25 – Broken Souls – June 26th, 2023

Natasha set the quinjet down on top of one of the many rain-soaked buildings in downtown Tokyo. The sky was dark and uninviting and somehow fit the mood. Natasha had updated Aspen on everything she had learned in tracking Clint-the good and the bad. The only good thing was that he was still alive. Everything else was pretty bad, though Aspen would be the last one to accuse him of killing innocents. He was still going after criminals who had killed time and time again. She knew their biggest crime was living while his family died. She had felt the same way once. Maybe she still did.

"What if he doesn't want to come with us?" she asked as she pulled her hood over her head. Natasha's green eyes were serious, her lips turned down in a frown.

"He'll want to come. This is a chance for him to get his family back, too." Natasha handed Aspen a black umbrella.

Once they reached the deserted streets, they opened their umbrellas. Aspen wiped raindrops from her face, glad for the shelter. "There are reports of an altercation two blocks from here at a nightclub. It has to be him. Yakuza involvement."

"Sounds like his M.O. these days." Taking on a yakuza gang didn't seem like something he should be doing on his own, but she knew he wasn't exactly thinking clearly these days.

The leering lights that kept the city from ever really sleeping reminded Aspen of Madripoor, of her adventures with Clint there. She missed him. She felt like she'd failed him somehow like she should have tried harder to get him to come home with her. Hell, he could have moved into their apartment and slept on the couch if it would have helped him. They turned down an alley and Aspen sucked in a breath. His face was covered, but she'd know him anywhere even as he stood with a katana over a man's dead body. He wiped the bloody sword on his sleeve before pushing back his hood and pulling the mask from his face.

"Clint…" Aspen whispered his name.

"You shouldn't be here," he said to them, his back still turned.

"Neither should you," Nat returned. He turned to look at them then, rivulets of rain running down his cheeks. The devastation on his face broke Aspen's heart.

"I've still got a job to do." His eyes landed on Aspen before he looked down again. "It's not over."

"Clint, you don't need to keep doing this," Aspen pleaded.

"Killing all these people isn't gonna bring your family back," Natasha told him, voice firm though Aspen could see the sympathy welling in her eyes.

Despite the rainwater running down Clint's face, Aspen could see tears welling in his eyes, could see the defeat in the slump of his shoulders. He was broken, lost. They had come here to bring him hope. She just hoped it was enough.

"We found something," Nat said, glancing at Aspen. "A chance, maybe…"

"Don't," Clint said, tears now running down his cheeks. Aspen felt tears running down her cheeks, too. She could feel his pain as if it were her own.

"Don't what?" Natasha asked him.

"Don't give me hope," he finished, and Aspen felt her heart breaking further.

"I'm sorry I couldn't give it to you sooner." Natasha walked up to him, reaching out to take his hand. He grasped it back. Aspen joined them, taking his other hand.

"We have a chance to bring them back," Aspen told him. "It's a work in progress, but we've got the best brains working on it." She smiled despite her tears. "Tony is there and Bruce. Steve and Scott. We're working on getting the others. In a few words, we think we invented a time machine?"

"Come on, let's get to the jet and we'll explain," Natasha said, glancing past Clint to the dead body.

He resisted for a moment as they turned to head down the alley, both still gripping his hands as if afraid to lose him. Then he nodded and let them lead him back to the jet. Aspen sat next to him in the back, holding onto his hand. He let her for the entire trip. She fell asleep after she and Natasha had caught him up on everything. The hope she'd seen in his eyes rekindled her own hope.

"We'll get them back," she told him before nodding off, head against his shoulder. It felt like getting a part of her family back, and she knew Natasha felt the same.

When the jet landed back at the Avengers facility, it really felt like coming home this time. It was a new dynamic, but with Clint at her side she felt like they could do anything. This was going to work. They were going to get everyone back. They were going to be happy again. She refused to think that it might be too late, that they had changed too much to ever go back to the way things had been.

They let Clint get cleaned up and sleep before bringing him to the others. They all needed a good night's rest, and Aspen slipped into her and Steve's bed. He was fast asleep, but he woke when she lay beside him.

"Hey," he said sleepily. "Did you find him?"

"Yeah. He's here."

