Chapter Text
The woods of Wakanda weren’t dense like a rain forest. They were just as beautiful, if not more so, but light slid between cracks of the trees, their outstretched branches guiding the light to hit the floor. The canopy of the woodland was bright, in a way like today shouldn’t have been. Rainforests are beautiful too, stunning, but they’re wet and muggy. Hot in a way. And the damp air sticks to your skin as though a sheen of sweat. Rainforests have exotic plants that crawl up vines and trees, buzzing with life. Beaming with energy. Each piece of foliage is vibrant, colourful and sparkles in the shared limelight of the environment. The Wakandan Forest isn’t like that. The Edge nearing the plains that skirted the city, were growing dusty with the ripples of dirt that were flung in waves from explosions.
The Wakandan Forest breathed with ancient life. Tall trees stretching skyward, their broad cover catching a gleam of the overhead sun. shafts of amber light pierced the green above, casting speckled patterns on the forest floor – a living mosaic of moss, roots and secrets. Every leaf shimmered with the subtle vibranium-rich energy of the land, humming softly beneath the surface, like the steady beating pulse of a hidden heart. Beneath the boughs, the scent of the earth was thick and fertile. The air carried a sharp twang of wild herbs and the distant whisper of smoke that grew ever present as the seconds ticked by. Insects hummed in synchronized rhythm something ancient and urgent, as if the forest itself knew something was coming. Within the dense growth, a clearing opened – vast and ceremonial – where the earth had been worn down by centuries of tribal gatherings, royal rites, and whispered oaths under moonlight. These woods weren’t a rainforest. It was a calm woodland, achingly present while man and monster battled. This was no ordinary woodland. It was sacred. A forest weathered by time. A forest preparing for war.
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To say it was strange would’ve been a severe understatement. It was petrifying. Looking around to find bodies, dead and alive, fading into the wind like ash. What was worse was waiting to see if you were next. For those who got snapped, it was like death. Painless, yet an acute awareness of an all-encompassing, gradual loss of sensation creeping over you like an imposing wave. Smelling the battlefield one moment, to be nose blind the next, smelling the acrid scent of death. Feeling the ache in your bones from desperate fighting to numbness making you it’s Prisoner. Even worse, still, was feeling yourself fade. If you were stood, you felt yourself get closer to the floor as your legs disintegrated. It was purely disorientating if nothing else. But nothing compared to the suffocation, right before it went black. The split second where your lungs faded before your mind. It was like drowning in a sea of air. Like finding yourself trapped in a burning building, where breathable oxygen transformed to pure breathable poison. The moment of silence as the last of sensation slid between your fingers, before the final touch of peace overcame what used to be your body. The snap was unbiased. Unyielding and unforgiving.
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“I told you. You’d die for that!” Rang over the deadly silence like a siren. Stormbreaker plunging itself into Thanos’ chest accompanied by the low rumble of thunder and the high-pitched ringing before the blinding, searing projection of lightning fell over the forest.
Thor cradled Thanos’ head in a mockery of kindness and brought him closer, staring angrily into his eyes while he forces the axe deeper. The God allows himself to relish in the grunts of pain before being cut off.
“You should’ve…” the titan begins to slur.
“You…” Thanos continues to persist through his dying moments. He gasped, catching his breath for his final crime.
“You should’ve gone for the head…” he wheezed, raising his left hand for the last time. He snapped. Half the universe wiped out.
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The brilliant luminescence that came from the gauntlet rivalled the sun.
“What did you do…?” Thor gasped.
“WHAT DID YOU DO!?” he yelled, ignited by fury at the Titans smirk before slipping away into a navy portal. An axe forged by starlight lay limp on the ground of the Wakandan Forest floor, covered in deep garnet coloured blood.
Thor stepped back, panting in muted anger with nothing to direct his loss at before feeling the effects of the gauntlets last act. His body slipping away from him. He stared around, fumbling with useless limbs as he faded to nothingness. Catching a glimpse of The Good Captain as he did. The God of thunder pronounced dead at the hand of a man with a will as undeterred as lightning.
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Steve heard the loss of the battle before he saw it. It wasn’t everyday that Thor yelled like that. Not with that anger. For a second he felt himself prepare for a fight, the pure anguish in his friends’ voice reminding him of simpler times. But then he saw Thanos leave like the coward he was. Then Thor began to fade, their eyes met but before he could cry out, he too started to disappear. Before he could be shocked, he heard the fear of another;
“Steve…?” His Bucky… Steve whirled around, his aching limbs trembling at the sudden effort, but he did.
