Prologue
There’s a moment before the end where you just know. It’s after the storm, when the dust begins to settle. Metaphorical dust, literal dust; well, in this case literal; it doesn’t matter when you know that this is the end of the line.
No one on the team fights it. There’s breath caught in their throats and shame on their faces as the final stone clicks into place on Thanos’s gauntlet. Their only and last comfort before the inevitable comes is in the form of held hands, and gripping onto any part of the people they love they can get.
“You” Thanos breathes out into the silence, “should have gone for the head.”
A twisted smirk breaks out on his pained face.
“The Avengers will never stand in my way again.”
He raises his hand, there’s a blinding flash and a portal and suddenly, he’s gone.
Thor stares into the oblivion. No one speaks.
None of them knew what the snap would bring, how it would eliminate them. Maybe it would be painful, they didn’t know. Scattered throughout the field, they hold onto each other anyway, as if they can keep everyone there if they hold on hard enough. This is the end.
The first to go is Bucky. Legs, torso, head, that’s how it goes. The dust floats into the open air, no one dares to breathe.
They all go one by one. Their last thoughts either of failure, or the fact that they’re all here together.
Well, almost all of them.
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Galaxies away, on the red planet Titan, the failure carries over.
Beaten and bruised and tired, Tony's barely keeping it together. He doesn’t want to scare the kid more than he already is.
No one speaks here either. It’s as if the whole universe is waiting.
Waiting for what?
For the dust that would linger on the red sand like an omen.
The snap takes Tony. His eyes meet Peters as he goes.
A steady chant of “no, no, no” leaves Peters lips as he tries to get to him before there’s nothing left.
Peter manages to grasp Tony’s outstretched hand before it disintegrates from the pressure. And just like that, he’s gone.
It’s as if Tony had never been there in the first place. Peter finds himself wondering if he might’ve made it all up. But his hand is still reaching towards the now empty space, dark flakes stand out against the burning red of Titan, and he knows what he felt was real.
The rest of them board the damaged Benatar. It’s quiet still. No one even dares to move.
Peter doesn’t think he’d even seen the Guardians this shaken throughout the entire battle with Thanos.
The silence coming from where Strange is sat is expected, but the torn expression on his face is not.
It doesn’t hit Peter right away. It’s almost like he’s dreaming, he’ll wake up in his bed at home soon enough, safe and warm, and repeat another day.
But as the thought weasels it’s way into his brain, he realizes. Tony’s gone, disappeared without a trace. He’s on a ship in the middle of nowhere in space with five other people he knows absolutely nothing about.
He feels small. Alone. There’s bigger things out there he couldn’t have ever dreamed of, and he feels like he’s been crushed beneath them.
Conversation starts the next day, after they all wake up from a fitful sleep. It starts as simple things, like what to eat, where things are on the ship, a change of clothes.
But in a desperate attempt to feel normal for a while, small talk turns to story’s and strained jokes.
Peter doesn’t know how to feel normal in the middle of all this. But he’s lived by the phrase “fake it till you make it” for years, why stop now.
It’s about twenty days later and hopes of finding a way out of deep space are futile. Oxygen is low, so are any forms of nutrients.
Three weeks ago Peter might have cared about getting out of this. He would’ve probably been afraid. Not that he wasn’t afraid now. A different kind of afraid. Now he was afraid of the unknown, what comes after death. He’s expecting death.
They’d all said their goodbyes to each other for the night. No one said it might be their last out loud.
Peter thought about Nebula. If she’d get lonely, before she’d eventually flicker out like the rest of them.
He thought about a miracle of going home to nothing changed when in reality he had no idea who was still left to go home to, or if there was any home at all.
He thought about how Tony’s hand felt before it slipped away.
He thought about a lot of things.
The darkness was almost welcoming.
Peter was startled awake by a bright light flooding the Benatar. At first, he thought that maybe this was it, this was the way things would end, of all the possibilities, this was how they would go.
But the next thing he knows is his feet hitting the solid ground of earth, and he wonders again if this is still part of the dream. The afterlife.
He hears her. May calls his name, her footsteps growing faster and louder until she collides with him.
And he feels her arms around him and in his hair and it’s almost like he can finally breathe again.
She’s holding him and whispering reassurances and crying, and he’s crying too. He hadn’t cried yet.
Warm tears spill over as everything hits him all at once.
Tony’s gone, he’s not dreaming, May’s here holding him, he’s home, he’s safe after all this time.
He breaks, let’s May hold him together as they sink to the ground, as he sobs his heart out to her.
He cracks his eyes open and spots Pepper’s sorrowful expression over May’s shoulder. He reaches a hand out to her, a mirror of his last moment with Tony on Titan, and she slowly walks over and takes it, and sinks down to the ground with them.
May must have realized that Tony never came out of the ship beind him, because she opens an arm to Pepper and allows her to fall into the embrace.
They all cling to each other like the others will slip away.
His grip on Peppers hand never faulters, he won’t make the same mistake again.
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Somewhere else, far away, a soul blinks into existence. It’s followed by a second, a third, fourth, on and on until nine bright little lights take their place among a never ending orange sky.
Nine souls seep into figures, materializing until they reach their true form.
Their feet ripple a mirror-like glaze of water that stretches on forever.
“What the hell is this?”