Chapter 94

Maggie went to the medbay to help Bruce scan Clint for cell damage or premature ageing, because she could still feel the sickening lurch her stomach had made when Clint disappeared into the Quantum Tunnel. Natasha came with them, hovering over Clint like a bodyguard. He kept insisting he was fine and wanted to get to work, but it wasn't until the scans came back in (nothing out of the ordinary aside from a spike in adrenaline and endorphins) that Bruce released him. The four of them strode through the facility toward the conference room.

"I can't believe it worked," Clint said, scratching the back of his head.

"Neither can I," Maggie breathed. Clint shot her a look, and she held up her hands. "Hey, I told you what I thought before you signed up. I knew we'd done everything we could to make it work, but still… seeing it actually happen is another thing."

"Nah, I get it," he replied. "Sometimes there are shots that I know I can make, but it's all only thought until I actually see the arrow land." Beside him, Natasha smiled.

"You just compared time travel to shooting a bow and arrow," Bruce said in a despairing tone. Clint shrugged.

They reached the conference room door just as Rhodey and Scott walked up from the other end of the corridor.

Rhodey nodded to Clint. "What up, McFly?"

"Time machine's safe," Clint replied, then grabbed the door to the conference room and held it open for them.

"Well I wouldn't necessarily say that," Bruce said, "It's a highly complex machine based on very theoretical math, if anything went wrong that machine could tear apart the laws of physics."

They all paused outside the door, staring at Bruce, who just adjusted his glasses as if he'd made a passing comment on the weather.

"But nothing's going to go wrong, is it?" Natasha said coaxingly, shooting Bruce a significant look. Bruce blinked and glanced at Scott and Rhodey's concerned expressions.

"Right," he said, and gave them a wide grin. "Everything is okay."

Maggie rolled her eyes and walked into the conference room. Steve and Tony were already waiting inside – they chatted at the front of the room by the dormant glass screens, one in a plain white tee and the other in a dark suit with a cup of coffee. Thor sat in an easy chair in the back corner, sunglasses obscuring his eyes, and Rocket had taken a chair at the main long table. Nebula sat at the back of the room, positioned so she could see everyone.

Tony and Steve looked up as everyone else filed through the doors.

"Still alive, McFly?" Tony asked Clint with a raised brow.

Clint cast his eyes heavenward as behind him, Rhodey just chuckled.

"I beat you to that one by about thirty seconds, Tony. Quit stealing my material." Rhodey clapped Clint on the shoulder. "He's fine."

"Alright, let's get started," Steve said. "Take a seat, everyone."

Bruce and Clint stayed standing but the rest of them took seats at the table, which was covered in notepads and books relevant to the mission – histories of events on Earth the Infinity Stones had been a part of, and theories of time travel. Maggie sat at the end of the table, cross legged on her chair, with Scott on the far side from her and Thor in the corner behind her left shoulder. Sun filtered into the room at their backs, illuminating the piles of research on the table and the serious lines etched into everyone's faces.

As Tony circled to the front of the room, he set a coffee cup on the desk in front of Maggie. Blinking, she lifted the cup to her nose and realized he'd made it exactly how she liked it. She met his eyes and he winked at her before clapping his hands.

"Alright, to business. F.R.I.D.A.Y., bring up the specs for operation Time Heist."

The glass screens at the front of the room flickered to life, displaying images of each of the six Infinity Stones alongside energy readings and any other shreds of information contained in F.R.I.D.A.Y.'s servers. Maggie's eyes instantly flicked to the Mind Stone; it seemed huge on the magnified screen, glowing bright yellow like a star. She didn't remember it like that. She remembered it as a small, golden pinprick of light shining on her best friend's forehead. It was the only Infinity Stone she'd ever seen, at least until Thanos showed up with the rest and punched her with them.

On the table, her hand curled into a fist.

"Okay," Steve said, straightening, "so the how works. Now we've gotta figure out the when, and where." He looked around at his team. "Almost everyone in this room has had an encounter with at least one of the six Infinity Stones-"

"Or substitute the word 'encounter' for 'damn near been killed by' one of the six Infinity Stones," Tony cut in, striding across the front of the conference room to stand beside Steve. Despite the serious subject, the corner of Maggie's mouth twitched. It was good to see them working together.

"I haven't," Scott said with a shrug. "I don't even know what the hell you're all talking about."

"Regardless," cut in Bruce, who had been pacing back and forth, "We only have enough Pym Particles for one round trip each, and these Stones have been in a lot of different places throughout history."

"Our history," Tony nodded. "So, not a lot of convenient spots to just drop in, yeah?"

"Which means we have to pick our targets," Clint added grimly.

"Correct."

Maggie piped up: "But we can't just drop in on a guess, we need to know precisely when and where each Stone will be." To her left Natasha nodded, a furrow in her brow.

"So." Steve put his hands in his pockets. "Let's start with the Aether. Thor – what do you know?"

Maggie looked over her shoulder at the Asgardian in the back corner of the room. He sat with one hand tucked into the hem of his baggy tartan pants, his eyes obscured by dark sunglasses, and a beer can in his right hand. And… he didn't move.

