Chapter 95

'Suiting up' in the Quantum Suits only took a few milliseconds once the time-space GPSes were on their hands, but everyone wore different uniforms beneath the suits. Space-resistant armored gear for Natasha, Clint, and the rest of the team going to Morag and Vormir, and time-appropriate outfits for the New York team. Maggie wore dark navy combat gear, the standard uniform for a S.H.I.E.L.D. (or HYDRA) agent in 2012.

She strode out of her changing station into the armory and saw Natasha and Clint strapping the last of their weapons to their dark uniforms. They looked up at the sound of her soft footsteps.

"Now there's a throwback," Clint said, nodding at her uniform. "How's it feel?"

"Like a disguise," Maggie shrugged. She ran a hand over the S.H.I.E.L.D. eagle emblazoned on her left shoulder. "Though I guess there's a kind of poetic justice in finally 'joining' the agency my dad helped set up." She'd never felt all that connected to S.H.I.E.L.D., but wearing the uniform did bring a certain sense of nostalgia. "You guys ready?"

"Ready as we'll ever be," Clint huffed. He held out his hand. "Maybe once this is all over we can actually get to know each other."

Maggie shook his hand. "I'd like that." She turned to Natasha, and for a moment they just eyed each other. But then Natasha's eyes glinted and as one they reached out to clasp each other's wrists.

"Wyvern," Natasha murmured with a quirk to her mouth.

"Widow," Maggie replied warmly.

More murmurs filled the armory as the rest of the team assembled, wearing an odd assortment of clothes from jeans and a shirt (Bruce) to armor (Rhodey) to time-appropriate disguises (Nebula). Lang stood with his hands on his hips, completely at ease in his red Ant Man armor. Thor wore a hoodie. Maggie met Tony's eyes, and his eyebrows quirked at her uniform. No one said much, but the room was loud with unspoken thoughts.

"Talk about a blast from the past," Natasha murmured, and Maggie followed her eyes to the doorway of the last changing station, where Steve stood straight-shouldered in a vibrant blue, red, and white uniform with his shield mounted on his right forearm. Maggie's eyebrows shot up. She'd seen Steve in many versions of the Captain America uniform, but never this one. She'd seen his original WWII suit, when he wore it to take down the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarriers, she'd seen a more rugged iteration of the newer suit when she'd fought with him at the airport in Germany, and she'd seen his dark Nomad uniform. This was…

"I forgot how bright it was," Tony muttered from behind her, and Maggie hid a smile.

Steve looked up and saw them all staring. "Alright, alright," he said, sighing. "Everyone ready?" He looked around and got nods from his team. "Suit up."

As one, everyone reached for the GPS on the back of their hand and tapped it twice.

Maggie was used to the feel of nanotech surging across her body, but she heard a few exclamations of surprise as, across the room, white and red quantum suits flowed out of the tiny devices. She heard a grunt, and leaned over to help Thor untuck his long blonde hair from the collar of his quantum suit.

"Thank you," he murmured, a heaviness to his expression that he usually tried to hide.

"Don't mention it."

Steve made sure his shield was fixed to his suit, then nodded. "Let's move out."

They filed out of the armory and into the aircraft hangar, their footsteps loud on the concrete floor. As they strode out Maggie caught a glimpse of herself in a plate glass window; her shoulders were straight in the red and white armored suit, her chin held high, with a look in her eyes that she barely recognized: determination. She saw the A emblazoned on her chest, felt her heart beating beneath it.

Her breath caught in her chest. She looked to her right, at her brother wearing the same uniform as her, and her throat constricted. His eyes flicked over her and went soft. They looked strong in the armor – the white paneling protected the most vulnerable parts of themselves but also highlighted their strength, and the feel of the nanotech holding her tight made Maggie stand a little taller.

She strode into the hangar behind Tony and looked around at her team, her friends, each of them in the same uniform as they followed Steve toward the Quantum Tunnel. She'd gotten used to seeing these people as family, as people to lean on and laugh with, so the sight of them as a team made her miss a step. Each face was utterly determined, each of them marching forward as soldiers into battle with their eyes up and their spines straight. The dawn light streamed in through the tall hangar windows to enshrine each Avenger in golden light.

Maggie hadn't had a lot of cause for pride in her life. But this, she thought, was her finest hour.

She took in a deep breath and felt certainty settle in her heart as she strode up the ramp to the gleaming Quantum Tunnel. She nodded to Bruce at the control panel as she passed, and he smiled at her. The sunrise illuminated her face as she ascended to the bridge. They formed a circle on the bridge and Maggie took her place at her brother's right side. Steve held out his hand, palm facing down toward the center of the bridge, and everyone lifted their hands to meet his in a united circle.

Maggie stared at her fist. It was one part of a whole, bathed in golden dawn light, and she couldn't help but feel overwhelmed at the sight of it. She took a deep breath, but her heart just kept beating faster and she felt herself shaking. All of it, all the preparations and the building and the planning, had led to this moment. Don't throw up on the Quantum Tunnel, Maggie, that's the last thing you need.

