The Seventh Infinity Stone

Hello Darkness I'm Ready to Succumb

A couple days before......

Steve Rogers snapped awake, forehead beaded with cold sweat, heart pounding. He took deep breaths, focusing only on his breathing trying to calm his racing heart.

'It's just a dream,' He reminded himself. 'It's not real.'

The only thing was no matter how many times he told himself that it was not real he knew it was, or it had been, 70 years ago. The dream was always the same. Peggy smiling at him, that gentle sweet smile, then he was jerked into the cockpit of a jet. The jet's only destination was the vast canvas of the ocean below him.

"Steve, don't you dare be late," those words would ring in his ears.

And he would always reply, "I won't."

But her tear felt phrase would repeat over and over again as he crashed into the cold bleakness of the ocean, everything else being drowned out except, "Steve don't you dare be late, don't you dare be late, Steve, Steve...."

As he sank further and was engulfed, he would snap awake. It was always the same and it happened so frequently that he had created a ritual every time it happened. Always calming his heart, telling himself it was not real, then recollecting his thoughts to prepare himself to enter the modern world once more.

Steve looked up at the tan canvas of the tent, a site not unfamiliar from when he served during WWII. He looked beside him and noticed that the sleeping bags next to him were empty. Two voices were talking in strained monotones occasionally growing louder to be then corrected by their owners and quieted down.

Getting dressed Steve exited the tent, "Didn't think to wake me?"

"We thought you needed the extra sleep. You have been taking all the watches and driving yourself so hard these past few weeks, trying to take down Hydra and secretly fight the war between Earth and Loki. You have also been helping all those who need help that we come across, regardless of if you had the energy to help them or not," Clint explained filling a mug with steaming liquid from a pot he just took off the fire and handing it to Bucky.

Bucky took his mug and took a sip, "Clint's right. You might be the star-spangled man himself on a glorious mission, but you are still human. And human's need the recommended hours of sleep. Here have some broth, humans also need to eat despite your strange desire to starve yourself."

Steve took another mug full of broth, "Where's the bowls? I'm pretty sure we had...."

"I used them to ward off those bounty hunters, remember? Back in Russia I think, after we failed to get...you know," Clint answered.

"Right, the bounty hunters armed with Chitauri weapons they had looted from the battle of New York? The ones you tried to disarm with your face?" Steve asked.

"It wasn't my face...." Clint tried but Bucky interrupted him.

"Yeah well talking about dumb ideas you sometimes have, the one you have right now is one of them. You have lost your mind; this is even more insane than trying to disarm a weapon with your face."

Clint's face became steely, "First of all I didn't try to disarm that weapon with my face, and second it's our only logical option and you know it."

There was a tense silence between the two as they stared each other down. Steve set down his mug full of broth barely touched.

"What is this about, is this the real reason you didn't wake me? What have you two been arguing about? What is our only option?" He looked to Bucky for answers.

Bucky gave Barton a disgusted look, "Ask him."

Steve gave his attention to Clint who also put down his mug, "Well I've been thinking, and please hear me out and allow me the chance to explain my thinking. We know that this war needs to end, and someone needs to win but there is more to it than we know. Normally I would say that S.H.I.E.L.D. is who we should support even if it is from the shadows, but we know that Hydra has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. which leaves us with only one option."