If Keira and Natasha had hoped to return to a quiet sit-down in the library, they were sadly mistaken.
There was only one who had already settled down in their chair, attentively glancing between everybody, and that person was Scott.
But Natasha merely had to look around at them all for the men to quiet down and find their places, something that Keira couldn't help but smirk at.
One might think that Steve or Tony was in charge, but in reality, it was Natasha who held the reins.
So, in the end, most of them ended up in the office chairs, their elbows resting on the table. Others, like Clint, chose to remain standing, simply leaning against the wall.
Keira, however, went with the more comfortable option and ended up on the sofa. With one leg thrown over the back of it, she had her head propped up with a few pillows, laying spread eagle across it.
To nobody's surprise, Steve was the one to take the driver's seat in the session, assisted by Tony who was better at the technical stuff.
All the screens in the room sported one Infinity Stone each.
Keira found that her eyes kept jumping to the Mind Stone. After all, that was the one Stone she had the most experience with. From burying the countless victims it reaped during HYDRA's trial period to granting Wanda her powers.
But the team had also been in contact with the Mind Stone a lot, mostly thanks to Vision. And the Space Stone had stirred up quite some trouble with the Chitauri back in 2012. The rest of the Stones, however, were unknown to Keira.
Time, Reality, Power, and Soul.
"Okay, so the 'how' works. Now, we gotta figure out the 'when' and the 'where'." Steve faced the rest of the team, almost all of them listening carefully to his words. Thor, however, looked like he had fallen asleep while sitting. It was difficult to tell though, due to the sunglasses covering his eyes and the beer still in his hand. "Almost everyone in this room has had an encounter with at least one of the six Infinity Stones."
"Or substitute the word 'encounter' for 'damn near being killed' by one of the six Infinity Stones." Tony filled in, occasionally sipping his coffee.
Keira mindlessly tapped her fingers against her thigh, her eyes darting between the different screens and trying to figure out a plan. It was quite easy to figure out what powers each Stone held, having seen them in action back in Wakanda, but she was still unable to figure out the Soul Stone's purpose. It didn't quite seem to fit in with the rest of the Stones. But she was pulled out of her head by Scott's voice and looked over at him.
He looked a bit... lost. "Well, I haven't, but I don't even know what the hell you're all talking about."
Bruce stepped forwards. "Regardless, we only have enough Pym Particles for one round-trip each. And these Stones have been in a lot of different places throughout history."
"Our history." Tony corrected him, thinking back at the Space and Mind Stone, which the Avengers had encountered the most. "So not a lot of convenient spots to just drop in, yeah?"
Clint was standing with his arms crossed, not saying much. But he had caught on to what Tony was saying. "Which means we have to pick our targets."
"Correct."
Steve eyed the screens, and it landed on the one Stone that wasn't solid. The Reality Stone was moving slowly, like a living organism, but it felt more menacing than that. "So, let's start with the Aether. Thor, what do you know?"
Every single pair of eyes turned to the god in the corner, Keira nearly cricking her neck in order to do so since he was sitting behind her. The god didn't make a move, or anything to recognize that he had been spoken to.
"Is he asleep?" Natasha asked the room at large.
"No, no." Rhodey said dryly. "I'm pretty sure he's dead."
Keira narrowed her eyes in warning at Rhodey, who recoiled slightly when catching her gaze. It wasn't fair to make fun of Thor, when he so obviously had fallen victim to depression. When nobody made a move to wake up the god, she sighed deeply before pushing herself up from the sofa and wandered over to Thor. She gently slipped the beer can out of his grip before tapping his shoulder. "Hey, Thunderbolt. Time to wake up."
The god startled awake, waving his arms around before his eyes fell on Keira. "Huh? Lady Keira? Has the liquor dried out?" He asked, pulling his sunglasses from his face and rubbing his eyes.
"No, no, I got your beer right here." Keira answered, shaking the can slightly in her can without spilling any of its contents. "But we would like some intel on the Aether, if you're feeling up to it?"
"Uh, sure. Alright." Thor hoisted himself up from the armchair and grabbed the can from Keira before stumbling to the front by the screens. Looking at the screen that showed the Reality Stone, he gestured to it. "Uh, where to start? Uhm... The Aether, firstly, is not a Stone. Someone called it a Stone before." He pointed at Steve, who looked a bit affronted. "Uhm, it's more of a... an angry sludge sort of thing, so... someone's gonna need to amend that, and stop saying that."
