Chapter Text
Despite his earlier statement, the path that lay before them wasn’t as easy as just ‘suiting up’. Before, all they had to do was put on their game face, fly the Quinjet to wherever the enemy was and take them out before the world ended. Now, not only were their numbers dwindled, but they had lost, and their enemy was no longer even on earth. He was somewhere out there in the galaxy having fulfilled his goal and Steve honestly still had a hard time wrapping his mind around the fact that there were aliens and other life forms out there. From what little conversation he had had with Rocket, the talking raccoon, there were apparently multiple civilizations out there, actual planets that contained life similar to earth, and not even like the ones he’d seen in the movies that Tony had shown him once upon a time. Steve shook his head, trying to focus. The only bright side of their predicament now that he could see was that Thanos probably wasn’t expecting any of them. Though that comforted little when he clearly had the power to disintegrate all of them with a single snap.
Steve honestly didn’t know whether to be glad or not that Wakanda was so advanced in technology. Their tech was on par with Tony’s and – he didn’t actually want to say it – but he thought that some of their technology might even outstrip the genius’s. On one hand it comforted him to know that the Wakandans could build on the technology they had at their disposal to allow them to travel to space, making their decision to venture out of their home world an expected reality and not an unattainable dream. On the other hand, being surrounded by such advanced technology reminded him of the genius and that was a path he really didn’t want to go down.
Steve sighed. It was hard, trying to corral what was left of them into some semblance of order. Despite what Thor wanted, he had finally managed to convince the god to stay and wait for them, citing their need for preparation and the benefits of having allies that could support him in a battle. It was a close call, not only because he thought that the raccoon was going to point out just how useful they had been against Thanos, but also because Thor apparently could now teleport, and being alien, had physiology that could withstand the harshness of space. Humans on the other hand, could not. Steve didn’t know much about science, but he knew that humans never went out to space without some sort of protective suit. That’s why he had Thor bring Bruce over to the Sanctum – again, something that the god apparently knew about – to seek for help from the wizard that had fought with them when the Black Order first arrived.
(A part of Steve wanted to comment on the amount of secrets everyone seemed to be keeping from him, but he bit that back at the last second.)
After speaking with Thor and convincing the god that ‘yes, they were going to space and no, he wasn’t lying to keep Thor on earth’, Natasha had pulled him aside and told him with dark eyes that she was going to find the Barton family. She had said it in an undertone, and Steve’s heart clenched with guilt, realizing that he had completely forgotten about them. He nodded solemnly and told her to be careful, earning only a rueful smile before she disappeared completely.
Steve had initially thought that with T’Challa gone, Shuri would take over the throne, but the girl had instead holed herself up in the lab with Rocket, combining the raccoon’s knowledge of weapons with her own inventions in order to provide them with weapons and tech that could survive outer space and that could give them a fighting chance against Thanos. Sitting on the royal throne of Wakanda instead, was Ramonda, the Queen Mother, her grief evidenced only in her eyes even as she ruled fairly and justly over what remained of their country, preventing it from falling into the chaos that blanketed the rest of the world.
There were many dead that littered the field apart from the ashes of those who had fallen to the Gauntlet, and in the days after his declaration, he found himself offering his help to the Wakandans, helping them carry their dead for a proper funeral. Each time, he marvelled at how strong willed the Wakandans were. Okoye, the general of the Dora Milaje who he accompanied, had shifted the bodies with only a stoic outlook, her expression severe and blank despite the tell-tale tremors in her fingers as she came across more of her soldiers. Steve regretted that they had brought the fight to Wakanda when the country was still slowly opening up to the rest of the world, and he hoped that these people received the honour their afterlife gave them.
With his super soldier strength, he had offered to help the Wakandans move the alien corpses as well, seeing as they were much heavier than the average human body. Heavy footfalls drew his attention from where he was lugging one such alien corpse, the monster’s multiple arms becoming a hassle.
“Need a hand with that?”
Steve turned to find Rhodey staring at him, the other man inclining his head towards the monster.
“Yeah sure why not?” Steve replied simply, moving to the side to allow the other man to grab onto the monster’s body.
The two of them heaved the creature to a pile that was building up. “This is gonna make an impressive bonfire.” Steve muttered, dropping the body on top of the ever-growing mountain of alien corpses.
He made to return where he had been to grab another alien but Rhodey’s voice stopped him short. “I’m not apologizing for what I said, back in the meeting.”
Steve pressed his lips together. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, Rhodey facing the mountain of corpses and himself facing the open field. “I’m not asking you to.” The ex-Avenger replied stoically.