"How is he?" Steve propped himself up on an elbow, eyes now alert.

Aspen didn't know how to answer that. "Broken? Hopeful? He's just like the rest of us. He was still killing when we found him. Fighting a yakuza gang, so it's not like they haven't done terrible things. He's just changed so much."

"We all have," Steve said, lying back down and pulling Aspen so that her head was rested against his chest. His steady heartbeat put her back to sleep. That night she dreamed of Mara. Of holding her and watching her grow up. She woke up feeling that surge of hope when dreams and reality blur. Then her mind sharpened and she felt the pang of loss anew.

Steve was already gone, so she forced herself to shower and dress, grabbing a muffin before heading over to the hanger. She wondered if Bruce had returned with Thor yet. She was worried about seeing Thor. It had been a few years since her visit, and he hadn't been doing too well then.

The first thing she saw was Rocket the space raccoon, who didn't like to be called a raccoon, working on the time machine, making some adjustments. "Hey, Rocket. Long time no see," she greeted him. He gave her a salute before continuing whatever he was doing. She still hadn't quite wrapped her mind around him despite everything they'd been through.

To her surprise, Clint walked toward her wearing the suit Scott had worn for their first time travel test. He looked nervous, and Aspen hurried forward toward him. "What's happening?" she asked, giving him a quick hug.

"I'm about to time travel, apparently."

The machine was complete now, and Aspen stood back to look at it. "And how do you feel about that? Was it your choice?" She thought Scott was going to test it again, but perhaps he'd had his fill of time travel for a while.

"Feeling nervous. Obviously. And yeah, I volunteered." He glanced down at her. "Scott told me the first tests didn't go quite as planned."

"Yeah, well that was before Tony got here." Aspen turned to greet the others who joined them. Bruce, Rhodey, and Nebula as well as Tony, Natasha, Steve, and… Aspen did a double-take as Thor joined them. She had to close her mouth as her jaw dropped. Thor looked nothing like the Thor she knew. He had gained significant weight, his stomach bulging. His hair was long and hung in something like dreadlocks like he hadn't bothered to brush it in years. His clothes were...she could only describe them as grungy, like something you'd wear on the weekend with drawstring sweats and a thick sweater.

"Aspen!" he said jovially, opening his arms to hug her.

She put on a bright smile and let him engulf her in his arms. He smelled of beer, and she tried to reconcile what she was seeing versus what she remembered of him. He'd gained weight last time she'd seen him. She could tell he was struggling, but seeing him like this was a complete shock. And yet she knew that it was a result of the very same thing that had caused all of them to change-their defeat in their fight against Thanos. Thor blamed himself perhaps more than any of the rest of them. He was the one who had wielded the Thanos-killer. He'd gone for the heart, not the head, and it had cost them. What she saw now was defeat, self-hate, and the results of a trauma that had rocked their entire world. She hugged him tighter.

"I missed you," she said.

"I missed you, too." He pulled back, holding her at arm's length so he could study her. "You look well."

"Thanks, Thor." She couldn't say the same, so she said, "I'm really glad you're here." She looked around the room and decided they needed each other. Apart, they fell apart. Together, they stood a chance of holding themselves together because they had someone else to hold them up when they started to fall.

"Let's get started," Tony said, and Aspen felt a surge of confidence. This was going to work.

"Good luck," she told Clint. He nodded at her as if beyond words. She could tell how nervous he was as he climbed to the platform they'd built to replace the device in the back of Scott's van. She stood next to Steve, twining her fingers around his. He squeezed her hand in response.

"All right, Clint." Bruce positioned himself by the controls. Aspen crossed her fingers on her free hand. "We're going in three...two…" He paused. Clint's helmet closed, and Aspen could see the panic on his face. "One." Clint disappeared.

Aspen tightened her grip on Steve's hand. It wasn't long before Bruce started the countdown. When Clint appeared, he was on his knees clutching something Aspen couldn't make out. They rushed up to him, Natasha getting there first. "You okay?" she asked, taking his face in her hand to examine him.

"Yeah, yeah," Clint said distractedly. Aspen saw that he was clutching a baseball glove that he had most definitely not been holding when he'd left them. And he was, thankfully, the same age as when he'd left a moment before.