Steve took a breath and she looked up. He was looking around at each of them, and in that uncanny way he had he drew their attention.

"Five years ago we lost," he began, his brow heavy. He looked around at them. "All of us. We lost friends. We lost family. We lost a part of ourselves." Steve met Maggie's eyes at that, and she felt the ever-present void inside her sing.

"Today we have a chance to take it all back," he continued. "You know your teams, you know your missions. Get the Stones, get them back. One round trip each. No mistakes, no do-overs." Natasha looked up, her eyes gleaming, and Maggie realized that none of them could take their eyes off Steve.

"Most of us are going somewhere we know," he said. "That doesn't mean we should know what to expect. Be careful. Look out for each other." Maggie looked at her brother out of the corner of her eye, and then back to Steve.

"This is the fight of our lives." Steve's voice rang with certainty. "And we're going to win." Tony looked over at Steve, a small smile on his face, and Steve met his eyes. "Whatever it takes." They held each other's gaze for a long moment, one half-smiling and one heavy browed and resolute, a million things passing between them in the space of a second. Steve turned back to the circle of his team and said, so softly after the determination of his speech: "Good luck."

Maggie beamed, her vision slightly blurry. Oh, Bucky, if you could've seen him. She recalled Bucky telling her about Steve's inspiring speeches before, but she didn't realize how it would feel to have one directed at her. She realized that though her nerves still raced beneath her skin, she didn't feel crippled by them anymore. She felt strong.

To her right Rocket remarked: "He's pretty good at that."

"Right?" Scott exclaimed.

"Alright," Tony called down to Bruce by the control panel, "You heard the man, stroke those keys, jolly green!"

"Traction's engaged," Bruce called back. Maggie's stomach swooped. This is happening.

Oh shit. This is happening.

She swallowed and met Rhodey's eyes across the Quantum Tunnel. "Good luck in space, Rhodey," she called. She nodded at Nebula, who stood next to him. "Take care of him, he's just a man in a tin can after all."

"I promise," Nebula intoned, startlingly genuine as always. Rhodey rolled his eyes.

Rocket and Clint bantered back and forth about the Benatar, and around the circle Maggie saw everyone take deep breaths and roll back their shoulders. But despite their nerves, Maggie felt nothing but a deep calm emanating across the Quantum Tunnel. After five years of living in their own failure, they had hope. They had a mission. Maggie's gut churned like a hive of angry bees and her jaw was clenched so tight she worried she might break her teeth, but her mind was steady.

Whatever it takes.

Bruce walked up the ramp with heavy footsteps, and joined the circle on the bridge. He tapped his GPS to activate the whole system and the Quantum Tunnel hummed to life.

"See you in a minute," Natasha murmured, smirking mischievously at Steve, and with a whir the canopy of metal discs over their heads began to move; a complicated twisting pattern that cast shattered light over the faces of the team below.

Maggie's helmet slid over her face in a flash of nanotech, and around the circle the others followed suit. Their determined eyes looked out through their visors.

At the last moment she looked down to see the floor yawn open beneath her feet, an orange maw like a jet engine or a burning star. For what felt like a millisecond and an eternity Maggie stared into the open eye of the Quantum Realm, and it stared back, and then–

Pressure. It felt like being crushed in a vacuum and being pulled apart all at once, an overwhelming surge of sensations that had Maggie screaming in her suit even as the world flashed with light before coming a dizzying wheel of optical stimulation: millions of glinting lights like shattered glass swirled around her, followed by dark blue spongy structures like close-up organic tissue or rocky formations, which became curls of vibrant colour culminating in a blinding flash of light like an oncoming train.

Maggie cried out again, her hands flying up to shield her face, but then the light passed over her and she felt another squeeze of pressure and suddenly found herself looking down at a debris-covered stretch of cement, her ears filled with the sounds of gunfire, distant screeching, and her own frantic breath.

She glanced up, rising, and her panic abruptly faded as she found herself in a narrow Manhattan alleyway blocked off by two wrecked cars, standing beside a dumpster with Tony, Steve, Bruce, and Scott. Smoke and dust filled the air, along with the sounds of chaos. As one, their quantum suits retracted.

Maggie met Tony's eye for a moment, barely concealing a grin. It worked!

Steve strode to the mouth of the alleyway. "Alright, we all have our assignments. Two Stones uptown, one Stone down." He turned back to face them. "Stay low, keep an eye on the clock." He whipped around at a metallic clank behind him, and Maggie's eyes widened as a single Chitauri soldier landed in the street, its gun raised. She'd never seen one before.

She only had a moment to stare at it, though, because in the next second a snarling Hulk leaped out of the sky and slammed a wrecked car on top of the alien with a roar. He slammed it down twice more before hurling a tire at another approaching Chitauri, then roared again and jumped on the car, slamming it into the shattered road. Gnashing his teeth, he took off down the road after the fleeing Chitauri.

Mouth open, Maggie turned to look at Bruce. He winced and hid his face. She'd heard of the anger of the Hulk, but she'd never seen it. That… that was the Hulk she'd heard about.

