I don't own anything except any original character and/or any original plot.

🕷

Chapter 7: They Will Resist

🕷

Although I would consider Nat a close friend, there was a lot I didn't know about her. She always made comments about my hair being dyed, and I did the same with her. She teased me and Peter when we were out together, and I made sure to visit when I could so she wouldn't always be alone.

"What are you doing?" Peter watched as I pulled water from the plants around the lake.

Keeping silent, I walked sideways, watching the proximity between my target and the compound. When I was the perfect distance between the lake and the building, I dropped the water into the ground. With increased moisture, it was easy to pull the wildflowers blooming into an intentional cluster.

"(Y/n)?"

"It's all I can do," my eyes burned with tears, and Peter hugged me from behind, "We don't have a body for a funeral and ice will melt so this is the only memorial-"

"Shh, it's okay," Peter rocked me gently, "You're doing the best she can. She gave up her life so we could bring everyone else back. When she released all of SHIELD's files, I read through some of them. She did a lot of bad stuff, but she redeemed herself. No one is beyond redemption."

Sniffling, I nodded slightly. Though his focus was on Nat, I understood that the redemption he mentioned was for me. Thanos made me do awful things but if Nat could redeem herself, then I could too.

"The others are talking about her. We should meet up with them," Peter led me to the lakeside where the others were mourning together.

"Do we know if she had any family?" Tony asked.

"Yeah. Us."

"What?" Thor snapped, "You're acting like she's dead. Why are we acting like she's dead? We have the stones, right? As long as we have the stones, Cap, we can bring her back, isn't that right? So stop this shit. We're the Avengers, get it together."

"We can't get her back."

"Wh- what?" Thor turned to me for help, "But Thanos brought you back with the stones. It's possible. You should be dead!"

Crossing my arms, I frowned deeply, "You don't have to remind me. I'm well aware of that, but this is different."

Thor laughed deeply, "I'm sorry. No offense, but you're a very earthly being. Okay? We're talking about space magic. And 'can't' seems very definitive don't you think?"

"Look, I know that I'm way outside my paygrade here. But she still isn't here, is she?" Clint cut in defending my thoughts.

Thanos could bring me back because I wasn't supposed to die in the first place, and he damaged his body doing so anyway. To bring someone back who traded their lives for the stone would mean losing the stone in the process.

"It can't... be undone. Or that's at least what the great floating guy had to say," Clint's voice rose steadily, "Maybe you wanna go talk to him? Okay? Go grab your hammer, and you go fly and you talk to him."

Grief quickly replaced that anger. It seemed as though all of us were rapidly going through the five stages of grief. As heroes, taking the time to go through all of that was dangerous and could lead to death in battle.

"It was supposed to be me. She sacrificed her life for that goddamn stone. She bet her life on it."

Bruce grabbed the nearest bench on the dock and hurled it across the lake, "She's not coming back. We have to make it worth it. We have to."

"We will. And that means putting that new gauntlet together."

"To do that, we need to be in the compound," Peter pointed out the obviously nervously, with no desire to get on the team's bad side. It was almost laughable how anxious he could still be around the Avengers when he'd known them for five years and was twenty-two.

The team collectively left the lakeside and wandered back to the compound. The 'branched off' Avengers were mourning separately and less severely. They knew Nat, but not like the originals. Peter and I couldn't even hold a candle to what they went through together.

"Are you gonna do it?" Rhodey came up beside us in the hallway.

"Yeah, we are. Can you get the others?" Steve requested.

Rhodey broke off again in a run to gather Rocket, Nebula, and the X-Men. They met us in one of the side labs. Tony already had a new gauntlet prepared and carefully plucked out each of the stones with pliers and placed them in the new gauntlet.

"Boom!" Rocket announced excitedly. Everyone in the room jumped at the joke.

"Actually, if we don't want everything to blow up, we should head to a fortified room," Tony led us across the hall to a separate lab which was, apparently, more fortified.

"All right. The glove's ready. Question is, who's gonna snap their freaking fingers?" Rocket questioned, crossing his arms.

"I'll do it," Thor offered.

"Excuse me?"

"It's okay."

"No, no, no, whoa. Stop. Stop. Wait, a sec. Hey, hey-" everyone rushed to stop him from grabbing the gauntlet.

"Wait, wait, wait, Thor, just wait. We haven't decided who's gonna put that on yet."

