Chapter 13

                                    

                                          
The next two weeks went by as Tony, Bruce, and Scott laid out the plans and constructed a larger version of Scott's Quantum Tunnel. Scott was currently being fitted with a red and white suit, similar to his Ant-Man suit, to run our first official test. "Hey! Hey! Hey! Easy!" Scott yells at Bruce as he's trying to fix red liquid in a glass tube to the suit. "I'm being very careful!" "No, you're being very Hulky." Bruce holds up his hands and I step in. "Let me do it." Bruce hands me the vile and I approach Scott. 
"Where does it go?" He points to a spot and I slowly fix it to his suit.
"These are Pym Particles, alright? And ever since Hank Pym got snapped out of existence, this is it. This is all we have, we can't make anymore." 
"Scott, calm down." Scott shakes his head and looks at Rhodey, "We only got enough for one round trip each. That's it. No do-overs. Plus two test runs." He accidentally presses the button on his suit, shrinks, then grows back to his normal size. "Make that one test run." He smiles sheepishly and I roll my eyes, fixing another vile to his suit. 
We make our way over to the large platform and Scott stares at it, panicked, "All right...I'm not ready for this." 
"I'm game. I'll do it." We turn our heads over to Clint who is leaning up against a wall. He and Scott go back into the lab, swapping the suit. Clint now walks out wearing the suit and stands on the large glass platform. Bruce and Tony stand behind the control panel, ready to activate it. "Clint, now you're gonna feel a little discombobulated from the chronoshift." 
"Don't worry about it." Clint waves his hand at him, likely not understanding a word Bruce just said. 
"Wait a second. Let me ask you all something...If we can pull this off, you know, go back in time...why don't we just find baby Thanos, you know, and..." Rhodey makes a hand gesture suggesting we strangle baby Thanos with a rope. I snort as the rest of the group looks shocked at his revelation. "First of all, that's horrible..." Bruce shakes his head and looks down. "It's Thanos." I mumble and Rhodey points at me, "see, she gets it!" 
"Even if we could, time doesn't work that way. Changing the past doesn't change the future." Bruce looks over the controls once more. They all start arguing over time travel in movies and I look at Steve, who is already watching me closely. I wrap my arms around him and he kisses my forehead. "I love you." I say, my words being muffled in his chest. "I love you too." He kisses my forehead once more.
"Hot Tub Time Machine -" 
"Hot Tub Time Machine, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure...Basically any movie that deals with time -" 
"Guys?!" I yell and they all snap their heads towards me. I motion towards the platform, "oh! Yea!" Bruce turns back to Clint. "Alright Clint, we're going in 3...2...1..." Clint's helmet engages and he goes quantum. Bruce counts quietly to ten before pressing the button to bring back Clint. "Reappearing in 3...2...1..." We all look at the platform closely.
Clint rematerializes on the platform, breathing heavily, holding a baseball glove in his hands. Nat rushes up onto the platform, kneeling next to him. "Hey, look at me...you okay?" He holds up the baseball glove and throws it over to Tony, "Yeah, it worked." I look at Steve and smile, "we did it." I whisper into his chest.
The next morning, we were all sitting in a room with hologram displays, showcasing each of the six Infinity stones. Tony and Bruce were pacing at the front, leading the discussion. 
"Okay, so the "how" works. Now we gotta figure out the when and the where. Almost all of us had an encounter with at least one of the six Infinity stones at some point in time." Steve's hand sits delicately on my thigh, rubbing small circles as he always does when he's anxious. "I'd substitute the word encounter for damn well near been killed by one of the six Infinity stones." Tony says, sitting down.
Bruce sighs, "regardless, we only have enough Pym Particles for one round trip each, and these stones have been in a lot of places throughout history." "Our history. So not a lot of convenient spots to just drop in." Tony pulls up the attack on New York on his hologram. 
"Okay, let's start with the Aether. Thor, what do you know?" We all look at Thor perched in a chair with sunglasses on, one hand in his pants, the other holding a beer. 
