Chapter Text
PART I: Something like Surrender
Flash Thompson doesn’t need to drive all the way Upstate for this.
He doesn’t need to because he could just get over himself and stop being a paranoid little bitch about the fact that he can’t get his boyfriend on the phone. But he’s spent the past three weeks being a little bitch and the paranoid comes with the territory after having worked on a documentary about the Thaddeus Ross conspiracy with Michelle for the better part of the last year.
Ned left him a voicemail and then went on a trip, and all Flash wants is an update which means he really doesn’t need to drive all the way to a lake house— the address to which he’s probably not meant to have access to— but he’s kind of over fighting with Ned about something as stupid as what they’ve been fighting about and he just wants to wish him well with wherever this new job of his has taken him for the weekend.
He gasses up the car, and he drives for the three hours it takes to get him to a dirt drive, past a gate that lets him in after what he’s pretty sure is supposed to be a surreptitious facial scan, but no facial scan is surreptitious when you’re dating Ned Leeds and he’s spent at least a collective total of seventeen hours ranting about facial recognition software.
The house is nice, nicer really than any lake house ought to be, lush green trees creating a canopy that mottles the light of the sun on its path to the earth below Flash’s feet as he climbs out of his car for the first time in three hours and stretches. His knees pop first and then his shoulders.
The sun is warm on his face.
He can understand why someone with as chaotic a life as Tony Stark would find peace in a place like this, and he wonders how much maintenance on a home you only live in two months out of the year actually costs as he climbs the wooden steps of the porch and approaches the front door.
Flash has come all this way, maybe someone will be able to answer his question while he’s here, give him a new unreachable goal to reach for since he’s already made that movie he’s always dreamt of.
He raps his knuckles on the door even though he knows there’s gotta be crazy security here and his presence is already well and truly known. Known, in fact, since that camera at the front gates scanned him in.
“What on earth could you possibly want from me?”
“Hey, Mister Happy,” Flash grins through the open door, the exhausted man before him almost comically so with his tie undone and his shirt sleeves rolled up, looking the very picture of unkempt in complete opposition to every other time Flash has ever seen him. “You look a little fucked up.”
Happy glares at him, but that’s not a new experience for Flash who has only really interacted with this man on trips to visit Ned at the lab and using someone else’s security badge to get in the elevator when he frequently forgets his own.
“You look like you’re trespassing,” Happy grouses. “What do you want?”
“I’m doing, like, a whole big romantic gesture thing,” Flash waves a hand, “forgiveness and all that. You know, the good stuff.”
“You’re… to me?” Happy frowns, face twisted up in the sort of bafflement that’s never not humorous in nature.
Flash makes a face of disgust in return.
“God, no,” he all but gags, “I just need your supercomputer to get in contact with my actual boyfriend. And he’s basically your boss now, right? So it’s in your best interests to let me in.”
“Ned Leeds is not my boss,” Happy says flatly, “and even if he was, you certainly wouldn’t be.”
“Maybe,” Flash shrugs, “but I drove all the way here and it would be kinda a dick move to make me turn around immediately.”
Happy stares at him, keeps on scowling at him, and then turns around with a heavy sigh and walks back into the house. He leaves the door open though, so Flash takes it as the most welcoming invitation that Happy Hogan is actually capable of.
“This place is nice,” Flash comments as he steps inside, glancing to his right at a living room gone haywire with what appears to be a collection of stuffed animals dressed in outfits handmade out of construction paper and tape. “I mean… I’m sure it is when it’s… clean.”
There are crackers scattered loose across the coffee table and books stuck in couch cushions and, the cause of all the chaos, little Morgan Stark sat at the breakfast bar toasting marshmallows with her bare hands.
“Mo-Mo, careful with those,” Happy points a finger at Morgan as he rounds the countertop to pick up a cup of coffee without offering one to Flash.
“I’m so careful,” Morgan says, a comically genius beat passing before the marshmallow between her fingertips bursts into a tiny flame, Happy immediately choking on his coffee before leaning forward to blow it out.
“Morgan—”
“Taking care of a six-year-old looks not great on you,” Flash snorts, shit-eating grin taking over his face as he crosses his arms. “Are you sure the Starks know how bad at this you are?”
