"Did he have any family?" Clint asked softly. Harley shrugged.

"His mom moved back to Mexico, I think, and...and he had Ellie and their baby."

A heavy sigh was forced from Tony's lungs as he gazed out at the river from the dock they were standing on, his gaze scanning the water as if he could still see Morgan playing in it, Peter and Harley having cannonball competitions.

"I don't understand why he would do this," Harley pressed, turning to Clint. "He had so much to live for. What exactly happened? How could he sacrifice himself like that?!"

Clint gave his head a shake. "Look, kid, I know you guys were close, but maybe there were some things that you don't understand about---"

"I'm twenty years old." Harley tried to smack Clint's shin with his crutch, but he moved it out of the way. "I've been through a lot of family stuff before and after the Snap, a traumatic bus accident, and I've been through HYDRA. Don't talk to me about stuff I don't understand."

With an unintelligent grumble, Clint crossed his arms and relented. "I dunno much. Kid said he'd made a lot of mistakes in his past and wasn't sure if he could live up to them, to live up to raising a son or a daughter. Wanted to 'make things right for once,' do some good in his life that would actually benefit people."

"He never told me any of that," Harley insisted. "Are you---"

"I know what I heard!" Clint snapped. "Look, the guy was clearly emotionally unstable or something, 'cause..." He suddenly trailed off and shook his head.

"'Cause what?" Harley pressed, but Tony shook his head.

"Just let it go, Motorcycle," he mumbled. "Clay sacrificed himself for the good of not just us, but the entire universe. Don't ruin it by---"

"I'm not going to stand by," he seethed, "while literally every single person close to me either dies or turns away."

Clint sighed. "Something came over him, okay? I don't think he was in his right mind. His eyes were all bright green, almost white, actually, and he--he just dove right off..."

"And you didn't stop him?!" Harley was almost screaming now. "How could you?!"

"Somebody had to do it! As soon as that floating head hinted at it, that's what he did. I'm sorry, kid, he didn't even give us a chance to stop him."

Harley shook his head. "I don't believe you."

Clint dipped his head, grimacing.

Was that guilt?!

He's hiding something, Harley decided.

"And you're sure..." Harley ventured, "that this had nothing to do with you and Nat be---"

Clint had taken a fistful of Harley's shirt and hoisted him off his feet before the sentence was even out of his mouth, Tony, Bruce, and Thor all sprang to their feet and tensed.

"There is nothing," he snarled. "Nothing. My heart will always belong to my Laura. I love Natasha like I loved my little sister. You got that, punk?"

Harley nodded, too freaked out to do much more until Clint set him down. His bad leg stiffened and he gripped his crutch for support. Tony rushed to his side.

"Clint, take it easy," he demanded. "He just lost his best friend."

Just lost his best friend.

The words finally sank in, and a colossal weight latched onto his chest.

"Well..." Harley cleared his dry throat and righted his baseball cap, pushing his hair behind his shoulders. "Let's go and make sure his sacrifice was worth it."

***

While Tony and Rocket worked on righting the stones inside the Iron Man glove, Harley secretly brought up his old blueprints for his Iron Lad suit on his Stark tablet.

It looked so much smaller than he was now that it was almost humorous. Still, it brought a smile to his tired face, to see all the hard work his sixteen year-old self had put into it. 

Unbeknownst to Tony, who hadn't liked the idea of Harley having a suit in the first place, Gwen had started to help Harley develop a new suit during some of their breaks in between classes within the last few weeks. They hadn't been serious about the project, it was almost merely for fun, but now Harley figured he could use it. He wasn't about to do the little snappy-fingers, of course, but he had a feeling that a suit would be needed.

"FRIDAY, how quickly can you develop the nanotech for this project?" Harley asked aloud, into his tablet microphone so Tony wouldn't overhear. "Like, if you went reeeally fast?"

"If this is about the Iron Lad project," she began sassily, "then 0 minutes. Tony already found your designs and printed them for you a few days ago."

"What?!" Harley cried. "And he didn't tell me because...?"

"It was supposed to be a late birthday present, more of a 'congrats on finishing this semester' gift." Harley groaned and tossed the tablet back to the counter.

"I was wondering how long it'd take you to realize your files had been hacked," Tony said, back still turned away from Harley, intent on the glove he and the clothed raccoon were inspecting. "Surprise?"

"Can I..." Harley awkwardly cleared his throat. "Can I see it?"

