Lost, Yet Found

“Anyone up for a round of Wii?” Barton asked mere seconds after Tasha had left the room, gazing about the rest of them with an honest yet slightly amused curiosity. The archer was still twirling the arrow in his hand. Steve wanted to snatch it away from him. It was only better judgment that stopped him from doing so; he’d seen Barton wield those arrows like daggers and swords.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit light considering the circumstances?” Steve asked, raising a brow.

Barton shrugged. “Bruce and Thor seem to think it’s a good idea to hold off on discussing the current circumstances. Video games are distracting. Distractions are useful. Besides, who am I to question someone with a doctorate degree and a being who can summon storms?”

Steve looked to Tony, but immediately knew that he shouldn’t have bothered to seek support from him.

“Sorry, Rogers, I agree with Agent Robinhood,” he said, giving a completely unapologetic ‘sympathetic’ half-smile. “And I’m all for seeing him destroy Thor in virtual bowling.”

“So you’re not the least bit interested or concerned over this?” Steve pressed. “And can this Reed Richards that you know even travel through time?”

“You’re discussing the thing we’re not supposed to be discussing. I’m pretty sure that constitutes as rule-breaking. And here I was thinking you were all about abiding by the rules." Tony's eyes went wide in mock-surprise. "All the stories I was told as a child were lies – Rogers, I must call the president. Your nobility and innocence are being compromised. This is a matter dire, national consequence.”

Steve had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. The most important thing he’d learned when it came to adapting to the modern age was how to put up with Tony Stark. The abrasive sarcasm used to get under his skin (it still did, honestly), but he knew that the best way to win in these situations was to pretend as if none of Tony’s words had any effect on him. He kept a straight face. The effect was immediate. Tony’s smirk went from smug to blank in a matter of seconds, a somewhat confused and disappointed glint in his eyes.

As it was, Steve knew Tony’s initial sarcasm was a bluff. His assumption was only confirmed when Tony stood to set up the video console and said, tone mildly serious, “Reed’s devices work…sometimes. They aren’t one-hundred percent safe, though…time travel is tricky business. And if time travel isn’t safe, inter-dimensional travel is completely hazardous.” He tossed the controllers to Barton, who caught them both effortlessly, handing the spare to Thor because the Asgardian didn't take well to having things thrown in his direction. “Don’t get me wrong,” he continued, sitting back on the couch. “I’m all for the dangerous things in life, but I’m not sure if we can successfully accomplish traveling to other dimensions. Especially if involving Reed is out of the option; that severely limits the probability of all this. The only way I could see us maybe achieving anything is if we can harness something with the energy of that legendary LGBT Price bridge from Thor’s world.”

Barton gave a short, bark of a laugh and looked to Thor for his reaction. The Asgardian’s brows were knitted in mild confusion, but his answer was serious. “The Bifrost’s powers allow my people to traverse to different realms. Separate dimensions may be an entirely different concept all together, my friend.”

“What are the limits to the definition of a ‘realm’ as compared to a dimension?” Romanoff asked.

“Why do you even use the word ‘realm’ still?” Barton added, casually tossing his controller in the air and catching it. “Isn’t that just a fancy way of saying ‘world’? Couldn’t you at least try adjusting to our petty mortal lingo?”

Thor gave Barton a slightly annoyed glance. “A realm is any world in the reachable universe,” he said, staring at the controller that, Steve thought, looked far too fragile in his hands.

“Reachable universe?” Barton asked.

“On Asgard we accept it as common knowledge that the universe in which all galaxies dwell is quite expansive,” Thor continued. “However, here on Midgard your kind seems to have a strange yet fascinating yearning to know exactly how expansive it is, what it all contains, and how far one can travel into it.”

“Science,” Tony said, scrolling through information on his transparent LG smartphone.

“Yes. In the grand scheme of things, Earth’s moon is but a speck of dust. Jane once told me that the universe is ever-expanding—”

“—And has no edge,” Tony added, eyes still glued to the screen.

“That as well, Man of Iron,” nodded Thor. “Apparently, through your logics of science, the means in which the Bifrost is able to transport a person to another realm is through a wormhole.”

“Okay…so?” Barton asked. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“To make a wormhole you'd need something with energy of the explosion caused by a dying star. Besides, the energy that allows the Bifrost to work can only permit travel to different realms within a single universe…or dimension, actually. To say universe would be inaccurate,” Tony said.

“Why would that be inaccurate?”

Tony finally tore his gaze from his phone. “Because the mere definition of the word ‘universe’ implies everything. The universe is infinite – no edge, expanding over time, everywhere. All matter and energy, including planets, galaxies, stars, and all the contents of space – all regarded as a whole. To say that there are multiple universes is to say that you have an excess of everything—”

“—Seems plausible to me,” Barton cut in, wearing a taunting grin. “I mean, look at you. You have an excess of everything.”

“I will take your own arrows and shove them up your—”

“—So it’s basically a ‘too much of a good thing’ issue?” Steve asked. The last thing they needed was for an actual argument to break out, which always happened over the most trivial of things, especially with Tony and Barton. Their last squabble had resulted in a game of darts turning into miniaturized aerial warfare.

