Galactic Savior | Avengers✔️

✮ 𝟎𝟔𝟓 ✮

lost a part of ourselves

MARLENE stood near Tony, resting her head on his shoulder after he stopped muttering under his breath about how reckless she was. Catching Clint's eye, he sent a wink her way that had her smirking before Tony covered her eyes.

"You and Clint are still in trouble, no talking to each other," Tony said causing Rhodey to laugh softly. Marlene pushed his hand off as Steve walked past her with a kiss to her cheek. "Oh, God. I gotta keep you away from everyone!"

"Tony," Marlene said with a laugh, shoving him aside as Steve pointed to the stones on the board. Natasha, Rocket, and Tony had already explained the time machine they created, and Marlene was excited, actually. She was ready to go back and do things right. "Where are we starting?"

Steve smiled at her. "Okay, so the how works. Now we gotta figure out the when and the where. Almost all of us has had an encounter with at least one of the six Infinity Stones."

"Well I'd substitute the word encounter for damn well near been killed by one of the six Infinity Stones," Tony muttered, nudging Marlene.

"I'd substitute encounter for being created by one," Marlene added with a grin.

Scott shook his head. "I haven't done any of that, I don't even know what the hell you're all talking about."

Marlene grinned at Scott. "I like you. I just met you, and you're great," she said with a nod. Scott grinned more.

Steve sighed. "All right, c'mon," he said as Marlene met his eyes with a smirk. "Focus."

Bruce nodded, pointing at the stones. "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. So, not a lot of convenient spots to just drop in," Tony added.

Clint nodded. "Which means we have to pick our targets."

Tony gave him a look before saying, "Correct." Clint smirked.

"Let's start with the Aether. Thor, what do you know?" Steve asked as they all turned to Thor in the corner. He wore sunglasses as he looked to be barely breathing.

"Is he asleep?" Natasha asked.

Rhodey shook his head, leaning back. "No, I'm pretty sure he's dead."

"Thor," Marlene said, walking forward to touch his shoulder. Thor jumped, grabbing her hand. "Hey, buddy. It's just me."

"Lady Marlene," Thor said with a nod as he grabbed her hand to help stand.

Thor stood in front of the holograms with a frown on his face. "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," he began as Tony rubbed his forehead in annoyance.

"Here's an interesting story though, many years ago... My grandfather had to hide the stones from the Dark Elves," he paused to wiggle his fingers as he said, "Wooooh, scary beings. So Jane," an image of Jane Foster popped 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."

Marlene frowned as Thor began to look defeated again. "And, oh, you know, Jane and I aren't even dating anymore, these things happen though you know, nothing last forever," he finished as Tony walked forward to push him back to his chair. "I'm not done yet, the only thing permanent in life is impermanence."