Chapter 96

April 7th, 1970

New Jersey

"This is lame, I want to be a soldier too." As she strode toward the employee entrance to Camp Lehigh, Maggie made a face down at her outfit; a mustard yellow blouse and brown pencil skirt, with a navy trench coat emblazoned with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo to top it all off. A pair of ugly brown glasses pinched her nose, and an equally ugly brown leather purse hung from her shoulder.

"Sorry Maggot," Tony said over the comms, a hundred paces behind her so they didn't walk in in one very obvious group. "This is the seventies. Not a female soldier to be seen." He took a deep breath. "Can you smell that? Sexism, racism, and homophobia. Reminds me of my childhood."

Maggie fought the urge to roll her eyes as she handed her fabricated military ID to the guard standing at the camp gate. Last time she'd been here, forty years in the future, the camp had been abandoned. But it was in the middle of its heyday now: soldiers, scientists and civilian personnel populated the busy walkways, military vehicles drove back and forth under the warm spring sunlight, and the air resounded with the melody familiar to any military base: shouts, running footsteps, engines of all shapes and sizes. Maggie took a deep breath. She was in the past. It was plain to see, all around her – the fashion, the make of the vehicles, the lack of cellphones. And yet this didn't feel so strange. This felt like any other infiltration: disguises to blend in with, social mores to imitate. She tried not to think too hard about the fact that she hadn't been born yet.

It was a bright, cool day, and Maggie found her eyes drawn to a large sign on the other side of the entry gate, with the name of the base on it. The bottom of the sign read: BIRTHPLACE OF CAPTAIN AMERICA.

The guard waved Maggie through and she paced into the camp with a smile. "One good thing about the seventies," she noted, "it's really easy to counterfeit just about anything you want." She spared a glance over her shoulder at Tony and Steve.

It hadn't taken long to organize disguises and documents for their new plan; Tony wore the smart and yet affordable suit of a scientist, with the MIT logo and briefcase to match, and Steve had found a pair of US Army fatigues that fit his shoulders.

Maggie fought back her smirk as the guards at the entryway let Steve and Tony in, and then continued striding down the busy pathway outside the main administrative building. Her right arm and the side of her chest still hurt from being smashed by the Hulk, but luckily her serum was kicking in. A group of women clutching folders full of files smiled at her as they walked past, and Maggie smiled back.

As she walked, she overheard Steve and Tony's dumbass conversation about whether or not Camp Lehigh was Steve's actual birthplace.

"Could you two talk any louder?" Maggie murmured into the comms. She paused to reach down and fix the buckle of her shoe – she'd gotten a size too large by mistake.

Tony completely ignored her as, a few yards behind her, he started peering through windows. "Right, well, imagine you're S.H.I.E.L.D., running a quasi-fascistic intelligence organisation." He looked over his shoulder. "Where do you hide it?"

"In plain sight," Steve replied, and nodded at the munitions bunker across the yard. As they all looked up, two men in dark suits tapped a code into a reader by the bunker door and walked inside. Maggie's brow lowered.

Tony eyed the bunker through his glasses for a moment. "Huh." He then glanced to where Maggie leaned against the wall fixing her shoe. "Maggie, you coming?"

"I distinctly remember asking you to act like you don't know me," she replied sourly, but finished tightening her shoe buckle and then pushed off the wall to follow them across the yard.

As she walked into the shadow of the bunker and saw the heavy metal door with its well-used keypad, Maggie shivered. Tony had leaned forward to figure out the keycode with his glasses, but Steve noticed.

"You alright?" he murmured. He stood a few paces away as if they were two strangers waiting for the door to open.

"Fine," she said, pulling her trench coat tighter. "I doubt I'm the only one with bad memories of this place."

His lips curved into a smile. "I'll be in here when this place blow up, forty years in the future."

"Fun times," Tony said. The keypad beeped, and Tony swung open the metal door with a jerk of his head. "Hurry up."

They filed into the elevator, and Maggie had just opened her mouth to ask Tony to at least try to have some respect for the rules of infiltration when another person dashed into the elevator at the last moment. Maggie shut her mouth and slipped into the back corner, shifting her body language to make it clear she wasn't with the other two men at all.

The woman, wearing a navy blue dress with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo hanging around her neck, was reading an open folder of documents, but she glanced up for a moment to eye the others in the elevator. Her shrewd eyes snagged on Maggie, who was trying to make herself as small as possible.

"Your collar's crooked, dear."

