Forever and Always

Chapter 25

       "So uhhh....I can tell by the getup you had when you returned that you took a little visit to my time, huh?" Clara was back in her normal clothes, and had ran into Steve while walking to the conference room where they would start planning.

"Uhhh, yeah, well Bruce said that things as do in the past won't affect the future...or now...so I thought why not get a glimpse of what your life was like before all this." They walked side by side to an elevator, and Steve pushed a buttons to the third floor.

"Well, how was it?"

"It was...old fashioned. A lot of things have definitely changed since then, but it was a fun little experience. A lady criticized my looks and my clothes, things were a lot cheaper, people were a bit rude, oh and best of all, a car almost ran over me. It was fun though." Clara decided not to tell him that she ran into them on her little journey. At least not yet. Steve sighed and put his hands in his jacket pockets.

"Why did you choose to go there? I'm sure there are other places you would've liked to visit?"

"Easy. I wanted to see what your time period was like. And now I actually realize how hard of a transition it must've been for you and...Bucky..." saying his name out loud still managed to hurt her a bit, and Steve also looked a bit stung by his name. "...to get used to. Reading about your time in the museums and books definitely doesn't match living in it." Steve gave a bit of a snarky laugh, clearly telling me that he was thinking "well no shit".

"Yeah, it's definitely a lot different. But I've gotten used to it by now." Clara was glad to hear that he was all caught up with the times, but that led to Clara thinking of something even sadder.

"Bucky never got used to this world. He's never had the opportunity to." Clara slowed her pace and looked down at her feet. "I mean...his mind has been jacked up for over seventy years, then once he got free for awhile, he was a wanted person by the government and he knew nothing about himself, so he had to figure that out. And then once he was finally freed for good, Thanos comes out of nowhere and he's gone. Just like that...he's gone." Clara felt herself choke up a bit, but she managed to swallow the tears down. She felt Steve place his hand gently down on her shoulder and squeeze it.

"Clara we are going to bring them back. We are going to bring him back. I know we can do it." She smiled. She liked hearing how Steve had so much hope.

"I'm willing to do anything to bring him back." They looked at each other and continued to walk to the conference room. By the time they got there, everyone was already gathered.

"Geez, what took so long?" Rocket was holding a remote, and with a click of the button, a bunch of holograms appeared throughout the room, different screens depicting different infinity stones and clips of where they have been used or seen. Steve left Clara's side to go join Rocket, who was standing on the table. She sat down as she watched Steve take off his jacket and throw it to the side.

"Okay," Steve faced everyone. "So we figured out how to do this. Now we just need to know when and where we need to go. Almost all of us here has had an encounter with an infinity stone." Clara was probably the only one in that room that hadn't had an experience with an infinity apart from what happened five years ago. Clara did laugh a little when Tony made a comment that he would rather use the word "kill" than "encounter", but she stopped laughing immediately when no one else shared the same humor. She sunk down in her seat.

"I haven't." Scott blurted out next to her. "I don't even know what you are talking about."

"We only have enough Pym Particles for one round trip each, and these places have been everywhere." Bruce explained to the group.