After another long plane journey and a small fight with Thor after you'd discovered he'd smuggled some beer back with him, you arrived back at the compound at about 2am.

You sent Thor straight to bed (double checking that he didn't have any beer hidden in his jacket) and then made your way to the kitchen for some food with Bruce, where you discovered Nat and Tony sitting at the table.

"Hey, did you get him?" Nat asked as you trudged into the room, shattered from your long day.

"Just about." you smiled, and Tony raised a fist in celebration.

"That's the whole crew." he said in satisfaction.

"So, what's the plan?" Bruce asked, looking into the fridge over your shoulder.

"We're sending Clint on a test run tomorrow-"

"Clint's here?" you asked in shock, spinning around to look at Nat, who nodded sheepishly.

"I flew out to Tokyo. I didn't wanna tell anyone in case I didn't find him or... anyway, he's here now." she said, smiling a smile which looked forced. You decided not to ask any more questions for now.

"Kid, you look dead on your feet, you should get some sleep." Tony told you as you walked over to the table with a glass of water, having decided not to eat.

"Thanks very much. And I won't sleep, I'm too nervous." you told him truthfully.

"Yeah, I know the feeling." he replied, looking off out of one of the large windows.

"So, a test run?"

"Yep. We have everything we need so we figured, why hang about?" Tony replied.

"We still need to work out a proper plan though. It'll be a week or so before we can actually try it." Nat said quickly.

"So, this time next week..." you said, leaving the sentence hanging, unfinished, in the air.

"You might have your fiancé back." Tony said, smiling at you. You nodded, smiling a fake smile which was apparently glaring obvious to everyone in the room. Nat and Tony frowned at you.

"What's wrong?" Nat asked.

"She's afraid Loki will have gone off of her." Bruce told them from the kitchen through a huge mouthful of food.

"You can't be serious." Tony said disbelievingly. Nat was shaking her head and smiling.

"No, guys, listen! I-" you started, unable to finish your sentence due to an onslaught of protest from both Tony and Nat, which was along the lines of what Bruce had told you earlier. Instead of making you feel better, tears filled your eyes and you looked down at your hands.

"Kid, don't." Tony said, moving to sit next to you. Nat came to sit at your other side.

"I'm sorry, I just- I don't know. We might not even do it." you sniffed, trying in vain to hold the tears back.

"One. We are going to make this work. Two. What makes you think Reindeer Games is gonna be any less in love with you?" Tony asked you.

"He was in love with me five years ago. That's a long time for me to turn into a different person." you said quietly. Tony nodded thoughtfully.

"I don't think you need to worry Y/N. And maybe let's just cross that bridge when we come to it? We have bigger things to worry about for the next few days." Nat suggested, and you smiled, wiping your eyes.

"I know. This has all just happened so quickly." you said, your hand moving to the lock of Loki's hair entwined with yours.

"You can say that again." Tony sighed, twisting his wedding ring around his finger.

You sat and talked for another half an hour before tiredness finally got the better of you and you went off to bed for a practically sleepless night of worrying.

...

The next day everyone was up as the sun rose.

It was odd to have eleven people in the compound; you and Nat were so used to it being just the two of you. Breakfast was an interesting affair because as it turned out you didn't have enough food for all eleven of you, so you and Tony ventured out to obtain breakfast for everyone.

Once you'd all eaten everyone got to work. Almost everyone.

Thor was sat on a bench wearing a large fishing jumper and a pair of dark sunglasses, barely awake, watching Rocket working on something underneath the raised glass platform in the centre of the testing chamber. The others had been just as shocked as Bruce when they'd seen Thor, but luckily had so far refrained from commenting on it.

"Hey." you said, sitting down next to him and waving Rocket away, who inevitably had been about to make some sort of snide remark.

"Hello." Thor said glumly.

"It won't be long now." you told him, reaching forward to push his shades up on to his forehead in order to look at him properly. There were dark bags under his eyes.

"I need a beer." he replied.

"I know, but we talked about this yesterday." you told him sympathetically.

"I know." he said sadly.

"Ratchet, how's it going?" Tony asked Rocket, striding into the room.

"It's Rocket. Take it easy, you're only a genius on Earth, pal." Rocket replied heatedly. Tony pulled a face at you as he walked past and you smiled at him, before standing up.

