At the conference table, they had sat Tony down. Bruce hooked him up to an IV machine to get his fluids back to normal. Natasha returned from the kitchen and set down a plate of saltine crackers in front of him.
Tony remained the only one sitting at the table. The remaining team gathered, spread throughout the room. Carol, Thor, and Nebula remained on the outskirts. Rocket had sat against the wall.
Steve and I naturally gravitated towards standing together. He rested his palms on the chair in front of him, watching Tony solemnly. I watched him, too, but didn't spare a glance in our directions.
Rhodey programmed the projector on the table to work. A hologram of faces started to appear, with a red shaded number rapidly increasing, representing the names of the Vanished as they were reported missing across the world.
"It's been twenty three days since Thanos came to Earth," said Rhodey, beginning the meeting.
"World governments are in pieces. Parts that are still working are trying to take a census... It looks like he did, well, exactly what he said he was gonna do: Thanos wiped out fifty percent of all living creatures," continued Natasha.
"Where is he now?" asked Tony, looking around. "Where?"
"We don't know. He just opened a portal and walked through," said Steve.
Tony, at last, rolled his eyes to meet mine. "'A portal' huh? Portals. That's your territory, isn't it?"
"If I knew where he went, we would've been there," I sighed.
"You knew where I was though didn't you?" he asked rhetorically. His head was tilted, his brow furrowed, because he knew he was in the higher position of power.
I shrugged. "I went back, Tony. By the time I went back to Titan, you weren't there." He opened his mouth to say something witty, I suppose, but I didn't care to hear it. "You're Tony Stark. You created the greatest invention of our time in a cave. Did you really expect me to believe you wouldn't find your way home?"
"I wouldn't have, if not for her," he was quick to retort, pointing to Carol. "Clara Blake, Watcher of Time and Space, Agamotto or something, couldn't be bothered to find me. But, sure. I digress."
I pursed my lips and tilted my palms face up for a moment. I didn't have anything else to say. He wasn't going to hear my reasoning; he looked for blame, and he placed it on me. I let it happen.
Tony turned to look at Thor. "What's up with him?"
"Oh, he's pissed," chimed Rocket. "Thinks he failed. Which, of course he did, but there's a lot of that goin' around, ain't there?"
"Honestly, until this exact second, I thought you were a Build-A-Bear," admitted Tony.
"Maybe I am," said Rocket.
Steve steered the conversation back on track. "We've been hunting Thanos for three weeks now. Deep space scans, satellites, and we got nothing," he said. He faltered, then inhaled a soft breath. "Tony, you fought him."
"Who told you that? No, I didn't fight him. He wiped my face with a planet while the Bleeker Street Magician gave away the Stone," corrected Tony hastily. Raising his eyebrow, he turned to me, waving his finger in the air. "You know about that by the way? The guy you trusted to protect your precious Stone gave it away. We kept it from you and I trusted him. But maybe we should have just given it to you."
"I know about it. But you also know what he said. 14 million possibilities. One win. He did it for a reason," I reminded him.
Tony rolled his eyes. "God. He lied to you and you still trust him."
"Okay, okay," interrupted Steve. "Did he give you any clues? Any coordinates?"
Tony made a fart noise from his mouth. He slouched back in his chair, casually admitting, "I saw this coming a few years back. Had a vision. I didn't wanna believe it, thought I was dreaming."
"Tony, I'm gonna need you to focus," said Steve.
"And I needed you. As in past tense. And that trumps what you needed. It's too late, buddy. Sorry," he said, though we all knew he truly wasn't apologetic. He stood, slamming his hands on the table, sending the plate of crackers and his drink falling over. "You know know what I need? A shave," he continued. He ripped the IV from his wrist. "You know I remember telling you that what we needed was a pseudo armor around the world remember that? Whether it impacted our precious feedroms or not. That's what we needed."
Steve watched Tony sadly. Softly, he said, "Well, that didn't work out, did it?"
"I said we'd lose. You said we'll do that together too. And guess what, Cap? We lost. And you weren't there," snarled Tony, his body trembling with not just malnutrition any longer but rage, remorse. "But that's what we do. Our best work after the fact? We're the Avengers. Not the Prevengers-"
Rhodey stepped forward and grabbed Tony, as he was looking wobbly. "Okay," he muttered to him. "You made your point. Just sit."
"No, you know what, here's my point: she's great!" said Tony, pointing to Carol. "We need you, you're new blood." He turned back to Steve, walking right up to him. They stared at each other, each hurting the other with what they had done, what they were doing.
"We're a bunch of tired old mules. I got nothing for you, Cap, nothing. No coordinates, no clues, no strategies, no options— zero, zip, nada. No trust. Liar," snapped Tony. He ripped off the nanotech diamond from his chest and palced it in Steve's hand. "Here. Take this. You find Thanos, you put that on, you hide."
Tony dropped unconscious on the floor in front of Steve's feet. I was quick to catch his head with my green energy, stopping him from hitting it against the floor. I dropped him gently onto the floor.
"Do you still have a bed back in Med?" I asked Bruce. When he nodded, I scooped a portal underneath Tony's body and placed him onto a bed in the Medical Bay of the Compound.
Bruce, Pepper, and Rhodey stepped through my portal to be with him.
"We'll give him a sedative, he'll probably be out for the rest of the day," said Bruce.
We nodded. I closed the portal.