Steve looked up at Bruce. "Maybe smash a few things along the way."

Bruce sighed and started ripping off his shirt. "I think it's gratuitous but whatever." He strode out into the street, rumbling under his breath, and brought a half-hearted fist down on the roof of a taxi. He grumbled again and tossed a motorcycle aside.

Tony sighed. "You'll get there, big guy. See ya later!"

"Bye," Bruce called morosely, and took off running down the street.

Maggie watched him go with a frown. They'd assigned at least two people to every other Stone, but Bruce was going after the Time Stone alone. Maggie had offered her own services during the planning process, but Tony had said: "Hey, he's technically two people in one. And Strange isn't likely to put up much of a fight. He's an asshole, but he'll see that this is the right idea."

Maggie shook her head and looked in the other direction, to the smoke rising from the Manhattan skyscrapers and Stark Tower in the middle of it all, with a massive blue-ringed portal open in the sky above it. Maggie's eyes widened as a roaring, armored Leviathan flew through the hole in the sky, flanked by dozens of Chitauri. She could hear their warcries from all the way down on the street.

"Jesus," she murmured.

"Spoiler alert, but that gets taken care of," Tony said as he strode past her, his Iron Man armor sliding over his body. "Focus, Maggot."

"I'm focusing," she said, and jogged out into the street after Steve. Her boots crunched on debris and she managed to tear her eyes away from the portal in the sky. "It's just a hell of a view."

"I'm with you," Scott said as he went small and leaped onto Tony's armor. "This is so much crazier than I imagined. Look, there's an alien!"

Maggie eyed the airborne Chitauri as it whizzed overhead. Her instincts told her to fly after it and bring it crashing to the ground, but that wasn't what she was here for. A second later, the Chitauri went down in a ball of flame after an arrow tore through its steering column.

"Let's go," Steve said grimly.

Maggie spared a thought for their teammates, scattered across space and time. This very moment (sort of) Thor and Rocket were in the halls of Asgard, Clint and Natasha would be boarding the Benatar to fly to Vormir, and Rhodey and Nebula would be walking the surface of Morag. If all went to plan, she'd see them in less than an hour. God, I hope it goes to plan.

She fell into step behind Steve as they slipped through the debris-filled Manhattan alleyways toward Stark Tower.

Once they got within range of Stark Tower, all that was left to do was to wait. Tony and Scott hid at the top of the Empire State building but Maggie and Steve stayed on the streets, out of sight and out of danger. It was by no means a relaxing wait.

Maggie had seen footage of the Chitauri invasion, but it was nothing compared to hearing the wild alien cries, and seeing the wreckage strewn about the city and the ships flying overhead. She'd seen footage of this event, distant and safe in the knowledge that it was over. Even with the gift of foreknowledge it was a terrifying event.

I'm timetravelling, Maggie thought, with a spark of wonder. Somewhere out there, at this very moment, her past self was alive and working under HYDRA. The thought should have made her… disturbed, maybe, but it almost made her smile – that Maggie, the Wyvern, had so much joy in her future. She had freedom, and love, and family coming her way.

Another thought hit her like a kick in the chest: somewhere out there, at this very moment, Bucky is alive.

She knew exactly where: the Winter Soldier was frozen in a cryochamber in D.C., awaiting his next mission. The HYDRA files indicated that the next time he'd come out of cryo wouldn't be until next year, to take down a vigilante cell in Cuba with the Wyvern by his side. Bucky had nothing to do with this mission but Maggie couldn't help it when her chest clenched. I am closer to Bucky now than I have been in five long years.

She forced herself to breathe deeply and tune back in to her surroundings. To forget her thoughts of a frozen face behind frosted-over glass. You can't change the past. You can only use it to change your future.

Steve was quiet by her side, but she sensed him eyeing the battle with grim remembrance as they waited, crouched in an alley across from Stark Tower in the shadow of a fallen Leviathan. A permanent furrow rested on Steve's brow.

They caught glimpses of the Avengers; a flash of red hair on a hurtling Chitauri chariot, the distant roars of the Hulk, even a pretty clear view of Captain America and Thor fighting together on an overpass. Thor brought his hammer down on Captain America's shield, sending out a resonant shockwave that sent Chitauri flying.

Maggie turned to eye Steve, who watched himself run away with a complicated look on his face. Maggie couldn't imagine how it felt to see yourself as you'd been, more than ten years ago.

"You guys are fighting together like you've fought together for years," she said softly, as Thor launched back into the sky with a crack of thunder. He looked so different now. "And you'd all only met each other what, yesterday?"

"Yeah," Steve murmured, a hint of a smile on his face. "We were as surprised as you are."

"I'll say," Tony added over the comms. "You had such a stick up your ass, Rogers-"

"Don't start," Steve huffed. Maggie's eyes widened as she saw what could only be Loki whizzing overhead on a Chitauri chariot; a green and gold figure with an arcing horned helmet. Steve didn't see. "How're we looking on time?"

"Ten minutes to go time," Tony replied. "Scott, you good?"

