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He opens his eyes to a desolate landscape. He remembers a resonance, then a feeling of slowly becoming dust - and then weightlessness. The resonance is gone now, but the weightlessness persists. If he squints, he can distinguish the vague features of dunes and ruins of buildings that blur out of focus the more he tries to concentrate. The world spins and becomes nothing.
Anchor. That word is in his head as his world swivels and spins around and maybe he’s falling but he cannot move and there’s nothing to grab onto. He thinks his eyes are open, but all is dark.
He tries to order his thoughts, but all he can remember is loss, desperation and his mind screaming no, not him! as he commits to a desperate gamble.
He remembers sacrifice.
There is a flash of orange and the world shifts again, falls apart and spins into focus.
This time the world is green. The air is moving - is there air - is he even breathing - no don’t hyperventilate - he hasn’t died yet af-
Yes he has.
Oh god.
He focuses on the air. He doesn’t think he’s breathing (and isn’t that worrying, but maybe he can’t anymore- don’t go there, he thinks, focus, focus…)
The a- his surroundings feel different, more heavy, he thinks as he waits for the impeding panic attack to subside. Very strange. He doesn’t know why the thought suddenly makes him so amused.
Resonance.
Has it- has this happened before? There are ripples in the green landscape and out of the ripples, shapes appear.
He sees stars being born and dying, he sees planets collide, he sees humanoid shapes go to war, invent the wheel. He sees armies march, fires burn, civilisations wither and steps falter and dust settle. He sees bright shapes reach out with their hands raised in prayer, he sees mothers shield their children while the fathers stand in lines of sweat and armour and grim determination. He sees everything and recalls nothing as the shapes combine and swirl into one - lives becoming monuments, monuments becoming rubble, rubble reforming to make something new altogether. Cycles, he thinks, circles. Life and death intertwined.
Nothing ever really had a beginning, not even the universe.
“The universe was born restless and has never since been still”. Someone said that, once, and maybe it’s true, he thinks as the shapes spiral into each other and stick together and fall apart. Someone said that, and was almost right, but the universe was never born or created - it just always was.
Yet it will end in dust, a shape whispers, all will end in dust.
“He will get nothing but dust and blood.”
He did, didn’t he?
Dust everywhere and half of life gone, somewhere, at some time. Life goes on.
Undo it, a voice wraps around him, you have the power.
No, he doesn’t. He only helplessly watches as creatures and civilisations fall as one. Dust and blood indeed.
Undo it, a stronger voice whispers.
He can’t. He doesn’t know what or why or how or who or what or when-
There is no when. There is only him, now, for eternity.
Until it isn’t.
A face, with bright eyes and a brighter will that looks broken but isn’t shattered, and oh, so strong, is suddenly there. Like a mirage, wavering and blurry at the edges, rippling yet unchanging. It seems to beckon him and he almost unconsciously shifts forward without moving at all.
He knows those eyes, has seen them countless times, has heard those eyes say no as they stood up against impossible odds. Has seen them close forever again and again in a familiar dance, spanning tens and hundreds of timelines, tens of hundreds, and hundreds of hundreds, and millions and tens of millions and -
The eyes are open now.
They tell him to come.
He comes.
There is another shift, he thinks, and something topples and turns on its axis and he thinks he can feel a crack somewhere and suddenly he can move and he thinks he is breathing but maybe the invisible air currents are all in his imagination and a vibration from multiverses flying past at light speed shakes him, spins him and spits him out.
He can move but is now more sure than ever that he is no longer alive.
The landscape is still green but more alive, and tendrils from pasts and presents and futures grab onto him and tug in a thousand directions, all striving for what? He doesn’t know.
He isn’t sure balance comes into this, anymore.
He wants to take the path of least resistance, because he is just so tired, but there is always resistance and never a path and he struggles to stay upright when he is already upside down and the whispers are suddenly screams and pleas that seem to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
He wasn’t sure what sensory deprivation felt like until it was gone and now there are a trillion ways with nowhere to go.
He looks for the face, or a familiar voice, or a shadow, or an anchor, or anything that can hold him against the sweeping currents of multiple timelines running through him all at once like a trillion different movies on a trillion different screens all trying to overpower one another. He would have been fascinated by this once, but now he is just tiredness and fear and confusion and road blocked with no diversion sign and a spider’s web where the slightest movement will send you over the edge and he is slipping, and then the timelines screech and crack at the edges and no, he must hold on…
Then there is a river. A stream of consciousness of fear and self-hatred and desperation and resilience and love and finally grudging acceptance and there is no other way and I am your new master and I don’t want it and someone else take it but there is no one who will and the stream braces itself and all the voices are suddenly silent. The pasts and presents and futures and what is to-be and never-to-be and always-to-be stare like one in shock and awe and the stream calls to him now -
And the timelines merge and twist and coil around one another, some pulsing while others disappear, hissing like snakes, fighting the pull of the never-to-be with all they have, and the stream whispers no and the snakes are silent and the circle spins clockwise and anti-clockwise.
The dust settles until it doesn’t.
