Carmine Jewels ║ Wanda Maximoff

Chapter 84 - Worlds Apart

"Five years ago, we lost. All of us. We lost friends. We lost family. We lost a part of ourselves."

Keira glanced around at them all, a small smile tugging on her lips. Just like everyone else, she was nervous.

The stakes were high, to say the least. Their whole plan would crumble to pieces if even one of the teams failed to retrieve their Stone. She had expected to be more on edge, but she was feeling carefully optimistic.

Since everything was riding on the retrieval of the Stones, she knew that everyone would do their utmost to not fail.

Her hair was tied back in a fishtail braid, courtesy of Natasha, with some loose strands framing her face. To her delight, Tony had jumped at the opportunity to integrate nanotech into the suits. So now, not only were they more convenient than the first version, but it was also much more comfortable to wear. And since they all were traveling to different places in time, they could just wear whatever uniform they needed underneath, without having to go through the trouble of slipping the suit on and off.

Like always, the necklace with her engagement ring hung around her neck, acting as both a reminder but also as a motivator of what was at stake.

"Today, we have a chance to take it all back. You know your teams. You know your missions. Get the Stones. Get them back. One round-trip each. No mistakes, no do-overs."

As if anyone needed a reminder of that.

"Most of us are going somewhere we know. That doesn't mean we should know what to expect. Be careful. Look out for each other. This is the fight of our lives. And we're gonna win." He shared a look with Tony, the latter smiling at the supersoldier. "Whatever it takes. Good luck."

"He's pretty good at that." Rocket admitted, glancing up at Scott, who stood to his left.

"Right?" Scott breathed in amazement, still barely believing that this was real. He would get to help the Avengers put the world right. Not only the Avengers, but Captain America himself. Someone should pinch him so he knew he wasn't dreaming. Only when Rocket gave him a small push, did Scott join his fist in the middle with the others.

They all held their hands there for a moment, all silently vowing to try their hardest to make this work.

Tony was the first to break the circle of hands, the rest following suit. "Alright. You heard the man. Stroke those keys, Jolly Green." He called down to Bruce, who pushed the buttons with the help of a pencil, his fingers being a bit too big for the delicate switches. The green giant confirmed that everything was good to go.

"You promise to bring that back in one piece, right?" Rocket eyed the miniature version of the Benatar, which lay in the palm of Clint's hand. It had been made small by one of Scott's shrinking discs, so that once they emerged on the other side of the Quantum Realm, they could use it to travel to Vormir while leaving Nebula and Rhodey on Morag with the space pod.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Clint answered dismissively, but for the sake of pleasantries, he mustered a smile. A forced one, yes, but a smile nevertheless. "Okay, I'll do my best."

The answer didn't exactly invite confidence, something that Rocket picked up on. "As promises go, that was pretty lame."

Bruce walked up the ramp to the platform and hit the activation button on his glove, which gave a small beep of confirmation. Soon, they would all be shrunken down to beyond the level of atoms.

Natasha looked around at them all, smiling broadly. "See you in a minute." Her little remark earned her a small smile from Steve before the mirrors in the ceiling started to realign into the correct position.