"Is he asleep?" Natasha said.

"No, no," Rhodey murmured. "I'm pretty sure he's dead."

Maggie glanced back at all the staring Avengers, then cleared her throat and rolled her chair toward Thor. "Hey." He didn't move, but his chest did rise and fall. Alive, then. "Hey, Thor." Very conscious of everyone still staring at the passed out Asgardian, Maggie reached out and poked his cheek.

"Gah!" Thor flinched and flung his hand out, and would have smacked Maggie right in the face if she didn't dodge back, then dive to catch the beer can which he dropped in his sudden awakening.

"Come on, man," Bruce muttered. Thor looked up with a baffled look.

"Oh good," he said. "Everyone's here. Are we starting the meeting?" He clapped his hands together and flashed another thin smile. His eyes were concealed by his sunglasses, but Maggie would bet that the smile hadn't reached his eyes.

Bruce cleared his throat. "You ready to tell us about the Aether, buddy?"

Thor looked at the holographic glass screen with the red glowing image of the Reality Stone. "Now?"

"Yes," Maggie muttered as she carefully set the beer can down in the nearest trash can. She looked up and met Thor's red-lined eyes. "Are you okay?"

"Never better!" Thor's chair groaned as he heaved himself out of it, and Maggie made sure to keep back as he strode past her toward the front of the room.

"Uh, where to start – um," Thor pulled off his sunglasses and winced at the bright light in the room. He tapped his glasses against the screen. "The Aether, firstly is not a stone, someone called it a stone before." He pointed at Steve, whose brow scrunched in confusion. "Erm, it's more of a… kind of an angry sludge sort of thing, so, someone's going to need to amend that" – he leaned back to squirt eye droplets into his eye – "and stop saying that."

Thor continued to talk, swaying back and forth like a sailor on deck and going off on rambling tangents as he described his interaction with the Aether and 'Dark Elves' and apparently one of his ex girlfriends, and Maggie's eyebrows slowly lowered. She'd pulled up a holographic screen from her nanotech bracelets, fingers poised to take notes, but as he kept talking her hand slowly lowered into her lap. Her eyes flicked across the room to Tony, and for a moment they exchanged a bewildered glance. Maggie looked back to Thor and felt her heart twinge. Thor needed help, and in five long years he'd never asked for it.

When Thor seemed to have veered entirely away from his story and into some strange sort of philosophizing, Tony stepped in. "Why don't you sit down–"

"I'm not done yet – the only thing that is permanent i-in life is impermanence." He let out a wheeze that Maggie suspected was supposed to sound like a laugh.

"Awesome," Tony said with a clap. "Eggs? Breakfast?"

"No, I'd like a Bloody Mary."

After Thor's rough start they spent the rest of the day on the Reality Stone – exactly where it was located on each specific day that Thor was in its presence (it took a great deal of coaxing and bribing to get each piece of information from him), and going over maps of the Asgardian royal palace and devising containment modules for the 'angry sludge'. It made the most sense to send Thor after that Stone, but everyone was in silent agreement that he could not go alone.

Just before dinner, they tabled Objective One of the mission and turned to the Power Stone.

This was the Guardians' area, so over a massive pile of Chinese takeout the others listened as Rocket strode up and down the table, explaining Peter Quill's discovery of the Stone. He described a long, complicated story of dance-offs in space and Nebula being evil and treacherous relic collectors. Maggie took notes, trying to wrap her head around all the new names and places that Rocket kept throwing in at random.

"It would be difficult to steal the Stone from the Nova Corps once it's secured," Nebula murmured, "and the Guardians are far too chaotic to attempt taking it from them during the whole debacle."

"Not to mention you trying to kill us," Rocket added.

Her eyes narrowed. "Where did the Orb come from in the first place?"

"Quill said he stole the Power Stone from Morag," he said with a shrug.

"Is that a person?" Bruce asked through a mouthful of ice cream.

"No, Morag's a planet. Quill was a person."

At the other end of the table Maggie tapped out a few notes on the open Power Stone file, then turned back to her egg rolls. Steve silently passed her the sweet chili sauce.

"Like a – a planet?" Scott exclaimed. "Like in outer space?"

Maggie sensed Nebula look from Scott and then to her, her pitch black eyes gleaming with incredulity. She just shrugged.

Maggie let Rocket make fun of Scott for approximately ten seconds – because Scott kinda deserved it – and then called his name. Rocket turned just in time to catch the egg roll she'd tossed at him. He sniffed it, shrugged, and then stuffed it in his mouth.

"Tell us about Morag," she prompted. "And how did Quill 'steal' the Stone?"

They talked over the details of the Power Stone long into the night, tossing up ideas for getting it and who should be tasked with stealing it before Quill did – they wanted to make sure that each Stone had at least two people assigned to it, which was proving difficult even at this early stage.

Around midnight, Steve sent them all to bed. It felt strange to be able to sleep in the middle of a mission, but as Steve had pointed out, there was no time crunch right now – no villains to fight, no victims to rescue. Only the team, and their minds at work. "There's no point working on empty stomachs and tired eyes when we don't have to," Steve had said, and switched off all the holoscreens.

