you won’t find me (where you left me)

by backpacks-lite (TumblingBackpacks)

Summary:

“SHIELD has been infiltrated by Hydra.”

“We know,” says Stark. Steve nods in agreement.

Bucky blinks. “What?”

In which the Thunderbolts end up back in 2012. Except it’s not their 2012, it’s the alternate 2012 timeline created by the Time Heist.

Notes:

watch me post a new time travel fic instead of finishing my other time travel wips :)

title from can’t have it all by the crane wives

Chapter 1: i. steve rogers

Summary:

In which Steve considers what his doppleganger had told him: Bucky is alive.

Steve can’t stop thinking about it.

He knows he should be more concerned about where Loki is now, but his mind is stuck on what Loki had done before he’d escaped. He’d fought Steve wearing his face, speaking in his voice, and said Bucky is alive. He knows it had been a tactic meant to distract, to unnerve him, but the words had slid into his chest like a blade anyway. And even now, Steve can’t shake the way it sounded, like a possibility. The very idea won’t leave him.

Bucky is alive.

Steve had seen Bucky fall, had watched him plummet down, down, down, until he’d disappeared from view. He can’t have survived that height. And yet, the hope still sparks in his chest. He ends up lingering around Stark Tower longer than he intended. Partly because of those words still burning in his mind, but also because of how Stark collapsed after…whatever happened with his heart. Steve didn’t catch all the details, just that the man had gone pale and unsteady and Thor had helped avert that particular medical disaster, but even with Stark insisting that he was fine, really, stop hovering, Steve stayed. Just in case. And Stark, for all his bluster, hadn’t thrown him out. If anything, Steve caught glimpses of something softer when he realized Steve wasn’t leaving. By the time Steve finally readied himself to head out, Stark had become Tony, and Steve left with a warm goodbye and a phone number in his pocket to get in contact if he needed to.

The days after were restless.

SHIELD had given him an apartment—sterile, neatly furnished, impersonal—and Steve rattled around inside it like a ghost. He tried to plan his next steps, tried to make sense of whether Bucky is alive was even a lead he could follow. The questions knotted in his chest: where would he start, who he could get assistance from, what if chasing it was nothing more than a cruel trick Loki had set in motion?

He ends up trying to get his head straight with movement, walking through SHIELD corridors, through hangars and offices, trying to pass off his wandering as idle. Just getting his bearings. That was how it should have looked, anyway. But really, he was studying faces, listening for tones, for slips, for anything that might tell him who was safe and who wasn’t. Because something gnawed at him, a quiet unease that SHIELD wasn’t the greater good Fury wanted him to believe it was. Especially after what Steve had found about Tesseract-based weapons and Phase Two.

It’s in the middle of one of those “aimless” walks that a man in tactical black intercepts him, square-shouldered, easy smile. Steve vaguely recognizes him from the STRIKE team that had met them at Stark Tower in the aftermath of the Chitauri’s defeat, and says as much. The man looks pleased to be recognized, and offers a hand.

“Rumlow,” the man introduces.

Steve takes his hand to shake. “Steve.”

And then, low enough that it’s meant only for Steve, Rumlow murmurs, “Hail Hydra.”

The words freeze Steve where he stands.

His mind careens, stomach twisting, and before Steve even knows what he’s doing, his fist connects with the man’s nose. Rumlow stumbles back with a curse, blood spilling. “It was a joke!” he protests, muffled, clutching his face.

Steve doesn’t think it’s funny.

Not when Hydra is the reason Bucky fell. Not when it’s the reason Steve woke up seventy years too late. His pulse roars in his ears, anger sharp and unsteady. Still, when Rumlow stumbles to his feet, Steve catches him, gripping his arm and half-dragging him to the medical wing. His jaw stays locked the entire way, and when he finally steps back into the corridor, leaving Rumlow behind to be treated, the unease in his chest has hardened into something heavier. He can’t trust SHEILD—not anymore. Maybe not at all. So, Steve pulls the scrap of paper Stark gave him from his pocket and dials.

The line rings once, twice, then clicks.

“This is JARVIS,” a polite British voice greets him. “How may I assist you?”

Steve blinks. “Uh…Steve Rogers. Calling for Tony Stark.”

“One moment, Captain,” JARVIS replies smoothly.

Later, Steve will learn JARVIS isn’t a man at all, but a machine, a program that speaks with more grace than most people he’s met. For now, it’s enough that JARVIS doesn’t hang up on him, and before long, Steve is back in Stark Tower, stepping into a space buzzing with light and energy. The elevator doors slide open, and Tony’s voice greets him before he even steps fully inside the room.