"I'm good, just hoping I don't get blasted by one of these Chitauri."

"You're the size of a pinhead right now, I think you're safe."

A minute later, Maggie watched with her heart in the pit of her stomach as Iron Man disappeared into the yawning black hole in the sky with a nuclear missile mounted on his shoulder. Steve's hand rested on her shoulder, whether to hold her down or to comfort her she wasn't sure.

"So like, I'm not saying I'm the greatest superhero to have ever lived," Tony said idly over the comms, "but that's pretty damn heroic right there."

Maggie's concern and fear instantly melted away at the exasperated look on Steve's face, and the stammering note to Scott's voice when he said: "I mean, um… yes, that was… brave. Thank... you?"

"If I'd known you then – er, now," Maggie murmured, "I'd have kicked your ass for doing that."

"Don't worry, Pepper gave me an emotionally devastating talking to afterwards. Followed by some seriously intense-"

"And that's all I need to hear about that," Scott cut Tony off.

Across New York, the Chitauri cried out and went limp. Flying Leviathans crashed to the ground. Moments later the portal began to close, blue sky pushing in against the blackness of space, and at the last moment the glinting gold and red Iron Man armor slipped through the gap. Maggie clenched her hand into a fist as he fell, then let out a quiet breath when Hulk leaped through the air to catch him.

"Cheers, Bruce," Tony commented. Bruce didn't reply – he'd gone quiet a few minutes ago, but they suspected that would happen once he got to the wizard's house.

After that, they just had to wait for the team to assemble in the penthouse of Stark Tower before they set the plan in action.

Now that the Chitauri were out of the game, Maggie and Steve slipped across the shattered street and into a private entrance of Stark Tower. They made sure Steve wasn't seen – Captain America wasn't exactly forgettable – and began climbing the fire stairs. They made good time, surging up the steps with their footsteps in time and their breath echoing in the stairwell.

"Better hustle you two," Tony called, "Things look like they're just about wrapped up here." Maggie checked the digital clock on her GPS – they had less than a minute to get into position.

"Got it," Steve replied, as he and Maggie pushed through a set of heavy doors onto the floor they needed. "We're approaching the elevator now." They jogged down the evacuated corridors of the office level, past empty desks and abandoned offices. As they moved, they listened intently to the comms. Tony's end faintly picked up the voices of the past-Avengers in the penthouse as they ordered Loki to get to his feet. Past-Tony didn't fail to deliver on the snark, making quips about posing and cleaning up the mess.

Present-Tony's voice came through much clearer when he commented: "Agh, Mr Rogers I almost forgot – that suit did nothing for your ass."

Maggie snorted and looked across at Steve as he replied evenly: "No one asked you to look, Tony."

Through superhuman effort, Maggie did not look at Steve's ass as he ran beside her.

"Ridiculous," Tony muttered.

"I think you look great, Cap," Scott added eagerly. "As far as I'm concerned, that's America's ass."

"As much as I'm enjoying this fun, lighthearted approach to the time heist," Maggie called as she and Steve rounded the last corner and came up to the elevator. "Could we get an update on the mission progress?"

The sound of Tony moving quickly came over the comms. "Uh, Sitwell and the STRIKE team just showed up. Aaaand there we are giving away the farm. Well, the Scepter. You know what I mean."

"Who are these guys?" Scott breathed.

"They are S.H.I.E.L.D.," Tony murmured. "Well, actually HYDRA, but we didn't know that yet."

Maggie and Steve shared a dark look.

"Seriously, you didn't?" questioned Scott. "I mean… they look like bad guys." Maggie's brow lowered.

"You're small, but you're talking loud," Tony grumbled.

Maggie's attention perked when she heard Loki's impersonation of Steve – 'I'm on my way down to coordinate search and rescue' – and then the start of him complaining before Thor cut him off. Maggie had never met the God. He sounded… like a complicated person.

She looked out the window to Steve's right as Tony flicked Scott toward the Tesseract and then jumped off the building. Pillars of smoke rose out of New York's jungle of skyscrapers, but from up here the wreckage didn't look too bad. And to think, six years from this moment the city would fall into silence.

She shook herself. Focus, Wyvern.

"Alright Cap and Maggie," Tony said, his comms whirring with the sound of repulsors. "I've got our Scepter in the elevator just passing the eightieth floor."

Steve tapped the down button beside the elevator doors before them. "On it. Head to the lobby."

"Good luck," Maggie added.

"Alright, I'll see you there."

Steve looked over his shoulder, sweeping their surroundings, then met Maggie's eyes. "Time to suit up."

She nodded and released the nanotech waiting in her wing moorings. Black nanotech surged across her body, along her torso and down her arms and legs, then flowed up and over her head and face. In a second she was covered from head to toe, and she blinked as her vision suddenly became tinted red. Her wings sprouted from her spine, stretching wide for an instant before shuffling in close to her back, just visible over her shoulders. Needle-sharp claws extended over her fingertips.

She took in Steve's wide-eyed expression. "How do I look?"