"By all means." Tony turned and pushed his glasses up to the top of his head. "I made it for you, buddy. A sign I trust you to make your own decisions now, I guess. It's yours." He clapped a grinning Harley on the shoulder and pulled something out of his pocket. It was a small arc reactor, not unlike the one he strapped to his own chest and let the nanoparticles form a suit around him.

"Thanks, Tony." Harley took off his brace and attached the glowing orange circle to his chest and watched in amazement as the suit enveloped him, the red still darker than Tony's own and the gold a shiny silver color. The left leg of the suit had the same glowing blue lights around the hip, knee, and ankle joints that Rhodey's braces had. "Woah, this is so sick!" He tested out the weight on his bad leg, which actually held up, though a bit unsteadily.

"You're gonna need that when we test the stones, for sure," Rocket snorted. "Who knows what kinda messed-up explosion is gonna spew forth from the unlucky chap's fingers?"

They went back to working on the glove, and it only felt like a few minutes later before Rocket sighed in satisfaction.

"All right, the glove's ready." He sat back on his haunches, his dark, creepily human-like eyes scanning the group. "Question is, who's gonna snap they're freakin' fingers?"

Nat snorted. "Yeah, good luck finding a volunteer."

After a brief argument between Thor and everybody else with something to do about Cheez Whiz, Bruce stepped up.

"Lightning won't help you, pal," he said heavily. "It's gotta be me. You saw what those stones did to Thanos, they almost killed him. None of you could survive."

"And how do we know you will?" Steve asked skeptically, fitting a tiny pair of safety goggles around his beloved cactus, Cap Jr. Bruce shook his head.

"We don't." Bruce gave his head a shake and stared dramatically into the distance like he was in a movie and this was his moment of glory. "But the radiation's mostly gamma. It's like I was made for this."

Bruce took the glove and held it in his hands, staring down at the little glowing stones.

"Okay, remember," Tony instructed, moving to stand protectively in front of Harley, "everyone Thanos snapped away five years ago, just bring them back to now, today. Don't change anything from the last five years."

The giant Hulk nodded. "Got it."

With clangs and whizzes, everyone who had armor or shields of some sort activated them. Harley's helmet flipped down and he stood behind Tony, who hefted a holographic shield of his own.

This is it, Harley thought giddily. Peter and Morgan could be coming home. He almost felt like throwing up from anticipation. He had spent so long dreaming about this kind of moment that it almost didn't seem real.

But then he farted inside the suit and was reminded how real reality was.

"FRIDAY," Tony said through his suit's speakers, "activate the Barn Door protocol, will ya?"

All the security doors grinded closed, inside and outside the compound. Harley remembered only one other time Tony had had to activate it, and that had been when he saw Steve driving up to the parking lot with a horse trailer filled with a bunch of random piglets he wanted to give away as pets.

This time it was serious.

The room darkened dramatically as the roof closed over, and it got so quiet Harley could hear his own breathing and heartbeat.

Bruce closed his eyes, holding his arm close.

"Everybody comes home," he whispered as the glove expanded to fit his huge hand.

As soon as it enclosed his skin, a ripple of multi-colored lightning shot through his arm and he hit his knee with a grunt. His arm vibrated, electricity skittering across his skin and melting off his shirt and eating away at his skin. Bruce screamed.

Harley was horrified, but he couldn't look away.

With a shrill grinding of metal against metal, Bruce snapped his fingers with a flash. Then he unceremoniously passed out onto the floor.

As everyone else rushed forwards to check on Bruce, Harley's helmet receded and he took a few hesitant steps out into the hallway.

Did it work?

What if it didn't work?

His heart was beating so fast he thought Friday might be about to alert him he was about to have a cardiac arrest or something. He felt sick. He felt lightheaded.

What if...?

And then, a voice.

A sweet, angelic voice that always had hidden venom, always teased him about his height, always screamed shotgun overtop of him. A voice that he hadn't heard in five years. A voice that called him Lee.

"Mom?" Morgan called, bare feet gently pattering against the tiled floor as she walked down the hall and came into Harley's view. She was wearing the same tutu she had that morning all those years ago, that same dinosaur t-shirt that didn't seem to match. "Mommy, where'd my tea table go? It just disappeared. Did you take it?"

Harley fell onto one knee, breathing heavily. "Morgan? Is...is that really you?!" he whispered. Morgan raised her eyebrows at him, suddenly seeming a little scared.

"Harley...?" She looked around in confusion. "Why---"

With a crack, the ground was torn up beneath their feet.