(Chapter 29)Me and Myself

The road of God unfurls into an open field and all that was becomes Man's harvest." Victor said. He had called dibs on the first words of a time traveler.

"Poetic," I said.

"Well, I've been thinking about it for a long time. Can't really go into the future, which is a disappointment. Go get whatever chore you need done, done, and I'll stay here and get to work checking on the temporal effects and imbalances."

The rules of MCU time travel were straightforward enough. You go back in time, you create a divergent timeline. Maybe it's close to the one you're from, maybe it's not. Regardless, it is never again your timeline. I had checked and Peggy Carter had married someone else in my home timeline, so I was pretty sure we were close to the top of timeline piles. Banner explained it in the most confusing manner possible in the movies, but those were the rules. That meant that if you went into the future and then went back into the past, you were effectively creating a timeline without yourself in it. And for everything that had gone wrong already, I didn't think the world would be better off without me.

I stripped out of my 'leapfrog', the green-black suit that Victor had designed and codenamed, before unshrinking my suit and putting it on. We had wound up in a storage unit of Victor's in California. Minimal time in the past wasn't really a problem - The platform of curbed inhibitors and mirror sheen panels was a beacon back to our own moment in history.

So, for our initially jump, we had decided on something relatively close and simple, so we could be confident in our future success. I had chosen the date and time - 2009, the day I had killed Obadiah Stane, a fair few hours before hand.

Since I had already created this timeline anyway, I wasn't going to let an opportunity go to waste.

I banged on the window of the white van when I reached it, "Tango!" I shouted.

That got his attention, my twin emerged from the van and caught sight of me. "Damn." He said, looking at me for a moment, "I like the silver. Really works."

I was only two years older than he was, but I was starting to gray. "The fake nose and wig don't work for you, take them off."

"Uh, dude, you know what I'm here to do."

"Yeah, so, if I'm here to stop you, maybe you should stop?"

He tilted his head back in thought and then nodded. "Yeah, fair enough. Come on. Let's go get some food. Ice cream?"

I climbed into the van and we started driving away. "I know we're genetically hot now, but we're not genetically fit, so I'll pass on that. Trying to stay in better shape."

"Your loss. So how bad did we fuck up?"

"Tony Stark isn't Iron Man. War Machine operates under the name Patriot."

"That's… not good," he admitted. "Captain America?"

"Still haven't found him!"

"Well. Banner?"

"Wasn't there for his rampage, but he inspired a huge amount of anti-bioengineering activism and now the President and I have an ongoing feud about it."

"Is the anti-bio-activism new?" I shrugged. "Did you at least catch Mjolnir in Nevada?"

"It was actually in a small town in New Mexico, Puente Antiguo."

"Damn, did you get the girlfriend's name?"

"Yes. Jane Foster, spitting image of Natalie Portman."

His eyes darted as he sorted through his memories and found her. "Wow, she is. I'm never going to get used to that."

"You absolutely do get used to that."

"Oh I get used to it, huh?" He said in a tone that made me want to punch him. "Do I detect romance in my future?"

"Look man, if you want to go for it, go for it." It couldn't possibly be worse than my own choices. Plus Jane Foster was smart which would make her much less boring than most of the pretty girls I had flirted with before Andromeda.

"Alright, so I won't kill Stane. How far in the future are you from anyway?"

"2011."

"2011?!" He asked incredulously. "Has the Invasion of New York even happened yet?"

"No…"

"Did you start a nuclear war?"

"No, I just… made some personal mistakes."

"But you can't change them by coming back here you doofus! I already checked, no stable-time-loop Cap."

"Yeah, I know." I said, hoping my voice wasn't too bitter.

"Did you blow up the space stone and cause a fissure in reality or something?"

"What, no. I just… fell in love with the wrong woman, I guess." It was so weird to be explaining my regrets to this past version of myself.

"Ah, so I really should go for Jane Foster."

