"Are you sure you have to be the one to return the stones?" Bucky asked.

"Anyone else wanna try to lift Thor's hammer?" Steve replied as he flipped said item into the air and caught it.

Bucky chuckled and shook his head.

"Yeah, I didn't think so," Steve said.

"Ok, Cap," Bruce called out. "We're all ready here."

Bucky stepped back, coming to stand near Sam, and watched the subtle tension of Steve's body right before the portal opened and sucked him through.

"Five, four, three, two, one," Bruce announced, then poof, Steve was gone.

Bruce began resetting his instruments, then did the same count down again, preparing for Steve's return. "Five, four, three, two, one."

The portal opened again and no one was prepared for what came through.

~~~oOoOoOo~~~

Steve started by returning the Tesseract, opting to get one of the worst parts of the journey over with first. It was bittersweet catching a glimpse of Tony stumbling over accidentally running into his father as he stole the Space Stone. And this time he stayed away from Peggy's office, because the momentary hesitation he had experienced before now felt like a betrayal of Natasha's memory.

Next, he returned the Power Stone, hating that he wasn't able to help the Nebula he knew be taken by the old Nebula to be interrogated and tortured by her father.

Then he travelled to Asgard to inject the Aether back into Jane Foster, only able to do so with the knowledge that Thor and Loki were eventually able to extract it before it did any lasting damage. He left Thor's hammer in a random windowsill because it wasn't like Thor could lose the thing. The Asgardian would just call it to him when he needed it.

After that, he travelled back to New York and returned Loki's staff with the Mind Stone in it to its Hydra keepers where they would study it and use it to give Wanda and Pietro their powers.

Then, he headed across town and came face to face with the bald women in yellow that Bruce had negotiated with.

"Captain Rogers," she welcomed him with a slight frown.

"Bruce made it," Steve said, knowing that she was concerned about the man she had met moments ago.

"I am glad," she replied a small smile warming her expression. "From your appearance, am I to believe you succeeded?"

"We stopped Thanos," Steve replied.

"But at a cost," the woman added.

Steve dropped his eyes, unable to handle her concerned gaze. "We lost a couple of people."

"I'm sorry for your loss," the woman said, sounding as if she really meant it. "However, I'm sure you'll find that no one is ever really gone."

He didn't question her, merely nodding as he returned the Time Stone before stepping away to activate his last jump.

Steve saved the Soul Stone for last because he honestly had no idea how he was going to handle returning the stone that had cost Natasha's life.

Arriving on the barren, yet beautiful planet was surreal. The climb to the top of the mountain was grueling, but even Clint's description of events didn't prepare him for the familiar face that greeted him when he had nearly reached the top.

"Steven, son of Sarah and Joseph Rogers."

"Johann Schmidt," Steve replied as he stopped in front of the red-faced man.

The cloaked figure drifted closer. "You are too late. The Soul Stone has already been taken."

"I came to return it."

At his statement, the Red Skull stopped in midair. "That was . . . unexpected." He paused for another moment, then turned and began drifting up the stone stairs. "Follow me."

Steve slowly followed behind, mind racing as to how the Red Skull ended up as the keeper or guide to the Soul Stone and came to the conclusion that the Tesseract had deposited the man here when he touched it all those years ago.

They reached the top and while Steve tried his damnedest to hold it together, seeing the place where Natasha died drove him to his knees and brought fresh tears to his eyes.

She would never get to see what they would accomplish with their second chance. She would never get to see Clint's kids grow into adults, help mold and shape them. She would never get to have a relationship with Tony's daughter. She would never get to help him train the new Avengers, to help polish their hand to hand combat skills and develop their covers for the more covert operations.

And he would never get a chance to really explore what might have been.

When Steve had pulled himself together enough to finish the task at hand, he pushed himself to his feet and opened the case to withdraw the remaining stone. Tossing the now empty container to the side, he half listened as it skittered across the rock and bounced down the side of the cliff.

For a moment, he contemplated throwing himself off of the great height to join Natasha at the bottom.

Only two things stopped him.

The first were his remaining friends. While everyone might understand his self-sacrificing, suicidal tendencies, he couldn't do that to them, not come back and leave them wondering what had happened, not when there were still things that needed fixing.

Especially things with Bucky. While the Wakandan doctors were able to take the Winter Soldier programming out of his head, his best friend was still struggling, and he couldn't let him to face any of their unknown future alone.

"I'm with you, 'til the end of the line."

Those words were truer now than they had ever been. Steve wasn't about to abandon Bucky, not after everything they had gone through both separately and together, not when they had a chance to live the kind of life they should have. He would be there to help Bucky regain some semblance of the man he once was, no matter how long it took.