Rhodey flexed his fingers, looking down at the monster corpses. “I haven’t forgotten what you did to him. And until he comes back, I won’t.”
“I thought he called.” Steve said, the words tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop them, “When the phone rang, I thought he called.”
Rhodey shifted but didn’t say anything so Steve took it as his cue to continue. “I was glad to hear Bruce. Honestly. But... But then I learnt that he had gone after an alien ship of all things...” Steve shuddered, closing his eyes as he remembered watching Ironman fly a nuke into a portal, knowing that it meant certain death. “I know I did something unforgivable. And I’m not asking for forgiveness. But I wanted to say I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –” he faltered slightly, “I didn’t mean for everything to get so out of hand, I swear. And I just –” Steve ran a hand through his hair, sighing deeply, feeling like his age for the first time.
“When Bucky – when he turned to dust I just - I think it hit me that Tony might never be coming back.” Steve confessed, grief sitting heavily in his chest. “And I don’t – I thought we had time, and I don’t want the last thing we ever spoke of to be – to be that.”
Rhodey’s head snapped around, “Don’t say that.”
Steve just fixed his eyes on the ground. “But haven’t you thought about it? Tony went after an alien ship containing a creature who could manipulate objects with his mind.” He stressed, “Tony could have been – he could’ve –” Steve swallowed, the words stuck in his throat, “And the dust –”
“Don’t say that.” Rhodey growled, clenching his fists, “Tony isn’t dead.”
“How could you –”
“He’s not dead.” The colonel snapped, glaring at Steve, “He’s not going to die in some corner of the galaxy with nobody by his side. He’s survived everything that life has thrown at him, and he’s prepared six years for this.” Rhodey laughed, “Six years, he’s prepared for this, and none of us believed him.” The man shook his head, grinning sharply, “He’s too stubborn to die. And I know,” Rhodey said, turning to face Steve completely, “That he’s waiting for us on the other side of the galaxy. It wouldn’t be him if he wasn’t.”
Steve smiled wryly. He didn’t truly believe what Rhodey was saying, not when the naivety clouding his eyes had been brutally ripped apart. But a small part of him ached with so much hope, with the determination and the conviction that he could hear in Rhodey’s voice, and so he replied, “And I suppose he’ll be asking us why we took our own sweet time.”
Bruce stumbled out of the portal, thanking the stern Asian man for his help before backing away carefully as the portal snapped shut, memories of a severed arm rising to the forefront of his mind.
His second trip to the Sanctum had been a fruitful one, and more hopeful than the last one had been. He remembered smashing into the Sanctum, his heart racing with terror as memories of a giant purple alien beating the hulk into the ground so easily. His first thought – as it always was – had been to contact Tony. It ashamed him now, to realize how often he ran to Tony when he encountered a problem, seeking the genius’s help and then leaving him in the lurch. A bitter taste filled Bruce’s mouth as he realized that he had expected Tony to drop everything to help him, when he had left the man alone to deal with the fallout from Ultron. In retrospect, he realized that he shouldn’t have been shocked that the Avengers had split up, not when he’d called them a time bomb from the start. He hadn’t started looking into the events surrounding the break up in detail. Rhodey, when he had met the guy, had given him the run down of the events that had happened, had explained in short sentences why he had to walk around with braces on his legs.
The little he heard was enough to make him sick.
He had pushed all those thoughts aside in favor of working with the rogue avengers, but he wondered, vaguely, if he should have stayed to help Tony back then. If the team would still be together if Tony had someone in his corner.
Shaking his head, he ran a hand over his scalp. For the longest time, he had hated the hulk, hated the creature that seemed to only destroy and destroy and destroy. But after Sakaar, after Asgard, he realized how sentient the hulk was, how capable the green giant was of emotions and thought. Another point, again, which he realized Tony had seen that none of them – even himself – had noticed. Bruce thought about the Asgardians, and he wondered if Valkyrie and Korg managed to get away, or if they too had fallen prey to Thanos. He – or rather, the hulk – remembered Loki giving orders for evacuation the moment the gigantic ship had loomed over them. Had forced the women and children to flee in the evacuation pods, weaving some spell to conceal them. That was the first time that Loki had stared straight into the hulk’s eyes without fear and asked him to aid them in protecting the civilians.
