"Cap, what do I do with the gauntlet?" Jessica asked through her earpiece as she ran through the battlefield, dodging and shooting Thanos' soldiers.

"Get those stones as far away as possible!" Steve answered her, but Bruce didn't seem to agree with his order.

"No! We need to get them back where they came from." 

"No way to get them back. Thanos destroyed the quantum tunnel." Tony added.

"Hold on!" Jessica exclaimed, thinking. "Didn't Scott have another time machine in his ugly brown van?" 

"Anyone see an ugly brown van up there?" Asked Rogers.

"Yes!" Someone answered. "But you're not gonna like where it's parked." 

They probably meant that it was in the middle of the enemy army. "Scott, how long you need to get that thing working?"

"Maybe ten minutes."

"Get it started. We'll get the stones to you."

Jessica was starting to struggle to have to carry the gauntlet on one arm and fight with the other. Luckily for her, someone came to her rescue. "Girl." He said. She recognized it was Black Panther. "Give that to me." And she did as he told her, knowing the gauntlet was in good hands. She focused on fighting the alien troops, shooting at their faces and chests or anywhere she could. But then something unexpected happened.

Thanos' ship started shooting blasters directly at them, not only trying to end with the Avengers but destroying his own army on the way. Jessica prepared herself to create energy shields at any given moment. She started to run, trying to avoid the constant bombing coming from the skies. She jumped and propelled her body weight up with the help of her powers. She looked for Black Panther, the last one she saw carrying the stones. She failed to find him, but suddenly, she noticed a flash of color flying over the battlefield. The gauntlet. 

She was relieved to have found the precious object,  but she was paralyzed when she saw the person carrying it. She fell to the ground again, after being distracted by the image before her. It almost seemed unreal. She had dreamed with him for so long that she had convinced herself it was just that: a dream. 

But there he was. Spider-Man. Peter.

He was shooting webs, holding onto whatever he could, carrying the stones with him. And then a blast almost hit him, cutting the web from which he was swinging and making him brusquely land on the ground. 

Jessica came to her senses again. She ran as fast as she could, using her powers to impulse herself, jumping over Thanos' soldiers and avoiding the raining blasters. She had almost made it were Peter was, she could see him laying on the ground, his knees almost touching his chest and holding onto the Gauntlet. She was just a few feet away from him when she saw a blast flying right towards him. She jumped and gathered all her strength to project it outwards. Peter, from his point of view, could only see dust.

A few seconds later, the shooting had stopped. Their bombing had ended and the ships were now targeting the sky. 

The dust scattered and Peter looked up, surprised he hadn't been hurt after the shooting. He was even more surprised to find Jessica still creating an energy shield around them. 

"Jess?" He got up and called her, as she dissolved the protective barrier. "Oh my-"

Impatient, Jessica hugged him as tight as she could. "You don't realize-" She couldn't even talk. She was shaking, still not believing that moment was real. "how much I've missed you."

Peter pulled her away from the hug but still held her close to him. Jessica placed her hands on his cheeks, examining his features, glad to see them again. She was extremely happy to look into his eyes again. Before she could say anything else, he kissed her. It wasn't their best kiss. It was a bit rough and they even almost hurt their teeth. But they knew any of them could die on the battlefield. 

Peter broke the kiss and rested his forehead on Jessica's, placing his hands over hers. 

"I love you." The words slipped out of Jessica's mouth without her realizing. She hadn't forgotten how she missed her chance to tell him that before he was dusted. 

Without thinking it twice and with a huge smile, Peter replied. "I love you too." They stood still for a second, even though they knew they needed to keep fighting. It wasn't until a loud noise coming from Thanos' ship was heard that they came back to reality. 

Jessica recognized her the moment she saw her. Captain Marvel was destroying Thanos' fleets by flying straight through them. For a moment, Jessica felt overwhelmed with hope and excitement that now there was no way they would lose. 

"What the heck is that?" Peter, who had never met the heroine, looked at the sky in amazement. A second later, there was nothing in the sky to stare at anymore. Captain Marvel had landed right next to them. "Hi, I'm Peter Parker."

"Hi, Peter Parker. You got something for me?" She nodded towards the gauntlet. Peter handed it to her, but then saw the army standing between them and the van where they needed to get the stones to. 

"I don't know how you're gonna get through all that." He said.

Jessica stepped forward, charging her weapon and reading it to fire. "Don't worry about that."

"She's got help." In a matter of seconds, every single female fighting on the battlefield was standing next to them. As they advanced towards the enemy troops, Jessica started shooting as many Thanos' soldiers as she could. It wasn't long until Jessica spotted the one and only mad titan. Still, Captain Marvel engaged in a fight with him, so Jessica kept on battling the armies. 

There were a loud sound and a bright gleam coming from where the van was supposed to be. Nobody knew what happened, but when they saw the gauntlet flying over their head and Thanos running after it, they knew he had to be stopped. 