Thor paused and used some eyedrops before continuing. "Here's an interesting story, though, about the Aether. My grandfather, many years ago had to hide the Stone from the Dark Elves. Wooh." He wiggled his fingers and chuckled, as if telling a scary story to a couple of kids. "Scary beings. So, Jane, actually... Oh, there she is." A photograph of Jane Foster replaced the Stone on the screen. "Yeah, so Jane was an old flame of mine. Uh, you know, she stuck her hand inside a rock this one time... And then the Aether stuck itself inside her, and she became very, very sick."
Glancing around, Keira couldn't help but feel pity for Thor. The rest of the team was looking at him in either confusion or exhaustion, not having the patience for what seemed to be a very outdrawn story that had nothing to do with the actual Stone.
"And so, I had to take her to Asgard, which is where I'm from, and we had to try and fix her. We- We were dating at the time, you see, and I got to introduce her to my mother... who's..." Thor sighed, his face scrunching up. "Who's dead, and, uhm... Oh, you know, Jane and I aren't even dating anymore, so... Yes, these things happens, though. You know? Nothing lasts forever. The only thing that-"
Keira couldn't stand to watch it anymore, so she pushed herself up from the armrest and gently guided Thor back to his chair. "Let's sit down, okay, buddy?"
"I'm not done yet." The god protested, but Keira used some of her strength to push him down, which he accepted after swaying on the spot for just a moment. "The only thing that is permanent in life, is impermanence."
When Thor had settled down in his chair, Keira turned around and Tony's hand landed on her shoulder, silently thanking her for interfering. "Awesome. Eggs? Breakfast?"
"No, I'd like a Bloody Mary." Thor piped up from the corner, one finger in the air as if he was ordering from a waiter.
"And I'm craving Chinese food, so if anyone's up for it, lemme know." Keira took up her phone, and for the first time in a very long time, the sight of her background didn't cause her total misery. Because now, she had a chance.
A chance to get her Wanda back.
Scott jumped out of his seat, nearly causing the chair to topple over in his excitement. "I want food too! I want noodles, please!" It turned out that trying to zigzag his way through chairs and people to reach Keira so he could take a look at the menu, was a bit of a challenge. Because he fell flat on his face just as he passed Rocket, causing the room to erupt in laughter.
Although, Keira wasn't sure it was completely Scott's fault. The raccoon was laughing along with everyone else, but he had a certain gleam in his eyes that was hard to place.
❆
Said and done, Keira ended up ordering food for everybody.
Because it wasn't just her and Scott that were hungry, of course. Among all the Chinese food, there was even a huge bucket of ice cream, thanks to Bruce, who had a bad craving for Ben & Jerry's.
This time around, they all ended up around the table with their faces buried in the food. Something that shut most of them up, surprisingly enough.
"Hey, stop that!" Natasha exclaimed indignantly, smacking Keira on the forehead with the back of her chopsticks.
Keira winced, and retreated back in her seat, rubbing the now-smarting spot. "Auch! That was so unnecessary. I just wanted to try the squid." The painful grimace that painted her face melted away as she put the stolen piece of squid into her mouth. It tasted a bit like chicken, but more rubbery. Not too bad actually.
"Well, order it yourself next time then." Natasha shrugged with a smirk, continuing to elegantly use the chopsticks to scoop pieces of squid and rice into her mouth.
Keira just rolled her eyes, shaking her head faintly while demonstratively stabbing a piece of fried chicken on her own plate. "I did order this. And mind you, paid for it. So technically, it's all mine." She shot back, eyeing the redhead's food just long enough to make Natasha put her arms around the takeout container and pull it towards her in a protective manner.
"Don't you dare." Natasha scowled, waving a reprimanding chopstick at the mutant, who just chuckled in response.
If there was one thing Keira would never tire of, it would be teasing Natasha.
The rest of them started to chat, once their bellies weren't howling for food any longer, and a pleasant atmosphere fell over the room.
"Okay, so what Stone is next?" Steve broke the silence after a while, leaning back in his chair to breathe a bit between bites.
Rocket, who had finished his meal already, climbed onto the table. "Quill said he stole the Power Stone from Morag." It was quite obvious that Rocket was a part of the group that couldn't sit still for long, as he dodged around the various boxes of Chinese takeout as the others kept eating.
"Is that a person?" Bruce asked, his cheeks full of ice cream.
"No, Morag's a planet. Quill was a person."
