Snap Back to the Past AKA the Infinity Stones Decide to Adopt Tony Stark Chapter Eleven: Weight of Living, Pt. I
Story Summary: The Infinity Stones decide that they don’t appreciate being snapped to destruction and that it isn’t time for their favorite human to rest quite yet. An unlikely group of six is sent back in time to fix the universe before Thanos gets a chance to break it.
Note: This is chapter eleven, but you should start with the prologue! Make sure you start with Snap Back to the Past AKA the Infinity Stones Adopt Tony Stark Prologue: The Infinity Stones Adopt Tony Stark. Happy Reading!
Chapter Summary:
There’s an albatross around your neck
All the things you’ve said
And the things you’ve done
Can you carry it with no regrets?
Can you stand the person you’ve become
I know this chapter took forever to get out. I’m sorry! I hope y’all consider it worth the wait especially considering how I ended the last chapter. 😅
This chapter includes some mild spoilers for The Marvels but it’s been out for almost a year now so I hope y’all have seen it. I reference parts of the flashbacks present in the movie and some of the dialogue. I don’t go deep into the active plot of the movie or how it ends, just how the events prior to the start of the movie will affect this plot. Nevertheless, this fic and Meet Cute (Let’s Agree to Disagree About Who Started the Fight) are not fully compliant with the history shown in The Marvels because a lot of this was written before the movie was released and so I had to do a lot of moving things around to combine both the world building of this fic and some of the moments from the film that I wanted to preserve.
So many thanks to Missaness for the excellent beta work on this chapter!!
Chapter Eleven: Weight of Living, Pt. I
Dr. Stephen Strange had never been accused of being good with children. Most people who knew him and his general disposition would likely be wary of having him as a babysitter. But then again, Friday was not exactly a baby. She was a super computer in the body of an eight year old. That was not at all an insult against her— it was the soul stone that had given her a body after all. But she was definitely not the average child, and if she had been given a body a bit older, leaving her alone would not be too much of an issue. That said, she was young enough that if left alone her parents would likely be accused of child abandonment, and since Tony, Loki, and Pepper were all needed at a board meeting; Rhodey was overseas, and Happy was recovering from a cold; it was up to Stephen to babysit.
It had been a few weeks since Friday was ‘born’ into the current timeline, and the team were still working on how to introduce her to the public. The current story that they were going with was that she had been raised primarily with ‘Lois’ and her family, but still saw Tony frequently and had grown up with him actively in her life.
Stephen felt as though he were treading on uncertain ground with Friday. It would have been easier, perhaps, if she was a regular child. He was not the greatest with children, but it was even more difficult to know how to act around one as knowledgeable as Friday. As with many things, he fell back on what he was used to, and so decided that he would spend the time training her with magic. They had been making a decent amount of progress in the past few weeks, and were at the point where Friday was eager to visit the New York Sanctum with him.
“Please Uncle Stephen? Can we go to the Sanctum? I haven’t seen it with human eyes before! The last time I was there, I was looking through Bo-Babbo’s glasses. And the world was ending. And I wasn’t human yet. And—” Stephen cut Friday off, her bright green puppy dog eyes were too much; he was only human.
“Yes, yes, we can go.” Friday cheered and was now bouncing on her heels. “But! What are the two important rules?” He asked her seriously.
“No touching anything without permission, and no bothering people who are working.”
“Exactly. If you have a question about something you can always ask me, but no bothering Master Drumm, or the Ancient One, or anyone else who might be visiting the Sanctum.”
“You got it!” Friday saluted and Stephen’s mouth twitched into an almost smile. He created a portal to the Sanctum’s entrance hall with barely a thought and they stepped through from Malibu to New York in an instant.
As they stepped through Friday looked around with wide eyes. “You know, the stairs look much nicer when there’s not a Hulk-sized hole in them.”
“Well yes, they’re also much easier to use.”
Friday was distracted from Stephen’s bemused reply when her ears caught the sound of the last voice she had expected to hear in the New York Sanctum of 2010. She darted away from Stephen’s side at a faster speed that he had expected her capable of, Stephen hot on her heels.