"Oh, I'm sorry. What, were you just sitting around waiting for the right opportunity? Us sitting here staring at that thing is not gonna bring everybody back. I'm the strongest Avenger, okay? So this responsibility falls upon me. It's my duty."

"It's not that-"

"It's- stop it! Just let me," Thor's voice became thick with emotion, "Just let me do it. Just let me do something good. Something great."

"Look, it's not just the fact that that glove is channeling enough energy to light up a continent, I'm telling you, you're in no condition."

"What do you think is coursing through my veins right now?"

"A high alcohol content?" Peter suggested.

"Lightning," Thor corrected, the insult going over his head.

"Thor, if I may," the professor rolled forward, "The issue here is not necessarily your body, but your mind. The stones need to be handled by someone with no hesitations or doubts about anything they're doing. While you're in your current... state, it would destroy you."

Rhodey snapped his fingers in realization, "What about that one guy who came here earlier? Doesn't he have super healing or something? I don't know if he's necessarily mentally stable, but-"

"Wade doesn't show up when you need him to," Ororo shook her head, sighing in annoyance.

"We tried calling him while you guys were outside. No answer," Scott shrugged.

"If I knew where he was, I would be able to get him, but I can't," Kurt added.

"In other words, Wade is out. It's probably a good thing," Peter concluded, "Logan would be a good option. But he uh, well he was dusted so..."

Bruce held up his hands in a motion for us to stop, "Guys, it's gotta be me. You saw what those stones did to Thanos. It almost killed him. None of you could survive."

"What tells us you will?" I crossed my arms, "Thanos was gravely injured after."

"We don't know if I'll live. But the radiation's mostly gamma. It's like I was made for this."

From the corner of my eye, I could see Nebula slinking out of the room. Brows furrowing, I nearly called out to her, but before I could Bruce was putting on the gauntlet. Humming in confusion, Peter noticed.

"You good?"

"Yeah. Just excited for this," I dismissed it. She'd probably be back in a second for the Reverse-Snap.

"You remember; everyone Thanos snapped away five years ago and just bringing them back to now, today. Don't change anything from the last five years," Tony all but pleaded, desperate to keep his second chance.

"Got it."

Peter's metal legs emerged from his suit, and he pulled me close to him and wrapped the legs around us. Tony activated a shield and tossed a small device to the X-Men. A wider shield popped out of it for them, considering they didn't have defensive mutations. Rhodey's armor closed over his face, Scott's mask closed, Thor held up his arm to protect Rocket, and Clint ducked behind Tony's shield, and Steve held up his own shield.

"FRIDAY, do me a favor and activate Protocol 8," Tony requested. On cue, thick sheets of metal slid over the doors and windows, including above us.

Cheering himself on, Bruce muttered, "Everybody comes home."

Sliding on the gauntlet, he immediately grunted in pain as the power overcame him. Considering how many X-Men it took to handle the Mind Stone- although we weren't testing where the stopping point really was, we were being safe- I couldn't imagine what all the stones were like.

"Take it off. Take it off!" Thor yelled in panic.

"No, wait. Bruce, are you okay?" Steve held out his hand to stop Thor from jumping forward.

"Talk to me, Banner."

"I'm okay. I'm okay," Bruce panted.

Screaming as the pain came back with a vengeance, Bruce lifted his arm enough to snap his fingers. Light flashed through the room, but nothing shield worthy. Bruce's eyes rolled back, and he fell to the ground. The gauntlet slipped off his arm and Clint kicked it away.

"Bruce!" Steve ran to his friend's aid.

"Don't move him," Tony ordered.

One of Bruce's arms was severely burned. I doubted the damage would ever heal completely. But we had yet to see if his Reverse-Snap really worked. If everything we had gone through, if the suffering and pain we trudged through, if Nat's life, was worth it.

"Did it work?" Bruce asked weakly, gripping Steve's arms.

The professor gasped, clutching the arms of his wheelchair. We all turned to him, worried something terrible had happened, "I feel them. All of them. Congratulations Doctor Banner, you brought them back."

"We can't forget what it took to get here," Peter brought up Nat's sacrifice. The room fell into a moment of silence and respect for her until Clint's phone rang. Immediately, his eyes teared up, and he left to answer it.

It was then that I realized that Nebula never returned. Not even after the compound went to lockdown, or when the snap was complete.