"It worked," he said, looking over at them. "It worked."

Aspen let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. It had worked. They had a way back. They had a way to Mara. She turned to Steve and found him grinning. She threw her arms around his neck, laughing happily. "We're going to get her back," she said, resting her cheek against his. "We're going to win this time."

...

"I saw her, Pen, just for a second before I came back," Clint said. They were sitting on a bench outside the hangar the day after Clint's trip back in time. The baseball glove he'd brought back with him sat beside him on the bench. "Lila heard me." He smiled sadly. "What I wouldn't give to have spent five more minutes there."

"Pretty soon you'll have the rest of your life to spend with them," Aspen said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"And you'll get Mara back."

Aspen took a deep breath. "I never thought this day would come. It feels like a dream, like something that could be snatched away at any second. We know we can go back, but we still have to defeat Thanos. That's not going to be easy. Not at all."

"But we're going in knowing that. We know what not to do. And we know what we lose if we fail."

"I'm terrified, you know. I have nightmares all the time about losing Mara again, about Thanos winning again, about losing Steve and you and all the others this time. That would break me. There's no recovering from that. I mean, look at us now. We're all a mess. Tony came out all right with his family, but you and me… We went on a murder spree. Thor...Thor's lost all his self-confidence. He's stopped taking care of himself because he doesn't see anything worth caring for. Natasha put everything on her shoulders while the rest of us left to cope because it was all she had. I feel like I let everyone down. "

"You didn't."

"I know we all did what we needed to to cope. I just...I want this to be a clean slate, but can it?"

Clint sighed, leaning back. "I don't know, Pen," he said after a long pause. "All we can do is move forward. With our families back, it'll be a whole long easier."

Aspen leaned her head against his shoulder, wrapping her arm through his. "I'm so glad you're here."

Clint leaned his head against hers. "Me, too. Thanks for giving me hope."

"Now we just need to plan said time heist. No biggie." Aspen couldn't even wrap her head around what they would do. Why couldn't her nightmares turn into helpful visions? None of her visions in the past had been remotely helpful. They just spelled out certain doom and made her doubt everything.

"Well, good thing we've got the big brains plus an alien and space raccoon."

"All things considered, we've got a lot going for us," Aspen agreed. "We've got this."

"Maybe if we say that enough, we actually will have this," Clint teased and Aspen realized how much she'd been saying that the last few days.

"It's motivational," she defended. "We've gotta stay positive. You didn't come back a baby or an old man, so that's something."

"Was that a possibility?" Clint asked, lifting his head to give her a look.

"Uh, did no one tell you what happened to Scott when he first tried to go back?"

"I heard it didn't work the way it was supposed to. Nobody told me about coming back a baby or an old man!" Clint sounded so indignant that Aspen started chuckling to herself. He prodded her in the ribs. "Not funny."

"It's a little funny."

"Hey." Aspen looked up at the sound of Steve's voice. "Planning session back at base," he said. "How are you doing?" he aimed that question at Clint.

"I'm fine," Clint said. "I'm not a baby, so apparently that's something."

Aspen winced. "He didn't know about Scott," she mock-whispered to Steve.

"That was...unexpected," Steve said. "But obviously we fixed that."

Aspen grinned at Clint before hopping up to walk with Steve to the main building. Clint followed. The others were already gathered in the meeting room. There were books scattered all over the table on a variety of subjects-none of them on time travel, obviously.

Aspen sat down and flipped through one of the books. "You think you're gonna find our answer in a book?" she asked Tony.

"Maybe." He lifted a brow at her. "I thought you liked reading."

"Anything I've read on time travel was purely fiction. And I'm sure quite inaccurate at that."

"Doesn't mean there isn't something useful out there even if it is a theory," he challenged.

Aspen shrugged, setting the book aside. "Fair enough." She turned her attention to the screens where the words 'Operation: Time Heist' and 'Brainstorming Session' blazed.

Steve addressed the room like a soldier commanding an army and Aspen smiled. He was in his element leading the team again. "Okay, so the 'how' works. Now we gotta figure out the 'when' and 'where.' Almost all of us has had an encounter with at least one of the six Infinity Stones."