"I'm going to see how they're getting on. You coming?" you asked Thor, who shook his head, pushing his sunglasses back down over his eyes. You sighed quietly as you walked away, wondering how you were going to get him back on his feet.

You walked through to the side room where Scott, Bruce, Steve and Rhodey were discussing time travel. There was what you assumed to be a time travel suit carefully laid out on the side, next to a vial of something red in a glass tube.

"Time travel suit? Cool." you asked upon entering the room.

"Hey, hey, hey! Easy!" Scott stressed as Bruce leaned forwards to touch the vial.

"I'm being very careful." Bruce protested, stepping back.

"You're being very Hulk-y." Scott corrected him, moving forward to pick up the vial tenderly.

"These are Pym Particles, alright? And ever since Hank Pym got snapped out of existence, this is it. This is what we have. We're not making anymore." he told you all sternly.

"Scott, calm down." Rhodey said, motioning with his hands to suggest that he needed to chill out.

"Sorry, but we've only got enough for one round trip each. That's it. No do-overs." Scott replied.

You looked at Steve, who smiled nervously at you.

"Alright nerds, get in here." Rocket called from the other room. You all filed into the room with the raised glass platform where Rocket was fiddling with some wires.

"It's ready." he said simply. You ran to get Nat and Clint and when you returned Nebula and Tony were there too. Thor remained sat in the corner.

"All right. Here." Scott said nervously, holding the suit out to Clint, who took it and pulled it on without a word. This was a very different Clint to the one you'd used to know; you hadn't spoken to him much since he'd returned from Tokyo. You'd only heard snippets of the terrible things he'd been doing, and you weren't in a rush to find out the details.

When he was in the suit, Clint walked into the middle of the glass platform and turned to face you all stood behind the control panel.

"Clint, now, you're gonna feel a little discombobulated from the chronoshift. Don't worry about it." Bruce told him nonchalantly, as though what he had just said had been entirely normal.

"Wait, wait a second, let me ask you something. If we can do this, you know, go back in time... why don't we just find baby Thanos, and, you know..." here Rhodey trailed off, making a hand gesture to suggest strangling baby Thanos with a rope.

"First of all, that's horrible-" Bruce started in disgust.

"It's Thanos." Rhodey stated blatantly. You privately agreed with him.

"-and secondly, time doesn't work that way. Changing the past doesn't change the future." Bruce said. You frowned. This wasn't how you'd thought things would work.

"Look, we go back, we get the stones before Thanos gets them... Thanos doesn't have the stones. Problem solved." Scott told everyone.

"Bingo." Clint said.

"That's not how it works." Nebula said in annoyance.

"Well, that's what I heard." Clint argued.

"What? Who told you that?" Bruce asked in disbelief.

"Star Trek, Terminator, TimeCop, Time After Time..." Rhodey listed, ticking the shows off of his fingers as he did so.

"Quantum Leap..." Scott chipped in.

"A Wrinkle in Time, Somewhere in Time..."

"Hot Tub Time Machine-"

"Hot Tub Time Machine. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Basically any movie that deals with time travel." Rhodey concluded.

"Die Hard? No, that's not one..." Scott said.

"This is known." Rhodey stated.

"I don't know why everyone believes that, but it isn't true. Think about it: if you travel to the past, that past becomes your future. And your former present becomes your past. Which can't now be changed by your new future." Bruce told everyone.

Your brain hurt, but Tony was nodding beside you. You'd get him to explain to you how it worked later on.

"Exactly." Nebula agreed with Bruce.

"So... Back to the Future's a bunch of bullshit?" Scott asked, sounding crushed. Bruce ignored him and turned back to Clint.

"Alright, you ready?"

Clint nodded, bracing himself.

"And we're going in three, two, one..." Bruce said, and then in a flash Clint had disappeared.

"Well that's a good sign." Tony said.

"What now?" Nat asked.

"Give him a minute, then we'll try and bring him back." Bruce told you all. You winced at his use of the word 'try'.

"What happens if we don't get him back?" Rocket asked unhelpfully.

"He's coming back." Nat said firmly. A loud silence settled over you all.

"Get him back." Nat told Bruce sharply, suddenly.

"Okay, and bringing him back... now." Bruce said, and with the press of a button and a blast of energy from the platform Clint was back, crouched on the floor. Everyone rushed towards him, Nat in the lead.