“Bucky…” Steve could only recite his name in some twisted version of a prayer before he too was coming apart at the seams. It was agony, then it wasn’t. He could see Bucky was yelling, but his brain couldn’t register the words. He didn’t get the privilege of panic before the world blurred and spun, then darkness. The last thing his body was able to register was a mix of hot and cold, but it was safe.
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He looked around to find Steve, to know he was okay, to know that they didn’t lose, but it was too late by then. He rushed over to capture Steve's decaying body. All he could do was stumble over as he died, is mix-matched arms cradling Steve in his forms final fleeting moments. He choked back a sob, silently pleading as he grappled with what this meant. He suddenly felt as if he was back in the 1940’s cradling Steve’s weak and sick body as he trembled with bout of pneumonia, forehead glistening with sweat. Watching helplessly as his Ma’ pressed a cloth against his head trying to bring a fever down, heart breaking at each pained whimper that fell from those blue quivering lips.
“Steve…?” His voice was rough into his ears, hoarse with grief. He fell forward at the lack of weight in his arms.
His metal arm fisted at the ground, punching craters into the floor as his eyes glossed over. The other half of his soul ripped from him.
The world span, eyes wet with unshed tears. His body ached; his throat hurt with a lump he couldn’t seem to rid himself of. Looking around at the dust clouding the air, bomb smoke had settled long ago in the stillness of shock. They lost…
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T'Challa reached out for a fallen Okoye.
“General!” He called out, eyes searching her form for injury,
“Up, General, up!” he panted grabbing her arm, but he was a second to short, fingers slipping through her forearm, he stumbled, their eyes locking as she faded.
“Go… This is no place to die…” she gritted out, shutting her eyes as she turned to ash, scattering to the floor. T’Challa straightened, looking around. He sucked in a breath, rolling his shoulders as he looked around the forest. Peeking through the foliage over to the plains where his soldiers and the Chitauri were ravaged by the snap. Bombs and weaponry that were being piloted, malfunctioning as their respective captains faded away. Both sides of the battle, were taken out without even a glance spared. The field turning into a true ‘no man’s land’ as warriors from both armies, crumbled to cinders.
The king’s eyes met M’baku’s as he scattered to dust. It was surreal to see the leader of The Jabari Tribe, a strong warrior who always opposed the King, nod in respect before fading to his death.
T'Challa shuddered as the quiet wind passed down his back. Like a hand pressing on his shoulder, not oppressive, but he was aware of it. He heaved in a breath of air. Savouring it before rushing off. He had people to save.
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Wanda was lying on the ground by visions limp body when the snap happened, his red form turned an ashen grey without his source of power. His body starting to fade fast between her fingers. Suddenly she was 17 again, sobbing over the loss of her dear brother. Only this time it wasn’t Pietro. It was her Vision... her Vis.
No explosion. No scream. No shattering sky.
Only silence.
Wanda Maximoff, amidst the wreckage of Wakanda’s battlefield, her fingers trembling, stained with ash and memory. Around her, the world had fractured. The once lush green of the forest was now choked in smoke and ruin. Vibranium-lit soil scorched black, the sacred land gasping under the weight of loss.
and in her arms – there was nothing. Vision was gone. She had killed him.
she had looked into his eyes, felt the surge of his soul through the mind stone, and unmade him. Not because she wanted to – but because she had to. To save the world. To save everyone. It was the only way. But it hadn’t mattered.
Thanos had come. The gauntlet had glowed. Time had unravelled like a thread pulled too tight. and Vision, broken and lifeless, was taken from her a second time – this time without love, without mercy.
She dropped to her knees in the dust, her sight blurred by her tears, the red in her eyes growing faint like dying embers. Around her, people screamed. Bodies lay still. The sky burned a sick orange as the sun dipped low, casting long shadows across devastation. But none of it touched her. None of it mattered.
He was gone.