“Yeah, basically,” Tony said, giving him an odd look. “Remind me to get you a gold star sticker or something because I’m pretty sure that’s the first time you’ve ever understood anything I’ve ever had to say—”

“—It wasn’t that complicated,” Steve mumbled, but Tony was already talking over him.

“—Anyway, you can’t have multiple ‘everythings’. It’s like saying there’s two-to-the-power-of infinity stars in the universe; it’s the same damn thing as saying there’s an infinity of stars. It’s just redundant. Alternate dimensions are another thing entirely in comparison to multiple universes.”

“Or you could have multiple ‘everythings’ but they’re all different by slight, varying degrees, thus eliminating redundancies,” Bruce suggested. “The obvious example would be that the particular ‘Alternate You’ in our universe is a woman instead of a man. There could be another You in another universe who is male but leads a different life than you. Say for example that this hypothetical version of you never had a need to create a miniaturized arc reactor. In another, maybe you were never even born. It could even be more subtle than that, but you get my point, I’m sure.”

“Yeah,” Tony nodded slowly. His gaze had gone somewhat distant. Steve couldn’t tell if it was because he was thinking about the subject at hand or the implications of Bruce’s words.

“Like Tasha said, there’s a theory about time all happening at once but there being a lack of ability to travel away from the section of the timeline you currently live in, it could be the same for other universes. We know that every particle has an antiparticle, with which it can destroy. There could an antiworld for our world and an antiuniverse for our universe.”

“Well, hopefully she isn’t the anti-me, because if I accidentally bump shoulders with her we both vanish,” Tony said with a scoff.

“Why don’t you ask her to shake your hand and find out?” Barton asked with a laugh. Tony just glared at him.

“I think what she said about particles being able to exist in multiple places at once is more accurate for this situation,” Bruce assured him even though there was a trace of doubt in his voice. “Both could exist of course.”

“Thor can travel to and from our world by using the Tesseract,” Barton mused. “Couldn’t that be of some help to us?”

“No,” Steve said, a bit too firmly. Tony gave him another odd look. It was no secret that he hadn’t been happy to learn that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been meddling with the Tesseract, but none of the others knew the extent of his displeasure. Except maybe Tony. Steve suspected he knew, if only because Tony had been given each of their files months before to look over. And if the information he’d been given hadn’t told him about Steve’s history with the Tesseract, he knew that the other man was more than capable of finding out on his own. He cleared his throat. “Other than the fact that the Tesseract should stay where it belongs, Thor needs it to be there for his people and us. If we let Tasha use it to somehow get her back home, our…universe…is left without one, while hers would then have two. That’s got to be breaking some law of physics.”

“Rogers actually has a point,” Tony said after a moment, finally taking his still-calculating gaze from him to look at Barton. “Although I’m sure we could harness the energy from it, that’s disastrous on more than one level…it stays in Asgard where it belongs.”

They were all quiet for a moment, either thinking or unsure of what to say, the silence only interrupted by the sounds of the video game.

“So...” Barton said, frowning at the television screen as his bowling ball fell into the gutter without hitting any of the pins. “Who gets to tell her that we have absolutely no idea how to get her back home?”

Another silence. Though, Steve thought, they needn’t have bothered speaking anyway; they all looked to him. He wanted to ask ‘Why me?’ but he answered his own question with a ‘Why not me?’. A lot of things in his life – past and present – seemed to amount to those two questions. He knew his feelings on the matter must have shown on his face because Barton gave a ‘What else can we do?’ sort of shrug and went back to focusing on the game. Only Tony seemed to share Steve’s hesitance, but he guessed that was only because Tony didn’t like sharing his limelight with another version of himself. Steve just honestly hated letting people down.

He didn’t say anything as he stood, just nodded and left the room without excusing himself. How was he supposed to break this sort of news lightly? And wasn’t that just a foolish question; there was no light way to tell someone that they couldn’t return home.

He of all people knew that.

“JARVIS?” he asked tentatively once he was out of earshot of the others. Steve braced himself for the disembodied voice, trying to will the muscles in his body not to tense into a flinch when the AI replied.

“Yes, Captain Rogers?” Well, some things you can’t will away, he thought as he jumped ever-so-slightly at the voice.

“Uh…hi…could you tell me where N—Tasha,” he corrected himself, “…where Tasha is?”

There was a brief moment of silence before the AI spoke next. “…Ms. Stark is overlooking the city on the East Wing balcony, sir.” Steve could have sworn that JARVIS sounded confused at having to use the phrase ‘Ms. Stark’. In all honesty, Steve couldn’t blame him. ‘Him’. Great. Now he was personifying technology. That couldn’t be normal. Or maybe it was. Maybe it was part of this whole ‘adapting’ thing he was supposed to be doing. He was either developing some sort of Stark-esque level of insanity or he was progressing; he wasn’t sure which. Maybe the two went hand-in-hand.

The glass doors to the tower’s East Wing balcony had been left open. Tasha’s back was turned to him, hands on the sleek metallic railing. He would have knocked but seeing as there was nothing but glass around him and he still didn't entirely trust his strength, he made his presence known with a small, “Hey.”

