The King: T'Challa.

Chapter 31: Time Travel.

The diner's chrome counters had seen better decades. Sunlight sheared through the plate glass in tired stripes and picked out dust motes above a plate of cooling eggs. Bruce—large, green, and improbably serene in a cardigan—pushed the dish forward with the patient insistence of a kindly uncle.

"Come on," he said. "I feel like I'm the only one eating."

Scott stared as if Bruce had arrived from a parallel dimension—which, in a manner of speaking, he had. "I'm... profoundly confused."

"These are confusing times," Bruce replied, then caught himself and grinned. "I'm joking. I get it. I know how I look. Shirts. Cutlery. Witty repartee. It's a lot."

"How?" Steve asked, dry as the coffee.

Bruce wiped his fingers with a napkin, the gesture weirdly dainty for hands the size of spades. "Five years ago, we all lost. Hulk lost. Banner lost. And then we—collectively—managed to outdo both of us." His eyes flicked to Natasha, to Emily, then settled back on the table. "I spent years treating him like something to cure. Turns out he was the cure. Eighteen months in a gamma lab trying to make peace with myself. Brains and brawn, one operating system. This is what you get."

Three kids had been orbiting their booth in cautious circles. One finally screwed up the courage. "Excuse me, Mr Hulk?"

Bruce leaned down, the cardigan stretching across hulking shoulders. "Absolutely. Come on. Step up."

He passed Emily a phone. She took it, amused despite herself. "Say 'green'," Bruce prompted. They did, beaming. The shutter clicked. She handed the mobile back, and the smallest boy gave an awed, "Thank you, Mr Hulk."

Scott seized the moment, pointing both thumbs at his chest. "Do you want one with me? I'm Ant-Man."

Three solemn shakes of three small heads. "Stranger danger," the youngest muttered.

Bruce winced on Scott's behalf. "No, no, he wants you to—" He tried the littlest again. "You do, right?"

The boy shook his head harder.

"It's fine," Scott said, easy tone not quite camouflaging the sting. "I don't—listen, I'm not even offended."

"Just take the phone," Emily murmured, patting his shoulder. "We'll get you a statue next time."

"Can we please get back to—" Steve began.

"Dab," Bruce told the departing trio gravely. When they were gone, he scrubbed a hand down his face and sobered. "The time thing. I can talk quantum decoherence over pancakes, but strictly? It's outside my lane."

Natasha's mouth tugged. "You bolted two impossible halves of yourself together with a cardigan on top. Impossible's relative."

***

Back at the compound the air felt different; hope thinned out into something more brittle whenever machines were involved. Bruce was at a console, coaxing a battered control panel to pretend it was new. Scott stood in front of his van in the Ant-Man suit, helmet off, anxiety very much on. The back doors were open on the jury-rigged Quantum Tunnel, humming faintly like a beehive.

Emily lingered at the periphery with her jacket hooked over two fingers. "I need to go home," she said, the words heavier than they should have been.

Four heads turned. Steve's was the last. "Em—"

"I'm not walking away," she said, before he could shape it into an accusation. "When this works—and I'll stake whatever I have left that it will—I'll be wherever you need me to be. But Wakanda's king disintegrated on a battlefield that I helped build. They've had two years of trying to breathe around a missing person. They need someone who can look them in the eye and say the word 'when' without flinching."