated.

The massive lift fans beneath the carrier rotated downward with a deafening roar, and suddenly the entire ship began rising into the sky.

I instinctively grabbed the railing while staring over the edge.

The ocean dropped farther and farther beneath us.

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

Steve looked just as stunned.

Bruce gave us both a small, deeply amused smile. “Oh no,” he said. “This is much worse.”

—

The bridge looked like science fiction.

Screens stretched across every surface while agents barked orders over one another in controlled chaos. The windows alone were larger than my entire apartment back in Brooklyn.

Steve reached into his pocket beside me and silently handed Fury ten dollars.

Fury took it without hesitation.

“Told you,” he said.

Bruce was already moving toward the briefing table while Fury approached him.

“Doctor, thank you for coming.”

“Thanks for asking nicely,” Bruce replied. “So, uh… how long am I staying?”

I drifted beside Steve while Fury explained the situation, both of us quietly taking in the bridge around us.

It felt strange standing beside him again after all those years.

Like I could finally unclench something inside myself.

Every so often, one of us glanced over automatically.

Old habits. New century.

Banner eventually began explaining his tracking plan involving gamma spectrometers and satellite calibration, and before I realized it, I had wandered closer.

“You’re tracking residual cosmic radiation signatures through gamma clustering?” I asked.

Bruce looked delighted someone followed that sentence. “Basically, yes.”

“The cube’s energy output fluctuates under stress conditions,” I added. “Back in the forties, we noticed it reacted almost like a living nervous system.”

Bruce’s eyes widened slightly. “You saw the Tesseract in the forties?”

“Unfortunately.”

“What was it like?”

I folded my arms. “Temperamental.”

Bruce laughed softly. “That tracks.”

For the next several minutes we fell into easy scientific conversation while agents rushed around us completely lost in the terminology. Steve stayed nearby the entire time, leaning casually against one of the consoles even if he understood maybe half of what we were discussing.

Not because he cared about the science.

Because after seventy years apart, neither of us wanted the other out of sight.

Eventually Natasha reappeared beside Bruce. “You’re gonna love the lab, Doc. We’ve got all the toys.”

Bruce followed her out while Steve and I remained behind near Coulson.

Hours later, the bridge had dimmed into nighttime operations when an agent suddenly called out from one of the consoles.

“We got a hit. Sixty-seven percent match.”

Coulson straightened immediately. “Location?”

“Stuttgart, Germany. Twenty-eight Königstrasse. He’s not exactly hiding.”

Fury looked toward Steve.

“Captain, you’re up.”

Steve nodded once before turning away.

I followed him automatically.

Inside the locker room, the updated Captain America uniform already waited behind glass alongside the shield.

Steve stopped in front of it silently.

I watched his shoulders tense.

Not fear.

Memory.

Carefully, I stepped beside him and picked up the straps of the suit jacket.

“Turn around,” I said gently.

Steve obeyed without argument.

I helped slide the material over his shoulders, smoothing the fabric automatically the same way I used to fix his collars before dances and exhibitions and missions.

Only now the uniform was darker. Sharper. More tactical.

Still Steve underneath it though.

“You know,” I murmured while adjusting one of the straps, “I think the stars and stripes are growing on me.”

Steve glanced sideways. “Thought they were too old fashioned.”

“Oh, they absolutely are.”

He smiled faintly.

I tightened one final buckle before stepping back to look at him properly.

Captain America.

My brother.

Still here. Still standing. Still running headfirst into impossible situations because someone had to.

“You ready?” I asked softly.

Steve picked up the shield.

“No,” he admitted.

Then he slid it onto his arm anyway.

---

---

???, ???

I barely had time to understand what was happening before the world disappeared beneath my feet again.

One moment, I was on that damn plane, standing beside Steve, feeling the cold bite of altitude and the weight of the inevitable pressing down on us. The next—I was here. Wherever here was.

The cargo hold was dark and rattling around me, the low hum of an airplane engine reverberating through my bones. A baggage compartment. I recognized the smell of stale air and travel-worn fabric. My fingers dug into the worn canvas of a duffel bag as I tried to steady myself.

The last thing I remembered was watching Steve, his jaw set in grim determination. Then, Red Skull—he had reached for the Tesseract, and it had swallowed him whole in a flash of searing blue light. And then... I was here.

I stayed still for a moment, forcing myself to breathe through the nausea twisting in my stomach.

My hands shook faintly as I pushed myself upright between stacks of luggage.

No snow. No crashing plane. No Steve. Just darkness and the low hum of an engine.