“Friday! Friday, where are you going?” Stephen ran every morning, and he was fast. Apparently, though, not as much as an enhanced eight year old. He caught up to her just as she was throwing open the door to the sitting room and interrupting the conversation there.
“Peter?”
There were three people squished close together on the couch, facing The Ancient One, who was in an armchair. They all had cups of tea in their hands. The strangers were painfully familiar.
“Um, yeah, hi.” Peter waved slightly. “I’m sorry, have we met? Oh! Dr. Strange!” Peter Parker stood up suddenly, as did the other two on the couch.
“What are you— how are you here?” Stephen asked, bewildered.
“Well, the short version is, the universe was ending, so we decided to try out the whole ‘traveling backwards in time’ thing, and an alternate version of you teamed up with Carol Danvers to direct us to this timeline.” Harley Keener scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “I don’t think we’ve met, I’m—”
“Harley Keener, I know. That is… I would say unbelievable, but truthfully anything goes at this point, the world stopped making sense a long time ago.” Stephen sighed. “Do you have any more of that tea, Tao?”
“Of course. Everyone, sit down, there is much to discuss.” Friday and Stephen settled down in two of the other chairs, and suddenly everyone had tea again.
“Can I, we, I know we need to tell everyone what happened but I’d been hoping I could see my parents soon. And, um, Dad especially.” Morgan bit her lip, and Stephen tried to guess her age. Probably fourteen or fifteen. She had not seen her father in ten years. Having watched Tony grieve her for the past four months that they had been in the past, Stephen knew what he had to do.
“Right, I’m still not sure how you got here, but it feels like a conversation for more than just the six of us here.” Stephen set down his tea and clapped before standing up. “Let’s head over to the mansion, I’ll let everyone know to meet us there.” Everyone stood again, except Friday whose wide eyes were on Morgan as soon as she realized who she was.
“Friday, are you okay?” Stephen asked cautiously. “This must be a lot for you.”
“Friday?” Morgan gasped. “Wait, are you FRIDAY?”
“Uh, yeah. The soul stone gave me a body because Dad wanted a hug. He um, really misses all of you.” Friday looked at her shoes for a moment, missing the fact that Morgan was coming over to her, and so was surprised when the teenager picked her up and pulled her into a hug. Almost without realizing it Friday wrapped her arms around the older girl’s neck.
“Well? Shouldn’t we get going?” Morgan asked. There was a wobble in her voice, but none of them brought it up as Stephen created another portal to take everyone right back to Malibu.
—
“I missed this.” Carol mused as she sipped wine with Maria and Monica on their front porch. “Well, it was a little different before I suppose.”
“Yes it is.” Monica mused as she took a sip of hers too. “Why did you stay away?”
“It’s a long story.”
“So tell it.” Monica snapped.
“Monica!” Maria hissed.
“No mom! I want to know why! Why did you abandon our family?” Monica asked, anger taking over. Maria made as though to speak again but Carol did before her.
“I started a war.” Carol whispered hauntingly. Before Maria and Monica could give voice to their confusion, Carol continued. “I went to Hala, the home planet of the Kree. For millennia the Kree had been led by an artificial intelligence that had led them to war across the galaxy. They committed genocide against countless species, including the Skrulls as you know from their time here.” Carol paused for a moment and gathered her breath.
“I thought that if I destroyed the Supreme Intelligence I could stop the war.” Carol laughed bitterly. “I was wrong, and I was right at the same time. The Kree were no longer at war with the Skrulls and the Nova, or rather those wars were diminished because they were also at war with themselves. I had created a power vacuum. This was made even worse by Hala’s dying sun. The Kree homeworld is dying. The air becomes worse every day, their oceans are drying up, and it is perpetually dark. They do not call me Captain Marvel there. They call me the Annihilator. I’ve been trying to fix it, trying to help where I can, but there are rogue factions of the Kree everywhere, in tiny wars with others and themselves and I have only made it worse. I thought if I could fix it, I could come home. But I don’t know what I can do by myself.”
