emmylou | natasha romanoff

fifty-four.

2023
Manhattan, New York

Natasha enters the Avenger's Facility to find that Steve and Tony were already there. She spots Scott who was absolutely devouring a sandwich and looks over at the two men, pointing a finger at Scott.

"How is he alive and what's with the ugly van outside?"

"He never disappeared," Steve answers, "Scott said he was trapped in the quantum realm? Except he wasn't there for five years. He was there for five hours."

"And the van is his," Tony states nodding his head toward Scott who had moved on to a bag of chips.

"So, we're talking quantum physics?" Natasha asks, looking over at Tony, him being the smartest of the three of them and probably having the best understanding of what was going on.

"Yes," Tony says, "The quantum realm is a microscopic universe. To get there you'd have to do Scott's thing, get really tiny. Time moves differently in the quantum realm. What Scott was suggesting was a way to navigate time. Enter at one point through the quantum realm, exit at another."

Natasha raises an eyebrow, "We're talking about time travel?"

"It's crazy right?" Steve asks as he looks at her, "I mean time travel?"

"Well, we get emails from a raccoon so is it that crazy?" Natasha asks.

"He still hasn't gotten back to me about Morgan's birthday," Tony mutters.

"That's because he found the email insulting, Tony," Natasha says as she looks at him.

"Could we do it?" Steve asks, "Could we? Could we go back before Thanos?"

Tony sighs, "The way I see it, Scott got lucky. Quantum fluctuation messes with the Planck scale which then triggers the Deutsch Proposition. We wouldn't come back from that. In theory, it sounds nice, but in reality – we'd be off worse than we are now."

Natasha bites the inside of her cheek, "Scott survived."

"He accidentally survived," Tony adds, "Meaning he is a one in a billion cosmic fluke. Say that we do this. We go and we try to stop Thanos or get the stones before him, but we get lost. That's it. Game over. And we leave behind our families. We have kids to think about."

"I get that," Natasha says, "But I want to be able to look my kids in the eye and tell them I did everything I could to bring their aunts back. Don't you want to tell Morgan the same?"

"Don't bring Morgan into this," Tony states, "She likes Kennedy more than you anyway."

"Now that who you really don't want to bring into this," Natasha states, "Because there is a part of me that doesn't want to do this because I am thinking of my kids. Kennedy will figure out quantum fluctuation herself if it means she can bring everyone back."

"Steve," Tony says, looking at the only member who hadn't expressed his opinion, "You have a child on the way. What does Marin think about all of this?"

Steve is silent, jaw clenched as he looks at the floor thoughtfully, "I think that we should talk to our spouses."

"Seriously?" Tony asks, "She just said that we didn't want to bring Kennedy into this."

"Okay yes Kennedy wants to save the world, but at the end of the day she's a mother," Steve states, "The same way Natasha is, the same way you're a father. And there are people out there who lost their family members. Our Avenger's family isn't completely whole. We owe it to them, but we also have to think about our family. The ones that are here."