"Oh!" Maggie's hand flew to her mustard yellow collar and she smoothed it out. "Thank you very much."

The woman shot her a thin smile and then turned back to her notes. Maggie's eyes darted to Tony and Steve, who looked at her and then away, and she let out a breath. This felt very different to the last elevator she'd been in.

It was an awkward ride down into the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility. The other woman looked up at Steve once, only for Tony to step into her field of vision. Maggie resisted the urge to kick him.

Finally, the elevator chimed and the doors slid open on sub level seven. Maggie drew in a slow breath and straightened. She and Tony had agreed to get off here, and search for the Tesseract.

Tony turned to Steve. "Good luck on your mission, Captain."

"Good luck on your… project, doctor."

Tony strode out of the elevator and a second later Maggie followed him, jaw clenched. Once he was out of the elevator Tony looked back at Steve, like an idiot, but Maggie just strode off down the corridor, pretending that neither of them existed.

The doors slid shut again and Tony rushed after her.

"You're a terrible spy," she hissed once he'd caught up with her, both of them speed-walking down the well-polished floor. They passed two agents in dark suits and Maggie nodded politely.

"Well not all of us had years of practice," Tony shot back. He sounded stressed. At least the upped-stakes of their continued time travel were freaking him out as much as they were Maggie.

"Come on." They walked as fast as they could without looking suspicious to where Tony's glasses pinpointed the largest amount of electrical energy. The layout of the base had changed since Maggie had last been here (or, would change in the future), so she didn't realize where they were headed until they pushed open a door to find themselves in a massive warehouse-sized room illuminated by rows of hanging lights, filled with hundreds of computer banks.

Maggie's heart flipped over and she instinctively pushed backwards, knocking into Tony's chest when he tried to follow her into the room.

"Maggot?" he murmured. When she didn't respond, he looked over his shoulder before pushing Maggie into the room and closing the door behind them. Alone in the computer vault, he put a hand on her shoulder. "What's wrong?"

She swallowed, trying to control her breathing. "Sorry, this is just…" she nodded at the rows and rows of hard drives. "This is… this is going to be Arnim Zola's brain. The Wyvern's going to come here in forty two years and help him write a code to murder millions of people." She shook her head. "I'm okay. It just… I didn't expect the memories."

"Good thing is you know how that all turns out," Tony said, looking into her eyes. "Zola blows himself up and then Steve blows up the code. Right?"

"Right." Maggie rolled her shoulders back and discarded Zola from her mind. "Now let's find the Tesseract."

After taking another second to make sure Maggie was alright, Tony nodded and then started jogging down one of the long rows of computer banks towards the other end of the vault. Maggie split off from him, taking a separate passage to cover more ground. They ran through the rows of databanks that would become Arnim Zola's brain and to what looked like storage space at the end of the warehouse.

Maggie tapped her ugly brown glasses, the only part of her disguise made of nanotech, and a holodisplay popped up to scan the heavy metal crates and shelving units around her. She half-walked, half-jogged, hopping over dusty boxes and half-formed apparatus lying around on the dusty ground. Tony's quick footsteps echoed across the basement, matching her own.

"Come on, come on," Maggie muttered to herself, her eyes darting from crate to crate. Bank bonds, radioactive waste, explosive powder… S.H.I.E.L.D. was storing all kinds of things down here but she couldn't find the Tesseract. She checked her GPS. They'd spent four cumulative hours on their mission all together – the time was meaningless, as they'd appear back at the facility in 2023 at exactly the same time as the others if they managed to find more Pym Particles, but Maggie couldn't help but feel the pressure. She was sure the others had got in and got out by now.

What if we were wrong about the Pym Particles? What if the GPSes can't handle a second trip? What if the Tesseract's being stored somewhere else and the papertrail is a false lead? What will the others think if they get back and we're not there?

"Got it," Tony hissed across the basement.

She let out a sigh and then slipped past a stack of boxes full of manila folders to get through to Tony's passageway in the vault. She staggered through, narrowly avoiding knocking the whole stack to the ground, and Tony jerked his head at a heavy metal containment unit as he set a briefcase down on a nearby counter-top.

"Fire it up," Maggie whispered, looking over her shoulder. They hadn't seen anyone else in this basement so far, but someone was bound to come down sooner or later.

Nanotech flowed over Tony's hand to form an Iron Man gauntlet. "Cover your eyes," he warned. Maggie looked away as he fired up the inbuilt welding torch. She stared at the wall, her heart in her mouth and sweat rolling down the back of her neck, until she heard a final metallic clink and the sound of the welding torch died.