“Capsicle!” Tony calls, grinning. “Back already? Tell me you’re not just here to play nurse again. Or is this the part where you beg me for a crash course in twenty-first century slang?”

Despite himself, Steve feels a small smile tug at his mouth. The humor fades quickly though, and Steve shakes his head. “I…wanted to ask about something. From the battle. Loki—when he was disguised as me. Is there footage of that?”

“Ah,” Tony says, and spins around in his chair towards the holograms. Steve walks up behind him. “Funny you should ask. I was about to call you, if you hadn’t come knocking like a boy scout with perfect posture.” He taps a few things, then looks at Steve, expression serious. “Because I don’t think that was Loki at all.”

Steve frowns. “What do you mean?”

“Let’s roll the tape,” Tony says.

His fingers flick across the air, and a holographic display blossoms into light, bending itself into shapes Steve knows too well. He watches himself move—only it isn’t him. The fight plays out: trading blows, that compass with Peggy’s face, the brutal chokehold, and then, in his own voice, the imposter wheezing out: Bucky is alive.

His stomach knots so hard it feels like a punch.

He can’t tear his eyes away.

The projection jumps forward. He sees himself, limp and sprawled out, unconscious on the ground. The sight alone is disorienting—watching his own body like a casualty—but worse is what comes next. The double, the man with his face, grins down and mutters something careless about his own rear end. Heat surges to Steve’s neck, his face burning with embarrassment. He’s grateful when Tony sweeps that image away, as though giving him back a scrap of dignity.

“Cute, right? But here’s the kicker.” Tony switches angles, bringing up a different feed, one of the elevators as his imposter steps inside and requests the scepter on some unknown orders. His unease builds sharp in his chest. Not-Steve leans close to the STRIKE agent beside him, and the curve of his mouth is his own, but what comes out makes Steve’s blood run cold.

“Hail Hydra,” the imposter says softly.

And worse—the men around him react positively.

Steve’s chest tightens. His thoughts skid, jagged, down the slope of memory: Rumlow in the hallway, palm firm in his, voice dropping like a secret—Hail Hydra. The words had rattled him, made his fists act before his head could catch up. He’d told himself it was a cruel joke, a tasteless provocation. But here—here is proof it wasn’t just in his imagination. His double says it, and they approve.

He’d thought Hydra had died when Schmidt did. He’d thought he buried them under the ice. But now they’re in SHIELD? Or maybe SHIELD was simply Hydra’s new name. God, they’d been the ones to pull him into this new age. The ground shifts under him, dizzying. Steve swallows hard, forcing words out. “That one. On the left.” He points. “Rumlow. He approached me earlier. Said the same thing.”

Tony’s eyes flick from the screen back to Steve. “Where is he now?”

Steve’s mouth feels dry. “SHIELD medical.”

Tony arches an eyebrow at him.

“I punched him,” Steve says.

Tony snorts. “Good man.” He swivels back to the hologram, eyes narrowing as he studies the Hydra-echoing faces. His tone cools, hardens. “Seems like SHIELD’s got an infestation.”

Steve bites his tongue. The word infestation makes his stomach turn, because all he can see is rot spreading through the walls of the house he thought was shelter. And the worst part is—he doesn’t know how deep it goes. He can still see Rumlow’s bloody nose, still hear him swearing it was a joke, but now it plays back with a new edge, sharper and truer.

Hydra inside SHIELD.

It explains too much, and not nearly enough.

“So,” Tony says at last, spinning the hologram away. “Question one: who do we trust?”

Steve exhales slowly. “Thor.” Easy enough, he can’t be part of Hydra if he’s not even from Earth. Though, he’d left for Asgard with the Tesseract to report that Loki had gotten away, and none of them knew when he’d return. “Bruce.” He seemed wary enough of SHIELD for Steve to believe he was safe. “Natasha. Clint.” They’d fought together, but doubt creeps in almost immediately after he says their names. “Unless—”

He doesn’t finish it.

“Yeah,” Tony’s mouth twists. “Pretty hard to pick out the secret Nazis out of all the other liars and spies.” Steve hates that it makes sense. Hydra doesn’t survive by being obvious. They slip into uniforms and smiles and salutes. He feels sick. Tony clears his throat, pulls up another feed. “There’s more. I found this yesterday.”

The image resolves into Tony himself—but the man looks older. Lines carve deeper around the eyes, hair gone more salt than pepper, but it’s recognizably Tony.

Or it looks to be. Almost.

Steve blinks. “…That’s not you.”