On autopilot, Maggie walked the halls back to her old room and only realized where she'd gone when the heavy automatic door slid open before her.

For a moment she considered turning around and going back to the common room. She could sleep on one of the couches, she'd done it before. But… it's been five years, she told herself. You can do this. She stepped through the door and into her room.

Everything inside was spotless, just as she'd left it. She'd half been expecting it to be covered in a thick layer of dust, like her childhood bedroom back at the mansion, but F.R.I.D.A.Y. had kept careful watch over the environmental controls of the room – to keep it this clean, she must have shut off the airflow entirely. Maggie's eyes roved across the space, taking in her neatly-made bed, the couch, dresser, desk, and the wide window through which gleaming moonlight streamed . Tucked against the wall beside the window stood the sharp, angular statue of wings that Maggie had made out of her torn up bedframe during her first few weeks in the compound. She eyed the twisted metal, slowly letting out a breath. It all felt so long ago.

Tiredness itched at her eyes, but she didn't yet feel drawn to her old bed, so she paced around it and came to stand in front of her dresser. On the wall above the dresser hung a handful of postcards; Maggie remembered tacking them to the wall, a reminder of Bucky and of herself. In the dim moonlight, the images of the countries and landmarks she and Bucky had visited seemed shadowy. In the middle of the postcards was a print of the painting she'd admired at the art museum in Chile; a portrait of a woman in a rich blue gown with her back to the viewer, a letter clutched behind her back. Carta de Amor: The Love Letter.

Stop thinking so much about what it might mean, Bucky had murmured to her. Stop searching for an explanation, and just… look at it.

Maggie's lips twitched. That had been almost… she went cold. That was almost nine years ago, now. She reached out, breathless, and pressed her palm against the small rendering of the painting to try to forget that she'd now spent more time apart from Bucky than she'd ever spent with him. She thought about how it had felt to have Bucky warm and solid beside her, watching her as she watched the painting.

She blinked furiously and then crouched down to pull out the bottom drawer of her dresser. The wood creaked as it slid open, as if complaining at having been disturbed after a five year rest. Maggie scooped out the folded sweaters inside and set them on the floor, then carefully disarmed the small booby trap at the bottom before prying out the drawer's false bottom. Old school spy shit, as Tony would call it.

Once she'd set the false wooden bottom on the carpet, Maggie looked back into the shadowy drawer and sighed.

To anyone else, it would have looked like a pile of old junk. But each object tugged at somewhere deep inside Maggie and brought her back to days that she held precious in her memory, like glittering jewels in a padded box.

The first thing she saw was a faded Rubik's cube and a scratched silver iPod, on top of a dog-eared copy of El Hobbit. Maggie ran her fingers feather-light over each item. The book was stacked on Bucky's only surviving notebook, which she had promised herself she would never read – she'd just been safe keeping it, until she could give it back to Bucky to write more of his thoughts in. Beside El Hobbit rested the Virtual Reality Planetarium Maggie had given Bucky for his ninety eighth birthday. Meg, this is the pinnacle of human invention.

Maggie's lips quirked. If only Bucky knew that one day she'd end up building a time machine.

Maybe he will know.

She pushed away the thought – she couldn't get her hopes up, she just couldn't – and looked over the rest of the items at the bottom of the drawer. A pair of scratched up safety goggles. A faded plush toy flower which Bucky had won for her at a can shooting game at a fair, resting on top of his Swiss Army Knife. And tucked in the back corner, a small pile of paper. Maggie picked up the papers with shaking fingers and unfolded them.

These were the photobooth photos they'd taken the same day that Bucky had won Maggie the toy flower: her twenty ninth birthday. Seven years ago. Maggie didn't look physically much younger in the photos (the supersoldier serum seemed to impact ageing as well as metabolism) but Maggie barely recognized herself. The first photograph made her smile: Bucky beamed at the camera, while Maggie frowned at him as if he'd gone mad. That Maggie had been learning new things about the world every day, and smiling for a camera had never occurred to her before. In the second photo they both smiled, though Maggie still looked a little perplexed. In the third photo Bucky's mouth pressed against Maggie's cheek and her eyes were closed, a wide and brilliant grin on her face.

Maggie hadn't felt like that in a long time. She barely remembered being capable of it.

The second strip of photos brought a new ache to her chest: she and Bucky beamed at the camera, squeezed to the edges of the frame by the enormous orange teddy bear that Maggie had won for him at the strongman game. The final photo on the strip captured a moment that made Maggie's heart skip: the orange teddy bear was gone, leaving Maggie and Bucky at the middle of the frame as if they'd been pulled together. Maggie remembered the moment well – Bucky had leaned across the photobooth and drawn her in for a kiss, and the teddy bear had fallen from her distracted fingers. Bucky's flesh hand cradled Maggie's jaw, Maggie's hand was just visible on his shoulder, and their eyes were closed.

Maggie felt an odd, distant envy as she looked at the two of them bound up in each other's touch, oblivious to the world around them. She remembered they'd sat in the photobooth until the next person in line knocked irritably on the side of it. She wanted that again, so badly that it made her chest ache. It wasn't fair that she only had a limited amount of memories to look back on, she wanted to make more. She wanted to feel Bucky's hand on her cheek, wanted his sea grey eyes and his warm, solid presence beside her.