She looked back to see Tony brushing sparks off his shoulder, and a glowing orange line cutting down the containment unit locking mechanism. She stepped in, bumped Tony gently out of the way, then dug her fingers into each side of the containment unit hinge and pulled.

The doors slid open with a groan and a clunk, and Maggie winced at the sudden blinding blue light that poured out. The light resolved itself into the shape of a cube, smaller than Maggie had expected, making the air crackle with unmistakable energy.

Over her shoulder, Tony let out a breath. "Back in the game," he muttered. He reached past her to grab the glowing blue cube with his gauntlet.

"Thank goodness." She darted backwards to open the briefcase so he could set the Tesseract inside. "Now we've just got to hope that Steve got our time travel juice." She wiped her forehead with the back of her sleeve.

"Arnim, you in there?"

Maggie and Tony flinched and jerked upright, because they knew that voice.

A man appeared a few yards away, his back turned, and Maggie slid in front of the briefcase so Tony had time to close it and hide the glow.

"Arnim?"

Eyes wide, Maggie reached behind her and smacked Tony. "Go, go, go," she whispered. She turned just as the man did, catching a glimpse of a mustache, and stumbled in the other direction. Tony hesitated for half a second with his eyes wide behind his glasses before he turned stiffly and started speedwalking after her.

"Hey!"

They both froze. Maggie heard Tony's short, sharp breaths beside her, and for a moment she almost forgot about the briefcase in his hand.

"Tony," she breathed, her voice almost terrified.

"Door's this way," the man called.

Tony turned, and after a moment to close her eyes and think holy hell, here we go, Maggie turned as well.

And just as she'd feared… that was her father. No silver hair yet, and his suit wasn't quite as fine as she was used to, but there was no mistaking Howard Stark when he walked into a room. His sharp dark eyes looked at them from under a furrowed brow, and he clutched a blue can in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other. He looked only a little older than Maggie – hell, he looked the same age as Tony.

"Oh," Tony said, sounding as if he'd swallowed his own tongue, and started walking stiffly in Howard's direction. Maggie reluctantly followed with round eyes.

"Looking for Doctor Zola, have you seen him?" asked Howard.

Maggie's sharp breath through her nose felt like a spike of pain.

"Yeah, D-Doctor Zola, nah, I haven't-haven't seen a soul–" Tony slammed into a chair, and Maggie reached out automatically to steady him without taking her eyes off Howard Stark. "Pardon me."

Howard's eyes flicked between Tony and Maggie. Oh god, she thought. They were smart but so was he; if anyone on this base could see through them it was him. She called on everything she remembered about changing her body language, disarming with her appearance, but she struggled to think over the ever-louder soundtrack in her head of: That's my dad. That's my dad. That's my dad.

"Do I know you two?" Howard asked, head cocked.

"No sir," Tony said in a high voice, setting the briefcase on the chair behind his back. He slipped off his glasses. "I'm a… visitor from MIT." He held up the fake ID, still staring at Howard with an open mouth.

"Huh, MIT." The furrow on Howard's brow lifted. "Got a name?"

"Howard."

Maggie's eyes closed. Stupid asshole.

"Well that'll be easy to remember," Howard said wryly, and stepped forward. Maggie opened her eyes and nearly flinched at seeing him so close, such a familiar face but younger than she remembered.

"Howard…" Tony looked away for a moment. "Potts."

Maggie looked heavenward. Tony's going to give us away, and I'm going to have to knock out my own father so we can escape.

"Well I'm Howard Stark." Maggie and Tony's father tucked the can under his arm and offered his hand.

"Hi," Tony breathed. He reached out to take the hand, but fumbled and only grabbed a finger. He let out a slightly hysterical breath of a laugh.

"Shake that, don't pull it," Howard warned. He turned on Maggie, who was still busy staring. "And you?"

Tony had rested his hand on the back of the nearest chair, as if he was about to collapse. "That's my–"

He faltered, so Maggie said "sister" at the same time as Tony said "assistant", and it was all she could do not to glare at him.

Howard quirked a brow. "Huh." He held out his hand, eyebrows raised, and Maggie swallowed.

"Abigail Potts, nice to meet you," she said, because she wasn't stupid enough to use her own parent's name. Just her own middle name. She took Howard's hand and shook it firmly. The last time I held your hand, your hand was twice the size of mine. She didn't let the spike of pain that thought brought show in her face.

"Abigail, nice name," Howard said with a quirk of his brow. "Got a strong handshake too."

