Chapter 93

"How are things on your end, Maggie?"

Standing beside Carol in an empty room on an alien planet, Maggie looked around at the holographic faces of her teammates. She and Carol had joined the monthly holocall a few minutes ago.

She shrugged. "Mission stopped before it really started. When I arrived the violence had already died down, the locals are sorting it out."

"Hm," said Natasha. She sounded distracted, and half a second later Maggie realized she was making a sandwich. "Rocket and Nebula?"

"Yeah, we boarded that 'highly suspect' warship Danvers pinged," Rocket replied.

"It was an infectious garbage scow," Nebula hissed.

Maggie kept her face neutral. She'd almost gone with those two instead of Carol. Thank goodness.

"So thanks for the hot tip," Rocket scowled.

Carol cocked her head. "Well, you were closer." She nudged Maggie with her foot, unseen through the holocall, and Maggie's lips twitched.

"Yeah, and now we smell like garbage!"

Maggie listened as Okoye briefed Natasha on the undersea tremors back on Earth, and noted that Natasha looked more tired than usual. I should visit soon.

"Carol," Natasha said, "Are we seeing you here next month?"

"Not likely."

Maggie's mouth turned down as she recalled the brief conversation she and Carol had had before the call.

"What," Rocket cut in, "You gonna get another hair cut?"

"Listen, fur face, I'm covering a lot of territory. The things that are happening on earth are happening everywhere. On thousands of planets."

"Alright, alright, that's a good point," Rocket mumbled.

"So you might not see me for a long time," Carol finished.

Maggie shifted her weight. "We're on a planet with a lot of transport hubs, so I can hitch a ride in your direction, Nebula and Rocket. Should be there in a few days."

"We'll get your bunk ready," Rocket said with a nod in her direction.

"Alright," Natasha said, leaning on her desk. "Uh, well, this channel's always active, so if anything goes sideways, anyone's making trouble where they shouldn't…" her gaze leveled. "It comes through me."

"Kulungile," Okoye murmured, followed by Rocket's "Okay," and Maggie's sharp nod.

"Alright," Natasha said.

One by one, their holograms turned away and vanished. Carol turned to Rhodey and murmured "Good luck," but Maggie didn't take her eyes off Natasha.

"Take care, Nat," she said. The other woman's lips twitched.

And then the hologram fizzled out.

Maggie turned to Carol, now just the two of them in the empty room. "Good luck out there." Carol was going further than Maggie had ever traveled, beyond the Kree outworlds and into the wild expanses of untraveled space.

"Hopefully I won't need the luck," Carol replied wryly, "But I appreciate it all the same. You take care of yourself, don't let any of these outworlders give you any shit."

"Never do."

They hugged briefly, their armor clanking together, before pulling apart and striding out of the room onto a large, busy airstrip. Three suns shone hotly down on them.

Carol shot her an informal salute, walking backwards over the tarmac. "See you round, Stark."

"Later, Danvers." Maggie shielded her eyes as Carol summoned her glowing power, blazing with light, and then watched her shoot off the ground and into the sky.

Now alone on the blazing tarmac on a world lightyears away from Earth, Maggie put her hands on her hips. "Right. Hitch a ride. No big deal."

Back at the Facility, Steve sat in the chair opposite Natasha.

"You know I keep telling everybody they should move on, and… grow. Some do," he said. Natasha's glimmering eyes looked away, and Steve remembered Maggie standing across from him, looking so desperate as he said I just… I had to move on. And then the hopeless realization in her eyes when she'd said but you didn't. He shook his head. "But not us."

A couple of minutes later Steve got slowly to his feet, staring at the video Natasha had swiped up on the holographic screen.

"This is, uh, Scott Lang, we met a few years ago? At the airport? In Germany? I was the guy that got really big, I had a mask on, you would recognize me-"

Steve's heart pounded. "Is this an old message?" On screen Scott still jabbered away, waving at the camera. Scott. Steve had driven to San Francisco a few years ago to lay flowers at the monument with his name on it.

Behind him, Natasha also got to her feet, and when she spoke Steve heard a note in her voice that he hadn't heard in five long years: "It's the front gate."

Quantum realm, time travel, time machines… this was all way above Steve's pay grade. He trusted Scott, he really did, but this sounded… well, as Scott put it at the end of his long ramble in the facility common room, it sounded crazy.

"Scott," Natasha said drily, "I get emails from a raccoon, so… nothing sounds crazy anymore."

Steve rubbed his jaw. We're really thinking about trying this. What the hell.

Scott nodded slowly and glanced between them. "So who do we talk to about this?"

Steve and Natasha looked at each other.

"Bruce?" Steve suggested.

"It's not really his field," Natasha murmured.

"This is no one's field," Steve countered. "What about Maggie?"

"Off world. We could call her in, and I will send her a message, but you know who we have to talk to, Steve."

He let out a sigh. He and Tony had met a few times over the past five years, at Decimation memorials and sometimes at the facility. The meetings had been tense, underpinned by the last time they had spoken when Tony had ripped off his arc reactor and slammed it into Steve's palm. No trust. Liar.