He has really let himself go these past 5 years...
"Is he asleep?" "No, I'm pretty sure he's dead." Nat throws a crumbled up piece of paper at his head and he jolts up. 
"Where to start? Umm... The Aether, first, is not a stone, someone called it a stone before. It's more of a... an angry sludge thing, so... someones gonna need to amend that. Here's an interesting story though, many years ago... My grandfather had to hide the stones from the Dark Elves..." He wiggles his fingers to imitate a spooky ghost. "Wooooh, scary beings. So Jane," An image of Jane Foster pops up on the screen, "Oh, there she is. That's Jane... She's... an old flame of mine... She... she stuck her hand inside a rock this one time... and then the Aether stuck itself inside her... And, she became very, very sick. So I had to take her to Asgard, which is where I'm from. And we had to try and fix her. We were dating at the time, you see. I got to introduce her to my Mother... who's dead," Thor starts to look broken, and seems on the verge of tears. "...and oh you know, Jane and I aren't even dating anymore, these things happen though you know, nothing last forever," Tony walks up towards him and starts to push him back to his chair. "I'm not done yet, the only thing permanent in life is impermanence -"
"Awesome. Eggs? Breakfast?" Tony successfully sits him down in the chair. "I'd like a Bloody Mary, thank you." 
"I'll get it." I shook my head and carried myself to the kitchen to make Thor a Bloody Mary. Tony had ordered us all breakfast and I went to collect it before joining everyone again. "Thor?" I kicked his knee with my foot, "Oh! Right! Bloody Mary, thank you Lady Stark-Rogers." He grabbed the drink from my hand and downed it in a few sips. I handed out all of the food and we all ate, while continuing to brainstorm. 
"Quill said he stole the Power Stone from Morag." Rocket flashed an image of the stone on the screen. "Is that a person?" Scott asks, valid question. "No, Morag's a planet. Quill was a person." He replied and Scott nodded, seemingly having further questions. 
"Thanos found the Soul Stone on Vormir." Nebula says from the adjoining room, leaning up against a wall. "What's Vormir?" I ask her and she pushes off from the wall. "A dominion of death, at the very center of Celestial existence. It's where...Thanos murdered my sister." An awkward silence falls upon the room. Nat quickly writes down what Nebula has just said. 
"Not it." Scott raises his hand slightly, breaking the awkward tension. 
"Taylor?" I looked over at Tony who brought up the Tesseract on the hologram. "What can you tell us about the Tesseract?" He asked. 
"Other than it hurt like a bitch when Hydra used me a a lab rat...I don't know much. I know I'm connected to it though. Like Wanda was to the mine stone." Steve squeezed my thigh as I spoke. I never did actually tell anyone what happened there. Besides the more obvious things. 
A few hours later, we were still struggling to pick our moments in time. Nat and Tony were spread out on the table while Bruce was laying on the floor. Thor was likely asleep and Rocket was doing...well whatever talking Raccoons do...eat garbage?
I was now sitting across Steve's lap with my head nestled in his neck. I planted soft kisses on his neck every once in a while and I would feel his grip on my hip tighten each time. 
Tony is mindlessly flashing each stone onto the hologram above him and pauses on the Time Stone. "That time stone guy..." Nat sits up a little and turns to Bruce and Tony. "Doctor Strange." "Yeah, what kind of doctor was he?" "Ear-nose-throat meets rabbit from a hat." Tony remarks and brings his image on the screen. "Nice place in the village, though." Tony scoffs at Bruce. "Yea. Sullivan Street." "Hmm...Bleecker." Nat cut their conversation off, "wait, he lived in New York?" She sat up abruptly, "guys...if you pick the right year, there are three stones in New York. Loki and the attack on New York and Strange."  
Steve nods and looks around the room. 
"So, we split into three teams. A team in New York, another to Vormir, and the other to Morag. That's the plan. Six stones, three teams, one shot."