Maggie felt an instant of panic because oh god, is my dad about to try to flirt with me, but then Howard turned to Tony and said "You look a little green around the gills there, Potts."

"I'm fine, just… long hours," Tony said. He did look very pale.

Howard gestured the can over his shoulder. "Wanna get some air…?"

Tony stared at Howard, his eyes going deep and complicated, then turned to glance at Maggie.

"Hello, Potts?"

"Yeah," Tony blurted out. "That'd be swell."

Howard gestured. "That way." Maggie was still rooted to the spot, staring. She wasn't sure she'd be able to move. But then Howard looked down and asked "Need your briefcase?" and she nearly leaped out of her skin. She lurched forwards, hand out, but Howard just picked up the briefcase and handed it to Tony as if it were full of nothing more exciting than manila folders.

Tony let out a nervous laugh, met Maggie's eyes for a brief moment, then turned and walked away.

Howard gestured for Maggie to go first. It surprised her, but she managed to scurry ahead without faceplanting. Behind her, Howard called out to Tony: "You're not one of those beatniks are you, Potts?"

"No sir!"

They started walking down the long passage of the vault, their footsteps loud on the concrete. Maggie tried to stop breathing so loudly. Her entire left side prickled where she stood closest to Howard Stark, her father, and she had to concentrate on walking in a straight line.

Despite the fact that Tony and Maggie's brains had apparently left their bodies, Howard seemed inclined to chat. "So what are you two working on down here?"

Maggie's hackles rose. Deflect, deflect. "There's untold applications for the computer power you've got down here," she said, tipping her head over her shoulder at the rows of databanks as she pushed her glasses up her nose. "Your work with microprocessors is miles ahead of the curve, the potential processing power is very promising."

Howard cocked his head at her. "You keen on engineering, Potts?"

"You could say that," she said with a thin smile. "Got it from my dad."

A few paces ahead Tony choked, because apparently he had lost all his cool.

"That's nice," Howard said thoughtfully as they turned out of the vault and into a better-lit corridor, with another elevator at the end of it. "I don't think my pops could've spelled science, let alone know anything about it." Maggie's eyebrows rose. "You go to college?"

She swallowed. "No, I never… never had the opportunity, I guess." They reached the elevator and Tony hit the up button, still staring at Howard. "I'd like to, someday." I never thought I'd get the chance to talk about my college prospects with my dad.

"That's a good idea. Maybe I should look into funding scholarships or something." He pointed the bouquet at her. "You want a scholarship?"

Maggie couldn't help but smile, because the harebrained idea and the offhand tone in his voice as he offered it sounded exactly like Tony. "I, uh… that's kind of you, but I'm sure I'll be alright. You should look into scholarships, though." Is this breaking the rules of time travel?

"Not a bad idea," Tony agreed, his voice still an octave too high.

"It's decided." Howard nodded. "I'll start a Potts Scholarship–"

"Please don't," Maggie laughed.

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, and the three of them stepped inside.

Tony glanced down at Howard's hands and then back up again. "Flowers and sauerkraut," he noted. "You got a… big date tonight?" He flashed a weird smile, and Maggie frowned at him. The doors slid shut behind them.

"Uh, my wife's expecting."

Tony's eyes shot wide again, and Maggie almost put a hole in the elevator when she went to press the button for their floor. 1970.

Howard continued: "And uh…" he held up the flowers. "Too much time at the office."

Tony's eyes darted to Maggie, and she just shot him a wide-eyed look. "Congratulations," he said numbly.

"That's great news," she echoed.

"Thanks, hold these will you?" Howard handed the flowers and the can of sauerkraut to Tony and started fixing his tie.

"How far along is she?" Tony questioned.

"Ah, I dunno…" Howard started measuring a distance away from his gut, and Maggie's wide-eyed expression slowly faded. When he shrugged and went back to fixing his tie, she bit the inside of her cheek. "She's at the point where she can't stand the sound of my chewing," he joked, rolling his eyes at Maggie before turning back to Tony.

Tony flashed a smile that looked more like a grimace.

"I guess I'll be eating dinner in the pantry again," Howard finished in a mutter.

Standing in the elevator, Maggie came to see some of what made Howard… not such a good father. She never saw, never understood as a kid. But now, with perspective and time and a good two inches on her dad…

It hurt a little bit, to see him so clearly. She'd read about how children came to realize that their parents were flawed, fallible humans, but she'd thought she'd never get that chance. She hadn't exactly expected this.

