Chapter Text
Prologue
Steve sighs and tries to relax as he rests his cheek against Peggy’s hair. A light rose scent fills his nose as they move slowly together, soft music playing in the background. This moment is all he’s dreamed of since he saw her through the blinds in her office at Camp Lehigh – all the moments of his life that should have been and now can be. So why does he feel so tense and uneasy?
As the music fades away and the record player needle starts to skip, a crash sounds behind Peggy and a glowing orange rectangle appears. Steve swiftly moves Peggy aside and behind him as a group of people dressed in black armour stream through the opening, surrounding them on all sides.
Another figure appears through the glowing door, holding a small rectangular device in their hand. They look Steve up and down, glancing again at the device.
“Variant identified”, they state calmly before meeting Steve’s eyes coldly. “On behalf of the Time Variance Authority I hereby arrest you for crimes against the sacred timeline.”
They nod at one of their cohorts who moves towards Steve, a long baton with a glowing orb at its point pointed at his chest.
“Arms up, you’re coming with us”
Steve shrinks back closer to Peggy, “Who are you and what exactly is this about?” he demands. His mind races, the words time variance and timeline have given him a pretty good idea what this is about but why now and who is it arresting him?
Two other agents move swiftly towards him, one grabs his arms while the other wraps his throat in a collar. It clicks shut as they start to pull him towards the glowing doorway while another comes from behind Peggy and holds her back.
“Steve! What’s going on?”
Their strength shocks Steve to his core, he cannot pull his arms away no matter how hard he tries. As he is dragged through the door his eyes meet Peggy’s one last time as he hears someone shouting.
“Set the charge to reset the timeline, let’s go”.
“Steve!”
Chapter 1
Immediately Steve feels himself drop and land heavily, arms still grasped by the two agents either side of him. They’ve arrived in a dimly lit corridor, the walls covered with a geometric pattern in a burnt orange colour. The person he assumes is the lead agent lands behind him, striding forward to lead the way towards what looks to be a reception area staffed by a lone man in a short sleeved shirt and tie. The man smiles and holds out a clipboard towards the lead agent who ignores him and keeps moving around the desk. Dragged along by his captors, Steve looks around for any clues to where he is and what is about to happen. There are no signs, just oddly decorated walls and doors. He spots a few other armoured guards or agents dragging along other people. Or mostly people, one of the figures is most definitely purple and doesn’t have any facial features he recognises.
The three guards escorting Steve stop as they reach a silver door, resembling an elevator but with an odd looking handle surrounded by small buttons alongside it. The door slides open and the three guards push Steve inside – ignoring his protestations.
Steve finds himself faced with what appears to be a robot, it reminds him a little of Dum-E from Tony’s lab and he starts to wonder how many things about time travel he and Tony were perhaps too arrogant to consider. The robot arms poke him, attempting to grab at his shirt and his belt. He yelps when another arm grabs his ass. Apparently satisfied with whatever it was investigating the robot’s arms detract as a glowing pole appears in its centre.
Steve holds his hands in front of himself, “Wait a minute!”
The glow grows brighter and gust of wind waves over his body from head to toe leaving a chill in its wake. And no wonder, he looks down to find himself suddenly naked except for the collar he can still feel around his neck. Protest dies on his lips as the floor falls away from beneath his bare feet.
Shock and confusion races through his limbs as he lands on a metal panel, now wearing what appears to be a khaki jumpsuit and white sneakers. The jumpsuit pulls awkwardly across the breadth of his shoulders and bags loosely around his hips before tightening again across his thighs. Surely in a magical place like this clothes should actually fit? An angry looking man looks down at him from a high desk, face partially obscured by a mountain of paper. A pen is slammed down as the man barks at Steve.
“Please sign to verify this is everything you have ever said.”
Stunned, Steve does what comes naturally and picks up the first page to start reading. The angry man gets even grumpier at this.
“No one ever reads all this you know. Just sign it and let me get on with my day”
Steve can’t help himself and pointedly picks up the second page, glancing down only to find himself feeling an old familiar sense of injustice.
“I only ever said Language once!”
Eyebrows raised, the grumpy man picks up a new piece of paper that has just come out of his printer and lays it in front of Steve. He taps the pen once again and Steve begrudgingly picks it up and signs. Sometimes even he knows when it’s time to back down from a fight.
Steve finds himself moving through a corridor, pausing when he gets to what looks to be a metal detector like you’d see at security check points at airports manned by a small man who’s focussed on the clipboard he holds in his hands. Steve is feeling more and more confused, why are there so many clipboards and piles of paper here?
“Please confirm to your knowledge that you are not a fully robotic being, you were born an organic creature and do in fact possess what many would call a soul” says the attendant, somehow managing to make the most fantastical sentence sound boring.