He stared at her a moment longer and Maggie knew what he saw: this suit was made of nanotech, but it had been designed to appear to be made from older materials. A black and gunmetal grey combat uniform covered her from head to toe, not an inch of skin visible, and a black cowl concealed her head and face. The only color came from her slitted, glowing red goggles.

This was HYDRA's Wyvern. The Wyvern forged out of darkness in the tunnels of a freezing island in Canada, the Wyvern who'd fought by the Winter Soldier's side. It wasn't exactly the same uniform and if you looked close enough you could tell, but Maggie felt… different.

Steve swallowed. "You look… you look like when I first saw you in D.C."

She stretched her clawed fingers. "Scary?"

He nodded. "Yep."

"Perfect."

He shot her a concerned look. "Are you ready?"

From behind her red goggles, she met his gaze. "Sure I am. Are you? These guys were mainly a pain in your ass."

His brow flickered. "I… I'm fine. I beat 'em in an elevator once. This time I reckon I'm smart enough to avoid the punching."

Maggie smirked. "Let's see."

The elevator dinged and Maggie wiped her face of all expression. Her body tensed, her metal spine rammed bolt upright and her muscles coiled – ready for action at an instant's notice. The posture brought back echoes of old thought patterns: ready to comply. Complete the mission. Malfunction.

Her clawed gauntlets curled into fists.

The elevator doors opened, revealing a compartment filled with the STRIKE agents and Jasper Sitwell. For a moment they looked up at Captain America and the Wyvern standing side by side outside the elevator with blank shock on their faces.

To their credit, they didn't react too obviously once the sight before them registered. The more junior STRIKE agents' eyes nearly popped out of their heads, but Rollins, Rumlow and Sitwell's eyes only widened for a moment before they carefully schooled their expressions. Maggie kept her posture firm, coiled, and her face blank behind her mask. A surreptitious sideways glance showed Steve keeping his face perfectly neutral.

She and Steve stepped into the elevator, as casually as if it were any other day, and Steve leaned over to press the button for a mid-level floor.

Maggie moved to the right, sliding around a very tense Rollins and coming to stand beside Sitwell, who leaned toward her and hissed: "What are you doing here?"

"Reassignment," she uttered in the low, cold tone of the Wyvern. The voice of a weapon. She stood with her feet a shoulder width apart, her hands loose by her sides and her gaze fixed straight ahead. She felt the agents closest to her cringe away.

They didn't question her. Why would they?

"Cap," Sitwell then said, cautiously. "Thought you were coordinating search and rescue?"

"Change of plans," Steve said as he sidled into the very middle of the elevator compartment, with Rumlow to one side and Sitwell to the other. He didn't spare a glance for the red-eyed Wyvern at the edge of the elevator, as if she wasn't worth looking at.

"Hey Cap," Rumlow said softly.

"Rumlow," Steve greeted, glancing his way.

The elevator started to descend, soundless thanks to its engineer. Maggie sensed tension crackle throughout the compartment, a million unsaid secrets vibrating in the air, and she saw hands rest near weapons, saw muscles clench and sweat bead on foreheads. She just stood in her place, staring straight ahead with her wings tucked in close. Her weapon was her stillness, and she could feel how nervous it made them. She wouldn't have cared, as the Wyvern. But as Maggie she thrived in it.

Steve picked his moment. "I just got a call from the Secretary," he said. "I'm going to be running point on the Scepter."

Maggie watched as the agents traded side-eyed glances. Sitwell turned to look Steve fully in the face.

"Sir?" His eyes flicked down to Steve's shield. "I don't understand."

Steve glanced around at the HYDRA agents surrounding him. "We got word there may be an attempt to steal it." His gaze landed on Sitwell, firm and unyielding.

Maggie allowed herself to move at that; the barest movement of her wings, just a twitch really, which made a strange metallic whirring sound audible to everyone in small space. Someone on the other side of the elevator sucked in a sharp breath through their nose. Sitwell looked so confused.

"Sorry Cap," Rumlow drawled, turning to look at Steve. "I can't give you the Scepter."

Sitwell turned to look at Maggie with a questioning gaze but she only stared straight ahead, a perfect soldier. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "I-I'm going to have to call the Director-"

"That's okay," Steve cut in, and nodded minutely at Sitwell. "Trust me." He leaned over, a full head taller than the bald HYDRA agent, bringing his mouth close to Sitwell's ear.

"Hail HYDRA."

Maggie felt the energy in the elevator shift once again. Every agent stayed utterly silent, but their thoughts were deafening. Every eye turned to Steve, wide and disbelieving, flicked to the dark, rigid figure of the Wyvern, and then turned back to Steve. Sitwell and Rumlow met each other's eyes.

Steve cleared his throat. "Wyvern?"

Every eye turned to Maggie again. Swirling snow and blood dripping on metal. You are a weapon. Weapons do not feel.

"Ready to comply."

Sitwell audibly swallowed. Out of the corner of her eye, Maggie saw the assumptions settling in his mind. Knowing that HYDRA was alive was Steve's secret weapon. Having the Wyvern by his side was the clincher.

