Five Years Later

The world was cold and empty. Skies were grey seemingly every day, not once letting the sun shine through its heavy clouds.

It was quiet. Eerie as no one made a sound louder than a sneeze.

Tourist locations were no longer full, instead, they were empty as if they were abandoned. Football fields and large stadiums lay bare with no one to play.

Even the Mets were gone.

Those poor straight white men who no longer had their entertainment for the week.

Tears were shed constantly by every living person. No matter who you were, old, young, vampire, mortal, it didn't matter. You had been affected one way or the other.

Steve had begun running a group therapy session in honour of Sam. He had seen all those years before how the Wilson man talked to veterans, how he gave them hope and Steve was inspired.

Natasha stayed in the compound. Every day she and the Mikaelsons searched for new solutions, each one leading to a dead end.

The Mikaelsons had lost their soulmate. Their other half. No matter how many dead ends they found, they would never give up on finding Mia.

The same for Natasha, she had finally found her family. She was not going to let some purple bastard with a nutsack for a chin get away with taking them from her.

Perhaps she was spending too much time with Kol who constantly belittled the purple giant who ruined their lives.

To be fair, his insults were quite witty and often reminded her of Mia.

She found comfort in his stupid jokes.

The Mikaelsons had become her family. It was like Natasha was a sister they never knew they wanted yet always needed.

San Francisco | U-Store-It Self Storage

A rat squeaked inside the dash of a rundown van as it walked around. His little feet pulled him up onto a small screen with multiple buttons.

He continued to move around on it, pressing random buttons, powering up whatever machine was in the back without a care in the world.

The machine whirred as lights flickered until suddenly, a body was thrown out of the back doors.

The man groaned as he landed harshly on a pile of junk. He pressed against his ear causing his metal mask to disappear.

He stood up, glancing around the storage room in confusion. He hadn't remembered being there. He remembered being on a rooftop.

"What the hell?... Hope?"

— — —

The man carried a wagon full of his belongings as he walked out of the storage building. He kept walking for hours, reading signs that read 'missing person' in bold on every street post, each one for a different person.

Cars were crashed, tires having been pulled off of them and used for resources.

"Kid!" He shouted when he saw a young boy move past him on a bike. He was the first person he had seen during his walk.

"Hey, kid!"

The kid stopped and looked at the man.

"What the hell happened here?"

The kid didn't answer. Instead, tears filled his eyes before he sped away on his bike.

— — —

The man walked even further until he reached an open field which held multiple stone walls, each engraved with names.

'The Vanished' was written on the top of each pillar.

"Oh my god," He muttered as he stared at the vast amount of names.

He quickly moved around each stone, searching for a set of names, "No, please please."

He cut in front of multiple people as he kept muttering a single name, "Cassie."

He paused however when he read a name.

'Scott Lang'

That was his name. Why was his name on that stone?

He ran and he didn't stop running until he reached a familiar home. He pressed on the doorbell multiple times, slamming his hand against the door.

He could see the faint frame of a woman before the door opened revealing a young woman.

She stared at him in shock as she held his face in her hands.

"Cassie?" He muttered as he watched tears fall down her cheeks.

"Dad?" She sobbed as she held onto her father tightly.

He held her for a moment before stepping back to look at her, "You- You're so big."

She laughed softly as she embraced him once more.

Avengers Compound | One Day Later

Rebekah watched as Natasha cut her peanut butter and jelly sandwich in half before looking back at the wall of holograms which displayed Rocket, Okoye, Carol, Rhodey and Nebula.

Her brothers were all in one of the training rooms letting off steam or rather breaking everything in sight.

They had yet another failed attempt at finding Mia and they weren't taking it well.

They hadn't seen Steve in weeks. They didn't blame him though. They all dealt with their grief in different ways.

"Yeah, we boarded that highly suspect warship Danvers pinged," Rocket spoke.

"It was an infectious garbage scowl," Nebula added.

Rocket nodded as he looked at Carol, "So, thanks for the hot tip."

She smirked at him, "Well, you were closer."

"Yeah. And now we smell like garbage."

Rebekah's eyes moved to Okoye, "You get a reading on those tremors?"

"It was a mild subduction under the African plate," The woman answered.

"Do we have a visual? How are we handling it?" Natasha asked from beside Rebekah.

"Nat, it's an earthquake under the ocean. We handle it by not handling it."

