Chapter Text
Steve yelled commands into his comms as a— a nightmare unicorn?— trampled over nearby cars. This mission had gone completely south and the Avengers that were on sight were completely disorganized. All of the creatures currently overtaking Manhattan were made entirely of a black powdery substance, and destroying them didn’t work because they just reformed into something else a few minutes later. (And why was it always Manhattan? Why couldn't things like this go over to Westchester County so it was at least the X-Men’s problem instead of theirs? Or head further over in Manhattan to 42nd Street and Madison Avenue, make it the problem of the Fantastic Four.)
He had a feeling that even if he’d had his full team present, there wasn’t much they’d be able to really do. Which was really sad and frustrating. As it stood now, he had Spider-man, the Falcon, Dr. Strange, the Winter Soldier, Black Widow, and Hawkeye fighting by his side. As far as Steve could tell, these creatures had somebody puppeteering them from the shadows, but there wasn’t a single clue as to who. Despite how FRIDAY was in their comm-set, she could find nothing. What was clear, however, was that they were completely made of magic so the only one of the Avengers who was even remotely effective was Dr. Strange.
Steve figured the Scarlet Witch would’ve been the most helpful in this situation, but of course, Wanda and Vision were off doing who-knows-what in who-knows-where and had been completely off the radar the past few months. The Hulk was especially no use because breaking the forms of the creatures did absolutely nothing and the only thing the Hulk could do was break things; which would mean a whole lotta property damage and not a lot to show for it, and he knew better than to ask that of Bruce. Iron Man was out of the question because Tony was still injured from their previous mission and Pepper put her foot down about him going out. Black Panther was in Wakanda and this wasn’t world-threatening enough to constitute him flying over; Steve wasn’t willing to call upon King T’Challa no matter how often the man told him it was fine. And Ant-Man, when called, simply said, “Lol, no, what help would I be?” and hung up. Oh, and Thor was off-planet. Because of course, he was.
The good news was that the ash creatures didn’t appear to really be after any civilians, but due to the property damage and the fact they were running rampant in New York, the Avengers were still expected to do something. The method all of them had deployed thus far was to just destroy as many as they could as fast as they could to at least keep their numbers down. It worked minimally.
“Cap, I’m going to try something with the Time Stone, see if it helps,” Dr. Strange said over the direct line.
Steve audibly sighed, “Something is better than nothing. Go ahead, Strange.”
“I’ll need cover,” He said, meanwhile sending his exact coordinates to Steve.
“Got it,” He replied affirmatively.
Nodding to nobody in particular (himself. Steve needed the positive reinforcement, okay?), he tapped the mic-piece in his ear to contact everybody on the field, “Converge by Dr. Strange and provide cover. He’s trying something,” He ordered, forwarding the aforementioned coordinates to the rest of the team. He received a mismatched chorus of ‘Roger that,’ ‘Aye aye Captain,’ ‘Sure thing, pal,’ ‘Oh, he’s trying something, is he?’ and ‘I’ll be right there, Mr. America, sir!’ in response. Why Natasha was the only one of them to remain professional at any given point, he’ll never know (even though her reply was kind of a pun). After punching one final nightmare creature, Steve ran toward the location to find the rest of his team forming a protective circle around Dr. Strange. He was doing what looked to be some kind of complicated spell. They all moved in tandem to keep any and all stray beings away from Strange while he worked. Teamwork like this made him think of the Howling Commandos, and that thought struck him with a sudden pang of grief for the friends he didn’t get enough time with. Even with the years that passed, it still hurt not having been able to say goodbye. But now wasn’t the time for memories. It never was.
“Just a second more—” Dr. Strange said through gritted teeth, which could be heard both behind him and over the comms, like an echo. And, of course, like everything else, that was right when something went wrong. Steve watched in stopped-clock illusion as one of the nightmare unicorns from earlier shot what looked to be a superpowered blast of puffy black dust directly at the Time Stone resting on Dr. Strange’s chest just as he finished the spell. He was given no time to react, however, as every single creature they were fighting immediately exploded into even more clouds of ash and subtle black glitter. Steve had gotten a big mouthful and started coughing into his arm.
