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Twenty-two days. Twenty two days had passed after losing to Thanos and (Y/N) felt herself drifting into insanity. There was no sign of Tony's activity at all, and that made her ten times more terrified than she's ever felt in her life. The others in the compound did their best to reassure her, but she knew that they themselves had their demons to battle after such a terrible loss, they just had different ways to express them.

Carol had been of help in the process, yet it was visible to (Y/N) how much anger was in her body from losing Fury to a titan she'd never seen before. (Y/N), on the other hand, fought back the urge to scream into her pillow every night after not hearing a single word from Tony's whereabouts, the engagement ring on her finger not doing any favors.

Steve, like always, had been the most composed out of all, and he did his best to comfort his companions. Today had been no exception, and he knocked on the door to (Y/N)'s room with hope of getting to her and changing her guilt-consuming mindset.

"Come in," she groaned, lifting her head from her pillow to see who it was, yet she didn't have to guess who it was. She got up from laying on the bed and crossed her legs, moving all the blankets in the process. "You know, I'm starting to think you won't give up on this."

Steve raised his hands in surrender. "I can do this all day."

(Y/N) scoffed with a shook of her head. "Oh, stop that," her eyes then registered something missing on his face. "You shaved?"

"Is it bad?" Steve suddenly grew subconscious over the shaved beard, his fingers grazing his hairless jaw meanwhile his eyes searched for any sign of disgust in her expression.

"No! I was finally getting used to seeing you with the beard and then — " she responded. A sigh left her lips, and her eyes darted to the floor. She decided to change the subject. "Any news at all?"

Steve shook his head. "No."

A frustrated groan left (Y/N)'s lips. "Where the hell is he?"

"Carol is doing her best to find him, we just — "

"Maybe, if she had help like I suggested, we would've found him by now."

"(Y/N), we've been over this," Steve scolded in his common, demanding voice. "You're too emotionally invested, you'd be going into the unknown without a clear head. Any new information would have you on an emotional turmoil."

"'Emotional turmoil'?" she snapped, eyes planting their angry gaze at Steve like a couple of sharp knives. "This is my fiancé we're talking about, Steve. How do you want me to react?"

"I know that, but we can't risk losing someone else."

(Y/N) stood up from the bed with a huff. Steve had an apologetic gaze, and she knew that look behind his eyes. They were pleading to do what his words were against to. She knew that he still cared about Tony and wanted her to find him too, but he couldn't risk if something bad happened to her out there.

"I can't stand here and do nothing about it!" her volume grew out of anger, though there was a slight waver in her voice. "I'm sorry, Steve. I just can't."

With that being said, she stormed off her room with angry footsteps, leaving Steve astonished in the quiet room. When his mind clicked, he ran after (Y/N) in the hall calling out her name, and the ruckus made Natasha peak out of her room to see what was going on. She ran behind Steve with furrowed eyebrows as they both trailed after (Y/N), who was headed toward the nearest exit.

"(Y/N), wait!"

The woman didn't hear their protests and ran through the open field of the compound before pushing herself off the ground. Her body ignited in a yellow glow in the air, and her friends were forced to stand there and watch with no way of getting her to change her mind. They watched upward to see her disappear into a thin light in the dark, cold night, flying away of the Earth's atmosphere.

"You think she'll find him?"

"I think it's better to hope she does."

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The blue and green rays from the space's abyss was half of the spaceship's only source of light. The only two members inside the ship tried to brighten themselves up from their inevitable despair with a simple game.  They were sat on opposite sides of a table in the ship, one holding their fingers up as if to imitate a goal while the other threw a diamond-shaped paper in the air.

One of them, Nebula, jumped at the sudden movement of the paper with a grunt, holding a defensive stance and a deadly glare against the person across from her.

"You don't need to do that," Tony, her companion, told her in a familiar tone. "Because, uh, you're just holding the position."

Tony held up his fingers to show the position she had to mimic, and thus Nebula grabbed the paper. She flicked it with her fingers with another grunt, and the paper flew past Tony's goalie.

"That was close," he still reassured. She tried it two more times, and succeeded in the last one. "That's a goal. We are now one apiece."

Nebula shot up at his words. "I would like to try again."

The two of them did several attempts in shooting goals on the other's goalies, sometimes failing and others succeeding. After a series of thrown papers, Tony settled the score.

"We're tied up. Feel the tension? It's fun," he said, and flicked his piece of paper in the air. It flew just an inch away, and this made his shoulders drop. "That was terrible. Now you have a chance to win."