Steve nodded slowly. "Alright. Let's go."

In the middle of her negotiations with a starship captain in a skeevy alien bar, Maggie's nanotech bracelet vibrated.

"Just a second," she told the blue-skinned captain, and tapped the bracelet. A short holo-message from Natasha appeared before her.

For a few moments she just stared at it, convinced that she'd misread, but the blue glowing words hung undeniable in the air.

She swallowed thickly, shut down the message with shaking fingers, and turned back to the very unimpressed starship captain.

"Okay," she said croakily. "Forget Xandar. How much to get me to Terra?"

Earth

Natasha could feel the plan falling apart in her hands. They'd been on Tony's porch for less than five minutes and it was rapidly becoming clear that he wasn't buying into Scott's 'time heist' idea. Steve's attempts at drumming up hope only seemed to irritate him, and none of them could get on his level as far as the science went. Natasha had learned how to manipulate people at the tender age of seven, but she didn't know how to do this – how to convince her friend to risk everything he'd gained these past five years and throw his all into an unlikely hope.

"Tony." Natasha looked up, her eyes burning. She'd known that trying to get him in on the plan here, in his beautiful house with his family waiting inside, would be difficult, but she thought he'd jump at the chance to undo their failure. Tony met her eyes and the irritation in his face faded. "We have to take a stand."

Tony didn't look away. "We did stand," he replied. "And yet here we are."

She looked away, out to the bright sun shining off the lake.

"I know you've got a lot on the line," she heard Scott say. "A wife, a daughter. But I lost someone very important to me. A lot of people did." Natasha considered playing the Maggie card, but she knew that if she used that on Tony now he would only get angry.

Scott continued: "But now, we have a chance to bring her back – to bring everyone back, and you're telling me that you won't even-"

"That's right Scott, I won't. Even." Tony's voice softened to a whisper. "I can't."

The door opened and Tony's little girl ran out, and Natasha knew it was over. Tony wouldn't help.

So, she thought, fighting past the hurt. Bruce, then.

That night as he washed the dinner dishes, Tony accidentally splashed a spray of water up onto the shelves of ornaments by the fridge. Told Pepper that was a terrible place to put fancy wooden plates, he thought to himself as he reached up to wipe down the shelf.

But then he hesitated.

They'd set three photos in amongst the candle holders and nice glasses. Tony had almost forgotten they were there. The first photo was of Howard, smiling grimly at the camera. Beside him sat the picture of Tony and Peter, the day Peter had received the certificate for his 'internship'. Tony plucked it off the shelf and wiped it down, his heart heavy. He couldn't avoid the kid's excitable, dorky face.

I don't wanna go, Mr Stark. Please don't make me go.

Tony turned to set the photo back and his eyes caught on the next frame: a picture of Maggie. They'd put her photo up there, beside the others who were gone. The picture had been taken at the facility, before Thanos arrived; she was sprawled on a couch laughing at someone out of frame (Rhodey, Tony remembered), her face looking years younger in her mirth.

Tony gripped the counter top and looked down. Maggie was still here, growing more and more present with each visit, but he still knew that part of her had died that day along with Peter, and Barnes, and everyone else.

Tony was luckier than most, but he couldn't ignore those losses. He glanced over his shoulder.

What's the harm in a little experimenting?

The Next Day

Earth

After paying the extortionate junker captain to drop her in the Earth's atmosphere instead of on the freaking moon, Maggie jumped out of the ship with a sigh and spread her wings. Natasha had sent a follow up message about preparations for some kind of experimentation at the facility, but Maggie didn't set her coordinates for Upstate New York. She flew straight for Tony's house.

After a swift flight down with the wind screaming in her ears, Maggie landed with a thump right in the middle of Tony's lawn. She staggered a little and looked down to see that she'd made a small crater in the grass.

I really am distracted.

"Maggie!"

At the sound of Morgan's young voice Maggie instantly retracted her nanotech uniform and whirled around. "Morgan, hi-"

The five year old slammed into Maggie's legs after her beeline from a small tent on the other side of the lawn, and Maggie dropped down to hug her. "Hey, precious." It had only been three days since they went fishing.

"What were you wearing?" Morgan mumbled. She peeled her face away from Maggie's shoulder to squint up at her face.

"Nothing. Well, not nothing, but – uh… stuff." Maggie shook her head and straightened, her lips twitching when Morgan grabbed her hand. "Where's your dad?"

"Inside," Morgan said, tugging her in the direction of the house. Her dark hair was in three weird-looking pigtails today. "He's got some important shit going on."

"I beg your pardon."

After a short discussion about inappropriate words and when to use them, Morgan continued tugging Maggie inside, chatting about the 'blue robot' she'd found in the garage and how her mom had bought her a new pair of gumboots.

Morgan guided her inside the house and into the dining room, where they found Tony working on a holographic model over the dining room table while Pepper leaned against the wall and spoke to him in a low voice. Tired lines hung beneath their eyes. They looked up, spotted Maggie, and then glanced back at each other.