The intercom crackled. It was muffled by the floor, but I could just make it out. 

"Ladies and gentlemen, we’ll be landing in Los Angeles shortly. Please fasten your seatbelts."

Los Angeles? My mind is reeling. That wasn’t where I’m was supposed to be.

The plane jolted as the wheels hit the ground, and my stomach twisted. 

—

LA, 1995

Slipping out of the baggage claim unseen wasn’t hard. People weren’t expecting to see a woman in a 1940s combat uniform stepping out from behind their luggage, and I made sure to move when no one was looking. 

The world outside the terminal was overwhelming. Everything looked too bright. Too polished. Giant glowing billboards towered over the streets while impossibly sleek cars moved bumper-to-bumper beneath glass buildings that looked nothing like the New York I remembered.

There were barely any soldiers.

No ration posters. No war bulletins. No tension humming beneath conversations.

The world had kept moving. Mine hadn’t.

I stopped walking when I caught sight of a magazine stand near the curb.

A newspaper stand with a glossy magazine cover featuring a young man with dark hair and a cocky smirk. The headline? **STARK INDUSTRIES UNVEILS NEXT-GEN TECH: INSIDE THE MIND OF TONY STARK.**

Not Howard. Not my Howard.

My stomach sank.

I needed answers. And there was only one place to start.

—

The Stark estate somehow looked both exactly the same and completely different.

Bigger. Quieter.

The long driveway still curled toward the house the same way it always had, but the warmth was gone somehow. The place felt preserved instead of lived in.

I stood outside the front door longer than necessary, staring at it while my brain tried unsuccessfully to catch up with the last several hours.

Fifty years. So much time has passed already. But nothing feels real just yet.

My hand tightened briefly at my side before I finally rang the bell.

Footsteps approached slowly.

Then the door opened.

For a second, neither of us spoke.

Jarvis looked older now. Gray at the temples. More lines around his eyes.

But still unmistakably Jarvis.

Suddenly, I realized how badly I needed someone to recognize me.

His expression shifted almost immediately from confusion to disbelief.

“Miss Rogers,” Jarvis breathed, his voice carrying a weight of disbelief and nostalgia, “It can’t be.”

“Hey, Jarvis,” I managed, my throat tightening. “It’s been a while.”

My voice sounded smaller than I intended.

His eyes scanned my face carefully, like he was trying to decide if grief had finally caused him to lose his mind.

“You haven’t aged.”

“Yeah,” I said weakly. “I’m starting to think I should be concerned about that too.”

The joke didn’t really land.

Jarvis recovered first, stepping aside quickly, “Please come inside.”

The second I crossed the threshold, exhaustion hit me all at once. Not physical exhaustion. Something deeper. Like my brain had finally realized none of this was temporary.

---

Tea helped.

Not emotionally.

But it gave my hands something to do besides shake.

I sat curled slightly into one corner of the Stark sitting room while Jarvis quietly filled in fifty years of history I was never supposed to miss.

Peggy had lived a full life, working with the SSR and later founding S.H.I.E.L.D. She was still alive but retired now. 

I pressed my thumb hard against the edge of the teacup until the ceramic bit into my skin.

A deep, shuddering breath left my lips. Peggy had made it. She had built the future she deserved. It wasn’t the same as seeing her, but it was enough.

Steve, however… Steve never came home. The plane had gone down, and he’d been presumed dead ever since. They had failed to recover his body. 

I stared down into the tea silently.

Howard. Howard and Maria, his wife,  were gone, too. A car crash in ‘91. Leaving behind a son, Tony.

The room suddenly felt strangely distant.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. Howard had been a pain in my ass, but he’d been my friend. The thought of him being gone, of Peggy growing old, of Steve never getting his dance—it was too much.

Jarvis placed a hand over mine, grounding me. “You’ve been missed, Miss Rogers. Howard spoke of you often. As did Peggy.”

I swallowed hard.

“That sounds unhealthy for everyone involved.”

A weak attempt at humour, but Jarvis smiled anyway.

Then footsteps echoed somewhere deeper in the house. Confident. Fast. Careless in the way only rich men seemed capable of being.

I looked up automatically. Jarvis’s expression shifted into something fondly exhausted.

“Ah,” he sighed quietly. “That would be Master Tony.”

As if on cue, Tony Stark sauntered into the room, a whiskey glass in hand and the exact same defensive arrogance Howard used, like body armour, that I have seen time and time again.

For one horrible second, it felt like seeing a ghost.

Tony stopped short when he saw me.

His eyes flicked toward Jarvis immediately.

“Why is there a woman dressed like a war documentary sitting in our living room?”

