entrancelogs | all that's left behind [closed]

Entry tags:

all that's left behind [closed]

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.

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Whether it's mind control or manipulating people, it's bad news, and Steve's not exactly thrilled that Loki has once again become a thorn in his side now that he's back in Wonderland. Granted, he's been keeping to himself for the most part, apparently having learned his lesson after the last time. There's the other Loki too, but both Billy and Verity insist that he's searching for redemption.

"Yeah, we found it." Steve nods slowly, closing his eyes for a second as he recalls the mess that find had led them down. "Stark and Banner decided that they wanted to study it for a few days before Thor took it back to Asgard, but they used the data they found to work on something else -- without telling the rest of us."

It's something that still stings when Steve thinks back on it. They were supposed to be a team, but when his subordinates decided to sneak around or go over his head, that's when the entire thing fell apart. He thought that taking down SHIELD would fix that, but obviously not. It makes the muscles in his throat go tight, and he swallows around it.

Billy could see the troubled look on Steve's face. Something had happened that clearly didn't sit right with him. What exactly had they gone through back home? It was a little startling to see Steve looking like that, betrayed, he hadn't seen that look on Cap's face since the superhero registration act and everything that went down with that...oh he really hoped they hadn't gone through that as well. There was something so innocent about the Avengers he'd met here. The ones that hadn't betrayed each other yet, that hadn't realized what levels they could reach just to prove they were right, or wrong.

He resisted the urge to rub his ears. Scars there that were just a reminder of people were capable of.

"What happened?" He asked hesitantly.

Betrayal had become almost commonplace for Steve, unfortunately. Existing in an organization based around subterfuge had been one thing, but all of his suspicions had turned out to have merit when they learned that HYDRA was a part of SHIELD. But to have his own teammates, some of them even friends, keep things from him -- it was getting really old.

Steve could only hope that after the mess with Ultron, everyone on the team (the new team, because the old one had splintered) would be open with each other and with him.

"They were trying to create an AI program... something that would defend the Earth from any more extraterrestrial threats," Steve explained. "But something went wrong." He glanced down at his hands in his lap and forced himself not to coil them into fists. "The AI took on a life of its own and almost destroyed the whole human race in the process."

Unexpected but not unsurprising. This was worse than what he was expecting. From what he knew about Steve's world there were some key players to this missing, but he guessed it didn't really matter.

"Ultron?" It was still a guess but he didn't know of any other AI that wanted to wipe out humanity.

A guess, but a good one. Steve should have been past the point of shock at the similarities between their worlds, but it was difficult to know where they would overlap and where they would deviate. Loki's scepter, for instance, didn't exist where Billy came from, but apparently Ultron did.

"So he terrorized you guys too?" Steve found it strangely frustrating to know that the AI had given people Hell even in an alternate universe, but he shifted to face Billy, attention seized. "How did it happen?" Was Stark doomed to make his own monster no matter what world he was in?

Billy nodded. "Yeah, well not my team directly, we never had to fight him but he's been around since the 60s. The Avengers are always defeating him but he keeps rebuilding himself." Billy shook his head, Ultron was a pain in the ass. "Hank Pym created him in our world and he also went wrong and thought humanity would be better with him as our leader."

Since the 60's? That sounded like a nightmare. It also put the seed into Steve's head that Ultron could come back in their world too, but they'd killed every last one of those robots. Vision had confirmed it. But what if Ultron had tucked himself away on some private server where he couldn't be tracked? Granted, worrying about it now wouldn't do Steve any good, but he still ran his hand over his mouth in contemplation.

Hank Pym wasn't a name that meant anything to Steve, and he didn't know if that was because Pym didn't exist in his world or because Steve was still catching up on his seventy-year-long sleep.

"I've never heard of any Hank Pym, but it sounds like Ultron is pretty much the same, even if he was created by a different person. Anyway, we managed to stop him, but now I'm wondering if he might crop up again sooner or later."

Nothing could be done about that possibility here in Wonderland, though.