“Peanut gallery, can you please do what you came to do and then leave?” Happy asks, lifting Morgan out of her seat and carrying her on his hip while she pouts about not being allowed to set things on fire anymore.
“Alright, alright,” Flash brushes him off, “how exactly do I talk to…?”
“Friday?” Happy calls out, picking the kitchen up one-handed while carrying Morgan with the other. “Help this doofus with whatever he needs.”
“Mommy says you shouldn’t call people doofus, but apparently only for me,” Morgan imparts wisely. “I know because Daddy called Peter a doofus and they just laughed but then I called Sarah Marie at school a doofus and got in trouble.”
“That sounds like a serious case of injustice,” Flash tells her and Morgan nods at him sagely with her chin tucked over Happy’s shoulder.
“It sure was!” she says with all the indignance of a six-year-old who has grown up around too many foul-mouthed vigilantes for her own good.
“Okay, okay, Justice Ruth,” Happy rolls his eyes, but even Flash can see the fondness in them as he shifts Morgan to one hip and lifts a hand to point at Flash. “You should… what the fuck—”
“What the fuck?” Flash reiterates succinctly, but it doesn’t nearly begin to encompass what’s happening.
Happy’s hand.
Pointed at Flash’s face.
“Oh, God—”
“Uncle Happy, where’d your hand go—”
“Take her, take her—”
Happy is thrusting Morgan into Flash’s hands before he can do anything about it, say anything, look for a solution to the fact that this man is turning to dust. Big, flat flakes that don’t even look like they’re made out of human matter as they float listlessly to the ground.
“Happy—” Flash gasps, Morgan held tight in his arms, probably too tight from the way she squirms but at least he’s not dropping her. “Happy—”
“Call Tony— Get ahold of Tony, tell him—”
Happy’s face is terrified when it dissipates into the air around them, his final order drifting away with the rest of him.
And Flash stares.
Flash’s entire world shifts in an instant with a six-year-old girl balanced on his hip, scared by what she’s seen, scared doubly by Flash’s lack of comforting as he tries to process what’s just happened to Happy Hogan.
They’re in the middle of nowhere, there’s no one around for miles, they’ve got the best security system in the world keeping this place on lock so how could anything have gotten in to cause that?
“Friday? I’m gonna need you to call Ned now. Right now.”
“Of course, Mister Thompson.”
Dial tone.
Dial tone.
Crying kid and a dial tone.
“Hi, you’ve got Ned! Honestly just text me, I’ll see it quicker. Bye!”
“Okay,” Flash holds Morgan’s head closer to his shoulder, bounces her like he’s seen people bounce babies on TV. “Okay, we’re okay, you’re okay, everything’s—”
“I wanna go home!”
Flash swallows thickly and looks around, begins to formulate a plan.
“Alright, let’s get outta here, then. Let’s get outta here.”
He pulls out his phone and begins to dial.
“And let’s try Ned one more time…”
***
Chaos.
She knows there’s chaos going on around her but she can’t hear it, can’t feel it. She knows that something has happened but she can hardly comprehend what, her sister’s ashes scattered in the dirt where she kneels.
Natasha Romanoff hurts so entirely in every inch of her being that she’s practically numb with it. Numb with it in a way not all that entirely dissimilar from a life lived under the control of some cruel man in a plush office somewhere, watching on a monitor as she tears herself limb from limb without any say in the matter.
There is a ringing in her ears, there is fire and brimstone and screaming, and Natasha can’t hear it because her body is no longer under her control. They’ve gotten her brainwashed again, she’s sure of it. She doesn’t know how, but the Red Room has done it and this is some new training module where she’s supposed to learn that she could have saved them all if she had sacrificed her sister or something.
Her sister.
Her sister.
Yelena is dust on the ground in front of her, the dirt she digs her fingertips into, ash slipping between tall blades of grass that can’t be real because she can’t feel them. It’s not real. It’s not real, she’s just been captured by the Red Room, they’re brainwashing her again, it’s not—
“Hey, hey, look at me—”
“No, no, no, no—” Natasha has no idea how long she’s been repeating the same word, only recognizing that sound is coming from her mouth when a steady hand lands on her shoulder and her gaze on the ground in front of her— ash, a woman, a sister— is interrupted by someone crouching down. “No— she can’t— she’s—”
“I know, I know,” Sam Wilson squeezes her shoulder tight enough to hurt but it’s what she needs to unstick from her circling spiral, look up at his face with what she knows is a face that can’t possibly be a product of the Red Room. There is too much feeling in her, too much spilling out in tears and horrified eyes. “We’re gonna figure it out, hear me? We’re going to find him.”