There was silence for a moment before Carol felt Maria’s hand on hers. “That’s not how family works.” Maria told her softly.
“I never expected you to be a mighty superhero, I only wanted my aunt back.” Monica took her other hand.
“Oh I missed you both. I still don’t… I don’t have all my memories back. But I do remember that you are my family.” Carol smiled, and if there were tears in their eyes, they didn’t let them fall.
“Why did you come back?” Maria asked.
“Well, that’s easy. I didn’t come back before, and it was one of my biggest regrets. Now I can try to make things right, for us, and for the universe.” Carol shook herself. She pulled away from Maria and reached for the bottle to pour herself another glass, only to realize that the bottle was empty.
“Y’all sit tight. I’m going to go grab some more wine, and when I’m back I’ll tell you about how we have less than ten years to stop my girlfriend’s adopted father from snapping his fingers and killing half of all life in the universe.” Carol stood up and headed for the kitchen, leaving Monica and Maria staring at each other in bewilderment.
—
The board meeting was extraordinarily dull, and while there was technically still more work to be done for the day, Loki and Tony successfully convinced Pepper to skip for the rest of the afternoon and have a drink with them at the mansion. They still needed to decide how they were going to introduce Friday to the press.
“Honestly I think the best thing for it is to let them catch us.” Loki suggested as the three of them walked into the mansion. Tony was still reveling in how weird it was to be siding with Loki on anything, but after Thor’s intense speeches about Loki’s redemption and sacrifice he was used to the idea. It also helped that Loki’s female form, while very similar, looked more like a sibling of their male form than the same person. Not that their male form was necessarily hard on the eyes.
“I think it has merit, but we also have to be careful. This can’t look too staged,” Pepper replied cautiously.
“Well, whatever you decide to do is fine with me. I only think—” Tony forgot what he was thinking when they walked into the living room at the same time that a portal formed, and he saw who was coming in from the other side. There were two men, late 20s, and a teenage girl who looked around 15. All three of them looked startlingly familiar. Both men were white with brown hair. The shorter of the two had brown eyes and his hair was cut short. He was wearing a nondescript outfit, a t-shirt, jeans, and boots with a leather jacket. The other had blue eyes, his hair pulled back into what many might describe as a “man-bun”. His outfit was just as simple, jeans, t-shirt, boots, and a flannel. If he hadn’t known that both Peter Parker and Harley Keener were currently in single digits, Tony would almost think that they looked like how he imagined the boys he considered sons would in twenty years. He barely had time to take any of this in however, as his eyes were drawn to the girl. He had never seen her this old, yet knew he would recognize her anywhere.
“Dad!” Two overlapping voices called out to him, and he walked forward as if in a dream. It was Morgan, looking older than he’d ever seen her, but he would recognize her anywhere, he thought. She looked just like he imagined she would, a perfect blend of him and Pepper. She was holding Friday, who jumped out of her grasp, and they both rushed towards him, and suddenly he was being hugged by both of his daughters.
“I, what, how is this possible?” Tony asked, confused and happier than he could have ever expected. “Maguna you are so big! Last time I saw you…”
“You left me video diaries.” Morgan told him wetly. “You left me video diaries and I watched them all. I built my own suit. We traveled through time because the Universe was ending and we; we wanted to come back to you.”
Tony pressed a kiss to her forehead, holding both her and Friday tight before looking up again at the two men, who he realized really were Peter and Harley, and the impossibility of the three of them being there started to fade away before coming back in force.
Tony somehow made it over to the couch, both Morgan and Friday still clinging to him.
“Hey Mr. Stark.” At the sound of Peter’s voice Tony felt another shock, as much as when Harley spoke. “Hey Mechanic. Long time no see.” Harley tossed himself onto another one of the couches, lounging in a way that could not possibly be comfortable. Something so quintessentially Harley. Peter rolled his eyes as he pushed Harley’s leg to the side and made room for himself, only for Harley to re-arrange so that he was now also partially sprawled over Peter.
