Avengers: Breathe (Avengers: Infinity War Major Spoilers)

Chapter 8

Natasha, Steve, Clint and Claire had spent the past few hours scrolling through the thousands of scanned pages of SHIELD files relating to Nick Fury during the late 1980's to the mid '90's, trying to find anything connected to the Hala star image found on his pager. This was the "ass-end of spying", as Clint called it. Most of the files were very highly censored, with all but a few words per page blacked out.

"Any idea where the actual copies of these are kept?" Claire asked, scrolling past a page that contained only two 'the's, an 'of', and a 'has' that weren't blacked out.

"Probably long incinerated," Clint said. "Why can't there just be a word-search function on these?"

"Because they're scanned as picture files, not text files," Natasha said, wondering if it was worth asking Bruce to come up with an algorithm to help them search. However, after they'd spoken to Tony and had breakfast, Bruce had returned to the lab and began to see if there was any hope of repairing Vision, which surely took priority over busy work to keep the spies out of the way, while the engineers did their thing. Rocket and Thor were looking at making the Quinjet space-proof, Rhodes was giving what remained of the National Security Council as much of a briefing as he could, Pepper was single-handedly keeping the world economy from completely free falling, Matt had disappeared after breakfast, claiming that he had 'work to do', and Lila was playing with a set of Star Wars Millennium Falcon Lego which Pepper around for her that Tony had bought but hadn't got around to constructing.

"When do I get to play with the Lego?" Clint mumbled, looking across the room at Lila sprawled on the floor, pieces of Lego spread out around her.

"There's got to be something here," Steve said.

"Oh, there is," Clint said, pointing to his screen. "Right here."

"What?" Steve asked, and everyone looked up.

"And here, and here..."

"He's being sarcastic," Natasha said, and looked back at her screen.

"This is full of highly useful information," Clint went on, "Just we can't damn see any of it!"

"I think it's time for a break," Natasha said, closing her screen. She was frustrated with the situation too. She wanted something to do, and knew Clint felt the same. It was as though they were in an endless holding pattern, waiting for the ok to land and there was nothing they could do but sit tight in the meantime.

"Wait," Claire said. "I think I've actually got something."

Everyone looked at her and waited.

"Does the name Carol Danvers mean anything to any of you?"

"Afraid not," said Steve.

"Nope," said Clint.

"Is it in the document?" Natasha asked.

"Kind of," Claire said, turning her laptop around so the others could see. "It's at the top, where Fury's name has been on every other document, but instead of Fury, Nicholas J., it says Danvers, Carol S.J. There's three words in the document that aren't blacked out, none of which are helpful."

"Great," Clint said, closing his laptop and standing up, "So not only do SHIELD cross out every single word of every single one of their archived documents, they can't even file things in the right order, or pick up on their mistakes when they're scanning."

"What year is it from?" Natasha asked.

"The date on this is blacked out, and the last thing I was with a date was November, 1989. So, late '89? Early 1990?"

"Way before Clint and I were around," Natasha said.

"Around the time Bucky killed Stark's parents," Steve said.

"It's unlikely there's a connection," Natasha said. "Like Clint said, it's probably just bad filing."

Steve sighed. He didn't have many other reference points for the time period. "Is it worth running a search on this Carol Danvers?"

"She's probably just some secretary," Clint grumbled.

"Peggy was running SHIELD," Steve said.

"She was an exception," Clint said, "Very far from the rule."

"Ok," Natasha said, catching Claire's eye and deciding to intervene before the boys came to further odds, "Maybe we need to broaden our search. Someone other than Fury had to know something. Find out who Carol Danvers was. It doesn't matter if she was the tea lady or Peggy's 2IC, it won't hurt to know. But first, let's get something to eat."

"And coffee," Claire said, "A whole lotta coffee."

"Do you reckon there's a decent supply of Oreos around here? Do Tony and Pepper eat them? Come on, Lil" Clint said, heading towards the kitchen. Lila jumped up and followed him. "I bet Thor will," Clint continued, "And I'm damn gunna hoard the lot before that giant god can get to them."

"Is he...?" Claire asked.

Natasha shrugged, "No, but what can we do?"

...

Despite being hungry and angry and tired and sad, as the spaceship descended, Tony couldn't help but admire its design, the way it moved and something in his brain came alive as he began to wonder at its power source (clearly not fossil fuels), how the thrusters worked, it's navigation system, the life support, the lighting, the communications devices...

Tony and Nebula walked cautiously towards the spaceship which was smaller than the Avenger's Quinjet. Dust floated about, and the hatch opened. Obscured by the settling dust, Tony saw a huge shape emerge. Bigger than Thor, possibly even bigger than Bruce when the Other Guy took charge. Bruce, who had been missing for years, and within days of returning to Earth had successfully hacked FRIDAY. As the figure came closer and the dust settled, Tony could see that it was not a man at all.

"Hello. My name is Korg. As you can see, I am made of rocks, but don't let that intimidate you."

"Oh, for..."

"Our friend and King, Thor, sent us on a detour to collect you, his friends, and take you back to Midgard, where we will pool our resources and decide what to do next in regards to Thanos. Since peaceful negotiations with him to return half the population of the galaxy seem unlikely, and a more violent course of action will need to be taken, we - "

"Yeah, ok, great. Nice speech," Tony said, as two stunningly beautiful women, dressed in stylised armour and capes, carrying weapons that looked like they came from the wildest imaginations of the good folks at Weta Workshop stepped out of the spaceship.

"Tony Stark of Midgard. Nebula of Luphom. I am Lady Sif of Asgard, and this is Valkyrie. You are to accompany us to Midgard."

Tony exhaled. Part of him really wanted to go and check out that super amazing, albeit very small, spaceship, but he mostly just wanted to wake up from this super weird dream-within-a-dream, which had become weirder ever since he had told Pepper about the first dream about the baby.

"The pod is not meant to carry very many people," Korg said, "So it will be very cosy on the way to Midgard. Gives us all an opportunity to get to know each other quite well. I'm sure you have very interesting stories to tell about your adventures and - "

"Uh, yeah, ok," Tony said. "Does this guy have an off-switch?"

Lady Sif and Valkyrie looked at each other, and Sif raised an eyebrow, then they turned and boarded the ship.

"Right this way, Mr Tony, sir," Korg smiled.

"You coming?" Nebula asked, walking towards the plane. The Asgardian women could be seen through the window taking their seats as pilot and co-pilot, and Korg stood beside the hatch as security-cum-valet.

"Yep," Tony said, as much to himself as to Nebula, "Really regretting getting out of bed, back whenever ago it was."