"Yeah, I mean, yuck it up man. She puts out an internship offer for summer 2010, maybe get some of your hot for teacher on."

"Doesn't she lift Mjolnir in the next movie? Seems like she wouldn't go in for it? Abuse of power and all that."

"The internship thing was a joke, but I encourage you to try to romance her. Mjolnir material is girlfriend material."

"Wow, we broke this girl's heart huh?"

"No… no, things between us are great actually."

"Then what happened?"

"This is a test run."

"Lots of potential test runs that go back further than this and help loads of people. You came here, now, to me. To yourself. That means something went wrong with the plan."

"Look it's fine," I said hurriedly.

That got a glare. Then he pulled over and held out his hand, "Give me the thumb drive and get out or explain your goddamn self."

"Look, I came back with Victor Stein, alright?"

His eyes did the 'mentally looking up' motion again and he said, "Oh, you fell in with the PRIDE? Yikes, dude that's pretty bad. Who's the woman? Janet? She's very pretty, I don't think that's that poor of taste. I mean, adultery, but you're hanging out with murderers so, really that's not that big of a line to cross is it. Plus Victor's a wife beating shitstain."

The awkward truth was that the PRIDE were the upper half of my social circle in moral terms. Most of them had done it because of the blackmail.

"Oh, it's not the PRIDE, is it? You just said that to throw me off. Jeez, dude, what's worse than the PRIDE?"

I didn't say anything.

"I'll leave without any more advice and you won't be able to guarantee any more changes."

"I joined Hydra."

He stared at me for a moment, his eye flitting upward in the 'lookup' position, and then punched me in the stomach. Or tried, anyway, banging against the bullet proof of my suit probably hurt his hand more than the hit hurt my stomach. "You stupid son of a bitch. What the fuck were you thinking?"

"Would you believe me if I told you it seemed like a good idea at the time?"

"No! They're fascists!"

"Oh come on, you know they're actually synarchists. Fascism is a nationalist movement that glorifies violence."

"Am I speaking to a dictionary? Man, when I say they're fascists, I mean they're authoritarian monsters. Did you join the American Nazi Party while you were at it?"

"Wow, next you'll be telling me the Democrats are the real racists because of the Klan?"

"That's not even an analogous case! The modern Democrats represent black people and the Civil War Democrats fought to keep them enslaved. Hydra tried to take over the world with bombs and now wants to use its weird killsat plan to take over the world. Serious Supervillain Brain, obvious continuity."

"Yeah, I'm working on that part."

"Gah, you suck. Okay, so you joined Hydra. Partially because of a girl. At least tell me she's some Black widow level bombshell we hadn't seen coming."

"She's Andromeda Albertson, the niece of the governor of Louisiana. And she's nice looking."

"You went out with a governor's niece? Why, that seems like a lot of potential problems."

"She was a SHIELD agent!"

"You didn't see SHIELD agent plus powerful family and immediately say, 'Hydra'?"

"I considered it! But she's kind of like Daria," I said, referencing a very peppy friend from college. "Very patriotic, very peppy, nice when I was around her. And hindsight is really twenty-twenty on this one."

"Wow, I guess I wouldn't have suspected Daria either."

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Look, you're obviously a terrible person, but since we're the same person I'll cut you some slack. Stay here with me. Sounds like your old world is kind of a crapsack."

"I can't, I've messed it up and I have to fix it."

"What, from inside of Hydra?"

"That's the plan."

"Well. I guess I don't want you here then and you wouldn't be here if you thought I could stop you. Give me the damn thumb drive and get out of my car."

I handed him the thumb drive and climbed out of the car. I had deserved that and I hoped he took caution from my words. I was emotionally exhausted by the time I made it back to Victor and the suits were missing.

"Victor, where are the suits?" I asked, leaning up against the wall, tired.

Victor was leaning back in a lawn chair, looking pensive.

"I've stored them in a secure place, Mike, don't worry. But before you and I go back, we're going to have a talk about the future you came from."