“Not right now,” Tony says. “Might be me in a couple years. Or a couple decades. Or who knows, Tuesday. Time’s flexible, apparently.”

Steve stares. “You think they’re from the future?”

Tony looks him up and down, almost amused. “Cap, you skipped seventy years in an ice cube. Skipping through years isn’t exactly novel anymore.”

Steve wants to say it’s different, that being frozen and waking up isn’t the same as walking backward and forward across time like it’s nothing. But his throat closes around the words, because what if it’s true? What if the other man with his face really was him, older, knowing more than Steve does now?

Bucky is alive.

Steve swallows hard. “If that was me from the future…does that mean what he said is true? Bucky…might be alive?”

“Time travelers can still lie,” Tony says carefully, “but…” His voice fades, and Steve can see the gears turning, see the way his mind is already chewing at the problem. Tony leans back, tapping his fingers against the arm of his chair, eyes narrowed like he’s running numbers only he can see. “Okay. Let’s think about this. Your buddy falls off a train in the Alps, presumed dead. No body recovered, right?”

“I didn’t get the chance to look,” Steve says. He’d wanted to, he’d requested to, but Colonel Phillips had told him that they couldn’t spare the manpower it would take to retrieve Bucky’s body when they were so close to taking down Hydra. Except they hadn’t taken down Hydra. And there might never have been a body to retrieve if Bucky had never actually died. “I don’t—no. No body.”

Tony waves that aside, and Steve does his best to quash all his painful emotions as Tony continues, “Bodies don’t just vanish, and if Hydra was crawling around then like they are now, you think they’d pass up a chance to get their hands on a super soldier’s best friend? Pretty useful leverage. Or a test subject. Or both.”

Steve doesn’t want to picture it, doesn’t want to imagine Bucky dragged from the snow into Hydra’s clutches, but if Bucky is alive, then the how could not be kind.

Tony keeps going. “Probability-wise? Let’s call it…thirty percent he died on impact, thirty he froze to death, forty Hydra bagged him and did Hydra things.” He swivels, typing a string of commands into midair. “So, if you ask me? Your odds of him being alive aren’t bad. Especially since we just watched a not-you-but-maybe-you drop his name like it was meant to rattle your cage.”

Steve swallows hard, hope surging up and choking him. He wants to ask—how do we find him, where do we start—and he’s about to voice all the questions in his chest when the room floods with sudden white light. It burns against his eyes, sharp and searing. Steve raises an arm on instinct, and when it fades, someone is standing there.

The breath punches out of him.

Different—that’s his first thought. He looks older, worn in ways Steve can’t place. His hair is hair longer, face lined with years Steve can’t account for, and his left arm glints with the cold shine of dark metal. But none of that matters. Because those eyes—blue, sharp, familiar—are exactly the same. The man’s expression flickers with anger and weariness all at once, and despite everything, Steve knows without a doubt who stands before him.

Steve breathes, “Bucky?”

“Shit,” Bucky says.

Notes:

i've been reading a bunch of time travelling thunderbolts fics and wanted to throw an extra wrench into things by tossing into a past that’s technically not their own. each of the thunderbolts is going to be appearing in the pov of someone else :)

Chapter 2: ii. bill foster

Summary:

In which Bill is greeted by a sudden visitor.

Bill closes the door to his office.

His last student has gone, heading off with a quiet thanks.

Office hours have a way of stretching him thin, but Bill doesn’t resent it. There’s satisfaction in being here, in lecturing at Berkeley, in the rhythm of academia and offering his experience for young minds to learn from. Still, it is work, and Bill is ready to head home. He exhales, thinking about the quiet apartment waiting for him, the small comforts of a routine life, and the thin thread of unease that’s been there since the news reports—aliens in New York. It all seems like something from a film, a story he’d tell students to illustrate chaos theory or probability, except the serious headlines and the footage make it real, make it pressing.

That’s when the light comes.

It isn’t quite blinding, but it does cut across his vision with a brilliance that doesn’t belong in the familiar dim of his office. He blinks, adjusting, and instinctively steps forward to investigate the cause, but when the flare clears, there’s another person in his office with him.

“Ava?” Bill asks, cautious, careful.

His first reaction is one of confusion. She phases, yes, and Bill knows her condition is painful, unpredictable, and sometimes dangerous with how she slips in and out of solidity, but it has never come with light like this. Moreover, she doesn’t tend to meet him like this, not in potentially public spaces. And yet, undeniably, there she is, standing in his office, tall and steady.

And that’s what strikes him most.

Ava is standing before him, and she is steady.

