"Alright so where are we at?" Raven said sitting at the table with Steve, Thor, Nebula, Clint, Nat, Rhodes, and Loki while Bruce, Shuri, Rocket, and Tony were projected in front of them.
"Since when do you start the meetings?" Tony asked.
"Since you gave me access to F.R.I.D.A.Y. and got stranded on an alien planet." She smirked back at him.
"Good to know you got rest while at your house." Nat smiled at her.
"They say there's nothing like your own bed." Raven looked at her and Loki couldn't help but enjoy the little bit of herself she was getting back.
"Anyways, we're at no luck with Vision. The bit of him I was able to download before we were attacked isn't enough to make him fully operational yet." Shuri told them.
"Alright what about ways to get everyone back?" Steve asked.
"We find and kill Thanos, get the gauntlet and undo what he did." Nebula said.
"Sounds so simple." Bruce faked a smile.
"But didn't you say the gauntlet looked destroyed?" Tony asked Thor.
"Yes but we could always have another one made on Nidavellir." Thor stated.
"Yeah your buddy there did still have a cast for it." Rocket said.
"Well then how do we get the stones from Thanos?" Raven asked.
"And how do we find Thanos." Nat added.
"I don't know but I know we do." Tony said, "Strange gave Thanos the stone and said it was the only way, it means that we figure it out."
"That's great Tony but how long until we figure it out?" Rhodes asked.
"Yeah, it'd be really nice to fix everything as quickly as possible." Clint said more bitter than he probably meant to.
"I don't know…but we will." Tony said and they all ended the meeting.
Clint was the first one to get up and leave and a Rhodes and Nat followed. Raven sighed getting up as well and went to her room, Loki watching her go as Steve followed her.
"Raven." He said as she opened her door, "We'll get her back."
"Yeah." She nodded.
"We will." He reassured her.
"I know." She said again before going into her room.
Days went on and hope began fading. Tony and Bruce had come back from Wakanda, leaving Visions corpse in the hands of Rocket and Shuri. Ross had left them alone for the time being the U.N. being more preoccupied with the loss of half of the population than capturing the remaining Avengers. Loki continued giving Raven her space despite how hard it was knowing that she was going through something like this and wouldn't allow him to help her, not that he knew how to do that when she had always been the one helping him.
He left his room unable to sleep and as he went down the hallway he heard the TV on in the rec room despite all the doors in the complex being shut and everyone seemed to be asleep. Walking to the room, the only light was coming from the screen and Raven was sitting on the couch, hair down and falling around her face, her knees pulled into her chest watching a movie. His voice was quiet, "May I join you?"
"Sure." She motioned to the rest of the couch not even looking at him.
"Can't sleep?" He asked sitting on the other end of the couch.
"God of Observation now?" She tilted her head slightly at him and he let out a laugh.
"Not much mischief to be had."
"Not much of anything to be had." She sighed.
Loki was silent, knowing she was right. They hadn't gotten any further on figuring anything out, in fact tensions were getting high due to the lack of ideas. Nebula had even left on her ship to go and find Thanos out of frustration with the others not having any clue what to do. He felt a shift to his right and froze as she leaned on him, stretching out her legs. Her head was on his shoulder and he took in a slow breath moving his hand to wrap around hers. She didn't pull back from this instead her voice was sad, "Loki…why are you still here?"
"Isn't it obvious?" He looked down at her.
"At first yeah, but after this long…" She looked back up at him.
"I've wanted to see you, be with you for five years." He took the side of her face, "I'm sure I can be patient enough for a little while longer." A slight laugh escaped her and a small smile grew on his face, "I've been patient when it came to you before."
"I guess you were." She remembered. "What would have happened if Thor never went back to Asgard? If you'd continued being Odin? Would you have just stayed there for the rest of your life?"
"It didn't happen." He replied.
"But what would have happened." She sat up and looked at him, almost demanding an answer.
"I'm not sure." Loki answered honestly, "I tried to find you and couldn't. I worried about you every day wondering if you were dead or if S.H.I.E.L.D. had recaptured you. But with the ruse I was involved in I couldn't leave to search the entirety of Earth."
"Yeah, I guess." She moved back to sitting beside him.
"But that's what you would have wanted isn't it?" He asked her, finally realizing how much she truly cared for him.
She shook her head, "No. Ruling Asgard is all you ever wanted. I would have been fine just knowing you were alive. Then at least I would have known you kept your promise."
"But I did anyways." He made her look at him, "I didn't die before you."
"No, but I had to live with the fact that I thought you had." She looked him right in the eyes, "And that hurt. It hurt a lot."
"I'm sorry." He put his forehead to hers, "I'm truly so sorry."
"But ruling Asgard will always come first." She whispered.
"Asgard is no longer." He closed the distance to her lips. When she didn't pull away from him again he put an arm around her waist, pulling her in closer. Loki wanted to show her that she was his top priority at the moment.