But then Howard smoothed down his tie and lifted his chin and Maggie felt a sudden rush of love. It reminded her of when she'd first seen Morgan; that sudden hit of emotion, yet somehow softer and sadder. The shock of seeing her father again had worn off and now he was just… Howard. Dad. Flawed, genius, with tired lines around his eyes and a joke ready at a moment's notice.

Her gaze slid to Tony and she saw a similar complicated cocktail of emotions flickering in his eyes. He took a breath.

"I have a little girl," he offered. Maggie's heart twisted.

"Girl'd be nice," Howard nodded. "Less of a chance she'd turn out exactly like me."

Maggie slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her helpless laugh, and both Tony and Howard looked over at her. Tony with a soft, cautious expression in his eyes and Howard just looking confused. She pulled her hand away.

"Girl would be nice," she echoed faintly.

"What would be so awful about that?" Tony asked Howard.

"Let's just say that the, uh, greater good has rarely outweighed… my own self interest."

The elevator door slid open again as Maggie and Tony stared at Howard in the wake of that admission. Neither of them knew what to say to that. With a decisive nod, Howard tapped Tony's arm and then strode out.

Maggie and Tony met each other's wide eyes.

"Oh boy," she breathed.

"Oh boy is right," he said. He held up the can. "I'm holding sauerkraut that is, indirectly, going to feed myself as a fetus."

She frowned and swiped the can out of his hand. "Focus!" She grabbed the elevator door as it tried to close on them and then they both rushed out after their father.

On their way down the main thoroughfare of the camp Maggie walked a step behind Howard and Tony, looking from one to the other with her heart full to bursting in her chest.

"Where are you at with names?" Tony queried, holding the flowers for their mother in one hand and the briefcase with the Tesseract in the other.

"Well if it's a boy, my wife likes Elmonzo," Howard said.

"That's a great name," Maggie blurted out, struggling to conceal her grin.

"Huh," Tony said with a brief, venomous glance at Maggie. "Might want to let that stew a while, you've got time."

They paused to let a large green truck pass, and Howard nodded at Tony. "Let me ask you a question – when your kid was born… were you nervous?"

"Wildly," Tony said, straight-faced. Maggie smiled at him.

"Did you feel qualified?" Howard asked, his brow furrowed. "Like you had any… idea how to successfully operate that thing?"

Tony glanced at Maggie, as if seeking help, but she was too busy staring at Howard again. Because that… had sounded just like her. She thought she'd gotten her mechanical way of understanding people from her upbringing in HYDRA, but apparently she'd gotten it from her father after all. The thought brought tears springing to her eyes, so she barely heard Tony's answer.

"I… literally pieced it together as I went along, I thought about what my dad… did, and–" Tony hesitated, and Maggie followed his gaze across the road to where Steve stood in his fatigues by a small transport vehicle. Steve flashed a quick thumbs up and then looked away, the opposite of nonchalant.

"My old man, he never met a problem he couldn't solve with a belt," Howard said wryly, oblivious to their distraction. Maggie winced.

Tony took a breath. "I thought my dad was tough on me, but now, looking back… I dunno, I just remember the good stuff." He looked to Maggie, a questioning look on his brow, and she smiled warmly at him and nodded. He looked back to Howard. "Y'know? He did drop the odd pearl."

"Yeah? Like what?"

Tony's gaze deepened. "No amount of money ever bought a second of time."

Maggie's heart flipped and her head snapped back to Howard. I only had five years with you, she wanted to say. The first thing I remembered about you after twenty years of HYDRA was the way you'd looked when you were dead. She swallowed. The last thing you ever said to me was 'let's have some quiet time now'. Her breath hitched in her throat. When you were bleeding on the ground, you asked for help – not for you, but for me and mom.

But she couldn't say any of that, so she just watched him as he smiled and said: "Smart guy."

"He did his best," Tony murmured.

"He did," Maggie breathed, finally speaking after feeling the words strangle in her throat. She felt Tony's eyes on her but avoided them.

"I tell ya," Howard said, glancing at Maggie, "Kid's not even here yet and… there's nothing I wouldn't do for him." He met Tony and Maggie's eyes, stunning them both in his sincerity, and then stepped aside to go talk to his driver, who – oh god. Maggie stared at Mr Jarvis, standing by the door of a black sedan with a primly unimpressed look on his face. She turned back to Tony to point him out, only to see him making a face at Steve from across the main road as he gestured to his briefcase. Steve relaxed at the sight of it.