Natasha’s mouth twists up at the mention of him. Her body winds tight and her heart stutters out a new rhythm as she finds a new mission and a new purpose in her anger.
“We are going to find him,” she says, stern despite the continuing cracking in her voice, tears undisturbed on her cheeks and even steady Sam Wilson’s own face showing a fear of his own, a determination in spite of it. “I am going to kill him.”
Sam breathes in deep. Natasha can’t help but mirror the rise of his chest with the filling of her own lungs.
“I think you’ll have to get in line for that one,” he says flatly. “But I like the spirit.”
***
Rhodey knows what it means when he watches the first people begin to crumble.
He knows, even if he can’t comprehend it, and he can logically understand that they’ve lost even if the most pragmatic parts of himself still can’t figure out how.
They’ve lost and they lose sometimes, it’s part of the fight to lose a battle here and there on the way to winning the war. But this is the war, this had been the war, and it’s over. It’s over, right before his eyes, it’s over.
Rhodey stumbles through the tall grass, watches Steve Rogers sitting in stunned, immovable silence, watches Sam Wilson crouch down in the space where one of their own had just been standing, watches Princess Shuri sprint across the wide-open space in search of a brother she will not find.
And all the while he is keeping count. Keeping score, a score that’s not even accurate because half of their people are off-planet, facing the weight of their failure and not even on their home turf to cope with the fallout.
Rhodey keeps count of who is still alive if not necessarily still standing, so many sitting on the ground and just, simply breathing, but all the while he is looking for just a handful of faces.
One in particular, who shouldn’t have been in this place through it all to begin with, who should be just up ahead through these glass doors, who should be coming back up from the tunnels as she looks for yet another way to help, always another way to help.
That’s what she does, that’s who she is, that’s what she’d taught the boy turned man turned—
“Spidey?” Rhodey gasps as he comes through those doors despite the fact that he had been walking, not running, not in that much of a hurry to find the cause for the hopeless feeling in his chest at the other end of this tether.
The tether that has him standing in an almost mockingly pristine lobby, Wanda Maximoff’s eyes lifting to him as though she is only just coming back to herself, tears threatening to fall and mouth falling open ever so slightly in understanding.
And there, in the middle of the floor, Spider-Man on his knees.
On his knees.
On his—
“Peter,” Rhodey takes a careful step forward. “Pete, where is everyone. Where is—”
“They’re gone,” Wanda answers, voice small and cracking, sounding so much younger than all the years she’s grown since he first met her. “They’re all gone.”
There’s a shuddering breath that Rhodey only believes comes from Peter because he’s the only other person in this room, because it certainly doesn’t sound like anything that should be coming from that man, so capable and witty and ever-going in the face of everything.
In the face of everything, of everything except for this, Rhodey realizes as his eyes finally fall on Peter’s hands, hovering and shaking just above a pile of ash.
Peter’s shoulders are heaving, up and down and up again in a pattern that Rhodey can see becoming more intentional with each new inhale, like Peter is actively keeping himself steady, like Peter is choosing not to break down when Rhodey knows that’s all he wants to do.
When that’s all Rhodey wants to do.
What else is there? They lost. They lost, they lost, and everything is playing on a loop in Rhodey’s head.
Peter inhales, Wanda exhales, they lost. They’re all gone.
“Okay,” Rhodey breathes out harshly, wishes he could feel his feet under him. “Okay, okay.”
And he’s about to get a hold of himself, about to put aside all his own grief and all of his own fear for that checklist in his head that does not and cannot include too many names, when Peter very abruptly gets to his feet and walks out the door.
“Where are you going?” Wanda calls out after him, and Peter doesn’t even stop when he tells her—
“I’m handling this.”
Rhodey shares a look with Wanda. She looks so unbelievably young, so old in the eyes despite herself.
“He’s— he’s—”
“I’m on it,” Rhodey assures her, moves for the door, “don’t wander too far, okay? Gather the others.”
Wanda doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even nod in her shock, and he thinks she probably hasn’t moved her feet since this all started, since it all ended, but he has to follow Peter because there’s a pile of ash on the floor and he knows it’s her, he knows it’s her.