Jarvis stood, his posture as proper as ever. Not wanting to be impolite, I stood as well.

“Tony,” Jarvis started carefully, “this is Miss Beatrice Rogers.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “Rogers? As in Captain America Rogers?”

I crossed my arms. “That’s usually how family names work, yes.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. Not hostile. Assessing.

“You’re too young.”

“Thank you.”

“No, I mean concerningly young.”

“That’s less flattering.”

Jarvis made a quiet, disapproving noise somewhere behind him.

Tony ignored it completely, still staring at me like he was trying to solve a puzzle.

Then realization flickered across his face.

“Wait.” He pointed slightly. “I know you.”

“I sincerely doubt that.”

“Old photos,” he said slowly. “SSR archives. You worked with my dad.”

Worked with.

I looked away briefly.

“That’s one way to describe it.”

Tony stayed standing.

Interesting.

Didn’t trust me enough to sit yet.

Smart.

“So, A woman appeared in my living room dressed for World War Two,” he said. “I think I’ve earned at least one explanation.”

“That’s fair. Too bad I don’t quite have one for you.”

Silence stretched awkwardly for a second.

“You keep staring at me.”

The comment caught me off guard.

I blinked, “Sorry?”

“You look at me like you’re comparing blueprints.”

I hadn’t realized I was doing it.

My eyes dropped briefly toward the glass in his hand, “You tap your fingers when you’re thinking.”

Tony looked down automatically, “…Okay?”

“Howard used to do that.”

The room went quieter than before.

Tony’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly. Not softened. Worsened. Like I’d accidentally stepped on something bruised.

He took a slow sip from the whiskey.

“You knew him before I did.”

There was no accusation in it.

Which somehow made it worse.

“He was difficult,” I admitted. “Arrogant. Terrible at sleeping. Physically incapable of admitting he was wrong.”

Tony snorted quietly into the glass.

“But,” I continued carefully, “he was also one of the smartest people I’ve ever met.”

Tony studied me for another long moment.

Still uncertain. Still guarded. Good. That felt more honest somehow.

Then his eyes dropped toward my hands.Specifically toward where my fingers kept rubbing anxiously against the edge of the teacup.

“You okay there, time traveller?”

“I was accidentally launched fifty years into the future by a glowing cube. ”

“Fair.”

I stared blankly toward the television across the room.

“Also your television is enormous.”

That finally got the smallest smile out of him.

Tony moved toward the kitchen counter before grabbing a small black notebook and tossing it toward me.

I caught it automatically.

“What’s this for?”

Tony pointed toward the notebook.

“Write things down. It’s a grounding technique.”

I looked down at the plain black cover in my hands. Small. Portable. Real. Something about it immediately settled the spinning in my head just slightly.

“You know about grounding techniques?” I asked quietly.

Tony shrugged one shoulder.

“My therapist said writing things down helps.”

The words landed heavily between us.

Tony looked vaguely annoyed with himself for saying it out loud.

I opened the notebook carefully.

Blank pages. A place to organize things. Track things. Prove this was happening.

My thumb brushed lightly across the paper.

“Thank you.”

Tony immediately looked uncomfortable.

“Don’t make it weird, Rogers.”

Despite everything, I laughed quietly.

The sound surprised both of us a little.

Outside the windows, California glowed bright and unfamiliar against the night sky.

Everything I knew was gone.

And somehow the world had kept turning anyway.

Tony studied me, his usual cocky grin faltering just slightly. “You really knew my dad?”

I nodded. “Knew him, worked with him, and called him an ass on multiple occasions.”

Tony barked a laugh. “Sounds about right.” He swirled his drink, then shot me a sideways glance. “So, tell me, time traveller—got any advice for a guy trying to figure out his old man’s mess?”

I smirked as I sat down. “Yeah. Stop trying to be him. He didn’t have it figured out either.”

For a moment, Tony didn’t say anything. Then he exhaled, shaking his head with a chuckle. “Huh. Maybe you are the real deal.”

Jarvis, ever patient, cleared his throat. “Miss Rogers has had a long journey. Perhaps some rest, and then… answers.”

Tony sighed dramatically. “Fine. But I’m warning you—if you’re sticking around, you’re going to have to catch up. Fast.”

I glanced at the world outside the window—the bright lights, the technology, the future. A future without Howard, without Steve.

---

Stark Mansion, 1995

I couldn’t sleep.

Not that I really expected to.

The guest room Jarvis gave me was warm, quiet, and significantly larger than any room I’d had before the war, but every time I closed my eyes, my brain seemed to restart itself.

