Avengers 4 Fix-It continued

[cashew]

Fanfic for tanithryudo, I bet you thought I forgot about this, but no, the story is still going. I have not abandoned you!

Title: Nowhere Past Morning

Part: 3

Fandom: MCU, Captain America Movies

Rating: PG because swear words

Previously: Part 1 Part 2

---

Bucky sat back in the conference room and watched with a sense of detached amusement as Banner and Parker fussed over the younger Steve. Sam watched with him from the corner, his eyes distrusting as he flicked his gaze between the younger and older versions, like he couldn't be sure he could trust his own eyes at the sight of two Steves. Meanwhile, the older Steve was sending his younger self disapproving glares, which was pretty rich, all things considered.

The younger Steve seemed to think the same as he returned the older version's glare and answered Banner's question with an absent mind.

"No," he replied, "I didn't use the Tesseract."

"What about the Time Stone?" Banner pursued.

"What's a Time Stone?"

"So we can confirm that he's not the Captain America from my PSA videos," Parker interjected where no one asked.

Both Steves gave Parker a horrified look.

"What were you doing before you found Barnes?" Banner continued with his questioning as though Parker hadn't spoken.

"I told you, we — that is, the Avengers thought they saw something odd around the compound and we came to investigate. We thought the anomaly was the result of Loki coming back with the Tesseract, since the last time—"

"I meant if you saw anything that might have been out of place at the Hydra cell," Banner hurriedly corrected before the younger Steve could get off course recounting his recon mission.

"No. I already told you, I volunteered to investigate, heard some noises upstairs and went to look. That's when I saw Bucky," Steve the Younger answered, getting impatient with Banner's unending questions. "I didn't think a few steps would take me into an entirely different universe or I'd have paid more attention to my surroundings."

"At least you accepted that much," Banner murmured and received a doubly impatient glare from both Steves for his troubles.

Before Banner could continue, Parker interrupted, "So, we're sure he's not a Hydra clone and is the same guy that Captain America knocked out when the Avengers went on their time heist, right?"

"I'm Captain America," the younger Steve complained. "How do you know he's not the clone?"

The older Steve snorted with derision and gave Parker an affirming nod instead.

"But you've never done any PSAs after you woke up from the ice?" Parker continued as he turned his attention from Steve the Elder to Steve the Younger. "So you're not really the Cap of the past anymore, since he" — Parker jerked his thumb at the older Steve to signal his pronouns — "definitely, vividly showed up in our PSA videos. I will forever be traumatized by Captain America talking about grooming hygiene—"

"So how do we send him back?" Sam finally interjected as he grew tired of the science nerds and their meandering chatter.

"I can't even be sure how he came into our dimension, let alone get him back," Banner answered as he took charge of the situation again. "I have some theories, as usual, but nothing solid."

"Well, what to do we do in the meantime while you figure it out? We can't just keep him running around here like nothing's happened."

"Why not?" the younger Steve asked.

Sam and Banner turned to give Steve matching disappointed looks, clearly expecting Captain America to show a bit more awareness of the potential catastrophe of merging universes, a potential that he perpetuated.

Neither Steve looked particularly distraught by the possible chaos.

Meanwhile, Parker took to the suggestion as he echoed, "Yeah, it's not like we couldn't use another super soldier around. And he can take over as Captain—"

"Sam's Captain America now," Bucky interrupted the kid before he could step into it any further. Parker's mouth snapped shut at the chastisement and Bucky slipped back to his usual silence as he waited for Banner to resume the discussion.

Steve the Elder turned to give him an indecipherable look. Bucky shrugged back at him for the lack of a verbal explanation.

Bucky had spent the better part of two years acclimating to Sam being Captain America, he wasn't going to let some universe-traversing punk invalidate that effort, even if that punk was Steve Rogers.

Besides, Bucky wasn't sure he ever really settled on the idea of Steve as Captain America anyway, war or no war.

"Anyway, we have to think of a different name for you while you're around. We already have a Steve Rogers," Banner picked up from where Steve had interrupted. "We can't return you to your universe until we figure out what brought you over, but we can't have you running around willy-nilly either."

"Why not?" the younger Steve asked, clearly taking offense. Gesturing at his older self with his chin, Steve added, "It's not like he can go out either. Seems like you guys could use a Steve Rogers in this world."

"They'll suspect something's wrong," the older Steve answered without rising to the bait.

"Who?"

"SHIELD."

"So you've started working for Hydra?"

"They're not anymore," Banner quickly explained before the younger Steve could work himself up into a righteous anger.