Howard strode back from the car, and Maggie stepped towards him so he wouldn't see Tony's nonverbal communication with Captain America. She smiled and held out her hand, which he took in a strong grip.

"I think you've got your priorities in the right place, Mr Stark," she said. "Have a… have a wonderful life." That was maybe a bit too strong, but he just quirked his mustache at her, his dark eyes quizzical. He looked at her without familiarity, with nothing but a kind of well-meaning friendliness, but Maggie's head spun at the sensation of looking her father in the eye and shaking his hand.

"Likewise," Howard said. He turned toward Tony and his hand slipped out of hers. Maggie tried not to let the feeling hit her too hard.

She didn't give him back the sauerkraut can. She needed it: it was her excuse.

As Tony and Howard said goodbye, Maggie strode over to the black sedan and the tall man who looked both surprised to be noticed, and mildly irritated. He looked so much younger than she remembered.

She held out the blue can, with a look of uncertainty on her face. "Uh, Mr Stark told me to hold this, but I don't…" she looked over her shoulder at Howard just as Tony hugged him, the idiot.

"Of course," Mr Jarvis said crisply. He took the can. "Thank you ever so much."

Maggie smiled at him, taking in the perpetual crease in his brow and his professional aversion to smiling. She then looked upward, shielding her eyes. "It's a lovely day, isn't it?"

Mr Jarvis squinted around, then looked back at her. "Yes, I suppose it its."

She took a few moments to take him in, this man who existed at the edges of all her fondest childhood memories. She must have taken a second too long, because he said: "Are you alright, miss?" He looked over at Howard. "I know he can be… a tad overwhelming at times."

Maggie beamed. "That he can be. I imagine you're quite good for him."

He blushed faintly and waved her off. "Oh, I'm just-"

"I mean it," she said. In for a penny, in for a pound. "I mean it. Thank you." And because that was a little too earnest, she gestured at the can. "For taking the… taking the thing." He followed her gaze down to the can, his brow furrowed, and Maggie glanced over her shoulder to see Tony jerking his head at her. She looked back. "Have a wonderful day, Mr Jarvis."

He frowned at her as she turned and strode off, and she mentally kicked herself when she remembered that he'd never given her his name. Oh well. She smiled at Howard when she walked past him, and then she and Tony scurried off.

They rushed across the road to Steve, and then followed him around the corner of the building to a shadowy spot away from the main thoroughfare.

"What took so long?" Steve took off his aviator sunglasses.

Maggie and Tony looked at each other, and then broke out in breathy, slightly hysterical laughter. Steve frowned at them.

"That was our dad," Maggie told him. Steve's head jerked up and he glanced back around the building, just spotting the black sedan as it pulled away.

"… Oh." He opened and closed his mouth. "You spoke to him?"

"Didn't really have a choice," Tony explained.

Steve's eyes went pinched with sadness. "I saw… I saw Pe– Agent Carter."

Maggie's exhilaration softened. "Did you…?"

He shook his head. "Didn't talk to her. Just saw her for a moment." There was so much unsaid in that statement, obvious in the low tone of his voice and the almost wrenched expression in his face. She reached out and set her hand on his shoulder.

Tony had stilled. "You alright, buddy?" Steve nodded jerkily, and Tony lifted the briefcase. "Well we got the Tesseract, you've got the Pym Particles. We did it, mission accomplished. Let's head home."

An electric thrill ran down Maggie's spine. "We actually did it," she realized. She looked from Tony's briefcase and then to the red vials of Pym Particles that Steve pulled out of his pocket, and the unease that had been swirling in her gut since Scott had told her the Tesseract was gone faded away. She took the Particles from Steve and set about installing them in each time-space GPS, her hands steady despite her mounting excitement. Tony grinned at her when she powered up his GPS, and then the three of them put in their home coordinates.

"Let's suit up," Tony said. As one they tapped their GPSes twice. The devices beeped and the nanotech Quantum Suits shot out across their bodies.

Maggie glanced up and looked into Steve and Tony's eyes through the blue goggles of their helmets. She let out a breath.

"Let's go home."

When the tunnel to the Quantum Realm opened up and pulled them back to the future, Maggie and Tony were holding hands.

The Sanctuary II

Nebula strode across the throne room of her father's warship and presented him with the small vial of red particles. He took it with a considering look, ignoring her as she knelt before him.

Nebula raised her head, revealing the updated armor plating she had donned to imitate the future version of herself.

"How do I look?"