Whatever that spell was seemed to work for the time being, anyhow. As the dust cleared, he looked around at his teammates, “Is everyone alright?” He called. Everybody was coughing, too, but he received various sounds or gestures of confirmation; only when he saw Bucky’s thumbs up did he allow the tension in his shoulders to disperse. Steve looked over to Dr. Strange, noticing that the Time Stone was giving off green sparks. The previous tension in his shoulders came back tenfold.
“Hey, Strange?” He’d cried (sort of. As close to panic his voice ever got, anyway), voice going up an octave because he could tell something was wrong even if he didn’t know what for certain, “Is the Time Stone supposed to be going on the fritz like that?”
Dr. Strange looked down wide-eyed in alarm, still sputtering from the dust and hoarsely yelling, “Get down!”
Before Steve could duck there was another explosion, this one semi-opaque green and almost gaseous that seemed to rapidly expand outward before imploding back to the source. There appeared to be no change, though, when they all looked at each other and everybody was on edge. He glanced around, catching Bucky’s eyes off to the far left of him. Wordlessly, Bucky ambled over and Steve braced himself with his arms on the other's shoulders while Bucky held his biceps. They’d made a habit of doing this after everything that had happened, just to be sure the other was okay. To lose the other again was not something either of them would survive.
“Yeah, that wasn’t weird or ominous at all,” Sam remarked dryly, landing on the ground and stirring some of the dust that settled, “Everybody feels normal, right?”
Before anybody could respond, a new but startlingly familiar voice off to the side said, “If you call this normal then I think we’ve got a problem, Ace.”
Steve heard Bucky suck in a fast breath and both of them turned their heads sharply. Because there, amongst all the chaos and dust of the aftermath, stood every single one of the Commandos. Jim Morita was the one who spoke, he could tell because he just knew that voice.
Every Avenger seemed instantly put on edge by the newcomers but Sam seemed to recover the fastest, smoothly saying, “What the hell.” Which basically summed up what everybody was feeling in that moment.
“Well, that’s not supposed to happen,” Dr. Strange commented, wryly.
It helped, though, that the faces of Gabe, Dum-Dum, Dernier, Monty, and Jim all seemed equally as stunned. Dum-Dum leaned over to Gabe and said in a stage whisper, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” to which Gabe just nodded dumbly, too startled to speak.
Dernier looked over at Dum-Dum swiftly, face openly bemused; brows furrowed, scowling, nostrils flared— the whole shebang, “De quoi tu parles? Nous n'avons jamais été au Kansas pour commencer, es-tu devenu fou?”
Gabe snorted at that which broke all of the tension surrounding them. Bucky and Natasha looked equally as amused when Steve went to gauge their reactions. Everybody who didn’t speak French just looked more confused. At least his current teammates no longer looked prepared for a fight (except for Bucky and Natasha. He knew better than to think they ever truly relaxed, no matter how at ease they seemed).
“Alright, I guess I’ll ask first; where the bloody hell are we and who are you?” Monty said slowly, his British accent thicker than usual.
Several of the Avengers looked like they wanted to say something but Steve held up a hand to silence them. Now wasn’t the time to grieve, or gape in shock, or laugh or cry and hold his loved ones close. They had a genuine timeline issue on their hands and Steve knew the first matter at hand was preventing anything from going haywire. Obviously, something already had gone very wrong with the Time Stone due to the blast fired at Dr. Strange earlier. It didn’t matter that these were his friends that he’d lost, his job came first; as much as he was loathe to admit it.
So, he cleared his throat and stepped forward, “You’re in Manhattan, New York.”
And boy, could he tell, that might not have been the wisest of choices. The jaws of the Commandos dropped when they took stock of him. He could feel their eyes sliding over both him and then to Bucky appraisingly, and he resisted the urge to squirm self-consciously. Dernier spoke first, without any shame, “Wow, ce type ressemble beaucoup au capitaine. Si le capitaine était un peu plus âgé,” And then he added in too loud a whisper to Gabe, “Pensez-vous que si nous intimidons suffisamment le sergent, nous pourrions lui faire laisser pousser les cheveux comme cet homme au bras métallique étrange?”
