Through Space and Time | MCU Multiverse

37 - Family

The house was quiet, as Cassie walked through the portal. She dropped the bag Tony gave her, a lump forming in her chest. Looking around the house, she saw nothing was out of place and it was clear her parents weren't home like always. As she walked into the living room, she saw that Doctor Strange was still playing in the exact scene that she remembered leaving in. She watched Stephen try to make a portal on her screen, her heart tearing just a little bit. She had been there when it happened, she remembered it like it was yesterday.

Then again, how could no time have passed since she had traveled back? She pulled her phone out of her pocket. The date was the exact same as when she had left. Weird, she thought herself. Sitting down on the couch, she paused the movie. After living through these it felt weird to see them on screen. But did she actually live through them? What if she had been dreaming this whole time?

No, she couldn't have. Who has dreams this intense that it felt like she had spent an entire year someplace else? Besides, she didn't even remember falling asleep. Then, it dawned on her. If she wasn't making it all up, her photos would have transferred back with her like they did when she arrived on Earth-199999.

Anxiously, she opened her phone opened the photos app immediately. Cassie felt tears come to her eyes as she stared at her camera roll, the one that had become so familiar to her over the course of the last year.

"It had been real," she said to herself. "All of it was real."

She sat on the couch for the rest of the afternoon, scowling through her camera roll with tears in her eyes. There were photos of Tony making weird faces the time he stole her phone, photos from the night of the party after the accords were lifted. She saw photos of Wong losing at ping pong against the cloak of levitation in the Kamar-Taj library, and even the photos she took from her hotel in Germany of the airport fight happening in the distance.

Smiling through the pain, she continued to scroll but that's when she saw it. It was the video Peter had taken them on the private jet in Germany back on the day they had met. She set her phone down, not being able to handle it anymore. Curling up on the couch, she began to weep.

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Life on Earth-616 sucked more than Cassie ever remembered. She was back to taking care of herself, with no one around to keep her company. Her parents still worked more than they realized and there was still no one at school she could turn to talk about what happened to her. It didn't matter though, who would believe her anyway.

Speaking of the girls at school, they were definitely crueler than she remembered. It was weird going from a world where she fought a purple alien back to mundane life in high school. One of the girls caught in the hallway looking at a news report about Tom Holland. She had never cared about his movies before but now that he was wearing the face of someone she cared for, it was hard not to pay attention.

When the girls caught her staring at the photo, they gave her hell for it, going on about she could never get a guy that looked like that. In a fit of rage, and granted without thinking, she tried to summon the Ruby Rings of Raggadorr. Nothing happened, of course, it just made her look like an idiot. The girls laughed, pushing her into her locker as they passed.

She hated school more than ever as well - and it wasn't just because of the people she was stuck with. On Earth-199999, she had already finished her junior year of high school, getting 2 months into her senior one. To go back and take classes she had already finished what felt like a lifetime ago was extremely frustrating. She found herself reading more in class than before. She even dropped out of Academic Decathlon, the meeting reminding her too much of her time with Peter, Ned, and even Liz; she had only known the girl for a short about of time but still considered her a friend.