The superluminal processes of the Jotunheim Key let Tony's mind roll across the universe with close attention to detail—more than enough to catch the way the Power Gem shone in Thanos' grasp. And nearer to him, scattered across copies of Jotunheim, three more bright, burning points: Reality, Mind, and Soul. The Time Gem flashed across his consciousness and was gone before any other details could be discovered; someone had it, and they had vanished with it, taking it to another time. The Space Gem disintegrated in his grasp, breaking—or repairing into the Key, in reverse: locking it shut, the moment gone, ripped apart by the flaw that ran throughout all Reality, not just this jagged dimensionless point.

And then time ran backward, and the Space Gem was just a point once more. It dropped, and he couldn't see where it fell.

The disconnection from the Key left him reeling, half-stunned. The all-knowing awareness wasn't even a memory that his extremis-enhanced mind could properly remember—it was mostly junk data, little bits of a bigger picture that didn't make sense on their own, every 1040 HD picture reduced to a pixel. But he knew, he knew—

He, stumbled, fell, and strong arms caught him. "Easy, I have you," said Steve, and there was no time to contradict him. Tony wrapped them in subspace and forced the portal device in his armour to flare to life in half the time it should have taken and—

Stop, said a familiar, hated voice in his head, and he did. His subspace bubble burst without a pop, and realspace settled back about them.

"Tony," said Steve, setting him down carefully, "Tony? Please, God—"

"Did you find it?" demanded Laufey—not Laufey, she had never been Laufey—suddenly there: no, there all along, because there was the Space Gem's amethyst light gleaming from her palm. She was the one who'd grabbed it, unseen. And there were the other three lights he'd seen in her hand. Tony could feel her digging into his mind, pulling secrets inside out, the memory of the Space Gem falling to pieces and the bare knowledge of what he'd found beyond, the few things he'd saved to extremis. Other secrets—things Loki might have already known, but which now she definitely knew—doomsday weapons, the Nullifier, his every half-formed hope of removing the Makluan headband, making pain claw across his mind.

"No," breathed Loki. There might have been a tiny hint of despair in it, but then it was gone. "So he has had it all along. Well, then. Four shall have to suffice."

And then Loki's thoughts weren't the only pressure raking at him. A Presence had arrived, vast and terrible.

But not shatteringly so. They were wrapped up in the smothering presence of four Infinity Gems, and Tony saw the moment that Steve froze above him—saw the helpless rage in his eyes as Loki drawled, "Stop, Steve."

He could see. He could think. But he couldn't do one damn thing, send one damn command to the armour. Loki paced nearer, and her form rippled—no illusion, that: some sort of shape-change. She was giant-size still, female still, but there was no mistaking those features, not for him. Laufey had not had such madness in her eyes, and that had been the illusion.

The Presence wavered outside of Loki's sphere of influence—her total control over Space, Reality, Mind, and Soul, but even the Gems bowed beneath such an onslaught. Chthon's malignancy had nothing on Thanos'; he was a shapeless, faceless blight, a curse upon reality. Cracks formed about him—

—but the universe had been broken a long time before he'd ever shown up.

The Outsider, said Thanos. The words penetrated Loki's protection like thunder heralding a lightning strike: a rolling, distant echo, impressive but scarcely conveying the reality of plasma heated hotter than the surface of the sun. Outside of Loki's bubble of control, reality was melting. You have been a thorn in my side for too long, pestering me constantly.

He was addressing Loki. Well, shit. Tony'd been wrong about Loki working for Thanos. Fucking icing on the cake.

Tony stared up at Steve—it wasn't like he could look away. Steve couldn't either; he was as unnaturally still as Tony was. They couldn't twitch, couldn't blink. They breathed because Loki willed it. Jesus christ, I'm so sorry, Steve.

"Thanos," said Loki. "I have a bargain to make with you."

Or, I was right — but too damn early...

Thanos laughed. Loki's grip on Tony's mind flexed and wavered beneath that force, and he strained, clawed for freedom—it was the freedom of destruction, he knew; no mortal could really expect to last in that Presence. Please—but his breath stopped and his heart beat sluggishly. He fell short.

Is that why you have been flaring those Infinity Gems so brightly, trying to attract my attention? What do you possibly have to bargain with? The Gems are but a convenience to me.

"I have this," said Loki, holding up one hand. Green light flared, not the shade of Loki's magic, but something deeper, awfuller: the Soul Gem. A pinpoint of light appeared above Loki's palm, gripped within the Gem's power—but this near, Tony saw it, recognized it—it resonated through his body and his mind, mine mine mine mine MINE

Thanos' intrigued skepticism oozed past Loki's wall. A mortal soul? You must be joking.

"This is the soul I anchored a very particular spell upon, when I ripped my home dominion to shreds and denied it the last gasp of Ragnarok," said Loki. "I know what you seek, Thanos: Death Herself. You've waded through dominions one at a time, slaughtering them just as surely as you seek to slaughter this one. But I hold an entire dominion at the brink of death, denying them that final fall—each passing moment, denying them renewal, denying them life! I hold death in the palm of my hand, Thanos. Do you think that is worth bargaining for?"

Tony couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Everything in him strained toward that light—the thing that should have been his, that was him—he could barely think to wonder when Loki had stolen it, how—

You cannot withstand me. All of the Gems—perhaps, for a time, but only a short one. And you do not have them all. Break beneath me, little godling, said Thanos, and the weight of the parasite crushed down—it was grown fat, engorged on its host, and beneath it sickly reality began to smother.

"Wait," said Loki, falling to her knees, but back unbent, head unbowed, "You will not, Thanos, or I will just destroy it, and the chance to have it for yourself will be gone! You can't—kill me—quick enough!"

Thanos laughed. Reality warped like a soap bubble. You don't have the power. Even the Soul Gem cannot destroy a soul. It cannot destroy itself.

"Ah," said Loki, grinning with all her teeth bared, "but my puppet here has a Nullifier. That will destroy anything short of the Gems themselves. It may even be sufficient to break one apart."

Reality straightened. The pressure eased. Thanos had paused.

"No gain for you, once this winks out. You'll be back to going through each dominion one at a time... Death before you, Death in your wake, but never, ever in your grasp."

...Clever, Outsider.

"My terms are simple," said Loki, breathing normally once again. She climbed back to her feet. "Easy. You will leave this dominion, as I'm sure you would anyway. You'll want to fully enjoy your new acquisition."

Yes...