Another person who didn't exist in Steve's world, or at least no one knew about. It was strange the things that were missing despite so many similarities. He wondered if he would ever exist in Steve's world, probably not for years if their timeline was anything to go by.

"Hank Pym was one of the founding Avengers, he's Ant-Man. Who I'm also assuming you don't have in your world, yet at least. I feel like slowly you guys are catching up, even if you still don't have mutants. Anyway, hopefully you stopped him for good. Though Ultron has a nasty habit of popping up after he has time to lick his wounds, metaphorically. The Avengers always manage to stop him at least. Even the androids he creates wind up fighting against him. He's destined to fail."

Ant-Man? Steve wanted to believe that was a joke, for how ridiculous it sounded, but Billy's expression didn't give any indication of that. He raised an eyebrow and would have dug further into that if it weren't for the more relevant information that Billy followed up with.

Destined to fail, that had a nice ring to it when it came to a homicidal maniac of an AI, but there was something else that picked at Steve's brain about what Billy said.

"The androids he creates?" He frowned slightly. "Like what?"

Because Steve knew of an android, one that Stark had also made, although Vision had turned out to be on their side, an accepted member of the team now. Could it have happened differently in this other universe?

Billy saw Steve's face when he said Ant-Man, and he could understand he always thought it was a ridiculous name too. Though he couldn't judge, his first code name was Asgardian.

"Yeah, I'm not too sure of the specifics, but he created a synthezoid we call Vision. Ultron used the brain patterns from another human to create him and I guess because of that it gave Vision humanity and he turned against Ultron. He became an Avenger himself after that."

Billy wondered exactly how much information Steve wanted, he doubt he needed to hear about Jacosta. Because that was just strange. He opted to stick to what he really knew. "He was dismantled for a short period of time and actually a younger version of him was a Young Avenger for a while, until he was killed. Tony and Hank rebuilt him, I think it was them, and he's taking a break from the Avengers for a while, or so he told me when we last saw each other. I was just getting to know him before Wonderland pulled me here."

Like a lot of similarities between their world, there's just enough to distinguish them that it's kind of headache-inducing. Then again, Ultron had started the process of creation the Vision -- Stark had just been the one to finish it off.

"It happened that way for us too... sort of. Ultron was trying to make a more human-like body for his own use and was planning to upload himself into it. We stole it and got it to Stark, and he ended up putting JARVIS in it instead. He became the Vision."

Not without a lot of grief and arguing, rightfully so. It's a good thing that they'd learned Vision could wield Mjolnir, because otherwise Steve might not have allowed the AI onto the team so easily. It's all turned out fine, though.

The rest of the details that Billy offers are kind of hard to imagine. A younger version of the Vision? But technically he was still only a few weeks old at most.

"He's one of us," Steve adds after a pause. "Actually, our whole lineup got rearranged after we stopped Ultron." Only Steve and Natasha had remained. It's taking some getting used to, that's for sure.

More than headache inducing, migraine inducing sometimes. And he always thought time travel was confusing, this is a whole different level. He nods along listening to Steve'snstory before something makes him pause. "Jarvis? As in the Avengers butler Jarvis?" Why would they put Jarvis in Vision? That didn't make a lot of sense, or any sense really.

"Whose on the new team?" Maybe there were more people Billy would recognize now. Little does he know...

The Avengers' butler? Steve frowns and draws his head back in surprise, then shakes his head slowly. Maybe JARVIS had been a butler in a sense, given that he'd done just about everything for Stark, but somehow Steve doesn't think that's what Billy means. "JARVIS was Stark's AI, who helped him with developing the Iron Man program and also served as a security system."

JARVIS as they knew him is gone. Vision is something more than that, or at least, that's how the android himself (itself?) had explained it.

The team is something that's much easier to explain, and Steve sits up straight, some pride entering his voice as he lists the members off. "It's me and Natasha -- we're the two who stuck around from the original team -- and Vision, Sam Wilson, James Rhodes, and Wanda Maximoff."