Gabe side-eyed Dernier before looking back at the two men in question silently, and Jim said, “I’ve seen enough weird magical shit in the past year to tell you I’m pretty sure that is the Captain and Sarge.”
The others hummed in varying levels of hesitant agreement while Dernier did a double take. Gabe crossed his arms, “Does anybody wanna actually tell us what’s goin’ on? Or do we just gotta figure it out on our own.”
Steve pondered his words because wasn’t that the question they just asked? But Bucky stepped forward to stand at his shoulder before he could even say anything, answering for him, “So, you guys know the Tesseract, right?” He paused, giving them a chance to nod, “There’s this magic stone thing inside it and there’s about five more of them,” He chuckled at the look of abject horror on their faces, “Our friend here has got one— it controls time— and something has caused it to malfunction, apparently. And here you are.”
They blinked simultaneously in shock, which would have been funny if it were under any different circumstances. Dum-Dum raised a hand and Bucky pointed at him. He cleared his throat theatrically— fist to his mouth and all, “Please tell me the Krauts don’t get any of those other rocks. I don’t think I can handle any more vaporization guns.”
“They don’t,” Bucky’s eyes widened microscopically as if he realized something before he turned back to Dr. Strange, “Is this the kind of information that will tear apart the time-space continuum?”
Steve watched in amusement as Strange squinted at his teammate with a scowl. Which, yeah— if it was the kind of world-altering catastrophe media portrayed it as he should’ve asked before he did it. Strange’s face then softened into something even more bored and unimpressed, “No, it won’t. While you were busy chattering away, I have checked our timelines and can tell you nothing is amiss. This is still a serious problem we have to fix, but it has no immediate consequences as of yet.”
Bucky nodded slowly as if he fully understood what was being said. Steve himself understood a good 80%, maybe 85% of that explanation. The other Commandos seemed to be fairing the same in that regard. It wasn’t like that was a new concept, and even so, they were all nerds (Wow, he was spending too much time with Tony).
“Alright, so I’m going to ask one of the biggest questions on all of our minds, what the hell happened?” Gabe gesticulated wildly to Manhattan, with all its black dust glory and tall silvery buildings and cars (which were definitely worse for wear because of the battle), “Because I know you said this is Manhattan, Cap, but this is not Manhattan.”
Steve rubbed the back of his neck nervously, “Yeah… remember how Bucky said the stone we have deals with time?”
The Commandos were smart enough to not need it explained to them. Monty stepped forward slightly, “So, you’re telling us… that, somehow we’ve ended up in the— the future? That’s bloody impossible, innit, mate?”
“I know Stark was working on some strange ass things but this is a bit much…” Jim seemed the most willing to accept the change, “I mean, I’m from Fresno so I don’t know what Manhattan is supposed to look like normally, but I’m rather sure this is not it.”
“Not like this, man, not like this,” Gabe shook his head in awe.
“Je n’ai absolument rien compris de ce que tout le monde vient de dire. Êtes-vous en train de dire que nous sommes dans le futur?” Dernier seemed completely and utterly lost, and honestly, Steve couldn’t blame him. He couldn’t blame any of them, really, because he was just as skeptical when he first woke up in the 21st century. The only difference is his friends aren’t stuck here the same way he is and they’ve got some familiar faces.
Dum-Dum raised his hand again but started speaking without anybody having to acknowledge him, “How far in the future are we, exactly?”
Bucky seemed far more willing to delegate this conversation than Steve was, so he left it to him. The former turned to Dr. Strange, who nodded his assent, “Uh, 2017.”
“Man, I need to sit down,” Gabe said, unceremoniously plopping down onto the dusty concrete. The others soon followed his lead— even the Avengers present despite how they were only spectating. Steve thanked whatever Gods there were, Norse Gods notwithstanding, that Clint and Peter had remained quiet up until now.
Monty looked confused again, “Hold the line, that doesn’t make any sense. That would put Sarge here at a hundred years old and Cap at ninety-nine.”
Before anybody could put a word in edgewise, Natasha cleared her throat, “If I may, we should really bring this to the Tower. There are bound to be reporters lurking around here and we can’t have them catching sight of this. Wouldn’t you agree, Rogers?”