So much wasted time and wasted love, he knows it’s her.
Rhodey hurries back out onto the battlefield and strides towards the figure of red retreating from the shadow of this tower where it all ended.
“Kid— Peter—” he chases after Peter, picking up his pace the necessary amount to be just behind him, “stop walking away I’m trying to talk to you—”
“Karen,” Peter stops in his tracks, standing over Vision’s body and clenching his jaw, breathing in sharply when he looks at it but not letting a single inch of his stoicism fade yet. “Read the energy signature here for me. It’s different right? It’s traceable?”
“Peter.”
Rhodey tries to get into his line of vision but Peter averts his eyes and puts up a hand, obviously listening to the voice in his suit and choosing to tune out Rhodey for the moment. Tune out the rest of the world, save the direction he’s set his sights, it would seem.
“Is there a reason we’re still hiding this from your kid?” Rhodey had asked May Parker once upon a time, back when the thing between them had been new and theirs and private.
Back when the thing between them had been doable and possible and May hadn’t been— hadn’t been—
“If you need to know anything about my boy, it’s this,” May had responded, laughing through it as she lifted up two fingers and pointed to them one at a time, “he’s the most stubborn guy you’ll ever meet, and he’s fiercely protective to the point where it’s actually a little bit concerning.”
“So we’re waiting because you’re afraid he’ll try and kill me?” Rhodey had snorted, a disbelieving lift to his eyebrows that Rhodey knows today wouldn’t be there, knowing Peter as he knows him now.
“We’re waiting because I don’t want to lie to him when I tell him I’m in this for real.”
May Parker. May Parker, Rhodey can see her in her boy now as he talks to the AI in his head and starts immediately finding a way to bring her back. Rhodey can see her in him and the way it sits in his chest isn’t even entirely painful, although he knows it could be, will be soon, once any of this starts to feel real.
Once any of it starts to sink in past the sight of a pillaged battlefield and the stunned quiet of soldiers who may know how to lose, who may have lost in the past on any number of occasions, but not like this. Never like this.
“Peter, look at me,” Rhodey lifts a hand to rest it on his shoulder, but Peter shrugs him off without a second thought, seemingly incapable of looking him in the eye, of stepping from the path he’s set himself on. “Peter—”
“Anyone who isn’t on the jet in five minutes is getting left behind,” Peter tells him bluntly as he walks away, walks towards the parked Quinjet, away from one battle and straight into another without taking the time to breathe about it.
Stubborn and protective to a fault. Without any of Peter’s people here, with the knowledge that both May and Ned are gone and the lack of knowledge as to the state of Michelle’s own life, Rhodey knows that there is very little grounding Peter Parker right now except that fire in his stride as he makes a decision and chases it full-speed-ahead.
There is very little grounding Peter Parker right now, and Rhodey knows that he can’t doubt this man’s ability to tear the entire planet apart piece by piece anymore. He has power in the very tips of his fingers that Rhodey can achieve a mere fraction of when he wraps himself up in armor and weaponry like the War Machine suit.
Peter Parker could do it, tear the world apart in lamentation of what he’s lost, and he’s all the more likely for the anger that is visibly radiating off of him right now.
Rhodey chases after him, chases him into this new arena and chases all that stubbornity and protectiveness towards its goals.
It’s not over until the likes of Spider-Man gives up, and they are far from reaching that point, so long as someone keeps the kid grounded.
I’ve got him, May, Rhodey thinks as he directs every remaining Avenger back towards the jet.
I’ve got him.
***
“Karen says there’s a specific energy signature, and if I hook up to the main computers back at the Compound—”
“I understand, Pete—”
“Then stop trying to tell me to slow down!” Peter snaps, him and Sam the only two really carrying out any conversation, right there at the front of the jet where Wanda can see them clearly from her seat in the main hull. “We don’t have time to slow down, he could be anywhere in the universe by now, Wilson—”
“I’m aware,” Sam says levely, just about the only one maintaining any sort of level head in this situation with even the pillar that is Steve Rogers slumped in a seat and staring into the middle-distance where Wanda knows he can see his best friend, saved two, three times over, simply turning to dust in front of his face.