Bruce recalled Thor commanding both Valkyrie and Korg to lead the evacuation, promising to catch up with them when they were done. He wondered now, if they were even still alive. He hoped, sincerely hoped that they had made it out. He knew, from the look on Thor’s face, that Loki hadn’t made it. He didn’t think it was possible, but he felt sorry for the other god. Despite his own misgivings about Loki, he knew, from the hulk’s memories, that Loki had turned up to save Asgard at the end, had helped Thor organize the Asgardians on the stolen Sakaarian ship. The fact that Thor had arrived on earth with no Loki in sight…
Bruce bit his lip, regret weighing heavily in his chest. It seemed as though that was all he could do now, lingering in the past and regretting the actions he had taken.
He looked around, trying to suppress the heavy feeling, giving a shy nod to one of the Wakandan guards who responded in kind, shifting away from the door to allow Bruce entry into Shuri’s lab. He hastily smoothened down the rumples in his shirt, fingers twitching with nervous energy.
A quick scan of the lab told him that Rocket was missing. Shuri on the other hand, was buzzing around her lab, flitting from one holographic plan to another in a frenzied way that was so familiar that Bruce had to stop to swallow the lump that suddenly clogged his throat. He remembered the days that Tony used to do so, and he recalled how – how useless he had been in the face of danger, how he had been unable to transform, could only cower and hide away, watching with bated breath as his friend stepped up to deal with an enemy three times his size. Bruce thought he’d seen everything that Tony was capable of when he helped design the Hulkbuster but seeing the Ironman armour slowly crawl up Tony’s skin and encase him smoothly, Bruce could do little but marvel at his friend’s unlimited genius.
Seeing Shuri buzzing around the lab in a manner which he felt should have been contentedly busy, he felt ashamed and guilty that he couldn’t offer more. The hulk was one of the most powerful beings on Earth and yet he had refused to come out when they truly needed him. Bruce wondered if anyone here blamed him for not being able to hold his own in battle, and then he wondered if he could have prevented Tony from ever leaving earth if he had transformed back then. Steve had called Tony earth’s greatest defender, and Bruce wondered if things would have gone differently had he been able to prevent Tony from leaving.
“Did you find who you were looking for?”
Bruce snapped to attention, his mind focusing on the girl who was busy tweaking some holographic designs of what seemed to be a Wakandan aircraft, not lifting her gaze from the schematic plans despite her question.
Bruce licked his lips, rubbing his fingers nervously, “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I did. Wong – that’s the guy’s name – survived and he uh – he agreed to help us. Said he’ll research for a spell to allow us to breathe in space. Or at least have access to oxygen. Not in the vacuum mind, I think that’s too far-fetched even for him.”
Shuri nodded absently, her hands coming up to enlarge the holographic image, fingers plucking out parts that she didn’t need and replacing them with others.
“Do you uh – do you need help?” he ventured hesitantly.
The princess turned around and looked at him questioningly.
Bruce nodded to the holograph in her hand, “With that.”
Shuri turned back to the schematic of the aircraft and nodded mutely, her previous joviality all but gone. “We have aircrafts, much like your Quinjets, but better of course. The problem is getting them to space.”
“What do you mean?” Bruce frowned, coming over to the other side of the table.
Shuri threw her hands outward, enlarging the schematic. “Look,” she pointed out, plucking the diagram of the engine and holding it in her palm, “I’ve run multiple simulations, and I’ve replaced the engine of the craft multiple times to increase its power, but it always fails to breach the stratosphere. The engines burn out before it can push the craft out.”
Bruce raised an eyebrow, “You changed the engines? What kind of energy are you using?”
Shuri frowned, “Wakanda is rich in vibranium because of a meteorite that crashed into the country centuries ago. We harvested the metal and use the energy obtained from the crystals within the meteorite to power our tech, including the craft. I’ve even tried modifying the thrusters used by rockets but those consume too much fuel and throws the balance of the craft completely off.”
Bruce reached out and turned the hologram towards him, scanning the schematic of the craft studiously. “What about arc reactor technology?”
Shuri startled, “What?”
Bruce bit his lip hesitantly, “Tony caught up to an alien space ship that was already on its way out of earth’s atmosphere.” He said, “The Ironman suit is powered by arc reactor technology, it’s powerful enough.”
Shuri frowned, “That depends on the energy output. The arc reactor in the Ironman suit could be primed for boosting the suit alone. Plus, the suit itself isn’t as heavy as an entire aircraft.”
“No you’re right,” Bruce murmured, snapping his fingers, “But then we just need to have a reactor that has enough energy proportional to what is required to lift the craft. Ultron,” he faltered slightly but forced himself to continue, “Ultron used arc reactor technology as well. He embedded several reactors, huge ones made out of vibranium into Sokovia’s soil. If those reactors can generate enough power to lift an entire city I think we can create one that can lift a jet.”