For years Bill has grown accustomed to watching her edges waver, her form blur, like she might slip away at any second. Every touch with her has been tentative, always reaching through instead of reaching for. But now—several moments pass, and her form doesn’t falter. She stands before him whole, anchored, more present than he has ever seen her.

“Bill,” she says, and before he can respond she phases across the space between them. The movement is quick, and when she reaches him, she doesn’t fade.

She takes his hand.

He almost doesn’t believe it at first. The shock freezes him. He stares at her face, then down at their joined hands, then back again. She’s looking at him too, though her gaze is quick to dart around the room, like she’s searching for bearings. The caution in her expression unsettles him almost as much as the miracle of her solidity.

“Ava,” he says again. Emotion climbs in his throat, and Bill breathes his realization. “You found a cure.”

Something flickers in her face, something bright and unfamiliar, like a dawning awareness pulling at the edges of her thoughts. His heart leaps, already trying to imagine what it means, how she could have done it, what this future could hold for her, and squeezes her hands tighter as she takes in his words.

But then Ava shakes her head slowly, and the flicker shifts into something else: confusion, maybe even sorrow. “Not…not yet, I think.”

“Not yet?” echoes Bill.

He doesn’t want to press, still torn between relief and dread, between the scientist who wants to ask a thousand questions and the guardian who only wants her safe. He promised to protect her from the people who would use her, hurt her, discard her. He promised to help her make sense of the pain, of the phasing, of the way she sometimes looked like she was unraveling before his very eyes. And right now, she looks—

Bill frowns.

She looks older.

Older, and yet somehow, lighter as well.

He knows the world has already stolen too much of her childhood, robbing her youth of the normalcy that she should have had. For so long, she’s flickered like a ghost through his life, always half here and half pulled away by the torment in her cells, her body never quite obeying her will. He’d hoped, naively perhaps, that time might return some of what she’d been denied, that the years could soften rather than sharpen the hard edges of her existence.

Bill wonders if that hope was not so foolish after all.

It is still Ava standing before him now, but for the first time she seems anchored, almost at ease. Almost, because she’s still scanning his office, gaze catching on his desk, on the scattered stacks of papers, then lingering on the small desk calendar he keeps propped near the corner. Her expression hardens, not unkindly but intent, as if she’s bracing herself. She takes a breath, and when she looks back at him, her eyes are tentatively hopeful.

“I need your help,” she says.

At once, all Bill can see is the little girl he’d approached so long ago, the daughter of a friend who’d been lost, a child half swallowed by grief and pain and a condition that made her body feel like it was tearing itself apart. He remembers the way her eyes had been so wary, so sharp for someone so young, and the way he’d made a promise then and there, silent but absolute: that she would not face this alone.

In the years after, she’d gone from being the daughter of a friend to more than that. In every way that mattered, Ava had become his. Not by blood, but by bond. Almost his daughter. Bill had vowed to himself to stand in that space, to shoulder what he could, to keep her safe. And now, standing here years later, she’s asking the same thing in different words.

I need your help, she’s saying, with her hands in his, and it isn’t a question, just a request with the simple, implicit knowledge that there would never, could never be a moment where he’d turn away from her. Bill feels the old ache rise in his chest, the one born the first day he’d promised himself he would be her guardian, her advocate, her family in the absence of the ones she’d lost.

Bill doesn’t hesitate to answer, “Of course. What do you need?”

“Can you get in contact with Hank Pym?”

Notes:

it’s a bit tricky to get everything in from an outsider pov, but ava’s working things out quick! since she can’t recall having a shameful memory involving bill and taking place at uc berkeley (was he teaching at berkeley in 2012? oh well-), she figures something else is going and bill is NOT prepared for the whirlwind of plans ava already has in mind. he’s gonna be along for the ride though! :D

Chapter 3: iii. melina vostokov

Summary:

In which Melina faces her past husband from her fake family.

Melina leans back in the lab chair, sighing.

This is where her life has led: meticulous work under fluorescent lights, formulae and chemical reactions and the quiet hum of equipment, still tethered to the Red Room. Years of skill, of precision, of survival, funneled into experiments and reports, all under the watchful eyes of Dreykov. She doesn’t romanticize it, doesn’t let herself slip into nostalgia. There’s no longing for the life she might have had, no illusion that she could have escaped the gravity of what she’s become.

And yet, as her eyes flick to the small monitor in the corner, replaying footage of the chaos that had recently overtaken New York, Melina allows herself a brief, private thought: Natasha is doing well. She had only appeared in glimpses, and had not been given much attention like the more public figures that the self-proclaimed Iron Man and Captain America, but it had been enough for recognition.