She let out a shuddering breath and set the photos aside, reaching for the last piece of paper. She knew what it was before she unfolded it, of course, but it still made her breath hitch when she saw it. It was a simple pencil sketch of her own face, wearing safety goggles and concentrating deeply on something out of frame. The paper already seemed brittle, faded. Maggie traced a finger across it and graphite smudged onto her fingers.

If she'd barely seen herself in the photobooth photos, this woman was nearly unrecognizable. Her dark eyes and hair were etched out in careful, considered lines, her expression utterly focused and yet softened by the viewer's eye. The close attention to the details of her face made her seem beautiful in the midst of deep thought. This was a drawing that showed you how it felt to love the subject. This was a Maggie that hadn't existed for five long years. This was Meg.

She could almost hear his voice drawling in her ear: hey, doll.

Maggie tugged her pearl pendant and Kimoyo bead out of her shirt and pressed them to her tear-stained lips. A moment later, she tapped the Kimoyo bead and watched the symbol glow purple. She hadn't done this in nearly a year now, but… she couldn't help it. With shaking fingers she typed out a message and sent it out into the ether, to a Kimoyo bead that had crumbled to nothing five years ago.

I can't let myself hope for anything yet, Bucky, but I promise you that I'll do whatever I can and whatever it takes to make sure this crazy plan succeeds. You're my mission.

She'd only just tucked the Kimoyo bead back under her shirt when F.R.I.D.A.Y. spoke up:

"Ms Stark, your brother is requesting entry."

"Just a second!" Maggie wiped her eyes and quickly yet carefully set her and Bucky's belongings back in the false bottom of the drawer. Once the booby trap was active and the sweaters back in place, she got to her feet and kicked the drawer shut. "Alright, F.R.I.D.A.Y."

The door slid open with a whir, revealing Tony with a small holoscreen hovering just to the right of his face.

"Hey, look who I found." He strode into the room and Maggie spotted Pepper and Morgan's tired faces on the screen. They smiled when Tony moved next to the dresser and Maggie came into view.

"What are you doing up so late, Morrigan?" Maggie murmured.

Morgan's head was propped on her mom's shoulder. "I miss daddy."

"Oh, I'm sorry." Maggie bumped her shoulder against Tony's when he leaned against the dresser beside her. "He misses you too, you know." She'd seen it in his face while they built the Quantum Tunnel and during their planning – he enjoyed the challenge, but he missed his home.

"He already said that," Morgan informed her.

Maggie smiled. "Well then the only thing left is for me to say that I miss you too. And your mom. You making sure she stays out of trouble?"

Morgan's nose scrunched up. 'Mommy doesn't get into trouble."

"That's right," Pepper said, brushing her daughter's hair back from her face. "I leave that to dad, don't I?"

They chatted for another few minutes, Maggie and Tony leaning side-by-side and smiling in the warm glow of the holoscreen. When they said good night and hung up, silence rang out.

Tony looked around at the dark room as if seeing it for the first time. "Haven't been in here in a long time," he murmured. His eyes rested on the metal wing statue by the window.

"Neither have I," Maggie replied softly. This room echoed with ghosts of memories – she'd gotten to know her brother here, just the two of them trading tentative words back and forth. They'd screamed at each other and cried together and laughed until their sides hurt in here. This room was a part of both of them.

After a few more moments of silence, Tony sighed. "If we pull this off, it's going to change the whole world."

Maggie's nerves thrummed despite herself. "The whole universe."

"It'll change Morgan's world. It'll be so different to what she knows. That's been worrying me, but… the world will be better. I don't want her to grow up in a world where everyone older than her lost the people they loved. She deserves a whole world. Not just half of one."

Maggie squeezed his hand. "It'd be a hell of a sixth birthday present."

He snorted. "That's a year away. I can't save the universe now and expect to show up with nothing on her birthday."

"Very true. You'll be hard pressed to come up with something better, though."

"Watch me."

She smiled in the darkness, then nudged him with her shoulder. "Let's work on present number one, for now." He chuckled lowly, and Maggie tried to join him but her thoughts were caught on darker things.

She took a breath. "Tony. In this mission, if I… if I don't make it-"

"Don't do that," he cut in gently. He elbowed her. "You'll jinx it."

She rolled her eyes. "You are such a child."

"True. But at least I don't do big dramatic goodbyes like a martyr at the stake. It's so embarrassing when you have to take it all back later. That's why you save it all for afterwards."

She frowned at that. "What do you mean, afterwards–"

But he talked over her again: "It's gonna work, Maggie." His voice had changed, low and certain. It made Maggie nervous. "We're going to get him back. Get them all back." From the way he leaned into her, she knew exactly which him he meant.

"So I keep telling myself." She took a deep breath. "I guess I've just got to wait for the arrow to land."

"The hell does that mean?"

"It means get the hell out of my room so I can sleep."

