It's Always Been You

hundred forty-five

Y/N felt like she should have portaled to the meeting location. But she couldn't get herself to go there immediately for some reason. It wasn't because did couldn't access the Space Stone, she could. She just... the way the Ancient One said, 'be careful', shook her slightly. Her and Steve headed into the alley at the same time.

"Did you get it?" Steve asked, carrying the case with Loki's scepter.

"I sent it back with Bruce," she replied. "I wanted to see if you guys successfully got the others before we headed back."

"I got mine." He slightly lifted the case. "Now I hope they got there's."

"Me too."

The twins looked around, trying to find where Scott and Tony were.

"Cap," Tony called. They turned to see Tony and Scott sitting in a broken car. They looked saddened, like something went wrong. "Sorry, buddy. We got a- problem."

"Huh. Yeah, we do," Scott huffed.

"What the hell did you two do?" Y/N asked.

Scott and Tony quickly explained how they almost had the Space Stone. Unfortunately, the Hulk slammed into Tony who had been holding the case with the Tesseract in it. Tony lost grip of the case and Loki picked up the Tesseract and disappeared. Tony was still sitting in the car as Scott had gotten out and paced.

"Well, what are we gonna do now?" Steve questioned.

"You know what? Give me a break, Steve," Tony said. "I just got hit in the head with the Hulk."

"You said that we had one shot," Scott freaked. "This-this was our shot. We shot it. It's shot. Six Stones or nothing. Six Stones or nothing-"

"You're repeating yourself, you know that? You're repeating yourself."

"You're repeating yourself. You're repeating yourself. You know- No."

"Dude, come on."

"You never wanted a time heist, you went on board with the time heist-"

"I dropped the ball."

"You ruined the time heist."

"Is that what I did?"

"Yeah!"

"Stop!" Y/N exclaimed. "Sounds to me that it wasn't something you could have controlled. Now stop fighting. Please! Just... just let me think..."

"Are there any other options with the Tesseract?" Steve wondered.

"No, no, no. There's no other options," Scott insisted. "There's no do-overs. We're not going anywhere else. We have one particle left. Each. That's it, alright? We use that- Bye, bye. You're not going home."

"Yeah, well if we don't try, then no one else is going home, either."

"Unless by some how using the Tesseract I could get back," Y/N said. "I could go somewhere that I know the Stones are all there and channel that power to come home."

"No," Steve said. "That's too big of a risk. We don't know if it will work."

"There's no other option, Stevie."

"I got it," Tony stated. He got out of the car and stood in front of Steve. "There's another way. To retake the Tesseract and acquire new particles. We'll stroll down memory lane. Military installation, Garden State."

"When were they both there?" Steve asked.

"They were there at a- I've a vaguely exact idea."

"How vague?"