Melina doesn’t intend to linger on it.

She is not a woman for nostalgia, for soft sentiment, but she is struck with an odd sense of pride seeing who Natasha has become. She shakes her head almost imperceptibly a moment after, as if that gesture alone could dispel the feeling. Still, the fleeting flashes she’d caught showed a figure facing down aliens throughout the chaos and destruction with the same sharp, unyielding precision she remembered in the younger version in Ohio.

That girl, the one who had lifted a gun to protect the sister that never really was, had listened, enough to survive and escape and find something new. Never let them take your heart, Melina had told her then, uncertain if the words would take root. And yet there was Natasha, moving through fire and ruin with steady, unwavering resolve. She had not let the Red Room to snuff out her spirit.

Melina, by contrast, could not say the same.

She had never left the Red Room, having been raised within its walls, and had remained in them. In doing so, she had helped ensure other girls could not leave either. Every formula, every injection, every experiment she oversaw had been another chain in the system she’d perpetuated. Still, there was a fragment of redemption: the hope that she might finally synthesize a cure for the mind-control serum she had helped create.

She recognizes the irony in that.

Melina had been the architect of their chains, and now she was the one searching for a key to unlock them. She thinks of Yelena, much younger than Natasha had been, and how the control over her and the other young widows would hold like a leash. The guilt is familiar; constant, gnawing, tempered only by her ability to push it aside in the name of progress. She would simply have to keep working, keep testing, keep refining, keep turning over every variable until she broke open what would work to—

A sudden flash of light shatters her thoughts.

Instinct takes even before she breaks out of her musings. Her hand darts to the drawer beside her, fingers closing around the grip of a compact pistol. Years of training, of watching, of surviving in environments where hesitation meant death, sharpen every nerve. She’s commanding this lab now, yes, but she is never unarmed. The light fades as abruptly as it had appeared, and through the lingering glare, a figure stands where there was nothing moments before.

“Alexei?” Melina breathes, disbelieving.

She eases the gun downward just enough to take him in, letting the weight of recognition hit before relief or shock can fully settle. She’d never expected to see Alexei again, not after the (not-so-)fleeting love they’d shared in the family that was never real (except when she’d let it feel real). He’d never contacted her after that mission, and she’d never reached out. And yet, here he is, standing in her lab and she’s left facing the sudden presence of someone she had assumed would stay in her past.

Alexei offers a half-smile. “My love.”

Melina scoffs at him, but sets aside her gun. “I believe those years are long past.”

“Melina,” he tries.

She holds up a hand to quiet him. “What brings you here, Alexei?”

“I…” Alexei hesitates, as if searching for words that fit a truth even he can’t fully grasp. “I am not sure.”

“You are not sure,” she echoes, flatly.

Alexei takes a step towards her. “I was not…here…a moment ago.”

Her gaze narrows, unamused. “I noticed” she says flatly, the corners of her mouth tilting up with a hint of ironic acknowledgment. She studies him, noting the subtle disorientation in his posture, the unsteadiness in his bearings; all the signs that the impossible he’s trying to explain is real, that it has weight. Her mind ticks over the implications, but she keeps her voice steady. “You are going to have to explain that properly.”

“It is the work of the Sentry,” Alexei says, then pauses. “I think.”

Melina levels a look. “The Sentry?”

“Yes, yes. You have seen the New Avengers?”

“Mm,” she nods. “Fighting aliens.”

Alexei frowns. “The Void was not an alien.”

She nods towards the screen in the corner, still on. “Reports say these Avengers were fighting aliens.”

News has been nothing but that attack for the past week.

Alexei turns to peer at the video, before shaking his head.

He turns back to face her. “We are in 2012.”

“Congratulations, Alexei,” she says. “You know the year.”

But despite her dry, teasing words, Melina is far from stupid.

He appeared in a flash of light, and while she is aware he has the serum, it has never involved anything resembling teleportation. She would have noticed. Moreover, she was quite sure that was in the Seventh Circle Prison, with no news about any sort of recent escapes. Her mind runs through other options, and while the more far-fetched implications strain credulity, she has created mind control serums and seen aliens on the television. Dismissing what is unlikely would be foolish.

Melina asks, “When are you from?”

Notes:

…and that makes 3/6 thunderbolts so far! i’m so excited for bob’s chapter (one of the first parts written <33), but first, i’ve got to finish up yelena and john’s chapters. i’m sure it’ll be easy to guess who’s povs will be showing up for their arrivals ;)

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 16 of 😔 that IS my circus, these ARE my monkeys 😔