"Morgan," Pepper called, "Why don't you and I go get Maggie something to drink? I'm sure she's thirsty."

"Okay," Morgan said, squeezing Maggie's hand before she let go. As Pepper took her hand and led her out of the room, Morgan started telling her mom about the 'weird black clothes' auntie Maggie had been wearing outside. On her way past Maggie, Pepper brushed a hand against her shoulder, met her eyes just for a moment, and nodded. What does that mean? Maggie watched them walk out of the room, frowning. Behind her Tony leaned both hands on the dining table, watching his sister.

When the door closed behind Pepper and Morgan, Tony opened his mouth. "Maggie, I-"

"Nat contacted me," she interrupted, turning back to look at him. "Told me there might be a chance of… that there might be a chance. I know she wouldn't dangle cruelty like that without a damn good reason, but… I need to hear it from you."

Tony nodded slowly. He looked… different. Not his appearance, but something had changed in the way he looked at her. His brow was furrowed and his eyes were trained intently on her, as if he was searching for something in her face.

"Tony?"

He blinked. "Right. You, uh… you should probably sit down."

Maggie sat hesitantly on one of the dining room chairs and listened as Tony walked in circles around the table, explaining the events of the past few days. He told her about Scott Lang's remarkable return, the Quantum Realm, and Lang's harebrained theory about time travel.

"So I started looking into it, and-"

"Wait, that's it?" Maggie held up a hand. "Lang… Lang traveled forward in time, albeit slowly, and he thinks this fixes all our problems?" Despite herself, despite her promises to herself that she wouldn't get her hopes up, tears prickled her eyes. "Tony, I don't know-"

"Maggot," he said softly, holding up his hands. She fell silent. "I said the same thing when they came to me, but just… keep listening."

And Tony kept talking. He showed her what he'd worked on throughout the night, the pages of equations and the rendered quantum fluctuation model.

"Okay," she said slowly, rising to her feet as she looked at the glowing model of the inverted Möbius strip. "I get that you've theoretically proved it's possible, but this can't work in practice. It goes against the laws of quantum mechanics to actually put things with any mass – people – through quantum fluctuation. You can't just get around that–"

"No but see, here's where Lang's wackadoo Quantum Realm works" – with a gesture Tony enhanced the model, gesturing to the equations hovering around the sides – "you get over the mass density ratio problem because mass there functions entirely differently, allowing for the time shift. You have to go in when you're really, really small. This proves the quantum gravity theory, Maggie, and then the Möbius strip model allows the machine to reflect time and emulate it. See?" He flicked through his designs, explaining them, and Maggie saw.

She'd been working with the science she knew, but Tony had proved time and time again that he could find new science that no one had ever considered before – this Quantum Realm changed everything if it really functioned the way the model predicted, and as Maggie absorbed this shift in the laws of goddamn physics, she began to see how they could make this machine work. It'd be complicated as hell and they'd need all kinds of computer power to make it function at all, plus some kind of navigational device, but… Tony was right. This was possible.

The thought was almost sickening – after so many years of accepting that Thanos's actions were permanent, the idea that they might not be felt like a torrent of ice water pouring directly onto Maggie's head. Her gut churned, her heart pounded, and prickles crawled across her skin. She didn't know what to do with her hands.

She couldn't help but think of all the moments she wished she could go back to.

"And it wouldn't work without this," she said, pointing to a ream of equations beside the rendered model so she didn't lose her mind in thinking about the implications of Tony's discovery. She could see Tony had already built some device models. "This is directional, right? A device to invert the EPR paradox and exert control over the quantum realm's timeshift properties rather than letting them run through the traveling object – er, person."

"Right," Tony said appreciatively. "That needs some work."

Maggie nodded slowly, still feeling sick to her stomach. "Well… you've got a garage."

He grinned at her. "That's the spirit."

She flashed a small smile back, but then hesitated. "Tony… you want to do this? Build this" - she stumbled on the words time machine - "… thing?"

Tony crossed his arms over his chest, watching her. A long silence passed. "I…" he looked away. "I gotta admit, Maggie, I was considering burying this."

She tried not to let that hurt her, but it felt like a cold blade in her gut all the same. Not anger, just hurt. She understood. Morgan.

"Considered it for a good few minutes," he continued. He looked tired. "But…" he sighed and put his hands on his hips as he hung his head. "Pepper knows me, Maggie. She was scared out of her mind too, but she knew I couldn't… couldn't just let this chance go." His head lifted and he met her eyes. "I'm doing this, Maggie. I'm going to fight to get everyone we lost back." He looked into her eyes, showing her with a rare moment of gravity just how serious he was. Maggie's head spun. Everyone. "You know me though, gotta have my cake and eat it too; I'm going to make sure we keep-"

"- keep the people we found," Maggie finished for him. "That's all I want too." Her eyes burned. The fact that they could even have this negotiation… she felt breathless.

"Right." Tony nodded, letting out a breath, then clapped his hands together. "Right. Let's get cooking."

