The Path of Time ★ [3] ✔ (EDITING)

Are You Sure?

⏳ 2016

The all looked at me in shock. I didn't blame them. We'd been closely knit since first coming together in 2012 and the addition of Wanda and Vision and Sam last year. With something like this coming out of nowhere, I knew what they were thinking. They thought I was going to leave them. Steve's worried expression proved that. He didn't want me to go, not after everything we'd been through. Not after what we've finally managed to accept.

But I had to go. Since finding out I wasn't the last Time Walker after meeting with Astra last year, I didn't want what I thought was my reality to really become it. I had a chance to save my people. I needed to go.

It that wasn't my plan to just abandon my friends. To abandon Steve. That wasn't what I intended. I'd promised Astra that I would bring help with me. And it was time to tell the truth. All of it.

"So, you're...leaving?" Wanda interjected, hugging her body.

"I have to. My people need me. I can't sit around and let Eon wipe them out. I won't. Time will fall into chaos if the all the Walkers die, and time will be in even more trouble if Eon is the only one left to control it. I have to go home and lead the Resistance."

"She is right."

I turned to the lab entrance. With Dr. Cho's help, Astra limped into the lab. She looked ghost white. Her beautiful long black hair had been cut to a choppy do, so unlike how she'd looked the last time we'd met. Her purple eyes watched me carefully. She looked nothing like her elegant self the last time we met. She looked like a calmly enraged warrior ready for any battle to be thrown at her.

"Andromeda must return with me to the Chronos," she said. "The Time Walkers need her."

"But we need her here," Steve countered, stepping next to me protectively. "The Earth needs her."

"She's the best we've got," Sam added. "We need our most powerful to protect our people."

"And what about her own people?" Astra fired back. "What would you do if the human race was in peril while you stand on another planet? Would you let it fall to protect another when you have a chance to return to it?"