Scalpels

Proxima flailed helplessly as she felt herself being lifted into the Thresher machine, the whirring of the blades drowning out her scream.  She felt the metal tear into her back and side, shredding her armor like it was paper.  The pain was searing, and she could only think that this would be an intense yet quick way to go, could only think of Corvus—

And then she was on the ground, razor sharp blades spitting her out as the Thresher violently redirected towards a horde of troops.

She felt light as air, and Corvus, that the bits falling out of her were oddly shining, and Corvus, that the dusty ground was strangely wet, and Corvus, and what a strange hell she was in—

And then she realized she was staring at her own organs in a pool of her own navy blood and—

Corvus, my love.

-------

22 Days Later

After her moment of mourning with Rocket and ensuring that Stark was cared for after his outburst, Nebula approached the ragtag group and dared to ask about her biggest concern, second to only Thanos himself.

“What happened to the rest of the Black Order?”

“The who now?”

“Glaive and Proxima and Cull.”

“Yeah… not ringing a bell.”

Nebula seethed inside, exploding, “The Children of Thanos, whatever the hell you called them, the ones every planet knows of except for you, the people who were clearly leading the ‘space dogs’!”

“Oh, your… siblings?” The woman called Natasha asked, eyebrow arched, unfazed by her outburst.

Nebula bristled and then scoffed. “No.  Gamora is my only sibling.  The Children of Thanos are not his actual children.  The Black Order are the generals of Thanos.  Stark,” she waved a hand towards his room, “told me his group managed to get rid of the Maw.  But the three others came to Earth.”

The man with curly hair raised his hand and waved.  “I blew the giant rock guy up!”

“And Wanda threw the blue lady into one of those giant shredder machines, but we found her on the field afterwards.  She looked like someone did an autopsy on her, but she was breathing.  She’s in a secure unit in the medical lab now, not that she’s woken up yet.”

“Vision stabbed the goblin with his blade… we didn’t find his body.  Assumed he dusted.”

Nebula said nothing, willing the Captain to continue.  He didn’t.

“And his blade?  Did you recover his weapon?”

The Captain shared a glance with Natasha.  “No… he’s dead, so it’s somewhere on the battlefield in Wakanda, I suppose.  Didn’t we just cover that?”

Nebula felt a shock go through her system, something that caused her lungs to seize briefly in their metal cage.  But then she realized that these Terrans wouldn’t have anything like Corvus or Proxima on their planet.  They didn’t know that someone could be immortal in the way Glaive was, or that it was possible to survive everything from stabs to atmospheric entries if you were Midnight.  And they hadn’t even heard of Thanos, let alone his generals.  They had no urgency because they had no fear, they thought the worst was already over.

“You need to show me where you slayed him, right now.  We need to find that glaive.”

“Listen ma’am, I appreciate you helping us out and helping Tony.  But I’m sure this can wait until morning, once we’ve all rested and regrouped.”

“No, I’m not sure it can.”  All heads swiveled to their newest arrival, and Nebula was glad to have another cosmic traveler in the room.  Even if it was Captain Marvel.

“No offense, but you guys didn’t even know Thanos existed until he knocked down your door.  But those of us out there, we’ve heard stories.  I’ve seen the aftermath of their culls.  These guys are even worse than their name.  We need to be sure that all of our checks are marked, even if it is just a fancy big knife.”

Nebula gave her a slight nod of thanks.

“Alright then, Nat, Rhodey and I will go with Nebula to Wakanda.  Rocket, Danvers, you know space better than us, start brainstorming how we locate Thanos.”

-------

They arrived in Wakanda by early morning.  Even though three weeks had past, the sudden halving of the already war torn city meant the remnants of battle were still strewn about.  Rubble, broken and abandoned weapons, the metal from Thanos’ contraptions and ships riddled the field.  What remained of the Wakandan warriors were working to burn away the last of the Outrider carcasses.

Combing their way through the trees, the group quickly found where Thanos had snapped, the ruts in the earth from his moment with Thor still present.