The older Steve merely glared while Banner explained, succinctly, how SHIELD disbanded and reformed under newer leadership.

Bucky watched the two Steves re-engage in their silent standoff, feeling the tension ratcheting up a notch as Banner's words fell on most probably deaf ears. There was something neither Steve had disclosed to the rest of the team and as soon as this meeting was over, Bucky intended to find out what the Steves were hiding from them.

---

Sam begged off from the meeting when Banner began talking about quantum stability and string propagation. Parker left to attend his special school for gifted under-served kids, even though he looked like he would love to have another go at the younger Steve. When Banner moved onto space folding and Einstein-Rosin bridges, Bucky gave in and escaped the room with a hasty excuse about writing a post-op report, leaving the Steves to Barnner's nerdy mercies.

As Bucky debated between leaving the Avengers compound for a stroll around Cunningham Park versus heading down to the indoor gym to pound away his frustrations on some of the reinforced sandbags, he noticed the younger Steve also managed to get away and was loitering in the middle of the hallway like an abandoned poodle. Unable to resist the sight of a Steve in distress, Bucky abandoned his half formed plans.

He called out as he approached, "Did Banner let you go or are you sneaking out like the rest of us?"

"Bucky!"

Steve greeted him with a nostalgic brightness and looked visibly relieved.

"Where's the older you?" Bucky asked.

Steve's enthusiasm visibly dimmed at the mention of his doppelganger. Bucky felt a twinge of sympathy before squashing the feeling away. This Steve was a temporary visitor and Bucky didn't need to be distracted by misplaced attachment. Like all Steves, this one had somewhere else he needed to be.

When Steve continued to stay silent, Bucky offered, "I'm going out for a run, want to come?"

If old man Steve wanted to talk with Bucky, he had Bucky's cellphone number. And since this universe's Steve was nowhere to be seen, Bucky guessed that meant Banner still had Steve hostage with some talk that they didn't want the younger Steve to hear. So, a run in Cunningham Park would give them privacy while also working off the excessive energy vibrating out of the younger Steve. And it'll keep Bucky distracted enough to not think too hard about what it means to have two Steves in the same universe.

It wasn't long before the two of them were jogging down the paved paths winding between the trees, nodding at the occasional fellow jogger who, in true New Yorker fashion, ignored their presence. They moved at a sedate pace, staying well within the running speed of normal people and paused every so often to enjoy the park in the height of summer.

They managed to keep a companionable quiet for about two miles when Steve decided he couldn't wait anymore and asked, "Where have you been all this time, Buck?"

"In this universe," Bucky answered vaguely as he kept his feet moving. Feeling Steve's disapproval at the flippant response, he clarified, "I'm not the same Bucky as the one you know."

"I know that! But we've had similar experiences — the Steve here and me," Steve retorted, frustration building despite their physical exertion. "I know this isn't just time travel or whatever. It's just—I looked everywhere, Buck. I couldn't find anything about you! All of the records said you're dead, but he found you somehow, so—"

"Hey," Bucky interrupted as he slowed his steps and approached the increasingly agitated Steve, "it's OK. You'll find him."

"Can't you give me a hint?" Steve implored, turning on the hangdog face that Bucky hates. "It can't just be coincidence that I came into your universe, right? This is an opportunity—"

"Don't over think it. Most of life is just an accident," Bucky cut off the speculation before Steve invoked something ridiculous like fate or kismet or whatever has Steve looking this desperate.

"I can't believe that, Buck," Steve continued, too earnest for Bucky's liking. "After he told me that you were still alive—"

"What do you mean 'he told you'?" Bucky asked, latching onto the words with foreboding.

Steve paused, taken aback by Bucky's sudden intensity, but answered dutifully, "When he—the me here—traveled to my universe, he told me—look, I thought he was Loki in disguise at the time. But then he knocked me out and Loki escaped with the Tesseract and Banner—the one in my world—deduced that he must have been an alternate universe version of me who—"

"Steve is you. He—" Bucky broke off the explanation with frustration, not sure how much he could say and Banner was never very specific about the rules of time travel, especially for people who came from the past. Sighing, he settled for, "You're both Steve."

"But Banner, this Banner, said we're not the same, not anymore. Not after Loki escaped with the Tesseract," Steve argued.

"The alternate universes aren't stable, they'll merge together at some point. You and him, you're still the same person."

"I don't feel like him," Steve said just to be contrary.

Bucky resisted the urge to yell. Or, better yet, punch a tree. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Bucky wondered if Steve had developed super soldier dysmorphia after Operation Rebirth. He never had a chance to ask.