"Professor? Can you read Nebula's mind?" I asked nervously. Something was off. I knew her. She was my Sister by War. She wouldn't miss the Reverse-Snap.

Finger on his temple, the professor breathed out slowly. His eyes widened, and he yelled- "Kurt, Peter, get us out now! Everyone get over he-"

Boom!

Missile after missile struck the compound. I didn't have time to see where the X-Men ended up, but the flash of silver and blue smoke let me know that they were okay. They did their best to warn us and had to evacuate when it was too late.

Peter's legs managed to wrap around me and push us both away from the initial blast until Peter could shoot out a web when the floor collapsed.

"Shit," we breathed out in unison, just above raging waters from the sewer system. It was good ammo, not good for the others depending on where they ended up.

"Is everyone okay?" I yelled into the com, getting scattered responses, mainly panicked.

"I'm going to try to get us over there," Peter pointed out solid ground at least fifty feet away from us, "Without a ceiling, it might be kinda hard."

"Wait, I got it," lifting my hands, the roaring waters below picked us up and carried us to the singed grass and debris just outside the collapsed compound, "You forget that water is my element, Bug-Boy."

"Mayday, mayday! Does anybody copy? We're in the bshhhh level, it's bshhh!" Rhodey yelled, cutting in and out.

"Karen, what's going on with the coms?" Peter questioned, head turning every which way as he searched for signs of life, "Damaged? Is it just us?"

"What?" It was Scott Lang.

"We're bshhhh! Does bshhh copy? Mayday!"

The X-Men approached behind us, each one has panicked as the next.

"I'm so sorry, there wasn't enough time to reach you before the missiles hit," Kurt apologized profusely, head bowed in shame.

"I wasn't fast enough either. I grabbed Ororo and booked it."

"We're alive, we're relatively unharmed. It's okay," Peter assured them, "We have bigger problems. The team is all split up and we have- oh, how did I not notice that before?"

Peter pointed and brought attention to the giant ship in the sky. Fear struck me deep down in my gut and made me nauseous. Swallowing bile, I couldn't tear my eyes away from the obstruction.

"It's the Sanctuary. But Thanos had it destroyed for good after the snap. Which means-"

"It's from the past," Peter gasped, "They must have figured out what we were doing and traveled here."

"But how would they have-" Ororo was cut off by the professor.

"When I reached out for Nebula's mind, I was shocked to find it was split into two. The past, and the future. Something happened on their mission, and the two timelines collided, resulting in past Nebula coming back here and bringing in past Thanos and his armies."

That made me even sicker. Thanos was alive? Alive and kicking. And if he understood what was happening via Nebula's memories, then he saw all of our discussions about what happened. He didn't know me, but he knew me. Heard my darkest thoughts about what I did in the past.

"What do we do now?" Scott S adjusted his glasses and looked around, "We're alone."

"Not necessarily. Kurt, I need you to take me to the school," without hesitation Kurt grabbed hold of the professor and bamph-ed off, leaving us in the dark about his plans.

"That didn't explain anything," Scott deadpanned.

"My sensors are picking up on Four life forms beyond those large chunks of debris. The Captain, Tony, Thor, and Thanos. Would you like me to enact enhanced hearing?"

Turning to the others, I held a finger to my mouth and motioned for them to follow me, "Yeah."

"You could not live with your own failure. And where did that bring you? Back to me. I thought by eliminating half of life, the other half would thrive. But you've shown me that's impossible. And as long as there are those that remember what was, there will always be those that are unable to accept what can be. They will resist."

Hearing his voice sent another round of nausea through me. This was enough to make me bend over and hold my stomach. Peter (my Peter) was immediately by my side, rubbing my back.

"You don't have to do this," he whispered reassuringly, "We can wait this out and see what happens."

Shaking my head, I steeled my nerves. I could do it. I had to. What kind of hero would I be if I couldn't face a villain, no matter what they did to me? Breathing slowly until the sickness was gone, I straightened back up and gave the X-Men a reassuring smile.

Finishing our walk, we were right behind the rubble, hiding and watching the exchange between the Avengers trio and the Mad Titan from the past.

"Yep. We're all kinds of stubborn." We were close enough to hear their voices.

"I'm thankful. Because now, I know what I must do," Thanos stood, and put on his helmet, "I will shred this universe down to its last atom. And then with the stones you've collected for me, create a new one. Teeming with life, but knows not what it has lost but only what it has been given. A grateful universe."