The next day, they moved on to the Soul Stone. Maggie wasn't there for most of the discussion about it, as she and Tony went back to the workshop to finish up the quantum suits for the whole team – adjusting for size, species, and enhancements proved an interesting challenge.

They caught up with the main planning group in the kitchen at lunch, as everyone stood around munching on sandwiches and bags of chips and whatever else they could dredge out of the cupboards. They'd all split off to groups in the morning, taking on different roles – some working on the Soul Stone, others hammering out the details of the two Stones they'd discussed yesterday.

"So what did you guys work out?" Maggie asked as she put potato chips in her sandwich. Tony had taught her that.

Natasha looked up. "Soul Stone hasn't moved much, it stayed on Vormir until Thanos showed up."

"So not much of a time constraint," Tony nodded. "Okay, we could combine that one with the Power Stone then."

"That's what we thought," Steve agreed.

Through a mouthful of sandwich, Scott added: "But apparently Vormir's a real shithole."

Maggie raised her eyebrows at him, and then at Nebula, who just nodded resignedly.

"Okay then."

"Alright," Nebula said once they were all back in the (increasingly messy) conference room. Tony and Natasha shared a bright orange beanbag that someone had dragged into the room, and everyone else sprawled in desk chairs or lounges, some rubbing their temples and some seeking respite in large mugs of coffee. Sun streamed into the room, illuminating motes of dust in the air and the tired lines on everyone's faces. Maggie kicked her legs up onto the desk covered in loose notepaper and open books and absentmindedly rubbed the scar running through her eyebrow. Thor's jokester façade had, for once, dropped away and he sat quietly by her side.

Nebula brought up two holoscreens at the front of the room. Objective: Space Stone and Objective: Mind Stone. The blue and yellow gems gleamed.

"Two at once?" Maggie heard Scott grumble.

Nebula eyed him and he instantly shut up. "We're discussing these at the same time because we need to track their position throughout time and space, and I hear that some of us have a story to tell." She looked pointedly around the room, her eyes alighting on each member of the original Avengers: Tony, Natasha, Steve, Bruce, Clint, and Thor. "When you're ready."

She took her seat at the table, and as one the original Avengers got to their feet. Thor made a sound like a protesting walrus as he climbed out of the chair beside Maggie. They gathered at the front of the room between the two screens like grade schoolers called up for a group presentation, as the others sat and watched them with raised eyebrows.

Bruce scratched his green chin. "Okay, uh, where to start…"

"1940s Germany seems like as good a place as any," Tony suggested, looking to Steve.

Steve nodded. "Alright. So, in 1942 a Nazi scientist named Johann Schmidt found an item called the Tesseract."

For another hour the original Avengers gave their report, tracking the Space Stone from its discovery by Schmidt, to getting lost in the Arctic sea with Steve, to being found by S.H.I.E.L.D. and then to the Loki shenanigans, where the Mind Stone came in. Scott asked the most questions through their discussion, seemingly fascinated by all the secret details that he had never known about the Battle of New York.

As they finished describing how the Avengers had captured both Stones at the end of the Battle, Clint took over.

"Thor took the Tesseract back to Asgard the next day, and we gave up the Scepter to S.H.I.E.L.D. right after we beat Loki. After that, the S.H.I.E.L.D. records are contradictory – the Scepter was definitely in a New York S.H.I.E.L.D. facility for a time, but some point before the agency fell, thanks to HYDRA, it ended up in a fortress in Sokovia."

Natasha opened her mouth to continue, but stopped when she saw Maggie raise her hand, almost guiltily. Seeing Natasha's quirked brow, everyone in the room turned to Maggie.

Tony cocked his head at her. "Maggot? Something to ask?"

"No, uh… something to add." She swallowed. "I've had something of an encounter with the Mind Stone myself–"

"When it was in Vision's head, we know–"

"Before that." She sat up straighter, but couldn't quite meet anyone's eye. "In early 2014, HYDRA had the Scepter transported from the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility in New York to Sokovia. January 6th, 2014, to be exact. So we can… we can put that on the timeline."

Nebula charted the day on their Mind Stone timeline as the others looked at Maggie with raised brows.

"How do you know that?" Thor asked.

"How do you think?" she replied wryly. "The Wyvern was given the mission of escorting two HYDRA agents out of the States on a Quinjet, and seeing them safely to Baron Strucker's fortress in Sokovia. If we wanted to drop in there I could incapacitate my former self–"

"Risky," cut in Tony.

"Then," Maggie continued, "I could switch out the Scepter without the agents realizing."

Tony shrugged, nodding. "That's an option. Let's add it to the draft plans."

Nodding, Nebula made a few notes. They had hundreds of draft plans at this point, and dozens for the Mind and Space Stones alone. It was all about finding the right moment.

"Wait," Steve said, frowning. "Was that… was that a solo mission?"

A lump rose in Maggie's throat. She knew what he was asking: was the Winter Soldier there? "It was solo," she murmured. She cleared her throat. "Though if we go with that route we should steal the Stone before it arrives in Sokovia. They had some tech at that fortress I wasn't familiar with, plus… the twins saw me there."

"The twins?" Scott asked.

"Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. We've got enough going on logistics-wise without getting them involved."