"Will it bring you what you seek? I don't know." She shrugged. "But I'm sure it is worth a try... a chance is all I offer. You'll leave me the Gem of Power in return."

Oh? Crimson light shone, a pin-point star nearly equal in power to that awful presence.

"Yes. It can't be taken outside its dominion in any case, and I shall use it to leave myself." Loki flashed a charming smile. "I don't object to your return to this dominion, once I am gone, if your endeavours elsewhere don't work out. But for our bargain, if you do return, from here you will not follow me. There are many other dominions to be devoured. Surely my terms would be no inconvenience."

Agreed, said Thanos, and logic shifted; reality shifted. The next moment Tony couldn't process it. The thing that was him, that was his, was shining brightly at the end of Loki's hand, an abstract concept given form and pulled away from the Soul Gem, and his soul could feel the Gem's resentment at the loss of his prize and he could feel Loki's will separating them until the two snapped and then his awareness of the Gem went out and all he could feel was horror at the grip of that Presence around him and crushing and

Leaving.

Loki's harsh breathing echoed from the ruined walls of Laufey's palace. Her grin grew wider, crazed—she turned toward Tony and Steve, insanity like fire in her eyes, as her form melted, reshaping into the image of the god who'd taken over Stark Tower a year ago—such a petty, puny alien. "So. You see? I did have a plan. He is gone, as I promised, and this cluster is safe, your world is safe, at least long enough for him to try his hand at the other—"

And you'll kickstart Ragnarok here, and burn it to ash leaving, Tony thought furiously.

Loki shrugged in response. "Well, yes. But that will take me some time to arrange—possibly less, if I can find the Time Gem. I am curious to know where in all the hells you managed to lose it—a pity, even you don't know. But I'll have time to find out... I'll be keeping you around, you see. It will take a while to see such a weighty entity as Thanos gone, and until then, I'll be able to call your soul back if he breaks his side of the bargain..." The Soul Gem danced over his fingers, flipping over each knuckle in turn before he made it vanish. "A bit of insurance. And, to be honest, a bit of amusement." He crouched. The edges of his leather coat pooled against the floor. His smile was like knives.

Oh god, no, no no no no NO NO NO

"Yes," murmured Loki. "Beg. I've been holding off, saving this for a special occasion. Go on, Tony. Beg me." He grinned, and terror rose like bile through Tony's chest as he opened his mouth to speak—

An orange point of light appeared overtop of the reactor in Tony's chest.

Loki stopped with his mouth half-open, taken aback—and the shock loosed his grip just enough; desperation did the rest, and Tony slapped his hand over the Time Gem and threw himself forward—one moment ahead of Loki's control chasing him, just out of sync. His mind was half split across timeframes—Steve, freed of the control when all of Loki's thoughts went to grabbing Tony again, overbalanced and nearly fell—Tony had already moved, and he watched as in the past, out of sync, Steve spun around and kicked Loki in the face, cracking Loki's nose and his boot both.

Useless; Loki's nose reformed unharmed, Reality bending to make it so, and Steve screamed as something inside him began to—Tony grabbed him and threw him back along his own timeline, back past Thanos, back past Loki's deception, back past coming to Jotunheim. Loki nearly caught him with a twist of Space that made dimensions shorten, but Tony danced forward in time, pulling the Ultimate Nullifier from subspace with Loki right in front of him, his finger on the trigger—

I can't use it, he realized, and froze in horror.

"It will take a while to see such a weighty entity as Thanos gone —"

"If Loki is slain, Ragnarok may yet complete... Like the serpent he birthed: cut off the head, and the body will die."

If he pulled the trigger, destroyed Loki—destroyed them both on the sacrificial pyre of this reality—then the other cluster would finish collapsing. Thanos would call off his bargain and return to destroy this one.

Unless he was caught inside the collapse. Oshtur had said even Thanos could die, if a dominion—a multiverse cluster—died with him. Two deaths, the deaths of the greatest threat to the cluster, were now in the palm of Tony's hand—two deaths, but he didn't fucking know when to go. How long would it take a being that filled clusters to move to another? The Time Gem was his—how much time did he need? He couldn't skip too far ahead, couldn't give Thanos time to leave and return, not to mention what fucking Loki would do—

"Lie down and die!" snarled Loki—Tony had nearly frozen too long. But Loki...

—opened his mouth—

He had frozen too long. Those words would chase him through time, through intent, through all of creation—

Loki spoke, syllables harsh and flat in his mouth, and Tony's knees gave way—

But there was nothing, no change, except extremis registering pressure against his knee and shin plates. There was no pain. There was nothing.

Tony's hands flew up to his head—useless, he was wearing a helmet and gauntlets—but the headband wasn't there. He thought the words himself, thought them with intent, and there was nothing. The Makluan headband was gone.

When the hell—?!

The headband was gone—the headband, that fucking collar—was gone. Everything he'd feared most was gone—and he still didn't know how far in the future he needed to go.

Loki had stopped speaking, was frowning—had realized something else was not working out for him. Tony scrambled to control his thoughts, but one kept ringing around in his head, dazedly, It's gone thank fuck it's gone it's gone it's GONE and he hadn't even dared to hope for it in so long, had shoved it down, convinced himself it would chain him the rest of his undoubtedly short life. But it was gone, and he didn't know what to do next—

"If you ever get that collar off your neck—"

Realization was like a cascade.

"I feel like we've had this conversation before."

"—every plan I had, it's not going to work because he knows, now! There's nothing I can do against him!"

"I shan't say we can speak freely, nor plan freely, not against an enemy so pervasive..."

An orange point of light appeared overtop of the reactor in Tony's chest. A miracle he'd not thought to look for, appearing just when he needed it most.

"It's fixable, Tony. It'd take less time than you think. Don't come back before then."

I sent myself the Time Gem. There's no one else I would have turned to. Not for this. Not to destroy himself. Steve wouldn't have let him, and to fire this weapon, he had to know—

"In two years—which you might say is ambitious, but it would take less time than you'd think — "

"—Don't come back before then."

Christ, I'm sorry, Pep. I always leave the crap jobs to you, even when I'm trying my hardest not to. Or think I am—

Point-nine milliseconds was all he could spare for revelations. Time to act, not think. Tony looked up.

Loki was backing away, wariness in his eyes. A part of Tony exulted in it, even as he swore to himself fuck need to reach him with the Time Gem fuck fuck fuck and he lunged forward with the Nullifier in one hand and the Time Gem in the other. Amethyst light crackled, the Space Gem ripping Loki away, across worlds. Tony flared power to his own portal devices and followed, so close behind that he could see each destination as Loki formed it—because he was literally one second ahead.