The screens lit up with pictures of each stone. The Tesseract aka the Space Stone. The Orb aka the Power Stone, the Aether aka the Reality Stone and lastly, the Eye of Agamotto aka the Time Stone and the Soul Stone, which they didn't know really anything about.

"Well, I'd substitute the word 'encounter' for damn well near been killed by one of the six Infinity Stones," Tony cut in.

"I haven't," Scott said, sounding a little left out. "I don't even know what the hell you're all talking about."

"You're lucky," Aspen told him. "Although, I might point out they haven't always been destructive. I have my powers because of the Tesseract. Wanda got her powers because of the mind stone. Vision…" She cut off there.

"Vision carried the mind stone, and he was good," Natasha finished for her. Aspen gave her a grateful smile.

"Well, in Thanos's hands, they're not good," Tony said. "Or Loki's or anyone else hellbent on the destruction of mankind."

"Fair enough," Aspen conceded.

"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 spoke up. Aspen was finally getting used to him as both Hulk and Bruce. Somehow, it felt like he'd always been this way.

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

"Which means we have to pick our targets," Clint said from his spot against the wall.

"Correct."

"Let's start with the Aether. Thor, what do you know?" Steve asked.

They were rewarded with silence. Aspen looked over to where Thor sat in the corner of the room. It wasn't an entirely encouraging sight as he looked like he was asleep with one hand holding a can of beer, the other partially down the waistband of his pajama pants. Aspen still couldn't quite wrap her mind around this look. Mostly she just wanted to give him a hug and remind him none of this was his fault and that they loved him no matter what. At the moment, however, his sunglasses hid his eyes and it was unclear whether or not he was actually asleep.

"Is he asleep?" Natasha asked.

"No, I'm pretty sure he's dead," Rhodey put in.

Aspen took a pen from the table, took careful aim, and threw it.

"What?" Thor jolted, somehow managing not to spill his beer. "What was that? I agree with the Captain."

"I was asking what you knew about the Aether," Steve said, his voice patient, though Aspen could hear a strain of impatience. Right now they all needed to be alert, but Thor had already drunk half a dozen beers in the half an hour he'd been awake, so that wasn't the most encouraging start to the day.

"Oh, right." Thor got to his feet, swaying just a little. He set his beer down and squeezed past Aspen's chair. She grabbed a notepad and retrieved her pen. Might as well take notes. "Where to start?" He pulled off his sunglasses, squinting at the screen and tapping the glasses against it. "The Aether, first, is not a stone. Someone called it a stone before." He pointed at Steve who narrowed his eyes like he couldn't figure out whether to be irritated or confused and landing somewhere in between.

"You didn't say it right," Aspen whispered to him across the table. He pursed his lips and shook his head at her, though she could tell he was fighting a smile. She smirked at him before turning back to Thor's rambling speech. "It's more of an angry sludge thing, so someone's gonna need to amend that."

Aspen jotted down 'angry sludge thing' next to 'Reality Stone.'

"Here's an interesting story though…" The story progressed from his grandfather to Dark Elves to Jane Foster. It went downhill rather quickly at that point. The skin between Steve's brow furrowed deeper and deeper and Rhodey and Clint exchanged a look while Rocket put a paw over his face. Scott looked happily lost. "Nothing lasts forever," Thor was saying, wiping at his eyes. Tony got up to usher Thor back to his chair, but Thor objected. "I'm not done yet. The only thing permanent in life is impermanence."

Aspen glanced down at her notes. They read:

Reality Stone aka the Aether aka angry sludge thing.
Hidden from Dark Elves a long time ago
Jane Foster - once put her hand inside a rock and the Aether went inside her (?)
Dating Thor at the time, now broken up
Only permanent thing in life is impermanence (?)

How did they get the Aether out of Jane and how did it take the form of a stone or is it still an angry sludge thing?

She raised her hand. "Uh, I still have some questions."

"We're doing breakfast now," Tony said, all but pushing Thor from the room.

"Bloody Marys. Do you want one?" Thor called back to her.

"I'm good, thanks. Well," she said to the room when Thor and Tony had left. "The only thing I got out of that was that Thor is really not over his breakup with Jane."