The King: T'Challa.

Chapter 32: A Look Into The Past.

Emily reached the compound before the jet's heat had time to bleed from its skin. Less than a day after Steve's call, she was stepping into the war-room as the holotable bloomed to life: latticework projections of space and time arranging themselves into an impossible itinerary—New York, 2012; Asgard, 2013; Morag and Vormir, 2014. Six jewels threaded through history like nerves.

Tony talked his team through the plan for a final time, the way surgeons rehearse catastrophes they hope never to see. He paced, eyes on the air rather than on them, the cadence brisk but not careless. Steve broke off and drifted towards her; something uncoiled in his shoulders when he saw she was there.

"You made it," he said.

She arched a brow. "Did you, Steve Rogers, doubt me?"

"Not doubt," he said, a breath of a laugh. "I worried you might not want to come back."

Her smile slipped. "I couldn't stay," she said simply.

A beat. "Wakanda?" he asked, soft.

"It hurt more being there than the moment it happened," she replied, and left it at that. He nodded once—acceptance, not agreement—and turned to the room.

"All right," he said, voice carrying. "Six Stones, three teams, one round trip. No mistakes. No do-overs. We go, we get them, we come back. Look out for each other." He glanced towards Tony, then back to the line of faces—old friends and uneasy allies, the edges of a family that had been through a fire. "This is the fight of our lives. And we're going to win. Whatever it takes."

***

They formed a circle on the quantum platform, white suits bright under the gantry lights, helmets tucked under arms—the choreography of people who had practised not dying. Rhodey's War Machine rig had been reworked into a bulkier, brutalist cousin of the standard issue; Scott fiddled with a strap he'd adjusted twice already; Nebula stood very still, as if motion were a habit she was still relearning. Emily slotted in beside Natasha. Their knuckles brushed, neither commenting.

"Stroke those keys, jolly green," Tony called, bravado a careful lacquer. Bruce's fingers moved and the machine answered like an instrument tuning to itself.

"Tractors engaged," he murmured. Systems spun up. Somewhere, in Emily's gloved palm, Rocket's shrunken Benatar felt like a lie told with a straight face.

"You promise to bring that back in one piece?" Rocket asked, eyeing her hand as if his spaceship could sense disrespect.

"I'll do my very best," she said.

"As promises go, that was pretty limp," he muttered, but there was no real heat to it.

Natasha smiled at Emily without quite looking at her. "See you in a minute," she said, the line that had become a ritual between them—meaningless and necessary in equal measure.

They shrank together, the floor rising like a wave, and then space became something else entirely.

***

Morag smelled of wet metal and old salt. The Benatar touched down on a shelf of rock slick enough to shame a fishmonger's floor. Rhodey moved down the ramp first; Nebula followed, a map of scars and determination; Clint trotted after them, hood pulled low, a man who had forgotten how to be anything other than efficient.

"Bring her down on the line," Rhodey said into Emily's ear, out of habit more than need. "Down, down—"

"You're very helpful," Natasha said dryly, one foot already on the ramp. "Now go steal a space rock."