Sacrificially Grim Triumph

2: 12

"Cap–" Tony called. He turned around to see Tony and Scott sitting in a broken car. "Sorry, buddy. We got a– problem."

"Huh. Yeah, we do," Scott said.

"Well, what are we gonna do now?" Steve wondered.

"You know what? Give me a break, Steve. I just got hit in the head with the Hulk," Tony shot back.

"You said that we had one shot," Scott reminded them. "This– this was our shot. We shot it. It's shot. Six Stones or nothing. Six Stones or nothing–"

"You're repeating yourself, you know that? You're repeating yourself."

"You're repeating yourself," Scott repeated. "You're repeating yourself. You know– No."

"Dude, come on."

"You never wanted a time heist, you went on board with the time heist–"

"I dropped the ball."

"You ruined the time heist."

"Is that what I did?"

"Yeah!"

"Are there any other options with the Tesseract?" Steve asked.

"No, no, no. There's no other options. There's no do-overs. We're not going anywhere else. We have one particle left. Each. That's it, all right? We use that– Bye, bye. You're not going home."

"Yeah, well if we don't try, then no one else is going home, either. We gotta get them back."

"I got it. There's another way. To retake the Tesseract and acquire new particles. We'll stroll down memory lane. Military installation, Garden State," Tony suggested.

"When were they both there?"

"They were there at a– I've a vaguely exact idea."

"How vague?"

"What are you talking about?" Scott asked. "Where are we going?"

"I know for a fact they were there–" Tony was cut off.

"Who's they? What are we doing?"

"And I know how I know."

"Guys, what's up? What is it?"

"Well, it looks like we're improvising."

"Right. What are we improvising?"

"Scott, get this back to the compound. Suit up."

"What's in New Jersey?"

"0-4-"

"0-4–" Steve repeated.

"Uhh, 0-7."

"0-7."

"Excuse me..." Scott began.

"1-9-7-0," Tony said.

"Are you sure?" Steve asked.

"Cap. Captain. Steve, sorry, America. Rogers. Look, if you do this, and this doesn't work, you're not coming back," Scott warned.

"Thanks for the pep talk, pissant," Tony said, turning to Steve, "Do you trust me?"

"I do," Steve replied.

"Your call."

"Here we go."

---

Steve and Tony were in 1970 New Jersey.

The Watcher Informant, Stan Lee, drove past Steve and Tony and cried, "Hey, man! Make love, not war!"

"Clearly, you weren't actually born here, right?" Tony asked.