"Born out of blood," Steve growled.

"They'll never know it. Because you won't be alive to tell them."

The trio let out synced battle cries and charged. Taking that as our cue, I waved my hand in a 'forward' motion. The X-Men moved out from their hiding spots and joined the fight. Peter M zooming around and getting hits in while staying safe, Ororo releasing her biggest blasts, Scott shifting his glasses to full blast, Peter webbing whatever he could to slow him down, and me, rapidly freezing water and throwing it at him.

With the eight of us against Thanos, I should have had more confidence in our abilities, and for a split second, I thought we could end the carnage before it could start until Thanos figured out Peter M's pattern and kicked him across the battlefield. From there, he ducked under Scott's beams and punched him near Peter M, swatted Ororo from the sky, wrapped his wrist around Peter's web and swung him as far away as possible. Turning to me, his eyes flashed with recognition, practically swimming with everything he knew about me. He lunged at me with his sword, and I had to lower my guard and fall to the ground to avoid being hit, sprinting away when he continued.

"Thor hit me!" Thor charged Tony's blasters and Tony let loose, distracting Thanos from me.

Thanos diverted Tony's blast and picked him up, using him as a shield against Thor. When his use was served, Thanos threw him away towards the ground. Steve attempted to charge and was hit to the ground as well. Thor slid under an attack. Meeting Thanos' double sword with Stormbreaker, both of them lost their weapons. Thanos threw Thor to the ground, punched him, and took his own weapon from the air.

"Come on, come one," I pushed myself up on weak arms, looking for any signs of consciousness from the others, "Misty, send out something to Karen so she can wake Peter up."

"She's already been attempting to. It's slow going."

As Stormbreaker cut through Thor's armor, Mjolnir lifted from the ground. My jaw fell as it flew through the air. It hit Thanos, then turned and landed in Steve's hand. Everything inside of me was screaming in fangirl. The internet had been speculating for years if Steve could wield Mjolnir, and I just witnessed the answer.

"I knew it!" Thor yelled victoriously, getting kicked to the ground after.

"I'm up, I'm good. Oh, everything hurts," Peter's voice rang through my com, I sighed in relief, "Sucks that I got my butt kicked twice."

"Peter I need you to try to wake up the other X-Men. I got Tony."

"Got it!"

I ran to Tony's motionless suit, knocking on the helmet several times. No answer. I hit harder, his head falling limply to the side. At least Misty could assure me he was alive, just slow to consciousness.

"Tony, come on! We need you!"

"In all my years of conquest, violence, slaughter... It was never personal. But I'll tell you now; what I'm about to do to your stubborn, annoying little planet... I'm gonna enjoy it. Very, very much."

Thanos' entire army was summoned to the ground. Including the long-dead Children of Thanos- I hated to include myself in that category- the Chitauri, and the Outriders. I looked across the field to Peter, who was already looking at me while helping Peter M to his feet. Neither of us were hopeful, but that didn't mean we were ready to stop fighting.

"Misty, if I don't make it. Tell my parents I love them."

Don't lose hope just yet, (Y/n).

It wasn't the professor. It was- holy shit it was Jean! Spinning around; I laughed as yellow portals opened up behind us. But that wasn't the only mode of transportation. Kurt popped up with the entire team on his arm- minus the professor who wouldn't be great in the looming fight.

But it wasn't just the X-Men. Everyone we lost to the snap, Wakandans, sorcerers, I saw Shuri next to Okoye and T'Challa, Wanda, the Guardians, Asgardians. Anyone and everyone was there for the fight. Even Pepper, clad in Tony's anniversary present.

Ant-Man, or rather, Giant-Man, emerged from the rubble with Bruce, Rhodey, and Rocket. Kurt popped up next to me and held onto me and Tony, teleporting us to the front lines. Then, he disappeared and reappeared with Peter and the undusted X-Men.

"This is amazing," Peter clutched my arm, voice full of the excitement I couldn't see on his face, "Oh! Superhero poses. Go (Y/n)!"

Peter fell into a natural pose with the other heroes. Rolling my eyes, I obeyed all the same and opened my water stores, stretching my hands out so the water was held between them.

"Avengers!" Steve summoned Mjolnir, "Assemble."

"Woohoo! That was awesome!"

And there was Wade in an Avengers t-shirt.