"Okay," Natasha said, turning away from where she'd been murmuring to Nebula by the holoscreen. "We've got the timelines more or less figured out. The Mind and Space Stones intersect the most, so let's keep all those possibilities flagged."

They continued brainstorming, sifting through now terabytes of data about the Stones and their locations throughout time and space. As they worked they ate and chatted together, and finished preparing their supplies for time travel on the side. Maggie, Tony, and Bruce finished the quantum suits for the whole team, and finished fine tuning the time-space GPSes.

On the morning of the next day Maggie walked outside to catch a breath of fresh air and spotted Thor, sitting alone at the metal picnic bench overlooking the facility lawns. He wore a thick knitted sweater and dark sweatpants, and he was barefoot.

Maggie cautiously walked to the bench and circled it, getting a look at Thor's face: he'd been looking out at the lawns with a thousand-mile stare, but when he spotted her at the corner of his vision he wiped the solemn look away and flashed her one of his thin bleary-eyed smiles.

"Maggie," he said genially. "How goes the… the science?" He waved a hand back at the facility building.

"It goes… pretty good. We're mostly finished." Her eyes flicked over his face. "Thor."

He'd been looking out at the lawns again, but at his name he squinted up at her. "Yes?"

She looked into his eyes, not relenting even when his gaze skittered away. "What's on your mind?"

He sniffed and made a nonchalant gesture with his hand. "Oh, you know. I'm, ah…" his hand, resting on the metal table, started drumming out a nervous rhythm. "I'm probably going to end up going back to Asgard."

She nodded. "It looks that way."

A grimace flashed across his face. "Great, that's great, I'll get to… get to see the old stomping grounds again." He nodded too vigorously, his face painfully tight.

Maggie didn't respond for a long few moments. She just watched Thor. He wouldn't meet her eyes again but he grew visibly uncomfortable in her silent stillness – his drumming fingers tapped faster, and he reached up to scratch his beard. It was a beautiful, clear day, and the sun illuminated the gold in Thor's long hair and beard, and deepened the shadows under his eyes. He seemed more real out here, away from the glass and steel halls of the facility.

Finally she spoke again. "Your home was destroyed, right?"

"Yep," he said, seeming relieved that she'd finally spoken. "My sister was being a total dick so me and…" he sucked in a breath. "Me and Loki blew it all up. Bruce and Valkyrie helped."

Maggie reached out slowly, so he could see her every movement, and rested her hand on his. A spark of static jumped across her skin. Thor's tapping fingers grew still. He didn't meet her gaze, but his eyes grew dark and deep as they stared at her hand over his.

"You can't change the past," Maggie murmured. "You know that, right?"

"I know, I know," he said, still with a falsely-light tone in his voice. "Don't worry about me."

"I'm not," she said. "I never got to know you as well as I wanted to, but I know you can do this. You're strong, Thor, in ways that have nothing to do with thunder or lightning."

His mouth tilted up, but it barely looked like a smile. "I'm the strongest Avenger."

Maggie smiled. "Sure. But it's okay to not be strong all the time, you know."

His eyes clouded and his brow furrowed, and he pulled his hand out from under hers. "You're mortal, you wouldn't understand."

Maggie wanted to roll her eyes, but she didn't. "Okay," she said. "Just… just keep it in mind, alright?"

"Alright." He shot her another fake smile, and then stood up with a groan. "Have you seen my axe?"

"Last I saw, it was on top of the fridge."

Late in the afternoon of the next day Maggie found herself with Tony, Natasha, and Bruce back in the original conference room, which now overflowed with notes and empty coffee cups. Steve was in another room somewhere talking to Nebula, Rocket, and Clint about the non-Earth based Stones. Thor was apparently cooking, but the fire alarm had gone off a few minutes ago so Maggie wasn't holding out much hope for that. Scott and Rhodey were working on supplies for the mission – clothes and uniforms from different points throughout history. They had general ideas of where they were going now, as a hazy plan had started to form. A crazy plan, but it had been crazy to start with.

The Stones on Earth were still posing a headache-inducing problem, however. There were so many people involved with the Stones, flitting from place to place with all sorts of motivations and agendas. The team didn't want to get too close to their past selves, but those were the only times when the locations of the Stones were clear.

Maggie shook her head and focused back in on the conversation in the room around her. Tony and Natasha lay on the planning table, Tony pinching the bridge of his nose as his head rested on an enormous orange pillow while Natasha twiddled a pen in the air. Bruce lay on the floor beside the table, cleaning his glasses, and Maggie leaned against the glass wall with her legs draped over Bruce's middle. The Hulk-scientist hybrid was surprisingly warm.

They were trying to figure out where to take each Stone on Earth from – pre WWII was too murky location and time wise, and post-Ultron was no good because no one wanted to rip the Mind Stone out of Vision's head. And everything in between was a mess of wars and power-hungry tyrants.

Natasha sighed. "That Time Stone guy–"

"Mm, Doctor Strange," Bruce offered.

"Yeah, what kind of doctor was he?"

"Ear nose and throat meets rabbit from a hat," Tony grumbled.