Loki wasn't used to the Space Gem. Tony wasn't used to the Time Gem, either, but it was nearly identical to the Space Gem and he'd had days of practice with that; it responded to him like he'd worked with it for years. Either the others weren't as similar or Loki was a slow learner, because he was clumsy with it, and now Tony was the cat instead of the mouse. They raced through a world on fire, flames dancing high, past the wastes of Hel, the ruins of Maklu—images flickered by, each world barely more than a blur as Loki fled from it in turn... and stumbled, tripped too near to the Gap. The great roots of Yggdrasil reached down about them both and the dragon that Tony could not see curled beyond. Loki's eyes widened—

Tony reached just near enough and snagged them both in the Time Gem's grasp, hurtling them forward down the years. The not-stars around them blurred. Loki brought up a fistful of yellow fire—the Reality Gem—and the nothingness around them became something. Reality blossomed into existence, yellow and purple lights combined to form an entire world where none had been before, and Tony grinned at Loki, making him snarl. Yeah, thanks for making sure I don't take the cluster with us.

Loki raised the Reality Gem, and the rules of this world ran differently—extremis dropped away from Tony as the bonds between the nanites broke, unable to form. But he'd built the Nullifier with a manual control just in case, and as soon as there was reality between them and the Gap, his finger was already pulling the trigger. There was no one else around to learn what happened when all the Infinity Gems at once were caught in the field of an Ultimate Nullifier, and he couldn't have planned this better if he'd—

The Nullifier activated.

Tony landed back in his body, screaming. Dimly, he was aware that tears were rolling down his cheeks from eyes strained too far and too wide. Fake pain, false errors, but his limbs spasmed and thrashed, independent of his control, as the Makluan headband ripped him apart, slowly, thoroughly. Somewhere, the mantra was being said, and the headband detected it.

Nothing could save him from this. There was nowhere to run. He sobbed for air and respite, but found none. There was only enduring it, until sometime later—an eternity, 3.2 seconds—it was over. The mantra had stopped; the pain ceased.

Tony lay on the ground of a dead world and breathed. The pure clarity of knowledge he'd held for that infinite instant—that understanding of what was—would be—could be—faded beneath the constraints of mortality. He'd lost it, and sweet Jesus, he didn't want to ever look again. Was that the association with pain? Would he have ended up screaming anyway? Could he have even seen it, without seeing also the faults that the headband induced?

It took longer, this time, for him to get his breath back. He found himself contemplating the ashy distances around him: plains only, although there were hills off in the distance. If there was a volcano, or volcanic vents, they were over the horizon and out of sight. Overall he might've considered it boring, once, but it was a hell of a lot more lively than Hel. Tony dragged himself to his knees, then his feet. Finer ash had gotten into all the seams of the suit by now, turning him vaguely grey when he stared down at himself—at the two Gems in his palm.

Not just Loki to deal with when he got back, he thought dazedly. Thanos, too. Foster's Silencer wouldn't be sufficient against Thanos—the White Tiger had told him, them, that: Thanos knew when he was spoken of under any name. That meant there was some mental component there, intent. If it was—he made himself stop thinking about it, before he could kill all his possibilities trying, if Thanos' reach went that far.

He couldn't just go back. Loki would be waiting with a trap. The other Gems were already claimed.

There had been something he'd seen, in that eternity-in-an-instant, all the uncountable paths lying in front of him and the one he wanted decorated with neon lights. Infinity contained within a point. The breadth and depth of space and time open before him, and—

He didn't want to look again, but he was going to have to, wasn't he? Because of everything he'd seen, he thought—he was beginning to think—he could almost still see it: actions and ripple effects combining, resonating through the past and future, until they added up to something that, just maybe, just might count as a win.

The Time Gem could handle paradoxes up to a point. Had he already started?

First things first. He needed a way to hide; he couldn't find what he was looking for if he wasn't able to risk looking. Loki had the Mind Gem, and Thanos was... Thanos. The memory of that power, that Presence, was enough to make his hands shake. Thanos had the Power Gem, but he didn't need it. To the Titan, it was just a useful trinket.

Just like Loki thinks I am.

If Tony managed to do the near-impossible, and kill Loki... it would be nothing but empty revenge, unless he could figure out a way to bring down Thanos, too. He needed to hide. He needed—clues adding up and clicking into place in place—someone to hide him.

"Death devours all secrets... Have you come to bargain with me again?"

Thanos had grabbed the Power Gem almost as soon as there was the Power Gem, but only almost. He hadn't been here from the very beginning of the cluster. There was still time.

Tony closed his eyes, squeezed his hand shut around the Gems, and thought about the beginning of the universe.

Steve screamed as his insides tore. Bones detached from muscles, acid ripped its way out of his stomach, lungs shredded so that his scream turned to a gurgle. Dimly, through the pain, he was aware that this damage was worse than when he'd been getting bombarded with vita-rays, when he'd been infected with extremis, and when he'd nearly died of radiation poisoning. He would not survive this.

Then the pain was gone, reversing, replaced with ice-cold. Fleeting sensations of movement, all overlaid by a deep orange light, and he opened his eyes and took a gasping breath of air with miraculously whole lungs. Radio chatter in his ear, the click of keys, people speaking quickly, nervously, all laid overtop of the hum of equipment; the visual display of the enemy alien ships, Udarnik's dwindling fleet, white-blue lights: the command centre on 3490, still in crisis. He looked around wildly and saw that Tony wasn't there.

"Steven?" Sue asked. The infinity gauntlet was still on the table before her; she hadn't picked it up. Her voice turned flat. "He left you behind."

"No," said Steve, "No, we went, Thanos showed up, but the Time Gem was there, somehow—how much time has it been here?"

Sue's mouth moved: teeth almost bared, and it would have been a snarl had she not controlled the expression. "None at all. Anthony just left. But if Thanos' attention is there—"

"More than—there, I think he left." Steve shook his head. "Loki negotiated—but that's in the future!"

"Thanos exists more than three dimensions, too," said Sue. She wasn't looking at Steve; she was looking at the display. "Reed? Tell me how this affects your calculations."

Reed's face cohered into something recognizable as a face, rather than eyeballs sitting on separate, wriggly stalks. He nodded. "I think—yes. Yes! Look at that, all the readings just changed—that's impossible, they shouldn't be able to drop discretely like that, it must be the Time Gem—"

Sue picked up the gauntlet.