It wasn’t exhaustion exactly. More like my mind refusing to accept that stillness was safe in a world that had already shifted without warning once.

So I kept moving.

The mansion was quieter after midnight. Less performative. Less like a museum pretending to be a home.

Jarvis had given me clothes earlier—modern ones, still unfamiliar in the way they sat on my body—but I hadn’t really changed. Just added layers over something that still felt like 1945.

Bare feet against polished floor, I wandered.

Past framed blueprints. Past prototype schematics I didn’t recognize. Past photographs that showcased a life after the war.

Howard everywhere. Not in presence. In absence. Then I found the papers.

It was tucked into a low shelf like it had been forgotten on purpose but kept anyway.

A stack of notebooks and loose pages tied together with string that had clearly been replaced more than once.

My handwriting was on most of it. I froze before touching them. Because I already knew what they were.

Howard and I didn’t write letters like normal people. We wrote at each other.

Margins became conversations. Equations became arguments. Entire days condensed into ink-stained commentary and half-finished thoughts that never fully resolved because neither of us ever really stopped working long enough to end them properly.

I pulled the top notebook out carefully. Howard’s handwriting on the front page:

BEATRICE— YOUR SIGNATURE IS STILL OBNOXIOUSLY NEAT. FIX IT.

My throat tightened before I could stop it. Underneath, in smaller writing:

It is not my fault that you write like you’re afraid of punctuation.

A laugh slipped out before I could catch it.

Too sharp. Too sudden. It broke halfway through. I pressed my thumb against the edge of the page.

God.

He kept these. All of them.

“You okay?”

I turned quickly, wiping at my face out of instinct more than intention.

Tony stood in the doorway. Not leaning like earlier. Just standing and watching. Less smirk now. More hesitation.

“I’m fine,” I said automatically.

He tilted his head slightly, “That sounded like a lie.”

I let out a breath through my nose and looked back down at the notebooks.

“It’s just…” I hesitated. “He kept all of this.”

Tony stepped inside slowly, eyes flicking to the stack in my hands.

“Yeah,” he said. “He never threw anything away. My mom used to threaten him with fire.”

I huffed faintly, “That sounds accurate.”

Silence settled again, but it wasn’t the same kind as before. This one had weight in it. Unfinished conversations instead of awkwardness.

Tony reached past me and picked up one of the older notebooks from the stack. He didn’t open it immediately. Just held it like he wasn’t sure he had permission.

“What is all this?” he asked.

“Us arguing,” I said. “Mostly.”

That earned a faint look from him.

“You and my dad argued a lot?”

“All the time.”

He flipped the notebook open. The page was dense with handwriting.

THIS DESIGN IS IMPOSSIBLE.

So are you. Yet here we are.

CHARMING. FIX IT.

Tony read silently for a moment, then exhaled a short laugh through his nose before stopping himself.

“Jesus.”

I nodded once, “That one was a good day. I had to burn the bad ones before anyone could see them.”

He looked at me then. Properly. Like he was trying to map something he hadn’t expected to exist.

“You really knew him.”

“Yes.”

A pause.

Then I corrected myself slightly, “Before he was… whatever version of him you grew up with.”

That landed differently. Tony’s expression shifted, just slightly. Not defensive. Just more careful.

“What does that mean?”

I hesitated. Because this was the part people usually didn’t ask about. Not the achievements. Not the legacy.The in-between.

“He used to talk about fear,” I said quietly.

Tony frowned faintly, “Howard Stark didn’t fear anything.”

I looked back down at the notebook.

“That’s not true.”

He didn’t interrupt.

So I continued.

“He was brilliant. Loud. Confident when it mattered and insufferable when it didn’t.” A pause. “But he used to ask questions he didn’t like the answers to. That’s part of his genius”

Tony stayed still.

I turned a page carefully. Another margin exchange.

DO YOU THINK PEOPLE CAN BE TOO SELFISH TO RAISE A CHILD?

The fact that you’re asking means no.

THAT IS NOT AN ANSWER.

It is the only one you need.

Silence.

Tony looked down at the page for a long moment. Something in his jaw tightened slightly.

“You’re telling me he thought about that?” he asked finally.

“Constantly,” I said. “Just not in the way people assume.”

Tony let out a short breath, almost a laugh but not quite.

“Fantastic. So I get to add ‘existential parenting crisis’ to the list of things he never mentioned.”

I glanced at him, “You’re not wrong.”

That got a small, reluctant smirk from him. It didn’t last. He turned another page. Stopped.

