Steve sighed and ran his fingers through his hair nervously. It had grown in a bit during his travels through space and time but he’d kept up by trimming it himself in hopes that he’d still look the same to Peggy and the Howling Commandos.
If what Bruce and Tony had said was true then he didn’t need to worry about changing the timeline since nothing he did would affect the future. Not now since he’d returned the stones to where and when they were taken.
Seeing the Red Skull again had been a nightmare come true, especially since he had sneered and called him “Son of Sarah” as if Schmidt had any right to speak his mothers name. He wondered why Clint hadn’t warned him that he’d be confronting his arch nemesis on Vormir, not that he’d been able to fight the ghostly…thing Schmidt had become.
Still, teammates shouldn’t keep secrets from one another. Hadn’t they all learned that lesson the hard way?
He pressed his lips together in irritation and put the idea out of his head. He’d have to ask the archer what he’d been thinking when they met up again…in 80 years.
He pushed his guilt aside, assuring himself that it wouldn’t be nearly so long for his friends, that they’d be waiting for him by the lake when he returned to them just moments after he left. They wouldn’t feel abandoned, he was sure of it.
He had come to Hydra’s last base and stowed away on the Valkyrie to await the battle with Schmidt and his men. After the other version of himself put the plane in the water and fell unconscious, Steve would move in and complete his mission.
He refused to think of it as murder or suicide. The younger version of himself would just never be resurrected from the ice. He would be lost in the waters of the North Atlantic. He wouldn’t ever know what had happened, Steve knew better than anyone that the time in the ice was a blank.
It wasn’t cruel, it wasn’t torture, it wasn’t even really a death since Steve was still right here, he smiled at the thought. The cycle of re-birth Thor had brokenly rambled about suddenly made far more sense.
When Howard found Steve he’d be in his old uniform carrying his pristine shield. This would work, it had to work. He was going to live the life he was meant to have.
Something shifted behind him, a gust of wind in an otherwise enclosed space that set his hairs on end.
“A man out of time indeed,” came a firm, feminine voice that had him spinning on his heel fists up to face the intruder.
It was a petite figure wearing elaborate gold robes with a deep hood pulled forward to hide her face. Around her neck…Steve swallowed thickly at the sight of the wizards necklace.
He had met her weeks before when he’d returned the Time Stone to the New York Sanctum. But what was she doing here? How was she here? Sorcery hadn’t existed in his time. Not yet, not for decades.
And this was before they ever met so how did she even know he was the man out of time? He opened his mouth to ask that very thing when she pushed her hood back revealing her all knowing eyes that looked through him as though she could see into his very soul.
“Mr. Rogers, I am the guardian of the Time Stone. Any temporal displacement is my concern, though believe me, I’d rather not have brought this precious relic anywhere near the zealots so eagerly searching for arcane artifacts in this part of the world.” She said evenly, without a hint of the peaceful acceptance he’d associated with her in 2012.
“I’m not displacing anything,” he hurried to explain, sensing her displeasure but not having the willingness or desire to hit a woman to complete this mission. He’d just have to talk his way out of this and help her see sense. “I’m correcting a mistake. This is my time. This is where I belong,” he said softly, softening his stance to be less physically imposing to the small woman.
She pursed her lips and sighed softly, pausing for a moment to weigh her words. “I’m sorry you feel that way Mr. Rogers but that simply isn’t the case. If you remain here you will create an alternate timeline that will veer into darkness, taking not only this version of Earth, but this branch of the universe with it.”
Steve didn’t know what to say to that. “What? How can you know that? I promise I won’t-“
She cut him off sharply but not unkindly. “We have studied the Time Stone for thousands of years. Many of my fellow Masters have had the ability to wield it as well. The mistakes and successes we’ve achieved through its use have informed the rules we’ve written and follow as Law.”
He shook his head, frustrated that he still wasn’t getting through to her when their time was almost up. “But I’m not-”
“But you are Mr. Rogers. Not a sorcerer but a time traveler. From the future no less. I am sorry, young man. But you cannot remain.” The Ancient One said, voice full of warning.
He straightened to his full height, squaring his shoulders for a fight. The timeline wasn’t hers to control. Fortune favors the bold and he had been bold enough to come this far. He wasn’t losing his miraculous second chance to some wizard with a god complex.
“I’m sorry ma’am but I can’t go back. Your rules may say one thing, but a wise woman once said 'Compromise where you can. And where you can’t, don’t. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right, even if the whole world is telling you to move. It is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye and say, no. You move.' This is me refusing to compromise. This is me refusing to move. This is where I belong and I’m not going anywhere.” He announced proudly.
There was no way she could make him go back to the future, as far as he knew portals didn’t work through time and she had no hope of beating him physically. No, Steve Rogers was here to stay and the Ancient One would have to accept that.
Instead of looking cowed or resigned by his words she tilted her lips in a small, amused smile. “Mountains, rivers, and yes even trees are all lost to the passage of time.”
He blinked at that, having no idea what she meant by it. Then she moved quicker than he’d imagined she could and struck him in the chest with the flat of her palm, a light tap that didn’t even shift his body until he realized it at fallen and was lying on the ground behind him.
“Oh my god! Did you kill me?!” he demanded, horrified as she crouched by his side and fiddled with the watch Tony had created.
“Calm down, I simply knocked your astral form out of your body. It’s time for you to accept that there are some things you can’t change. The past is one of them. It’s time to look to the future Mr. Rogers.” She tapped the center of his forehead and returned him to his body.
Then, before he could take a breath or sit up or even roll over she hit the button on his watch and he was in the quantum realm flying away from this mission, from his love, from his home.
He stumbled onto the platform with a raw cry. He hadn’t even seen Peggy again. He fell to his knees and wept as Sam and Bruce asked how long it had been for him, what had happened, was he alright? While Bucky looked on in shock, having been aware of his plan and knowing that Steve didn’t quit for any reason.
But he had no answers for them. He had no answers for himself. He was a man out of time and now he always would be.