“I don’t –” Shuri broke off, swallowing heavily, “I’ve always respected Tony Stark and his creation of the arc reactor. It’s amazing and frankly far beyond what I’ve ever seen in my life and I live and breathe new inventions. I can’t just – I can’t just steal it. Not when he’s –” she cut herself off.
Bruce pressed his lips together, “I know, which is why we’re not gonna steal it. We’re gonna use the arc reactors from the Hulkbuster.”
He tried to give her a reassuring smile, “If it makes you feel better, you can hide behind me when Tony finds out.”
He was rewarded with a tiny twitch of her lips. She hesitated for a second, then lifted her wrist, tapping her bracelet as she spoke rapidly into it. Bruce hoped, and prayed fervently that Tony wasn’t dead. Bruce would rather deal with an angry Tony shouting at him for picking apart his tech and stealing it. He had already abandoned the genius once, he wasn’t going to stop until he found his friend or – and his mind stuttered here – or he found undeniable proof that Tony Stark was dead.
Tony sat in an alcove, a tiny crevice in the ship, somewhere above the throne Thanos normally sat on. He leaned back against the cool alien material, eyeing the commotion below disinterestedly. As a genius, he knew exactly how powerful Thanos was, and he had quickly made himself scarce the moment they returned to the ship. It wasn’t a moment too soon because Thanos had proceeded to go on a rampage in the throne room, ripping apart his favourite chair and tearing up the entire room. As one of Thanos’ (only remaining) ally, he was tasked with overseeing the titan’s protection – not that the Titan needed it seeing as he literally held the power to change the goddamn universe in his hands – but orders were orders and so Tony found a compromise. His armour allowed him to find this small alcove – small for beings twice his size, but just comfortable enough for him – situated somewhere above the throne, a place where he could recline and keep an eye over Thanos but still stay out of reach of the titan’s rampage.
A sudden memory of him sitting in a similar fashion within the ring of a donut rose up in his mind. Frowning, Tony shook his head, pushing the image from his mind. There had been several few instances in the past couple of days, innocuous images that popped up now and then, overlapping reality with its similarity. Tony didn’t want to bother Thanos (he remembered white hot painpainpain) and figured he could handle it on his own. He didn’t tell Thanos about the empty feeling in his chest, as though something had been carved out.
A loud crash drew his attention, and he leaned over slightly to see what his master was doing. Thanos had apparently uprooted the bottom of the throne and thrown the metal across the room where it had shattered against the ship’s wall, tiny cracks emerging from the point of impact. Tony grimaced, realizing that if he continued his tantrum any longer, the Titan would tear the entire ship apart. Sighing inaudibly, Tony rolled over the edge of the alcove he had situated himself in, his armour smoothly sliding over his skin, catching him in mid-air. He floated within arm’s length of Thanos, his uncovered face expressing his scepticism.
“They’re a race of mindless creature,” he said, rolling his eyes, “you don’t need to get so worked up over them.”
The purple being didn’t reply at first, breathing heavily as though he had gone several thousand rounds against the hulk.
“You don’t understand.” Thanos growled, slamming a fist against the ship wall.
Tony eyed the wall dubiously, fervently hoping that the Titan wouldn’t put a hole in his own ship. He shook off the echo of ‘Did you ever watch that old movie Aliens?’ in his head and replied quickly lest the titan figure out something was wrong, “Don’t understand what?”
“It was a gift!” Thanos roared, spinning around to face Tony, who merely raised an eyebrow in reply, seemingly unfazed by the titan’s ire. “I gave them a gift, a mercy for their dying planet, and they spat it back at me. Turned on me as though I had not given them what they so desperately needed: resources.”
The genius lifted a shoulder, “And? It’s just one planet of aliens right? Who’s to say that the others out there don’t feel thankful? Besides, you didn’t really explain yourself to them, maybe they just need some explanation.”
Thanos sneered, clenching his fists, “I have deigned to take upon the sacrifices needed to deliver this mercy to them, I should not need to explain myself to the likes of them.”
Tony crossed his arms.
The Titan sighed, “But perhaps I was too hasty.” He looked away, uncurling his fingers, “I am too easily incensed by their lack of understanding because I have lost too much in order to grant this gift to the universe.” The Titan turned to Tony, “Take us to the nearest inhabited planet, I want to see for myself.”
“Sure,” Tony sighed, shaking his head slightly, as the Titan walked away, melting into the darkness, “leave it to the human to figure out how to operate an alien ship.” He groused, running a hand through his hair.