Howard Stark registered the sensation of smooth, cool blades of grass pressing against his cheek.
He drew a breath, pulling the scent of damp earth and pine needles into his lungs.
The serenity of the moment shattered as the final seconds of his life crashed into his conscious mind.
He saw the dark, winding road.
He heard the screech of tires tearing across the asphalt.
He saw the assassin standing over him, the cold glare of the metal arm, the crimson star painted on the shoulder plate, and the merciless eyes behind the dark mask.
Howard sat up, his chest heaving as he gasped for air.
He threw his hands out, expecting to feel the crushed metal of his ruined car or the blinding agony of a caved-in skull.
Instead, he felt nothing but the steady, rhythmic beat of his own heart.
The chronic ache in his lower back, a constant companion in his old age, had vanished.
He looked down at his hands.
The liver spots and creeping arthritis were gone.
The skin was taut, the muscles firm.
He possessed the body of a man in his prime.
He scanned his surroundings, pushing the panic down.
He sat in the center of a lush, sprawling forest.
Towering maple trees formed a canopy overhead, filtering soft, ambient light onto the forest floor.
A few yards away, a woman lay asleep on the grass.
“Maria,” Howard breathed.
He scrambled to his feet and rushed to her side.
He dropped to his knees, his hands hovering over her before gently gripping her shoulders.
Maria stirred.
Her eyes fluttered open.
She gasped, a reflex born from the memory of metal fingers crushing her throat, suffocating the life out of her.
She reached for her neck, finding the skin smooth and unblemished.
She looked up and blinked, her vision focusing on the man hovering over her.
“Howard?” she whispered, taking in his dark hair and youthful face.
She looked around at the towering maples and the pristine grass.
“Are we in heaven?”
Howard offered a dry, humorless chuckle.
“You might be.
But with the volume of weapons I built in my lifetime, I am pretty sure I am booked for the other direction.”
“No, you are in my dimension.”
The voice was small, lacking the booming resonance of a deity or a demon.
Howard and Maria turned.
A child, appearing no older than five years of fact, dropped down from the low-hanging branch of a maple tree.
He landed softly on the grass, his face a picture of solemn determination.
Maria stared at the boy.
The shock of her own death and sudden resurrection took a back seat to the innate, maternal instinct triggered by the sight of a lone child in a forest.
She pushed herself up from the ground, brushing past Howard, and walked toward the boy.
“Where are your parents?” Maria asked, her brow furrowing with concern.
“How did a child get out here all by himself?
Are you lost?”
Howard remained planted on the grass, his analytical mind dissecting the situation.
He looked from the seemingly endless forest to the strange ambient light with no visible sun.
“What do you mean, your dimension?”
Max took a deliberate step back, putting distance between himself and Maria’s outstretched hands.
He needed to maintain control of the conversation.
“Let me explain a few things first,” Max said, keeping his tone level.
“Then you can ask your questions.” Get faster updates on g.com.
Howard stood up, placing a hand on Maria’s arm to stop her advance.
He gave the boy a measured nod.
“You are dead,” Max stated.
“Or, at least, you were.
I was watching on that road.
I saw the Winter Soldier run your car into the trees.
I saw him murder you.
I saw him take the briefcase holding the super-soldier serum from the trunk.”
Max raised his hand.
He communicated silently with Alpha.
A shimmering screen of pure, condensed mana materialized in the air between them.
Howard narrowed his eyes at the floating image.
He looked for a light source, a projector lens, or the telltale scattering of photons that accompanied holographic technology.
He found none.
The screen defied the laws of physics.
The magical display flickered to life.
It played the memories Max had recorded through the eyes of his distant Shadowkhan.
Howard and Maria watched their own murders from a third-person perspective.
They watched the assassin walk away with the blue vials.
The scene shifted, following the Winter Soldier as he arrived at a secluded landing pad.
He handed the briefcase to a man in a dark suit.
Alexander Pierce.
Pierce boarded a helicopter, the rotors spinning to life.