"You guys take care of him and I'll bring him a Zhor Elixir when I come back," decided Carol. She turned on her heel and began to leave the Compound.
Natasha, Steve, and I shared a confused look before hustling to follow after her.
"Where are you going?" asked Steve.
Carol turned and stopped. "To kill thanos."
Clara. Hear me.
I stopped in my tracks. I turned from the group to seek quiet. I heard the Stone, it was speaking to me, but it was soft and distant. After a month of radio silence, it reached to me, across the universe. I was desperately trying to hear it.
Clara, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Clara. Hear me. Please.
"What are you talking about? Slow down," I mumbled, placing my hands on my head. I closed my eyes, and they moved across my eyelids in fast beats. I tried to focus.
Clara. He's going to destroy us. He's going to make it permanent. This is my end. Clara. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
My eyes shot open. "No, where are you? Where are you, tell me where you are, I will save you."
"What?" I heard Steve say behind me.
I waved my hand at him to silence him. "I'm supposed to protect you, you can't leave me, please, just—"
Clara, I'm on the planet—
Silence took over my head. I stared into the distance, my eyes widened. I felt time fall still, silent, for a mere moment.
Suddenly, a burning fire sparked within my chest. I let out a scream, of loss, of pain. I felt a definitive stab directly in my heart, my soul. As I fell to my knees on the floor, I watched as time slowed around me, and I was helpless as the green energy that lived within me fanned out around me and disintegrated as it left my body and mixed with the air.
I heard groans around me. My outburst had caused a wave of energy to explode and throw my teammates to the floor.
I felt different, automatically I knew instantly the Time Stone was destroyed. I lost the power it gave me. I lost my title. Time lost it's only remaining protector. I was reduced to a mere human.
"Clara!" shouted Steve, and I left my thoughts. I brought my eyes to meet his. "Clara, what the hell?"
"I'm..." I croaked. I blinked once and a dam of tears poured out of my eyes. "He destroyed them."
"What?" mumbled Natasha in disbelief.
"I-It's my source of my power. I was supposed to protect it. It called to me and I failed it," I croaked. Through my glossed eyes, I turned to Natasha and Carol. "Thanos destroyed the Stones. All of them."
"I can look for an energy signature, the energy signature exerted from Earth when the Snap happened is unlike anything else anyone's ever seen; it has to have been replicated from wherever he is," said Rocket immediately. He scurried away from where Steve and I sat on the floor and started to scramble through the debris for his device.
Steve brought me into his arms, tucking my head into his chest. He held me.
"I'm nothing," I whispered to him. "I was our best shot in finding information to trace the Stone's paths to find them and they're destroyed. They're gone. I failed."
"Stop," he whispered back.
"I was supposed to be more than you all, I was one of the strongest beings in the universe, and... And now I'm nothing. I was supposed to be more than a human, Protector of Space and Time, and I'm nothing. I'm nothing," I sobbed to him, clutching his shirt. "This is exactly what he said would happen, that I'd be a disgrace to Time and he'd be glad to not be alive when it happened."
Steve didn't have anything to say. We both knew I had gotten too cocky with my abilities. I hadn't even tapped into the full scope of my abilities as agamotto, I got cocky, and I lost it before I could truly help anyone. The fate of the universe tested higher in my hands because of the power I'd been given and I had dropped the ball entirely.
Rhodey, Bruce, and Thor ran into the room. They surveyed the destruction, saw me crumbled in Steve's arms, and looked to Natasha for answers.
"Thanos destroyed them," she said quietly. "Clara felt it. Her Stone is gone. And her power with it."
Rocket hummed in achievement which brought our attentions to him. He threw his device in the center of the room, where it projected a yellow planet with a cosmic burst of energy exerting from the center and out.
"When Thanos snapped his fingers, Earth became Ground Zero for a power surge of ridiculously cosmic proportions. No one's ever seen anything like it. Until now," he introduced.
"Thanos is there," chimed Nebula from the outsides of our formation. "The Garden."
They shared looks. It was what we had been waiting for. Now that we had it...
Bruce rubbed his hands together in slight opposition. "We'd be going in short handed."
"He doesn't have the Stones," I said.
"So let's get him," said Carol, her sorrowful eyes on me. "Interrogate him. Maybe, just maybe, there's a chance he didn't destroy them and did something else. Should they be alive, use them to bring everyone back."
Rhodey raised his eyebrow. "Just like that?"
"Yeah," said Steve stoically. "Just like that."
"If there's a small chance that we can undo this, we owe it to everyone who's not in this room to try," said Natasha boldly. "We owe it to Clara."
"If we do this, how do we know it won't turn out any differently than it did before?" asked Bruce.
"Because before you didn't have me," said Carol.
Rhodey rolled his eyes. "Hey, new girl? Everyone in this room is about that Superhero Life. And, if you don't mind me asking, where the Hell have you been all this time?"
"There are a lot of other planets in the universe," she defended. She looked at all of us. "Unfortunately, they didn't have you guys."
Thor left his post leaning against the doorframe to stand behind Carol. Hands on her hips, she turned, and their eyes stayed connected. He held his hand in the air. She didn't turn. She didn't flinch when Stormbreaker flew past her head and into Thor's hand— she just squinted her eyes at him.
He raised his head at the team. "I like this one."
Steve nodded once. "Let's go get this son of a bitch."