Nebula flicked the paper and it flew over the goalie, which made Tony give her a proud look. "And you've won."

Nebula moved back at the words coming from his mouth with a startle, as if she'd never heard of them. Meanwhile, Tony extended his hand for a congratulatory handshake.

"Fair game," Nebula took a second to correspond to the action, but still gave his hand a firm handshake. "Good sport. You have fun?"

"It was fun."

Yet, those short moments of peace weren't enough to calm Tony's fear over what would happen in the next couple of minutes. He excused himself from Nebula and sat on the floor near the ship's cockpit, the greens and blues from space glowing through the window. Tony raised his weak right arm to turn a switch on his suit's helmet, which had been damaged in the battle.

It was sat on the floor inches away from him, and once the helmet emitted a whirring sound to announce it was on, Tony let out a sigh from exhaustion. He tapped it twice as a scanner light came out of the lenses. "This thing on?"

He wouldn't get any verbal answer, but he took a few seconds to gather his thoughts before speaking. "Hey, Miss Vaughn. (Y/N)." He leaned backward into the wall and exhaled a deep breath, his skinny form finally resting on the cold metal. "If you find this recording, don't post it on social media. It's gonna be a real tearjerker."

"I don't know if you're ever gonna see these. I don't even know if you're still — Oh, God, I hope so," his mind didn't want to think of her disappearing into a pile of dust like he watched the kid do. "Today's day 21. No, uh, 22. You know, if it wasn't for the existential terror of staring into the literal void of space, I'd get why you like it here so much. Infection's run its course, thanks to the Blue Meanie back there. Oh, you'd love her. Very practical. Only a tiny bit sadistic."

"So, the fuel cells were cracked during battle. . .and we figured out a way to reverse the ion charge and bought ourselves about 48 hours of flight time. Uh, but it's now dead in the water. Thousand light years from the nearest 7-Eleven. Oxygen will run out tomorrow morning and. . .that'll be it."

"(Y/N), I know I said no more surprises, but I gotta say I was really hoping to pull off one last one," he paused, gulping down his saliva.  "But it looks like. . .Well, you know what it looks like."

"Don't feel bad about this. I mean, actually, if you grovel for a couple weeks, and then move on with enormous guilt. I should probably lie down for a minute. Go rest my eyes."

He sighed and passed a hand through his face. "Please know, when I drift off, it'll be like every night lately. I'm fine. Totally fine. I dream about you. Because it's always you."

He turned off the camera on the helmet, and with the last amount of strength in his body, Tony placed a jacket around his left arm before lying on the cold floor. He let out a deep breath, preparing for the end with a solemn look behind his eyes, already starting to drift off into what could've been his future with (Y/N). Part of him felt like he was betraying her for easily giving up hope and accepting the fact that he'd probably never marry her, but at the moment, it seemed like the only thought in his mind.

Nebula, with quiet steps, entered the cockpit and saw Tony lying unconscious on the ground. She carefully grabbed him by the arms and lifted him into one of the seats beside him, propping him up in the seat so he could be at least confortable. With emotionless eyes, she left him in the seat before returning to her original place.

Tony's eyes remained closed as he subconsciously adjusted to the new position his body was in, but then he was interrupted from his slumber by another factor. A distant boom was heard in the distance, something that didn't make sense inside his mind, but tried to ignore. But that sound was followed by an orange and yellow glow in the distance, growing in size as if it was approaching the drifting ship.

Tony cracked his eyes open and lifted a hand over his face to cover himself from the light. His hand wasn't enough to protect his eyes from it, and the curiosity got the better of him and he opened his eyes wider to see what was disturbing his last moments of peace.

When his eyes finally registered the light in front of him, he couldn't help but part his lips in shock. His eyes widened more than they already were as the glow got closer to the window he was sat to. A figure in between the light made itself known to the man in the window, and Tony knew of only one person in his life capable of having that radiant glow.

"(Y/N)," the name left his lips breathlessly.

(Y/N) Vaughn's figure was visible through the glow, her eyes losing that radiance to stare at the man inside the spaceship with a mix of relief and joy. She got closer to the window of the spaceship and graced it with her palm, and Tony, with the last strength inside his body, inched toward the window to place his hand on the exact same spot she had hers in.

No words were exchanged, but they weren't needed. (Y/N) gave Tony a meaningful look before pushing away from the window.

'He's coming home,' she told herself.

you know that tiktok audio that was like,
'you came'
'you called' ??
its so them in this chapter OMG

i don't know what else to say, si here you have this chapter. hopefully i'll be able to update soon.

-see you soon, bex :)