AU: Hi! Don't own the Avengers (the crowd gasps, because of them are really surprised!). Anyway, I'm sorry I haven't updated this story in so long… like for six months… um. Awkward. Sorry about that.

(Don't look at me like that! You make me feel like a huge jerk!)

Anyway, I think there's only two or three more chapters left in this story, so I really really will make an effort to write them (I know I've said that before, but this time I actually mean it).

EVERYONE WHO'S READING THIS NEEDS TO READ THE FOLLOWING SENTENCE: DOCMUSE IF YOU EVER READ THIS UPDATE YOUR STORIES ALREADY! (And, doc, yes, I know that was super hypocritical. Shut up.)

Okay, now we can start.

Jean sat up in the dark, leaning her head against the headboard of her bed. She rubbed her eyes. She tugged on her braids. She yanked a string out of the sleeve of her pajamas. But she couldn't make herself stand up, walk to the door, make herself do what she had to do.

She had to betray her friends. She had to steal from them, and lie to them, and hurt them. She had to because there was no other choice, and she had to because nobody else could. Time was a never ending loop, and she would do it eventually, just like every Jean Rogers did in every timeline.

Jean looked at the TV screen hanging on one wall of the dark guest bedroom. "Jarvis?" She called softly. "Are you, um, there?"

"Yes, Ms. Rogers." Jarvis said politely. "I am always here."

"Great. Okay." Jean nodded. She considered her question, tugging on another thread from her pajamas. "Jarvis?"

"Yes, Ms. Rogers?"

"Do you feel emotions? Do you have… friends? Family? Are the Avengers your friends and family?"

Jarvis didn't answer for a minute, and Jean thought she might've broken him. "In a manner of speaking, Ms. Rogers. Mr. Stark programmed me with several rudimentary emotions to be used in certain situations-"

"I mean do you like things?" Jean interrupted, getting impatient.

"I suppose so, Ms. Rogers. I like Mr. Stark being safe, as well as Ms. Potts. The Avengers are under my care, as is everyone in this tower."

"Okay." Jean said. Somehow, talking to a disembodied voice in the dark in the middle of the night was making her feel better. "Do you like me?"

"Yes, Ms. Rogers."

"Would you still like me if I did something everyone thought was bad, but really it was good, because I had great reasons? Would you trust that I did the right thing?"

"It depends on what you did." Jarvis answered. "Ms. Rogers, you seem distressed. Would you like me to wake one of the others? Your father, maybe? I am sure he would be happy to talk to-"

"No." Jean interrupted again, stubbornly. "If I stole something, if I did something that might get people hurt but overall would save a lot of people, what would you say?"

"I'd say you spend entirely too much time with the Stark family."

Jean smiled. "Jarvis, was that a joke?"

"Indeed. Probably a bug in my programming… I'll have Mr. Stark look into it."

"Don't." Jean said, making herself climb out of bed. She started getting dressed in street clothes. Jeans covered in sharpie doodles, a white t-shirt, a jacket. "Promise me you won't?"

"I promise, Ms. Rogers. Is what you are planning to do directly dangerous to any inhabitants of this tower? Because if it is, I am programmed to immediately alert Mr. Stark, Mr. Rogers, and Ms. Romanoff."

"It's not." Jean lied. Lied? Was that a lie? She didn't even know.

Jean opened her bedroom door and crept into the hallway. It was dark and silent. Everywhere was dark and silent but where she was. She walked past the doors of her friends, but paused when she saw light beneath Max's door. She leaned her ear against it, not usually an eavesdropper but wondering if he was okay.

There was a whispered argument going on inside. "It's too big of a risk for us to take, Marina." Max was saying. "We can't do it."

"I agree. I'm just saying maybe there's some way we can keep too much from changing, maybe if-"

Jean tiptoed away. They had clearly been arguing that all day, and into the night.

She went up two floors in the elevator, to Tony's lab. It was empty but for a robot, Dum-E. Dum-E had turned the TV on, and was watching Top Gear. Jean thought he might've even been making little vroom-vroom noises. They stared at each other guiltily.

"I won't say anything if you don't," Jean told him. Dum-E turned back to the TV, apparently satisfied.

Jean found the table with the time machine carefully placed on it. They had left it there since they had come back, mostly ignored. She stared at it sadly.

"How does this thing work…?" She ran her hands over it, hoping for a button or a lever or an instruction manual. She found a small panel on the side, with several buttons and switches, and a big red friendly button that Jean knew better then to push. She figured out how to enter a date and a time into the machine-there was a little screen. She winced with every beep the buttons made.

