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It was almost impossible for Marlena to drown out the sound of Rocket's voice. She'd been listening to him drone on for about five minutes and each second that continued to pass was beginning to feel longer and longer. She wished the team would hurry up; she wished Tony wouldn't call everyone to the conference area at a specific time and not be on time himself. Marlena and Rocket were the only ones who'd arrived so far, and she wouldn't have put it past Tony to tell the two of them a different time. It'd been ten years, and he still enjoyed annoying the hell out of her. She couldn't help but love it, though.
"So, when did you and Captain Fancypants get together?" Rocket asked Marlena, a quiet laugh escaping him over the thought of it.
The brunette looked at him with bored eyes, her lips pressed to the top of the mug in her hands. She knew he wasn't finished saying what else he needed to say, so she remained quiet as she sipped away at the tea Tony made for her. It was pushing ten o'clock, and Marlena was just ready to figure out the game plan for retrieving the stones so she could take a nap.
"I mean, he's one of the few decent-looking humans I've ever seen," Rocket laughed loudly and slapped his hand to the table. "And he chose you?"
"Let me ask you something, Rocket," Marlena replied nonchalantly. She sat her mug down on the table and met his eyes. His words hadn't effected her whatsoever; they never did. She knew better than to take him seriously. "Say today I somehow miraculously get my powers back? How would it make you feel knowing I could permanently snap your jaw shut? Do you think you could handle never speaking again?"
"You terrans are a tough crowd," Rocket shook his head at Marlena and crossed his arms over his chest.
"Yeah, well, we're a lot tougher than we look," Marlena remarked.
Multiple footsteps could be heard, and Marlena turned her head to see Tony, Steve, and Natasha heading into the conference area, while the remainder of the team followed behind. The brunette held her arms up at Tony and scoffed. They were incredibly late.
Tony took a sip of his coffee and smirked at Marlena. "How long you been in here, Claire?"
Marlena rolled her eyes at him and picked up her mug. She knew he had told her a different time on purpose. "You're quite possibly the most annoying person on the planet," she grumbled before taking a sip of her tea.
"Yes, I know," Tony said and placed his cup onto the table. "By the way, I bought blonde roast for a reason, yet you fixed the dark."
"Yeah, you'll get over it."
"If you two don't mind..." Steve said to the two as everyone settled into their spots around the room.
Marlena sat back in her seat and pulled her legs up with her, thankful that she now had on leggings rather than jeans. Tony made himself comfortable standing at Steve's side. It made sense that the two of them were in charge of the meeting. She figured Thor could've joined them, but one look in his direction alerted Marlena he wouldn't be joining anyone any time soon. He was asleep, or at least that was what it looked like to her. She just wasn't sure how he managed to fall asleep so fast, but she figured it was the alcohol. It was the only explanation.
"So," Steve started, and the screens in front of them lit up with different images of the infinity stones. "The how works, but now we gotta figure out the when and the where. 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 been killed by one of the six infinity stones," Tony quickly added.
"I haven't," Scott said. "I don't even know what you guys are talking about."
"Consider yourself one of the lucky ones," Marlena muttered as she looked at Scott.
"Regardless," Bruce began speaking. "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, so not a lot of convenient spots to just drop in," Tony said to the crew.
"Which means we have to pick our targets," Clint added.
"Correct."
"So, let's start with the Aether," Steve looked at Thor, who was still sleeping in his chair in the corner of his room, but no one could tell from the sunglasses on his face. "Thor, what do you know?"
Everyone looked at Thor, but he still hadn't moved.
"Is he asleep?" Natasha asked no one in particular.
"No, no, I'm pretty sure he's dead," Rhodey remarked, earning a quiet laugh from Marlena.
"Can someone wake him up?" Steve asked.
Marlena knew no one else would, so she got up and walked over to Thor. She squeezed his nose shut with her fingers and waited for his body to react to the lack of oxygen, and once it had, she stepped back. Thor woke up immediately, but his glasses remained on his face. He looked at the team, he looked at the screen, and then he stood up, his covered eyes falling on Marlena.