Vision – Her Vision – the one who had spoken to her in soft tones. Who took the heart of a broken child and mended it with caring steady hands and gentle caresses. Her Vision. The one who had made her feel like she was more than her past mistakes, who had carefully taken a shattered heart and sealed it back together again. Fixing her like the kintsugi practice that filled red skin with gold…
Her Vision that held her as though she were a precious ceramic. Vision, the one who had held her hand in a kitchen in Scotland and talked of forever. The one who had asked, so gently “it shouldn’t be you, but it is.” And she had answered. She had taken that light from his eyes, with her own hand, only to watch it be stolen again – like her choice, like her heart.
Her breath hitched, quiet and sharp. She pressed her hand to her chest, hoping – foolishly – to feel something other than weight. But there was only hollowness. As if Thanos had reached inside her too and taken whatever was left.
Greif didn’t scream. It whispered.
It folded in on itself like a dying star, collapsing under its own gravity.
And in that moment Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, sat in silence – not as a hero, not as a weapon, not even as an avenger – but a woman who had loved and lost everything.
And the world, already beginning to vanish one soul at a time, didn’t even notice.
She was powerless to stop it. All she could do was watch as his body fell between her fingers. Turning to dust before fading into the floor. Her hands pressed to the empty place where her Vision would’ve been. Now leaving a shape of the android in the dust.
From just beyond the bushes, Colonel Rhodes called out for Sam but could barely get his words out before he too faded to dust.
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On Titan, the dusty red atmosphere swirled overhead intentionally foreboding as the reality of Thanos’ decision crossed across the universe. The power of all 6 stones combined sweeping across every galaxy, stars seemed to flick and falter under the weight of what had happened, what has happened and what was to come. An invisible force creeping over them as if ice was poured across their skin. Peter felt every nerve set alight as it tried to lock onto a danger they couldn’t even see, Mantis’ head spun as she tried to find the source of such grief. Dr Strange looked around, spell sigils already forming on his palms, the orange glow of their intricate pattern illuminating what rubble wasn’t swept up by the power of their fight against Thanos. They shone in the bottoms of his dark eyes, the sparks as if flame itself was threatening to emerge from those delicately formed circles.
Peter was midway to moving to crouch when he felt the hairs on his body stand to attention before that terrible gut feeling threatened to bring up what little he ate for breakfast. He whirled around to face his mentor, looking for guidance and direction to see him halfway to the floor, his lower body corroding into dust. He was running before he knew he was running.
“Mr Stark...?” he stuttered out, his arms cradling the man as if he were an infant, his enhanced strength making lightwork of prying his face plate from his helmet.
“Mr Stark?” He tried again raw unfiltered terror falling into his tone, watching his mentor search his face, maybe trying to force his fading brain to work, maybe trying to commit the kid- HIS kid to memory. Peter watched as Tony squinted, maybe he was trying to piece together what was happening to him, but he was gone before he could make sense of his observations. The last thing Tony might ever see would be the boy he saw as his son. He just hoped Peter knew he tried to break the cycle. His head went foggy, eyes unseeing as he faded.
peter choked a sob as he attempted to shake Tony to alertness. But it was for naught. The genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist was gone. No more half sass smiles, no more affectionate shoulder squeezes. He wasn’t sure how to cope. Peter sagged as he yelled. This was like losing uncle ben all over again but worse. Tony had become a sturdy concrete that filled the cracks of his heart, like smoothing over a pothole to make a calm ride. With tony gone, it was like a sinkhole, ripping down the steady foundations Peter built his healing heart on. He didn’t know he was being moved until he no longer felt the oppressive atmosphere of titan on every choked breath, not that it made a difference to his grief gagged chokes of air.
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Mantis felt the boy’s grief before she could do anything. Her gift of Empathy was beautiful but painful, it was a rose that sliced her open every time she got too close, But right now she didn’t need to be close to feel the overwhelming pain radiating from the boy. The wizard had teleported them realizing what happened, horror creeping onto his face. She watched him fly off, leaving her and the other guardians with a grieving 16-year-old. She could feel his pain, but no matter how much she wanted to help his grief clogged her senses, the worlds pain clogged her senses. She let out a yell before she could stop herself. Her legs giving out on her. Mantis had felt pain before, but this was a different level. This was a universal grief that amalgamated into one frequency of anguish that she was specifically attuned to. Her antennae shrank in on themselves like a snail that had been poked. fortunately, she was rendered unconscious before she could linger on the grief that swallowed the entire universe whole, like a tide on a shallow beach, lapping away at rocks as they sank under the erosion.