As she sensed every agent in the elevator struggle not to let the words holy shit fall out of their open mouths, it was all Maggie could do not to laugh or rip out their throats.

When the elevator doors opened once more, Captain America and the Wyvern strode out side by side, their spines straight and the Scepter case clutched firmly in Steve's right hand.

As she walked Maggie could tell that Steve was smirking too, but they waited for the doors to shut behind them before they turned to each other and grinned.

Maggie retracted her old-Wyvern suit, revealing her flushed face. "Captain."

"Wyvern," he beamed. He touched his comms. "We've got the Scepter. Scott and Tony, what's your status?"

Silence rang out over the comms. Steve and Maggie shared a panicked glance.

"I'll go see what's going on down there," she said. "You get the Scepter to the alley."

"Copy," he replied, and they broke off in opposite directions.

Maggie ran back to the elevator doors, wrenched them open and then peered down the elevator shaft. There were two elevators running on parallel pulleys. Score. She leaped into the shaft and plummeted down, the wind tearing at her face and hair as she watched her descent, carefully judging the distance. The concrete walls blurred past her. At the last possible moment she spread her wings, flaring them just wide enough that they fit in the narrow shaft without scraping against the walls, narrowly dodged the STRIKE team's descending elevator, and then landed with a thud at the bottom of the shaft.

"Tony, what's going on," Steve urged over the comms. "Tell me you found that Cube." Then: "You've got to be shitting me."

Maggie tuned him out, taking just a moment to form a nanotech helmet and thick goggles over her head in the style of a standard SHIELD grunt, complementing her uniform, before she pried open the elevator doors on the ground level and walked out.

She got a general impression of chaos: screams, black-clad agents milling around, civilians fleeing, and deafening roars, before a massive green hand swung out of her blind spot and smashed into her side.

Maggie only caught the glancing edge of the Hulk's blow but it felt as if she'd been struck by a mountain. She launched sideways and went skidding across the marble floor, gasping, her whole right side alight with pain.

"NO. STAAAIRS!" A deafening voice roared, and Maggie's head rung as heavy footsteps thundered away.

"Fucking… ow," she grunted, reaching over to press her left hand against her side. Too early to say if she'd broken anything.

She distantly heard Scott's voice over the comms: "That wasn't meant to happen, was it?"

"Oh, we blew it," came Tony's answering reply.

A second later, as Maggie's head was still spinning, Tony's voice said: "Hey, are you okay?" A hand appeared in her field of vision.

"Yeah," she grunted, and grabbed the hand. It pulled her up, even though she groaned all the way, and then she found herself looking at…

Tony.

"You okay?" he repeated, looking breathless and frazzled and young. "Big Green got you good there, you feeling any broken bones? Punctured lungs? Heart failure?"

He looked at her without recognition, one hand steadying her shoulder and the other resting over the arc reactor glowing underneath his shirt. Maggie stared at him, faintly picking up on the scramble of people around them shouting "Where's Loki?" and "Where's the case?". She couldn't process any of it, because she was staring at her too-young brother.

"Agent," he urged, shaking her slightly. Of course. She wore a helmet, concealing most of her face, plus the S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform, and anyway there was no reason for 2012 Tony Stark to recognize her face at all, let alone suspect that his sister was alive. "Are you okay?" He started to look over his shoulder. "Can we get a medic?"

"No," Maggie finally said. "I'm… I'm okay." She nodded at Tony Stark, with his neatly trimmed beard and his bruised face and his Black Sabbath t-shirt with the arc reactor glowing beneath it. "Thanks." She shook herself, wincing as that made the giant bruise on her right side ache.

"Great," he said. "You can sue me later." With that, he turned around and shouted: "Where the hell did Loki go?"

Still dazed, Maggie blinked and then looked around the foyer of Stark Tower. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents milled around the lobby, shouting, Thor was calling his brother's name, and a group of men in suits yelled orders that were mostly ignored. Maggie's eyes snagged on Secretary Pierce, his sharp blue eyes thunderous, but she forced herself to look away. He's irrelevant. At the far end of the room Maggie spotted her Tony getting slowly to his feet.

"Tony, where's the Tesseract?"

Scott, tiny somewhere in the room, replied. "It's gone," he growled, his voice more emotional than she'd ever heard it.

The bottom of Maggie's stomach dropped out. "What?" But then she tuned in to a different set of noises over the comms: grunts, flesh and metal clashing, glass smashing. Steve.

Her heart pounded in her chest and her whole right side ached, but she could see from the defeated look Tony shot her across the room that there was nothing she could do here. But Steve… Steve was in trouble.

She turned and ran back to the elevator shaft.

A quick check of Steve's position had placed him at a glass walkway on the fortieth floor, but when Maggie burst out of the elevator on that level and ran to walkway that spanned the wide, open space between the two segments of the tower, it was empty save for a shattered glass panel on one side. Sunlight glinted on the sharp edges of the broken glass. Heart in her mouth, she ran to the shattered panel and looked down.