Little does Steve know the kind of bombshell he just dropped.

JARVIS is an AI, that wasn't what Billy was expecting to hear but knowing Tony Stark it makes sense. "In my world Jarvis is a real person, he's worked for the Starks for years and now he works for the Avengers."

He would have elaborated if Steve hadn't named the new members of the team. "Wait. Wait back up. Wanda Maximoff?" The name makes his heart stop for just a second and if he hadn't been sitting down he would have had to. That was not a name he was expecting and he doesn't know how to process it just yet. She's alive in their world, she exists. That's some of the best news he's heard.

For all Steve knows, the name JARVIS comes from an actual person, but it's not something he's ever heard Tony mention. It's not like he can ask about it now either, since it looks like Wonderland's got no interest in Tony Stark for whatever reason.

Out of all of those names, there's one that Billy zeroes in on, and there's a stunned look on his face like he can't quite believe it. So Wanda exists in the alternate universe too, and must have some kind of connection with Billy.

Steve nods. "That's right. She was working with Ultron at first because she had a vendetta against Tony, but when she realized what Ultron's ultimate plan was, she switched to our side." Which might have been a more contentious issue if they'd had the time to debate it, but at this point it's water under the bridge.

"That sounds like- well that's both surprising and not surprising." He's still stunned and he wants to make sure this is the right Wanda. "Does she have abilities? Like almost like mine? And a twin, does she have a twin brother named Pietro?" Because that right there would tell him everything he needed to know. But Steve hadn't mentioned Pietro when he named the team, which didn't seem right.

Steve can't say whether or not Wanda's abilities are similar to Billy's, but the question alone is enough to earn a raised eyebrow. With the string of questions, it's pretty obvious that there must be some kind of connection between the two of them in Billy's world. Billy has always described what he can do as magic, though, and Steve's not sure he would call Wanda's powers that.

Magic isn't supposed to exist, though, so who really knows? It may just be another term for the same thing.

That question about Pietro is a much simpler one, and Steve nods firmly. "She does, yeah." Although that's not entirely accurate, and Steve tilts his chin down as he amends that statement. "Or... she did. We lost him in the battle against Ultron."

That's something that happens all the time, soldiers losing their lives in the crushing tide of war. But that doesn't mean it gets any easier for those who live on, especially not Wanda in this case.

Its like Billy's brain shorts out and for the second time he's happy he's already sitting down. "You lost him? Like he's dead?" Well that was....that was not at all like his world.

He looks up and Steve and he knows he probably looks shocked. "Wanda is my mother."

It's a simple statement, one that will probably let everything click into place for Steve. There more to the story than that but when it comes down to it Wanda created him, he carried Maximoff genes, she is his mother.

"What?"

Steve blurts it out before he really lets it all sink in, but Wanda is still so young that it's hard to wrap his head around her having a son Billy's age. Of course, Steve's had to deal with this kind of thing before.

Still, he just told Billy that his uncle is dead in his world. He would have found out one way or another, but Steve would have been more delicate about it if he'd known.

He lets out a breath and rubs at the back of his neck. "I've come across this before. I don't know if you ever met James Rogers when he was here, but he was my son -- with Natasha -- from another universe."

No, Steve will never quite be over that, even though James has been gone for a few months now. "Wanda's still pretty young in my world. In her twenties," he explains.

Billy feels sort of bad for just telling Steve that but he had been shocked himself. It doesn't surprise him that Wanda is so young in Steve's world. "You're all younger than I'm used to. I doubt, if she's going to have kids, that she has the means to have Tommy and I yet. It's...confusing. But yeah, I have her powers and Tommy has Pietro's. I look like Wanda and Tommy looks like Pietro." And they have other families and oh it all gets so confusing.

"I met James, he wasn't from my world either." Just another world from the multiverse.

