Day 84
The sun rose bright and beautiful and the earth was the way it should be. Everyone who had turned dust was back. Thanos’s body lay dead and lifeless on the ground. Stephen Strange was the first one come back to awareness. He stood and looked around at the destruction as the Avengers slowly rose and collected themselves from various mounds of rubble. They were all bloodied and bruised none of them were worse for the wear. Strange scanned the heroes that were slowly accumulating around. They had won.
Stephen’s eyes finally lay rest on an idol gauntlet that lay on the ground gleaming in the pale morning light. He glanced back up at the gathering heroes that were beginning to hug and congratulate each other. Something was missing. Something was wrong. Strange couldn’t place it.
“We did it!” Captain Rogers was the first to speak. He pulled his best friend into his arms. Barnes had materialized shortly after Stephen had, “We won!”
“And we are all alive and back!” Peter Park whooped, “We all lived!”
What was missing? What was it about all of this that was wrong? What was different? What had happened?
Stephen had watched the fight from the soul realm, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on how it had ended.
“We all made it,” Natasha confirmed proudly, “I thought for sure this would end badly, but we’re all here.”
The woman tucked her arm around Wanda.
It hit Strange. It wasn’t what was missing. It was who. Strange’s eyes snapped back to the gauntlet and then back to the titan’s dead body, and finally he scanned the heroes gathered before him. It hit him harder, he closed his eyes and he remembered.
“If you do this, you die!” The mad titan screamed against the building wind and energy.
“For smart guy you are pretty dense if you have yet to realize it doesn’t matter to me!” Stark- the Iron Man - roared back over howl of the energy surging around him.
“Why? Why would you die for a world that has done nothing for you! They don’t deserve-”
“Silence!” The man hissed, and his voice echoed through the air, and crackled in the black sky, “You are a coward. Weak. Groveling in a last ditch effort to save yourself.”
The power around the metal man burned hotter and more powerful his words still a maliced echo in the the dark energy rot air.
“If you use that power you not only die, you will be wiped from existence! No one will remember you! Do you want that!” Thanos roared back at his formidable, now unstoppable enemy.
A cold smile spread across the Tony’s face. The power of the gauntlet began to glow through his veins, his eyes gleamed with the light of the stones.
“Good.”
The word reverberated through the air.
“How can you say that!”
“For once no one will suffer for the choice I make.”
“But-”
“This was never about me. This was always about the future. What becomes of me was always moot. It was your wish that I be remembered. Not mine,” Stark’s whole body glowed from the power flowing through him. He lift the gauntlet that danced with pure power and energy, “It is over.”
“No!”
Earth’s best defender closed his fist and everything exploded into pure blinding whiteness. The whiteness washed over the whole of the universe.
Stephen’s eyes snapped open and looked around at the joyful heroes. There was no red and gold armor among them, yet they were rejoicing. Just like the titan had said. No one remembered.