all that's left behind [closed]

[assembles]

Who: Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanoff, Bucky Barnes, Pepper Potts, Lydia Martin, Darcy Lewis, Billy Kaplan, & Carol Danvers
Where: Starting in the hedge maze, then all around the mansion.
When: 05/11
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Steve is back from a year-long trip home and has a lot of people to catch up with. Possible spoilers for Age of Ultron within! This is a closed log, but if you want to be added to it, feel free to contact me.
The Story:
One moment, Steve is in the middle of a training session at their new facility. It's what most of his days are made up of lately, him and Natasha putting their new group of Avengers through their paces. It's all about learning to work together as a team, to act as one unit instead of six separate entities. It's been going well, all four of their new additions ready and willing to show up every day and put their all into it --

But the next thing he knows, he's looking at nothing but green. Steve's grip on his shield tightens as he spins in a quick circle, only to find that Natasha is there with him. But it's just the two of them, and it takes a few seconds of puzzled staring before he realizes that they're in a maze. A hedge maze.

There's only one place he knows of that has a hedge maze, and it's a place he'd forgotten about entirely until this exact moment. To have a year's worth of memories crash back into him all at once is almost enough to send Steve off-balance, and he definitely doesn't have the coherency to speak as it rushes back. This place, the events, the people. Bucky is here. Bucky, who he's spent a year searching for back home to no avail, had been right here all along. Trapped in time. Peggy had been here too, and then there are those who he met and befriended here: Pepper and Darcy, Sansa and Evelyn, Lydia and Carol.

He snaps his head to look at Natasha when he remembers that Bruce had been here too, and they had found something here together, carefully working their way into a relationship long before it happened back home. They'd had the peace and quiet and security to actually make something of it here, whereas at home Natasha has been doing her best to accept that Bruce took off without her. (To keep her safe, Steve knows, but it's not like it stings any less that way.)

So many people had described to Steve what it would be like to go home and then return here, but even with all that he hadn't really been prepared for it. He rubs at the side of his head with his free hand as he finally finds words. "Looks like the two of us are doomed to come and go from this place together." At least, that's what Steve figures happened, but he'd better be sure. "What's the last thing that you remember?"

If it's training their team after cleaning up Stark's hugest mess, then they'll be in business. Or on the same page, at the least.

Comments

[assembles]

It's true that it might be strange if someone came down the hall and happened upon the two of them here, and Steve would prefer that they have a semi-private area in which to talk. Not that he'll be telling Pepper anything that he considers classified -- he doesn't subscribe to the Nick Fury method of keeping everyone in the dark, and never really has.

(Except for when he'd kept the whole Winter Soldier project from everyone here, but that had been different.)

"Yeah, I guess we left together and came back together." That's how it's worked for them since their first arrival here. For whatever reason, Wonderland has decided they're linked, but Steve doesn't mind it. He can't think of anyone who could better watch his back than Natasha.

Steve takes a seat in one of the cushy chairs in Pepper's room and makes himself as comfortable as he can. When she points out the uniform, a smile flashes across his face and he looks down at himself. "Yeah, thanks, it's an upgrade. Tony's responsible for it, actually." He looks back at Pepper when he says his name. She must be dying for information about him, but Steve doesn't have the best news.

Granted, it could be a lot worse. Pepper must be pretty used to her ex-boss screwing things up.

"I wasn't on a mission, though. Not too long ago we kind of saved the world... again, and it's been training session after training session since then. We were in the middle of one when we got pulled back."

[handing]

She’s honestly a little jealous to hear it put that way, but glad for all of them that Steve isn’t the only one to have come back. Pepper wants to ask how Natasha’s doing, but that’s ultimately something else to come with whatever details Steve wants to share with her from home. It doesn’t matter how long she’d spent in their world; Natasha wouldn’t have remembered the pain and loss of Bruce’s departure there. For all Pepper knows, the connection they’d forged within Wonderland doesn’t even exist outside this pocket universe.

“Tony designed it?” Oh, she’s used to it, but at the moment clueless about just how royal the screw ups are this time. Instead she flashes a grin of her own at Steve; he’s just told her that her lover is alive, and working with a group of people she respects. How can she not be happy about it? “You might want to be careful, Steve. Once you let him start tinkering, he doesn’t always know when to quit.”

One of the many traits Tony has that Pepper loves and hates in turns.

“Was it aliens again?” Pepper sincerely hopes not. Even in her time they’re still recovering from the aftermath of the Chitauri. She hardly wants to think about what a second visit from extraterrestrials might mean for the world, or for Tony, who had such a hard time dealing with the first. Still, it’s easier to ask considering that Steve’s talking about the disaster in the past tense, and claiming success in dealing with it. “How did you talk Tony into that sort of schedule? I mean, he takes his role as Iron Man seriously—for him—but after something like that, I’d expect him to want a team vacation.”

[assembles]

It's probably for the best that Pepper asks Natasha how she's doing herself, just because Steve doesn't want to say more than he should. Natasha isn't one to be as open with what she tells people, or she at least takes care with her phrasing so as to not reveal too much. Steve respects that she needs that level of control, and wouldn't want to mess with it too much.

Pepper's comment about Tony not knowing when to quit hits a little too close to home, given how much damage his tinkering actually ended up doing. It takes a lot of effort not to cringe at that, and he's not entirely sure that he succeeds at it.

No, it hadn't been aliens again, but rather a result of someone being paranoid about their return. Which isn't to say that Stark had been wrong to want to prepare for that in some way, but he shouldn't have gone over their heads on it either. Maybe they had been able to fix his mistakes, but not without a lot of people dying in the process.

Pepper keeps talking and it only drives the nail in deeper, realizing that he has to break this news to her. Steve has no idea how she'll react, but it wouldn't be right to leave her in the dark about it. He lets out a long sigh and runs his hand over his mouth.

Here goes. Steve leans forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. "Well, it all started because we teamed up to search for Loki's scepter. Thor emphasized to us how leaving it in the hands of people like HYDRA wouldn't lead anywhere good" -- though Steve could have told them that -- "so we spent a year searching for it. And we found it. As soon as Tony got his hands on it, he and Banner decided to run some tests on it. Without telling us, Tony decided to use the information he got from the scepter to make an AI system, something way beyond JARVIS. A suit of armor to protect the world from any more alien attacks."

He pauses then, a small shake of his head as he gnaws on his lip.

"At least, that was the idea."