She heard a grunt and spotted two blue-clad figures on another walkway far below, wrestling back and forth. Her goggles helpfully zoomed in for her and her mouth dropped open when she saw Steve grimacing as… as Steve held him in a headlock. The young-Steve wore his cowl, but aside from that they were identical. They fell backwards, grunting, and Maggie's gaze zeroed in on the Scepter lying in a pile of shattered glass a few feet away from them.

She stepped off the edge of her walkway.

She dropped through the air, narrowly avoiding other walkways and balconies jutting out into the open space, and over the whistling in her ears heard Steve over the comms as he gritted out: "Bucky… is… alive!"

She was two floors away when young-Steve released his choke hold on time-travel-Steve, his mouth dropping open. Her Steve fell away, coughing.

Young-Steve murmured: "What?"

Maggie's boots connected with the walkway just as Steve threw a fist over his shoulder and into young-Steve's face, sending him lurching back. Maggie kicked the Scepter into her hand and whirled it around just in time to touch the tip of it against young-Steve's chest as he launched forward. His eyes widened at the sight of her, wings spread wide and wearing a S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform.

Sleep, she thought, feeling the command flow through her palm and into the Scepter, and her stomach lurched as young-Steve's eyes went black. He sagged and slumped face-down on the ground.

Maggie took a step back, her boots crunching on shattered glass. Present-Steve lay on his back beside his fallen counterpart, breathing heavily, then met Maggie's eyes.

"Thanks," he breathlessly. "I had him on the ropes, though."

"Sure," Maggie said numbly. The Scepter felt cool in her grip. "You broke the first rule of time travel."

"Yeah, well." He sat up, reached over to pick up a compass, then got to his feet with a groan. Maggie watched him silently, feeling the past few minutes catch up with her. The aching in her side, her heart pounding in her chest. The look on Tony's face as he'd met her eyes across the lobby.

Steve heaved a sigh, his head falling back, then looked down at the unconscious young-Steve on the ground. He nodded appreciatively. "That is America's ass." He tucked his compass into his belt and looked to Maggie, grinning, before his face fell at the sight of her expression. "What?"

She swallowed. "I think… I think something went wrong."

Two years in the future and a million light years away, Thanos looked up from Nebula's memory files and turned to Ebony Maw.

"Set course for Morag, and scan the duplicate's memories." He looked back to his cyborg daughter, suspended in midair.

"I want to see everything."

After a fast, grim-faced run back to the alley, Steve and Maggie listened as Scott and Tony explained what exactly had gone wrong.

Gone. Snatched up by Loki and whisked to who knew where. And the Tesseract had been in Tony's hands.

They paused for a moment to contact Bruce, but his end of the comms was silent – he'd likely already gotten his Stone and returned via the Quantum realm, as per the plan.

The city had gone quiet now the invasion was over, just sirens in the distance to distract from the sound of Maggie's fast breathing and pounding heartbeat in her ears. She paced back and forth across the disheveled alley, a million thoughts racing through her mind.

"Well what're we going to do now?" Steve said, calm in the face of defeat.

"Y'know what, give me a break Steve," Tony said from the passenger seat of the wrecked car at the mouth of the alley. "I just got hit in the head with a Hulk."

Maggie, who had also been hit in the head with a Hulk, swallowed thickly and turned, pacing the same path. She remembered how she had felt after Thanos had died, that sense of encroaching hopelessness. It was starting to creep back in, numbing the corners of her mind. How could we fail so often and so badly?

Scott had climbed out of the car. "You said that we had one shot," he hissed. "This, this was our shot. We shot it, it's shot. Six Stones or nothing, we needed six Stones or nothing-"

"You're repeating yourself, you know that?" Tony fired back crankily. "You're repeating yourself."

"You're repeating yourself, you're repeating yourself."

Tony threw up his hands. "Dude, come on-"

Maggie saw Steve look away, exasperated and desperate, before she turned on the spot and paced back again.

"No," Lang yelled at Tony, "you never wanted a time heist, you weren't even on board with the time heist-"

"I dropped the ball," Tony admitted, hands spread.

"You ruined the time heist," Scott yelled, and Maggie said "hey" in a low and dangerous voice as she strode past him. Scott took a step away from her, eyes wide.

"Are there any other options with the Tesseract?" Steve asked, and then Scott started arguing with him.

Maggie tuned out, turning over Steve's question and everything she knew about the Tesseract as she paced. Maybe they could communicate with Thor and Rocket somehow, get them to steal the Tesseract from Asgard. Her hand rose to her mouth and she frowned. But they didn't have a form of communication through time and space like that, and Thor didn't even know exactly where the Tesseract had been kept on Asgard.

She turned around. Maybe we could go to the 40s, get it then. Her frown deepened. Either way, we don't have a way to get it back to the future. Unless…

She stopped walking. Unless someone got abandoned in the past, with no way back.

Whatever it takes. Maggie swallowed. She could give her Pym Particles to Tony, he could go and get the Tesseract from another timeline. She looked up, taking in the rubble-strewn streets and smoke in the air. Being stuck here wouldn't be too bad, surely? She'd have to go into hiding for the next – she counted – eleven years, but… surely that would be okay?