A hush settled upon the control room. The chatter from the radio seemed remote; the visual displays, dim. Beneath the blue-white fluorescents, the gold of the gauntlet still seemed gaudy, tacky, but the gems themselves shone with recognizable power. When Sue pulled the gauntlet on, it fit to her skin like a glove: sized perfectly for her, and her alone. The lights of the gems shone brighter, then, coruscating about her hand, a torch of rainbow fire, visible power.

"The battle for this world is over," said Sue, and it was.

Five days later, representatives from twenty-seven Earths gathered in Stark Tower on Earth-3490, ostensibly to discuss the dissolution of Thanos' fleets. The Sorceress Supreme of Earth-83437 was not among them; without their Earth's infinity gauntlet, she had sacrificed her life to power a spell dismissing the fleet attacking her Earth. The Vision attended alone, his face blank with grief.

There were few others similarly grieving. The rest of the meeting had the air of a party more than a mutual briefing; there were some questions about the report that Steve had submitted for distribution among the allied Earths, but most people seemed more interested in celebrating than getting further details. There had been no reprisals, no further attacks. The scientists had confirmed that the Thanos-detection system they'd worked out was showing all clear—he was simply gone, and the mystics and sorcerers all agreed. The Guardians of the Galaxy-3490 had reported in, confirming no other planets had been attacked, and this was confirmed across the other Earths, too.

There was catering, and somebody had definitely spiked one of the punch bowls.

"I'm sorry to hear about your Tony," Steve-3490 told him in a quiet moment, and Steve nodded. He couldn't quite make himself say anything in reply.

But he couldn't avoid all the curious gazes once everyone was more or less gathered around the conference table. Or rather, that was until one of Wanda's counterparts stepped up—another woman wearing that golden eye amulet—and said, gravely, "This must be the last time that our worlds all meet together like this."

Steve blinked. Across the room, he could see others looking equally taken aback. Natasha, beside him, shot him a questioning glance—he shook his head. He had no idea what this was about.

And yet, it felt...

"Is there some new threat?" someone asked.

"No." The Sorceress Supreme shook her head. "But Thanos is gone, and the walls between realities are rising once again. Perhaps the Living Tribunal has returned—perhaps not. With it or no, things are returning to as they once were."

"But we can still keep these connections," said Udarnaya, the Android who had stepped up to fill Udarnik's shoes. "We have much to learn from each other."

"No. She's right," said Reed, stepping forward and waving an elongated hand at Toni. "Toni—thank you—" A display of equations appeared in the middle of the room, and about half the people there looked at it with interest, while the other half looked blank. "I've been looking into the reasons why inter-reality coordination was so much more difficult before this crisis. Cause and effect. Continuing to meet like this at regular intervals is working up a hill that is going to become much steeper very soon."

"It's true," added another sorcerer—Sorcerer?—dressed in the same style. "Realities are meant to be separate. The walls of the multiverses must remain strong, and now they begin to again be patrolled by their intended watch-keepers. Observe, if you wish. Aid unfortunate travellers who have fallen astray. But interfere no more than that, or you will come to regret it." Others around the table were nodding—Sorcerers. Mystics. Some of the Reeds and Sues. People who tapped alien power, and who had travelled between worlds before this crisis.

"Damn," said Natasha, low enough that Steve alone heard her. But he glanced at her and saw the same awareness on her face that he felt himself. The walls were going up; some laws could not be denied. Everyone here had travelled realities at least once. There were some things that could be felt.

The meeting continued. When it finally broke up, Steve shook Reed's hand, and Other-Steve's and Toni's and Sue's, and knew that it would be for the last time.

"SWORD's primary objective was always to monitor for threats from other worlds," said Hill. "With the immediate threat of Thanos gone, our situation is a lot like it was one year ago. We have eyes on us not just from Asgard, but from a large number of other alien races. Those worlds will be opening their borders again, and we've attracted a lot of attention in the past year. Threats from other realities will be monitored and responded to, but our primary concern needs to be the worlds closest to home."

"These are valuable allies you're talking about cutting off, here," observed the WSC Chairman. "A dialogue should be kept open, at the very least."

That was rich, Steve thought, after all the work he'd had to do to convince the WSC to start talking in the first place.

"Unfortunately, Chairman, they don't agree. All Earths we've spoken to have already come to their own decision to cease inter-reality contact."

It was a lie—the order of it, that was, not the end result. But Steve couldn't read that from Hill's expression. Apparently, neither could the Chairman, because he sighed but acceded to the point.

"I always liked the desert," said Jane, pulling books out of the box she was packing and realigning them to make them fit. "I'm just not sure whether to be more surprised that they approved the funding or that they agreed to let me run it."

"You're the most qualified person," said Bruce. He didn't have a box; he hadn't made up his mind about whether or not he wanted to move out to Arizona to work in the facility SHIELD was renovating to provide a base for SWORD's new focus.

"I know that."

"Xavier said you were fine," said Steve. They'd managed to accomplish at least that much before that last meeting.

"Sure," said Jane. She glanced toward the door, cautiously; it was a busy hallway outside. When she spoke again, she'd lowered her voice. "Do you believe it?"

Steve made himself try to smile. It came out more like a grimace. "Like he told me—Reality will prove itself with time."

"Cap, either take the damn leave or I'll bench you," Fury told him.

He took a month's leave, but stayed in New York. SHIELD wanted him to stay close so he could keep up his psych appointments, anyway. He was pretty sure that he was being watched, but he left the AED on and kept the curtains closed for the most part.

April turned to May, and suddenly it was the anniversary of the New York Invasion. Steve attended the city-hosted remembrance ceremony, but managed to get out of giving a speech.

The lingering billboards about the dangers of the Nanoplague finally vanished. International air travel picked up. A noted human rights' activist spoke at the UN about the bombs dropped on Shenzhen, and people began getting paranoid about nukes and the Chinese instead. Steve went running around Central Park. Two paparazzi tried to snap shots the first day—until he swiftly outdistanced them—but by the fourth day they'd lost interest. He got a haircut, and when he wore sunglasses people looked past him with unrecognizing eyes.

Clint and Natasha each dropped by once, bringing news about the slow re-purposing of SWORD, and that—in Natasha's case—she'd also been ordered to take leave. "Quite a lot," she remarked wryly. "You got off lucky, Cap." They clinked their beer bottles to that.

His neighbours changed out as agents got re-assigned and shuffled locations. He started considering moving out of the SHIELD-provided apartment, into someplace of his own, but it was strangely hard to contemplate. He thought that maybe if he were going on missions again, it wouldn't be so bad, if he lived in the same place as the people on his team.