“It was close to here.  We were decently far from the rest of the battle.”  Steve gestured around him.  The three spread out, searching through the foliage for the shining gold blade Nebula had described.

“Hey, over here!”

Natasha was crouched over the silver husk of Vision’s body.  She looked up at Steve and Nebula, a frown plastered on her face.  “How did they miss him… Never mind.  So it should be around here then?”

Steve nodded, and Nebula a strange twinge in the metal encasing her synaptic drive.

“Something’s not right, it should be-”

The next thing she felt was a heavy body tackling her down, her head smashing against a rock.  As her line of sight spotted with black dots, she saw a familiar glint of gold swiping towards Steve and Natasha.  Grunting with effort, she smacked her metal hand against the panel on her head, knocking her drive back into place.  With a yell, she unsheathed her baton and charged towards the fight.

-------

Corvus grimaced as he awoke.  His limbs felt heavy, his eyes fluttering closed against his will.  Gritting his teeth, he pulled himself up until he was sitting against the wall behind him.  Further inspection found his glaive, contained in a unit across the room.  His vision was blurry, but he would know that gold sheen anywhere.

And he was in a cell.

Blue flickered into his peripheral vision, but it was not the shade of blue he longed to see.  He growled in the back of his throat as he recognized Nebula.

“So that’s what happens when you’re impaled by your own glaive.”  She glanced at his chest, where a thin line of crimson leaked, a shallow remnant of his wound that had broken open during their fight. He scoffed at her, even though she had a point.  The only time it had taken him this long time to heal was when he had to reform an entire body.

Nebula smirked in response.

He had nothing to answer with.  The desire he once would have had to wipe the smirk off of her face was gone, as dead as… No, don’t think of it.

-------

“Thanos left you there to rot.  So much for that undying loyalty.”

It had been three days since he was hauled into his cell.  His only visitor had been Nebula, and she had taken to alternating between taunting him and pleading her anti-Thanos case.

The cybernetic woman sighed as she leaned against the wall.  “He has all of the stones, you know.  He could have brought you all back.  The Maw, Cull, Proxima.”  She exhaled sharply through her nose.  “I wish you could see what Gamora saw, what I finally saw.”

He still did not speak.

-------

“Is there any chance of making any progress with this guy?”

Nebula glanced at Banner.  “Until Rocket’s tracking algorithm gets a hit, he’s our best bet for finding my father.”

“Yeah, but why would he betray him?  What could possibly motivate him to cross the line the way you did?”  Natasha wondered aloud, throwing her hands in the air.

“His wife.”

“His what?!”

“Wait, wait, wait, back up a sec.  Are you telling me that we could have just went out and grabbed this gremlin reject’s wife this whole time to get our answers?  Geez, first Thanos has a retirement plan, now this guy of all people has a wife, what next?”  Rhodey rambled off.

Nebula resisted rolling her eyes.

“His wife is currently in your medical unit, last I checked.  She would be far more easily swayed than him.  And he would follow her to the ends of the universe.”

Natasha perked up, looking thoughtful.  “Ah.  Well that explains a bit.”  She leaned back onto the legs of her chair, feet propped up on the table.  “But while we wait for Cap to finish cooking, why don’t you tell us everything we need to know about Thanos and his followers?  We work as a team here, we all need to know everything you can give us.”

-------

Corvus lost the will to count after ten days, as the realization that his wife was truly gone began to crush him with a weight greater than that of a black hole.

-------

The next time Nebula came before him, she surprised him by throwing the switch to his cell.  The bars retracted, but he stayed seated on the ratty bed they had supplied.

“I don’t know if anything I’ve said to you has worked.  But I hope this does.”