For two days straight they worked in Tony's garage; flipping through holographic models, arguing over science, and putting machinery together, like the old days. Morgan and Pepper flitted through, one to stick her nose in their work and the other to make sure they were eating and sleeping. Morgan didn't quite grasp the science (hell, Maggie barely understood what they were doing half the time), but she seemed drawn to the glowing holographic designs and the spark of welding torches.

If there was one thing that could draw Tony away from his work, it was Morgan – whenever she was around he became softer, kinder, patiently explaining what he was welding at the moment or getting her to help him clamp something down. Morgan seemed to enjoy sitting on Maggie's shoulders as Maggie stood in the middle of a holographic cloud of data, sifting through it.

But Pepper mostly kept Morgan out of the garage – she knew what they were working on, and how important it was. Maggie saw shades of fear in her eyes, but it was outshone by her hope.

Maggie couldn't bring herself to hope again, not if it was going to be shattered once more, but Pepper's hope lifted her up and kept her going.

Finally, one morning found Maggie and Tony packing their work into his sleek grey car. As she tossed a dufflebag in the trunk Maggie spotted a distinctive red, white, and blue shield hidden under some of Morgan's toys, but didn't comment on it. She shut the trunk and looked up.

Tony rested one arm on the top of the car, his eyes obscured by dark sunglasses. Maggie could see he was still unsettled after saying goodbye to Morgan and Pepper; Morgan had been confused about why he had to leave, and Tony couldn't really explain – he'd mostly been a stay at home dad these past few years. Morgan had squeezed Maggie as tightly as she could, because she was used to saying goodbye to her aunt, and Pepper drew Maggie in for a tight, desperate embrace.

"Good luck," she'd murmured. Maggie had gone out to the car, so she hadn't seen Tony and Pepper's parting words. It's not like he's not coming back, Maggie told herself. Depending on how long this whole process takes, he'll have time to visit them. And after we're done… she pressed her lips together. She couldn't think about what after would look like.

"You ready?" Tony called.

"Not in the slightest." She strode up the length of the car and opened the passenger side door. "You?"

"Me neither. Should be fun."

They both dropped into their seats, and with a squeal of tires and displaced pebbles they shot off down the driveway.

They didn't talk about the 'time heist' on the drive. It was still too real and present for Maggie to deal with (any time she thought beyond the pure science of it all her chest grew tight and her breathing short), and she knew Tony liked to turn these things over in the back of his mind. So she listened as Tony told her about the suit he'd been making for Pepper. Halfway there, Maggie informed him that his five year old daughter was using the word shit, and Tony slapped a hand on his face and started worrying aloud for the rest of the car ride about how he was a bad influence on his daughter.

On the empty road up to the facility, Maggie was saying: "I mean, worst things come to worst, you've just got a toddler who occasionally uses the word shit. She's using it in the right context, so whatever. Plus, it's hilarious."

"One day, you playing the 'cool aunt' card will lose its charm." The car blew through the Avengers Facility gates and started zooming down the winding road. "Alright," Tony said. "Back to the big house."

It was a bright day, and the facility gleamed in the sunlight. Maggie's heartbeat kicked up at the sight of it. She was so busy taking in the wide, glinting windows and the A symbol on the side that she didn't notice the figure standing outside until Tony made the last bend. With the glint of blonde hair and the massive shoulders, she instantly recognized him.

Tony swerved the car in close to the building ("Jesus, don't run him over," Maggie muttered) and came to a slightly screeching halt a few feet away from where Steve stood.

Maggie turned to her brother, and he met her gaze with raised eyebrows.

"What?"

She shook her head at him. "You're such a show off."

Sniffing, Tony threw the car into reverse and rolled backwards until they came level with Steve once more.

Tony rolled down his window, not looking directly at Steve, and Maggie felt tension crackle through the air. Steve looked into the car, a frown on his brow.

Maggie glanced between them. "Yikes, okay, I am not getting in the middle of this." She threw open her door, climbed out and speed-walked around the car. She breezed past Steve as she called: "I'll see you inside once you're done fighting or making out or whatever this is. Hi Steve."

"Hi Maggie," Steve said with a hint of resignation in his voice.

Maggie darted through the glass doors just as Tony said: "Why the long face?"

Maggie made a beeline for the common room, walking through familiar rooms and corridors that reminded her of the way things used to be. She still remembered how it felt to walk these empty corridors in the wake of the Decimation, feeling completely and utterly numb.

When she reached the open doors of the common room she paused and took in the sight within: Bruce and Natasha sat at the main table, heads together as they spoke in low tones, and behind them on the couch –

"Scott!" Maggie exclaimed, slowly pacing inside. The dark haired oddball's head jerked up at the sound of his name, and he looked over at her. He lay prostrate on the couch, with a plate of orange slices resting on his chest and one of the slices in his mouth like a big orange smile. Maggie drank in the sight of him. "It's true," she murmured, her eyes round. "You're really not dead."