Now that Billy mentions it, Steve can actually see the resemblance between him and Wanda. And while he'd only spoken to Tommy a couple of times when he'd been here, he can definitely see how he takes after Pietro too. Granted, that doesn't explain how they came to be. Billy said something about Wanda having the "means" to have them, which implies that there's more to this whole story.

Billy's warned that it's confusing, but Steve doesn't see how he can't ask at this point. He leans himself against the couch a little more and braces himself.

"What do you mean, the means to have you?" Billy hasn't even mentioned who their father is yet, although Steve gets the feeling he's about to find out.

Well, Steve, you asked.

Billy pauses before he answers, trying to think of the least confusing way of explaining this. "When Wanda and Vision joined the Avengers they fell in love and got married. Wanda really wanted children and obviously Vision couldn't uh...do that. But her powers are like mine, we can warp reality. I'm really not a hundred percent sure of the specifics but she, she created two babies, which she carried and gave birth to. I'm told they- we- were created out of a lost soul. We were magical constructs, that actually belonged to Mephisto and he took the soul back. William and Thomas Maximoff were about three when they 'died'."

He pauses so that all can sink in. "Fast forward a few years, Wanda repressed the memory of her sons to keep her sanity and when she finally remembers she snaps, killing some of her teammates and her husband. A lot of things happen that I'm not going to go into but she changes the world for a little while. Recreates it to be a world where we exist again. When she comes back to her senses and puts the world back she accidentally willed us back into existence, splitting the soul and putting it into two new boys. Tommy and I."

Well if he wasn't confused before...

The very beginning of the explanation is enough to throw Steve off. Wanda and Vision, falling in love and getting married? The two of them have only just met as far as he knows, and Vision kind of isn't human. Then again, he's not just a machine either, but something in between, and for all Steve knows he's entirely capable of love.

He can't help but wonder what Stark would think if he heard all this.

It gets even more baffling and difficult to follow after that. Wanda doesn't have reality warping powers in his world, at least not as far as any of them know -- and Steve kind of hopes she doesn't because it would only make their lives even more complicated.

"Okay. Wow." Steve closes his eyes and rubs at his temple, then draws in a breath. "So did she undo killing Vision and her other teammates? Is she capable of that?" It seems like she must be, if she could will her own children back into existence.

"Yeah, she fixed things. She even have some mutants back their powers. She rejoined the Avengers for a while. When Tommy and I went looking for her to confirm she was our mother we found her without her memories being controlled by Doom. I'm assuming you don't know who Victor Von Doom is, be happy about that. It seems that everything she did was under his brain washing. That's an even longer story. Involving the Avengers from my world trying to lock me up because they were afraid I would do what Wanda did."

He stops there because he doesn't really want to go into that and Steve probably knows enough.

"So yeah, probably more of my life story than you ever wanted to know."

It would have been much easier to give Steve the comics he found while snooping in the library. It wasn't surprising considering he was already in comics in his own world too.

No, Steve has never heard of anyone named Victor Von Doom and the name itself is so ridiculous that it's hard to take seriously, but the way that Billy talks about the villain makes it obvious that he's no joke. Brainwashing is never a joke, and while Steve may not be familiar with Doom specifically, he already doesn't like him if he's busy rooting around in people's heads.

Steve can only assume that the other him had been part of the choice to try and lock Billy up. It's hard to know what he would have done in the same situation. Billy having the same powers as Wanda would mean the same vulnerability to whatever Doom did, but...

Suffice to say he's glad it wasn't him put in that position.

"It's fine," Steve says with a shake of his head. "It's all a little above my pay grade, I think, but it's important to know." Especially if Wanda ever happens to show up here.

Either way, that means they're pretty much caught up on each other's lives. "I'm guessing you'd probably like to go watch a movie and forget about all this for a while," Steve suggests.

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actualwizard - 2015-07-05 19:37 (UTC) - Expand

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assembles - 2015-07-16 14:20 (UTC) - Expand

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all that's left behind [closed]

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no civil war yet billy!!

Ultron isn't much better!

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