“I, um, I guess so?” Steve manages to stammer out. “But can you tell me why you’re asking and where I am?”
“You’re at the TVA, move forward” is the only response he gets from the attendant in that same bored tone that he was speaking of robots, organic beings and souls.
Only slightly hesitant after all he’s seen since his arrival, Steve moves forward as the check point lights up and prints out what appears to be a small photo.
“This is your temporal aura, take it with you and go through there”.
Still confused, Steve takes the glowing card and moves through a door that has appeared abruptly behind the attendant who is already back to studying his clipboard.
The bizarre world Steve has found himself in is mostly bizarre in its resemblance to the most mundane of human experiences in the 21st century. Security check points and now ticketed queues? It’s possibly the strangest thing Steve’s experienced in his very strange long life.
Another guard dressed in the same black armour as those who took him from Peggy’s arms points at a red ticket machine, it looks exactly like the one at his local deli back in Washington. Back when he shopped for groceries and had time to notice and learn about such things. Back before going on the run, back before the snap, back before.
There are a few other people ahead of him, moving slowly through the maze created by barriers. A disembodied voice announces “Welcome to the Time Variance Authority!” and Steve’s head swings around to notice a small television mounted near the ceiling.
An animated clock appears on screen and introduces itself as Miss Minutes, while Steve begins to think he’s knocked his head somewhere in his travels and is experiencing a particularly vivid dream. Maybe he fell asleep at Peggy’s? The cartoon clock continues to cheerfully explain something called the sacred timeline and Steve frowns as he recalls the same words spoken in Peggy’s living room. Multiverses, nexus events, variants; Steve’s mind races as he realises that time travel perhaps wasn’t as simple as they’d thought. Does this mean he didn’t return the stones properly as the Sorcerer Supreme advised Bruce to do? Did he make a mistake somewhere? He keeps coming back to the same question – if creating time branches disrupts the proper flow of time, why wait to arrest him now?
The people in front of him continue to wind their way towards the window. As they get closer Steve can see the attendant behind seated behind the window. A raised voice echoes across the waiting area as someone argues vehemently with the attendant, their voice is cut off as they are shoved unceremoniously through a door on the side wall by another guard. Steve swallows his dread as the door disappears with a snap, glancing around to count the guards. They hover in shadows between pools of light from the dim fluorescent lighting, there’s more of them than he first thought.
When he’s called forward to the window, the woman sitting behind the glass gestures with her hand.
“Ticket and aura!”
Guessing she’s after the glowing card in his hand, he passes it over to her along with his deli style ticket. She places it in a round metal disc that appears to float in the air in front of her face. Small red lights begin to glow on each side of the disc, almost like a gauge of some kind. Once again, thoughts of Tony pass through Steve’s mind, would he know what all this is? Did he know this could happen?
At the sound of a beep, the woman nods towards a guard that moves out of their dim hiding place and into the light to come forward and grab Steve’s elbow, propelling him forward with that same strength he confronted earlier as he was pulled away from Peggy. He wonders with a pang what happened to her, dread filling his heart as he imagines it was nothing good.
Steve is moved through a wooden door that has appeared, different to the one the other person was earlier pushed through. The guard accompanies him through the door to what appears to be a court room, rows of seats not dissimilar to church pews with a raised stand in front all facing a high bench. Murals decorate the walls, three long limbed figures are repeated in various scenes, the Time-Keepers from Miss Minutes’ spiel Steve assumes. Behind the bench sits a young woman, staring at him sternly as he is pushed forward to step onto the raised stand before her.
“Rogers. Variant R0722, AKA Steve Rogers is charged with sequence violation 6-13-81. How do you plead?” she demands.
Looking around the room for clues as to what’s happening now, Steve sees only more guards, spaced evenly around the walls of the room. The chairs behind him are all curiously empty.
“I’m not sure what you mean?” he replies.
The woman at the bench sighs. “Did no one explain the charges to you yet?”
Steve shakes his head cautiously. Aside from what the overly cheerful Miss Minutes explained and learning that he is for sure not a robot, no one’s told him anything. Given his many many travels through time recently, he’s certain it would not be wise to start guessing which of his actions resulted in his arrival here. The desire to not incriminate himself holds his tongue for now.
“Right, well, you’re here to answer charges of violating the sacred timeline. I’m Judge Ravonna Renslayer and I uphold the sacred timeline as dictated by the Time-Keepers and deal with all variant violations such as yourself. It says here you created a new branch timeline using time travel in 1949.”
She pauses and re reads the paper in front of her.
“Hmm, I didn’t think humans had discovered that yet. No matter, how do you plead?”