The now red-haired woman nodded, "Carol, are we seeing you here next month?"

"Not likely."

"What, you gonna get another haircut?" Rocket asked sarcastically.

"Listen fur-face, I'm covering a lot of territory. The things that are happening on Earth are happening everywhere, on thousands of planets."

"All right, all right, that's a good point. That's a good point."

"So you might not see me for a long time."

Natasha nodded with a sigh, "Alright. Uh, well. This channel is always active. So, if anything goes sideways... anyone's making trouble where they shouldn't... comes through me."

They all agreed before the call was cut off. However, one stayed on.

"Where are you?" Natasha asked as she took a bite of her sandwich.

"Mexico. The Federales found a room full of bodies. Looks like a bunch of cartel guys. Never even had the chance to get their guns off," Answered Rhodey.

"It's probably a rival gang."

"Except it isn't. It's definitely Barton. What he's done here, what he's been doing for the last few years... I mean, the scene that he left... I gotta tell you, there's a part of me that doesn't even want to find him."

"Will you find out where he's going next?"

"Nat..."

"Please."

He reluctantly nodded before leaving the call as well.

Rebekah stared at the woman who had tears in her eyes but before she could say anything a small knock came from the door.

"You know I'd offer to cook you dinner but you seem pretty miserable already," Steve spoke as he walked inside the room, offering a polite smile to Rebekah.

"You here to do your laundry?"

"And to see a friend."

Natasha chuckled as he wiped away her tears, "Clearly, your friend is fine."

"You know I saw a pod of whales when I was coming up the bridge."

"In the Hudson?"

"There's fewer ships, cleaner water."

Natasha sighed, "You know, if you're about to tell me to look on the bright side. Um... I'm about to hit you in the head with a peanut butter sandwich."

He chuckled softly as he sat down across from the two women, "Sorry. Force of habit. You know, I keep telling everybody they should move on and... grow. Some do. But not us."

"If we move on, who does this?"

"Maybe it doesn't need to be done."

Natasha breathed out, "I used to have nothing. And then I got this. This job... this family... Mia. And I was... I was better because of it. And even though... they're gone... I'm still trying to be better."

Steve smiled sadly at them. He could see the way Rebekah's heart was shattering at just the mention of Mia's name, "I think we all need to get a life."

"You first."

Suddenly camera footage popped up revealing a man who stood next to a van.

"Oh! Hi. Hi! Is anyone home? This is Scott Lang. We met a few years ago, at the airport? In Germany? I got really big, and I had my mask on. You wouldn't recognize me," The man shouted as he stared up at the camera.

"Is this an old message?" Rebekah asked as she stood up, Steve and Natasha doing the same.

"It's the front gate," Natasha answered.

"Ant-Man? Ant-Man, I know you know that. I need to talk to you guys."

— — —

After letting Scott in, the rest of the Mikaelons joined them. This was their first real sign of hope and they weren't going to miss it.

"Scott. Are you okay?" Steve asked as he watched the man pace.

"Yeah. I'm fine. Have you ever studied Quantum Physics?"

"Only to make conversation," Natasha answered.

"Alright. So... five years ago, right before Thanos, I was in a place called the Quantum Realm. The Quantum Realm is like its own microscopic universe. To get in there, you have to be incredibly small. Hope, she's my... She was my... She was supposed to pull me out. And then Thanos happened, and I got stuck in there."

Natasha looked at him with a pitiful look, "I'm sorry. That must've been a very long five years."

"Yeah, but that's just it. It wasn't. For me, it was five hours."

The group looked at each other in shock.

"See, the rules of the Quantum Realm aren't like they are up here. Everything is unpredictable. Is that anybody's sandwich? I'm starving," He paused as he grabbed onto the sandwich before taking a large bite.

"Scott, what are you talking about?"

"What I'm saying is, time works differently in the Quantum Realm. The only problem is right now, we don't have a way to navigate it. But what if we did? I can't stop thinking about it. What if we could somehow control the chaos, and we could navigate it? What if there was a way to enter the Quantum Realm at a certain point in time but then exit at another point in time? Like... Like before Thanos."

Elijah stared at the man, "Wait, are you talking about a time machine?"

"No. No, of course not. No, not a time machine. It's more like a... Yeah, a time machine. I know it's crazy. But I can't stop thinking about it. There's gotta be some way... There's gotta be...some w... it's crazy."

