On Luke's side,
He felt the shift in space before he saw anything, the familiar pull of something cutting across dimensional boundaries, and his first thought was Superior Tony making another move.
Then the distortion formed in front of him and he saw faces.
Wanda, clearly straining with concentration. Behind her Selene, Jill, Alice, Esdeath, Jean, Clarice, Natasha, Tauriel, and one very bald Ancient One standing at the back watching the whole thing with her usual unreadable expression.
Luke stared at the distortion for a long moment.
"What the hell is going on?" he asked.
"I found him," Wanda said, her voice strained from the concentration, the sparks around her flickering with the effort of holding the connection open.
The distortion stabilized enough for everyone to see Luke clearly, sitting on the roof of Kamar-Taj looking back at them with an expression that could only be described as completely unprepared for this specific development.
"Yeah that's him," Alice said. "Still has the stupid face."
"Bring him in," Esdeath said immediately.
"I can't," Wanda said through her teeth, the engravings beneath her feet flickering as something pushed back against the spell from the other side. "Something is trying to block me."
"No need for us to do anything more," the Ancient One said, watching the cracks forming in the reality around Wanda's spell. "He can handle the rest himself."
On the roof Luke's mind shifted into full capacity, Infinite Mind running at complete output, scanning the fractures in reality that Wanda's spell had created, tracing the dimensional geometry until he found the exact point where the two universes were closest to touching.
His eyes glowed.
A black hole opened in his palm.
He clenched his fist and drove it into the space in front of him and pulled, the rift tearing open with violent energy pouring out of the edges, reality resisting and losing, the gap widening with every inch he forced it.
"Everyone out," he said. "I found the way back."
Tony, Variant Tony, Wanda, Steve and Natasha came out of Kamar-Taj onto the roof and stopped when they saw Luke standing in front of a tear in reality, veins visible in his arms from the effort of holding it open, violent energy churning at the edges of the rift.
"Are you sure that's stable?" Tony asked.
Luke didn't answer.
He grabbed all five of them and jumped through, dragging them into the rift before any of them had a second to object.
They tumbled through the space between dimensions, nothing solid beneath them, reality on all sides replaced by churning energy and color that had no business existing, the rift walls pressing in and expanding in equal measure as they moved through it.
"I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS," Tony shouted, spinning head over heels through the void with absolutely no control over his orientation or velocity.
"IS THIS STABLE?" Steve shouted from somewhere to his left.
"DEFINE STABLE," Variant Tony shouted back from somewhere completely different.
Wanda and Natasha said nothing, which was either composure or pure shock, and Luke moved through it like he was taking a casual walk, completely unbothered by the violent dimensional turbulence throwing everyone else around like laundry.
"Almost through," he said, at a perfectly normal volume.
"ALMOST?" Tony's voice cracked slightly.
Then the rift spat them out.
Luke landed on his feet clean, hands in his pockets.
The other four hit the ground face first in various configurations, none of them graceful, none of them with anything resembling a controlled landing.
Luke took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
"It feels great to breathe fresh air after spending hours in that zombie world where everything smells rotten," he said, looking out at the familiar skyline around them.
Then he glanced back at the four people on the ground.
"You guys alright back there?"
Tony raised one hand from where he was still lying face down and gave a weak thumbs up.
Then he looked at Wanda, whose hands were still glowing from the aftermath of the spell, the residual magic fading slowly at her fingertips.
Luke crossed to her and held her face in both hands.
"Wanda that was brilliant," he said, and kissed her before she could respond.
Wanda's eyes went wide for a half second before they closed, the leftover tension from the spell leaving her shoulders all at once, her hands coming up to his wrists without thinking about it.
He pulled back and looked at her.
"You did a wonderful job," he said quietly.
Wanda opened her mouth to say something and didn't get the chance.
Two hands landed on Luke's shoulders from behind simultaneously, gripping with the deliberate firmness of women who had spent an entire week doing nothing but waiting and worrying and had arrived at the very end of their patience for it.
Esdeath on the left.
Selene on the right.
"Before you shower anyone else with affection," Esdeath said, her voice carrying that specific quiet that was considerably more dangerous than anything loud, "would you mind explaining what exactly has been going on."
Luke slowly turned his head to look at both of them.
"Trust me this time I'm innocent," he said, "if anything or anyone is to blame, blame that guy," he said, pointing at Tony.
Tony looked up from the ground where he was still recovering from the landing, saw everyone looking at him, and immediately pointed at his variant.
"It's him," Tony said. "Different universe. Not me."
Variant Tony who was still face down on the ground raised one hand weakly.
"I also didn't do it," he said into the ground. "Blame the other other Tony."
*****
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