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“Tell me what they’re planning,” Thanos says, “and I’ll bring your sister back.”
Pietro barks a laugh. “You won’t,” he says. “Or you’ll bring her back only to kill her again. You’re a murderer.”
“Perhaps,” says Thanos. “But not a liar. Your sister is nothing to me. Her life is a small price to pay to keep the universe in balance.”
“Will you kill them?” Pietro asks. “The Avengers?”
“Does it matter?”
It does matter, Pietro is surprised to realize. Just not enough to change his decision. He nods to the Titan. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Wanda feels Pietro’s presence in the back of her mind the moment Banner snaps his fingers, though he awakens half a world away. For the first time in half a decade, she is whole—and she is furious.
Thanos’s attack on the compound is a gift, for with Pietro alive, her first mission is accomplished and she can move to the next: revenge. Five years without her brother. Five years. Pietro’s death may have been undone, but her grief, her rage—those still need to be answered for.
The world goes scarlet as power rises at her fingertips. She attacks.
Pietro is at Wanda’s side in an instant when she begins to turn to ash. He grabs her by the shoulders, as if to hold her together through sheer force of will, but her body only continues to disintegrate under his hands. As her frightened eyes meet his, he tries to pull her into one final embrace. But there is nothing left in his arms except ash and wind: she’s already gone.
Pietro sinks to his knees, casts his gaze upward in a silent prayer to the universe—
When his own body begins to crumble, all he feels is relief.