The second thing that stopped him was knowing that Natasha wouldn't want him to join her in whatever afterlife there was due to his own selfish desires. She would want him to soldier on no matter how hard it was because there were still people out there that needed him, even if it was merely as someone running a support group.

He lifted his hand over the cliff and unfurled his fingers, letting the orange stone rest in his palm for a second, before rotating his wrist and letting the thing fall.

It was impossible for him to watch its decent. Natasha wouldn't want him to see the crumpled speck of her body at the bottom. So he stared straight ahead and forced himself to keep breathing.

Just as the tiny stone struck the rocks below, the sky above him began to brighten and thunder boomed even though there was no lightning. The ground shook and nearly pitched him off the edge. Then a sudden flash of light blinded him and the ground disappeared beneath him.

The next thing he knew, he found himself lying in water staring up at the alien sky.

Was that it?

Had the stone been properly returned?

Was he free to go home now, back to his timeline, back to a world that would be dimmer now without the light of two of his closest friends?

Steve began to sit up, suddenly impatient to get off this empty planet and only then realized the added weight across his chest. Glancing down, he found a body draped on top of him and it took him a moment to register that the person had deep red hair.

He froze.

This was it. His mind had finally broken. After managing to stay relatively sane throughout the years, no matter what the world had thrown at him, he must have finally lost it because there was no way that Natasha was anything but gone.

But there she was, lying unmoving across his chest.

How was this possible?

Clint had watched his best friend fall, had seen her broken body at the bottom of the cliff. He wouldn't have lied about something like that, not with how much they all meant to each other, and especially not with everything at stake.

And then something the archer had said drifted across his mind.

"A soul for a soul."

That's what Clint had told him that the Red Skull had said, the secret to getting the orange stone that had cost the life of the woman in his arms.

"Natasha?" His voice was barely more than a whisper, afraid that anything else would break the illusion of her on top of him. But when she didn't respond, he bolted upright, shifting her in his grip, settling her in his lap.

She was relatively unharmed, no noticeable wounds, no blood. He ran his hands up and down her arms and back, feeling nothing out of place, even cupped the back of her head, winding his fingers through her messy braid and found nothing abnormal.

"Natasha," he said again, a little louder this time. Still no reply. "Natasha. Come on, wake up. Natasha!" He gripped her a little tighter against him. "Hey, I'm here. Wake up. We did it! Nat."

Just as he was beginning to really panic, a small groan vibrated from her throat.

Steve froze, still half convinced that he was imagining all of this.

"Steve?"

A flustered laugh bubbled up. "That's it. Wake up. Nat."

"Steve?" she asked again, her voice just a tad gravellier than was normal. Her eyelids fluttered open, then scrunched closed for a moment, before opening again and focusing on him.

"Nat," he whispered because it was just so unbelievable. Moments before, she had been dead. She had sacrificed herself for just the chance that they might be able to fix what Thanos had done. And now, there she lay in his arms, staring up at him, alive and well.

Unable to hold himself back any longer, he finally did what he had been longing to do since she failed to return from her mission and leaned down to press his lips against hers.

She was real!

There was no mistaking her slight weight in his arms, the soft warmth of her pressed against him, the surprised inhale at his desperate affection.

He pulled back quicker than he would have liked, but he needed to see her, needed to prove to himself again that she wasn't just an illusion or his imagination.

"What happened?" she asked, a frown marring her brow, probably confused as to why he had just kissed her after having never initiated any kind of intimacy between them before.

"We did it, Nat," he explained.

"You did?"

He smiled. "We did."

"But how –," she looked around before continuing. "I thought –"

"It doesn't matter," Steve interrupted, not wanting to focus on the fact that she had been gone minutes before, only interested in the fact that she was alive and safe with him now. "I'll explain everything later. I promise."

She nodded and started to pull her feet under her in an effort to stand.

However, Steve wouldn't let her get far. He pushed himself to his feet with her still pressed against his chest because there was no way he was letting her go right now.

"Hold tight," he said and waited until her grip strengthened before activating their suites and sending them back to their present.

~~~oOoOoOo~~~

The portal opened a split second after Bruce's countdown and Steve reappeared, only he wasn't alone. In his arms was a familiar red head that no one expected to see again.

"Oh my god," Bucky breathed.

"Somebody call Clint," Steve ordered from his place on the platform. "She'll want to talk to him."