That would be a no • Steve Rogers [6]

Part 16

Me and Steve walked inside the Avengers building, our home. We stopped just before we were close enough to the others.

"Soph. I just..."

"No. You are not saying goodbye. Not gonna happen." I said cutting him off.

"I just wanna make sure we know all our possibilities."

"One possibility. Going back. Staying alive. For Lily. For Lily..." My voice cracked.

"We can't control it."

"But we can decide when not to sacrifice ourselves. We could take risks earlier, now we have a little girl. If you won't stay for me, you stay for her."

He put his hands on my cheeks. "Why would you say that?"

"Say what?"

"Not come back for you? Where did you get that idea?"

"I don't know..."

"Soph. You're the most important person in my life. You have been in the past 13 years, and you'll continue to be that person. Okay?" I nodded quietly. "Do you understand how much I love you?"

"Of course I do. I love you just as much." I said quietly. "I love you, Steve Rogers."

"There you are!" I heard Tony's voice. "Come on!"

We walked to the others. "Sophia." I heard a voice.

I turned to my right to see Thor. But, he's a very big Thor.

"Thor. Hi." I said surprised. "You look..."

"Fantastic. Thanks."

"All right, Clint." Hulk said, "We're going in three... two, one." Clint dropped down in the middle of the circle.

In five seconds he came back on his knees, screaming. "Lila!"

Nat ran to him. "Hey, look at me." She said. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah." He replied. "It worked." He said to Tony.

—

"Okay. So the how works." Steve said. "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 said.

"Well, I haven't. But I don't even know what the hell you're all talking about." Scott said.

"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." Hulk said.

"Our history." Tony added. "So, not a lot of convenient spots to just drop in, yeah?"

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

"Correct."

"So. Let's start with the Aether." Steve said. "Thor, what do you know?"

We all looked at the back of the room where Thor sat with sunglasses. His hand on his stomach and the other hand holding a bear.

"Is he asleep?" Nat asked.

"No. Pretty sure he's dead." I said.

"I'm fine." He called up and stood up. "Uh, where to start? The Aether, firstly, is not a stone. Someone called it a stone before." I looked at Steve who had the same confused expression as me. "It's more of an angry sludge sort of a thing, so someone's gonna need to amend that and stop saying that. Here's an interesting story, about the Aether. My grandfather, many years ago, had to hide the stone from the Dark Elves. Ooh." He chuckled, "Scary beings. So, Jane, actually," her photo popped out on the screen, "oh, there she is... so Jane was an old flame of mine."

"Someone make him stop." I whispered to everyone.

"She stuck her hand inside a rick 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. And I got to introduce her to my mother..." he started crying, "who's dead and, um... oh, you know, Jane and I aren't even dating anymore, so..."

"Stark?" I said again. "Please."

"Why don't you come to sit down?" Tony walked up to Thor.

"I'm not done yet. The only thing that is permanent in life is impermanence."

Tony clapped. "Awesome. Breakfast?"

"No. I'd like a bloody Mary."

"Quill said he stole the power Stone from Morag." Rocket explained.

"Is that a person?" Hulk asked.

"No. Morag's a plant. Quill was a person."

"Like a planet? Like in outer space?" Scott asked.

"Oh. Look. It's like a little puppy all happy and everything." Rocket pat Scott's haur. "Do you wanna go to space? You wanna go to space, puppy? I'll take you to space."

"Thanos found the soul stone on Vormir." Nebula said.

"What is Vormir?" Nat asked who took notes of everything.

"A dominion of death at the very center of celestial existence. It's where Thanos murdered my sister." We all looked at her said.

Steve sighned.

"Not it." Scott called.