“Hey, Cap,” Tasha said, turning her head ever-so-slightly but still facing away from him. “Figured you’d be the first I’d see after my little ‘exit-stage-left storm-off.” She scoffed at her own words.

“Why’s that?” Steve asked gently. He still kept his distance from her, but now that he was standing beside her he searched her face for any sign of expression. She was completely impassive.

Tasha turned to face him, expression still blank, eyes flicking briefly to his hands then back to his face again. She flashed him a quick smile that failed to reach her eyes. “Just a hunch,” she said lightly. “You’re the mother hen of the group. Which brings up the question as to why you’re here…wait, let me guess,” she put a finger to her lip in mock-thought before pointing at him. “You’ve either opted to put your mother-henning skills to the test by trying to comfort me - when I don’t need to be comforted - or they’ve sent you out here to break the bad news to me.”

Steve was a little taken aback by the sudden switch from being closed off to interrogative, and couldn’t prevent the, “What?” from escaping his lips.

Tasha rolled her eyes. “Don’t be play stupid, Captain. I’ve been running the possibilities through my head since leaving the room – before that even – and I’m drawing blanks. I rarely come up answerless after a good brainstorm, which I generally take to mean there isn’t an answer to the problem at hand. Now – I like a good, honest, direct person, and seeing as you fit those qualifications, I’d sure as hell hope you wouldn’t be vague or lie to me. So…which is it? Mother-henning…or bad news?” she asked, turning her hands palm-up as if they held the two options there for him to see.

Her tone (or maybe it was her words) made him scowl. Something steely and immovable clicked into place within his brain, that blunt force of stubbornness that refused to let him back down from any fight, even minor, testy verbal ones. He thought of the others’ conversation, their quick dismissal. It was as if they thought a fight not worth fighting unless it was some viewable force of malintent. He supposed that probably wasn’t too far from the truth. Most of them (Clint) were fairly ‘trigger happy' (not even he was excluded from that categorization at times) and it seemed that if there wasn't anything to physically attack then they needn't bother attacking at all. But some things didn’t need the guise of ‘Enemy’ to be worth fighting, and Steve had never been one to so easily call it quits.

“Neither,” he said. Tasha narrowed her eyes, raising her head slightly as if to strengthen the focus of the appraising leer she was giving him. “We’ve agreed to put as much effort into finding a way to get you back home as we possibly can. We’ll pull all of our resources for it, excluding Reed Richards due to obvious concerns.”

Her calculating stare didn’t falter as she asked, “Really? And you all agreed to this?”

“There were some doubts (‘What an understatement’, he thought), but yes, we’re all in agreement.” He felt the slightest twinge of guilt at the lie, but convinced himself that he wasn’t being entirely dishonest. Steve knew that he alone couldn’t push the group into the effort, but if he was right in his assumption that Tony would want Tasha gone as soon as possible, then the two of them could account for a two-person majority vote. He took a brief moment to appreciate how ironically undemocratic he was being before focusing his attention back to Tasha, who still looked doubtful.

“Right,” she said, voice clipped despite the defeated sigh that followed her words, walking a few steps away from him. “If you’re projecting the ‘if there’s a will, there’s a way’ tripe onto this, then have at it.” She stretched and yawned, only to wince and put a hand to her ribs.

“Are you alright?” Steve asked, unconsciously taking a step forward only to freeze as she pointed a finger at him.

“Mother-henning!” she quipped, her serious expression breaking into a smirk as her hand fell back to her side. “But yes, I’m fine. Just some sore muscles and a few too many bruises from the day’s events.”

“Maybe you should—”

“—Don’t coddle me, Rogers,” she groaned exasperatedly, rolling her eyes. “I’m a grown woman. Despite what everyone thinks, I can take care of myself – seriously how many times do I have to tell…you.”

Steve pretended not to notice that she’d fallen into addressing him as the Steve she knew, though he could have sworn there was something challenging in the sideways glance she shot him before pointedly staring at the view of the city, head held high.

“It’s been a long day,” Tasha said after a moment, looking away from the cityscape to stare at a place above his right shoulder. “I might actually go to bed before – what time is it? Ten? Yeah, I might actually go to bed before midnight.” She shook her head in disapproval. “Ridiculous. I haven’t been to bed before midnight since I was nine.”

He tried to spare her the smile that threatened to show but wasn’t entirely successful. Tasha looked like she was trying not to roll her eyes again, but gave him a thoughtful look instead. “Since it’s technically mine, think I could convince Tony to let me have his bed for the night?”

“Not a chance,” he said with a soft laugh.

“I could think of a few things…but I’m far more dignified than that and I’m actually exhausted,” she shrugged. He looked the other way at realizing the implications of her words, but could still see her smirk from his periph as she made her way back inside. “And Cap?” she asked, pausing to look over her shoulder.

“Yeah?”

“I know what you’re going to do.”

His stomach churned uncomfortably. “I—”

“—I appreciate it.”

She was gone before he could even think of what to say.