Scott pulled the orange out of his mouth and lifted the plate off his chest so he could sit up. "Not since the last time I checked," he said, and reached out to shake her hand. "It's good to see you too, for me it's been like… two years since I saw you last." He jerked his chin at her. "Saw you get all famous. I watched a lot of TV while I was on house arrest."

Didn't that feel like another lifetime. "Yeah, I uh… I heard about your house arrest. Sorry." At the table, Natasha and Bruce looked between Scott and Maggie.

Scott shrugged, and then pointed at her. "Wait, but also! At the airport, you never told me you were Tony Stark's sister!"

"We never did get around to telling you that, I guess we were busy with… everything else going on."

"I guess." He scratched his head. "And you promised to tell me a joke."

Maggie cracked a smile. "I'll save it for a rainy day."

He waved a hand around. "Can't get much rainier than this." It was clear sunshine out, streaming through the common room windows, but Maggie knew what he meant. She couldn't imagine appearing suddenly in this new, sad world without knowing what had happened.

Scott picked up another orange slice. "We've been running experiments all morning."

Maggie frowned. "Jesus, already? What about the EPR paradox?"

"The what now?"

At the table, Bruce smacked a large green hand against his face. "The EPR paradox. Dammit."

Maggie narrowed her eyes at Scott. "Did you go old or young?"

He looked like a deer in the headlights. "Uh, both?"

She looked him over. "You're alright now?"

Bruce cleared his throat. "Yeah, I just reversed the directionality. He should be back to normal now, barring some neutron damage."

"Some what?" Scott exclaimed, but Bruce kept talking.

"So I take it you guys figured it out?"

Maggie shrugged and turned toward the main table. "Tony did, mostly. When I showed up most of the math was done, so I helped him build the…" she sighed. "Time-space GPS." Bruce and Natasha raised their eyebrows. "I know. I didn't pick the name."

"So I take it Tony's on board…?" Natasha asked cautiously.

At that moment Steve and Tony walked into the room, side by side. Maggie fought a smile.

Natasha looked up. "Looks like you two have kissed and made up," she commented wryly.

Steve shot her an exasperated look, and Tony strutted into the room.

Here we go.

"Hello, I've arrived," he called, "No need to get down on your knees and thank me with tears in your eyes, although now I think about it-"

"What's the game plan?" Maggie cut in, because she knew that once Tony got started he'd never stop. Tony glared at her but then gestured for Steve to speak.

Steve set his hands on his hips and looked around the room. "We're putting out the call, bringing the team in."

Maggie's eyebrows raised. "Everybody?"

"Everybody."

"And in the meantime, Maggot," Tony cut in, "you and I are going to do what we do best."

"Blow shit up?" Scott suggested through a mouthful of orange.

Tony glanced over. "Hello again Lang, lovely to see you approximately the same age as you were yesterday. I appreciate your guess but no – Maggie and I are going to start building shit."

Tony and Maggie started construction in the aircraft hangar. It started with moving in the parts: trucks full of components arrived, and whoever was around and strong enough lugged it all into the hangar – Maggie, Steve, and Bruce mostly, carrying heavy boxes and massive metal pylons as Tony bossed them all around.

Then Maggie and Tony got to work putting it all together. Tony focused on the welding and bolting, while Maggie turned to the computers and GPSes, finely honing them. There were multiple projects progressing at once: the quantum tunnel itself, which they'd designed as a launchpad of sorts, the GPSes, and the suits to protect the team in the Quantum Realm.

On the afternoon of the first day Maggie lay on a skateboard underneath a massive array of computers, hooking up the wiring, when the hangar windows rattled and she heard the sound of a familiar engine. Tony started grumbling about delicate calibrations, but Maggie rolled out from the computer array, leaped to her feet and sprinted out of the hangar.

She ran outside, squinting in the sunlight, to see Scott staring opened mouthed at the orange, gleaming Benatar which had just landed on the lawn. The landing ramp descended and Nebula strode down the stairs, Rocket remaining behind her. Maggie jogged past a truly dumbfounded Scott and met Nebula at the base of the stairs.

"Hi," she said, unable to help her smile. "Glad you came."

Nebula nodded, serious as ever, and held out her fist. Maggie bumped her fist against Nebula's tough polymer knuckles as Rocket yelled to Scott asking where Bruce was. She and Nebula had worked out 'acceptable touching' way back when, in those first missions in space. Nebula wasn't a hugger, and Maggie certainly hadn't been one at the time.

"I'll see you inside," Nebula murmured, and then continued striding across the lawn. Maggie jogged up the stairs to swoop in and hug Rocket. He wasn't much of a hugger himself, but things had gotten dark in the chaos of the universe, and they'd bonded.

"How've you been, jokester?" Rocket asked, patting her shoulder with his paw when they pulled apart. His beady dark eyes gleamed.

"The usual," Maggie replied. She jerked her head at the Benatar. "This hunk of junk still working?"

"How dare you." He looked over her shoulder at the flurry of activity around the Facility. "We're really going to try this, huh?"

She swallowed. "I guess we are." She threw a thumb over her shoulder. "I've gotta get back, but… good luck in New Asgard. You're going to need it."