Steve blanched at the accusation in her tone, “Ah, yes—,” He turned to his old friends, “If you think this is advanced, you’re in for a surprise.”
“I don’t think I can handle any more surprises,” Jim and Gabe both said morosely before laughing that they spoke over each other.
They all stood (all the while grumbling that they were too old to sit on concrete like children) and huddled together, making sure they had everything to leave on the quinjet that decided to descend at the perfect moment. All the dust that settled started to stir as the aircraft landed, making them cough. Steve saw that Clint was actively trying to get some of the dust into a small drawstring bag before Natasha slapped his hand, causing him to drop it. The dust he’d collected blew away before he could collect it again.
“Aw, black sand, no,” He’d said before being corralled into the jet.
The silence on the quinjet was tense and uncomfortable. Steve perhaps would’ve tried to make small talk if it weren’t for the flurry of emotions that had been incited in the last hour. He had so many questions and nobody to ask them. He could tell just by looking at his friends' attire that they’d been pulled directly from the middle of the war, especially since they hadn’t viewed either Steve or Bucky as people to be grieved.
He could also tell Bucky was having a similar revelation based on how stiffly his husband was sitting beside him. He took the brunette’s hand in his own and gave it a comforting squeeze. Steve would’ve offered more, but Bucky wasn’t yet comfortable with public displays of affection, which he understood. It was hard to get used to being allowed to do something that before would’ve gotten you killed. That mindset wasn’t easily forgotten, and Bucky always had more self-preservation than he ever did.
It seemed they were allowed to stew in their silence no longer as Sam loudly cleared his throat. Everybody looked at him with different expressions on their faces. He smiled sweetly, “I think we owe you some introductions, as clearly, my ma was the only one to teach me any manners,” Sam said, passive-aggressively directing the last half at the Avengers, “It’s nice to meet you, I’m Sam Wilson,” He put his hand out to shake and each of the Commandos took it happily, thankful for the reprieve, introducing themselves (although unnecessarily) in return.
Sam pointed to Natasha, “First off, the scary redhead is Natasha Romanov. Fair warning, do not flirt with her, she can kill you.” Bucky chuckled darkly at the cowed looks on their friends' faces at that admission.
The scary redhead in question offered them a single downward nod of respect, her lips quirking only slightly, “But you can call me Nat.”
He then pointed at Clint, “The man pouting at the dust on his hands is Clint Barton. He may use a bow and arrow but that man is anything but old fashioned, you will not understand a single thing he says.”
Clint looked up suddenly with wide eyes at the sound of his name before squinting accusingly at Sam, “I heard you were talking shit about me,” He said quickly, tapping twice on one of his hearing aids.
“See,” Sam said flatly. The Commandos cracked a smile at that. He preened a little bit at what, so far, had been him successfully getting these men to relax a little. He pointed at Dr. Strange, “That’s Doctor Stephen Strange, but we all just call him Strange because he’s, well… strange. He’s the time wizard.”
“I’m not a wizard.” Dr. Strange retorted sourly under his breath.
“He didn’t even deny being strange,” Sam smirked as the man in question slumped.
Dum-Dum raised his hand (again…), “The future has wizards?”
“Uh. They’re certainly not a normal occurrence, but yes. We have a witch on the team, too. She’s away right now,” He acquiesced just as Strange repeated ‘I’m not a wizard.’ But with less bite, more like he was trying to convince himself than the others. Clint leaned over to give him a reassuring pat on the shoulder and a sorry shake of the head. Steve almost smiled (he did smile -Bucky).
Sam pointed at Peter, "See that guy over there looking like he's got a frog in his mouth? That's Peter Parker. But don't let the nerves fool you, he's got brains like you wouldn't believe."
Peter blushed profusely at the compliment and the insult, "I do not look like I have a frog in my mouth?" He said it more like a question, though, so it implied he was starting to genuinely believe them.
"Keep telling yourself that. It’s a vibe that geniuses just have.”
“I’m telling Mr. Stark you said that,” He pouted like a child, which, really, he was a child so that made sense.
It was going to be a very, very long day. Or week. Steve didn’t know what he wanted anymore.
(also here’s my tumblr because it never lets me link things in notes no matter how hard I try)