I noticed immediately. Because his expression changed. Subtly. Like he’d found something that didn’t fit the version of Howard he’d built in his head.

Tony read quietly. Then again. Then slower.

MARIA SAYS I WOULD MAKE A TERRIBLE FATHER.

Maria is correct about most things.

I AM TRYING HERE.

Yes. That is usually the problem. 

I DON’T KNOW IF I KNOW HOW TO DO THIS.

No parent knows how to become a parent. You just do the best you can.

NOT HELPFUL.

Tony didn’t speak for a while.

When he finally did, his voice was quieter, “…He never said anything like that to me.”

I closed the notebook gently.

“I don’t think he would have known how.”

That answer seemed to sit heavily between us. Not comforting. Just real.

Tony exhaled slowly and looked away.

“So what, I’m supposed to feel better now?”

I shook my head slightly, “No.”

A pause. Then I added, softer, “But you’re allowed to know it.”

That earned a small, tired laugh from him.

“Wow,” he muttered. “You are terrible at comforting people.”

“Well, I have been busy fighting nazis and time-travelling.”

He glanced at me again.A small smirk on his face. 

“You’re doing a pretty good job so far.”

I do a little bow. The two of us let out a short laugh.

The room went quiet again, but differently this time. Less guarded.

Tony didn’t move for a second.

Then, like something had just fully caught up to him, he set the notebook down more carefully than I expected.

“You’re just… staying here?” he asked.

It wasn’t accusing. Just trying to make sense of it.

I blinked once, “I don’t know yet.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have. I’m kinda just going with the flow right now.”

That made him exhale through his nose, almost a laugh.

“Right. Time traveler. Very vague job description.”

I glanced down at the notebook still in my hands. My fingers tightened slightly around it.

There were too many directions all at once.

Brooklyn. Peggy. The SSR remnants I didn’t understand yet. The world I didn’t recognize.

And this house — Howard’s absence sitting in every corner like a missing piece of furniture no one had replaced.

“I should go back to Brooklyn,” I said slowly, thinking it through as I spoke it. “Check what’s left. See what actually survived.”

Tony tilted his head slightly. “And Aunt Peggy?”

That made me pause.

Longer than I meant to.

“I don’t know if I should see her yet,” I admitted.

“Why not?”

Because she was real in a way I wasn’t ready to reconcile. Because she had aged through time while I hadn’t. Because I didn’t know what I would be walking into — or what she would see when she looked at me.

“I don’t want to show up and… undo something,” I said finally.

Tony frowned slightly, “Undo what?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted again, quieter this time. “That’s part of the problem.”

That earned a small, tired huff from him.

“Seems like you don’t know a lot of things.”

“I noticed. But, I’ll learn.”

He leaned back against the table, studying me for a moment.

“And here?” he asked. “What about here?”

I looked around the room again. Howard’s house. Howard’s things. Howard’s son standing in the middle of it all like he’d been dropped into someone else’s unfinished story.

“I could stay a while,” I said carefully.

Tony raised an eyebrow.

“A while.”

“Don’t push it.”

That got a faint smirk from him.

I hesitated, then added more honestly, “You don’t exactly have… support systems that look like they’re working properly.”

“That’s one way to describe my entire life, yes.”

I let out a short breath through my nose.

“I could help,” I said. “Figure out what you’re dealing with. The company. The files. Whatever he left behind that no one has actually made sense of yet.”

Tony studied me for a beat.

“You’re offering to help me clean up my father’s mess.”

“I’m offering to help you understand it,” I corrected.

That seemed to land differently. Not lighter. Just more precise.

Tony looked away first, “…You don’t have to do that,” he said.

“I know.”

A pause.

Then, softer, “But it seems like the most logical next step.”

That made him let out a quiet laugh again.

“Of course it does,” He shook his head slightly, “You really are exactly like him in the worst possible way.”

I blinked, “That’s not comforting.”

“I wasn’t trying to be comforting.”

Before I could respond, the air shifted.

Subtle at first.Like pressure dropping before a storm.

I froze. Tony noticed immediately.

“…Hey.”

I didn’t get a chance to answer. The pull hit harder this time. My grip tightened instinctively on the notebook. 

Tony stepped forward sharply.

“No—wait, what is happening?”

“I don’t know,” I said again, but it came out tighter now. More strained.

The edges of the room began to fracture in blue light.

Tony looked at me like he was trying to grab onto something he couldn’t see yet.

“Bea—”

The pull sharpened. Everything tilted. I looked at him instinctively, frightened of where I might end up next.

Then the world disappeared again as I was pulled away once more.

---