In the Light Between the Lines

With a flash of green light, Thanos appeared on the endless gray plains of the Soul Realm. He was silent, still, staring out past the lone temple toward the eternal sunset beyond. It was a reflection of his mind, a mirror-like lake of inner calm. A place to escape into, to shape however he wanted without affecting the more permanent and stable reality beyond.

There was a big problem with this Realm, however: he hadn’t counted on the trapped souls having minds of their own.

The worst by far was Gamora. Altered by the Soul Stone, she’d reverted to her younger self, small and wide-eyed. Despite the regression, she’d managed to retain her quite ferocious and formidable will. That, and her sharp tongue.

Thanos strode across the gray plains toward the temple. He reached the steps and paused, frowning. “Gamora,” he said. It wasn’t a question. When the little girl didn’t appear at once, he took another step up into the structure. He looked around. Nothing. “Gamora!” he called, louder this time. He injected his voice with a stern, warning edge. “Gamora, I need to speak with you.”

“No.” Gamora’s voice cut through the silence like a heated blade through butter. Turning, Thanos spotted her, standing with her back to the temple a good twenty yards away. In the ever-present breeze, the bright tips of her hair waved like bloody banners. “I need to speak with you.”

Thanos’s frown grew deeper than the valleys of his chin. He approached Gamora, reaching her in a few long strides. He stood beside her, staring out over the gray wastes. “What is it, my child?” His voice was deep, rumbling. Like summer thunder on a calm night.

Gamora’s entire body tensed. “I am not your child,” she spit. “I was never yours. I never will be.”

Thanos didn’t reply. Of course she was his. He had her trapped forever. Where else could she go? It was a useless argument, and one he’d grown tired of having.

Gamora kept her gaze straight ahead. She lifted her chin. The wind seized her hair; she’d let it loose, and it billowed behind her like a mustang’s mane. “You’re dying,” she said. Casual, uninflected—a cold, empty fact.

Thanos followed her gaze out over the plains. “Why do you say that?” He was genuinely curious. Although Gamora had said many things to him since that fateful day on Vormir, she had never lied. Not as far as he could tell, anyway. And, given the fact that he’d taught her to lie, he was pretty sure he could tell.

Finally, Gamora turned to him. She stood as tall as she could, gaze sharp as barbed wire: a fearless child facing down a mighty god. “You aren’t worthy.” Her voice was half a whisper. Thanos could tell she was trying to tamp it down, but emotion crept into her voice like a disease. “You never were. You never will be.” Her mantra. Her repetitive, unceasing mantra.

Thanos sighed, disappointed. “My daughter…” he started, but she cut him off with a snarl.

“I am not your daughter!” She took a step back, hands curling into tiny, useless fists. “You’re no father to me! Abuse isn’t love. Terror isn’t trust. And this—” she gestured between them, lips curled and teeth bared, “—is nothing but servitude built on manipulation and torment.” She spit on the ground between them, not breaking eye contact as she did. “I hate you,” she said, “and when the time comes, I’ll be the one to kill you. If my sister or the Gauntlet doesn’t kill you first.”

Thanos felt red-hot anger surge beneath his skin. His fingers dug into his palms. But then the metal of the Gauntlet slid against his fingertips, the stones shimmering behind his knuckles, and he remembered himself. He let his shoulders fall, and his frown relax into a smile. “I know you’re angry now,” he said, “but what I did was for the best. Someday, you’ll come to understand that.”

To his surprise, Gamora didn’t reply for a long moment. She turned away, her eyes as cold and distant as the unbroken plains. “You’re dying. You aren’t worthy, and the Gauntlet is killing you.”

Thanos looked down at her. His eyes narrowed. “Why do you say that?” he asked again.

Gamora shrugged. “It’s true. And there’s more. Other things you don’t know.”

Thanos crouched down. He braced his elbows on his knees, trying to meet her eyes. She stubbornly looked away. “Gamora,” he said sternly, “I need you to tell me what’s wrong.”

She laughed. A high, half-insane laugh. “You don’t know? You really don’t know?”

Thanos sighed. “No, my child.”

She didn’t correct him this time. Instead, she turned to him with a sneer. “When you wiped out half of everything,” she said, voice low and intense, “you wiped out half of everything. Planets, stars, dark matter, dust, even light!” As she spoke, her eyes seemed to glow gold. She blinked, and the light faded. Thanos couldn’t be sure if he’d imagined it or not. “You think you’re in control, but you’re not. You played with fire, and now you’re trapped in the burning building.” She grinned like this thought pleased her, and anger flashed through Thanos’s chest like lightning striking an old tree.

Thanos rose to his full height. He clenched his fists. The Gauntlet bent to accommodate him, folded around his fingers and wrist. “I see what you’re trying to do. It won’t work. You cannot make me angry.”

Little Gamora’s eyes narrowed. “Lair,” she whispered.