Ah, so it was going to be one of those conversations.  Where Nebula wove stories of her childhood on Sanctuary into her message.  Tales of centuries gone by.  He closed his eyes and leaned his head back on the wall.  Days like this, he preferred to tune her out.  At first, the memories had been somewhat pleasant, not that he would ever admit that to her.  But very quickly, the absence of his fellows ate away at him.  And he daren’t think deeper on that pain, or else he would think of her.  He knew more than one thought of her would shatter him.  And he absolutely, positively refused to let them see him break.

It was this process of tuning Nebula out that caused him to miss the footsteps moving closer into his cell.  It wasn’t until the bars on his cell were back up and Nebula’s voice was gone that he realized he was not alone.

“Certainly not the reception I was expecting, husband.”

-------

Logically, Corvus knew that they had cameras on him.  Logically, he knew that showing anything more than a smile to Proxima was dangerous, a show of his biggest weakness.  Logically, he knew that his captors had known Proxima was alive the entire time, that Nebula had lied to him.

Fuck logic.

He wasn’t quite sure when he stood from his bed, wasn’t quite sure who reached for who first, but as Proxima’s arms looped under his, he latched onto her like she was the last thing in the universe and fell back to sit at the edge of his bed, pulling her down with him.  He clutched at her, one hand pressing her into his chest as the other frantically ran through her hair.  She let him do as he pleased, simply tightening her grip on him and wrapping her legs around his waist for balance as he perched on the bed.

Corvus shut his eyes tight, breathing in her scent, pressing his nose to her hair, combing through the beautiful cobalt strands that he never thought he’d see again, running fingers along ridges of her horn.

And when he spoke, his voice croaked, cracked from disuse, sounding more guttural than it had been in years.

“Midnight, my love, my Midnight.”

-------

“I feel like we shouldn’t be watching this.”

Natasha and Steve turned away from the screen.

Nebula’s dark eyes were locked on the couple, staring past them as much as she was staring at them.  It was so easy for her to hate, to blame them all; the negativity seeped into her with every new piece of machinery.  But she recalled the patience Proxima had displayed when she had first learned to fight, the surprising gentleness from Cull as she borrowed books from his library.  She thought of the wary concern the Maw had for her every time her circuitry would short after an upgrade, the sharp eyes of Corvus that would watch over her and Gamora from afar when they’d explore.  And as she watched husband and wife embrace, she thought that maybe she didn’t hate them as much as she thought she did.  And if they parted ways from Thanos, she might not even hate them at all.

-------

“At some point, we slipped down the chess board.  We were pawns, Corvus.  We are pawns.  Thanos ran past the point of no return, and we all missed it.  Ran over the edge with him blindly.”

“We all knew what we signed on for, Proxima.”

“But when did it turn from balance to indiscriminate slaughter?”  Her bright eyes met his in a desperate plea.  “Corvus, he murdered Gamora for a stone.  He had no intention of preserving the Order.”  Proxima’s voice cracked, wavering onto her next statement.  “I miss what we were, but I cannot ignore that of which we are no longer.  Thanos is not the same, we are not the same.  And I owe a debt that can only be repaid in one way.”

Corvus gazed at his wife.  New scars were everywhere, like a pale web stretched across the expanse of her skin.  Her brow was furrowed, her eyes pleading in an almost foreign way.

-------

Proxima stalked out of her husband’s cell, her pace quick and determined.  Corvus had not answered her, had shut her out, and she was in need of a long walk away from everyone, craving some semblance of privacy.  She didn’t even spare a glance at the people sitting around the table, laser-focused on the door.

But it was not to be, as she heard Nebula trotting after her long before she saw her.

“Midnight!”

Proxima grit her teeth, dug her heel into the soft grass, and spun to face Nebula.  “What?”  She snapped.

Nebula strode about three paces from her before pausing.  “I’d offer to talk, but that’s not your style of venting, is it?” She held her hands up, assuming a fighting stance.

-------

One final kick landed Nebula on her stomach.  She felt Proxima’s knees dig into the small of her back as she wrenched her metal side into an armlock, thanking whatever deities there were that Proxima didn’t have her full armor on.

“You still favor your hands too much.”