"The hell does that mean?" Rocket frowned.

"I've been a couple times. Thor is… troubled. You'll see. All else fails, you can bribe him here with beer." She jumped off the landing ramp and strode back toward the facility building, smiling when War Machine dropped out of the sky and landed with a clang on the concrete. Poor Scott looked like he was on the verge of a heart attack.

"What's up, regular size man," Rhodey said with a nod to Scott.

"Hey Rhodey," Maggie called, and after glancing over his shoulder he retracted his helmet to shoot her a smile. They turned and started walking toward the front doors, just as Bruce walked out with a duffle bag and handful of tacos. Maggie patted Bruce's shoulder as she walked past. She hadn't seen so many Avengers in succession in a long time.

"So someone said something about a time machine," Rhodey said as they walked inside. He shot her a skeptical look.

"Yeah, that's…" she shrugged at him. "We're building a time machine."

"You know how crazy that sounds, right?"

"I know. I make no promises about it actually working."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Not exactly inspiring a lot of hope there, Maggie."

She avoided his gaze. "I've learned not to get my hopes up."

Maggie showed Rhodey into the air hangar, where Nebula was already poring over the holographic designs, and left him and Tony to catch up. She made her way back to the common room to let Natasha know about the new arrivals.

When she reached the common room, she paused in the doorway. Inside, Natasha sat at a chair beside the main table, her hands clasped in front of her mouth and her green eyes locked on the holographic information in the air before her. Her whole body was rigid, and shadows hung under her eyes.

Maggie eyed the data: intelligence reports, flight plans, a map of Japan. Maggie couldn't quite make it out from the doorway, but she knew there was only one thing that brought that defeated, almost scared look to Natasha's eyes.

Maggie walked into the room, circling slowly. She knew Natasha had noticed her presence, but she kept her distance all the same.

Finally, she opened her mouth. "I saw him."

Natasha looked up sharply. "What?"

Maggie shifted her weight but didn't look away. "About four years ago. I was on a mission in Egypt, and… I saw him. Back when they were just starting to call him Ronin."

The other woman took in a gusty, shaking breath. "And what, you just had a chat?" Her voice was hard as Vibranium.

"We were both… in a lot of pain. We spoke for a minute tops, and then we went our separate ways."

Natasha's jaw clenched. "And you didn't think to bring him in?"

"Bring him in where, Nat?" Maggie spread her hands. "He wouldn't have come here. He lost his whole family-"

"I know what he lost," Natasha cut in, her eyes glinting. "I lost them too."

Maggie met her eyes. "When I saw him I was… broken. I still am, but then… I didn't know what to do, what to say." Natasha's green eyes lost their cutting edge. "We were both drowning in darkness, and there wasn't a way out."

"There is now," Natasha said softly.

Maggie paced across the room and sat in the chair next to the redhead. Not touching, but side by side. "So go get him," she murmured. "Bring him home."

The Next Day

Maggie was sitting on a box in the aircraft hangar with five holographic screens hovering around her head when Thor arrived.

In between working on the Quantum Tunnel she'd taken it upon herself to thoroughly research the theoretical science of time travel. They'd invented the technology but they needed a code of best practice: what not to do while journeying in the past. She was writing a whole new set of rules. The rules started with #1: Don't talk to your past self, and ballooned out into meta-theories about parallel universes and closed timelike curves. She was still working out how to dumb it all down for her other teammates (specifically, Scott).

They'd just finished lunch and had split off to their various tasks – Nebula working on the quantum suits, Tony somewhere under the base of the time machine itself, and Maggie with her notes.

Maggie looked up at the sound of a belch that resonated over Tony's blasting music, and saw three figures at the other end of the hangar: Bruce, Rocket, and…

"Holy hell," Tony muttered from under the Quantum Tunnel base.

Maggie didn't realize how much Thor had deteriorated since she'd last seen him a few years ago. The beard and hair which he'd been growing out were now tangled and ratty, dark sunglasses concealed his eyes, and… well. He'd let himself go. I didn't even know Asgardians could look like that.

She quickly concealed her look of shock. This was how Thor's grief had manifested herself, and she would not make light of it.

Thor waved. "Hello all. Stark-" he wiggled his fingers at Tony, and then his eyes traveled to Maggie. "Other Stark." He turned to Nebula, who'd come out of the back room and stood in the doorway with her arms crossed. "I… don't remember your name."

Nebula stayed silent.

Thor let out a breath and put his hands on his hips. "Well, I'm pooped from the flight, I'll just be…" he made a vague gesture over his shoulder and walked out of the room. Maggie shared a wide-eyed glance with Tony, then looked to Bruce and Rocket. Rocket's eyes were in danger of rolling into the back of his skull, while Bruce just looked vaguely apologetic.

"My ship stinks like stale Doritos and farts now," Rocket grumbled, then strode across the hangar toward the newly constructed base of the Quantum Tunnel. "Alright, tell me what the hell this is supposed to be."