Scott looked up with big eyes. "Like a planet? Like in outer space?" Even with the idea of time travel at hand, he still had difficulty grasping the concept that space travel was a thing. And that other planets existed out there, with their own living populations and fauna. It was a lot to wrap his head around.
While the others had grown accustomed to the idea during the years, he had only found out about it all after he came out of the Quantum Realm. Which was barely even a week.
"Oh, look. It's like a little puppy, all happy and everything." Rocket taunted, ruffling Scott's hair like a dog. "Do you wanna go to space? Do you wanna go to space, puppy? I'll get you to space."
Keira couldn't help the silent chuckle that escaped her. The mention of a puppy got her mind spinning to Nikato, which in turn painted a very funny picture in her mind. She could just imagine how the Kangal mistook Rocket for a toy, grabbed him by the tail, and dragged him across the compound, much to Rocket's dismay.
Oh, great. Now she missed her dog even more.
It took them a while to finish all the food, and as they did so, the Stone talk died down. Instead, people rode the wave that Rocket had created with his little puppy joke.
Genuine smiles could be seen all around, and there was more chatter in the room now than it had been during the last five years.
Some took a walk after finishing their meal, hoping it would lessen the upcoming food coma, while the rest of them just moved to another part of the library to continue the talk about the Stones. None of them had the energy to clean.
It was really lucky that they had some members who had been out in space before, or they would've been seriously underinformed. Like, they would've had zero information about the Power Stone without Rocket, and the same was true for the Soul Stone. However, it was Nebula who took over the reins regarding the orange Stone.
"Thanos found the Soul Stone on Vormir."
"What is Vormir?" Natasha didn't even bother to look up from her notepad, carefully finishing up her notes about the Power Stone. She was writing it all down, everything from what they knew of the Stones' origins to their possible locations during the years. It was always easier to spot patterns if she could lay them out in front of her. So, jotting everything down it was.
Besides, information never hurt anyone.
"A dominion of death at the very center of celestial existence. It's where... Thanos murdered my sister." Nebula said somberly, hanging her head.
A very tense silence followed her words as they all glanced around at each other.
They all knew about Gamora, how she had been sacrificed, no, murdered, by Thanos. And while it was only Nebula and Rocket who had known Gamora in the room, they all knew what it felt like to lose someone.
One must admit however, it was a different thing to lose a loved one to the Blip, rather than to a cold-blooded murder.
"Not it." Scott mumbled softly, trying to take up as little space as possible.
Keira glanced around the room, and she knew, even without listening in on their thoughts, that no one felt particularly motivated to take Vormir as their destination. "Well, what the hell. I'll take the dominion of death." Judging by the looks she received, one might've thought that she had just lost her head and thrown it down a bowling alley. "Somebody's gotta do it. Might as well be me." She shrugged, trying to tell herself that it would work out.
How bad could it possibly be?
Nobody dared to argue with her but the tense atmosphere that had settled over the room didn't quite evaporate even when the matter of Vormir had been settled.
Instead, Steve was the first to excuse himself, claiming that he needed some alone time to think. As soon as he had left, Clint, Nebula, Scott, and Rocket did the same.
Keira chose to take a quick breather as well, wanting to feel some fresh air in her lungs before she retreated back into heavy thinking. As she walked back into the office, she snatched a few pillows from the couch.
Bruce was already lying on the floor, his hands stretched out in front of him as he cleaned his glasses. Tony was spread across the table, his head resting on a few books while Natasha was sitting hunched over her notepad, one knee drawn up to her chest.
"Well, aren't you just a sight for sore eyes? I am here to save your poor bodies from a possible wry neck." Keira announced with a bow, throwing her hands out in a grand gesture before throwing pillows in Tony and Bruce's direction. She then hopped up on the table, scattering a few papers as she did so.
Tony's talk about chronospheres temporarily seized as he caught the pillows, but as soon as he had readjusted his position, he continued, something that earned a groan from Natasha.
Keira, however, didn't mind it at all but rather found it mildly interesting to listen to. That might be thanks to an older movie she watched recently that touched on that exact subject. Her hands automatically found Natasha's hair, gently running her fingers through it to untangle the braid, something that earned her an appreciative hum from the redhead.
As the subject of different time continuums kept on going, Natasha slid lower and lower until she ended up with her head in Keira's lap, still with the mutant's fingers playing with her hair.
"Wouldn't it be nice to have the Time Stone in your hand though?" Keira let her thoughts run aloud, not caring if they would be deemed immature or not. "Like, if you're taking out money from the bank, you'd have an infinite money glitch. Take the money, rewind, take the money again, and so on, and so on."