"Even if you're not technically from the same universe now, you're still the same person," Bucky argued back. Then, with resentful affection, he added, "Neither of you can hide your feelings worth a damn."

"Are you calling me a bad spy?"

"Didn't Nat say it all the time?"

Steve frowned at the word tense and asked, "What happened to Nat?"

Bucky blinked at the sudden reminder that this Steve came from 5 years in the past, before everything disappeared and reconstituted on the whims of some space gems. Caught flat-footed, Bucky stammered as he tried to figure out how he could explain the ordeal with a purple alien megalomaniac without causing the universe to implode from a temporal paradox.

Thankfully, Steve seemed to take the hint and dropped the subject.

"That bad, huh?"

"You wouldn't believe it even if I told you," Bucky agreed, relieved that Steve wasn't pushing the issue.

"And you still haven't told me where you were all this time," Steve continued without missing a beat, going right back to where Bucky didn't want him.

"I really can't tell you," Bucky finally conceded. "You'll still need to go back to where you came from—"

"You don't know that! You said the universe might merge, right? Maybe I'm not going back; maybe we're all coming over," Steve speculated, using Bucky's excuse against him as he forged on. "He obviously found you in this universe, right? So what's the harm in letting me know? It's not going to change anything he hasn't already changed."

"That's not the point."

"Then that's the point, Buck?"

Steve's stubborn frown was making a comeback and Bucky didn't now how to handle the overly familiar expression. This was a Steve on a mission and Bucky was never good at saying no.

Sighing in defeat, Bucky said, "Banner said the reason you appeared is because your timeline and our timeline were too similar, right?"

Steve nodded as Bucky recounted Banner's abridged theory about universe boundaries and the corruption of the space-time continuum.

"Right, so if you learn more about our universe, if you know what the Steve of this universe knows, then the similarities will keep increasing, right? And if it reaches some kind of critical mass, then our universes will definitely merge—"

"Would it be so bad having me around?"

"—and we might all die in a puff of anti-data," Bucky finished and gave Steve a glare. "Are you going to risk destroying the universe just to...what? Find me earlier?"

It was enough to get Steve to go quiet, but Bucky noted with silent concern that Steve didn't reject the notion either.

---

"I know what you're thinking and he won't like it."

The younger Steve finished washing his face after an unsatisfactory run, taking his time to pat the skin dry before turning around to stare down his older self. Banner's discussion with this older Steve finished just as Bucky got called into a meeting along with Sam. They were scheduled to talk with some top brass about a man named Zemo and Steve wasn't allowed to tag along.

So here Steve remained, at the Avengers' compound, wondering what to do besides getting lectured by himself.

"You don't know anything about me," Steve told his older doppelganger, suddenly feeling confrontational. The suppressed frustration during the run surged to the forefront now that the shock of seeing Bucky again had worn off. There were too many questions he wanted to ask, but Bucky's reluctance halted his words. He couldn't help but wonder what had happened to make Bucky so reticent.

And why the hell was he so much older in this universe?

"I've been where you are," his own withered face told him and Steve wondered if he sounded as condescending to Stark as his older self sounds to him. No wonder Stark couldn't stand him.

"I've heard that a lot, back in the army," Steve began, feeling defiant.

"Colonel Philips," his older self agreed before Steve could finish the sentence. "Yeah, I remember."

"And you're turning into him?"

"I'm starting to see he has a point," older Steve retorted without a hint of irony. "I'm starting to see I was too hot-headed for my own good."

Steve mulled on those words for a moment before asking, "Why did you tell me Bucky was alive?"

"Because I was hoping you could save him when I couldn't."

"Right, even if it meant destroying the world?" Steve scoffed.

He would've saved Bucky, of course he would, but he also didn't believe saving one person could destroy the world, no matter how many impossible things have happened since breakfast. No matter how many experts tried to sell him on the idea. The world wasn't built on one person, it never was, and when it all goes to hell in a hand-basket, it's never a single person's fault.

He also didn't trust the man in front of him to tell him the truth.

Steve wondered what happened to change him so much.

"You would have. What makes you think I wouldn't?" his older self questioned back.

"Because Bucky can barely look at you. Are you going to tell me that you saved him and he wouldn't even—"

"I never said I saved him," the older Steve cut him off. It seems impatience wasn't something he ever grew out of. "If I did, do you think I'd be here like this?"

The older Steve made a gesture at himself, raking a regretful gaze over his reflection in the mirror, then answered his own question, "No matter what I did, I couldn't stop the train."

