CopyCat | Bucky Barnes

74

Dimtiri had given me a coffee to try and sober me up, but it didn't help much. The bright sun was giving me a pounding headache, and I was already beginning to regret coming. Steve drove us a few hours out, till we reached a more woodland scenery.

When the car slowed down, I could see a lake house in front of us. It wasn't until I got out of the car that I saw him. He was standing near the edge of the porch, with a small girl in his arms.

She reminded me of Sarah.

She looked about the same age the twins were when I left them with Steve all those years ago. Tony didn't say anything, he simply walked up the stairs, taking the child inside.

I caught sight of my reflection in the car window. My hair was extremely unkempt, even though it was pulled back in a low messy bun. I'd definitely gotten paler and a little thinner, my face evident of that, but I had a jacket on, and a long scarf hanging over my neck so there wasn't much of my skin showing.

We waited out on the porch for him, and he came back a minute later with a pitcher of some kind of green drink. I stayed near the back of us, leaning against a wooden pillar with my hands in my jacket pockets.

Scott and Steve did their best to explain their theory to Tony, but he didn't seem too invested in the idea.

"Now, we know what it sounds like..." Scott sighs.

"Tony, after everything you've seen, is anything really impossible?" Steve asks him.

"Quantum fluctuation messes with the Planck scale, which then triggers the Deutsch proposition. Can we agree on that?" Tony asks, deliberately trying to prove he knew more than them about the subject. Tony holds out a glass of the green drink to Steve.

"Thank you." Steve says, accepting it.

Tony holds one out towards me, but I reach under my jacket, pulling out a flask. "I'm good." I tell him, unscrewing the cap. Before I can take a drink, Dimitri swipes it from me, dumping the liquid out over the balcony into the grass. "Really?"

"Knock it off." Dimitri rolls his eyes, putting the flask away in his own pocket.

"In Layman's terms, it means you're not coming home." Tony shakes his head.

"I did." Scott reminds him.

"No, you accidentally survived. It's a billion to one cosmic fluke. And now you wanna pull off a... What do you call it?" Tony asks Scott, handing him a glass.

"A time heist?" Scott says, trying to hide his pride.

"Yeah, a time heist. Of course, why didn't we think of this before? Oh, because it's laughable? Because it's a pipedream?" Tony tells him.

"The stones are in the past. We can go back and get them." Steve says optimistically.

"We can snap our own fingers. We can bring everyone back." Nat insists.

"Or screw it up worse than he already has, right?" Tony asks.

"I don't believe we would." Steve disagrees.

"Gotta say, sometimes I miss that giddy optimism." Tony sighs, sitting down. "However, high hopes won't help if there's no logical, tangible way for me to safely execute said time heist. I believe the most likely outcome would be our collective demise."

"Not if we strictly follow the rules of time travel." Scott insists. "That means no talking to our past selves, no betting on sporting events -"

"I'm gonna stop you right there, Scott. Are you seriously telling me that your plan to save the universe is based on Back To The Future?" Tony questions.