"Ms. Rogers, I have alerted Mr. Banner and Ms. Stark that you are currently tampering with the time device." Jarvis reported. Jean almost knocked the time machine off the table and onto her foot.

"Jarvis," She hissed. "Shut up! Keep them out-try and-Jarvis, lock all the doors. Lock them out!" There was no point in keeping her voice down now, so she shouted. "Make them go away!"

"I can't do that, Jean. I'm sorry, but Mr. Stark told me especially that nobody was to be allowed to time travel. I alerted the other awake Avengers as protocol stated."

The light over the elevator turned on, showing the floor it was on. Max and Marina would be here in fifteen seconds, twenty at best. Jean fumbled with the controls, panickedly trying to start the thing.

She jabbed her thumb into the red button, and nothing happened. She tried again. "Jarvis, lights!" The lights came on politely and she stared at the machine, hoping for anything at all that would get here when she needed to go.

The elevator doors opened. Max and Marina ran towards her, then faltered when they saw her with her hands on the time machine. "Jean, what are you doing?" Max demanded. "You know what'll happen if you use that thing!"

"I know that what'll happen is what's supposed to happen." She said, spotting a lever on the top of the machine. It was labeled in pink sharpie: safety! "I have to do this, I'm sorry."

"Jean, please," Marina pleaded, taking a tentative step forward. "Please, we just need some more time. We can still… we can still find a better way. We at least need a plan! You can't do this on your own!"

"I need to." Jean said. She flipped the safety switch, and both of the other stiffened. "Look, I… I'm sorry. I wish…" She looked at them, staring at her with fear and anger. Betrayal. She had never felt worse. "I wish there was another way, but there isn't, and I think deep down you two know that. Just…" Her finger hovered over the red button. "Try to understand." She pressed the button, and the next minute everything was white.

Her ears popped painfully. The feeling of being squeezed worsened and worsened, until she felt like one of those cartoon characters that got an anvil dropped on them. She had stuck a fork in a light socket once when she was little, and there was some of that feeling, too. She tried to speak, tried to breath, tried to scream, but she couldn't.

Then it ended, and she was standing in the living room of Stark Tower. A fully-repaired New York sat cheerfully out the window. The walls were hung with punk-rock posters, the floor was covered in trash, the TV was to muted PBS.

It was good to be back.

Marina Stark definitely lived here, no doubt about it. As Jean looked around, she spotted a photo framed and sitting on a shelf. She glanced at it-a group photo with Avengers written across the top in pen. Jean wasn't in the photo. She could see Marina, Max, Lily, Thomas. But not her… so this was the right time.

Jean headed for the elevator. She needed to find Fury.

~Marina Stark~

Everyone was gathered in the living room, mostly in pajamas and flip-flops with bed-head and sleepy eyes. Lily had her breastplate and battle-axe sheath on over a pair of footie pajamas she seemed to be a little embarrassed about.

"What's going on?" Steve demanded. "Where's Jean?"

"She took it." Max said, rubbing his face with his hands. He looked defeated. I felt as bad as he looked-like any minute I would either cry or start screaming and breaking things. "She took the time machine. She's gone. We saw her disappear."
"Why would she do that?" Tony demanded. "Why would she-"
"Because she's Jean." Thomas said bitterly. His hands were in his pockets, his head lowered so his hair fell in front of his eyes. "She always does the goddamn right thing."

"But we could've found another way," Bruce said, looking desperate. "We can still stop her."

"Maybe…." Steve hesitated. "Maybe we should let her go. Maybe she should just do it-maybe-"
"It's very true that her way might turn out to be the only way." Natasha said. She was the only one fully-dressed, like she hadn't been asleep when they'd called everyone down. "But we don't know that. We should try something else first-anything."
"It's too late, anyway-" I burst out, unable to listen to them stupidly talk like we could do anything, like there was chance left. "We can't stop her. She's already gone, and it's not like we can catch up by going eighty-eight miles per hour, there's nothing we can do except wait for something to happen."

A thick silence wound between us all. Max's hand folded over mine, and I felt again like I might cry. I didn't want to lose him. I desperately didn't want to lose him-but I felt so cruelly selfish. How could I risk the world just for me?
I glanced at him. Shaggy black hair slipping from behind his ear and into dark eyes. Too-big green t-shirt and plaid pajama pants.

I could risk the world for us. I would have. I would have in a minute. But it was too late-Jean was gone. Now it was time for her to decide our fate. And I had the worst feeling that she wouldn't change her mind.

AU: So this chapter was a little more tense. I've been working on my angsty writing, not just fluff, and I wanted to use some of that in this fic. Hope you liked it. Please favorite/follow/review. I'll post the next chapter sooner then I did this one, I swear!