"Did you have to hit me so hard?" 2012 Rogue groaned as we left the hotel, pressing a few pieces of thin bathroom tissue paper to her bleeding nose.
I rolled my eyes. "I've already explained – I had to hit you hard to free you of Kilgrave's compulsion," I repeated for the thousandth time, glancing at her nose when she removed the tissue. "You'll live."
"It was so weird," she said, her mind in a completely different place to mine. "He told me to do something, and then that was all I wanted to do. Like I knew I had no choice, but I wanted to do it anyway. Does that make sense?"
I sighed. "Unfortunately, it does."
"Who was that guy, anyway?" she continued. "What happened to give him those powers?"
"Experiments," I answered shortly. Just like us, Kilgrave had been the victim of experiments. But unlike us, he'd immediately decided to use his powers for evil.
She frowned. "Is it bad that I feel kind of sorry for him?"
I walked ahead of her so that she couldn't see me roll my eyes. "He killed Nat... and our mom. He deserves everything he gets. And what he gets, is to rot in hell. The last thing Kilgrave needs is sympathy."
She shrugged, making me want to punch her in the face again. However, soon she saw something that completely distracted her from Kilgrave.
"That's Captain America," she said in a low voice, surprise slowing her pace. "He's staring right at us."
I frowned, following her eye-line. "I knew what Steve looked like back then?"
"Of course you did," she scolded me, never taking her eyes off him. "Fury always talks about them. Captain America is the noble leader, Bruce Banner is the super-smart scientist with a deadly temper, Thor is the God, and Tony Stark is the 'genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist'... but from what Nat says, it sounds like he's just an asshole."
I smiled, not saying anything. It wasn't hard to remember the disdain that Nat and Tony had for each other. I could just imagine her eye-roll if she ever found out that, despite her warnings, I had married and had a baby with the man she hated. Luckily, the Tony Stark I married to was a more mature, less douchey version of the Tony Stark that she knew – not that it mattered. I'm pretty sure I would have married him anyway.
As we got closer, her surprise turned to shock.
"Oh my... that's Tony Stark too, right?" she asked warily, her head definitely full of Nat's words. "Wait a second," she commanded, grabbing my arm and pulling me back. I stopped, allowing her to figure out what she should have worked out as soon as she said his name.
"You said our –your– husband is called Tony," she remembered, looking back and forth between Tony and I. "Please tell me you don't mean Tony Stark."
I smirked, just as we reached the guys.
Tony looked back and forth between us, glaring at the woman that he first fell in love with standing next to the woman that he had now built a life with.
"This is... 'insane' isn't a strong enough word," he commented, not able to take his eyes off of her.
"Tell me about it," I scoffed, because nothing would ever be stranger than standing next to the past version of myself.
2012 Rogue squinted at him, frowning. "We marry Tony Stark?" she asked, trying to put together the image of the asshole that we always heard about with the man who I was obviously in love with. "Is there a serious shortage of men in the future?"
I rolled my eyes, almost smiling. "You sound like Nat. Wow, I can't believe I used to sound like Nat."
"How did it go?" Steve interrupted our conversation, all business. "Is Kilgrave-?"
"Dead?" I cut him off, nodding. "Yep, he's gone, I made sure of it." Looking at them, I noticed that my happiness about completing our part of the mission wasn't shared. "What's wrong? What happened?"
Scott scoffed, crossing his arms angrily.
"We lost the Tesseract," Tony told me, clearly despondent.
I looked back and forth between him and Scott, my eyes wide with disbelief. "You lost the Tesseract? What the hell happened?"
"You know what, give me a break. I just got hit in the head with a Hulk."
I rolled my eyes. "And I just got attacked by Jessica Jones and my former self, but I still managed to-" I stopped myself abruptly, seeing the look in his eyes. "You know what? This isn't helping." I sighed, raking a hand through my hair. "So, what do we do?"
"Nothing," Scott said angrily, pointing at Tony. "You said that we had one shot. This, this was our shot. We shot it. It's shot. Six stones or nothing. Six stones or nothing."
Tony rolled his eyes. "You're repeating yourself, you know that? You're repeating yourself."
"You're repeating yourself. You're repeating yourself," Scott mocked him.
2012 Rogue caught my eye and frowned. "You're seriously telling me that these are the people who are gonna save Nat's life?" she asked, looking at them with disdain. "Because I have absolutely no faith that you'll ever see her again."
"You've spent the last 12 years hiding, you don't get to judge," I reminded her, before turning to Steve, who, to me, would never stop being our leader. "What do we do?"
Steve sighed, looking at Tony and Scott still arguing. "Are there any other options with the Tesseract?"