"Hey! Is this your not-so-sneaky way of saying I don't pay you well?" Tony gasped, lifting his head up just enough to throw an inquisitorial look at the blonde.
Keira pressed her lips together in a smile, throwing her hands up in surrender. "I would never. I'm just saying that-" A disgruntled hum caused her to look down, only to find Natasha staring up at her with a meaningful look. Of course, she couldn't quit her duty of running her fingers through the redhead's hair. "-that it could be a way to solve poverty. If you could just respawn money, and give it to the people who need it, then we wouldn't have homeless people, fighting for their next meal. Everyone would have a roof over their head."
"It wouldn't work like that." Bruce shook his head. He admired the mutant's gullible approach, but the real world was crueler than that.
Keira pursed her lips and glanced down at him. "Why not? Seems simple enough to me."
"Because in order for the whole money system to work, it needs to have value. If everybody has access to an unlimited amount all the time, then it doesn't have a value anymore. Which in turn causes inflation, increasing the prices in an attempt to level the playfield. And if-"
"Okay, okay. I get it. Boring economics that I'll never understand." Keira interrupted him. "Thanks for trying though, Brucie. Anyway, back to the matter at hand. About that Time Stone guy..."
"Doctor Strange." Bruce answered without missing a beat, merely giving the mutant a slightly patronizing smile.
Natasha was mindlessly twirling a pen between her fingers, the notepad lying on her stomach. "Yeah, what kind of a doctor was he?"
"Ear-nose-throat meets rabbit-from-hat." Tony informed, rubbing the bridge of his nose in frustration. Trying to find the key points where they could jump in to grab the Stones without causing any damage proved to be more difficult than he had imagined.
"Nice place in the Village though."
"Yeah, on Sullivan Street?"
Bruce hummed in disagreement. "Hm, Bleecker."
Keira's fingers froze for a second as the gears clicked into place. And when she glanced down at Natasha, she saw that she wasn't alone in slowly connecting the dots. "Wait, he lived in New York?"
"No, no, he lived in Toronto." Tony argued sarcastically. "Have you been listening to anything?"
"Uh, yeah, on Bleecker and Sullivan." Bruce said, talking over Tony.
"Guys..." Natasha began slowly, keeping eye contact with Keira. "If you pick the right year, there are three Stones in New York."
She and Keira had thought along the same lines. They already knew that both the Space Stone and the Mind Stone would be in New York during 2012, thanks to Loki and the Chitauri. And since Strange lived on Bleecker, that would mean that the Time Stone would also be there.
"Shut the front door." Bruce pushed himself up into a sitting position, barely believing that it could be true.
Tony looked disbelieving as well, but Keira could only smile. One of their biggest problems at the moment had just been solved. And to think that it started out as a rambling about chronospheres. "Well, let's gather the rest of the group so we can deliver the good news. Hopefully, they've made some progress on the other Stones as well."
And in the end, they all ended up in the library. Again.
Their plan was simple. Jump in, get the Stone, and get out. They needed to succeed on their first try, as they couldn't afford any do-overs.
So, no pressure.
Thor and Rocket would focus on the Aether, or the Reality Stone, which would be back on Asgard in 2013. It would be in its liquid form, housed inside Jane Foster, which would cause some difficulty as they couldn't just grab it and go. But they seemed up for the task, already having an extraction tool. And Rocket would be able to steer the mission right, in case it proved too heavy for Thor to carry.
Bruce, Scott, Steve, and Tony would venture back to New York in 2012. Their group was the biggest, considering the fact that they needed to get not only one, not two, but three Stones. Mind, Space, and Time. It looked like Scott wouldn't get to see space after all.
Nebula and Rhodey would go to Morag back in 2014, and intercept Quill before he had a chance to steal the Power Stone.
And of course, Clint and Natasha would accompany Keira to Vormir.
Steve drew a deep breath, coming to the end of the meeting. "Alright. We have a plan. Six Stones, three teams, one shot. Get some well-deserved rest. See you at sunrise." And with that, the man walked out of the room.
~~~~~~~~~~
A/N: Well, I'm currently stuck with a writer's block that has lasted for weeks, which sucks. And I'm on the Vormir chapter soooo I'm starting to get stressed ahahah.
Luckily, I managed to write a rough outline of how I want things to go about a year ago so that simplifies things a bit at least. Just gotta dig myself up from this slump hahaha.
Anyways, hope y'all are doing good despite the world going to ash.