"Neurosurgeon," Maggie corrected. "PhD."

"Nice place in the Village, though," Bruce added, and Maggie craned her neck to frown at him. He must be getting tired.

"Yeah, Sullivan street?"

"Mm, Bleecker," Bruce corrected Tony, at the same time as Maggie said "It was Bleecker street that got all torn up when that alien dropship arrived."

"Wait, he lived in New York?" Natasha asked.

Maggie perked up at the slightly changed note in Natasha's voice, even as Bruce and Tony piled in on her:

"Uh, yeah, on Bleecker and Sullivan!"

"No no, he lived in Toronto, have you been listening to anything?"

Natasha ignored their sarcasm, spreading a hand as she said: "Guys, if you pick the right year… there are three Stones in New York."

After a beat of silence everyone sat up except for Natasha, who still frowned up at the ceiling as if double-checking her own statement. Maggie stared at Natasha, and then her gaze flicked to Tony's wide-eyed expression.

"Shut the front door," Bruce exclaimed.

"Shit," Maggie said, almost numb. "That works." She opened and closed her mouth, trying to catch up with her brain. "It makes more sense than getting them individually like during the HYDRA Scepter transfer-"

Natasha continued her thought: "In the Battle of New York there'd be so much less scrutiny and if anything goes wrong we can blame it on the chaos of the invasion-"

"Plus we can double as ourselves," Bruce added, "we were all there–"

"That poses a secondary problem of avoiding ourselves," Tony warned, but his eyes were alight in the same way as when he solved an engineering problem.

They erupted into discussion, and Maggie saw the threads come together in her mind. After a few minutes they all picked themselves up and rushed off to tell the others, and Maggie felt, not for the first time, a sense of rising hope.

She didn't push it down as viciously as she had before.

Natasha's realization had been the final key to figuring out the broad strokes of the mission, and once they figured out when and where, they began to arrange teams: a New York team, an Asgard team, and a Morag/Vormir team.

Maggie naturally fell into the New York team. They considered putting her on one of the space teams for a few moments, but she'd never been to Vormir, Morag, or Asgard, so her experience wasn't much advantage there. And she did have advantages on earth.

"So where are you in 2012?" Bruce asked her, over team breakfast the next day.

Maggie swallowed her mouthful of scrambled eggs. "During the Chitauri invasion the Wyvern was in the old S.H.I.E.L.D. facility in New Jersey, repairing Zola's brain. Only Secretary Pierce and my handlers knew I was there – things stayed shadowy in HYDRA, the less people who knew the secrets the more likely they were to stay secret. And not many in HYDRA knew that I was real at all, let alone knew my face."

"Who will?" asked Steve, gesturing to the list of known S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA agents in New York on the day of the invasion.

She thought about it, scanning the list. "Sitwell," she said, pointing him out. She softened the memories of his flat, calculating stare with the memory of Bucky tossing him out a car window and into the path of a truck. She nodded to the STRIKE Team. "They won't know my face, not in 2012, but they'd met the Wyvern by that point."

Tony cleared his throat. "The Secretary showed up at Stark Tower, after the invasion. In hindsight, he was totally trying to get the Tesseract for HYDRA too. Bastard."

"I remember him," Thor added. "Unpleasant fellow."

"So I'll stay out of his way," Maggie resolved.

"You sure about this, Stark?" Natasha asked from across the table. She'd already volunteered to go to Vormir with Clint. "That was a chaotic day, and though people might not recognize you, you will come across people who you recognize. That can be difficult."

Maggie met her gaze without blinking. "If you can handle travelling to the 'dominion of death at the very center of celestial existence,' I'm sure I can face a few unpleasant memories."

Natasha shot her a wry smile. "It's decided then. Congratulations Maggie, you made the team."

Early the next morning Maggie sat them all down in the common room and laid out her 'rules for time travel', which she had mostly dumbed down to be understood by the average joe (Scott). They all listened surprisingly attentively. They'd reached the end of their planning, everything was in place, and the mission felt real now. Maggie supposed they wanted any guidance they could get. She had surprisingly managed to get some sleep last night, but after a dream in which she'd seen Bucky trapped inside the Mind Stone and screaming in pain, she'd rolled out of bed and gone to work quietly beside Nebula and Rocket on the Benatar, ensuring it was fully functional for its trip to the past.

A lot of the time travel science was hypothetical and a lot of it was unknown, so she ended the list of rules by saying: "If you run into a situation where you're not sure what your impact will be, remember the science: anything you do in the past will change the future. So try to have as small an impact as possible."

Tony, reclined on the couch, added: "Aside from, y'know, stealing the six most powerful objects in the universe."

"Yes," Maggie conceded. "Aside from that. Basically, don't kill anyone or tell anyone something they wouldn't otherwise know at that point in time. Don't prevent any deaths or any suffering. I know we've all got tragedies in our past. Believe me, there's plenty I wish I could go back and change. But we are going back to get the Stones so we can reverse the Decimation, and that's it. We can't actually prevent anything from happening."

"Or what?" Scott asked.

"Or you'll fuck the universe up, Scott. Don't test me." She eyed him down for a few long moments before he nodded and bowed his head, appropriately cowed.