Sam and Peter are arguing, Wanda thinks but isn’t sure, because Peter is all rage and movement, in stark contrast to the larger mood of the jet, and that Sam is worried Peter is going to do something reckless.
“If you try to fight Thanos right now,” Sam tries to put a hand on Peter’s shoulder and Peter actually smacks it away, taking a step backwards on too-active feet, “you will lose, Spider-Man. You will lose, do you hear me? I’m with you in this, but we have to use our heads.”
Have to use their heads. Have to, but isn’t that what they’d been doing? Or had it just been their hands?
Wanda thinks it might have actually been the latter when she thinks about it, staring at the twist of her own fingers and knuckles around themselves where she clutches them in her lap, unwilling to let them do anything more than sit uselessly after what she’s done.
She had killed Vision. She had killed Vision, and maybe in another universe where things had played out differently she’d still be coping with that fact, but it would be wholly and entirely different in a context where they’d won.
Where it had been worth it rather than so completely useless in the long run.
Wanda had ended a life with just a twist of her wrist, and it hadn’t even mattered because it wasn’t a worthy sacrifice to the universe, apparently. Vision’s sacrifice of his life and Wanda’s sacrifice in taking it weren’t enough to save them from this.
Peter Parker and Sam Wilson bickering, the former looking for all the world like he’s about to have a break from reality at any moment and the latter very clearly holding onto stability by the skin of his teeth.
Wanda looks at her hands, clasped tight, free of the magic that she pushes back and ignores and pushes back and ignores and she takes a deep breath. Releases it with the lowering of a body into the seat next to hers.
Natasha doesn’t speak, she doesn’t try to hold Wanda’s hand or touch her or reassure her because none of them are in a place where reassurance could be possible, where it could be anything other than a further catalyst in their collective fury and hurt and grief.
Natasha just sits in silence and Wanda twists her hands tighter.
It has to have been worth something. It all has to have been worth something more than surrender.
“We’re finding him,” Peter jabs a finger into Sam’s chest and Sam is a pillar of patience to let that happen. “And we’re finding everyone else, and we’re fixing it. We’re fixing it.”
They have to.
It has to have been worth it.
***
“No, I’m trying to get in contact with Director Fury—”
Helen Cho scrambles down the hall, people running and wailing and lamenting something that none of them understand. She doesn’t understand. She hasn’t not understood something in so very long, but she doesn’t understand.
“He’s not answering his secure line,” Helen continues into the phone held stiffly to her ear as she rounds a corner into her office and shuts the door quickly behind her with a breath of relief as she leans back against it.
There’s so much chaos filling this building and she knows that there must be something to be done to fix it, she just needs to talk to the big guy in charge to find out what’s going on so she can do whatever her part in this crisis is.
What is her part? What is her part?
How can she help heal people when they crumble to dust in her hands— in her hands, in her hands—
“No, no, listen, I’m running this place alone— Maya Hansen is— she— she— she’s no longer available,” Helen chokes out a trembling hand covering her eyes. Covering her eyes but still watching that same scene play out again and again in the darkness, Maya watching her own hand disintegrate with fascination only to look up at Helen with terror.
She had just disappeared right before Helen’s eyes and that’s not possible. It’s not possible. Helen is a woman of science, and a great one at that, so the fact that she can’t even begin to place what sort of tragedy has befallen this hospital that she and Maya had built from the ground up.
Half an attempt to serve the enhanced and mutants and inhumans that can’t get medical attention anywhere else and half creating a space to carry out their own research, this place is their home and now people are turning to dust in the hallways and—
“Doctor Cho, you are not the only one trying to reach Director Fury right now. With the mass death all across the globe—”
“Wait,” Helen’s eyes snap open, brow furrowing, striding across her office to look out the window and down at the streets of San Francisco. “Wait— wait.”
She watches from high above the clambering of people in the streets, the crashed and crashing cars, the running and the lamenting.
“This isn’t just us?” she breathes more to herself than to the Shield agent on the other end of the phone. “This isn’t just us.”
“Ma’am, this is, as far as we can tell, everywhere.”
Helen hangs up the phone without responding and gapes.
She has never not known what to do so entirely.