Proxima released her and, to Nebula’s surprise, held out a hand to help her up.  Nebula grasped at her metallic forearm, a reminder that maybe they weren’t so different, as the older woman hauled her to her feet.  They glanced over at the windows of the facility, seeing more than one face watching them warily.

Proxima scoffed, feeling angry and morose all at once.  “They’ll never trust us.  Even if Corvus would deliver Thanos’s head on a platter, it wouldn’t be enough.”

Nebula cocked her head.  “You’re right, I don’t think you two could stay on Earth.  I’m not sure I would at this point.  But the ragtag group of morons that Gamora and I found, they’re good people.”

Nebula met Proxima’s eyes, neck craning ever so slightly to see the taller woman.  It was a look that she and Gamora had often seen on Midnight’s face growing up, thoughtful but still standoffish.  Nebula immediately felt transported back in time to her childhood self, watching the only maternal figure they had had.  “Proxima… I had convinced myself for so many years that I hated you all, had managed to see you solely as extensions of my father.  So much time wasted…  And then Thanos took my sister as soon as I had truly found her.  But I am glad to have you here now.  And Corvus, even if he’s not particularly cooperative.”

“I do not want to disappoint you, Nebula.  But I fear that I do not hate Thanos in the way you do.  I am disappointed in myself for allowing things to spiral in the manner that they have.  I am angry that the Order fell for him, knowing now that he could have changed that fate.  But my feeling of betrayal is not the bone-deep loathing you possess.  Enough to move against Thanos and try to correct the errors, try to figure out where the line was crossed, yes.  But his end will not be by my spear.  And while I owe a debt to you all for ensuring my survival, which I do intend to repay, Corvus has no such burden.  He feels more deeply for Thanos than I; he is the first and most favored Dreadlord for a reason.”

-------

7 Days Later

“You know, that really doesn’t ever get any less gross.”

Proxima shot a sideways look at Banner as she crossed the room.  The plate in her head was bright red, the raw meat practically dripping in blood.  The days spent in close proximity with these humans had created a sense of familiarity, still a bit distant but a comforting rapport nonetheless.  But as she grew closer to the people who had brought her back from the edge of death, she felt her husband retreat from her.  Each day was dividing them more and more, and Proxima has never imagined her heart could hurt as much as it did.

She had already admitted to herself that the decision to go against Thanos was painful.  The Titan had given the Black Order a purpose, a home, and most importantly, each other.  He had brought them together and allowed them to flourish.   But she couldn’t ignore the ever-growing feeling in the back of her mind in the past century that they weren’t being selective enough with their culls.  And then something inside of Thanos had snapped when Gamora left.  He had become harsher, at times irrational.  Nebula leaving shortly thereafter hastened his spiral.  But his anger had never been explicitly directed at the Black Order, and Proxima carried on with an intentional ignorance.

It wasn’t until she rasped out her dying breaths that she realized she really was just a pawn on Thanos’s chessboard.  He wasn’t the same Titan she had pledged her loyalty to.  And the blissful ignorance that their Order decided to live in, it had cost them everything.

Almost everything.

And so steeling her normally unflappable nerves, she entered her husband’s cell.

After their reunion, he hadn’t spoken much.  She wondered if she had gone in too quickly, too intensely on the anti-Thanos plea.  But Corvus was the one person in the universe that she could bare her soul to, the one person who had seen every side of her, who knew all of her thoughts.  If she couldn’t speak her mind at any time with him, with whom could she?

He just needed time to process, to figure it out in his own terms.

She hoped.

-------

“I sparred with Nebula again.  She’s quite the warrior now, those few years made a difference.  Gave her the confidence she needed.”

Corvus glanced up at her, sitting across from him, but before she could even see his pupils, he turned his attention back to the meat on his plate.

“And the doctor, Banner, he’s lent me some of his books.  Terrans have surprisingly active imaginations.  I think Cull would have enjoyed their poets.”