"Scott, we get emails from a raccoon, so nothing sounds crazy anymore."

The man nodded, "So who do we talk to about this?"

— — —

There was one person in the world they knew who would know about time travel and its possibilities.

And that was Tony Stark.

The man had moved out of the compound and to a nice cottage on a lake. To everyone's surprise, he and Pepper had started a family and raised a daughter, Morgan.

The Mikaelsons had chosen to stay at the compound in case they got any updates which left Natasha, Steve and Scott.

Tony sighed as he held onto Morgan, his eyes meeting Natasha's.

"Now, we know what it sounds like..." Scott spoke up five minutes later after he explained his situation to the Stark.

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

"Quantum fluctuation messes with the Planck Scale, which then triggers the Deutsch Proposition. Can we agree on that?"

They all looked at the man with puzzled looks.

Tony sighed as he handed them drinks, "In Layman's terms, it means you're not coming home."

 "I did," Scott spoke. 

Tony shook his head, "No, you accidentally survived. It's a billion to one cosmic fluke. And now you wanna pull off a... What do you call it?"

"A time heist?"

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

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

Natasha stared at Tony, "We can snap our own fingers. We can bring everyone back."

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

"I don't believe we would," Steve told him. 

Tony sighed, "Gotta say, sometimes I miss that giddy optimism. 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. 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?"

Scott looked at him embarrassed, "No."

"Good. You had me worried there. 'Cause that'd be horse shit. That's not how quantum physics works."

"Tony... We have to take a stand."

"We did stand. And yet, here we are."

"I know you got a lot on the line. You got a wife, a daughter. But I lost someone very important to me. A lot of people did. And now... now we have a chance to bring her back. To bring everyone back. And you're telling me that won't even-"

"That's right, Scott, I won't even. I got a kid," Tony spoke as Morgan ran up to him.

"Mommy told me to come and save you."

Tony smiled at the little girl, "Good job. I'm saved," He paused looking back at Steve and Natasha, "I wish you'd come here to ask me something else. Anything else. Honestly, I... I missed you guys, it was... Oh, and table's set for six."

"Tony, I get it. And I'm happy for you, I really am. But this is a second chance."

"I got my second chance right here, Cap. I can't roll the dice again. If you don't talk shop, you can stay for lunch."

As the trio walked away Natasha spoke, "He's scared."

"He's not wrong."

"Yeah, but I mean, what are we gonna do? We need him. What are we gonna stop?" Scott asked as they got inside the car once more.

"No, I wanna do it right. We're gonna need a really big brain."

"Bigger than his?"

— — —

Now in a small restaurant, Natasha, Steve and Scott sat across from Bruce Banner or rather Hulk.

During the five years, Bruce and Hulk had begun to work together. Bruce lived in Hulk's body while keeping his mind. It was a whole ordeal Natasha and Steve didn't fully understand.

"Come on, I feel like I'm the only one eating. Try some of that. Have some eggs," Bruce told them as he pushed a plate toward them.

"I'm so confused," Scott muttered.

"These are confusing times," Bruce answered with a small chuckle.

"Right. No, no, that's not what I meant."

"No, I get it. I'm kidding! I know. It's crazy. I'm wearing shirts now."

"Yeah! Wh...How? Why?"

"Five years ago, we got our asses beaten. Except it was worse for me. Because I lost twice. First, Hulk lost, then Banner lost. Then, we all lost."

Natasha shook her head, "No one blamed you, Bruce."

"I did. For years, I've been treating the Hulk like he's some kind of disease, something to get rid of. But then I started looking at him as the cure. Eighteen months in a gamma lab. I put the brains and the brawn together. And now look at me. Best of both worlds..."

Three kids slowly walked towards Bruce, "Excuse me, Mr. Hulk?"

"Yes?"

"Can we get a photo?"

"100%, little person. Come on, step up," He glanced at Scoot and held out the phone, "You mind?"

Scott nodded as he grabbed the phone, "Oh, yeah."

"Thanks. Say 'green!'" Bruce told them as Scott snapped the photo.

Scott leaned forward as he handed them the phone, "Don't you wanna grab one with me? I'm Ant-Man."

The kids looked at him awkwardly.

"They're Hulk fans, they don't know Ant-Man. Nobody does," Scott muttered.