Unsure of quite where to start, Steve can only stand straight and reply “Not guilty, ma’am”. Here’s hoping this is just like those courtroom shows Natasha made him watch when they were on the run.
The judge looks down at the page yet again, reading further as she responds to Steve, voice rising in disbelief with every word.
“Not guilty? Really, are you trying to tell me you didn’t create a new branch timeline in 1949 when you turned up on Peggy Carter’s doorstep claiming to have swum to shore in the Arctic?”
As Renslayer takes a breath, ready to continue listing her grievances with Steve’s actions, the court room door opens and a short woman in glasses dashes in. She’s desperately trying to keep hold of a large pile of files in her arms, coloured tabs hang out of each side as paper slips and slides as she moves towards the front of the room. Steve looks around, noting the guards standing even straighter as she passes them, interruptions are obviously not a regular occurrence here.
“Niffe, what is the meaning of this?” demands Renslayer.
“Just a minute, just a minute, I have it all right here”, the newly arrived woman says, sounding out of breath. She dumps her files on the bench in front of the judge and leans in, whispering frantically in Renslayer’s ear, pointing at the files and waving her arms in Steve’s direction.
Whatever she’s saying is of some surprise to Renslayer who casts several curious glances at Steve as the woman – Niffe? – gesticulates more wildly. Suddenly the judge’s hand goes up, silencing Niffe and capturing the attention of all the agents in the courtroom and Steve.
Renslayer waves away the woman and turns to face Steve once more. Taking a deep breath she picks up the files in front of her and says, “It seems I am missing some information about you Captain Rogers”
Noting the change in how she addresses him, a tiny sliver of hope appears in Steve’s chest. Maybe this isn’t going to be as bad as it appears.
Pulling a random page from the file she scans it quickly and asks, “Did you really attempt to face Thanos and his army alone?”
Steve looks around him, all of the guards are facing him, no longer looking straight ahead at their posts. A few have even moved a step forward. As he remembers the fear he barely kept down in that moment with Thanos, Steve feels a tingling pass across his skin. It was not that long ago and yet it feels like a lifetime.
“Didn’t seem like much else I could do at the time”, he says, adding an overly respectful “ma’am” at the end. No harm in being extra polite while on trial he figures.
“And then you wielded Mjolnir and the lightning power of Thor?” Steve can hear the disbelief in the Judge’s voice.
Looking down at his feet Steve remembers the exhilarating power of that moment and can’t help but smile a little.
Renslayer continues, “It seems we have a special case here. Actions such of yours to wilfully disrupt the sacred timeline would usually result in pruning.”
She pauses, glancing over another page from the file, Steve assumes it must be his file given the sudden turn the trial has taken.
“Given your actions I think we may have an opportunity for an exception to be made. How do you feel about a new mission Captain Rogers?”
Staring around the room Steve’s eyes fall upon Niffe, who is smiling at him like he’s Christmas, Easter and Valentine’s Day all rolled into one. The Judge nods her head in Niffe’s direction, sliding the files back towards her before rising to her feet and sweeping down from the bench and out the door without another word.
“Okay Captain Rogers, time to go!” Niffe clumsily attempts to gather the files back into her arms before Steve’s innate chivalry kicks in and he steps down from the witness stand and grabs the pile from her.
“I don’t know what just happened but I think I owe you a thank you?!” he queries.
Niffe laughs, “Never underestimate the power of a record keeper! Now follow me, I have a lot to show you”.
What follows has Steve reeling, emotions running high. Niffe speaks so quickly he only barely keeps up.
“So your time travel was all meant to happen, it was the only way to defeat Thanos and even the Time-Keepers agreed on that. Your sorcerer had that right, it was the only way. You were doing so well, why you decided to gamble all that good work for a woman I’ll never understand. Humans are so strange with your ideas about attachments to other humans. You more than most, I know all about you, followed you for units and units! You’re a bit more clueless than most aren’t you? Running after a woman that doesn’t need you when you had -”
Realising Niffe is not going to stop chattering even to breathe, Steve interrupts and asks the first thing that pops into his head, “What’s a unit?”
“Oh, units are how we measure time here as time doesn’t move the same in the TVA as it does on earth or in other universes. Time is all around us so there’s not really an equivalent to what you experience. Here we are!” she announces, pushing open another wooden door to reveal a barren, circular room with walls of a dull grey exposed brick. The words “TIME THEATRE” are written on the wall near the door in orange. Why is there so much orange here, Steve wonders.
The floor is bare concrete, the only furnishings a round table and two chairs placed in the centre of the room. An orange object - more orange! - resembling either a projector of some kind or a mushroom sits on the table.