On his third week of leave, he was again in Central Park—with a sketchbook this time, not jogging—when a man sat down heavily on the bench next to him and said in a flat voice, "Sir."

"Pardon?" said Steve, looking over. He'd only gotten approached the once last week. But this guy... looked like he could have done certain work for SHIELD. His face was expressionless, stiff—and vaguely familiar. Steve had seen him before, but not more than once or twice. When?

"I was asked to give this to you," the man said. He proffered a thin document, two pages only, folded over in thirds, letter-style. The way he moved wasn't exactly graceless, but it was strangely ponderous, like there was a hell of a lot of weight behind even the smallest motion.

"By who?" Steve asked, warily. He wished he was wearing gloves. The other guy was. Steve couldn't see or smell any powder, but that was no guarantee. The pages were printer paper, thick enough that ink didn't show through the other side.

The guy flipped them over. On the back, in familiar blocky writing, was, FOR STEVE.

Steve's breath caught. He studied the guy's face more carefully—extremis? It didn't look like it: this guy had scars, tiny imperfections that looked real. When the hand holding the letter moved forward again, insisting, Steve accepted it.

"Please don't follow me?" the guy asked, and it sounded painful, like asking a question was somehow difficult for him. His face was still blank. Shell-shocked.

Steve nodded, and flipped the paper open and straight. Beside him, the guy stood. The way he planted his feet made him look unbalanced, too heavy, and a ridiculous hope flared in Steve's heart.

Then fell. The first page on top—not the one which had FOR STEVE written on the back—wasn't in Tony's hand.

Captain Rogers, it read. My name is Gina Dyson...

Steve jerked his head around to follow the man's retreating back—he was walking away at a brisk pace. Between one crowd of kids in hoodies and a family out for a walk, he vanished, but Steve recognized him now, from pictures he'd seen half a year ago. Eric Savin. Army Colonel, the superior officer of Lt. Dr. Gina Dyson at the time Project ULTRA-Tech had collapsed... supposedly dead and buried. Dyson had broken out of Leavenworth shortly after the Chitauri; she'd been one of the criminal scientists suspected of working for Tony in Shenzhen, but they'd found no trace of her there—and Tony had denied it, later, anyway.

Apparently, he'd been lying. Again.

...Nine years ago, I started working with Tony Stark. He mentioned you used to live with him, so hopefully you won't think I'm crazy when I tell you that was in 2013. It was a shock for me when I found out, too...

Steve flipped the first page behind the second. It, too, was hand-written, but shorter than Dyson's.

Steve,

I'm sorry. In the end I guess I really can't play well with others. If you're reading this, and I've disappeared in a weird way, then yes, I'm probably dead. Hopefully our two big problems are too. I wish I could explain why, but it would be remarkably stupid for me to do that now and ruin all the effort I've put into secrecy.

It's stupid for me to be writing about any of this, really, but I need your help one last time. So long as we have our god-problem, I can't reactivate JARVIS. I'm pretty sure there is a curse—you-know-who's fault. Aimed at me—long story. JARVIS doesn't deserve to sit mindless in storage forever. Only one code is needed to activate this copy, but he will need more server space. Please help him. I can't trust SHIELD with him, even with all the progress you've made with SWORD. Please help Pepper. I can't trust SHIELD with her either. She needs backup.

I've never pretended not to be a hypocrite. I know I've never been fair in what I've asked of others.

It wasn't signed. Steve wasn't even sure Tony had finished it.

Tony was dead. Tony had thought he was going to die. Tony... had had some secret plan again, and had carried it off and told no one. Except, apparently, Gina Dyson.

Steve sat on his bench and stared, unseeing, at the skyline for a very long time. Eventually, when his butt grew numb, he turned back to Dyson's letter.

...I never worked on any of his technology relating to time-travel, so that was a shock. As I have finished my contract with Tony, I am now taking a permanent vacation with my boyfriend, Eric Savin. As a personal favour, in exchange for sending this letter to you, I ask that you please refuse any requests to hunt us down. He would be used as a lab experiment by the military.

Tony wrote many versions of the letter I've included. He trashed them all, but I finally stole one to see what he was doing. I'm glad I did. I had concerns about some other things he had planned, but if I hadn't read that letter I don't think I would have realized in time to stop him. There was a promise he made to me that he planned to break, you see. Fortunately, I was able to make substitutions that prevented him from doing so. I'm not sure if it actually escaped his notice, or if he decided to let it go, or if he forgot. He was very pre-occupied in the last few days.

I hope that he is not dead, despite what was in the letter. I tried to ask if he was suicidal, but it was clear he didn't want to talk about it. I'm not sure if I should have told him I had seen the letter. Maybe telling him would have made a difference.

At West Point you were always held up as the highest ideal of moral behaviour. This was often the subject of jokes among the cadets, since we also studied the many occasions under which you went against orders... but you always had a good reason. You were idealized for maintaining values ahead of both your time and ours. Tony is very secretive, but I've heard a lot about you from him and nothing that contradicts that. I hope that I am doing the right thing by leaving this to you.

I have moved everything I saved to a storage locker at 47.67, -122.10, unit 34. I'm not sure who JARVIS is, as I cannot get the case open myself, but I moved him there as well. I think that Tony had a plan to store him in another location for you to pick up, but decided not to go through with it. He did not attempt to destroy JARVIS, however, so I think he must be very important to him nonetheless.

Please don't look for us.

Sincerely,
Gina Dyson

47.67, -122.10. That was northwest USA... Steve pulled out his phone and debated checking the maps, then hit the number for Natasha's speed-dial instead.

"Steve?"

"Are you State-side?"

"Not exactly. Why?"

"There's something I want to go check out." This line might be monitored.

"Hm. I'll see if Clint's free to give me a ride."

"Good idea," he breathed, and started gathering up his sketching materials for the run home.

Steve didn't ask how Natasha and Clint had managed to procure a quinjet even though they were technically all on leave. He did ask, "Does Fury—"

"He's got an idea," said Clint. "But he'll let you run with it. You and your goddamn drama, Rogers. Only one worse than you is Tony."

Despite the teasing, his expression was grim, and the flight out to the storage lot was silent. Clint stayed with the jet while Steve and Natasha went in—Natasha first, disabling the security system with practised ease. From there, unit 34 wasn't difficult to find: each unit was a large shipping container with the number painted in large, professional letters on the sides and on the door: a bland, industrial barrier with an electronic lock that had only one pad, no buttons. Steve considered tapping the side of the container, to try and determine if it had been reinforced, and then thought better of it.