Scott took a break from the argument to fix Steve with a look. "No, no, no. There's no other options. There's no do-overs. We're not going anywhere else. We have one particle left. Each. That's it, alright? We use that... Bye, bye. You're not going home."
"Well going home without the Tesseract isn't an option," I reminded him. "Going home and not being able to bring everybody back isn't an option. Guys, we came all this way, we did all this stuff... there has to be something we can do."
"There's nothing," Scott dismissed, leaning against a nearby car. "It's over, we lost."
"No," 2012 Rogue said, addressing the group for the first time. She looked at Tony. "Look, there are only two things I know about you. One, you love me... or a version of me," she gestured to me as she spoke. "And two, you're a mega-genius. You know how important Nat is to your wife... please tell me you can figure this out." She folded her arms tightly. "I don't know any of you. But I'm choosing to believe that your plan, which includes me dying, will work. You can't give up now."
"We're not giving up," I told her vehemently. All of the guys looked at me with the same defeatist expression on their faces. "You guys, we are not giving up. Right?"
Tony reached out his hand and I automatically took it.
"Tony, we can't give up," I pleaded with him, interlocking our fingers. "Nati has to meet Nat, and Wanda, and my mom. She has to."
Suddenly, his facial expression changed. He grasped my hand tightly, and there was almost a look of excitement in his eyes.
"I got it," he said confidently. "There's another way. To retake the Tesseract and acquire new particles." He focused his attention on Steve. "We'll stroll down memory lane. Military installation, Garden State."
Steve's eyes widened in recognition, as Tony's confusing words started making sense to him. "When were they both there?"
Tony hesitated in his excitement. "...I have a vaguely exact idea."
Steve obviously tried not to roll his eyes. "How vague?"
"Wait a second, 'Garden State' as in New Jersey?" I asked them. "You think the Tesseract and some spare Pym particles are just holed up on a Military base somewhere in New Jersey?"
"I know for a fact they were there..." Tony assured me. "And I know how I know."
"How could you possibly...?" my words trailed off as I thought about who I was standing with. I knew that there was a S.H.I.E.L.D. base in New Jersey, though I'd never been. But being with Steve reminded me that before S.H.I.E.L.D. had taken it over, it was called 'Camp Lehigh', and it was one of the places responsible for the creation of Captain America. With the help of Howard Stark.
"Of course!" I almost squealed. Hank Pym had worked with the SSR, who were responsible for Steve's transformation; it made complete sense that he would have kept some of his particles in the Military Base. If we chose the right year, we could retrieve the Tesseract and more particles.
"Where are we going?" Scott asked, looking back and forth between us with clear confusion on his face. "What are we doing?"
Steve looked around, conflicted. "Well, looks like we're improvising."
"What are we improvising?" Scott asked, becoming more frustrated every time he got ignored.
"Hey, what's going on?" 2012 Rogue asked me. "Because I'm starting to get freaked out. Can we save Nat or not?"
I nodded emphatically. "We can save Nat... we can save everyone." I grabbed her arm, walking her towards Scott. I handed him the scepter. "Go back to the Compound with Scott. Jessica Jones is there, she'll do what she needs to do." I took a last lingering look at my former self, pulling her into a tight hug. "Thank you."
"It's Nat," she reminded me once again. "Just go do what you need to do to save her."
"Rogue, you don't have to come," Tony said. "If this doesn't work, if we screw up... one of us has to be there for Nati."
I bit my lip, because of course, Nati would always be our first priority. "We're not gonna screw this up," I promised him, and myself. "Plus, if you think I'm letting you go alone, you're insane. Nati needs both her parents, remember?"
He raised an eyebrow, smiling at me. A smile that said he knew exactly why this journey was so important to me. "I guess we're in this together."
"Always," I confirmed.
His eyes left mine and landed on Steve. "Ready?" he asked, listing the coordinates and waiting for us to repeat them back to him. "0-4, 0-7, 1-9-7-0."
"Are you sure?" Steve asked, worry creeping into his features.
At that point, Scott jumped back in, clutching the case that held the scepter. "Cap. Captain. Steve, sorry, America... Rogers. Look, if you do this, and this doesn't work, you're not coming back."
Tony looked at me, his eyebrows raised as he silently repeated Scott's question. I nodded in response. I was going back to 1970 for more than just the Tesseract and Pym particles.
Then he looked at Steve. "You trust me?"
After a moment of hesitation, Steve nodded. "I do."
"Good," I nodded again, my fingers tingling now that the anticipation of our next mission was quickly becoming a reality. "Steve, it's your call. Now or never."
Steve nodded, more to himself than to us. "Here we go..."
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Next chapter - Rogue, Tony and Steve go back to 1970!
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