No Tears | NR

Chapter 67

Avengers Compound, USA

All five of them were gathered together. Scott had put on a suit.

"Okay, here we go. Time travel test number one," Bruce announced. There was a sense of nervous anticipation mixed with excitement and anxiety all around. "Scott, fire up the, uh, van thing."

Scott walked up to the back of his truck and opened the doors, revealing a large, partially glowing device.

"Breakers are set," Steve let them know. "Emergency generators are on standby."

Yara stayed close to Natasha and observed - everything. She wasn't about to get involved in any of this. She understood some of the basic physics behind it, but would be absolutely no help. Natasha was adjusting some settings on a tablet. Yara felt a little bad, because he wasn't being helpful, but there was nothing she could do.

"Good, because if we blow the grid, I don't want to lose, ugh, Tiny here in the 1950s," Bruce responded to what Steve had said.

Scott clearly didn't like what he had heard. "Excuse me?"

"He's kidding," Natasha said with a smirk, while she kept her eyes on the tablet in the hand. Then she looked up at Bruce. "You can't say things like that."

"It was a bad joke," he stammered. Yara wasn't convinced.

Scott nodded and walked toward the van, where he put the helmet on.

"You were kidding, right?" Yara wanted to know.

"I have no idea," Bruce responded. "We're talking about time travel here. Either it's all a joke or, none of it is." He then turned towards Scott and gave him a thumbs-up. "We're good! Get your helmet on. Scott, I'm gonna send you back a week, let you walk around for an hour, then bring you back in 10 seconds. Make sense?"

"Perfectly not confusing."

"Good luck, Scott. You got this," Steve told him.

Scott nodded. "You're right. I do, Captain America."

Yara made a face at that, which only Natasha noticed. She hit the brunette in the side with her elbow lightly. Yara looked at her with a fake hurt expression, but got the message and returned her attention to Scott, who was not there anymore. He had shrunk and then disappeared during their quick exchange.

Bruce counted down from three while he pushed a few buttons and switches. After he reached one, he pressed a button, and Scott appeared right where he had been standing before. But it wasn't him in the suit anymore. Instead, it was some young boy.

"That was not supposed to happen, right?" Yara asked, but didn't get a response. Instead, Bruce was hectically working on the console in front of him while Natasha, and Steve were asking both, the boy and Bruce, questions. When the boy spoke, they quickly realized that this was, in fact, still Scott, but he had somehow gotten younger and turned into a boy.

A moment later, he shrunk and disappeared again, only to appear mere seconds later. Now, he was an old man with white hair.

Yara couldn't watch this any longer. She turned around and left the room. The others' voices got quieter until they finally faded away completely.

It didn't work. Yara felt hopeless. It seemed that they would never get this to work without Tony. But Tony had seemed pretty resolute. He would not help them. Yara sighed and plopped down on the floor. She hadn't realized until now that she had subconsciously found her way to the gym. This place had become a space for her to let out her emotions. The punchbags had been on the receiving end of all of her anger and frustration throughout the past few years. Now, however, she wasn't angry. She wasn't even very frustrated. She was just hopeless.