***
“Tony— Tony, Tony, Tony—”
“I’m sorry, Pepper, I’m sorry,” Michelle stumbles on her feet, collapses to her knees beside where Pepper is prone and reeling, wiping dust from her hands that’s no longer even there, but must feel like it is from the way she’s scratching her skin raw. “Pepper, we have to go now—”
Pepper sobs, a wretched sound that hurts more than the numbed stab wound in Michelle’s side, echoing across a desolate planet. Desolate twice over now, with only three remaining lives standing long enough to tell its tale.
Well, standing long enough if they manage to make it home, which Michelle really doesn’t feel particularly optimistic about, even if she does feel determined to try.
She has the power to make it happen. Between the three of them they have the power to make it happen, she’s almost nearly certain of it, and so they also have the responsibility to try. For the sake of everyone still on Earth, everyone who might still be standing down there and surviving and trying to survive the same way they are up here, but also for their own sake.
For their own sake, they have to keep going. This is a story worthy of telling, this story of how they put their entire souls into trying to stop Thanos and still failed. Still failed.
The failure does not make it any less worth telling. The loss does not make it any less vastly important.
Perhaps it makes it more so, Michelle’s hands grabbing at Pepper’s shoulders and pulling her up from where her forehead is resting in the clay-like dirt of this planet.
“Pepper, we can’t stay here,” she begs past the twinge in her side, past the exhaustion in her body, past the sight of a teenage girl dying in her arms. “We won’t make it, we have to try and make the ship work. Nebula is on her way to—”
“The ship?” Pepper croaks, not looking at Michelle but not pulling away from her touch anymore, not trying to fight her way back into a hole in the ground.
“Not the one we crashed,” Michelle explains, “the one the Guardians—”
“No, I know, I know, it’s just,” Pepper lifts her gaze and there is so much turmoil in her eyes that Michelle feels grateful for something she’s not sure she should be. She’s grateful that Peter is back home, that if he’s dead she doesn’t have to try and struggle through this feat while carrying the knowledge of his death on her back. She can just pretend he’s not, she can just pretend. “Tony was…”
“I’m so sorry, Pepper—”
“No, he was repairing the ship,” she insists, cuts into whatever misplaced condolences Michelle was spewing just to try and get Pepper on her feet again. “He didn’t finish, but he started— he started, we can probably…”
“Yeah, yes, okay,” Michelle nods fervently, tries to hop to her feet but ends up pulling at her wound and halting her movement with a doubled-over groan through bared teeth. “Shit.”
“Don’t jostle it, come on,” Pepper swipes hands under her eyes, climbs to her feet, and wraps an arm around Michelle’s waist like she hadn’t been a puddle of uncontained emotion just moments before. “I’ve got you,” she breathes, helping Michelle stand upright again, looking her in the eye.
Just two women lost in space, lost in their own guilt and loss and something else entirely. Just two women, trying to make their way back home.
They have to try.
“Ready?” Pepper asks, and it’s about whether or not Michelle can walk now but it’s also not.
Michelle swallows, looks around this planet, desolate twice-over. She nods.
“I’m ready.”
***
Peter Parker has been a number of things in his lifetime.
He has been a problem and a solution; he has been a neighbor and a scientist and a soldier. Peter has been through the wringer and back again, and all the while he has had hope. Even on the days where it wasn’t evident, when he was nearly ready to give himself up to the flood, he didn’t grow up the child of Ben and May Parker to not know how to believe in hope.
It’s not hope that’s driving him now, and that’s frightening, or it would be if there was anyone around who knows him well enough to know how dangerous that can be. It’s not hope that’s driving him, and the thing that is driving him, that anger and fear and a truly murderous sort of rage that he isn’t interested in holding back like he had mere months ago with a scavenger of a man wreaking havoc in his neighborhood, that thing is why he hasn’t slept in the hours it’s taken to return to the state of New York if not the city.
That thing is keeping him awake and moving and thinking about how much faster all this typing and coding and setting up of searches would be going if he weren’t doing it with the handicap that is a missing friend.
A missing friend. A brother in the chair. That guy keeps him going too. Ned keeps him going in the moments when his grief for May or the uncertainty around Michelle and Riri get too strong and vice versa, an ever-turning circle to keep him going, going, going.
The sun is up in New York where it would be down by now in Wakanda and Peter has been awake for approximately two days.
There’s a specific energy signature to the Stones. Friday is searching for it.
Now he just has to figure out how to search for the other thing.
His heart, lost to space.