Her hand slid up his chest to cup the side of his neck, her fingers scratching at the skin like they always had and he smiled before deepening the kiss. As he slid his tongue into her mouth he lifted her to be sitting across his lap, her back leaned against the arm of the couch so that his chest pressed against hers. Ravens fingers went through his hair as she clutched at his shirt. She'd missed him, everything about him, the way his tongue encircled hers, the way his hand gripped her side, and the way he surrounded her completely. She took in a sharp breath breaking the kiss, "Loki I can't."
"Can't what?" he asked his breathing labored.
"Can't do this." She replied, the light from the TV illuminating her face, "I don't know when you'll disappear again. If you'll come back again."
"I'll never disappear from you again." His voice was sincere as he moved a lock of hair form her face, "I don't expect you to believe me, but I will prove it to you."
"You better." She said as she placed a quick kiss to his lips, "I-I should go to bed."
"Okay." He said as she began to stand up but he kept her hand in his, "Promise you'll actually get some rest."
"I wish I could promise that." She let out a laugh.
"Then what do you need to be able too?" He asked but then saw her face falter and he knew what it was she needed and it wasn't something he could give her. Loki gripped her hand, "Knowing what I do now…I wish I would have killed Thanos on that ship, that I would have never taken the Tesseract, that I-"
"That I wouldn't have made you leave to go find him in the first place." She said and pulled her hand from his, "That you would have stayed and we would have found another way to get what we wanted."
"Raven, you seem deep in thought." Tony said leaning back in his chair. They were all sitting around not really doing anything despite still trying to figure out what to do about getting everyone back.
She sighed, "Just…just thinking."
"About what?" Nat asked.
"About how things could have been different." She said. The others all looked at her and she scooted closer to the table, "What if Loki had never gone to Thanos, what if he'd won the battle of New York, what if Red Skull had been able to hold the Tesseract, what if Ultron never figured out anything about the mind stone, what if Jane and I had never found the aether…how would things have been different? That kind of stuff."
"Raven, thinking like that…" Steve looked at her, "Thinking like that doesn't help."
"Yeah I know, but they asked so I answered." She shrugged.
"Not necessarily." Tony leaned forward now, a thought having popped into his head.
"What…what are you talking about?" Bruce asked.
"What if those things had played out differently, what if we were able to fix certain things to make it to where Thanos never got all the stones?" Tony asked.
"What are you talking about?" Nat reiterated Bruces question.
"I'm talking about fixing all of this. What if we were able to go back and fix it?" Tony looked around at all of them.
"What are you talking about time travel?" Rhodey asked him, "Or are you talking about seeing how things would have been using B.A.R.F. because I don't think your tech is that good."
"It's not but what if it were possible? We know that time travel can be done, Strange had the time stone, we saw Thanos turn back time, what if we were able to?" Tony asked.
"We would need the time stone, which would require us knowing where Thanos was at, which would defeat the purpose of getting the time stone because we could just get all the stones at once and undo the problem." Thor said.
"What if we made our own way then?" Tony glanced around at the table.
Nat was confused, "Wait are you actually suggesting we find a way to time travel to…to what before Thanos snaps out half of the universe?"
"Or farther." Tony shrugged, "Back to the battle of New York and make sure to keep both the Tesseract and Scepter close so that when Thanos does come for them we can adequately protect them. Or we just go back and collect all the stones before him so that we can use them against him and keep him from wiping us out altogether."
"We can't do that." Raven said positively.
"Why not?" Rhodes asked.
"Because if we were to go back and change things that happened years ago, we might mess up really big things from before the snap." She answered him and the others looked sort of confused except Clint who understood as a parent. Raven went on to explain, "Let's say we go back and stop the attack on New York. We manage to get the Mind Stone and the Space Stone, right? But then Loki gets taken to prison like what actually happened, but then so do I, therefore I'm not with Jane Foster in London and then she may never find the Aether, a.k.a the Reality Stone. She never gets infected with it, Thor never comes back to Earth therefore he never finds out the Aether has been awakened and only Malekith does. Malekith gets the Aether, sends the universe back into the darkness and boom, ends worse than where we are now."
"But what if going back is the only way?" Rhodey asks her.
"We don't even know if it's possible to do without the Time Stone." Steve threw in.
"And if it was we still can't do it. Strange said this was the only timeline in which we win." Raven said double checking with Tony and the man nodded, "Then things up until that point need to stay the same, because if they change then the whole thing changes and therefore what happens is no longer the timeline in which he saw."
"Shit you're right." Tony sighed putting his head in his hands.
"If time travel were possible and we could do something without messing up our timeline, then it'd be a great idea." Bruce said, "What if we went back, got the stones, brought them back to right now, then after we fix everything, put them back?"
"What?" Thor asked.
"I get it." Loki said, "If we were to go back and snatch the stones in the past but then return them to the past before we ever noticed they were gone then we could affect the future without effecting the past."
"Would that work?" Nat asked looking at Raven who responded with a confused shrug.
"We'd have to be able to time travel first." Steve pointed out.
"And make sure that absolutely nothing would change." Clint added, "If one thing changes, it could screw us now."
"Well then I guess, we have something to work on now until we come up with a better idea or find Thanos." Tony said.