Thanos looked away. Back toward the temple, standing alone in the swirling silver mist. The only landmark for a billion miles. “I’m leaving now,” he announced. He wasn’t sure if he was addressing her, or himself. “When I’m ready to speak to you again, I will return. Don’t stray too far. The gray wastes are a dangerous place. Even for the dead.”

As he turned and walked away, he watched her out of the corner of his eye. She turned back toward the empty plains. Her hands clenched by her sides, hair sweeping over her shoulders like a waterfall of blood-stained tar. “When you’re dead,” she called out, “who will undo the damage you’ve caused?”

Thanos ignored her. Or he tried to, at least. As he walked back through the temple toward the glowing blue crack in spacetime that would transport him back to reality, her words echoed in his head. Long after he’d returned to his quite place in the mountains, where he settled down to watch the real sun set over the lush green lands he’d saved, he couldn’t shake her words. Because somewhere, in some deep corner of his subconscious, he knew she was right.

Shrouded in enchantments so thick not even the wielder of the Infinity Gauntlet himself could break them, Loki Odinson watched the Mad Titan walk through a glowing blue split in spacetime and disappear. As soon as he was sure Thanos was gone, Loki strode across the flat gray plains toward the little girl standing on the edge of eternity.

“I must warn you,” Loki said when he was close enough for her to hear, “that if you try to attack me, it will spell disaster for both of us. Not to mention every other thing, living and dead.”

The green-skinned and bright-eyed alien child spun around. She held her fists up, feet scooted apart, braced for battle. “Who’s there?” she called out. Her dark eyes narrowed as she scanned the mist.

Loki laughed. He let the illusions slip away, bit by bit, until he stood before her in his Asgardian guise. “I am Loki of Asgard,” he told her, “and I am here to offer you your freedom.”

The little girl lifted her chin. Her eyes flashed gold. “No one can give me my freedom,” she said. “I’ll take it back myself.”

Loki smiled. Already, he liked this fierce, stubborn girl with fire in her eyes. “In that case,” he replied, taking a few graceful steps toward her, mist swirling around his booted feet like the hem of a cloak, “I’m here to offer you revenge.”

For a moment she considered him, eyes narrowed and lips slightly parted. He read the hesitance in the tense lines of her lithe, tiny body. Slowly, she lowered her fists. She straightened up, abandoning her fighting stance. She tilted her head to one side, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m listening,” she said. “What’s your plan?”

Loki smiled, bright and mischievous. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for someone to ask me that.”

Millions of light-years away, Tony and Nebula were building a ship. While Tony worked through his initial shock-slash-panic attack, Nebula combed the abandoned city of the Titans for anything they could use (or eat or drink) in their quest to get off the dead planet. Once she’d salvaged as much as she could from the ruins, Nebula returned to find Tony working feverishly on dislodging what appeared to be a head-sized, glowing blue orb from the wreck of Thanos’s ship.

“Let me help,” she said, with no intention of actually letting him let her do anything.

“No, I’ve got it.” His voice was rough, clipped. He did a good job of hiding it, but her quick eyes caught the way his hands shook and his pale skin gleamed with sweat. Finally, he managed to pull the glowing ball free. He fell back, holding it tight. He lifted the orb, examining it in the dusky red light of afternoon. “Huh. Lucky for us, it looks like this thing runs on some sort of advanced electron/muon propulsion system. Not quite as impressive as I’d hoped, but it’ll do. Piece of cake.”

Nebula crossed her arms over her chest. She had no idea why he was talking about cake at a time like this, but she let it go. She was hungry, too, and after what had happened to the Earth boy (his son? she wasn’t entirely sure, but they’d seemed close) she didn’t blame him for acting strange. “We should repurpose one of the shuttles,” she said. “I know where they are and how to detach them from the main ship.”

Tony set the orb aside, wincing as he did. He put a hand to his flank; she noticed the bloodstains under his fingers. “Good plan,” he said, clearly trying (and failing) to mask the residual pain in his voice. He played it off like he was wiping his hands on his shirt. “With two of us, there’s no need to build a flying Hearst Mansion. On the other hand, a private spaceship nightclub would be a dream come true.”

She narrowed her eyes. “What?”

He shook his head, letting out his breath in a long, heavy exhale. “It’s a Hollywood thing. Hand me those pliers.” He pointed to the bag of supplies she’d gathered.

Somewhat reluctantly, she handed over the pliers. She stood up. “I’m going to find water,” she told him. “When Titan’s sun rises tomorrow, we’ll cook alive without it.”

“That’s cheerful,” said Tony. He rubbed the pliers on his shirt, then blew on them. A cloud of orange rust billowed, thick and cloying, in the dusty air. “Bonne chance. Buena suerte. Or whatever they say where you’re from.”

She left him alone with the rusty pliers and the glowing orb. Overhead, the sky changed from red and orange to black. Pale, blinking stars stared down at her as she picked her way across the battered wasteland of the once-lush planet. She headed for the other side of the city ruins with a single, desperate purpose in mind: to find water before the morning sun found her.