"Hey, hey, look at me. You okay?" she asked in concern, crouching down and putting a hand on his shoulder. Clint looked up, holding up a baseball glove and tossing it to Tony.

"Yeah. It worked. It worked."

The rise of adrenaline and anticipation in the people surrounding you rendered you unable to speak for a few moments, although that might have just been your own overwhelming elation.

It worked.

...

The next day you began to plan, properly. Everyone was gathered in the kitchen in front of the hologram display, which was currently showcasing the six Infinity stones.

"Okay, so the 'how' works. Now we gotta figure out the 'when' and the 'where'. Almost all of us have had an encounter with at least one of the six Infinity stones." Steve said.

"Well, I'd substitute the word 'encounter' for damn well near been killed by one of the six Infinity stones." Tony replied, and you gave half a laugh.

"I haven't, I don't even know what the hell you're all talking about." Scott told the room. Somebody should have really filled him in by now. You'd talk to him later.

"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 said.

"Our history. So, not a lot of convenient spots to just drop in." Tony corrected him.

"Which means we have to pick our targets." Clint said in understanding.

"Correct." Tony nodded.

"Let's start with the Aether. Thor, what do you know?" Steve asked, turning to Thor, who was snoozing in the chair next to you.

"Is he asleep?" Nat whispered to you.

"No, I'm pretty sure he's dead." Rhodey commented. You poked Thor awake and he jerked upright, turning to look at you.

"They want you to tell us about the Aether." you explained to him. He stood up and swayed towards the front of the room.

"Oh. Where to start? Umm... The Aether, first, is not a stone, someone called it a stone before. It's more of a... an angry sludge thing, so... someone's gonna need to amend that." Thor started. You crossed your legs and pressed two fingers to your lips. This was a bad idea.

"Here's an interesting story though, many years ago... My grandfather had to hide the stones from the Dark Elves..." Here he wiggled his fingers to imitate a spooky ghost.

"Wooooh, scary beings. So Jane, oh, there she is." Here Jane appeared on the hologram behind him.

"That's Jane... she's an old flame of mine. She... she stuck her hand inside a rock this one time and then the Aether stuck itself inside her, and she became very, very sick. So I had to take her to Asgard, which is where I'm from. And we had to try and fix her. We were dating at the time, you see. I got to introduce her to my Mother... who's dead."

"Okay, thanks Thor." you said loudly, standing up abruptly and moving towards him as tears began to fill his eyes at the mention of Frigga.

"And oh you know, Jane and I aren't even dating anymore, these things happen though, you know, nothing lasts forever." he caried on talking as you tried to push him back towards his chair.

"I'm not done yet! The only thing permanent in life is impermanence." Thor finished, before collapsing back into his chair and slumping into himself.

"Do you want something to eat?" you suggested.

"I'd like a Bloody Mary." he told you quietly.

After that you decided to let Thor sit quietly in the meetings and listen, or sleep, depending on what sort of mood he was in on any given day. The next few days consisted of nothing but endless research on where the Infinity stones had been throughout all of your lives, and where and when was the best time to in order to get them all back.

You hardly slept, no one did, everyone working near constantly to find a solution which would work.

Five days after Clint's test run, you had a revelation. You and Tony were lying on a table together, surrounded by bits of paper covered in notes, and Nat and Bruce were lying on the floor on either side of the table.

"That Time stone guy..." Nat started.

"Doctor Strange." you said.

"Yeah, what kind of doctor was he?" she asked.

"Ear-nose-throat meets rabbit from a hat." Tony told her. You snorted.

"Nice place in the village though." Bruce commented.

"Yeah. Sullivan Street." Tony said.

"Bleecker." you corrected him.

"Wait, he lived in New York?" Nat asked, sounding oddly hopeful.

"No, he lived in Toronto. Were you even paying attention?" Tony reprimanded her.

"...guys, if you pick the right year, there are three stones in New York." Nat told you all, sitting up in excitement. You almost fell off of the table.

"What?" you and Tony exclaimed simultaneously.

"Shut the front door." Bruce said in disbelief.

"What year? When?" you asked, craning to see her notes.

"2012." she told you, waiting to gauge your reaction. It took you a second, but then you realised.

"Wait, not..." you asked, trailing off, already knowing what the answer would be.

"The day Loki attacked New York."