Things moved quicker once Rocket and Bruce were back. Bruce collaborated with Nebula on the suits and the Pym particles, and Rocket helped Maggie and Tony build the large, complicated Quantum Tunnel. It started to take shape, looking strangely beautiful with its circular array of quantum phasers and the canopy of smooth silver discs hanging over it. At sunset the Tunnel refracted the deep orange and red hues of light all across the hangar like a disco ball. Rocket and Tony developed a terrible habit of referring to the machine as 'sexy'.

They worked long, hard days, squinting through magnifying glasses at intricate wiring and burning their fingers on molten metal.

When Maggie occasionally pulled back from the work to breathe or eat, she saw Avengers everywhere she looked; Tony and Nebula fine-tuning ion engines together, Rocket trying to explain a mechanical principle to Steve, Bruce fitting Scott for the quantum suit, Thor dozing in a corner. The last time they'd all been together like this had been… she shuddered at the memory. The last time had been at the Garden. Where Thanos's blue blood had spilled on the creaking wooden floors and Maggie's soul had shut down like a malfunctioning machine.

She shook away the memory.

Finally, the morning of their first and only test run arrived. They carried out last-minute preparations, anticipation and nerves sparking in the air. The Quantum Tunnel was (theoretically) ready, and Scott, their volunteer guinea pig, was being suited up in the workshop. The sun shone bright on the facility, and Tony's music blasted in the aircraft hangar. They still hadn't heard from Natasha.

"Rocket, are you almost done down there?"

"Relax, I'll be done before you know it. Worry about your own job."

Maggie rolled her eyes. She hung upside down from the ceiling like a bat, her wings curled around two pylons on the roof to keep her steady as she manually adjusted the calibration of one of the many hanging metal discs. It had tested for some minor faults on one of their simulation modules, but just a few twists of her precision screwdriver had it falling back into sync with the rest.

She heard Tony's voice and glanced down to see him hauling the last power cable into the hangar, striding past a beer-carrying Thor. "Keep to one side there, Lebowski," he snarked.

Maggie tapped the side of her red goggles as she eyed the canopy of metal discs. "F.R.I.D.A.Y.?"

"The canopy is in 100% working order, Ms Stark."

"Fantastic."

Back on the ground, Tony called out: "Rachet, how's it going?"

"It's Rocket, and take it easy – you're only a genius on Earth, pal." Thor let out a belch.

Job done, Maggie released her wing-hold on the roof and flipped to the ground, landing with a forward roll to break her momentum.

Tony yelped and skittered away. "Jeez, will you give a little warning before you jump out of the rafters like a flying monkey?"

"Canopy fault's fixed," she said, dusting off her jacket and not breaking her momentum as she continued striding down the hangar. Her wings flowed back into their moorings. "I'm going to go check on the GPS synchronization." She dodged past Thor and winced at the haze of stale-beer stench that hung around him.

She walked out of the hangar and through the facility corridors toward the workshop, her mind full of equations and risk calculations and quantum theory. They'd checked their math dozens of times, but that didn't mean that Scott wasn't going to be in danger when they tested the Tunnel – time travel was unprecedented, and any number of things could go wrong from the machinery, to the computers, to the suit, to the navigational device itself. Maggie had never live tested an invention on a real person before, and the idea of it made her break out in a cold sweat.

But her swirling concerns didn't impact her hyper-vigilant situational awareness, so the moment she sensed a presence behind her she whipped around.

She first noticed Natasha, looking weary but satisfied. Half a step behind her stood Clint Barton.

Not Ronin, but Clint Barton. The black hooded uniform was gone, leaving him in dark trousers and a grey tank top, exposing the full sleeve of tattoos on his left arm and the grim hardness to his expression. His hair was swept up in a mohawk.

For a moment, none of them said anything. Then Clint stepped past Natasha, paced towards Maggie and extended his hand. She shook it.

"Hey," she said.

"Hey," he replied. This was a different man than the one she'd met at the airport in Germany, but she sensed determination in his gaze. He jerked his head down the corridor, to the flurry of activity in the workshop. "This gonna work?"

Maggie met his eyes firmly. "I'm not going to lie to you and say that it'll be a piece of cake. But the models work, the science works. It seems crazy, but… it works." She was still trying to make herself believe it.

Clint nodded and let go of her hand. "Alright then." He continued striding up the corridor toward the workshop, and after a quick glance at Natasha, Maggie hurried after him.

"Alright," echoed Scott's nervous voice from the workshop. "I'm not ready for this."

"I'm game."

Maggie walked into the workshop just in time to see Scott, Bruce, Nebula, and Rhodey glance up and stare at Clint where he leaned in the doorway to the armor room, arms crossed. A silence passed.

Clint didn't take his gaze off the white and red quantum suit with the stylised A on its chest.

"I'll do it."

As Bruce and Nebula fit Clint into the quantum suit and talked him through the process, Maggie sat cross-legged on a chair in the main workshop putting the final calibrations into the time-space GPS device. She wore a pair of magnification glasses that made her look like many-eyed insect, and worked with microscopic tools on the inner workings of the device.