"He likes his hidey-holes," Natasha muttered. "You should probably get the lock. The one in Oregon had defences."

Considering what could happen if Dyson had a streak of paranoia even half as wide as Tony's—"Right," said Steve, and pressed his thumb to the pad.

There was a click, then the sound of a heavier bar retracting, but nothing beyond that. Either it was silent, or Dyson wasn't half as paranoid as Tony. Steve exchanged a glance with Natasha, and tried the handle, pushing the door gently inward.

"Woah," said Clint. "Definite energy spike when you opened the door—bet there's an arc reactor in there."

The inside of the storage container was only half-full, and well-lit by bright fluorescents that came on overhead as they entered. Metal boxes were stacked neatly up against the back wall, loading pallets separating each layer. They were closed, with no labels that he could see, no hint at what might be inside them, except that cables ran out of several of them. Most vanished into other boxes, but three—coloured red, blue, and yellow—ended in a neat coil on the wall.

On an adjacent wall were two three-foot high server-racks that took up half the remaining floor-pace. Carefully placed on top of the nearest was a familiar-looking suitcase, identical to the one that Pepper had worn cuffed to her wrist when she'd brought JARVIS' backup right after Tony had... when they'd thought Tony had died. On the other rack was a small black box that Steve had never seen before.

"That's the package," said Natasha, crossing over quickly to the suitcase. "But no power source connected." She inspected it carefully, and the cables on the wall. "If it's like the other, then those cables aren't for this."

"They might be for this," said Steve, looking over the back of the black box. There were ports at the back, with three coloured strips of electrician's tape. Not the most difficult puzzle to solve, but he felt reluctant to tamper with it nonetheless.

Natasha nodded. Her expression was too blank for him tell what she was thinking.

"Do we do this here?"

She hesitated, and reached up to tap her radio off. "Steve... it's a black box."

"Yes—oh."

A black box. A final record.

Natasha pulled out a small device and stuck it on the end of the server rack. "That'll record it, if it's needed. I'm going to wait outside." She patted him awkwardly on the arm, and went out. The door clicked shut behind her.

"Radio check," Steve tried, and heard only silence. If this place could shield the energy reading off of an arc reactor, it must be good enough to disrupt communications. Maybe Dyson had some paranoia in her after all.

With a lump in his throat, he took the coil of cables down from the wall, and slotted them into the ports on the box. For a moment, nothing happened. Then a small LED that Steve hadn't seen on the front blinked on, a painfully bright point of red, and a lens clicked open.

"What—Steve," said Tony's voice, and the lights flickered—and then he appeared. It was only an image of him, a hologram, but it was three-dimensional and painfully illuminated in full colour. Also, about nine inches high, and standing on top of the server rack. Tony looked down at himself in dismay. "Christ, midget does not look good on me."

"Oh, I dunno," said Steve. "You managed it pretty well for the first forty-two years of your life." His voice wobbled.

"And grew myself to six foot at the first opportunity, you might have noticed," Tony shot back, but his face had fallen. It was—weird. It wasn't like watching someone on a screen, a tiny head on a tiny body—the hologram looked like the actual Tony Stark in front of him, just... shrunk.

And just an image.

"So, I don't actually have a connection with the outside world here, that's nice, you've stuck me somewhere shielded," said Tony, now with a wary look on his face as he craned his neck up at Steve. "Fill me in, here."

Steve went down on one knee, to put them on a more even eye-level. "You vanished. Nearly a month ago. We were—things went wrong, Thanos was invading, Loki tricked us—we were on Jotunheim and he had us cornered. Then... the Time Gem appeared, right over you. You grabbed it and sent me back in time, as far as I can tell. I woke up on another world confused as hell, nobody around me had any clue what had happened in that timeline. But you—never came back."

"And Loki and Thanos?" Tony asked. "If you're going to toss their names around—"

"Gone," said Steve, and the relief that crossed Tony's face was so real... "We've got word from a few Asgards and Loki's dead in all of them, although we don't know about Asgard Prime. Thanos is gone, too—and... things are different. Crossing into other realities feels different. Something changed. The other Earths, they think things have gone back to how they were before."

"Well," said Tony. He sounded a little bit giddy. "Well. I win, then."

"Yeah." Steve tried for a smile, but it came out flat and bitter; he looked away. "Y'know, not twenty minutes before it happened—you know what you asked me? You asked me to trust you. And I did."

"Steve—"

"I trusted you and I thought you trusted me," Steve said doggedly, "and then this morning I get a letter from a woman I've never met telling me you were working on something, this, for years, with the Time Gem, and you never—" His voice cracked. "And here you are. Another goddamn hologram, another goddamned secret plan. You're not—Tony's dead, and—I thought, before the end, he was starting to—to get better. But now you're here and, God, he's probably dead, died still paranoid and miserable and lying—"

He had to stop, then. His throat was too tight to keep speaking.

"Steve," said the hologram, and it looked so goddamn distressed. "Steve—" Tony shook his head. "You don't have all the pieces. The guy you know, the guy you... thought might be happy? He might've been. I don't know. I'm... a program, yes, but I'm not based on the guy who was him. I, uh. Split myself."

"You—what do you mean, split yourself?"

"Loki grabbed you," said Tony. "He kidnapped you and Foster. When we went after you, I got the Space Gem, and I went after the Time Gem... and I found it. God, I found it." His voice was haunted. "I ran away. To the future, as it turned out, but I wasn't really thinking at the time. When I'd—well, stopped screaming—I figured that with the Time Gem, I could find the others. They're all connected, right? They go right back to the beginning—they were all one thing, once." He looked contemplative. "I don't think they're the pieces of a dead god, actually. I think... they're what was before there was a living one. Maybe."

"Tony," Steve snapped.

"Sorry, that's a tangent. So I looked. And, uh. Saw what happened to them. Loki'd snuck his way into Maklu ages ago, stole the Soul Gem—he'd gone and ripped my soul out months before while I was half out of my head from extremis. See, that was the key—when he kicked off Ragnarok back in his cluster, he'd needed an outside catalyst and he used me, my soul. So there were two anchors for his spell, him and me, and, well, I guess he thought it would be easier to control my soul if I wasn't in possession of it. Not sure why he didn't just kill me after, except for laughs." He swallowed.

Ridiculous image. Tony was made of light.