Loki and Pepper stood awkwardly in confusion, while Stephen sighed and realized it was, once again, down to him to connect the dots for everyone.
“It seems that we six are not the only ones who have traveled back in time.” He announced, directing his attention to Loki and Tony.
“Are you saying that these three came from the future as well?” Loki asked curiously, her eyes roaming over the three newcomers.
“It appears so,” Peter’s smile was not forced exactly, but did not seem to be entirely genuine either. “I’m Peter Parker. This is Harley Keener, and that is Morgan Stark.” Peter pointed at each of them in turn. Today is March 2nd 2010. But when we left the house this morning it was 2034.” There was an air of nonchalance to his voice that he did not actually feel, but then again nothing about this situation was normal.
Pepper, who took almost everything in stride, was nevertheless shocked as she made eye contact with Morgan.
“Hi mom,” Morgan smiled tentatively even as she clung to Tony.
Pepper stumbled at the confirmation, only able to stay standing because of Loki’s gentle catch of her arm. Loki guided her to sit on another one of the couches as Pepper could not tear her eyes away from her 15 year old daughter that had not existed yesterday. They had the same freckles and the same nose, though she could see Tony in the girl’s eyes, and her hair which was such a dark red it was almost brown. “How is this possible?” Pepper asked in a whisper. Turning to Stephen she asked “I thought you said the time stone predicted only six people coming back. There’s three of them, which would make seven.”
Stephen hummed briefly before answering. “That is what the time stone said. Except these three did not use the stones to come back in time.” He turned to Harley as he posited a question. “What did you mean when you said that I worked with Carol Danvers to send you here?”
“Well, I’m not the greatest at magical theory, but from the way that you explained it, 2034 you I mean, your consciousness split.” Peter scratched the back of his head as he began to explain. “Basically, when Tony did the third snap it didn’t just dust 2014 Thanos. A piece of your consciousness, as well as a piece of Carol Danvers, also split off. You both spent years trying to figure out what happened, and your best guess was that part of you was sent back into the past, along with part of Carol and potentially Tony as well.”
“Our universe was dying.” Morgan continued softly. “The loss of the Infinity Stones was fracturing reality. We aren’t the only ones who traveled back.” Morgan’s eyes met Peter’s and Harley’s briefly before she went on. “But everyone else traveled back directly along the timeline. Dr. Strange— 2034 Dr. Strange I mean— helped us travel back to this timeline specifically to reunite with those of you who were already here. So we expected you both, and Carol, to know who we are, which would make it easier to blend in.
“We only expected to be three of you that had traveled back though. We weren’t aware of anyone else who felt the same consciousness split. Who are the other three?” Harley asked.
“Other three?” Morgan tilted her head to the side. “What makes you think there would be three more?”
“It’s what Pepper and Dr. Strange said.” Peter replied, gesturing towards the two. “The time stone told them that there would be six time travelers, and they only expected two more. So who are the rest?” Peter asked, turning to Stephen.
“We actually didn’t know about Carol.” Loki hummed. “She hasn’t made contact yet. So there is only one unknown.”
“Pardon me, but I don’t actually know who you are. Did you also travel back?” Peter asked.
“See! I told you that disguise was good. It’s not surprising that she fooled us at first!” Tony exclaimed.
“Yes yes, you’re very smart Anthony. Gold star.” Loki replied dryly before snapping their fingers. Sparkles and a puff of green smoke appeared, and he was back in his typical armor and horns. “Do you recognize me now?” He asked with a smirk.
“Drama queen.” Stephen muttered under his breath. Loki was tempted to admonish him, but he knew that the theatrics were not necessary at all for the change.
“Oh!” Morgan gasped. “You’re Loki, aren’t you? Uncle Thor told me a lot about you! He said that you were one of the best warriors and magic-users that he ever knew, and that he missed you every day since you sacrificed yourself to defeat Thanos.”
Loki blinked at her confusedly. That was certainly not the recognition he was expecting from someone who knew the events of the first timeline. Thor had said what about him?
Next Chapter:
