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Fandom Red and Blue (Marvel RP)

On Titan

Tony
"Good, I wasn't entirely sure about that", he mumbled and finally thought that he had figured it out. The blue parts seemed to be skin and the rest was metal. A very interesting way of transfering a personality into a machine. Just give it a few living parts and it gets a personality. He didn't even know for sure, but judging by the way that creature walked and talked, it had to be a woman. So he just decided that he would give her female pronouns until she suggested otherwise.
"I'm Tony", he said, even though he was sure that she didn't care. But they were in this together so there was no other way out than doing this together. But she was right, she was his ticket to earth. And he wouldn't let that go...
"So how do we get back? I mean, you have a ship hidden somewhere? Because we kind of destroyed the donut when we got here...", Tony tried to keep up a conversation. He had never been so close to such a fascinating fusion of technology and body. And strangely enough, he felt safe around her. Maybe it was because she wasn't human, because she looked like something artificial. Tony had always felt more connected to machines than to humans... A machine didn't let you down.

She didn't talk much on their way to the ship. She just lead the way and Tony followed with the strength he had left. He needed some water, otherwise he would pass out soon. He could feel his mouth dry out more and more and breathing was uncomfortable. So much dust from the fight... He didn't even want to think about the possibility that that dust could be the ashes of more people. He just couldn't take this right now. His hands clung onto the can where he had stored Peter's ashes and his knuckles turned white. He took a deep breath, but again, nothing came. No familiar heartbeat in his ears, no shivering and sweating, no anxiety attack. Just numbness and vacuum. It seemed like he was cured. Strangely enough, he was almost sure that Pepper and his children were gone. Thanos wouldn't risk anyone come and look for him. He wouldn't leave his children alive. That kind of guy slayed his enemies until there was nothing left of their heritage. He had wiped out whole populations. So why would he leave his family alive?

It took them about an hour to get to the ship, but the way Tony percieved it, it was half an eternity. He could see the ship already, when something inside him just snapped and let go. He stumbled and fell to his knees, panting with pain and uncontrollable thirst. This was worse than Afghanistan, worse than the desert. He had known that he would get back home after the desert. He had known that there had been someone waiting for him. Pepper... It was his fault that they were all dead. He had failed them.

On Earth

Clint He was feeling sorry for his son because Cooper had just sat through an approximate hour of a lecture on why he shouldn't pick the locks of things where he wasn't allowed in. There was a good reason why they locked the bow away, a good reason why the weapons in that closet were only reachable for Laura and Clint. But Clint had promised Cooper that he would teach him and help him become the archer and fighter he wanted to be. Because, hell, why wouldn't he? Deep down, he was very proud of the fact that his son wanted to be like him... But he couldn't show that, he couldn't say that with Cooper around or the boy might get the wrong idea. Just because his Dad was proud, didn't mean he was allowed to behave like a little piece of something and get himself in danger. Laura had to go through enough when Clint was on his missions, he didn't want her to be even more scared because of Cooper. He didn't want her to feel like she had lost both, her husband and her son. So Clint had stayed quiet about his feelings and had just watched his son being lectured, before Cooper had given off an annoyed grumble and had headed to his room. Clint was holding Nate in his arms, while he walked up and down the room.

"You know what, Nate", he mumbled and looked at Laura, who was cleaning the table, "I think this whole shooting thing got to your bro..."
Clint heard the scream as well and it was in exactly that moment that the newsflash reported that the alien ships had left Earth. They had just left... That wasn't good.
"Lila?!", he asked, worried, as Laura sprinted upstairs. Clint went after her and watched her fall down in pieces. He stopped, pressing the baby onto his chest, so he wouldn't see what was going on. Until that tiny human being, his son turned to dust, too.
"No...", he whispered and knelt down next to his family. He was waiting for it to happen, but nothing happened. He stayed, they were gone.
"No, please... Not like that, come on!!", he shouted out in pain, as tears shot out of his eyes like a river breaking the dam, "Not them! It should have been me! It should have been..."
He curled into a ball and lay beside his family, tears spilling all over what was left of them.
"...while people are turning to ashes all over New York as I'm speaking. No one knows who's next. Have the Avengers failed us? Is this the end of the world?"
He should have turned that stupid tv off, when he had headed upstairs. He couldn't take this, the thought that they were gone forever. There had to be a way. There was always a way. He refused to let this be the end. But first, first he had to find the others. And then he would go after whoever had caused this and demand his family back. Clint got up and gathered his stuff. His bow, his arrows, his gun. But instead of his archer vest, he put on a black hoodie and black trousers. He picked up Cooper's school bag, poured all the stuff out and filled it with memories. A few drawings from his oldest, Lila's favorite doll and Nathaniel's rumper, with the "my Dad is a superhero"- label. His box with the fake passports and credit cards to his various SHIELD accounts went into the backpack, too, as well as ammo and a knife. You never knew when you needed one. With wet eyes, he kissed his wedding ring and then took Laura's favorite necklace, the one with the heart and the arrow.
heart-arrow-necklace-300x300.jpg
He put it around his neck, before he left for the shed. He gathered all the fuel he could find and spread it around the house. If they were all hone, what did he need this house for? It was only a memory of what he had lost. When he threw the pack of matches, he had to turn away so his tears wouldn't extinguish the small flame that was dancing on them. He didn't look back once, when he walked down the path to where he had hidden the quinjet. He knew that one day he would need it.

"Where is the rest of the team?", he asked the AI after giving it time to start. He didn't engage in any of the casual smalltalk that Tony had programmed into the system and just waited for the location to be shown. In the middle of nowhere, somewhere in Africa. He would go there to pick them up, so they could give him the information he needed. In addition to that, he would make sure Natasha, Wanda and Pietro would come home safely. If he couldn't protect his family, he had to protect what was left of them. He just hoped that they weren't all dust, too.
Clint started the engines and flew off, anger and pain making it nearly impossible to breathe. But he stood up to it. He had to... For the sake of his family. This wasn't over.

Tony's House
"I am very sorry, Pepper", FRIDAY answered her question, alomst sounding concerned, "The only thing I can tell you is that when I lost connection, his heart rate was agitated, but his vitals were stable. Peter Parker is with him, too. He didn't let go as he was supposed to do."
In visible distress, Dum-E went to bring Pepper some tea, but poured it all over the couch. He rushed away to get a new cup. One thing that Tony had always told him had apparently stuck with him. Tea when Ms Potts is worried or sad and coacoa for late night sessions and contemplating nightmares.
"It appears that Tony is MIA. But I can tell you where the other Avengers are, if you should need some support locating him."

Andy
He was overthinking, like so many times before Steve had left. Since their last cuddling session they were officially dating, well, only the two of them knew but still... It was some sort of progress and Andy very much appreciated that. He was happy that Steve was willing to move forward, because that meant that he was doing it right. Damn, he had never been in live with a closeted man. He didn’t even know how that worked. He had basically been out for all his life, he had never even thought about dating a girl or looking after them. He had always been sure that he wanted to be married to a guy, no matter what. So this had never been a thing to him. But apparently, Steve was deep in the closet or bisexual, but still deep in the closet. But what would he care, he loved that guy. It was like a damn addiction running through his veins and he needed to see him.

But right now, there were other things to worry about. Aliens invading earth, Tony Stark going missing, Steve just running off without a text, a call, anything. Then suddenly people vanishing. Andy took on an extra shift to help with the chaos it had caused. Car crashes, injured pedestrians, kids who had fallen from heights because their parents had disappeared. It was a mess and he just hoped that Steve would come home safe... And would be able to explain this. Maybe it was all part of the plan, but maybe, maybe the news reporters were right and they had lost the fight. Maybe this was the end of the world, the end of the Avengers. But maybe this was just temporary. Probably. They were the Avengers after all. A bunch of superheroes who could fix everything.

Covered in dirt and blood, Andy had finally found his way home after a long shift and was now sitting on the couch, only his boxers on. He had taken a shower and smelt like Playboy- New York, his favorite shower gel. He just loved the smell of it and it made him feel sexy.
Turning the TV on was no use, as they all still treated the news from two days ago the most current news. While some "insiders" tried to analyze what had happened to the Avengers, Andy was waiting for Steve to come home. A text, a call, anything that showed him that his boyfriend was still alive. He hated to sit and do nothing. That was why he took the phone into his hands and called Steve's phone. Once, twice, thrice... No answer. He was probably busy fighting, or flying home. Or whatever. But he needed to make sure Steve was okay. He needed to make sure he was safe.
"Hey, it's me again", he spoke to the voicemail, "I know it's the third time but please just tell me if you're okay. Come back home, babe. I miss you..."
Silence. Then he put down the phone and picked out his guitar to pass some time.

Pietro
He had searched every inch of the forest, but she was gone. Wanda was gone, probably dust, like all the others. And it hurt, it hurt so much he couldn't breathe. He sat down on the floor and tried to get some air into his lungs, but all he did was make it worse. Damn, damn shit. Someone was calling for them to come, to bring the injured with them. And that was what he did. He just took that plastic robot, which had been Wanda's boyfriend, and dropped him in front of Steve, like a stone he had been carrying. The weight bothered him and he was angry. He was so DAMN ANGRY. He wanted to punch someone, to kill Thanos. He wanted him to pay for what he had done. And he needed to get his sister back. But first, he didn't need their mercy. He didn't want to see them, so he sped away again. No one apart from Wanda should talk to him. He hated the world and he wanted his sister back. Crying, he started hitting a tree with his fists until they bled. then he sat down, exhausted. So alone.... No one could help him. He was lost.
 
On TitanNebula
The human introduced himself, and of course, Nebula knew who he was. When she was still working with Thanos, she had heard him talking about Tony Stark and that they should be careful around him because he could be a threat to their plan. No one had cared about the other Avengers and judging by the boy Thanos had been right. The rest of them were laughable. Only Stark had stood his own against Thanos long enough to be a real threat - besides that strange wizard. But the man was gone so who cared. "I'm Nebula," she introduced herself after a moment of silence.

Irritated, Nebula turned to Tony. She really didn't understand what he was talking about. What was a donut anyway? "I have a ship. But it needs fixing so you shut up and just sit around," she huffed not planning on letting anyone does work for her. Even the moron who had been supposed to disassemble and assemble her again had put things together wrong. It was just her luck that she could manipulate her technical parts and most of Thanos's thugs were stupid as hell.

She walked inside ignoring the fact that he had just fallen on his knees. If he decided to make a scene on Titan, he could do it without her. With a groan though she pointed at a corner in her ship. "You can get something to drink and first aid stuff there," she says but starts to rummage through her ship to get going. The problem was that all the good ships had been gone on Thanos's mothership, so Nebula had been left with the shit to fix. Thankfully, it had brought her to Titan though and not stopped in the middle of nowhere.
Groaning, she started to dig up the engine knowing it had some sort of trouble based on the noise it had been making. She starts working ignoring the strange human for now.

"You know things would go way faster if you actually did something though," she huffs pissed off and turns to him.

On EarthPepper
She just nodded at what FRIDAY had to say. She blinked distressed and frowned over the way the AI made it seem. Of course, it was terrible that the teenager had gone into outer space, and she would need to face his aunt eventually, but right now she couldn't be bothered. Her brain was just too consumed by her own pain especially since she was still sitting in the ashes of her own children.

Looking up, she just saw Dum-E roll over with a cup of who knew what inside. She blinked though as he spilled it and Pepper desperately mumbled: "No, no, no, no..." In all honesty, she didn't care about her couch but the fact that the hot liquid threatened to drop onto her children. She did her best to soak the tea into her clothes so it would leave them alone.

Suddenly, she started sobbing. It wasn't the beautiful kind of crying but the one with snot running down her nose. Pepper just felt so helpless, and there was nothing she would be able to do to make this better. "Get one of his suits ready and program the coordinates of the rest of the Avengers into it," she told the AI and hurried to get something to place her twins into. Eventually, she found something that resembled two urnes closely enough for her taste right now.

As Dum-E came back with a fresh cup of tea, she took it from him before he was able to spill it everywhere. "Thank you..." she murmured, but her smile didn't reach her eyes. She just held the cup of tea tightly in her hands and cried. She looked at her two improvised urnes and just thought about how she would never be able to bury her Tony.

Natasha
Natasha was so exhausted, and she felt like throwing up. But at the same time, she couldn't do so on her lover's ashes or whatever it was she knelt in. Not even his metal arm was left behind. "James..." she whispers almost desperately like it would bring him back. Never in her wildest dreams, she would've thought that he would die before her. A part of her always had known that he would be the last to die after they had a long and hopefully calm life. But apparently, it wasn't like that.

She kept to herself even when she heard the girl cry out for her brother. It didn't matter, after all, she had lost everything as well. The woman better would get used to losing because this only meant it would become worse in the future. Exhausted she turned away and frowned a little. This was just something each of them needed to go through away. So when Steve placed his hand on her shoulder, Natasha moved away leaving everything behind. She would go back to New York to see if the girl was still alive and start a new life elsewhere. This was officially over.

Her plan was crossed though as she spotted an Avenger Quinjet landing. With a frown, she noticed that it was Barton's one. Why was he here? So, instead of going away to grab one of Wakanda's jet, she moved to see Clint. Quickly, she made sure that nothing looked like she had lost Barnes and a baby. It didn't matter after all. It was just one of many chapters in her life. Perhaps she should finally listen to life telling her that she and Bucky were a bad idea.

Steve
"Pietro, wait," he called after the twin, but it was too late. With a frown, he turned to the dead robot. Given Maximoff's reaction and the lack of his sister, Wanda was gone as well. They had lost so much - so many allies and good friends. He shouldn't have...He should have fought better. He should have been the shield he was supposed to be, but it hadn't been enough. He never had been enough to be Captain America. Col. Philips had known it from the start. That little and scrawny kid from Brooklyn...what could've he done?

Steve walked over to Shuri once he noticed the princess sitting on some debris. With a sigh, he limped over. Steve had taken quite the blow when Thanos hit him. He was sure that he might be dead if the titan hadn't set back the time.
Quietly, he sat down to her as he knew Natasha didn't want his company at the moment. "I know it's hard," he said and held the compass in his fist. Maybe it was morally wrong carrying around after all those decades and now with Andy, but he couldn't put it away. A part of him still loved Peggy after all. "I am sorry for your loss. I shouldn't have brought this fight to Wakanda," he explained even though it wouldn't have made a difference. After Thanos's snap, T'Challa would've been dead anyways.
 
On Titan

Tony He felt like a baby, suckling on the bottle of water, which was half empty, but still gave enough liquid for his body to work again. With a sigh, which caused him even more pain, he sat down on the floor of the ship and looked around. It looked old, used, like the kind of car that the owner hadn’t looked after. Scratches everywhere, dirt, rust and... was that blood? He couldn’t really tell, but it definitely wasn’t the newest model. Or one from the last five years.
“Well you told me to sit tight and not touch anything”, he countered with a weak smile, while he pushed himself back onto his feet. This ship was fascinating. But the engine didn’t sound good at all, when she tried to start it. Tony opened a hatch to see what was behind it and found a few wires and a gas line. Fuel... what did this thing run on? With a painful groan, he bent down and opened the next hatch. A fuse box. But some parts in there were fried and melted, so he asked himself why that thing had even worked in the first place.

When Tony was done checking the ship, he looked at the robot lady with a nod.
“It’s out of fuel. And somehow, the generator must be broken, because all the fuses were fried. There must be a power surge somewhere in the system. Any idea where it could be? I’ll go and get some parts from the donut, I think we might be able to fix this”, he stated as if it was the most natural thing to do. He set out and walked outside again, now a little stronger than before. His face still looked pale and he couldn’t move without feeling a sharp pain in his chest, but it would all be over, soon. He had to go home. If there was the slightest chance that Pepper was still alive, he had to go home. The long walk to the wreck of the space ship gave him a lot of time to think. He wondered if his children were okay, if Pepper was still there, if they were safe... And if Pepper was alive, did she still wear the ring? Did she think that he was dead or did she have faith? Would she bury an empty coffin and move on? Or would she wait for him to come home? Now he understood why Rhodey refused to have a family. He was a soldier and if he went missing, no one would be hurt. No one would have to live with the loss of a husband, a father... He wouldn’t destroy anyone’s life if he died.
When Stark came back to the ship, he saw Nebula furiously work on some part of the flight stabilizers. Maybe she had given up on the engine already, but while Tony had been walking the distance from the donut back to Nebula’s ship, he had had an idea. What did he have a power source for if he didn’t use it? And with the parts that he had gotten from the wreck, he could amplify the power and not only fix the generator, but also make the ship fly without fuel. But he needed one more thing.
“Hey, I’m back. I have a plan”, he told her and dropped the metal parts in front of her. Blood was seeping through his shirt and he was panting.
“The engine doesn’t need fuel to work, I can cause the explosion otherwise. I have an energy source that will get us home, but I need one more thing to make it work...”
He looked at her directly now, knowing that it was asked a lot. But he needed that wire from her prosthetic arm. It could transfer more power than the old ship’s wiring and was the only way that his plan worked out. That was why he smiled at her calmly.
“The wires inside the ship are old and unstable, if I want to transfer enough power into the engine, I need a stronger one... may I borrow your arm? You’ll get it back, I promise. And I’ll try not to cause you any pain.”

His eyes were two big questions marks when he approached her carefully. He let her think about what he had just said. She would have to give a part of her body. And while she thought about it, Tony replaced the defective fuses and detached the arc reactor from his chest. This was going to be a bumpy ride.

On Earth ?

Clint
Clint landed the jet smoothly and walked out just a minute after. His eyes were red, he was pale and all in all, he was sure that he looked horrible. The black hoodie he was wearing covered his face and if one didn’t look closely enough, they might have thought that he was just a black figure, a shady person, someone who wasn’t trustworthy. But the tears were clearly visible and so were the burning wounds on his hands. He hadn’t been fast enough to get away. But he didn’t feel them, he didn’t even realize they were there. All he felt was pain and the urge to kill whoever had done this. He would find out soon enough and as soon as he knew, no one would be safe anymore. Seeing Natasha approach the Quinjet with a frown on her face, but alive and unharmed just sent him right over the edge. Tears started dropping again, but he stood and looked at her. He wasn’t ashamed of crying for his family. They had been everything to him and they all knew that. Clint clenched his jaw, as he looked at the mess they had made. So many dead bodies, this almost looked like a damn war. He had never seen so many corpses in one place, so for a moment, he was fazed. But when he looked up, he saw the rest of the team. Steve, Bruce, Thor and Natasha. The first and the last members of the Avengers team. Rhodes joined the crowd just that moment and he looked like shit. Everyone did.
“Hey”, Clint finally came around to greet Natasha. His voice sounded raspy and low, a logical effect of all the crying he had done. He couldn’t say any more. He saw the pain in her eyes and knew Barnes was dead. He also knew that he couldn’t do anything about it, but sure as hell would he try to.

They stared at each other for a while and Clint knew that she was dead unhappy. He just couldn’t get himself to do anything. Laura was dead, his children were gone, too. So honestly, what was the point of comforting anyone? He was a mess himself and he knew damn well that if he opened up just a little bit, he would cry again. So really now, what was the point of trying?
“What happened?”, he asked.
Did he even wanna know? But this was the only way to get his family back. He couldn’t live without them, so this was his only shot. He would do anything to get them back.
With empty eyes, he stared at Natasha, while he waited for an answer. A tear sneaked it’s way to his eye and rolled down his cheek. He pulled the hood into his face and took a deep breath. The pain was too deep to fight it. He just had to hope it would pass soon. His hand clung to Laura’s necklace, one last desperate try to keep her close, to find comfort. He couldn’t stand it.

Happy
He was walking through the hallways like every day, was checking ID’s and answering questions like every day and like every other day, he took it very seriously. It was his job to keep this company from falling apart while Tony Stark was missing and Pepper was busy with the children. And it was his job, he didn’t complain. He even liked it. It made him feel special and needed in a way he hadn’t known before he had gotten to know Tony. It was nice working for him, even if he was currently missing, again. Happy had sat through worse that this. He had seen Tony mess up so many times, he had developed some kind of calmness regarding his friend. Tony would be okay, because he was Tony Stark and Tony fucking Stark could do anything. Except taking care of himself. The billionaire had never been good at that. At least he had taken care of the world, though. That was something, right?

Head up and shoulders straight, he walked up to the next person without a visible ID. She was from the energy lab and he knew her pretty well... But this was about principles, not about familiarity.
“Sarah, why aren’t you wearing your ID?”, he asked. She took a breath to answer, but no words came out of her mouth. Instead, her breath made a rattling sound and she fell to the ground. She didn’t even fall, she just... disappeared. Like paper when it was ignited. From body to dust, inner seconds. That was the first victim he saw, but others followed just seconds after. Was it a virus? Was it a chemical gone loose? He had the building evacuated immediately. The evaporation continued nevertheless. People on the streets fell to pieces before his eyes, some reaching out before they did. A couple died clinging onto each other, it was awful. Happy saw it happening, but he couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t stop it. And that was the moment when it hit him. Pepper. If all those people turned to ashes, was it possible that...?
In a split second, Happy had dialed her number. She didn’t pick up. And who the hell was gonna take care of the company now?!!! With a slightly anxious frown, he looked up at the building, where so many of his colleagues had fallen to ashes. His responsibility was to act on their behalf now. He shut the building down and walked towards the tower. Where was Pepper? Please, she had to be alive. He needed his boss alive. She had just gotten two beautiful children. What if they were on the floor, screaming? What if they were in a pile of ashes now, crying for their Mom?
Rushing up the stairs, Happy ignored the attempts of FRIDAY to communicate with him. When he finally reached the living room, he saw the ashes on the couch and he thought he knew. He searched the whole tower. Nothing. No sign of any living creature. Pepper, the children, all gone. He just hoped that at least Tony would come back in one piece. If he came back at all.

Shuri If she hated one thing more that having to do this and being the princess, it was the compassion the Captain was showing. She hated to be weak, to cry over T’Challa again. But then again, it made her proud that he had been her brother. He had been a good person and an even better king. At the thought, tears started dripping again and she had to turn away to keep the pain to herself. But her country didn’t cry silently. She heard the lament of her people and it made her wish she could scream or rip something apart. She had never been a princess. She had never fully been one of them.
“I appreciate. But I’d like to be alone now”, she said and gave Rogers a dead stare. Nothing could have prepared her for this. It was just too much. This chaos, the screams from her people, she could hear her mother’s voice on top of them all. It was just too much to take. So Shuri got up and started running. She ran until she reached the woods, the mountains, the cave. On the rocks, she sat down and screamed. She screamed at all the spirits and gods she knew, at all her ancestors and protector, at the panther and it’s might. It didn’t help. T’Challa was dead and this one was on her. Somewhen, she fell asleep, or at least it felt like. It was the trance that she felt when she was forced to meditate, just this time, it was more. It was like a vision. She saw the stones, the alien who had carried them. And she saw six people, who were holding the stones. In the middle, there was T’Challa, walking out of a blue circle, alongside so many other people...

Shuri jumped. There was still hope? She couldn’t believe it, but maybe this religious stuff that her parents had tried to teach her wasn’t that bad at all. Maybe she could do it, maybe she could save them. She had seen six blurry figures and the stones. Maybe they needed six suitable people to get the stones back and turn everything back to normal. Thoughtfully, Shuri returned to the place where everyone had gathered before. They were all gone now. How long had she been asleep? It was getting dark already and some of Birnin Zana’s houses were ignited by light. The destruction was enormous, but nothing they couldn’t fix... after they had their king back. Sneaking towards home, she suddenly stumbled over something. It was a body. Well, not exactly. It was the artificial man, Vision, or what was left of him. Shuri bent down and suddenly she knew what she had to do. She picked up his remains and carried him to her lab. It took her a night, but by dawn she was done and the man opened his eyes. He was alive... well, at least it seemed so at first. He looked at her with big eyes and then made a strange, toddler- like sound, before grasping for her hair. She had created a huge baby.

When she heard a knock on the door frame (the door was non existent), she looked up and saw Rogers walk up to her. She shook her head, as Vision tried to crawl out of the improvised crib she had built for him.
“That’s the best I could do”, she stated, “But we need him to get the others back. I saw something, in my dream. It can work. We just need the stone people.”
She couldn’t explain it, but she was almost sure that it hadn’t been a dream. It must have been T’Challa, sending her a message from wherever he was right now. She couldn’t ignore it, it was for her brother.
 
On TitanNebula
Tony or however that man was called told her what the ship was missing, and it just earned him a dark glance. "Well, don't tell me what it is lacking, idiot. Just fix it. I could talk all day as long, but it won't make anything better, will it? I think you're just as keen to leave this planet as I am before Thanos comes back," she rolled her eyes and went back to what she had been fixing before.

Before Tony even came back, Nebula had moved on to another part that needed more immediate attention than the crappy engine in her opinion. The stupid human said he would take care of it so be it. She could look at other components to make sure that rust bucket would leave Titan soon. Nebula kicked the flight stabilizer which usually did it right. That thing was just too stubborn to work sometimes so showing it who was boss would do the deal. At least in theory and for now.

Her gaze landed on him as he requested one more thing. "And that would be?" she asked crossing her arms. Something deep down, told her that she wouldn't like whatever he needed. Nebula gave him a cold and deadly glance as he requested her arm. "You are nods, Earthling," she simply told him and went back to what she had been doing at the stabilizer. Finally, it gave a healthy buzz indicating it finally worked. Straightening her back, she looked at Tony again and grumbled. "For the record, you don't get more," she said and started to disengage her prosthetic arm. She grumbled and handed it to him and stared at Stark to get to work.

On EarthPepper
Pepper allowed the suit to fly her. There wasn't much for her to do but mourn her children and most likely Tony as well. He would've found a way to contact her by now if he wasn't dead after all, wasn't it? "Friday? Can you contact both Rhodey and Happy to see if they are still...still alive?" her voice broke, and she felt the tears burning in the corner of her eyes again. This time though, she tried to focus her pain into something else. That stupid alien would pay for what he had done to her and her family.

The Iron Man suit landed in a superhero pose in the middle of the battlefield in Wakanda. Pepper looked around at all the dead humans and aliens and felt even more rage. So many people and creatures had to die for one narcissistic alien to get his will. She pulled her hands into fists and her gaze hardened. Thanos would die. Pepper would make sure of that.

Natasha
Her gaze landed on the black figure who walked out of the quintet. Of course, it didn’t take her all too long to realize who this broken man was. She didn’t need to ask questions about how his family is. One glance at him and she knew what had happened. She had failed just some other people’s who she had promised, no sworn to protect. The moment he broke into tears, she didn’t know what to do.

Eventually, she walked over to him and just patted his shoulder in comfort. She wasn’t one to hug or dwell on things so he would only need to deal on that. She walked past him and pulled her hands into fists as Clint asked what had happened. „Thanos happened. But it’s past so why dwell about it?“ She merely answered her voice stiff and cold. She reminisced more of the woman the Red Room had made her be by now instead of the woman she had become thanks to Clint.

„It’s wiser to allow the pain to consume than to push it away. It won’t get better though,“ she told him honestly and walked into the Quinjet. Natasha had no intention of staying whether Clint was here or not. This was a world she needed to find a place in anymore, and she felt like her place wasn’t with the Avengers anymore. She would see if Lina had survived and would take the girl and her cat along if they wished to come with her.
„Leave this place, Hawkeye. It has no place for us anymore,“ she tells him and walks inside the jet to leave this cursed country.

Steve
"Of course," Steve respected her wish to be alone. Everyone dealt with this misery on their own terms. So, without another mention or glare, Steve rose to his feet and walked away. He felt so tired. There was nothing left for him to do. Again, so many of his friends had died for what? He didn't know by now. It felt like the 40s for him all over again, just this time there was no Howling Commando by his side. He had lost his best friend and best girl by now. Most likely his boyfriend was dead as well. It would fit his usual lousy luck perfectly.

The Soldier marched along the battlefield and helped to carry the injured and dead to where the Wakandan wanted to bury their loved ones or what they called the hospital. Somehow he ended up at Shuri's lab without knowing how he had even gotten her. Politely, he knocked against the door frame. He would never walk in without making his presence known. After all, Shuri had made sure to tell him that she needed some time of her own.
"Ma'am?" he spoke up tired and looked at Shuri "May I use a phone? I lost mine and -, and I need to check on someone. They also request your help with the injured." Steve felt in somewhat of a condition to face Andy's situation. If the man didn't pick up, he'd know what was up. Steve didn't really dare to get his hopes up. It would only hurt too much.

He walked over to the crib as she mentioned that it was the best she could do. "Is that...is that Vision?" he asked her perplexed and frowned a little. "How... Why?" he asked, but Shuri, of course, was already ahead of him as she explained her reasoning. Steve listened quietly and frowned a bit. He tried to follow, but Steve felt like when Tony wanted to teach him something. It just made no sense to him.
"Who are those other people and what stone?" he asked her with a sigh and added, "How do you even know that?"
 
In Space

Tony
The engine rattled a bit but finally worked again when Tony pressed the start button. He was relieved and sat down on one of the chairs, before he looked at Nebula, who seemed genuinely surprised that this whole thing worked. Well, of course it did. He was Tony Stark after all. He just sat tight and waited for her to say something, to tell him where he should be, where he was needed. He had secured Peter’s ashes and had made sure that the urn wouldn’t break or be pushed around too much. He had to get Peter back to earth...
Suddenly, Tony felt a sting in his stomach, as he flexed the muscle. The nanotech shifted to plug the wound again, but now it hurt as hell.
“Crap...”, he grumbled, gritting his teeth, while he tried to keep a sound of pain from escaping through his mouth. He decided that he wouldn’t move anymore until they had reached home... if they would ever reach it. If he would ever make it home... too many if’s, too many open possibilities. He didn’t like this situation, not at all. But did he have a choice? No. He leaned back in the seat and breathed as steadily as possible. Still no panic attack. He was really starting to miss those uncomfortable moments.

“How long until we reach the earth’s atmosphere?”, Stark asked with a weak voice after about an hour flight time. The wound might not bleed anymore, but he felt like he needed medical attention nonetheless. He was starting to feel dizzy and almost dozed off a little. He was so thirsty. How long had he been lying there on the ground of Titan? How long had it taken for him to finally snap out of his grief?
“Thing’s that... I think I need some more water”, he told her and coughed, which was more painful than he had expected. She showed no reaction whatsoever, so Tony decided to get up and look for some himself. He had to crawl on all fours, because the ship was shaking and vibrating, but he finally reached a bottle. Suddenly, though, they got pulled off course and the alarm went off.
“What’s wrong now?!”, he gasped, clinging onto one of the handles close to him, “What happened?”
It didn’t take him too long to see the problem, though. They had hit an asteroid and one of the flight stabilizers was missing. The ship was spinning and Nebula somehow managed to land it safely in the middle of a... well, it looked like a battlefield from years ago. Tony was thrown down harshly and it felt like he had a broken rib when he breathed in, but he forced himself up. First, he checked if Peter’s ashes were still there and then he looked out the window.
“Fuck...”, he mumbled and shook his head, “How’re we gonna make it back home now?”
He looked like he was close to crying, when he stumbled out the door, trying to find out if the stabilizer could be fixed. But Nebula had been right, this ship was one big bucket of rust and dust. Outdated tech and material and what made it even worse was the impact it had taken from landing on the debris. When the dust cleared around the ship, he could see the full damage. It was fixable, but it would take a while.
“Nebula, I think we have a major problem”, he called inside the ship, “I need a screwdriver and a hammer...”

Linus
Something had changed. Someone had come. He could see it from back in his shelter that there was a new huge thing of debris. And there was something in there. Something that moved and made noises. He hadn’t seen that in years. Carefully, he walked over to the place where the debris had crashed. It was a long time ago sice something siving had crossed his path, so he had to be careful. One step, two steps, three steps... They were outside, but if he walked up the wall behind them, they wouldn't notice. He cocked his ears and the small tai, which was hidden under his shirt, stood upright because of the tension. The tops of his ears started to shiver, when he sniffed the air and tried to determine whether those two strange beings were friend or foe. Finally, he decided to walk up and show himself. So he got back onto his two feet and walked down the front of the ship, totally upight. The boy ducked a little and approached carefully, as he looked at the beings in front of him.
"Aymeyy(Mommy) ?", he asked and held out his hand, while ducking even more. His ears were now pressed to his head, scared, but still curious.
The boy held out a shivering hand to them, trying to make clear that he was friendly. That was how they had always done it with him. They had crouched down and held out a hand to him, so he could touch it.

After a while of standing still, one of those beings started to speak. Linus had heard the language before, but he couldn't really understand it. It had come from the radio that he had found under some debris and he had tried to make sense of it. He had given up on that language some time ago, but it was still fun to listen to sometimes, when the silence got all too loud. Maybe he could communicate with them, though. They always said that strange thing at the beginning of every conversation.
"Here's Huston", he tried greeting them. What followed was his best immitation of a white noise that only an old radio could make. He thought that this was part of their language, how could he know it wasn't?

On Earth

Clint
He nodded and stood still for a while. Then he followed her into the jet and sat down on the pilot chair. He needed something to cling to and Natasha was the closest to comfort he could get at the moment. He felt so numb, so helpless. It was all his fault. He had been so blinded by his family life that he had forgotten that without a world, there was no family. No Laura, no kids... Just darkness and emptiness.
"Don't leave me alone now. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do if you let me out of your sight for just a minute", Clint begged and tears started dropping into his black hoodie. He felt the tip of the arrow necklace pierce his skin, but he didn't let go until blood came out of his palm.
"I'm gonna go after him. Are you with me?"
The archer was well aware that he was in no condition to fight, but still he would try, because his family depended on it. Hell, he couldn't just do nothing and pretend it hadn't happened. And Clint understood that Natasha wanted James back, too. He could tell by the look in her eyes that it was the only thing that she wanted to do, but she was locking her emotions away again. Maybe they could find a way, if they just looked well enough. There had to be a way to get his family back. He refused to believe that this was the last thing he had seen of them.

Shuri
"Okay, that's a little hard to explain but I'll try", she said and pushed the eager artificial toddler back into his crib, "I had a vision. Near the holy cave... And I saw my brother."
She had to take a deep breath before she could continue talking. "He walked out of a portal, along with other people. He was saved. And there were six people holding six stones. They did something to open that portal. One of them was Vision here. But he was in better shape, then..."
Shuri just hoped that he would believe it and not tell her that she was crazy. But she had a feeling that Steve Rogers wasn't really the guy to question such things, so she guessed that it would be fine. They just needed a plan to find those people and then they were good to go. This had to work, she couldn't take her brother's place. She liked her lab better than the throne.

"Please, Mister Rogers, you have to trust me. I know this sounds weird but if there is any way to undo this, I will try to find it...", she added, her eyes filling with tears again. She wiped them off angrily and just for a moment, she looked like a child. She shook he head and looked at the Captain again.

Rhodey
He had just gotten out of his suit and sat down on a stone because his back was starting to hurt badly. One could say a lot about the exasceleton that Tony had built, but it definitely wasn't comfortable to wear, especially because he had to compensate a lot of bumps with his lower dorsal musculature. Panting, he sat there for a while, stretching his back, as suddenly one of Tony's suits landed in the middle of the battlefield. The pilot looked up and put his helmet back on.
"Tony?", he asked, utterly surprised. The suit wasn't battle damaged, hell, it didn't even have a scatch. Tony's newest invention? A self rebuilding suit? Had he even fought up there?
When Rhodey didn't get an answer, he got up on his feet and walked towards the suit carefully, "Tony? Are you okay? What happened, man? Why didn't you contact us?"
A bad feeling sneaked into Rhodey's head, when he still didn't get an answer. Was the suit bringing back Tony's dead body?
"Friday, open up the suit", he finally demanded and when the helmet opened, it was clear to him why no one had answered. Pepper was inside the suit and she was crying.
"Pepper?!", he asked, very surprised, "Okay? What's wrong? Why did you..."
He helped her out of the suit and looked at her, as suddenly her face hardened and he knew that there was something terribly wrong. She looked like one of those soldiers, who had lost everything and were driven by anger and revenge. She still looked so desperate, but he could see that her body was heating up and she was starting to glow red. That took him back to Kilian, back to when all this had started.
"Oh shit", was all he could say.
 
SpaceNebula
"As long as it needs it," she huffs steering the goddamn ship towards Earth with one arm. Her arm was useless without the wires, and it enraged her. So, she kept on talking with the stupid Earthling. She rolled her eyes, thinking he was as impatient as any child. Why Thanos spared his life was questionable to her. After all, he seemed to be good for nothing but go on her nerves.
"Hit by a fucking asteroid," she told him trying to steer the ship through the whole storm without damaging much more. It was harder than it looked like with one arm. She tried her best, but it would be a rocky landing. "Hold tight!" she warned him as she managed to land the bird as safely as possible. Cursing, she got to her feet and moved to leave the shit piece of a spaceship. "Not by fucking whining about it," she told him as he asked her how to get down from the planet. She opened the door to walk. At the mention of a screwdriver and a hammer, she scoffed and gave him a dark glance. "How about you organize that shit on your own? I need an arm, so that makes two of us," she pointed out clearly at the end of her patience.

"We are not your mother," Nebula said and rolled her eyes over the alien. She gave him a look and raised her eyebrow over his strange question. "And what the fuck is Houston?" she asked him and gave him a glance. "Always surrounded by idiots," she grumbled and walked past Linus. She walked around her ship to check it for any damage.

"How much for that flight stabilizer over there?" she pointed at one that lied around the debris. She could fix that quicker than her old one. Stretching herself, she looked at the child and waited for his answer.

On EarthPepper

Pepper ignored Rhodey as he tried to speak to Tony. Her Tony... She should've listened to him. Just allow him to tinker and give him a healthy timeline to go by instead of stopping his hobby. He had been right after all. It shouldn't surprise her as much as it did. After all, he was a freaking futurist and knew what would happen to others like no other. Suddenly the suit opened, and she felt Rhodey's hand on her to help her out. Pepper stumbled out of the suit less elegantly than Tony had mastered to do over the years.

"Where's he?" she asked instead of answering his question. She closed her eyes for a moment as she felt something feeding her rage. Pepper knew she needed to focus or at least to attempt to keep a clear head, so she took some deep breaths to calm herself a bit. Her eyes were red by the time she looked up at Rhodey.
"Where is Thanos?" she asked him again, and by now it was clear that she wouldn't take no as an answer. "Friday located his signature here in Wakanda. So, don't tell me you don't know!" she told him too cold to sound like her. She was in the same state Tony, and Killian had brought her to be years ago on that damned ship. Her fiancé would probably mention something about how hot she looked like this though.


Natasha
"Move!" she told him as he blocked the pilot seat. She didn't have much patience today. Natasha had almost been killed herself by that bitch of an alien female, and a goddamn golden wheel or whatever that thing had been. She was just tired and wanted to leave. To foolishly act like this day had never existed and to push her emotional baggage away.

Her gaze went to Clint as he basically begged her to stay. She pressed her lips into a thin line to prevent herself from telling him to find courage and to suck it up. It wasn't fair on him. After all, everyone dealt with loss differently. Natasha just had a very efficient and unhealthy way to deal with all of that. "I'm going back to New York, grab whatever is left of my apartment, Lina and Liho," she simply told him. With a scoff, she listened to his promise of revenge. "You won't get to kill him, Clint. He's better than anyone. It's going to be a suicide mission," she declared. The problem was that Natasha's survival instinct had always been bigger. She had lost her Winter Soldier and a child before so she knew she would survive it another time. "Take my advice and move on. Thanos is...He's going to kill you."

She sighed and sat down on the co-pilot chair. Closing her eyes a moment, she placed her hand on her stomach and straightened herself. "He has all Stones and does with them as he pleases. No one was able to stop him, and we lost people, Clint. What makes you think we would be able to do that, now?" she asked him and opened her eyes. Her emerald eyes pierced him, knowing that his grief and rage was speaking out of him. He wasn't reasoning anymore.

Steve
At the mention of a vision, his gaze went to that toddler version of Vision, and he frowned a little. His gaze went back to the teenaged girl and just stayed quiet as she mentioned that she had seen her brother. Perhaps she was able to communicate with the dead or see the future? It wouldn't be the craziest thing to find out. After all, he had seen so many strange things since waking from the ice.

"How did the stones look like?" he merely asked instead of questioning this highly intelligent girl. Steve knew better than to do that. He had done it with Stark and where had it let them? It sounded better to just trust in her abilities or whatever it was.
"Sounds like we need to find five more people and get Vision into better shape, ma'am?" he merely asked her and rubbed his face. He sighed and shook his head. This all sounded so crazy, but if it made the world go back to its normal existence, it would make sense.

Steve walked over to her and placed his hand on her arm. He knew she wouldn't want his compassion after all she had declined it earlier. "Just tell me what I'm supposed to do. I will help you, and maybe the others will do so as well," he answered and squeezed her shoulder gently. He knew this was much - especially on a child. He knew better than to say otherwise. That woman hadn't lived long enough to call her something else.

"But before I do that... Could I kindly borrow your phone?" he smiled gently at her hoping the change of topic would give her a bit of stability.
 
In Space

Tony
Tony raised his eyebrows and looked at the kid in confusion. It had pointy fox ears and it held up it's nose like a dog, sniffing the air. Still, it held out a hand to them like a human trying to greet scared dogs and... He couldn't help but crouch down and listen to his babbling. Tony was very interested in what that kid had to tell, even though he didn't understand it.
"Hey", he smiled and touched the hand carefully, "I'm Tony. Are you here alone?"
When Nebula answered the kid's words, he looked up at her.

"You understand him?", he asked, "What language is he talking? And what happened here? This place looks horrible..."
The Iron Man couldn't even fully stand straight himself, but he helped the fox boy get up and smiled, when he didn't let go off his hand anymore. Somehow, that strange being reminded him of Peter, which made his chest heavy but still he felt the need to help that guy.
"Huston is a space travel station on earth", Tony informed, "Where does he have that from?"
The boy said something to Nebula and she answered, so there was nothing else to do for Stark than to stand and hold that kid's hand because he didn't let it go anymore. Tony tried wriggling out, but it didn't work. So he stood still, accpeting his fate. At least for now, he would be so nice and grant the boy a little comfort.
"How old is he? Does he have anyone else in here?", Tony asked Nebula, still expecting her to talk to the boy.

Linus
She spoke his language, good. But the man was nicer. He touched his hand carefully and Linus grabbed it. It was so warm and soft and... He wouldn't let go off it again. It was the first body contact he had had in years and it made him feel at home. That man was slightly taller than him and it looked like he was a good protector. He didn't want to be here anymore. He had gone through too much already. He had seen his family die, his whole race. He was the last one of them and he didn't even know what his race had been called.
He listened to the words of the man and he wondered what he was talking about, when he looked around at the debris and his eyes got so distant for a moment. It was probably something sad, because the tears that were stuck in the cornes of the man's eyes were getting bigger. It was fascinating... Almost as fascinating as those ears... They were so small. Linus reached for them, but he didn't dare touching them. So he put his hand back where it belonged and just waited. That was until the blue woman asked him about the flight stabilizer. Linus didn't know much about tech or how to use it, neither did he know a lot about the worth of this part. He hadn't been a part of a society since he had been a very little child. But he knew that he wanted to get off of this planet. He knew that he wanted to see the galaxy before he died.

">I wanna come with you<", he said and looked at her pointily, still holding onto the man's hand. Like all beings of his race, he was drawn to the feeling of good and pure souls. He didn't know that, but it was the reason why he didn't want to let go off that man. ">If you want the stabilizer, you have to take me with you.<"
He nodded at his own statement and then sniffed the air again. He was nervous, but he wanted to go with them. He wanted to get off of this planet and see something else than every stone he had seen for the past 20 years. He had been just a child when everyone had died on his planet. But now he was older and stronger. Maybe it was time for him to see if someone out there knew what he was, if someone knew his story.

On Earth

Rhodey
“Pepper...”, he tried to calm her down, his hands raised defensively, “I don’t know, okay? He’s gone. I’m sorry.”
Carefully, James stepped closer and reached out to her.
“Hey, you have to calm down, we’ll find Tony. Just... take a deep breath, okay?”, he reasoned. He was kind of scared that Pepper might breathe fire or blow up, too, so he tried to calm her as much as possible. He knew she was upset, he could understand her. But this wasn’t the solution. She couldn’t just go after an alien with an infinity gauntlet. She would die, too and if Tony was still alive, Rhodey couldn’t face him and say that he hadn’t tried to stop her from going on a suicide mission.
“Let’s check in with the others first and see if they have a plan. Then we should head back to New York and try to locate Tony. Can’t be too hard tracking that huge space ship down. We’ll find a way to strike back, but not now. We’re all not at full strength and we need some rest. And a plan. Now that he thinks we’re broken and we know what we’re dealing with, maybe we can make this our advantage.”

Rhodey lead her to the small group of broken people that had remained at the battlefield. It was only a few warriors, griefing for their relatives, their friends, their lovers. Bruce stood in the middle of the whole destruction, staring at the people around him. When he saw Pepper, he climbed off the Hulkbuster and went towards her. Rhodey saw the empty look in his eyes, but he didn’t react. They’d all been through a lot the last few days and he was pretty sure that he was looking exactly the same. Bruce walked towards Pepper, though, and nodded towards Rhodey.
“He’s right. We all need a break.”

Clint
He nodded and then started the engine of the aircraft. He would fly to the Avengers base, the only place where he could pretend that he was still okay. And most of all, he had access to all the resources to find Thanos. Maybe Natasha would join him later, when she had picked up her cat and the murderous kid. The archer felt a big pressure on his chest and knew that he would start to cry again. So he took a deep breath and didn't respond to Natasha's advice. She meant well, he knew that. But she turned so cold when she was hurt and he couldn't take that right now. He just wished that this would all go away soon. That he would be with his family again, after he had found a way to defeat Thanos. There had to be a way, he believed in it.

"Move on...", Clint grunbled and shook his head, "I can't just move on, Tasha! He killed my family!"
The pain of that sentence mirrored in his eyes, his voice was shaking and so were his hands, clenched to fists so he didn't feel as weak. He let go of the necklace now. He was determined to find and kill that bastard, who had killed his family, his three innocent children and his beautiful wife. He wouldn't let this pass. And even if the chances were small, at least he wouldn't have to live with the burden of not having done anything to get his family back, because this was much worse than grief. It was self hate and destruction.
"Don't you understand that?! He took my wife and my kids! I can't just let him get away with this!"
More tears. He wanted to punch something, just to get that anger out of his system. Clint had never been the one to suffer silently. He had always had Laura to complain to, to talk to about anything. How could someone take that away from him?!
"Then we have to get the stones", Clint stated, "We have to destroy them. And then we destroy him."
When had Tasha ever been afraid of stealing somethig? Hell, they had been such a good team doing exactly that for decades. Stealing weapons from dangerous people, so they wouldn't get into the wrong hands. This was no different. And maybe they could use the stones to undo what Thanos had done. Maybe they could get all the people back and make this right after all. But Natasha wasn't the right one to talk into this plan. She was too stubborn to be convinced. He needed to talk to Steve about that.


Shuri
"Well, they were...", she shrugged, "Just glowing stones. They looked like balls, just, that big", she showed Steve with her hands, "And they had different colours. One was violet, one wasred, blue, green, orange and... yellow. Like some kind of rainbow.... But they all worked together. All I know is that Vision had the blue stone."
She was still so tired of this. But there was a way to get T'Challa back so this was worth it. She had to tell her parents that she was going back to the USA with the Avengers. She couldn't stay here, while those colonizers were clueless. She was the one who had seen it happen and as weird as it sounded, she trusted her abilities.
At the question if he could borrow her phone, she merely grinned and attached a bracelet to his wrist. She tapped it twice and a hologram phone popped up.
"Just tell it the number you want to call and then wait. I'll be back in a few minutes. Don't touch anything else.

A minute later, Shuri was standing opposite of her mother, the only family she had left now. Her face was serious and she knew that this would be hard work, but she knew that she could only find the stone people overseas. She knew that she had to go and she had never been so sure in her whole damn life. This had to be the way she was supposed to go. She couldn't stay here, not if there was a chance that T'Challa was still alive and could be saved.
After she had explained what she had seen, she nodded to herself and ended her explaination with: "And that's why I'll go back to the USA and help the Avengers find the Stone People. If I want to save him, Mother. There is no other way."

In the soul world

Sam
It was one big confusion. Everything was foggy and dirty and he couldn't hear a thing. Well, that was not fully true. He heard indistinguished chatter, screams, crying... What kind of mess was this place? It felt like he had gotten a blow to the head and was slowly waking up from the knockout.
“Mummy! Mummy!”, a little girl crashed into him at full speed and he saw her desperate face, before she disappeared again. He was so groggy, he couldn’t even tell if this was real or just a really weird dream. And even if this was a dream, it was fucking terrifying.
“Mom! Where are you?!”
A boy’s voice, now. What was this place? And why did everything feel so weird in here? So... wobbly, unreal... everything echoed through the space and it was exhausting to focus. Especially because everything seemed to be green. Even the fog was green- ish. What had happened?
"Hello? Anyone there?", he asked into the silence.
 
SpaceNebula
"Probably from one of your idiotic space stations," Nebula shrugged it off with an eye roll. "You litter the whole universe with your radio signals thinking you are so smart for doing but in truth, you're just inefficient and noisy," she answers Tony's question bored. She wasn't too interested in that boy. In truth, it was quite impressive that he had managed to survive on his own for so long.
"Look around yourself, Thanos was here a long time ago before he chased after the infinity stones. He killed all the population so you can guess if he has anyone around here," she answered like Tony should've known that. Why was she stuck with such a sentimental Earthling on her trip home? She was tempted to just leave Stark and the boy on this planet. But what could she do? She needed that damned flight stabilizer to get off this thing.

Nebula cursed as he told her the prize for the flight stabilizer. Who was she? The fucking welfare? But in truth, she couldn't do much about it now. <"I tell you something-"> she started and looked at him like she was going to bargain with him. It wasn't like she had much of a choice to take him along but she could get a better deal for herself out of this <"-If I take you along, I get all of this tech from this planet or else I just leave.">
Of course, she could just kill Linus and call it a day. But she guessed she would get in trouble with Stark. But then again, she didn't owe that man anything. He hadn't defeated Thanos but gotten close enough to do so. That was the only reason, she showed him some respect.

On EarthPepper
Deep down, Pepper knew that James was right. But that didn't stop her from going after the mad titan. Tears glistened in the corner of her eyes again as Rhodey mentioned Tony. How could she face him and tell him that they lost their beautiful babies? She sank into his arms just seeking her friend for comfort as she started to cry again. Her skin still gleamed orange but as her rage was replaced by grief rapidly. "What happened?" she asked him quietly and whispered "They're dead, James... I couldn't-I couldn't stop it. Just turned to ashes."

Pepper looked over to Bruce as she heard his voice. Her rational side took in the information and approved it. Fighting against someone like him made more sense with a plan. But she had lost so much today. Not only Tony but also her children. "Tony...He's..." she didn't want to say it aloud because it hurt too much. But she knew he would fight until his very last breath. So, chances were that he was dead. "Tony, he said...Peter was with him," she looked at Rhodey and then at Bruce. That poor boy probably was stranded in outer space on a planet on his own.

Natasha
Natasha snapped as he told her what he had lost and couldn't just possibly move on. She grumbled for a moment willing herself to calm down, but it wasn't working. "Killed your family," the spy murmured to herself and pulled her hands into fists. "Do you honestly think you are the only one who lost something today?" she practically shouted at him and stared him down. "Well, get in line because all of us lost family, friends and more today! At least we fought to make it right unlike other people," she told him and moved out of the seat. Of course, she knew it wasn't fair on Clint to hold him that this was his own fault for staying at home. She would've encouraged that but

Natasha rolled her eyes as Clint started crying. Well, she could relate to his pain, but it didn't get them anywhere to start complaining - as well as blaming. "Oh, don't you dare to tell me I wouldn't understand. Unlike you, I fought pregnantly and lost both that child and my boyfriend. Possibly even Lina!" she deadpanned and walked into the back of the Quinjet to get out of her clothes. They were sticking to her skin like they usually did but today she felt like the leather was suffocating her.

As he told her about his plan, Natasha simply rolled her eyes and searched the stupid Quinjet for clothes. By now, she didn't even care if she ended up wearing clothes of the other Avengers.
"You want to steal something that's literally on that madman's hand?" she asked him sounding tired of that topic. All she wanted to do by now was move on and go into hiding. This was the death of the Black Widow, and she would surface somewhere else. New name, new identity...everything. In her head, she was already planning everything. "That alien is not just some warmonger, Clint. He will squish you like a fly the moment you get too close. We might've killed his servants, but you won't get close to him. Thor got as close to killing him as it got," she grumbled clearly not thinking that this would work at all. Eventually, she comes back wearing different pieces of clothes and just sat down on the co-pilot seat again. She rubbed her face and turned away not wanting to have a pity party in this jet.


Steve
Steve nodded and looked around in the lab as the young woman left. He moved to sit down on a chair hoping that was okay with Shuri before he told that bracelet Andy's phone number. He sighed and secretly prayed that he would pick up because he had literally no idea what would happen if his boyfriend didn't. He looked down at the pearls hoping for the best. Steve was so tired that he just wanted to close his eyes and move on from whatever had happened not even an hour ago. But he couldn't. After all, with Tony gone, who would actually take on Thanos and make things right?

In the Soul StoneWanda
She cried when she held onto Vision's dead body. How could all of this go so terribly wrong? She wanted to scream and tear the world apart when it happened. Suddenly she felt light-headed, and she could feel her brother searching for her frantically.
"Pietro!" she called out being able to feel him right next to her. But nothing happened. He just stared past her like she didn't even exist. She didn't understand as things went blurry and she heard people screaming and children asking for their parents. She frowned and looked around. It was almost odd, and it felt like nothing had happened...just that things felt odd. She felt lighter than usual if that even made sense?

Suddenly things went silent, and she looked around. There were still people, but they were blurry. Everyone was blurry but Sam. She instantly stumbled over to her. Her legs wouldn't support her properly, but she needed to know that she was real and not trapped in some sort of dimension. Part of her mind still tried to reach out to Pietro though. She could feel his distress, and despite her confusion, she attempted to reach out to her twin.
"Sam," she called out breathless when she finally managed to reach him. Almost afraid, she touched his shoulder. Unlike all those blurry figures who almost seemed none existing, he actually felt real to her. "Oh god, it feels good to see someone," she exclaimed. Her makeup was ruined by her tears shed for Vision. But she didn't care. Wanda knew she could trust Sam and that was all that mattered to her, at the moment.
 
In space

Tony
“But that’s exactly it!”, Tony shouted and his face lit up, “There’s gotta be a radio somewhere! We can use it to contact the others. Maybe...”
He swallowed hard. Maybe they’re still alive. Maybe they’re dead.
He was still waiting for a panic attack, but it didn’t come. Apparently, he was healed from the anxiety. There was nothing to lose, he wasn't going to see any of his friends again. So where was the sense of this all? If he was lucky, maybe the rest of the team was still alive and even that wasn't sure. So he had decided to keep his expectations as low as possible for now, so he wouldn’t be too hurt if something went wrong.

He took the fox kid to the ship with him and the boy seemed happy about that. Nebula refused to tell him what was going on, so he just went with the fact that she didn’t like either of both. She seemed grumpy, even angry about the fact that the flight stabilizer was broken. But Tony was actually quite happy they had found that boy. He tired to communicate with him again, but this time using more of his body language. He pointed at himself and said: “Tony.” Then he pointed at the boy, asking him for his name. The boy thought about it for a while and smiled.
“Linus”, he sad and pointed at himself, then at Tony, “Tony.”
“Yeah, exactly”, Tony nodded and pressed him into a chair, “Wait here”, he said, hoping that Linus would understand what he meant.
“Wait here”, Linus repeated and got up, “No, wait. Stay here”, Tony tried again, this time woth more support from his arms.
Linus sat back down.
“Wait here?”, he asked and looked at Tony with big eyes.
The Stak nodded: “Exactly.”
“Exactly”, the fox boy repeated.
With a sigh, the Iron Man went outside to help Nebula fix the flight stabilizer. Somce she had only one hand to work with, she was quite slow and needed his assistance. Tony just held the thing in place and she did all the screwing. No word was said.
“What did you talk with him?”, Tony finally broke the silence, “What did he say?”
Nebula didn’t seem very happy about that question. Tony sighed and stared at the outdated spacecraft. He just hoped that this damn thing would get them through the atmosphere safely without burning to ashes. Once they were low enough, he could call his suits for support and they could slow them down, but they had to make the first few miles all by themselves and that was what worried him.
“Do you think this old thing can withstand the atmosphere long enough for us to survive the entry?”, he asked, more in a chatty tone now, while he was pressing a piece of metal onto another, “I can catch us at about 100 kilometers height, but we have to do the rest ourselves....”

The stabilizer was done and Tony was still waiting for an answer to his question. He had a satellite with spare suit parts in the Thermosphere. If they could make it that far, he could dress the ship from outside... Well, if his transmitter still worked. He wasn’t so sure about that, since his whole body and equipment had taken quite the blow when Thanos had thrown moons at him. He wasn't the one to question his technology, but right now, he wasn't sure if they could make it. Well, their best guess was to try... or burn up in the atmosphere.

On Earth

Clint
Squish you like a fly...
As if that mattered. It wasn't like they had anything to lose, did he?
"And? So what! At least we died trying!", Clint countered at approximately the same volume as Natasha, "We got nothing to lose, don't you get that? Since when is the Black Widow scared of death?"
This wasn't Clint talking. His eyes were gleaming like a mad man's and he was walking up and down the small room of the quinjet, "There's only one way to find out if we're gonna make it, we have to try. And if he kills me, so what? There's nothing waiting for me out there!"
The archer shrugged and licked his lips, the taste of salt on them. Why didn't she understand? What had happened to his best friend and partner in crime? Was this really just a debt thing?

"If you're too soft or scared or whatever, I'll go alone. See how far I'll get without you. Maybe past the first guard, until they find me..." He shrugged. The worst thing about all this was that he really didn't care. He would run right into that building and try his best just so that he wouldn't have to live with the loss of his family.

Andy
I threw a wish in the well
Don't ask me I'll never tell
I looked to you as it fell
And now you're in my way
I'd trade my soul for a wish
Pennies and dimes for a kiss
I wasn't looking for this
But now you're in my way


He knew he was totally broken when he had a pop song stuck in his head. His head buried in some newspapers, which displayed every detail on the way the Avengers had disappeared and no one knew what had happened, except that Tony Stark might be on that space ship, which had been seen in New York. Some said that he had been abducted, some of them said that there was some kind of conspiracy going on and Tony Stark was an alien that was... he had stopped to read at that point.

Andy jumped when his phone suddenly blared out his favorite song. He sighed and picked it up, as he saw a combination of numbers that didn't make any sense. No prefix of any state that he knew. Andy almost didn't pick up, but it was the feeling that it was something important that made him press that damned button.
"Hello?", he asked into the phone and almost expected some computer voice, telling him that the world would end, or some foreigner, asking him for money. But none of that happened. He heard a deep breath and then a sigh.
"Steve? Fuck, please tell me you're okay. How are you? Are you hurt? What happened? Come home, please, fuck, just... tell me you're okay, I need to hear your voice again. I thought..."
He had to close his mouth to stop talking. He was so upset and so... angry. Why didn't he come home? Why hadn't he told him where he was heading when he had left? And what the FUCK had happened? Why were people turning to dust? Had they lost the battle? Was the world ending?

Pietro
He was sitting in the same position as he had done two hours ago. It was still bright around him, but slowly, the sun was sinking and he could feel the day end already. His whole body was shaking, aching in disbelief. He refused to believe that Wanda was gone! She was his twin, his other half. But why couldn't he find her.
"Pietro?"
A whisper, as far away as home. He wasn't even sure if it was imaginary or real, as he raised his head and looked around him. She wasn't here, but it felt like she was. There, inside his head. But this time he didn't fight her, he didn't push her out immediately. He listened.
"Wanda?", he asked and wondered if she could hear him. He focused on one picture. It was the two of them, trapped under debris, clinging onto each other. It was something that connected them, something they had used as a symbol long ago. And she answered. She dissolved the picture and inserted something happy.
"Where are you?", he asked and got up. He still wasn't sure if she could hear him, but it was worth a shot, "Gimme a sign, I'll come and get you."
But there was nothing , no answer, no sign. Just silence and darkness.

In the soul world

Sam
"Wanda, damn, are you okay?", he asked and caught her before she could fall over. He hadn't been aware that he had been standing until now. This place was worse than any head injury. Was he dead? Was this some kind of in between life and death? Why didn he feel like his body was in free fall, approaching the ground real quick? Just the wind wasn't there, it didn't pull on his clothes, telling him to get ready. It was like he was in outer space.
"Hey, look at me. Slow breaths, okay?", he went on trying to get her scared eyes back to him. She looked like a panicked soldier, on the verge of losing it.
"Do you have any idea what this is? Did Thanos cause this?"
He looked at her with a frown. "Are we in someone's head?"

So many questions and probably no answers. The girl looked clueless herself and he didn't want to upset her any further. So he just stood there next to her and frowned. Slowly, the green fog cleared and he saw crowds of people, all equally as confused. And in the middle of it, a man with a metal arm, standing still, staring, not moving. He looked like a statue, as Sam approached him.
"Wanda, tell me what's going on in his head", he asked the girl next to him. He just wanted to make sure that they were safe talking to him, that he didn't snap and kill them all. He didn't seem too stable, the way he stared at something that wasn't there.
 
SpaceNebula
"We traded his trip to Earth with the technology I need on this shithole," she told him indifferent as she worked on the stabilizer with one arm. She huffed and looked at Tony wondering why he felt so compassionate about a stranger. "He's most likely the last of his kind; asked me if I was his mother," she shook her head over the foolishness and weakness that kid was showing. Nebula had already known how to kill people in various ways at that age.

"That ship has withstood worse than Earth's atmosphere," she told him seriously and huffed a little "Besides I wouldn't bring you back to Earth if I didn't expect that spaceship to get me back to space." Nebula didn't intend on waiting long. After all, Thanos was still out there alive, and now she had her sister to revenge as well. "Thanos won't get himself killed on his own," she grumbled as she finally finished the stabilizer. She grabbed the thing with her healthy arm and started to carry it to the ship.

"For someone as smart as Thanos said, you are asking a lot of dumb questions, Tony Stark," she told him unnerved.

On EarthNatasha
"You are one to talk about fear," she huffed and shook her head. Heck, he hadn't even been part of that. "What were you doing all day long? Lying on your cozy couch taking a nap?" she accused him and just shook her head. Natasha tried to stay calm knowing that Clint usually wouldn't say something like that to her. But it rubbed her the wrong way. What did he even know about Thanos?

"You wanna die so badly?" she asked him and raised a gun, she had placed in the waistband of the jeans she was wearing. She aimed the gun at his head threatening to shoot him. "Fucking tell me if you want it so badly instead of leaving this alone? I can help! That's far quicker and less painful," she shouted at him so annoyed with him at the moment. She shook her head and tried to pull herself together. Natasha glared at him as she finally lowered her gun and put the safety back in but kept a glance at him.

Steve
For once in his life, he didn't tell other people to watch their language. He was just happy to listen to Andy's voice, and he tried not to cry. Oh god, how freaking he glad he was to hear his voice. For a moment, he just breathed and enjoyed the rambling. Steve could just go on and listen to him say fuck over and over again.

"Hi," he merely said, and suddenly Steve just felt so tired. All people just expected him to work all the time. Even he didn't know why all his bones hurt in his body. Little did he know that Steve would be dead by now if Thanos hadn't rewind the time. When he was smacked to the ground, he had hit his head badly resulting in his death.
"I'm in Wakanda-" he explained slowly and rubbed his face "-that alien ship in New York brought some dangerous and powerful people to Earth... We lost, Andy. That's why everyone turns to dust. I thought when-when we could remove the Infinity Stone from Visions head we could destroy it. But...I couldn't save anyone today," he admitted quietly. All of this felt like it was his fault. If he had just fought more - no one would be dead. His friends would still live.

"I'm sorry... I mean- I tried to stop it," he said so quietly and sighed a bit "I left to stop him." Steve seemed caught in his own memory.

In the Soul StoneWanda
Her panic disconnected her from Pietro. She didn't want to do this. It made her feel helpless and alone. That was something she had hated. It was something about being able to communicate with her brother at all times that let her get going mostly. To her, it felt like he was dead all over again. But unknown to Wanda it was her who was actually dead instead of him.

Both Sam and her brother asked her where she was. How should she know? This was nothing but felt like everything at the same time. For some reason, it felt like Vision as well. Not exactly like him but close enough. "I don't know... I think Thanos snapped his fingers," she admitted and looked at Sam. This was the best explanation she had for something she didn't even comprehend completely. She looked around and frowned as other people came to view. "I can't explain... It feels like Vision," she admitted, and it was adequately the closest she would get to the soul stone. The Infinity Stone inside Vision's head had always been a part of him for her. Unlike most people, she hadn't seen it as something extra but him. She at least tried to send her twin a focused image of Vision and the stone in his forehead.

Wanda followed her friend and looked at Barnes. She turned to Sam once he asked her what was going on. "I don't think I should-" she admitted but reached out her hands displaying the red fog again. "He's lost...between this place and Earth-" she explains and frowns "-tries to hold onto his life." They weren't exactly dead or alive. It was almost like the Soul Stone had trapped them in somewhere in between. She frowned more but placed her hand on Bucky's shoulder. "It's okay... Let go," she encouraged him almost naturally.
 
Tony
"Yes, I know that", Tony sighed and looked up the space ship with concern, "That is exactly why I'm worried.."
But it didn't make a difference. They had to make it. This was all they had. This was their only chance to get back to earth. He was still scared what he wopuld find there. Still, he had to go down there and find out, because not knowing killed him as much as the thought that Pepper and all the others might be dead. Half of the population... What were the odds?
"Let's get going", he finally nodded, deciding to finally give destiny a shot. If he was meant to survive, maybe this was the time to just trust in it. Strange had been pretty specific: The needed him to win. He wasn't that special, but maybe he was worth something in the end.

The ship was fixed and they got inside. A test run for the engines, everything seemed to be functional. The pressure stabilizer made a strange noise, but it would stand it, at least that was what Tony tried to tell himself over and over again. He would make it back and bring Peter back home safely... Or what was left of him. It still hurt too much to think about it, but right now, all that he could think about was getting home and seeing if there was anything left to be saved. Maybe he could help those who were left to lead a better life... If they would ever let the man who had destroyed earth near him again. Who knew, maybe he would be imprisonated, too, hunted, like Steve and half of the Avengers. Everything would go its way sooner or later. If he made it home.

The flight was long and quiet. Somewhen, Tony had started trying to teach the boy a little bit of English. He used every avilable object on the ship to teach him how they were called. And the fox boy- Linus- was a good student. When Nebula told him that she needed instructions to where she should approach the planet, Tony was halfway through the equipment already and Linus was making great progress.
"Try somewhere in the desert, where no one can see us. I can get home from anywhere, doesn't really matter", he told her and sighed, "Don't wanna scare the shit out of everyone landing another space ship in the middle of New York...", he contemplated, more to himself than to her, but Linus repeated eagerly.
"Desert?", he asked.
"There's a lot of sand there", Tony mumbled, only half focused.
"Sand", the fox boy stated and took Peter's improvised urn to shake it.
"NO!", Tony shouted, totally unprepared, "That's no sand, that's... Peter, gimme that."
He snatched the urn and put it where it had been before. He sighed, as he saw that the fox boy had hidden behind Nebula's chair.
"No, I didn't mean to... Nebula, tell him I didn't mean to scare him...", he admitted and rubbed his face in his hands, "You're not wrong, this does look like sand..."

Silence was the result of Tony's little outburst. They sat like that for what felt like at least four hours, as suddenly Tony spotted a familiar blue planet. He almost felt delighted and smiled, as he pointed out of the window to show Linus his home planet.
"Look, Linus, that's Earth", he smiled and the boy went to stand next to him. They were approaching the blue planet pretty fast, now that Tony had a fixed point to measure their velocity. But Nebula looked calm and relaxed, so he just waved it off as his paranoia. She knew how to fly a space ship and he didn't. Not yet.
"Earth", Linus said and smiled, too, "Tony Earth."
The Iron Man sighed and shook his head.
"No idea what you're trying to say, kiddo, but this is my home, so...", the Stark started a sentence, but he couldn't finish it. Because the moment they entered the Thermosphere, there was a sudden bump and all the lights went off. Tony took a deep breath and looked at Nebula.
"Is it just me or are we out of electricity?", he asked and the next moment, he was starting to float. Well, shit. That much about gravity.
Also, no alarm went off. Instead, it was crazy quiet all of sudden, as Tony realized what no power meant. It meant no oxygen, which would give him approximately ten seconds to handle this.
"Friday", he gasped, "Please."
He knew that he was probably in range of his satelite, but he wasn't entirely sure. Please...
"Friday, get us outta here. Get us home."
A static noise, coming from his damaged wrist watch. He was still wearing it, though he hadn't been sure if it was functional.
"Friday, I need oxygen. Get us outta here", he tried again, then he passed out. Something crashed and he was sure he was freezing, as suddenly a voice was audible in his ear.
"Tony, good to hear your voice again. Hold your breath, I'm picking you up."

When the Iron Man regained consciousness, he was covered in metal, slowly approaching Earth. He was warm and cozy, but his thorax felt like it was mud. He was quite sure that this was some massive internal bleeding, but he couldn't tell.
"Oh, you're awake", a sassy AI voice greeted him and it almost sounded like she was smiling, which wasn't possible, but still...
"Am I...", he started, but Fri didn't let him finish.
"You have a mild concussion, your ribs are broken, you have a massive stab wound in your thorax, which needs medical attention stat, your body is suffering from hypothermia and your brain is oxygen deprieved. Otherwise your vitals are stable and surprisingly well."
"Perfect...", Tony sighed.
"Also, your new comerades are wrapped up and will follow wherever you go. Though the cyborg has not yet woken up. The- excuse the term- furry is alright, he is just staring at everything and talking in a language I am not yet familiar with."
"Thanks, Friday", he said, really grateful for everything. He didn't have time to focus on anything else, before she continued talking.
"Where shall I take you, Tony?", she asked.
This wasn't too hard. He couldn't go home or anywhere where he risked having lost someone. He couldn't take thinking about Pepper and the children now. But he needed help and a doctor, so who was he going to call...? It always came down to Rhodey, didn't it? He had to be alright. He had always been there.
"Is... Rhodey okay?", he asked, knowing that he had probably fought alongside the others. Moreover, he knew that Rhodey had like ten first aid kits in his flat and a few skills as a battlefield stitcher. This was definitely the best choice.
"Yes, shall I send him..."
"No, just get us to his apartment. We'll see where we go from there."

A few minutes later, Tony's suit broke through the bedroom window of Rhodey's apartment and the suit placed a panting and bleeding Tony on the soldier's bed.
"Okay, gimme some whisky, a few shirts and painkillers", he ordered his suit and watched the other two suits land and open up. Nebula was still unconscious, but Linus started sniffing the walls immediately. Tony just hoped that he wouldn't feel the urge to mark his territory anywhere around here. Oh God, Rhodey would kill him.
Tony did quite a good job, dressing his wound, while he was drinking whisky in big sips. Then he lay there, exhausted, two empty suits standing guard next to the bed. That was how Rhodey found him, drenched in his own blood and alcohol, breathing heavily.

Clint
"Oh so suddenly taking care of my family is being lazy?!", Clint shouted, now on top of his lungs, screaming all the pain out, as tears were streaming down his face. When Natasha pulled the gun, he didn't hesitate for a moment, but spread his arms wide, "Shoot me and you lose your chance to get Barnes back!", he shouted, still at high volume, "You know as well as me that you need me to help you fix this!"
Rage was not somehing that he could deal with easily. He wasn't too good at controlling his impulses, which was exactly the reason why he had been a thief for so long. Easy money had always appealed to him, in a way, but only until he had gotten to know Laura. The point was, though, that it was in his DNA. The anger outbursts of his father, the hate behind all that sadness... He didn't want to hurt Natasha, which was why he was aiming for her waist, which he knew she could block easily. He didn't throw a knife or anything valuable, he just picked up the next best thing lying around, which was a half full water bottle, and threw it at her. It made a flopping noise when it landed on the keyboard behind her and he stopped for a minute... Until that water bottle came flying back and he ducked away. It didn’t hit him, but it burst on the wall behind him and soaked Cooper’s backpack. And that was the second Clint lost it. He started throwing everything he could find. Unarmed arrows, metal parts, practically everything that made noise.

But Natasha knew how to aim and shoot, too, though she never hit Clint, who was juming and ducking, but always the wall behind him. In the end, that game turned into a huge fight, Clint putting all his rage and heart into hitting Natasha, or trying to. It was something like a coping fight, putting all his unshed tears into the rage that he needed to fight. Fighting was a staregy to distance himself from everything that had happened. It was an algorythm that took his mind off things and let him focus. It was relieving, letting all that hate flow out through the things that he threw at Natasha.

In the soul stone

Bucky
Let go...
He heard the voice, but he couldn't. He had just gotten control of his body, he couldn't let it go now.
"I can't. I have to keep control, keep it together..."
But once again, he was too weak. He sank into darkness, just that this time, he didn't wake up in an abandoned building, but looked at Wanda and Sam, observing him carefully.
"Are you okay, man?"
The question was simple and still so hard to answer.
"I think so. Where are we? What is this?", he asked, still dazed.
Suddenly, a green light started floating in front of his eyes. Only he could see it, but he followed it and he didn't even know why.
"Hey, where are you going?! Barnes?!"
He didn't need a babysitter. And he almost definitely didn't need someone to tell him what to do. Especially if Sam said it, he would gladly disobey and walk away from all this. He took a deep breath. That small green light looked so familiar, it almost made his heart ache. He reched out for it and touched it. It felt... Like a person. He couldn't explain it, but it felt like it was more than just a light. A life? A ghost, maybe?
"Who are you?", he asked, almost whispering. He felt like he was losing his mind, but this was important. It felt important to him.
 
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Nebula
Many things went very wrong at the same time. First things had been fine and were going fine, but suddenly the breaks and engine stopped working at the same time. Only moments later the flight stabilizer stopped working again, and her bird started to break apart. She cursed in her mother tongue and tried to move the ship in the right direction. But it was too late. They would most likely die when they hit earth if the metal would resist the newfound atmosphere. Suddenly something big hit her head, and she couldn't do anything but fall unconscious.

Natasha & Steve
As he told her to just shoot and mentioned, Bucky she completely lost it. "You have absolutely no right to judge any of this," she screamed at him and gave one single warning shot. She shot past his head, but if he had moved too much, she would've killed him. With a huff, she stepped out of the line as he threw a water bottle after her. Of course, hitting his son's backpack was making him more enraged. But again it wasn't her own fault. He was the one starting all of this after all.

"Stop this shit, or I'm knocking you out," she threatened him and started to throw different things to him. Eventually, she even started to throw things on him because Clint had absolutely no right in the world to blame her for what happened. "Just get off of my back! You want to go after him right now? Then do it! No one will truly stop you!" she shouted at him with tears in her eyes.

Steve was in his phone call when he heard the shot from Natasha's gun. He looked alarmed up and cursed for once in his life. Why couldn't things calm down? "I'm sorry... I have to go - it sounds like people are killing around here. I'll come back to New York shortly, but I gotta make sure my team doesn't kill each other," he mentions and hurries off after trying to hang up. Steve was really just stressed out and guilt-ridden by now. He huffs and pulls the door open blinking as he sees both Natasha and Clint throwing stuff each other and crying.
"What the heck are you doing there?" he walked between the two to stop them from killing each other or else it looked to him like that. "Can you stop it? We need to stick together and not kill each other!" he tried to point out.

Rhodey
He left Pepper with Banner. He felt tired because most voices he felt was that they wanted to make a plan to immediately go after Thanos. If he had learned anything during his time in the field. Sometimes attacking right after a fight wasn't right for the own soldiers. All of them were not only physically but also psychologically ready for another battle like this. Their next fight would most likely be even worse than their last one. So they all needed a few days of calmness to collect each other and form a proper plan and not go into this head's first like a few hours ago.

He sighed and took off. Rhodey told Pepper that she could contact him any time when she needed him or anything at all. But he needed a good night of sleep. He took off and allowed Tony's AI to fly him back to his apartment. But nothing could prepare him for what he saw on his freaking bed. His first glance went to two Iron Man suits that were sprawled in his living room. Confused but too tired to check it, he went to the bedroom. After all, he was sure that Friday would've told him if Tony was back and in need of some sort of help or that she would've contacted Pepper. But still, there was the former playboy on his bed bleeding onto his sheets. "Oh god, Tony!" he called out and instantly went over to check for a pulse. Next thing was that he searched for a phone and dialed 911.

He hurried to get the first aid kit to stop the bleeding for now. "Tony, Tony... Can you talk?" he asked him as he started to patch him up. He had seen worse on the field when he had been in war battle fields. But still this was Tony and he couldn't have him die on him. Pepper would kill him.

In the Soul StoneYoung Man
He was sitting on the ground. For him, the soul world already had a physical appearance. He had watched the souls appear everywhere. He huffs a bit as he doesn't expect any of them to talk to him. He was used to people emerging from time to time but usually not so many at once arose. Strangely enough, his appearance was like Buckys just with emerald eyes and vibrant red hair. He looked up as he heard someone walking up to him. With a frown, he noticed that the man looked similar to him and was accompanied by a bright green light.

"I see you found a soul without a body," he told him as the man seemed somewhat lost. The green light even snuggled close to him. He looked at Bucky and just shrugged getting up. "The soul will get a body eventually. You just have to wait," he shrugs.

Laura
She walks around with her three kids looking frantically for Clint. This was one big mess. What had happened? On her way, she had found two infants. She looked at the two babies and sighed. "Cooper, can you hold your brother?" she asked him but just placed Nathan into her oldest arms. She kisses his cheeks and sighs "I am so sorry for asking you to be so brave and grown up."
She takes the two children who looked suspiciously like Tony and Pepper. The two poor babies were crying for their parents. She shoo'd them gently hoping to calm them down for now until she figured out what had happened to all of them or found someone she knew.
 
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Clint
Clint hadn't even heard Steve come in. He had just picked up a metal box full of instant food and raised it to throw it at Natasha, as suddenly someone was blocking his shot.
"Fuck off!", he shouted at the man, before he looked up and saw who it was. Still, this had nothig to do with him or whatever he thought this was. This was about Barnes, Natasha, Clint and his lost family. And what the hell did Captain America know about that?! Nothing, that's right. He knew nothing about love, family, losing a child. He was just a soldier.
Can you stop it? We need to stick together and not kill each other!
He was right, which was also the reason why Clint dropped that damned box and looked at Natasha. She was crying, too and Clint's heart felt like it was ripped into pieces. Because how could he assume that Natasha didn't feel any pain, just beacuse she kept her emotions hidden, as always? How could he assume that she didn't grief for Barnes, as well as for his family? She had been a part of it... So why would he assume that she didn't feel broken?

"He killed my family", Clint pressed out between his lips in tears. He couldn't say more without screaming, it hurt too much to be said.
And Natasha looked just the same way. She wasn't as shaken, because she knew how to push the pain away. Something he had never leared to do... But she was hurting, too. And he went past Steve and pulled her into a hug, while his tears were flowing like a river.
"I can't just leave it like this, Tasha", he explained, "I can't just walk away and pretend that they never existed."

Linus
He was amazed by the thing that suddenly covered him and flew him somewhere. He had never felt that safe, that protected. He started talking to the voice he heard, though he wasn't sure if she understood what he was telling her. That his name was Linus, that he was lost and that he needed help. That he didn't want to be alone anymore and that he wanted to stay with her, because she was nice. After a few hours of flight time, he was placed somewhere and the cozy warm layer around him disappeared. He started exploring immediately. Everything looked so different, even the smell was different to everything he had ever known. But then again, he had spent the last 50 years on his own, on a planet that had been wiped clean by a man. He could remember him clearly, the wrinkled face, the purple skin... And how he had killed every single one of them, because they hadn't been strong enough. Linus had stayed, though. He had been able to hide and he had found that old ship, that had helped him to survive. And now he was here. Finally off that planet, finally somewhere new, where he didn't have to watch the misery of all of his relatives all over again.

Linus was obserivng a big and strange metal closet, which smelt amazing by the way, when he heard something approach. Scared that it might be something hostile, he walked up the wall and lay down on the ceiling, hiding behind a lamp, that hopefully wouldn't give his position away that fast. Then he watched, ears upright, as a human entered the apartment. First, the human walked by and seemed relaxed, but then suddenly he came running back, a thing pressed to his ear, while carrying a red box with a cross on it. Linus was curious, so he carefully crawled along the cieiling, not making any sound. The boy walked down the wall behind the human and hid under the bed, where he could smell Tony's blood. He couldln't die, not now. Not like this... He just wasn't old enough. And Linus had just found a friend. He wouldn't let him die.

"Tony...", he whispered and held out his hand on the side of the bed where the other human couldn't see. Tony grabbed it and Linus heard him cough.
Suddenly, there were feet stomping, more humans running in and Linus withdrew his hand. He just stayed under the bed and didn't move. This situation really was something else. So many people in this room, everyone shouting things he didn't understand. He just stayed where he was, not daring to move.

Tony
"Hey", Tony responded and sent the Colonel a smile, "Ever wondered what a spit-roasted Stark looks like?"
He breathed in heavily and felt his body getting lighter. This wasn't good, he had lost too much blood. But he would survive, wouldn't he? Strange had predicted it, this was the future where they won.
"Mh, takes a lot more to shut me up...", he panted and nodded, "Take care of my fox boy, yeah? He's a nice kid."
He wasn't the one to give up easily, but this was a little too much to take. He was cold and his hands started to lose the ability to move. He couldn't stay awake for much longer, and maybe it was better like that. But one thing, one thing he had to know before he passed out and was taken somewhere else, where he wouldn't be able to move for a while.
"Pepper...?", he asked, as his eyes fluttered closed and he felt Rhodey try and stop the bleeding, "The kids... Are they...?"
He couldn't say anything more. He just stared at his friend, begging for an answer. Even when the paramedics came in, his eyes were still fixed on Rhodey, begging him to tell him. He needed to know if this was worth fighting for before he was off to anywhere. He needed to know!

Andy
Life- threatening bleeding, patient responsive.
That had been the description on the screen when they had driven off. It wasn't as if Andy had known what would await him at the small apartment. They had rushed inside as fast as they could, had taken all their equipement with them. Even the defibrilator, because, well, who knew? He had put his gloves on in a second and opened the door, a black guy leading him and his team inside. The Iron Man suits around the room gave it away and Andy knew the second he saw them who they were going to treat. He wasn't nervous, he had done this a thousand times before. Still, when he entered the room, he felt a little sick to the stomach.
"Okay", he said and placed himself next to the bed and put away the shirts, so he could look at the wound. That didn't look good at all. "Hey, Mr Stark, Tony. Can you hear me?"
The man's eyes fluttered open and he nodded.
"Patient conscious", Andy informed his colleagues, who were making the stretcher ready to use.
Andy took some wound dressing and plugged the hole in Tony's thorax with them, before he stabilized the whole construction with some bandages.
"Okay, we're good to go", he nodded and let his colleagues put Tony onto the stretcher, "Sam, call the hospital, we need a transfusion stat."
He turned to Rhodey: "Do you happen to know his blood type?"

They were off as fast as they had arrived. Stark was in the Emergency unit, getting patched up and a transfusion. Andy would say that he was critical, but he was alive and would probably stay that way. It was kind of comforting to know that Tony Stark was alive and back on Earth, but that was all he could say about this. He smiled, when he washed the blood off his hands. Slowly, everything was getting back to normal.

In The Soul World

Bucky
They walked a while, the green light floating right beside him. This was all so strange, so empty. He could only see people, surrounded by green fog. He shook his head and just followed the light, too dazed to question any of this. But then here was this young man. He looked like him in his earlier days, just with Natasha's eyes and when he looked up, he swore that he recognized his own movements. What was this about? What was happening to them?
"What do you mean a soul without a body?", he asked and frowned at the man, "Are we in heaven? Is this hell...?"
It was probably something in between. But he couldn't feel his body. So maybe this wasn't him at all. Maybe this wasn't even real. But why would it get a body? How would it find one if it didn't get back to Earth? Where were they?
The young man got up and he felt strangely familiar. Those eyes, piercing through his own like they could see right through, the red hair and the face, as if he was looking into a mirror.
"Who are you...?", he finally came around to ask.

Cooper
It had felt like falling asleep all of sudden, so he hadn't cared much about where he had woken up. He had been next to Lila, so this couldn't have been wromng, right? Sure, he had been scared and he still was, but he couldn't show that in front of his family. He was just as much as a hero as his Dad was. His Mom was looking for him, calling his name again and again, but Cooper knew already that he wasn't there. They were alone, why didn't his Mom get that?
Maybe this was some kind of abduction, a different dimension they had been sucked into. Maybe he just needed to make sure that everyone was safe and things would happen on their own. They would make it back, he was sure of that and even though his heart was pounding, he nodded and took his little brother, so his Mom could carry those screaming babies. There were more kids, all lost, some looking for their parents, some just standing and crying and Cooper helped his Mom gather them all in one place. He sat down on the ground next to her, as she seemed to think about what to do next. That was when Cooper spotted a familiar face. It was Wanda, who was standing next to a black guy. But that guy didn't look dangerous, so he went running towards her, as he called her name.
"Wanda!", he shouted, happy to see his friend. Maybe she knew what had happened to them. She had magic powers, after all.
 
Natasha & Steve
"Tell that idiot that," Natasha pressed out despiteful and took some calming breaths. She wiped away the few tears that had slipped past her eyelids and huffed over herself. This was ridiculous, and the spy had no time for any of this. Just as she was about to move away entirely and walk out of this situation to allow Steve to take care of that fucking idiot, Clint came rushing over. The redhead stood tensed in the hug until she finally gave up and just hugged him back tightly.
Natasha held onto him like he was dear life itself. "I know... But now is not the time," she told him seriously. She didn't like any of this either, and if she could, that purple monster would've already had a bullet through his brain. But things hadn't worked out this way. So, they needed more than just anger to let go off.

"No one is asking you to do so," she whispered as Natasha knew no one but her griefed the way she did. Usually, people acknowledged the death, but she didn't. To her, it was easier pretending that none of this had ever happened. "We just need time, Clint. You can't take him down alone and the rest of us... I'm so damned tired," she admitted and looked at him. Without James...what was there to live for anyways? But she couldn't just end her life like this. Lina was her , and Natasha knew that her survival instinct would always just win. No matter how depressed she honestly felt.

Steve blinked utterly confused as Clint just walked past him like nothing had ever happened between the two. He stared at them hugging and declaring that everything was fine again. He didn't know how to handle this but just wished he had something like this before Bucky had died. But it was too late for that now. He mumbled something incoherent about what he needed to do and left them alone.

Rhodey
As Tony cracked her joke, Rhodey just gave a half-hearted chuckle. "No, I have not wondered that before and to be honest I could go without knowing, pal," he told him and sighed a little as he looked down at his best friend. At the mention of Linus, Rhodey seemed utterly confused. "Fox-boy? What fox-boy?" he asked him and frowned a little. There hadn't been someone around but the stupid Iron Man suits and Tony himself.

At the mention of Pepper and his children, Rhodey tried not to sigh. Now, really wasn't the time to tell him that his kids...had what exactly? Pepper hadn't mentioned anything, but it didn't take a genius to find out what had happened. "Pepper is doing fine. She went to Wakanda to fight Thanos," he replied, and with some luck, Tony wouldn't realize what he had implied. It was unlikely though.

"I'll get Pepper for you," he promised as the paramedics drove him off. He sighed and looked at the mess Tony had done in his apartment. That was ridiculous. Even half dead his best friend managed to make such a mess. His shoulders dropped as he realized that the much-needed sleep was far from happening.

In the Soul StoneYoung Man
The man looked at the light and sighed a little. "This happens when the soul is not developed completely yet as is the body. It takes time for a female to create a baby after all," he pointed out and sighed a little. He had just been around far longer, so the Soul Stone had created everything he needed to survive in this world. After refusing to leave this world because he regularly felt like someone was calling him back, he had stayed and gotten a body for himself.
"This is the stage between earth and the afterlife. Usually, people tend to stay here when they feel like it's not their time to die yet," he explained and looked around "But something tells me this is different... Usually not so many souls appear."

The young man stretched his hand out, and the green light flew over to him almost cuddling itself close before going back to Bucky like nothing had happened. As he was asked the question, the man looked at Bucky. He had a connection with him, and he had a feeling he knew exactly who that man was. But it wasn't in his place to tell. Maybe eventually but not when he was just stripped from the living. He could tell by the way he seemed so confused about this world.
"I don't really have a name. My parents never got around to name me-" he told him honestly and looked at Bucky "-I was very much as your friend here. Just that I never had the chance to move over. Someone keeps calling me back."

He had never been able to pass appropriately was because his mother kept calling him once a year. It was easier for souls to pass when someone came clean with the death and healed from the passing.

Lila
Looking around at all the lost children, Laura tried to gather them. She kept a close eye on both Lila and Cooper. The young girl clung to Cooper as well. She never had been able to hide her fear, but her older brother was her big hero. Not even dad because she didn't really understand what he was doing all day long when he wasn't at home. "Where are we, Coop?" she whispered as suddenly they were surrounded by all those kids she didn't know. Lila didn't like this because it felt like their mom just pushed them aside to do what? This felt so much like in school when the teacher tried to show them something. It was ridiculous.
"I'm scared," she whispered to Cooper only like he could make it better. For Lila, there were two ways of dealing with scary situations either run to mom or Cooper. Dad wasn't around to do much about the monsters underneath her bed or when she had scratched her knee open. Only Cooper and mom had been available to her most of the times. So, her brother had become her low key hero. She held onto him tightly as if she was afraid of losing him in this strange world.

She blinked as her brother suddenly started to run away from her. It took her a split second of shock to decide what she should be doing. In the end, she started crying and ran to mom. Why did her brother always dislike and push her away? She just wanted someone to hold onto. She hugged her mom tightly as she cried "I wanna go home!"
Laura looked down at her girl and frowned. She looked over to where she had left Nathan with Cooper but noticed he wasn't there anymore. This went her in a panic until she saw the familiar brown hair running to

Wanda
Once she heard her name, Wanda turned around confused. Blinking surprised, she looked at the young boy running her way. "Cooper," Wanda said and walked a few steps closer to him. With a frown, she looked at the small group that was gathering around...Laura. So, she and her son were there as well. She noticed Lila and Nathaniel there as well, and her heart sank a little. So they were dead as well?
"How are you?" she asked him unsure of how to handle all of this. Did he know what this was? But by the likes of it, probably not. Wanda knew where they were because to her it felt a bit like both Vision and the mind stone. In a way, it even was comforting. At least, she wouldn't need to feel lonely around here because Vision was here as well. Somewhere at least, she was sure of that.
 
Two weeks later...

Tony
Tony was sitting on the hospital bed, breathing heavily. He had just walked his first round oh the corridor and now his wound hurt as hell. He was better than before and it was nothing compared to the feeling that Thanos had induced by stabbing him, but it was still painful to walk. So he saw most of the time, watching anything but the news on tv and trying to relax. He had done some research and he was quite sure that there had to be a way to beat Thanos. This wasn’t over. Rhodey had come visit him every second day, telling him about Pepper. Pretty soon, Tony had figured that his kids were dead and it broke his heart, which was also the reason why he just couldn’t face Pepper, not yet. He had forbidden his friend to tell her that he knew where Tony was, he had begged Rhodey that for one time in his goddamn life, he should listen to what he said and not think about the consequences. Because it was as simple as that: Tony couldn’t look her in the eyes and tell her that it was his fault that the babies had died. That he hadn’t been strong enough to protect them.
“Mr Stark?”
A nurse came inside and looked at him with concern in her eyes: “Don’t tell me you’ve been awake again?”
It was early in the morning and Tony hadn’t been sleeping a lot since they had brought him to the hospital. He always had to think of Peter, the boy he had left behind. He hadn’t even been able to recover his remains. Damn, what kind of a mentor was he? When he hadn’t been busy contemplating his life, Tony had planned Peter’s funeral. A lot of flowers and songs, as well as a huge Iron Man show. Peter would have loved that.
"When can I go home?"
Tony almost didn't dare asking that question because he was too scared of what followed. They had told him that he had to stay at least a month, just to be sure that the wound would heal properly. And he did understand that, but with everything that had happened, he would rather be somewhere in a dark room, planning his revenge.

Though Rhodey still avoided that topic on their daily meetings (he just turned up in Tony's room, usually around 1 pm), Tony knew by now that Pepper was fine. But he also knew that most likely his children were dead, which was painful but too far away for him to fully comprehend. They had to be there, at least that was what his mind told him over and over again. They couldn't be dead. He couldn't be the murderer of his own children. It was painful enough to know that he killed half of the world's population.
It was awfully quiet for a few moments, until Tony’s phone buzzed and Tony opened the eMail he had just received.
Hello Susan,
he replied to his fund manager and the one person he had been talking on the phone with a lot lately. She was the one he had chosen to take care of his new project: The ‘Spider- home for special kids’, special meaning kids and teens with mutations like Peter’s. He did this because if he took better care of those kids, they wouldn’t end up being clumsy friendly neighborhood superheroes and die in space. They would be better off, because Tony had taught them how to use their suits and powers and they would stick to the emergency protocols like good kids did…

You know the game already, take the money you need and get us a decent building. Doesn’t have to be over the top, I wanna improve it with the kids, so they have something to do when they arrive. Thanks a lot.
Sincerely, Tony Stark
PS: Do not tell Pepper or Happy about this. I want to show them myself.


The real reason why he didn’t want Pepper to know about any of this was because he couldn’t look at her and tell her that it was his fault that the kids were dead. He couldn’t face her and admit that he had killed everyone he had been supposed to protect. So he didn’t call her. He didn’t want RHodey to tell her that he knew where Tony was. He needed some time alone.

Andy
Sleepless nights. They had had many of them since Steve had come back. They mostly involved Steve getting up in the middle of the nicest and coziest moments, walking around the flat. Sometimes he stood in front of the window, talking to someone who wasn’t there, sometimes he just got up and sat back down to draw something, or to just sit at the table and stare at a sketch for ages. Andy went with it. He knew how hard it was to just let it be, to get the past in the past. He hadn’t lost any friends, but he had lost people. And he knew that their death was a hundred percent his fault. Because he had been inexperienced and stupid. Because he had thought that he knew everything. But that was over. He had accepted that and he had also found a way to deal with those feelings of guilt. He had found a way to survive the deaths that he had experienced and that was what this was all about.

When Steve did his nightly things, meaning everything except sleeping, Andy mostly turned and sighed. He only got up once a night, which wasn’t enough to get Steve back to bed every time. But it was enough for him to make his boyfriend tea, to play guitar for him, to massage him and kiss him good night.
Andy had stopped taking shifts for some time to take care of Steve, to make sure that he wouldn’t do anything stupid, like hurt himself. He had to be sure that his boyfriend would make it through the day and the night, so he barely left him alone. They took walks together, went jogging, watched tv series and then went to bed. It had almost become a habit that Steve had trouble sleeping.

One day, they went jogging together. Andy was particularly slow that day and Steve was particularly fast, so the young paramedic and self declared musician sat down on a bench and waited for his boyfriend to pass him again. It wouldn’t take all too long, as far as he was concerned. That was when he saw a strange van with two computers in front of it. But the strangest thing about it all was that a girl in pretty, but strange clothes walked up to it and started exploring the screens. She frowned and Andy did, too. He knew that girl, Steve had introduced them when he had come back home. Her name was Shuri, she was 16 and she was from some top secret country in Africa, which was super important but Steve couldn’t say why. Anyways, Shuri shook her head and then tilted it to the side, as she mumbled something. Andy walked up to her and smiled at her gently.
“Hey, it’s me, Steve’s boyfriend. What’cha doin’?”, he asked. The girl shrugged.
“I don’t know, exactly. Just trying to find out how this machine works”, she answered and bit her lip, while pressing a button, “I think it is a portal to another dimension. Or something like that.”
“Sounds dangerous…”, he chuckled and sat down on a bench right next to her, “Need help?”

Shuri
When they had told her that they would take her with them, she had expected something exciting. Instead, the flight had been long and boring, side by side with tired warriors. Her mother had needed a long time to think about if she would let her go, but in the end, Shuri had decided for herself. She had packed her stuff and left, without a word. Now she was here and she missed home already. She was alone a lot, the room was uncomfortably small and, well, just not what she was used to. No one really talked to her and Mr Rogers had disappeared with his boyfriend. Shuri didn’t mind being alone, it was just that she kept having that dream. It came back again and again, to the point where she knew every detail and could remember everything. The third time she had seen it, she had been able to recognize two of the faces of those stone people. One was a woman, who seemed to be about T’Challa’s age and one was a strange blue figure, that almost looked like a robot of some sort. She had tried to talk to T’Challa afterwards, to get him to answer her questions, but it hadn’t been very successful. He had just shown her the same sequence over and over again, as if he were trying to tell her something important. Maybe she just didn’t get it, maybe he was being too vague. Fact was that all she knew was that Vision was involved somehow and that she had to fix him. But without the resources of a laboratory and vibranium, she was most likely unable to restore any more of his brain. She needed Tony Stark’s lab. She had seen pictures of it on the internet and it was huge and nice. Of course, her lab at home was better, but it would make a nice replacement until hers was restored.

One day, she was just walking around New York to clear her head, when she suddenly found a strange machine. There was a van next to some computers and the back of the van seemed to have some sort of ring with magnets on it, so… actually a portal? It looked like it could build one, but where to? Maybe, if she could get the machine running, she would find out. Or wouldn’t she? Oh, that one laptop seemed to be a com. She switched it on, as suddenly some guy came walking up to her, asking her what she was doing and if she needed help. Well, she didn’t actually need help, but she wouldn’t say no to company, especially because she had been on her own for what felt like forever (it had only been two days but still).
And then, when she was about to instruct that Steve’s boyfriend guy- His name, she had forgotten his name, how embarrassing.- Captain America came sprinting along and Shuri briefly wondered if he would beat her brother in a race. The boyfriend walked towards Steve and stopped him mid movement to explain what Shuri had told him she thought that they had found. It didn’t take too long and the girl didn’t listen too closely. She continued playing with the computer, which seemed to be a communication device, until she heard a clear voice. It almost sounded desperate.

“Please, I’m seeing colors all over the place. I’m going to go crazy in here”, someone wimped. Shuri frowned and looked at the screen, “Who’s there?”
“It’s uhm, it’s me… Hope?”, the voice sounded a little off, like the person behind it was half asleep.
Shuri shook her head and looked at Mr Rogers.
“It’s a portal. I think I know how to open it”, she said and expected an advice, anything to tell her if she should save that human or not.

Elsa Cardea
She walked outside and enjoyed the fresh air. She had been living in her little pretty world since the thing had happened. They all called it then end of the world, but Elsa refused to believe that. People had turned to dust and it wasn’t logical, yes, but then again, when was this world ever? She had all of her children, no one had disappeared. Her husband was in Egypt, but he was fine, too. So all in all she hadn’t lost anything. That was why her pretty little world worked. She went to work every day, happy about the fact that the worst of her patients had all fallen to ashes. It meant no more pain, no more senseless sessions with people who just wanted to kill or hurt her. She could focus on those she could really help.

Today was different, though. She had gotten a call in the morning, from a young woman who had been her student for some time. She had offered her a job, but Caia had denied it. She had told her that she couldn’t stand the evil of those people and Elsa understood that.
Now, she got into her car and was determined to use her lunch break to drive over to New York and talk to Caia, to find out if she could really help her with whatever it was that bothered her.
She sat in the waiting room of Caia’s practice, waiting for her former student and supervisee to be done with her morning meetings. When the last patient left, Elsa got up and smiled.
“So, I’m here, what’d you wanna talk about?”
 
Steve
He ran to get his mind free. Of course, Steve knew that Andy was worried for him. But in truth, he always had slept little to nothing even before what had happened. Ever since the serum, he didn't sleep longer than 5 hours at once. It only ended with him sleeping even less and wandering around a lot. At times, he had even tried to sneak out of Andy's apartment just to get a bit of space to breathe. He finally understood how Bucky must have felt when he had loved with him.

Now, he ran faster than Andy just to power himself out for once. He hoped it would quiet his extremely noisy brain lately. Steve felt so responsible for all of this, and now his mind didn't stop thinking about what had happened with Thanos and on the battlefield.
He didn't even breathe faster as Andy stopped him from running to lead him away from here. Steve didn't try to huff over Andy. He really didn't want to leave right now. But once his gaze landed on Shuri, Steve frowned a little. As he walked over with Andy to Shuri, he looked at the strange device. That man sounded like that ant guy. What had his name been? S...Scoy, Sculley.

"Scott?" he asked and walked forward with a frown "What's happening here?" Suddenly he seemed worried and looked at Shuri. "You do know how to get him back from wherever he is?" he asked her and nodded a little "Bring him back. He's one of us."

Rhodey
Rhodey always came in early to talk with the doctors about Tony's condition. Today, he was even earlier than usual and exhausted. He had spoken to Pepper, and it was getting to him seeing that woman like that. He had respected Tony's wishes in keeping it a secret that he was still alive and back from space. But he certainly didn't approve of it. Tony didn't need to face Pepper almost daily after all and see her so differently. The woman was at a breaking point, and he feared that she wouldn't come out the way either Tony or Pepper would like. He sighed and blinked as a nurse walked inside Tony's room.

For now, he stayed out and texted with Pepper. He tried to comfort her, but he felt like he was making things worse and break some trust once Pepper found out that he had kept Tony for her so long. So, he wanted to persuade him into at least giving her a phone call or some sort of sign of life to her. It was becoming ridiculous because Pepper really didn't grief well at the moment. Almost obsessed and really unhealthy the woman tried to push them all into revenging all of what had happened. Pepper and Clint complimented each other perfectly in the fact that they both just seem to set on fighting Thanos right now.

After the nurse came back out, Rhodey walked over to Tony's room and sighed. He couldn't go on any longer lying to Pepper, and he planned on telling Tony to finally come clean to her about it or else he would because he's sure that Pepper would take on Thanos any day now if she didn't have Tony to calm her down. Even Happy couldn't do anything about it. She didn't allow herself to grief and was just driven by pain and rage.
"Good morning," he greeted him instantly noticing that Tony was sleep deprived again. "You know you shouldn't give them such a hard time and sleep," he mentioned as he took the usual chair he did while visiting him. "So...what have you been up to since yesterday?" he asked him trying to make a bit of conversation but quickly added "Pepper called me last night. I think she's about to attack Thanos soon. Whether any of us will help her or not."

Natasha
Natasha had left the country of Wakanda after she made sure that Clint wouldn't kill himself. It took her a while to find both Liho and Lina as the two probably thought she and Bucky were dead. The spy still didn't take it well that James and her unborn child was dead, but Nat had pulled herself together to function for the girl. At least, she would try to provide a functioning and loving home for Lina. The redhead took both and moved into another safe home away from New York. It reminded her of too much about things she didn't want to remember.

So, the three had moved within a day and told no one about it. Clint knew most of her safe houses including the one they were currently staying in. She was sitting outside on a fire escape and dangled her feet down. In front of Lina, she tried to act tough like nothing was wrong, but when she thought she was alone, she felt the sadness almost take her over. It turned her numb. Slowly, she placed the black ribbon around her finger anymore. It had become a symbol not only for their lost son but also for James and another unborn child. "I am so sorry," she whispers in pain and closes her eyes as tears threatened to spill out. Natasha should've been able to stop it...should've saved James at least.

Caia
Caia was almost surprised that Elsa agreed on visiting her this soon. She had had this vision three times already, and it seemed urgent. But it made no sense to her, and she was afraid that she might sound stupid and entirely off the bonkers. Of course, she should've known better because Elsa listened to everything and made sense of that. But then again she wasn't one of those criminals, and she cared what the older woman thought of her.

Today didn't go as well as it usually did. Caia tried to concentrate on what her patients had to say but she felt confused, and a simple image kept on penetrating her mind. She stood amongst others which she didn't recognize besides one of them. The person looked like that robot the Avengers had introduced years ago. But she was sure that she just had those reoccurring dreams because the Avengers meant some sort of safety this world didn't seem to have anymore. They should have been the protectors, but still, she always felt all that pain of the dying and the survivors.
Maybe it was time for her to open up to someone to talk about her abilities. After all, she wasn't the only one with a mutation, but she had kept it to herself. Only her father had known before he turned to ashes as well. She had heard it from his girlfriend, and it broke a part of her as well. So it became hard to concentrate on her patients as well.
Caia was sure that her dreams meant she was looking for some sort of safety. But she guessed that she wanted things to turn back to normalcy again. But it was better to get a second opinion on it all.

Caia walked out to talk with Elsa. She smiled at her and sighed a little. "Do you want a cup of tea?" she asked her as it always had been her first reaction to make things better for anyone. It was something that always helped her calm down, and she still wasn't sure of how to start the conversation. She placed down two cups of tea with milk and sugar.
Crinkling her mouth, she looked into the hot liquid for a moment.

"I... There's this dream I kept on having-" she told her and looked at Elsa a bit anxiously "-It just feels more than a dream. You know... A bit like someone who tries to explain an episode." Caia crinkled her mouth and looked at her mentor.
"It's always the same, and I stand amongst five other...people holding these stones," she told her a little nervously and added, "I think one of them is that Robot Avengers."
 
Tony
“Hey”, Tony greeted his friend with a smile. He had a new bandage around his abdomen and was lying on his bed, only dressed in boxers, his upper body more or less upright. The genius sighed and closed his eyes. The morphine they had given him to numb the pain was doing the trick. He was really sleepy and relaxed and the pain was gone.
“Nah, sleep is overrated. But you know what? I can go home today”, he grinned and nodded towards a bag next to his bed. He had stuffed all the clothes Rhodey had brought him into it, which had cost him a lot of pain. But packing up to go home had been a huge motivatior and he had finished it. Besides, he didn’t want to stay in that hospital bed another minute. Anything was better than that empty room with nothing to do.
“What do you say? Somebody’s gotta take care of me. I can’t walk very far...”
He looked at Rhodey with a smirk, knowing he’d understand. “Come on, like old times...”

And then Rhodey changed subject and brought up Pepper. Her name alone was enough to make Tony’s mood take a 180 degree turn. He stared at something invisible and suddenly stopped talking. It was something that he couldn’t change, because it hurt too much to do anything against it. He had learned that he better retreated when something was painful. He couldn’t lose Pepper, but he also couldn’t see her. It was all his fault and he was sure that she would kill him for what he had done.
"Well that's her decision...", Tony finally mumbled, "I can't help you with that."
The genius got up and gritted his teeth, "Guess I can... try to... tell her that I’m okay, but...” Tony was breathing heavily, when he walked towards the door. “Damn, Friday, make sure that no suit leaves earth without my permission. Especially not with Pepper inside.”
That was all he could do for now. He was too weak for anything else.
“So what now? Are we going home?”

Scott
He was floating between atoms and shapes now, somewhere in between that strange world. The quantum realm... the name alone sounded mysterious and dangerous. But he had never been afraid for his own life, only the life of others. One second, he was talking to Hope, the other second she was gone and no one answered. Why did no one answer?! They couldn’t just abandon him in there!! He didn’t even have a regulator on him this time. He couldn’t even get big, even if he wanted to. So where the hell was everyone? Maybe something had happened or someone had pointed a gun at their heads and pulled them away. But who? All the dangerous people were gone. Well, not all of them but a lot of them.
Suddenly, he heard a voice. First, he thought that he was hallucinating, but then again, he had heard Cassie call him when he had gone atomic before so maybe there really was someone.
“Please, I’m seeing colors all over the place. I’m going to go crazy in here”, he tried to get someone on the com. His mind was feeling numb. How long had he been in there? Two hours? A year? Ten?
Who’s this?
Well, that was a very good question, actually. Who was this? This guy he was or wasn’t, trapped between triangles and circles and strange things that wanted to eat him.
“It’s me”, he answered, because there was no better answer than that. But who was he talking to? Was it Hope, was she there to pull him out?

Scott heard another voice just a moment later and after that -or before that?- he felt the familiar tingle and stretch of his body, while he was drawn back and forth- or up? Down?- and finally stumbled out of the portal. He fell, felt something cold and hard scratch his face and coughed. He was still holding onto the thing that he had brought with him. But what was it again?
Something, or someone touched him and he rolled around, still lying on the floor but now facing the sky.
“What’s happening?”, he asked and looked at the offered hand in confusion, until he finally shook it, “Hello. I don’t know who I am but you’re not Hope”, he stated. He was so damn tired and his legs felt really wobbly, so he decided to stay on the floor for now. It seemed to be the best solution until he had figured that situation out.

Suddenly, a man crouched down next to him and started talking. He was just tired. Damn, this was really exhausting.
“Scott?”
Scott? Oh right, that was him. Scott Lang, a criminal and hero. Two kind of contradictory things, but that was what he was. And the guy he had heard before, that was Captain America. Oh God, he was so dead.
“Captain America! Oh God! I’m not supposed to be consulting with you. Go away, you’ve gotten me into enough trouble”, Scott begged and got up off the floor, trying to run away. If someone saw them, this would end badly for him.

Linus
The last two weeks had been a hide and seek. But the human hadn’t really stood a chance against him. Linus had discovered that the iron closet was filled with delicious things, which he had seen the human eat so he had tried as well. There had been a yellow liquid, which had been very tasty. He had emptied that bottle pretty fast. His most favorite thing so far, was the beige cube, though. It was packed in plastic and tasted great. The human had used the knife to cut it and had put it on a brown kind of bread, but Linus didn’t like this one. He just wanted the beige, yellowish cube. So he had stolen it and the human had mumbled a “Where the heck has all my cheese gone?” In the morning. So Linus had no idea what a heck was, but he understood that it had something to do with the yellow cube. So he just assumed that that cube was called heck.

He also had learned that if he was bored, there was a thing that he could turn on and off, that showed him pictures of strange humans. Especially around noon, when the human was gone for a few hours, he turned the box on and watched it for a while it was almost like that radio from back home, just with pictures. His favorite of that was the drawn little girl, that talked really slowly and had that violet backpack on her back most of the time. He learned what a triangle was, what a rectangle was and what a knife was. He learned a lot of things those two weeks. And he watched with great interest.


One day, though, something was different. The human left earlier than usual and Linus waited for him to come back. While doing so, he took the yellow liquid from the metal closet and drank it in big sips. Wheh it was empty, he threw it into the bin, where the human put his empty bottles. It was comfortable on the couch and Linus fell asleep for a while, his senses still on high alert. So when he heard the door open, he quickly jumped up and lay down on the ceiling. He heard two voices talking, one was the human’s, the other one... Tony’s!
“Toyny!!”, he squealed and dropped off the ceiling all of sudden, to jump at his friend and lick his face.
“Iuw!”, his friend responded, but Linus saw the happiness on his face, “Stop it, you weird fox boy, get off... I’m happy to see you, too.”
Linus only understood half of what Tony said, but he switched from licking his face to hugging his leg. Tony didn’t seem very stable on his feet, he clung to the other human and looked like he was in a lot of pain. That was why Linus let go of him completely and sat down on the couch again.
“Hello”, Dora said on the tv, ”My name is Dora, what’s your name?”
Linus listened up. His ears turned towards the tv. He nodded.
“Hello, my name is Linus”, he stated and smiled, “Tony okay?”

Elsa Cardea
First thing she noticed was that Caia looked tired. Sleep deprivation was the number one symptom of psychological issues, the first thing to show that there was something wrong. She was used to analyzing every move of her patients, because she usually didn’t get any other information. She couldn’t turn it off and when Caia had made her way to the couch, she could already tell that there was something bothering her and it most likely had something to do with her sleep. Maybe a dream, something she felt she shouldn’t be dreaming? It wasn’t uncommon for psychologists to adapt to their patients’ behaviors a little bit, so she herself sometimes dreamt of her patients. It was really uncomfortable sometimes, but her brain needed to integrate the memories, which was why it had to review them.

The psychologist listened carefully and with a smile on her face. But the more Caia said, the less worried she was about her.
“And do you think it could be an episode?”, she asked and her eyes pierced through her friend’s. If she didn’t, well, there was reason to worry about. Because only the fact that she doubted her sanity was good enough to say that she didn’t have an episode.
“Do you have any other symptoms?”, Elsa finally went on asking, mostly to calm Caia down, “Hallucinations? Changed reality perception? Paranoia?”
Leaning back on her chair, which was a sign that she had her diagnosis ready, she nodded.
“And you’re worried about ehat exactly now?”
 
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Steve
He watched Shuri trying to extract Scott from that portal thing. He really didn't understand what was going on, but it seemed to work. Only seconds later, Scott appeared from where ever he had been. Scott gained in height until he was his usual size. Slowly, Steve stepped over to help him up. But Scott wasn't having any of it. In all honesty, he couldn't blame him, but it still brought a frown to his forehead. He sighed a little and ran his hand distressed through his hair.

He jogged after him, but it looked more like fast walking as he tried to move after Ant-Man. "I don't think anyone would care if you are around me after what has happened," he frowned a little and looked back at the machinery. "Since when were you in there?" he asks him with a small frown and sighs a little. Steve was tempted to just give Scott what he wanted, but he would need to make sure that the man was okay.

"At least allow me to bring you home," he offered and looked at Scott. "You don't really seem to be in the condition to walk some distance like this," he pointed out, having a feeling that Scott was in that portal thing for quite some time.

Rhodey
"The only difference is that I can't carry you around anymore, Tony," he reminded his friend. Mostly Rhodey just wore the exa-skeleton Tony had made him when he was around the billionaire or the Avengers. He didn't want them to pity him but at home...it was just too exhausting and painful for him not to do it. He had adapted to this kind of life.

"That's her decision," he repeated him in disbelief and just shook his head. "What do you plan on doing about it? If you want to call it quits, do that," he told him unnerved and gave Tony a glance. He couldn't keep on trying to mend things when Tony didn't even work with him. His gaze went to Tony, and he sighed a little. Perhaps it was time to get real with him. After all, Tony didn't seem to realize that he was not only hurting himself with staying away but other people as well.
"You should break up with her instead of playing this games if that's what you want," he tells him serious and looks at Tony. Of course, it's not the perfect solution, but it was better than what was going on at the moment with Pepper and the way he dealt with it. Perhaps they could find their way back again, but he highly doubted it this time around. Too many things had happened. Maybe speaking out the truth about his relationship with Pepper would finally get him to see the truth about how ridiculous the whole situation was.

"Well, we're going home to my place," he merely says and starts to make his way back to the car. He even grabs Tony's bag making sure that the hurt billionaire wouldn't need to carry the clothes.
He drove them to his apartment. Of course, Tony's place was far more, but something told him it would be better for them to go to his place. Besides, he could change things to the chair he had at home. As much as he appreciated Tony's gift but it was exhausting to him.

"What the fuck?" Rhodey asked as suddenly Tony was jumped. He almost reached for his gun inside the drawer next to the door. But Tony greeted that thing back almost instantly.
"Who's...Tony, what the heck?" he looked at his best friend and leaned against the drawer basically holding himself up by now. He felt exhausted. This was far more activity than he was used to.

Caia
Her hands were shaking a bit, and she placed the cup of tea down before Elsa was able to recognize it. She pulled her hands into fists various times to stop them from trembling. It came from her recent lack of food. The constant mourning and pain around her just stopped her appetite from happening. It only manifested in her body desperately signaling her that she should eat at least a sandwich. But she couldn't physically get herself to do so.

"I-I don't think it's an episode," she admitted and crinkled her mouth. "It feels like a vision; like something that should happen in the future." Her gaze finally went to Elsa. She couldn't really face Elsa because...she felt obligated to appear stronger than she currently felt. But she had called her friend for help. So she should go through with it.
"Did you ever wonder why I just...knew how people felt and how to calm them?" she reflected the topic because she wasn't ready to talk about that other symptom that gave her headaches and sleepless night. After all, she wondered if it had something to do with her second symptom.

"I'm an empath at the truest form. I can feel people's feelings, and I'm able to manipulate people's feelings-" she explained and pushed her black glasses up her nose. "Naturally, I feel people's constant pain at the moment. It's always there," she murmurs and closes her eyes as she tries to fight the feeling again.
"But ever since...people just vanished, I hear voices. People screaming for their loved ones, children crying for their parents. But no one is around," she murmured and looked at Elsa again.
 
Tony
"Why would I break up with her? Did she mention something?", Tony asked, worried now, "After what has happened, I'd understand if she doesn't wanna see me again and I've killed our kids, so..."
He paused and took a breath to walk down the few steps from the main entrance. Whoever had planned that hospital had definitely not thought about hurt people a lot. Sure, there was a ramp for wheelchairs but it went around the whole staircase and the way there was definitely more exhausting than walking down those five steps to the car.
Since Rhodey couldn't really drive anymore- or refused to do so- they took a cab home, which was really embarassing for Tony. Sure, he could have called Happy, but if he knew, Pepper knew and then the word would spread and everyone would confront him. He just wasn't ready for that yet, he didn't know if he would ever be, to be honest.

The ride was really quiet and tense, but Tony was too tired to pick anything of that up. He leaned against the window and felt his heartbeat inside his wound, where they had stitched him up and made sure that it would heal properly. It would take some time, though. The two broken ribs would take the longest, they had said, but he would be fine soon enough. In the meantime, he wasn't allowed to lift heavy things, fly, run, or do anything in general.

When Linus jumped at him and started licking his face, Tony was shocked at first, but the boy was surprisingly light and jumped off again almost immediately, but clung to his leg instead. After that, Tony slowly realized that Rhodey seemed to be in pain. He shook the fox boy off and went to get his friend's wheelchair as fast as he could. Meanwhile, Linus seemed to have a little chat with Dora, who was on tv. Tony nodded at the boy's question.
"Yeah, I'm okay."
Completely ignoring Rhodey's question, he pushed the Colonel in front of the tv, so he sat next to Linus, before placing himself on the couch. They were all equally as exhausted, when they watched an episode of Dora together. But Tony couldn't stop thinking about Peter. He couldn't stop picturing the poor boy floating around in space, burned to ashes, because he hadn't taken care of the Spiderboy. That one was on him and he knew it.
It was more of a habit thing when he walked up to the fridge and poured himself a glass of that half full bottle of Whisky he found in there. He walked back to the couch, the bottle in one, the glass in the second hand and sat down with a painful sigh. He just needed something to help him fall asleep. And numb his guilt, stop the echo of Rhodey's words in his head. He just needed time...

Scott
If that was some kind of trick to make him stop and turn around, Steve had done pretty well. Considering the fact that he was still feeling hella dizzy and a little off track, he was an easy victim for mind games right now. But where was Hope? Where was the whole Pym family? Where was everyone in general? The streets looked really empty and there was so much destruction around everywhere. What had happened to New York? That city was just really fucked up and looked beyond repair. People were trying, though. Everywhere, there were construction sites, cranes, excavators... The whole city looked like a battlefield. So what had he missed? And where the hell was Hope? Was she alive? She better was.
"What do you mean after what happened?", he gasped at Steve and finally stopped running. He leaned against a street lamp and took a few deep breaths. This all was really exhausting to him, almost like giant Ant Man when he tried to run.
"Since when I was in there, well I guess since nine in the morning, no idea where Hope and Hank and Janet went. They were supposed to pull me out...", Scott explained, waving his hands and shaking the quantum energy case, which was still in his right hand. When his eyes went past it, he looked at it and frowned.
"Oh no, Ghost. I have to bring this to her, she... She's gonna die...", Scott tried to explain, as he suddenly noticed the date on one of the still intact skyscrapers. 18 days had passed. 18! Days! Which meant Ghost was dead by now and Hope... Where were they?!

"I've been gone for 18 days? 18 damn days?!", Scott burst out and looked at Steve. As suddenly as his outburst had come, he suddenly took Steve's shoulders and shook them, "Tell me what happened here! Where is everybody? Where's Hope? Where's..."
Oh God, Cassie. Was Cassie okay? If something had happened to his peanut while he had been out and about, he would never forgive himself. If someone had taken Hope and the Pyms, maybe they had taken Cassie, too. But this wasn't the time to panic. It was the time to do something. So he just ran off, but this time, to check if his daughter was okay.

Elsa
Well, damn, this was more serious than it had seemed at first. Though Caia was way too old for a manifesting schizophrenic disorder, maybe that was exactly what it was. She chewed her lip and then opened her notebook to write something down. This had just turned into a meeting real quick and Elsa didn't like the form this was taking. But she couldn't do anything about it, so well... She had to live with it and do the best she could. Well, it could just be PTSD, of course. Maybe she had lost someone at the event, the end of the world. Maybe she had lost someone so close to her that she had to build a dysfunctional coping mechanism. The psychologist took a deep breath, going through the symptoms in her head again. Always assume the more frequent one first, until it's ruled out... Well, that would be PTSD, then.
"Okay, I know you have always had a gift to feel other people's emotions", she acknowleged Caia's statement, "That's what's so infectious to people. The way you show them you completely understand them. That's a talent, you're something special."
Just the way that he student put it, it sounded more like a religious belief or a delusion. Elsa sighed.
"Caia, I want you to focus and answer my questions, okay?", she demanded softly, but with a serious expression on her face. When Caia nodded, she parted her sheet in two sections. One with the headline PTSD and ons with the headline Schiz. Then, she started her interview.

"You said you keep having that dream. Does it remind you of anything? Do you think it symbolizes anything you want to do? Something you're scared of? Or something that happened to you?", was the first question she had for her. This could go both ways, but well, she would see. It was always best to let the patient take the lead and see where the flood took them. And she had time. Plenty of time. That was one of the upsides of being one's own boss. She didn't need to ask permission if she wanted to stay away for longer than expected.
 
Steve
With a sigh, he easily caught up to Scott. After all, he could run much faster, and he didn't want to do this. It seemed like Scott didn't know anything about what had happened around here. How long had he been in there? By the look he was doing, it had been a bit too long. He frowned at the mention of all those people. Who were Hope, Hank, Janet, and that Ghost? He scratched the back of his neck and tried not to sigh in his confusion. But it seemed like a good strategy to let him ramble on.

At the mention of 18 days, Steve felt a lump in his throat. Based on how Scott reacted he hadn't seen people just vanish. Most likely all of them were just gone anyways. Why was Steve always the one to tell people their bad news? He placed his own hand reassuring on Scott's shoulder as the man went to shake his. "Thanos...He-" Steve started, but he couldn't just break it to him like this. But maybe telling him outright was better than making a huge story out of this. Just like ripping a bandaid quickly was the best way to go with it.
"Thanos attacked earth to get infinity stones and remove half of the earth's population. I wasn't able to protect...He got the stones in the end and snapped his fingers-" Steve went to explain and removed his hand of Scott's shoulder as his hand started to shake a bit. His chest began to ache, and it felt like there was something heavy on it, so it became hard for him to breathe. Steve stepped back and tried to breathe slowly so he would get more oxygen, but it only made things worse as he slowly but surely started to hyperventilate. What was happening? Did the serum stop working on him? Steve felt like he was small again and maybe his asthma was coming back?

Rhodey
"No, but not talking with her for weeks isn't something normal people would consider a relationship, Tony," he points out and rubs his face tired. Why didn't Tony see that? He blinked though as he mentioned his dead children. "I don't think she sees it that way, Tony. Pepper's grieving for the twins and you-" Rhodey pointed out and looked at him "-I know facing her will be hard. But the longer you wait, the possibility that she will see red once she finds out that you have been avoiding her is going to be high." He stayed silent a bit longer and frowned a little. "You know that she and no one else will blame you for what happened with Thanos? We all fought, and we lost together," he told him with a frown "No matter what the news is saying. They will always bash us." He sighed a little.

Rhodey stayed quiet as Tony went to retrieve something from his fridge. He frowned a little as he watched his best friend with the heavy liquor. "Are you sure that goes well with your pain medication?" he asked him and frowned a little. He wasn't allowed to drink that anymore as well, but it didn't stop him from doing so from time to time - especially when the pain got too much, and his painkillers didn't work anymore.
"You could have at least gotten me a glass as well," he grumbled and looked at his best friend. "Besides you still haven't told me who that thing is and why it is in my apartment without me knowing!" he pointed out and looked really unhappy about it.

Caia
Caia could feel Elsa's worry. Her gaze was on the older woman, but she looked away feeling strangely judged for what she had said. She knew Elsa was already beginning her diagnosis of what was going on. She rubbed her temples and just shook her head a little. Of course, it was no surprise that Elsa didn't believe her.
"It's not a gift, it's a burden. Give me your hand-" Caia pointed out and held out her own hand to Elsa. She looked at the woman for a moment and thought about what might be the most unreasonable emotion for her to go through at the moment. Skin to skin contact would make it easier for her to manipulate people's feeling. Most likely a range of emotions within a second would be the easiest for Caia to make Elsa believe what she said. She had kept this as a secret for so long that it didn't surprise her that Elsa didn't seem to understand her fully.

But this was Elsa's interview, so she nodded a little. Caia had high hopes that Elsa knew what she was doing. She wouldn't dig around why she asked those questions. After all, she had asked herself similar questions before so it wasn't too surprising to hear them.
"Well, it reminds me of the Avengers but only because of that robot guy. I guess in a way it symbolizes unity-" she explained but frowned over the other questions "-I wouldn't necessarily say it symbolizes any of my fears that other people wouldn't have. But I'm scared more people just vanish, Elsa. It feels like...I'm the reason why they do....like somehow I'm the one keeping them captive."

Caia grabbed her cup of tea again and frowned as she could hear children cry for their parents again. It had become less crying but more general confusion in her head. So, that was a big advantage even though it still irritated her at times. She took a sip from her tea hoping to conceal her current episode. "Also I'm afraid of losing my job over all of this, but I suppose that's totally unrelated to my episodes," she murmurs into the cup and downs it with a few gulps. Right now, her cup of tea was really disappointing. It failed to deliver the hoped effect of calming her down.
"I think things get worse when I feel nervous or vulnerable-" she sighed and looked at Elsa "-It might have started when my dad...when my father turned into dust. But I'm not sure since I found out later he was...dead. His girlfriend called me."
 

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