He bit down the last of his meal and set his plate on the floor.  Proxima swallowed heavily and leaned forward in her plastic chair.  She had faced tens of thousands of beings in her life, and none had the ability to make her stomach flutter with this much anxiety.  Except him.

He reached out a hand, his claws tracing up the underside of her hand until he had pushed her fingers up, pressing their palms together.  The tip of his thumb lightly brushed against hers.  His golden eyes were focused on where their skin met.  “Many years ago, I vowed to protect you, to respect you, to cherish you.  I have failed on two of those counts now.”

Her breath caught in her throat, but she held silent and waited for him to continue.

“Your insights are as piercing as your spear, Midnight.  You would not have reached your conclusions about Thanos quickly or carelessly.  You are thoughtful, and you have always been honest with me.  I am bound to you, not Thanos, and by forgetting that, I condemned you to death.  And then I did not listen to you with as an open of a mind as you deserve.”

His grasp on her hand tightened like a vice, claws almost tearing into her skin.  His eyes finally found her face, searching all of her features like he was seeing her for the first time.

“You are my wife.  I will follow you to the ends of this universe.  You should have never needed to ask.  My lady Midnight, my place is always by your side, wherever you decide that may be.  And I was wrong to ever doubt that.”

Proxima stared at him, a bit slackjawed, unable to form a sentence with all of the thoughts swarming her head.

“My love…?” A slight frown appeared on his face, unsure how to interpret her silence.

Finally, after a long moment, she reached out with her other hand, its cold metal threading into his cloak to pull him forward as she crushed her mouth against his.

-------

“We need to get to Thanos quickly.  He will have recovered, and soon he plans to eliminate the stones from existence.”

Corvus stood in the back corner of the room, his fingers lightly threaded through Proxima’s.  Her head snapped to stare up at him in astonishment, as did everyone else in the room.

“What?”

“Can he even do that?”

Corvus exhaled slowly.  “I do not know.  But that is his plan, so he will try.”  He stepped forward, releasing his wife’s hand as he moved further into the common room.  “I was foolish to not have listened to Nebula and even more foolish to not have listened to Midnight.  You all saved my wife, and for that, you have my word that I will lead you to Thanos.”

“You know where he is?”

All heads in the room turned to see Tony leaning against the doorway.

“Yes.”

-------

They landed on the planet, the pristine green fields disrupted by the ship.  The remaining Avengers de-boarded quickly.  Nebula brought up the back of the group, stopping when she realized Corvus and Proxima weren’t following.  She turned to face them, her eyes meeting Proxima’s.

“Be safe, my love.  Please,” Corvus pleaded with his wife, still sitting in the co-pilot chair.  He grasped desperately at her hand.  “Please.”

Proxima knew that he was unhappy with his part in their plan, hated that he had to stay on the ship.  He was still a wildcard in their eyes, and they did not trust him to be by their side in battle.

“I will come back to you, Corvus.  Trust me.”

And with that, Corvus could only watch as she grabbed her spear and walked out of the jet with Nebula.

-------

The fight against Thanos was unlike anything Proxima had done before.  With the full power of the gauntlet, nothing was working; even weakened, Thanos was a one-man army.  After what seemed like an eternity, Captain Marvel was able to land a punch, knocking Thanos off of his feet for a brief moment.  Proxima leapt, throwing out her spear’s signature net.

With Thanos pinned to the ground, she took a quick glance.  Black Widow was out cold, as was Rocket. The Hulk had been reduced to tiny diced bits beside them, a temporary victim to the Reality Stone, while Rhodey had been transformed into a small metal cube.  Nebula was holding a massive hole in her side, her wiring sparking.  Stark and Rogers were down, but conscious.  Thor, Danvers, and herself.  Not good odds.  And then something sparked in her brain.  Once he had tagged Nebula with the Power Stone, Thanos had stopped using the full potential of the stones. 

“He’s toying with us!”

