Imagine If You Assembled The Avengers: Volume 3

Let's Do the Time Warp (Rogers/Wilson x reader)

"Are you sure about this?"

Steve and Sam stood silently and looked at each other expectantly, waiting for the other to give the answer that you needed before you began to gather the energy that you required to teleport them both. Steve had made a very specific request of you, asking you to bring him back in time to his own past. It wasn't often that he ever asked anyone for anything, given the selflessness that he exuded with his every action, so he must have struggled with the idea at all, much less to find the will to give his request words.

"Yeah...I think so..." he mumbled, very uncertainly.

"Steve, this could be a one-way trip for us," you warned. "I've never taken more than one other person with me during a teleport, much less coupling it with a time jump. This is new territory for me."

"Hey, I can hang back," Sam offered. "If this is risky for you, (Y/N), I don't want to do it."

"I can do it, Sam. I can get us there. It's the getting back that's tricky," you explained cautiously. "Just so we can be there long enough for me to recover and build up my power before jumping again." You paused and focused your sights again on Steve, still waiting for the word to move. "Cap? We good?"

Steve took a long breath, his chest expanding against the resistance of his nerves so forcefully that he shook with the attempt and it gave him no solace in the least. The war that his team and his friends had just survived had left him with a completely different outlook on this life, as it had for them all, but Steve felt as if his perspective reached beyond theirs. This wasn't his first life, and when the dust settled and the terror subsided, he began to realize that his ability to get what he wanted and what he needed was nonexistent. "Yeah, we're good," he exhaled heavily, dropping the tension from his body once and for all. "This war...our survival...it made me see that dying with so many regrets just can't happen for me. When you offered me this, I just couldn't turn it down. I need to go back. I need to tell her how sorry I am for leaving her behind. I need to tell her-"

"That you still love her," you completed for him, nodding along with his every word.

"Yes."

Even though he was expecting what he had heard, Sam gasped under his breath just loud enough to find sound. He had always known that his friend longed for his time back, and the chance to have the life that he was meant to live, but to hear him say that he was still hanging on to a love that he never had the chance to share left him with longing. Longing to find more than service and more than heroism; Sam wanted a love that carried over decades of time too, and he found himself actually jealous of a man he respected more than any other.

"Steve," you began in a hushed voice, "I need you to answer something before I start. Are you asking me to leave you there once we find her? That could have serious implications on the future and where we are now."

"I know, but I want...I need to be there."

"Do you? How many people have you saved in these years who could die now because you're altering this timeline? You'll still be living with that guilt, Cap."

"(Y/N), you know that I'm not making this decision lightly, and I've thought about it over and over. I think that I've earned my life."

"No one is arguing that Steve."

A low groan escaped his throat, though he tried to hold it back; he really did understand and he had gone back and forth through his conscience and his greed and weighed it all out. He knew full well that he was being selfish and he began to not care. He led the charge to regain the universe from a titan who had come within a single snap of winning, and he should be repaid for that. Never once before had he asked for it, but after standing on the precipice of hell, his guilt faded away. There had to be a way to make this work.