Vormir

"Let me go," Natasha pleaded, her voice open and free of all deception, all manipulation. They dangled from the cliff-face, frost blowing on their exposed faces, with the eternally setting sun casting soft purple light on the treacherous drop below.

"No," Clint groaned. His shoulder burned and every fiber of his being shuddered at what was being asked of him. She'd outsmarted him, like she always did, taking the choice away from him. "No, please no."

Natasha took a breath, never once tearing her eyes from his. "It's okay," she whispered. Snowflakes drifted in her hair.

"Please."

Natasha Romanov, Avenger and his oldest friend, gritted her teeth and slammed her feet against the cliff face. Her hand tore out of his and she… and she…

Clint screamed the whole time she fell.

Then the world fell still.

Even looking down at her broken, bloody body, his vision swam with how she'd looked in that last moment: calm, entreating, burning with love.

It's okay, her whisper echoed in his ears.

"No," he sobbed, tearing his eyes away.

An immense beam of light shot up from the mountain and haloed out across the clouds, and Clint's head tipped back to shout once more but then–

Darkness took him.

Maggie staggered back a few steps when the head-spinning vortex of the Quantum Realm spat her out on the bridge of their time machine, but Tony's hand on hers held her steady.

Heart pounding, she retracted her quantum suit and looked left and right at Steve and Tony, then around the circle of Avengers. She spotted wide-eyed faces and glowing Stones, though her mind was too frazzled to count them.

"Did we get 'em all?" Bruce's low voice resounded.

Maggie turned to her left, where she'd smiled at Natasha in the moments before they disappeared into the Quantum Realm. Her stomach plummeted.

Past the ringing in her ears she heard Rhodey call "Are you telling me this actually worked?", and then watched Clint as he fell to his knees.

She'd seen him as Ronin, but this was new. She'd seen old pain before, festering and rotting in his heart, but this was as sharp and new as broken glass.

The sound of his knees hitting the ground drew everyone's eyes, and Maggie felt the shudder in the air as one by one, the Avengers realized what had happened. She closed her eyes.

"Clint, where's Nat?" Bruce asked softly.

Clint didn't reply.

Maggie stood in the darkness of her own closed eyes, holding herself as still as possible in some effort to avoid the pain. Her first coherent thought filtered through the frozen blizzard of shock and horror: No.

A metal clang made her tear-filled eyes snap open, and she realized that Bruce had fallen to his knees and punched the ground. She turned to Tony.

Tony stared at the ground with wide, shocked eyes, as if he'd never considered the possibility that it would be Natasha who didn't come back. His chest rose and fell in short, sharp bursts. Maggie could see that he was lost in his head.

She reached out with shaking fingers and laid her hand on his shoulder.

He took in a shuddering breath. "Let's get the – get the Stones to the workshop," he grit out, still not looking away from the ground. "And then I'll be…" he blinked, and Maggie watched a tear spill down his cheek. "I'll be outside."

He walked across the empty circle of Avengers and down the Quantum Tunnel ramp, his footsteps loud in the silence.

Maggie moved mechanically as she changed out of her 1970s secretary disguise and then organised the containment unit for the Stones in the workshop. The six glowing Stones clutched in robotic arms filled her vision, but she couldn't make herself feel anything about them. She didn't allow herself to think, only to work.

But once the Stones were secure, she looked up and realized that she was alone in the workshop save for Rocket, who stared hard at an empty tabletop and had been doing so for some time. She glanced over her shoulder at the containment unit and her eyes rested on the dark orange Soul Stone, seeming somewhat smaller and dimmer than the others. Natasha paid her life for that. The unwelcome thought bloomed in the corner of her mind, closely followed by the soft, deadened sensation of nothing.

She turned and strode out of the workshop.

Maggie walked through the silent, empty Facility, her mind tingling with numbness once more. She spotted Rhodey in the common room, but Nebula was nowhere to be found. I've done this too many times, she thought distantly. Walked these corridors, desperately wishing I could bring people back. She shielded her eyes from the bright sun as she walked outside. Her heart beat sluggishly. She spotted figures on the jetty a little ways around the lake, and started walking.

Natasha had been invincible, in her mind. She'd been the strongest of all of them, she'd taken charge when the world fell apart and kept going. Maggie didn't know where she'd be without Natasha's steely-eyed guidance. Maybe we're fooling ourselves, she thought, thinking back to the glowing Stones she'd left in the workshop. Maybe we can't bring anyone back. We can only lose people, one by one until we're all gone.

