In Your Eyes // Steve Rogers

One Shot to Win

During Thor's entire speech, we had all been sharing looks of second-hand embarrassment between each other. Bruce tried waving his hand horizontally at his throat, gesturing for him to cut the story. Thor didn't notice. He didn't notice our disinterest in the story, he only saw Scott enthusiastically nod a few times and assumed to keep going.  

Tony stood from his seat and started to rub Thor's arm sympathetically, forcing a smile, and saying quietly, "All right, Thor, good story, thank you--" but he was cut off by Thor.

"The only thing permanent in life is impermanence!" finished Thor.

Tony paused, waiting for Thor to continue. When he didn't, he clapped his hands. "Awesome. Eggs? Breakfast?" he offered Thor. 

"No, I'd like a Bloody Mary," ordered Thor, nodding happily. 

Tony denied him and nudged him kindly back to his seat in the corner. When Thor sat back down, I rubbed my temples and suggested maybe we should all eat, and we decided to intercept for lunch. 

We ordered Chinese and distributed everyone's Styrofoam boxes. Once we had about an hour to talk about things that weren't related to the Time Stone and fill our stomachs, we went back to work. 

"Okay," said Steve, reclining in his chair. "Power stone next? Clara, where'd you see it?"

"Uh, it was, like in a vault. It sat there for years and years until Quill found it, but he got ambushed by some people," I recalled briefly. 

"By Ronan's troops," said Nebula.

Rocket cleared his throat loudly. He laced his fingers together and then stretched them out, cracked his neck, and then climbed on top of the table. He crossed his wrists behind his back and started to pace on the table. I watched him try to ignore Kona as she started to jog circles around the table, her tongue flopping out of her mouth, eagerly eyeing him. 

He stopped and pointed at her. "Will you control that beast?"

"Rocket, she's fine. She just wants to be your friend," I assured. 

"Or to eat him," suggested Tony, lazily throwing his wrist in the air. 

I rolled my eyes. "Stop. I've got her, Rocket. Go on."

Rocket continued to pace, projecting his voice for all to hear. "All right. Quill said he stole the Power Stone from Morag."

"Is that a person?" asked Bruce. 

"Quill's a person," I muttered as I hurried to type Rocket's information into the tablet. I glanced up, ensuring my typing was showing up on the projected screen as well. 

"Morag is a planet," finished Rocket. 

Scott's head flew up, his eyes swelling with wonder. "Like a planet? Like in outer space?"

"Aw, look, it's like a little puppy, all happy and everything," cooed Rocket, mocking Scott. He bent over to ruffle Scott's hair. "Do you wanna go to space? Do you wanna go to space, puppy?"

Rocket continued on to tell the story about how he and Groot intercepted the Power Stone from Quill and Gamora, which landed them in prison, and then the rest was history. He let us through the path the Power Stone took with himself and the other Guardians. 

Kona continued to pace as Rocket walked. I tried having her sit with me but she was being entirely too distracted by his claim to the center of attention, so I excused myself and the two of us went on a walk around the Compound. 

I assumed further discussion went on. I had listened to Rocket's story, though my mind found itself wandering. Steve remembered that five years ago, when I was still Agamotto, I had tracked the paths of the Infinity Stones. I barely remembered the knowledge I acquired from that; some of it came back to my mind when he reminded me of it. I took Kona on a walk to help soothe Rocket's annoyance with her, but also to try to be encapsulated by the quietness outside and recall whatever information I could of the Infinity Stones paths from my memory. Five years hadn't seemed like a long time to recall from until I tried to do so.