She let the conversation in the room behind her wash over her, only catching snippets of Bruce and Rhodey arguing about something. 'Changing the past doesn't change the future!" Bruce said in a raised voice, sounding exasperated, and Rhodey and Scott responded in increasingly belligerent tones.

Maggie closed the back of the device and murmured a command for F.R.I.D.A.Y. to finalize the programming. She lifted the GPS off its mount gently, letting out a slow breath. This small machine was about to guide Clint through the intricate, shifting, utterly dangerous world of the Quantum Realm.

"Alright," she said as she strode into the armor room. "It's all working now, we'll just hook it up-"

She walked into the middle of a heated debate – after reaching the end of what sounded like a long list of time travel movies, Rhodey threw up his hands and said "This is known."

Maggie's eyebrows shot up.

"I don't know why everyone believes that, but that isn't true," Bruce shot back frustratedly. "Think about it: if you travel to the past, that past becomes your future, and your former present becomes the past! Which can't now be changed by your new future!"

"Exactly," chimed in Nebula, crossing her arms.

Maggie rolled her eyes and pushed through them all to get to Clint. "It's called the grandfather paradox," she said, taking Clint's right hand and fitting the GPS to it. "If you go back in time and kill your grandfather you prevent your own existence. So who kills your grandfather?" She shook her head. "We're working with the 'closed timelike curve' principle. We're not going to the past to change the past, we're going to go to the past to change our future." She closed the last vacuum-proof clasp against the back of Clint's hand and patted it lightly with a nod. "You're ready to go."

He nodded at her, stoic.

Behind her, Scott muttered: "So Back To The Future's a bunch of bullshit?"

They quintuple-checked their math and the setup of each mechanical component until there was nothing left to check, and Clint strode up the grated ramp and onto the launchpad of the Quantum Tunnel.

Watching him up there, alone underneath the forested canopy of metal discs, Maggie wiped her palms on her jeans. Everyone had gathered around Bruce and the computer setup at the base of the Tunnel, and Maggie stepped in silently beside Tony.

"This is going to work, right?" she murmured out of the corner of her mouth. On her other side, Natasha's head snapped around and she stared at her with an admonishing look. Maggie held up her hands. "Sorry, sorry. It's… yeah, it's going to work." She'd spent so long staring at the individual parts of the machine that stepping back to look at it as a whole was overwhelming. Beside her, Tony folded his arms tightly across his chest. He didn't take his eyes off Clint's white and red figure, silhouetted against the wide windows of the aircraft hangar.

"Alright Clint," Bruce called, toggling the controls. At Clint's feet the opaque floor cleared, revealing the complex structure beneath as it began to spin. Over his head, the canopy of metal discs weaved and rotated in mesmerizing patterns. "We're going in three. Two." Maggie's heart skipped a beat. "One."

The base of the Quantum Tunnel flared with blinding orange light like an immense burning engine, and Maggie got the vaguest sense of Clint's body blurring before she blinked, and he was gone. The hangar reverberated with the clap of the Quantum Tunnel engine.

She forced herself to take a long, slow breath through her nose. Around her, Avengers shifted and muttered to each other. Natasha's body was wound as tight as a twisted coil.

Maggie and Tony had set Clint's time-coordinates themselves, finely honing the exact location and the exact second that Clint would arrive at. Maggie knew, logically, that the chance of their combined brains getting something wrong was infinitesimal. But it was another thing to convince her beating heart of that. Time travel still didn't technically exist.

"Okay," Bruce said. "Bringing him back in three, two, one-"

The Tunnel whirred and flared with light once more, and after the initial blinding burst Maggie's eyes focused on a huddled figure on the far side of the launchpad.

As one, the Avengers rushed forward. Maggie pushed onto the ramp beside Scott, who called: "Is he really old?" But then Clint retracted his helmet and lifted his head, groaning, and Maggie let out a breath of relief when she saw his perfectly middle-aged face.

Natasha got to him first. She seized his shoulders and pulled him up to face her. "Hey, hey, look at me-" her hands rose to the sides of his face as he got one arm under himself and pushed to his feet. "Are you okay?" Around them, machinery whirred as it powered down.

Maggie paused a few feet away, her hands raised as if to reach out and her eyes fixed on Clint. Her attention darted down to something clutched in his right hand. Is that a catcher's mitt?

"Yeah," Clint breathed, his chest heaving and his eyes wide. He tapped the mitt against Natasha's chest. "It worked."

Maggie flung her arm out instinctively, grabbing Tony's shoulder, and they shared a wild-eyed glance before looking back to Clint.

Clint turned to take them all in. "It worked." He tossed the mitt to Tony, who caught it with a flash of vindication on his face.

As one, the Avengers let out a collective breath. It worked. For a few moments silence rang out in the hangar.

Then Scott clapped a hand to his forehead, his eyes wide as if he couldn't quite believe what they'd just accomplished. "Well what the hell do we do now?"

Everyone turned to look at Steve. He nodded slowly, his own eyes still wide. "Alright," he said. "Let's meet in conference room A in one hour." His eyes glinted. "We're going to make a plan."