She strode along the grass at the edge of the lake towards the wooden jetty, her hands loose by her sides. At least then it won't hurt any more.

Her boots made no sound as she crossed the jetty to the wooden platform looking out over the still, soundless lake. The inhabitants of the platform did not seem to notice her, let alone acknowledge her. Maybe I'm already gone. The remaining original Avengers had gathered here, clad in dark clothes, and seemed to be in the middle of an argument.

"It can't be undone," Clint told Thor, his voice thready as if it were moments away from breaking. "Or that's at least what the… the red floating guy had to say. Maybe you wanna go talk to him, okay?" His voice rose to a shout and he gestured angrily at Thor. "Go grab your hammer, and you go fly and you talk to him!"

Thor looked away, argument dying in his eyes. The others hadn't moved throughout Thor and Clint's shouting – Bruce stood with his hands by his sides, looking out at the lake, Steve sat silently with his head down, and Tony watched them with a still, dark look on his face. Maggie paused just at the end of the jetty, and leaned against one of the metal struts supporting the canopy over the wooden platform. She felt rigid, taut, like a pillar of steel about to crack. Silence pooled in her chest and emanated outwards, making her ears ring and her skin go cold.

Clint's anger faded from his face and he looked around. His eyes welled. "It was supposed to be me." He looked away. Maggie had never heard such desperation in his voice before. "She sacrificed her life for that goddamn Stone, she bet her life on it."

With a roar, Bruce ripped a bench off the platform and hurled it out across the lake. Maggie didn't flinch. Bruce turned, suddenly still, and murmured: "She's not coming back."

Maggie's eyes burned, and she swallowed hard.

Bruce continued: "We have to make it worth it. We have to."

Her eyes turned to Steve as he stood up, slowly, and fixed his eyes on Bruce. "We will."

Tony nodded, and looked around at the team who he had fought alongside since aliens came to earth in 2012. His family. He turned and spotted Maggie by the jetty, and his dark eyes deepened.

"Let's get to work."

Together, the original Avengers turned and filed back down the jetty toward the compound. Each of them shared a word or a glance with Maggie, Steve even pausing to wrap her in a too-tight hug before he moved on. Tony came last, and he stopped beside her.

He couldn't quite bring himself to look at her, so instead his eyes focused on the forest beyond. "She was always there for me," he said in a low voice. "Even when I was an asshole to her she had my back." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "I wasn't there for–"

"No," Maggie said, probably harder than was necessary. Tony shut his mouth and looked at her. "You know as well as I do that if Natasha heard you right now she'd… well, she'd tell you to stop making everything about you." She realized her fingers were shaking. "But she'd also tell you that this wasn't your fault. She'd say-" Maggie's voice strangled itself in her throat and she turned away. It was a beautiful day; the sun shone clear down on the forest and sparkled on the lake, warming her skin. But she only felt cold.

"Maggie," Tony said, alarmed. His hand hovered over her shoulder, but then he thought better of it. "Maggie, what is it?"

Maggie wanted to shout at him. Natasha's gone, isn't that enough? But he was right, that wasn't all this was. Her whole body shook now, her teeth chattering and her fingers clenching involuntarily. She couldn't think past the heavy emptiness yawning wide in her mind. "I can't…" she felt like she was falling apart at the seams. She shook her head. "I can't lose anyone else."

Tony gently took her arm and turned her to face him. She barely saw him through her tear-blurred vision, but she saw his heavy brow lower at the sight of her.

"I can't do it," she whispered urgently, still shaking. "It's… I can't…"

Tony pulled her in, wrapping his arms around her like she was five years old again, one hand on the back of her head and the other arm holding her so tight she knew he'd never let her drift away. "I've known you a while now, Maggot," he said in a low voice. "And I've learned a thing or two about you."

He pulled away, holding her shoulders at an arms distance, and she went still at the way he looked at her. He looked at her like she wasn't falling apart.

He nodded, as if confirming a thought. "You are stronger than any loss."

Maggie's breath rushed out of her.

Mere words didn't fix things but already Maggie felt her numbness seep away, leaving pain and fear and grief in its wake. She heaved in a breath, then let it out in a sigh of relief.

She already missed Natasha, with her cool green eyes and her impassive façade and her tungsten-steel-strength, but Tony was right. She could grieve and live at the same time. She would not fall apart again.

Tony saw the change in Maggie's eyes, and let go of her shoulders. "Now, are you going to stay and help me finish this?"

She nodded firmly, reaching up to wipe away tears. "I'm staying."