Niffe gestures for him to sit and Steve places the files and folders he’s been carrying onto the table as he folds himself into the rigid chair that looks a lot like the moulded plastic ones Steve used to see at schools when visiting as Cap. The ridiculous jumpsuit pulls awkwardly across his thighs as he sits, he grimaces and tries to discreetly get comfortable to no avail.
“Let’s get straight into it shall we?” Niffe says, pressing a large black button on the orange object.
And it is a projector, Steve’s first guess was correct, images begin to appear on the walls around them and it only takes a moment for him to realise what he’s seeing. Hope, fear and pride flow through him as he sits watching glimpses of his friends both old and new. Events he remembers and events he never got to see. His heart aches as he slowly begins to realise just what he’d planned to leave behind when he went to Peggy.
Seeing Bucky drag himself back to his feet in the jungles of Wakanda, confusion on his face as he looks around nearly breaks his heart. Of course Bucky would have no idea that 5 years had passed, his timeline moving smoothly from speaking Steve’s name and that sensation of falling to finding himself suddenly lying on the ground with no Steve in sight.
Sam rises from the foliage where he’d fallen alone, greeted by the tall man Steve now knows as Dr Stephen Strange.
The blankness on Wanda’s face shocks Steve to his core, her grief for Vision still so fresh as she prepares herself to fight Thanos again. He only saw her on the battle field – her pain turned into spectacular power as she very nearly overcame the one who destroyed her love.
It’s odd to watch them all come together, propelled by the momentum of a fight they did not realise happened five years ago. The calm presence of Dr Strange swiftly convinces them of the urgency of moving on to the next fight via the portals. A wan smile crosses Steve’s face as he watches Bucky move into the glowing circle, hands reaching up to tie his hair back, battle face on.
“I don’t think I need to see the next bit if that’s ok”, Steve whispers. The exhaustion of that battle is a crystal clear memory for Steve, will live in his bones forever he thinks. The loss of Tony is still an open wound, so briefly reunited to fight together on the same team once again, he wonders who the TVA are that the timeline they call sacred contains so much loss.
Niffe nods and the screen flickers, rapidly moving through all that came next before coming to a sudden stop on the image of the time portal at the moment after Steve has vanished from it with a snap.
“I think you know what you did next, don’t you Steve? I can call you Steve right?”
“Sure and yeah, I remember this bit too.”
“Renslayer’s agreed to offer you a role here at the TVA as an agent. Your swift return of the infinity stones, restoring the sacred timeline was impressive, so much so that she’s willing to overlook your unsanctioned little side trip to the 40’s. I will warn you though that the punishment for any diversions from the missions we give you here will be swift and final. You’ll report directly to Renslayer, no contact with other agents. Any questions so far?”
Steve studies Niffe, unsure which questions to start with from the millions that just filled his head. Missions? Diversions? He shakes his head, thinking to himself that surely in a place beyond time he’ll have plenty of time to think this all over.
Niffe puts that thought to rest with her next words,
“Great! Time for your first mission then.”
The screen comes back to life and Steve watches Bruce and Sam count back for his return as Bucky turns away from the time portal. Puzzled as to why he’s walking away, Steve’s eyes widen as he sees an old man on a bench by the lake. An old man that looks remarkably like him, give or take a few decades.
Steve smiles as he watches Sam grasp the shield, testing its weight on his forearm. His smile turns to a frown as the screen skips ahead to Rhodey and Sam talking together in front of the Smithsonian exhibit in Washington, the shield now encased in glass. Why would Sam not take up the role he was so perfect for?
Quick scenes pass over the screen. Bucky alone, sleeping on the floor of a sparsely furnished apartment and gasping for breath as he wakes from must have been a nightmare. Sam laughing with a beautiful black woman whose smile echoes his own, his sister? Steve can’t help but grin as he watches Sam & Bucky argue over Gandalf. Righteous indignation surges through him as he watches Bucky leap from a plane without a parachute, he can still remember the yelling when Nat told Bucky about his habit of doing that on their missions for SHIELD.
His heart twists at the memory of Nat, surely there’s a timeline where she lives too? It can’t be right for the loss of her to be part of a sacred timeline.
Sam and Bucky continue to argue with each other and fight with the guy who seems to have taken Steve’s place, how did he not realise that the government would step in and anoint their own version of Captain America. Shame creeps up his spine as he thinks of all the things he didn’t consider when he left his friends.
The screen comes to a stop again, frozen on the image of Sam, having just flown through a window, smoothly catching the shield to now stand proudly as Captain America.
Maybe something is right with this timeline after all, Steve smiles.
“Ok then, time to get to work Steve!” says Niffe. “Your last mission as Steve Rogers is to deliver that shield to Sam, you’ll be aged up as you saw and you cannot linger. In and out, understood?”
Speechless, Steve can only nod his head. How can he possibly do this?