"That was incredibly rude," he said to Marlena.
The brunette simply shrugged and sat back down, while Thor fixed his attention on the screens at the front of the room.
"What are you guys talking about?" he asked Steve as he eyed the screens. "The stones, okay, what about them? What do you need from me?"
"What do you know about the Aether?" Steve asked him again.
"Um, where to start," Thor took off his sunglasses, while everyone watched and waited for what he had to say. In actuality, they were ready to hear what was about to come out of his mouth. "Um, alright, the Aether—first, it's not a stone. Someone called it a stone before," he pointed to Steve, who gave the God of Thunder a look. "It's more of an angry sludge sort of thing, so someone's gonna need to amend that and stop saying that."
The team just watched as he put his eye drops in. The Thor in front of them definitely wasn't the Thor they knew and loved, but rather the product of intense grief. They all dealt with it and were all still dealing with it, so they couldn't and wouldn't judge him.
"Here's an interesting story about the Aether," Thor continued. "My grandfather, years ago, had to hide the stone from the dark elves, so Jane, actually—oh, there she is—Jane is an old flame of mine. She stuck her hand inside a rock this one time and then the Aether stuck itself inside her and she became very, very sick, and I had to take her to Asgard, which is where I'm from, and we had to fix her. We were dating at the time and I got to introduce her to my mother...who's dead."
Thor was getting upset, that much everyone could notice, but no one chimed in yet. He wasn't done speaking.
"Jane and I aren't even together anymore, but these things happen, y'know, nothing lasts forever...except the Aether."
Tony grabbed Thor and tried to take him back to his seat, but Thor was adamant. He wanted to be heard.
"I'm not done," he gently shoved Tony out of the way. "After that I gave the Aether to SHIELD for safe keeping," he mentioned to the group.
"And what a shame it is that they all turned out to be Hydra," Marlena spoke up nonchalantly. She looked up from her painted nails to look at Thor, a cheeky grin on her face.
"Why yes, I heard about that, so I had Lady Sif retrieve it for the Collector," Thor said to her. He wiped his face again. "She's dead, too."
"Good to know!" Tony finally grabbed ahold of Thor and pulled him off to the side. "You want some eggs for breakfast? Steve makes a mean omelet."
"No," Thor shook his head. "I'd like a Bloody Mary."
Marlena shook her head and looked over at Natasha, who was absolutely amused by the current situation.
"Do you think anyone would notice if I left?" she whispered to the redhead.
Natasha chuckled and nodded her head. There was no way she'd let Marlena leave anyway; if she had to deal with the boys for the rest of the day, Marlena had to deal with them as well. "There's no way you're leaving me in here with these idiots," she answered.
"Marlena," Tony's loud voice startled the brunette.
"Yes, Tony?"
"You are literally the walking essence of the Reality Stone as we've now come to know," Tony reminded her, though he knew he didn't need to. "Tell us what you know about your creator."
"Thank you for putting it that way, um, it's exactly what Thor said," Marlena answered and pushed her glasses further onto her face. "It's just angry sludge, it hurts like a bitch."
"So, what's say we go back in time five years ago to when you got your ass wiped by Thanos in Wakanda," Tony started carefully, though he didn't miss the glare on the young woman's face.
"How do you even know about that?"
"That's not important," Tony answered her quickly. "How would you feel about going back and getting the stone from, say, yourself?"
Marlena huffed and shook her head. "No thank you, I don't feel like creating an inter-dimensional evil twin; I told you it hurts like a bitch."
"Who's to say you don't already have an evil twin here in this dimension?" Tony teased the brunette with a wink. "What's the harm in one more?"
"Whatever you say, Tony."
"Right," Tony trilled his lips and turned to look at Thor. He was sipping on a Bloody Mary, and Tony didn't have a clue who brought it to him. The only thing he could gather from it—among Rhodey's and Clint's hushed conversation, the nauseating expression on Marlena's face as Thor burped loudly behind her, and Natasha scribbling away at her notepad—was that the day was going to be a long one.