"So Loki had that one, and as it turns out, the Time and Space Gems can't just spirit the others away from their owners, in the past or present. Something of the owner clings to it. The trick with the Reality Gem... well. You were there. The entire time. So was he. Neither of us were thinking for ourselves. I think, maybe, he always had it. There're things like that, things that were because they are—with the Time Gem involved it gets complicated like that."

"And the Mind Gem..."

"Yeah. That was what he grabbed you and Jane to get, by the way, not the Power Gem. Thanos had that one, won it just after he first arrived here. It didn't do much for him—he's got power on a level equal to the cluster itself—but. I don't know. Maybe he just thought it was good tactics." Tony smiled bleakly. "Who can guess at the mind of a god?"

"So you saw... all this," said Steve.

"Yeah. And I knew... Loki would grab everything. Mind Gem, Soul Gem. I had a weapon, I was pretty sure I could use to kill him if I got close enough—"

Steve closed his eyes. "You were always building weapons."

"I needed them."

"Yeah."

"Right, well, I had the Ultimate Nullifier. Does what it sounds like—it can obliterate anything short of the Infinity Gems themselves, and maybe even them… if I could get close enough to use it without being mind-controlled by him. Tough order, especially once he read my mind and knew I had it, though I wasn't certain he had, at that point. But even if I managed that, there was Thanos, and it was pretty clear from the look I got at the universe that our side was going to lose that war. But..." Tony spread his hands. "Loki had a plan to get Thanos to go away."

"Using your soul."

"Yup. And I could piggyback on that one, because if Thanos was off investigating that cluster, he'd be destroyed when it collapsed—which is just about the only way to destroy a being that cosmically powerful. Since Loki was the other anchor for his own spell... kill him, and it would let that cluster finish collapsing, two birds with one stone." He grinned fiercely, looking smugly self-satisfied. "And, hey! Took fifteen years, so many goddamn recalculations, but it fucking worked!"

Then his eyes refocused, back to Steve, and his expression smoothed out. "I needed a way to set up a trap that I wouldn't know about—I stole that idea from watching what Loki did to you. So I grew a clone. I created a version of me that I didn't know what I had planned, so even if Loki took a rummage with the Mind Gem, there'd be nothing to find. It took a hell of a long time to figure out how, human brains are tricky. That was what I needed Dyson for. Then... I hopped through time, setting it up. Some of this I know worked, because I saw the effects, some I'm guessing about. If I followed the plan, then I asked asked Pepper to help sometime after I created this record, although the plan's to tell her that going to wipe my memory, not that the memory had never existed for that him. But she's always known how to manage me, she'll know—must've known—how to feed me just enough clues that I'd figure it out at the right time, later. Then I dumped new-me with the Mandarin, set to get rescued by you." His voice, his posture was perfectly casual. "And here we are, so my clone must have figured things out on schedule."

Steve closed his eyes. "And you're dead."

"Well... yes," said Tony. "A Nullifier isn't directional. It annihilates everything around it to its outer range, and its... nature, because of the impact it has on reality, it can't be used remotely. It's one of those laws of reality, like the Gems. Probably for the best, since I doubt any of us would have survived this long otherwise. And this was worth it, don't you think?"

Steve opened his eyes again. Tony's expression was uncertain. Concerned—

He felt his own eyes narrow. "And you're left behind."

"I was supposed to delete this," Tony said, frowning now. "Christ. Setting up all those sleight-of-hands and I left a record? Sloppy." Something on Steve's face must have shown—"Christ, it's not like that, I'm a program, okay? And yes, it sucked, to leave you not knowing what happened, I know I'm a shitty person, but the goddamn risk—"

"Was enough to kill yourself over?" Steve asked, and despite everything he could do, his voice still hitched in the middle.

"What—" Something, wariness, showed on Tony's face, and then he shut it down. "No. It wasn't like that. You remember the White Tiger?"

"That cat in Maklu?"

"Yeah. He said that Thanos knew when he was being talked about. That means it had to be about intent. How do you hide intent? Actually, Loki gave me that idea, too—he went to Hel, to hide. So did I. But hiding from Thanos... it's a bit trickier than ducking Thor. The price is higher." He shrugged, uncomfortably. "I hadn't done it yet, when I'd created this program—obviously. But the bottom line requires I go back and pay up sooner or later, and considering you're standing here telling me it was successful, obviously I did."

"God, Tony."

"Original me had to die. Put it down as something else that's probably for the best." His eyes were tired. "The loop's cut, the last thing tying Thanos to this cluster gone before it ever began."

"Leaving you behind."

"Not real-me's brightest moment, but I guess he was feeling sentimental," said Tony, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Like I said, he should have destroyed this program. Thanos is gone—was gone—from now's perspective, but while he was real, this was way too dangerous to justify its existence."

"You tried," said Steve quietly. "Gina Dyson wrote me a letter. She said there were things you were planning to do she didn't agree with... and that she'd managed to trick you. Switch out a fake."

"I guess she thought I owed you a record," said Tony, equally quiet.

"Or maybe she didn't want to stand by and watch a murder-suicide."

"Steve." Tony's voice was gentle. "I'm not an AI. I'm just an imprint program. It's not suicide, there's no... me—"

"Your expression changes," Steve said overtop of him, ruthlessly. "The concern. I thought you were just a hologram because of the first one you left, but that one didn't care. Pepper was crying"—Tony flinched—"and it didn't bat an eye. You just told me you were making a clone—"

"—a clone who wouldn't know—"

"—but human brains are tricky, huh? You were the first run." He wanted to add, Stop lying to me, and barely cut himself off in time. Instead, he made his voice quieter. "Tony. Trust me?"

Tony looked at him for a long, long moment, his head tilted. Steve counted his breaths, made himself breathe slowly. He could see Tony thinking—even though it was an image. He could lie. Maybe he couldn't really shut himself off, without extremis. Maybe not even with it. Or maybe he was just tired.

Tired, Steve decided, when Tony sighed.

"Yeah. I'm the prototype."

Slowly, Steve nodded, trying to put his thoughts into order. There were a lot of things he could say, only about half of them helpful. Or maybe none of them would be helpful, because he didn't understand at all. "Why?"

Tony shoved his non-existent hands into his non-existent pockets, and shrugged, expression unreadable.

The silence stretched out, until it was obvious that Tony wasn't going to answer. Feeling like he was walking out on black ice, Steve asked, "So what was the plan? To sneak off to the internet, or..." He couldn't quite make himself finish the sentence, not when he'd already seen the consequences twice over.

