It's a promise

Chapter 36

Steve's POV

'Okay, so the how works. Now we gotta figure out the when and the where.' I looked at the holo-board with the six stones. Mind, Space, Time, Power, Reality, Soul. Loki's Scepter, the Tesseract, the Eye of Agamotto, the Orb, the Aether container and a question mark. '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 still had doubts about this whole thing which was understandable. He was afraid of losing what he got with his second chance. I didn't know what changed his mind but I was glad he did.

'Well, I... We haven't.' Everybody looked at Scott 'Just... saying.' Rylee was sitting next to him and I saw how she suppressed a smile. They were the only two who never came in contact with any of the six Infinity Stones. I wished I could keep it that way. Rylee wouldn't be part of the time travel. We didn't have enough Pym Particles and she wasn't really an Avenger. I knew she could definitely take care of herself. She was a great sniper and she knew how to fight. I knew she could handle that but I would be distracted and my mind would be with her not the mission.

'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.' Bruce continued and he looked at Rylee knowing that she wouldn't come with us.

'Our history. So, not a lot of convenient spots to just drop in, yeah?' Tony walked through the room with a cup of coffee in his hands. He wouldn't admit it but it was the same coffee Rylee always drank. I smelled the hazelnut syrup.

'Which means we have to pick our targets.'

'Correct' Tony answered Clint because I stayed silent. I knew Rylee kinda forgave Clint for leaving her but I couldn't. He hurt her more than he even knew but I would keep that out of it and have this talk after we bought everyone back. I tapped on the Reality Stone. 'So, let's start with the Aether. Thor, what do you know?'

Everyone looks towards Thor, slumped over in the chair. Sunglasses on, shirt dirty and a beer in his hand while the other one was resting on his big belly. I looked over to Rylee and raised a brow. She was rolling her eyes and now I needed to suppress a smile. I was still teasing her about Thor being competition.

'Is he asleep?' He wouldn't, would he?

'No, no. I'm pretty sure he's dead.' Rylee let out a silent giggle. Rhodey and her grew close and I never expected them to be friends but especially when she still lived in Washington they became friends.

I was still thinking about how we could wake up Thor when Rocket grabbed one of the empty coffee cups and threw it at Thor's head. 'Wake up, melted ice cream!' Thor jumped up and looked at the holo-board.

'Uh, where to start? Um...' The next half an hour we watched Thor having problems with his robotic eye and talking about the Aether and that it was not really a stone, the Dark Elves, about Jane and their breakup and his dead mother. I tilted my head and saw how Clint and Rhodey looked at each other questioningly multiple times. They were worried about him. We all were, except for Rocket. He had surely some second hand embarrassment and Scott looked like Thor told a great story. But how funny it seemed, Thor had serious problems and we needed to work this out.

Before we could continue Rylee made a Bloody Mary for Thor and we all got some fresh air. I saw Rylee talking with Thor but he was just interested in his Bloody Mary. He put some of his Asgardian stuff into it and just nodded. Rylee made his way towards me.

'Do you think he's able to do that?' I wasn't sure either but he was the only one who could go to Asgard who knew where everything was. Would it be anybody else, I wouldn't let him be part of that but we couldn't do it without him. We needed him.