"Wait, no, no, he feels bad. No, he wants you to...he wants to... You want to take a picture with him, right?" Bruce asked one of the boys only for him to shake his head.

"Stranger Danger."

"He's even saying no he doesn't. I get it. I don't want it either."

"But, come on, the kid! But he...but you..."

Scott crossed his arms, "I don't want a picture with them."

"He's gonna feel bad. They said they'd do it."

"I don't want it anymore."

"No, no...you feel bad."

"Just take the goddamn phone."

The young girl took the phone before looking at Bruce, "Thank you, Mr. Hulk."

"No, it's great kids. Thank you very much. Hulk out!"

"Bruce. About what we were saying..." Steve trailed off.

"Right. The whole time travel do-over? Guys, it's outside my area of expertise."

Natasha stared at him, "Well, you pulled this off. I remember a time when that seemed pretty impossible, too."

Tony's Lakehouse | Five Hours Later

Tony stood over his sink as he scrubbed a plate clean. He went to grab the tap only for it to spray everywhere.

He sighed before drying the plate off. He held the rag in his hand as he stared up at a picture that was covered in water droplets.

He grabbed it before wiping it clean.

He stared down at the photo. It was the first day of Peter's 'Stark Internship'. He, Mia and Peter all held up peace signs as they smiled at the camera. Peter held up his papers upside down and in that moment, Mia and Tony were laughing at the boy.

He sighed before setting the picture back down and walking into his workroom.

He pulled up a few holograms before speaking to Friday, "Look at a mod inspiration, let me see what checks out. So, recommend one last sim before we pack it in for the night. This time, in the shape of a mobius strip, inverted, please."

"Processing..."

He stared at it before flipping it around, "Give me that eigenvalue. That, particle factoring, and a spectral decomp. That will take a second."

"Just a moment."

"And don't worry if it doesn't pan out. I'm just kinda-"

"Model rendered."

In shock, Tony stared as the render came back at 99.987% successful. He slumped back in his chair, completely in shock of his new discovery, "Shit."

"Shit," The young voice of Morgan Stark spoke out from the stairs.

Tony quickly turned to look at her as he held his finger up to his lips, "What are you doing up, little miss?"

Morgan grinned toothly at him, "Shit."

"No, we don't say that. Only Aunt Mia says that word. She coined it, it belongs to her."

Morgan smiled at the thought of the aunt she had yet to meet, "Why are you up?"

"Cause I got some important shit going on here."

Morgan stared at him with an adorable look on her little face.

"What do you think? No, I got something on my mind. I got something on my mind."

"Was it juice pops?"

"Sure was. That's extortion. Great minds think alike. Juice pops, exactly was on my mind," He stood up and grabbed her hand before leading her into the kitchen.

— — —

"You done? Yeah, now you are," Tony whispered as he wiped Morgan's lips with his sleeve, before gently pushing her head against the pillow, "That face goes there."

"Tell me a story."

"A story... Once upon a time, Maguna went to bed. The end."

Morgan giggled, "That's a horrible story."

"Come on, that's your favourite story. I love you tons," He told her as he kissed her forehead.

"I love you 3000."

"Wow. 3000. That's crazy. Go to bed. Or I'll sell all your toys. Night, night."

— — —

Tony had joined Pepper in the living room after leaving Morgan in her room.

"Not that it's a competition, but she loves me 3000. You were somewhere on the low 6 to 900 range."

Pepper laughed amused but said nothing.

"What are you reading?" He asked absentmindedly.

"Oh, it's just a book on composting."

"What's new with composting?"

"Just-"

"I figured it out, by the way."

Pepper stared at him, "You know, just so we're talking about the same thing-"

"Time travel."

She stared at him with wide-eyes, "What? Wow... That's amazing, and... terrifying."

He nodded, "That's right."

"We got really lucky."

"Yeah, I know."

"A lot of people didn't."

"No, I can't help everybody."

She smiled at him, "It sort of seems like you can."

"Not if I stop. I can put a pin in it right now, and stop."

"Tony, trying to get you to stop has been one of the few failures of my life."

He smiled, "I sometimes feel I should put it in a locked box and drop it at the bottom of a lake... go to bed."

"But would you be able to rest?"

A/N

I broke my fucking bed. Wtf.

Also, who knew bedframes were so goddamn expensive? Like fuck me, 300 for a simple little one. Big fuck you to my bank account I guess. Capitalism baby!

I need a nap.