Maggie nodded to Steve, who got up from his seat at the table and walked to the center of the room. The purpose to his strides and the set look of resolve on his face changed the atmosphere of the room instantly, and Maggie felt her own spine straighten.

"Alright," Steve said, looking around at them all. "We have a plan." He turned to the holoscreen on the table, where the six holographic Infinity Stones glowed.

"Six Stones, three teams." The others all stood, assembling behind Steve, and Maggie felt a thrill go down her spine. "One shot."

For a few moments they all stood there, staring at the Infinity Stones as their insane, brilliant plan hung complete and invisible in the air around them. Maggie snuck a glance at the people standing around her.

If anyone can do it, she thought, her heart thrumming. We can.

Steve nodded resolutely and then turned to face them all. "Let's suit up."

The others filed out, but Maggie noticed Steve linger by the holoscreen on the main table so she waited in the doorway. The hard lines of his face were softened by the first glimmers of dawn light, and she didn't miss the brief flash of uncertainty in his eyes.

Once everyone had left, Maggie cleared her throat. "There's something about you, Steve Rogers." He looked over his shoulder to meet her eyes. She smiled. "There hasn't yet come a fight that I won't follow you into."

He returned the smile, though his was a little sadder than hers. He put his hands in his pockets. "Might be that you got that from Bucky."

That hurt, but not as much as it might have once. "Maybe," she shrugged. "I think it comes from you, though. I trust you, Steve. I know that when you fight, it's for the right reasons." She straightened. "You're my Captain. And my friend."

He didn't look away from her gaze. "This is… this is beyond everything we've ever done, Maggie."

Maggie watched another brief flash of uncertainty cross his face, and took a deep breath. She'd been promising herself for days: don't get your hopes up. It'll just crush you again. She couldn't do that anymore.

Heart pounding, she strode across the room to Steve and took his hand. Her eyes bored into his. "We're going to get them back, Steve." Her voice was hard, certain, taking her own breath away. She didn't know when she'd come to believe that with her whole heart, but it was too late now. "All of them."

Something inside her loosened and came free. All of her work up until now had been a thought experiment, a project with a safety buffer; if it didn't work she wouldn't be disappointed because she hadn't allowed herself to get her hopes up. But this was a mission now. And the Wyvern always completed her missions.

Steve seemed first surprised by the vehemence to her words, but then she saw him draw strength from it. His shoulders straightened and the uncertainty faded from his face. His hand tightened around hers.

"We are," he murmured. Then, stronger: "We are." Resolve took over his features again and he nodded at her. "Let's go."

Maggie and Steve found Tony standing in a corridor on the way to the aircraft hangar, on a holocall with Morgan and Pepper. Maggie saw energy thrumming under her brother's skin, the kind of energy that usually turned into explosive engineering or supersonic flights in the Iron Man armor, but it was tamped down for now as he focused on his wife and daughter.

Steve hung back, eyes guarded, but Maggie strode toward Tony.

"Hey Maggot," he said, glancing over. "Want to say hi to Pep and the terrible terror?"

Maggie moved into frame and smiled. "Hello, you two. You're up early."

"We're gardening!" Morgan piped up.

"We know that some things might change today," Pepper said carefully, stroking Morgan's hair. "So we're going to stay close to the house and wait for a call from dad. And Happy's here too, just in case." Her voice was light, but her eyes bored into Maggie's. "You be careful, Auntie Maggie, okay?"

"I will," Maggie said softly. Another thrill went down her spine as she realized that for the rest of the world, today was a day like any other. For Pepper and Morgan, the entire shape of the universe could change in a single second today. She swallowed. "I love you both, very much."

"We love you too," Pepper murmured. "Right, Morgan?"

"Yes," Morgan said, in the same tone as someone might say duh. Her dark eyes rested on Maggie's face. "When are you coming back?"

Maggie's heart leaped into her throat. She glanced at Tony and saw a heaviness in his gaze. This was his first mission since Morgan had been born – since he fought Thanos, actually, and it was by far the riskiest mission any of them had ever undertaken. Anything could happen.

Maggie tried not to let her sudden spike of fear show in her face as she turned back to the screen and said: "Sooner than you think, Morrigan. And I promise I'm going to give you the biggest hug when I see you again. Sound good?"

"Sounds good," Morgan agreed, a shy smile lifting her cheeks as she nodded.

"I've gotta go now," Maggie said softly, "I'll give you back to your dad."

She stepped away from the holoscreen and walked back down the corridor to Steve without looking back.

He eyed her face. "You okay?"

She nodded stiffly. "I never used to be scared about going on missions. But now… there's so much to lose."

He nodded silently, and they waited side by side as Tony spoke to his family for another minute, his voice low and his eyes gleaming with love. When he hung up and Morgan and Pepper's faces vanished, Maggie and Steve strode up to meet him.

"That wasn't a goodbye, was it?" Maggie asked.

"Nope, it was an I love you," he said, with only the faintest clench of his jaw to betray his nerves. He slung his arm over Maggie's shoulders and nodded to Steve. "Now let's go suit up."