As the aircraft lifted into the sky, the facility below detonated, erasing all evidence of the exchange.
“Pierce,” Howard muttered, his jaw clenching.
“I never expected that young man to be a traitor.”
The screen vanished.
Max lowered his hand.
“I am sorry.
I had the means to intervene, but I did not.
I was afraid of the Time Variance Authority, an organization that prunes branching timelines.
I feared the consequences of altering fixed events.”
The air shimmered again, and a new set of images appeared.
Howard and Maria watched the aftermath of their absence.
They saw S.H.I.E.L.D.
agents altering the crash site, planting alcohol bottles to frame the tragedy as a drunk driving accident.
The scene transitioned to a rainy cemetery.
They saw a young Tony Stark, his face pale and hollow, standing before two closed caskets.
Maria covered her mouth, a stifled sob catching in her throat at the sight of her grieving son.
The perspective of the memory shifted to the back of the mourning crowd.
A woman leaned on a cane, watching the proceedings.
Peggy Carter.
Beside her stood a tall, broad-shouldered man with white hair, trying to remain inconspicuous under an umbrella.
Howard stepped forward, his eyes locking onto the screen.
He recognized the jawline.
“The Captain is alive?” Howard shouted, his voice cracking.
“Steve is alive?
Why hasn’t he appeared before me?
Why did he let me spend my life searching the ice?”
Max gestured, and the image froze on the elderly face of Steve Rogers.
“I possess a form of prophetic knowledge,” Max explained.
“The Steve Rogers you see there is not the Captain of your time.
He is from a distant future.
He traveled back to the past after a massive war to live out the life he lost.
He remains in hiding to preserve the flow of time.”
Howard stared at the frozen image, his brilliant mind processing the concept of temporal mechanics, alternate futures, and the sheer impossibility of the magic floating in front of him.
He had spent his life dealing in science and steel, but the evidence of his own breathing lungs and the floating energy screen left him with no choice but to accept the wild story.
Max waved his hand, dismissing the images.
“It is December 16, 1995,” Max said.
“Four years have passed since that night on the road.
When you were attacked, I had only just acquired my abilities.
The shadows I controlled were too weak and too far away from my physical body to stop a super-soldier in time.”
Max let the shadows around his feet pool and darken.
The darkness stretched upward, taking the three-dimensional form of a Shadowkhan ninja.
The silent warrior knelt on the grass, its light blue skin and glowing red eyes a stark contrast to the green forest.
“I waited until I felt safe,” Max continued, staring at the ground.
“I pulled your bodies into this dimension after everyone left.
I expended vast amounts of my own mana and karma to retrieve your dissipated souls from the ether and stitch them back into your repaired bodies.
You have been sleeping in stasis until today.”
Silence descended on the clearing.
Max kept his eyes focused on the toes of his shoes, waiting for the anger.
He expected Howard to yell about Tony.
He expected them to demand their freedom.
He tried to maintain the stoic posture of a mysterious savior holding all the cards.
Maria took a step forward.
She did not look at the glowing red eyes of the demon kneeling in the grass.
She did not care about the magical dimension or the Time Variance Authority.
She looked at the five-year-old boy trying to act like a general.
She saw through the confident, rehearsed speech.
She saw the heavy, crushing guilt weighing down his small shoulders.
She crossed the distance between them, dropped to her knees, and pulled Max into a tight embrace.
Max froze, his arms pinned to his sides.
“You owed us nothing,” Maria said, her voice soft and steady as she rested her chin on the top of his head.
“You were just a child, and you carried the weight of the world.
You spent your own mana and karma to save strangers.
You gave us a second chance.” She tightened her grip.
“I forgive you.”
Howard walked over.
He looked down at the boy, his expression losing the hard, cynical edge he usually carried.
He offered a slow, profound nod of respect and understanding.
The dam broke.
The stoic facade Max had built to navigate a universe of gods and monsters crumbled under the weight of genuine, unconditional forgiveness.
He buried his face in Maria’s shoulder, and the tears he had held back for years finally fell.