She came to this realization as Steve and Scott argued, and tuned back in just as Scott said:

"We have one particle left, each. That's it, alright? We use that, bye bye, you're not going home!"

"Yeah well if we don't try," Steve shouted back, frustrated, "then no one else is going home either."

Maggie opened her mouth and said: "I have an idea," at the same time as Tony launched out of the wrecked car and called "I got it!"

They both paused and looked at each other with quirked brows. Steve and Scott looked between them, eyes wide.

Tony frowned at Maggie. "What's your idea?"

She cocked her head. She'd seen Tony's self-sacrifice face, but this didn't look like it. "You first."

"Alright." He spread his hands, looking between Scott, Maggie, and Steve. "There's another way to retake the Tesseract and acquire new particles." He shut the car door and strode toward Steve. Maggie's frown deepened. Tony shot Steve a meaningful look. "A little stroll down memory lane: military installation, Garden State."

Maggie's eyes widened at the same time as Steve's. Holy shit. Her mind went spinning down a new path, and a new bud of hope sprouted in her chest as she recalled an empty military camp, desks covered in dust and a warehouse-sized room filled with ancient computer banks. Hell, her 2012 self was there at this very moment. She cast her mind back to all the files she'd read about S.H.I.E.L.D. in an effort to find out more about her father and about HYDRA. She recalled the names of prominent S.H.I.E.L.D. members throughout history. Of course.

Tony looked over at Maggie. "Was that your idea?"

She stared at him, her mouth slightly open. "Uh, no." His mouth opened to question he, but she held up a hand. "Yours is better, trust me."

Steve frowned into the middle distance. "When were they both there?"

"They were there, at a time, I" – Tony waved a hand and fixed his dark eyes on Steve – "I have a vaguely exact idea."

Steve bit back a sigh. "How vague?"

Maggie stepped forward. "I have a more exact idea, I've read all the records."

"What are you talking about?" Scott piped up. "What are you – where are we going?"

Tony nodded at Maggie, then turned back to Steve. "I know for a fact they were there," he urged, ignoring Scott's continued questions, "and I know how I know."

For a few more moments Steve looked at Tony, evaluating, then looked away as if hoping the heavens would open up and help him. "Well," he eventually said, "It looks like we're improvising."

Maggie's face broke open in a grin.

"Great," Tony said.

Steve stepped around Tony to go talk to Scott, and Maggie and Tony put their heads together to refine the date and place they needed.

"April 1970, right?" he murmured.

She nodded. "They moved the headquarters to D.C. the next year. They worked together at the facility a few other times apart from that but that's the longest stretch we can reliably say they were there. And that Pym was making Particles."

"Okay," Tony said, and started configuring his GPS as Maggie watched.

"Not that day," she hissed, "that's a weekend."

"Oh right," Tony realized, then adjusted the coordinates. "You go back with Scott, Maggie–"

"Like hell," she shot back. "You need me."

He looked back at that, his eyes warm as his hand hovered over his GPS. He smiled. "You're right."

Steve walked back after handing Scott the Scepter and telling him to head back to the compound, leaving Scott staring flabbergasted at the three of them. Steve looked up too see Maggie with her hand over her GPS and he nodded, shooting her a small smile.

"What's in New Jersey?" Scott questioned, waving the Scepter.

Maggie stood between Steve and Tony as Tony read the coordinates to Steve, and set in her own coordinates at the same time: 04071970. Her stomach clenched.

"Excuse me!" Scott shouted as they worked.

Once the coordinates were set, Steve looked up at Tony. "Are you sure?"

Tony nodded.

"Cap," Scott called. "Captain, Steve…" Steve looked over, an irritated frown on his brow, and Scott spread his hands. "Sorry, America. Rogers." He waved the Scepter. "Look. If you do this, and it doesn't work… you're not coming back."

Maggie scowled at him. Thanks Scott.

Tony let out a nervous breath before calling back: "Thanks for the pep talk, pissant." He turned back to Steve. "You trust me," he said, somehow a question.

They looked at each other for a long moment.

"I do," Steve nodded.

Maggie looked between them, exasperated. "I trust the science, come on–"

Tony cut her off, still looking at Steve. "Your call."

And Maggie had never felt more like a little sister in that moment, her brother ignoring her in favor of his friend. She rolled her eyes, almost relieved that the spike of annoyance cut through the fear thundering through her veins.

Steve nodded again, then cast a glance at Maggie to make sure she was ready. She nodded to him, grim faced.

"Here we go," Steve said, and the three of them tapped their GPSes twice. With a trilling signal their quantum suits flowed across their bodies in a burst of nanotech. Maggie had a half second to look at Steve, his brow low and his eyes determined, then at Tony, and then up at Scott's entreating face as he ran toward them.

We're jumping into the past without a parachute.

Pressure squeezed her skull in as the world exploded in a burst of color, and the New York street dropped out from under her feet.