"Figured I'd stick to the original."

"Don't."

"I've been working at it for a long time. It was a pretty good plan. Saved the multiverse—"

"Bullshit."

Tony didn't say anything to that.

Steve flattened his hand against his knee, and pulled out his own pain, like Tony had suggested a long time ago to browbeat reporters. "I've seen two versions of you kill themselves, Tony, I can't do it a third time. Don't make me."

"Yeah, it was a shitty plan," said Tony on a sigh, the words escaping quickly, like air from a punctured balloon. His eyes skittered sideways, away from Steve's—from an overabundance of honesty, Steve thought with relief, rather than a lack. "I'm just... I've been at this, what, sixteen, seventeen years. I'm... tired."

"You can get some rest," said Steve, trying to keep from deflating himself with relief. "As a... I don't know if you sleep like that."

"Not really."

"You could make yourself a body. We'd keep you safe, Tony. We did pretty good with your, um, clone."

"Yeah. I, uh, I know." Tony chewed on his lower lip. "I had a lot of time to go over things."

"You have friends," said Steve, as kind as he could make it without putting Tony's back up. Or tripping one of his anxieties.

"And I'm honoured by that, Steve," Tony said, this time meeting Steve's eyes directly. Even with him only nine inches tall, the intensity there, the sincerity, was almost uncomfortable. "But I... I don't know what's next. Unless it's trying to fix the mistakes I made while trying to fix the earlier fuckups I made, and..." He seemed to run out of steam, and looked around at the cabinets of the storage cube, lost.

Steve raised an eyebrow. "It's okay to take a break from atonement, you know. Especially after saving the multiverse."

That got a half-smile that was almost a smirk. "Yeah. I won that one."

"So," said Steve, only slightly hesitantly. "Stick around, and enjoy it with us. We'll figure out what we're doing with it later."

"Yeah," said Tony. And then, stronger—tiredness now eclipsed by familiar determination—"Yeah."

Steve smiled back, and let himself feel the victory.

Outside of the confines of existence, the ruined remnants of six fundamental concepts remained: shattered, broken... their pieces now all entwined. Their wills, inasmuch as abstractions had wills and then rather more, were made whole by their destruction. The pieces dropped through rents in Reality and filled them, straightened them. Geometries simplified, much as two soap bubbles might collapse into one larger, simpler sphere. It became as if the cracks had never been: smoothed over, perfectly forged, through all of Time and Space.

From outside of either, Something Else observed the repairs: flaws in the fundamental make-up, there since its creation, now fixed, almost entirely via internal workings—with some help from Death's Suitor, that rampaging being who had eaten more than one cluster of multiverses, but which was now gone. In this cluster, now repaired, the remains of six fundamental concepts were nearly used up. Crumbs, compared to what their reach had been.

Much less powerful. Much more stable. A spark touched them, and for a moment the concepts were as glass thrown into the heart of the sun. The six broken points of the universe were crushed inward, forged together by the heat of Something Greater than any star. From it emerged... balance.

The Living Tribunal re-entered creation, an aspect of itself in every reality and every world at the same time. Its death at the beginning of eternity was avenged, and now undone, and the flaw that had stretched across reality was gone.

The halls of the Infinite Embassy expanded once more, and the Tribunal turned to serve the purpose of its all-knowing God.

Tony sat on a boulder and rested his elbows on his knees, staring out at the hills before him. If he looked right, it sort of resembled Malibu—dry and scrubby. For a moment, he missed his house there with an ache that pulled at his bones. The ache was only half psychosomatic, considering the lack of sleep he'd had over the last week, but if he was going to feel constantly tired anyway, he might as well take advantage and not let it be all psychosomatic.

The cloning work had been set back by a string of recent failures, and Dyson had finally snapped and insisted on a vacation. Since that would mean he'd have to watch her, constantly, while she was out in the wider world, he was taking advantage of the Time Gem to work in a vacation of his own first. He could always just reappear after the moment he left—or before it, but he didn't feel much like talking to himself. It wasn't really much of a vacation, but it was a change, which was supposed to be just as good, and if he stopped working—then he might as well just stop.

The array buried in front of him was one that he'd set up going nearly a millennia in either direction of his start point, scattered across thousands of worlds. That was a paltry sample of the universe, but in this case he was just trying to cast a wide net and didn't care how big the holes in it were. He was more concerned about what crossed it, rather than what was inside it. By themselves, the arrays were just souped-up versions of the Thanos-detecting device that the SHIELD geeks had come up with.

Connecting to them with extremis, and then making use of the Time and Space Gems, however...

Causality and Reality were a massive snarled knot, but he could see the shape of how it would unravel, now, all tied to the course of the Time Gem rather than the universe outside it—how he could pull on a string and the entire thing would come undone and smooth everything back into place. It was a fucked up mess he couldn't give himself credit for creating—he wasn't even sure he could give Thanos credit for creating it—and Loki's machinations, constantly changing to match his own, almost like Loki had a Time Gem, too, had kept tripping him up... but it was all in place, now. The arrays were the last pieces of the puzzle. Thanks to them, he knew exactly how long it would take Thanos to shift his multidimensional bulk out of the cluster, and he could calculate with confidence the amount of time it would take him to ensconce himself in the one Loki had left cold and dying. Considering the immense forces and distances involved, it wasn't as long as Tony had thought it would be.

Now, when he and Dyson succeeded—and they would succeed; they had Time on their side—he could leave and kick off the rest of it like knocking down dominoes.

Or he could go back. Years of watching Loki from afar, and Tony had unravelled the traps that had Loki had left, located the lures, and finally managed to tease them apart without Loki figuring out the game was up and implementing something else. He'd worked it out. If he worked it through carefully enough, he might even be able to avoid Loki ever learning of the mantra.

He chased the thought around, testing the edges of it. He could go back, screw everything back up into a mess again—just for a chance to, what, see a friendly face?

When put like that, the self-indulgence of the idea became almost laughable.

Tony sighed, then climbed off his boulder and shook the Time Gem into his hand. He had a couple thousand arrays scattered across Time and Space to pick up and pack up, and then he needed to go give Dyson a chance at a vacation.

Author's notes: Thank you for reading! If something's confusing or whatever please give me a shout. Constructive criticism is much appreciated.

This was supposed to be the last installment in this series, but the epilogue just works much better as an epilogue for the entire series rather than for only this story. Alas. So I'm going to post it as its own one-shot. But this is the last major installment, and the epilogue should be up within a couple days.