The first one to try was Thor, but the titan took down the God of Thunder without effort. After him, the Iron Man tried as well, and in the same was he failed. Captain America almost got to keep the gauntlet away from the villain, but with one strike he was out just like the rest. 

Thanos wasted no time in putting on the gauntlet, absorbing its power. Attempting one last time to put an end to him, Captain Marvel flew towards him and for a moment, it seemed like she would stop him.

Just for a moment.

Thanos took the power stone from the gauntlet into his own hands, punching the heroine and eclipsing her powers. Once he had pushed her away, he replaced the stone on its place on the gauntlet. It took a moment for him to adjust again to the energy of the stones. Tony, desperately, jumped to try and get the gauntlet off the titan's hand. However, Thanos knocked him off without effort.

Jessica wasn't too far away from the scene. She loaded her weapon before she started running again.

"I am inevitable."

Thanos was ready to snap everyone out of existence again. But before he could do it, Jessica gathered all her strength to manipulate the radiation around the stones and get them out of the gauntlet. He snapped and nothing happened. When he turned to Jessica, she didn't hesitate to shoot him one of her bullets loaded with cadmium. The poisonous chemical got on his bloodstream, weakening him and paralyzing him. And then she did it again. And again. Making sure he wouldn't be able to recover for a few minutes. Jessica had specially engineered the bullet inside him to make sure it would hurt him and it was successfully doing its job.

Jessica looked at Tony, who was on the ground. He got up and looked back at her, perplexed to find her with the six stones floating over her right hand. Thanos was almost defeated, they were just one snap away to save the world from the mad titan.

Tony walked towards her, trying to get her to hand him the stones, but she refused. They had talked about it before. The stones reek mostly gamma radiation and she was immune to it. If one of them had a chance to survive after doing it, it was her.

"Tony..." They both turned to face Dr. Strange. He just showed up his index finger, reminding them of the one future where they won. This was the one, but it wasn't going to turn out the way Jessica wanted. Tony kept staring at her, waiting for her to give him the stones. If Strange had called out his name, it was for a reason. And Jessica knew it.

"I-I can do it..." She tried to negotiate, but her voice broke as she saw how he wouldn't give in. "The radiation- I'm immune. I can do it."

"Jess, no..." It was already hard for him to say no to her, but this was the hardest. How could he say no to his little girl? His little girl, on the verge of tears. She who always convinced him and he would let her convince him to keep her happy. But not this time. This time he wouldn't give up. "We both know there's only one way." 

"No!" She broke down into tears at the thought of it. Tony pulled her into a hug. "No..."

"Do you trust me?"

"More than anyone."

"You'll be okay." He whispered, saying his goodbyes to her. "I know you'll be."

Jessica tried to retain her tears, unsuccessfully. She accepted his fate but she still had faith that nothing bad would happen to him. Nothing could happen to the Iron Man. She thought to herself, in denial. Nothing will happen to him. She kept denying the fact that the hero she admired so much was just a man. A man in a can. The man who had embraced and raised her for the past years and the man who had loved her as a daughter. "You've been a good dad."

He gave her a final kiss on the forehead and she placed the stones on his suit, which adapted to fit them. He gathered all his strength in order to resist their force, it was painful to wield all six stones at once. Jessica stepped back after Tony nodded, letting her know he was ready to confront his destiny.

"You're inevitable." He repeated Thanos' words, directly addressing to him. "And I..." 

"am Iron Man."

He snapped. The energy released from the action pushed Jessica backward, making her fall to the ground. She reincorporated herself to find all of Thanos' armies turn into dust. All of its followers vanishing one by one, as the heroes had on their previous encounter. Last but not least, Thanos himself faded away, ending with the war he had started. 

"Mr. Stark?" Jessica immediately turned to Peter when she heard him call Tony's name. "Mr. Stark? Can you hear me?"

She knew what was going to happen to Tony, if it hadn't happened yet. She didn't want to see it. She didn't want to see him die. And she didn't want Peter to see how the person he most admired died before his eyes. "Peter..." 

"It's me. We won, Mr. Stark..." He kept calling him. Jessica grabbed his arm, but he ignored her. His voice was becoming more and more desperate as he got no response from the dying man. "We won and you did it, sir."

Jessica's sight finally fell upon his body. His whole arm was critically damaged, as well as half of his face. Yet, his eyes were still open. The image broke the girl's heart as she burst into tears, not being able to bear seeing him like that. 

"You did it." Peter cried. "I'm sorry, Tony..." He finally gave in and turned away from him, bringing Jessica into a hug.

"F.R.I.D.A.Y.?" They heard Pepper approach her husband to say her final goodbye to him. 

The AI reported his condition. "Life functions critical."

"Tony, look at me." Pepper told him, trying to hold her tears in. "We're gonna be okay. You can rest now."

With those words, Iron Man's arc reactor turned off. And Tony finally let go.

. . . 

RIP Tony Stark, Earth's best defender