Steve didn't need further elaboration to know what the man meant. Briefly convinced to hear the man out, Steve nodded for him to continue.

"Everything I tried only made things worse. I couldn't keep going, who knew how many universes I left behind? I thought if I could keep Bucky from being captured in even one of them, it would've been worth it. But...nothing worked. So here I am, trying to go back to a past never could have been." The old man shook his head in self-deprecation, then advised, "Don't waste your time like I did."

"It's only a waste of time if you fail," Steve told him, hackles rising at the implied challenge. "I won't."

"You haven't even found your Bucky."

"I just need to save a Bucky. You're the only one who thinks there's a difference between them, Steve. You never could understand that this, us, it's all connected."

"Bucky doesn't need—"

"You're the one who said it, right? You didn't save Bucky. And you're too busy trying to save some other Bucky to save the one under your nose."

His older self's eyes narrowed at those words. In a flat voice, he asked, "What are you going to do? Replace me?"

The two of them were now wearing identical expressions. Challenge, disbelief, and righteous anger etched against the weathering of time.

"Well, it seems like this timeline is missing a supersoldier."

"You do this and you might cause the entire universe to implode."

"If you cared about the universe imploding, why did you change the past in the first place?"

"We already had nothing left to lose."

Steve looked around him, at the sparkling walls of the flagrantly expensive facility, then drawled, "Ri-ight."

"We gambled and won some things back, of course," the older Steve explained, "but the losses are greater than you can imagine."

"Would you still do it knowing the costs?"

"In a heartbeat."

"Even with what happened to Bucky?"

The older Steve remained quiet, but Steve could see that there was no concession. Angry, he asked, "What the hell happened to you, Rogers?"

"Even if I couldn't save Bucky, I made sure there was a world where someone could."

"Maybe I'm that someone."

"In your dreams."

"I don't know what you want me to do here. I can't go back and I can't stay and you won't tell me anything. That's how you run this operation? By keeping everyone in the dark?"

"Keeping everyone in the dark is the only way to prevent the world from being destroyed," the older Steve answered with something resembling resentment. "I didn't understand it at first when Fury said it, but now..."

Steve snorted with disbelief. "You want me to trust the moral compass of a man who thought it was a good idea to use Hydra technology? You think he knows what's best for everyone?"

"No, but I know that I don't have the right answer."

---

"Zemo probably has the Tesseract," Fury told his audience.

Bucky and Sam sat in an afternoon meeting with Fury and the supposedly dead Coulson. Finding out that Coulson was alive hadn't been much of a surprise, at least not for an active assassin who was supposed to have been dead for over 70 years.

Steve was less blasé about the whole affair.

After some screaming, furniture pounding, and accusations of further Hydra conspiracies, the situation smoothed over because Steve's 90-year-old body, enhanced though it may be, couldn't handle an extended tantrum anymore. That had left the Avengers and SHIELD on shaky ground and the NSA absorbed the newly re-established agency as a concession to demands for oversight from the Avengers. An ironic development given the previous sordid Sokovia Accord affair, but it prevented further divisions between the military and civil officials. The Pentagon brass wasn't too happy about the compromise and the joint chiefs were in a tizzy for weeks, but after an apocalypse, everyone agreed to temporarily kick the disagreements down the road for the next administration to clean up.

Which is how they now find themselves in this current situation, where Sam became the acting liaison between the Avengers and SHIELD. And where Captain America goes, so goes Bucky.

"OK, back up," Sam raised a hand to interrupt Fury before he could pull out his holographic projectors. "When did Zemo escape? Actually, better yet, how?"

"With the Tesseract, the geographic isolation of the Raft becomes meaningless," Coulson answered without a hint of irony. At Sam's disbelieving stare, he hastened to add, "The Tesseract must have found its way across the dimensions when the other Steve—"

"How did you know about that?" Sam demanded, suspicion dripping from every word.

"We are an intelligence agency, Captain Wilson," Coulson answered without shame.

"The Avengers isn't under your jurisdiction anymore," Sam bit back.

Instead of responding, Coulson looked to Fury for an appropriate response.

"We still share some intel with the Pentagon for national security purposes," Fury answered smoothly. "And having two Steve Rogers constitutes a security concern."

"For what? Too much patriotism?"

"Rogers went on the lam—"

"Because the military was trying to imprison him—" Sam jabbed a finger at Bucky for emphasis as he continued, "—without trial. Last I checked, that was unconstitutional!"

"At the time, Barnes was deemed a national security threat," Fury defended his department's actions.