A roar brought their attentions back to him.  Proxima watched in horror as Thanos broke free of the weight of a star, her spear trembling in her hand as it reabsorbed the energy.

Again the Titan stood, glaring.  An angry snort came from him.  “My daughters’ betrayals hurt but were not as unexpected as they believed.  But you, Proxima, you surprise me.  And to use my own gift against me-”

“Enough talk!”  Thor charged at Thanos like an angry bull.

The fight resumed.  But now, Thanos was ready for it to be over.  He batted away Stark like a gnat, swatted Thor like an errant fly.  As they surrounded him, a wave of his arm knocked them all off their feet.  Proxima yelled out as her spear careened down at her, impaling her shoulder and holding her down.

“I grow weary of this fight.”

He raised his arm, a victorious smile breaking out on his face.  He pulled his fingers back, ready to snap them, all of his threats, out of existence.  Proxima craned her neck, straining to keep him in her eyeline as she awaited the inevitable.

“No!”

This time when Thanos roared, it was of pain.  His arm flopped onto the ground next to him.  Corvus wore the coldest mask he could muster, but Proxima could see the horror swimming behind his eyes, almost in disbelief of what he’d just done.

Thanos’s eyes widened in shock, and Thor wasted no time in capitalizing on his distraction, shoving his axe into the Titan’s chest.  Danvers rushed over to grab the severed arm.  “You told me to go for the head, but the arm seems to work just as well, don’t you think?”

But Corvus wasn’t listening to Thor nor looking at Thanos.  His focus was on Proxima, who was gasping in agony as the poison from her spear leached into her.  He rushed over to her and ripped the weapon out.  Cradling her, he watched as Thanos glared at him.  Midnight was weakly patting his arm, muttering, “Get up.”

He spared a glance at her, taking in her labored breaths, seeing the web of new scars all over her skin, courtesy of the Thresher.  All of this suffering she endured, all for the mad Titan who stood across from them.  Slowly, Corvus stood, body shielding his wife as he gripped his glaive tighter.

“Traitors!”  Thanos spat.

“You talk too much.”  With a swing of his axe, Thor beheaded the Titan.

A few moments passed in silence.  Natasha and Rocket were both groaning, coming back into consciousness, while Nebula propped herself against the stairs of Thanos’s hut, exposed circuitry still crackling and hindering her movement.

“Why aren’t they going back to normal?”  Steve asked, worriedly looking at the Hulk and Rhodey.

“The stones, they’re still here even if Thanos isn’t.  So the effects stand.”  Corvus stated.  He reached out to palm Proxima’s cheek before striding over to Captain Marvel.  “Give it to me.”

-------

“So you’re telling me that Corvus was able to hold the gauntlet long enough to mend Nebula and unravel the immediate effects of the stones, then he died, and then Dr. Banner put it on and the Hulk came out and they did some weird merging thing, and he reversed the snap?”

“Yes, for the tenth time on this trip.”

“It’s a cool story!”

“I am Groot!”

Proxima whipped her head towards the talking tree.  “Language!”  She scolded.  Quill smiled, but it quickly slid off of his face.

“Hold on, approaching next jump!”  Rocket called out.

The ship jerked violently, and with a yelp, Proxima was thrown off of her feet, flopping belly first to the floor.  Quill landed on his back beside her.

“Idiots!”  She and Nebula shouted up at Rocket and Corvus, perfectly in sync, as Drax and Mantis laughed raucously from their seats.  Corvus turned in his seat to flash her a wicked grin.

“Like mother, like daughter.”  Quill muttered.

“I did not birth her!”

“What!”

-------

“One more jump to Vormir.”

Proxima glanced over at Corvus.  The Guardians had decided to rest before they landed, so it was just the two of them piloting.  His eyes lit up as she smiled softly at him.

“Do you really think it will work?”  They swiveled around to face Peter.

“Can’t sleep?” Midnight asked.  He shook his head in response.  “Well, we return the stone, and we pray that the right Elder is watching.”

“And then, we leave with Gamora.”