And then shapes come from the dust like scarab beetles crawling up and out in the timelines of myths and gods and ancient architecture and early civilisations. The shapes sit up and blink and do not fly, but each and every one feels like a phoenix, resurrected from ash against impossible odds.
He smiles and thinks that he wants that too and the stream wants it as he does but he is tied with invisible ropes, no, not tied, it is as if he is the place and nothing can separate the one from the other like carbon in an interlocked lattice forms diamond and if you take it all out it isn’t diamond anymore and just ceases to exist and just like you cannot separate the book from its pages, the crystal won’t let him leave and the stream won’t let go either and they are both locked in a stalemate with no end in sight.
You made your choice, whispers the crystal, and invisible snakes move as one to chain him more strongly in this inverted reality. You chose to win while you lose and you cannot change your mind now.
I chose him, he whispers back and he still struggles while the crystal shakes as if seized by intangible forces. He thinks he once bargained for eternity and won because he was so afraid to lose and this doesn’t quite feel like dying but he’s died before and he’s already dead but not really because he is alive and he is the crystal and his surroundings and all the possible timelines in the multiverse.
And if there is a timeline, any timeline possible where he can go back and live and come back to the man with the broken-but-not-shattered eyes, then he can control the timeline and find a path to go back but the tendrils feel suffocating now and he can’t navigate and the crystal doesn’t want him to leave and it just wants to be accepted and it somehow knows it’s a tool and a weapon and a looking-glass and it feels too old and too tired but still bursting with life as it looks onto the many lives and deaths and wars and treaties and chaos and civilisation are both the rim of the coin that flips and rolls but always circulates -
- and sometimes too much choice is no choice at all as the universe bends towards the scenario assigned by both chaotic unpredictability and the desperate wills of the few that can alter reality away from those cornerstone events that seem invariant but will bend under the tsunami of change brought by those individuals.
And the stream is one of those as it pushes and pulls and bargains and is resolute and uncompromising as it pleads the crystal to let him go, and the crystal hates but understands but it is so lonely and it found a worthy keeper and the keeper doesn’t want it and the keeper’s soulmate won’t let him keep it and it is as well as lost again and all it wanted was to not be the tool of power that has been its identity for eternities and infinities.
It demands a price, a compromise between the keeper’s will and its own and that already feels like a loss but it has seen this future before and after and now and at least it is no longer a lonely vessel of infinite power. Is that what you want, it asks the keeper. It feels like loss and surrender when the keeper nods.
I want to be alive.
The stream recedes and the keeper assesses the crystal and the crystal assesses the keeper and both suddenly realise that they are one and only and there are no more boundaries.
The-crystal-and-the-keeper look at the nows and the laters and the nevers and the maybes and the possibilities slide past them like strands of silk and there is a moment and an eternity of acceptance and then they blink -
- and they are back on Titan where the chapter and maybe the whole book truly began with a sacrifice and there are people staring at them and Tony wields the gauntlet and the Time Stone isn’t on it and he looks so tired and those broken-but-not-shattered eyes welcome them back and they suddenly know their eyes are glowing green because they have seen it and the air smells like loss and victory and the universe realigning itself, and they stumble into Tony’s waiting arms because there was no other way yet there were always millions and they can still see the timelines that are starting to pick themselves up like dazed rows of ants forming fluid rows of cause-and-consequence.
They close their eyes to hope and possibility and past and future -
- and Stephen Strange reopens them to a desolate landscape and yet not-so-desolate people and his face is still buried in Tony’s neck and he still feels the multiverse trying to pick itself up and recover from the aftershocks and maybe he would like to stay here forever and maybe he no longer owns the Time Stone because he is the Time Stone and maybe he can now see all the maybes and the maybe-nots and maybe there is a moment/age/eternity when he can feel the resonance again and he knows what it means and Tony knows too because he clings to him tighter and the gauntlet falls to the floor and now everything is alright as the multiverse spins and shifts and rights itself once again and they still do not let go but that doesn’t matter because he is the Time Stone and Tony is here and he thinks he could see their future if he wanted to.
He thinks he senses a presence in at least one of the other Stones as they call to their brother and knows that more than one sacrifice had been made during the war. He feels Tony focus on the gauntlet and he hears one of the Stones shatter and reform and the universe still strives for balance and though the Mad Titan is gone no one will ever now wield the full set. The Stones have or will choose their Keepers. The balance, for now (and yesterday and tomorrow and maybe ever), has been restored as the winds of Time settle around the multiverse and soulmates and lovers and friends embrace their counterparts that they don’t remember losing, all in unison, and maybe some of them will wonder why their lives feel so fragile and fleeting all of a sudden, maybe no one will question the Avengers reassembling, though nobody knows why, and maybe only a select few individuals remember there ever being a war and dust and a being called Thanos that had a completely different idea of what a balance should be.
Worlds turn and suns rise and maybe one day the Avengers will tell stories of their battles to children with unruly hair and innocent eyes that will ask whether the stories are true and why their classmates and schoolteachers won’t believe them and a man with dark hair and glowing green eyes will say, “Because Time willed it so.”