"You guys thought he bombed Vienna. Since when did American law enforcement have jurisdiction in a foreign country?"

"It was an international anti-terror oper..." Fury trailed off mid-word as Sam's disbelieving gaze chilled to glacial levels. Changing tactics, Fury relented, admitting, "Our government decided that the Avengers required oversight from a third party."

"You have spies at the Avengers compound," Sam translated.

"Is that really a surprise? Did you think that any government agency is free from surveillance by the NSA? Especially one with enhanced individuals that could potentially threaten the government's interests at the drop of a hat? Especially one with a history of doing exactly that?"

When Sam remained furiously silent, Fury continued, "Yes, I admit, we have the Avengers under surveillance. Yelling at me isn't going to change anything, so you might as well accept the situation. Now, back to the issue of two Steve Rogers: So far, you — the Avengers — haven't done anything that warranted us — SHIELD — to intervene, so we've been keeping quiet. Instead, we'd like to focus our resources on recapturing Zemo, who has one of the Infinity Stones and is definitely a bigger threat to our existence than Steve Rogers. Even one that isn't from this universe."

"What do you think he wants to do with it?" Bucky finally spoke up as Sam slumped in defeat at the bureaucratic red tape. Sam gave him a betrayed glance and Bucky shrugged in response, indicating that there wasn't much they could do anyway.

"Well, you know that Zemo has certain...ideologies," Fury finally began his briefing after the detour around the jurisprudence of enhanced individuals. "He's morally opposed to the idea of super soldiers, or any enhanced beings. So, as you can imagine, he wasn't very pleased to find out that not only has the Avengers not been disbanded, but that the United States' government legitimized their existence and, as a government agency dedicated to global operations, gave them the benefit of diplomatic immunity."

"We get diplomatic immunity?" Sam asked, surprised by the unexpected perk.

"To a certain extent. Don't push it," Coulson warned before Sam could get any iffy ideas into his head.

"And Zemo would rather we didn't," Bucky finished Fury's point.

"He'd rather you don't exist, but yes, short of that, he'd like to see the Avengers disbanded as an organization."

"And how does he plan to do that?"

"By kidnapping the child of a prominent senator for a start."

"Why do bad guys always resort to kidnapping?" Sam bemoaned, his indignation momentarily set aside.

Instead of engaging, Fury clicked on the projector. The slide show was less informative than Bucky had hoped, as it gave no further insight on Zemo that Bucky hadn't already surmised from their previous encounter and the only new intelligence was a picture of the hostage's bedroom.

"That's not a lot to work with," Sam said as Fury finished his slide show. "I'm not sure what you're bringing us in for when it looks like you need a detective, not a bunch of soldiers."

"We have a group working to track down the location of the hostage already, but we thought someone with abduction experience from the other side would give us more insight," Fury answered.

Turning to Bucky, he asked, "Any ideas about how you would've done the job?"

"Hey!" Sam sat up, offended at the implication, but slouched back down again when Bucky silently signaled the all clear. Still tense from the backhanded insult, Sam crossed his arms and watched as Bucky studied the picture, looking for some kind of entry point.

"Normally, I just shoot the target," Bucky half joked, trying to lighten the mood. The words fell flat and after an uncomfortable pause, Bucky continued, "There's no sign of forced entry or struggle. Whoever kidnapped the kid must've convinced them to go willingly. I'd look through the security footage—"

"We've already done that," Fury said.

"—and if there's nothing, then you can pin it on an inside job," Bucky finished over the interruption. "The kid trusted whoever came to get them, so I'm guessing someone part of the usual security detail. I wouldn't be surprised if you find some Hydra agents mixed in with the senator's usual staff. You'll probably find some connection between those guys and whoever delivered the Tesseract to Zemo."

"Zemo hates Hydra almost as much as you do," Coulson argued.

"Didn't stop me from working for Hydra."

"You were brainwashed."

"Didn't matter when you guys were chasing me down," Bucky retorted, the bitterness finally coming to the surface. Swallowing back further chastisement, Bucky sighed and continued, "Hydra doesn't have any enhanced soldiers left. Zemo hates enhanced soldiers, not fascism."

"He wrote an entire manifesto about how enhanced beings were equivalent to supremacy," Coulson began.

"Yeah, and Nazis called themselves 'socialists'," Bucky interjected. "Last time I checked, the Nazis went after the communists first."

When Coulson had no comeback, Bucky continued, "You're part of an intelligence agency. Why don't you check your data bases and see if anyone in the senator's staff have Hydra roots? I'll bet you find some if you dig deep enough."