author's notes: MAJOR ENDGAME SPOILERS. TURN AWAY IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED. unpolished snippers because of severe end-game withdrawal symptoms. It hurts to breathe. May add more characters in the future. Wanted to write about the original six first but couldn't come up with a decent line for Banner.
Clint
knows that killing more people will never bring his family back. But when he sees them, the anger burns in his chest until it hurts to breathe. It is not fair that criminals and scum get to live and walk on earth while his family are the ones to disappear. Laura, who always supported his role even if the worry keeps her up at night. Cooper. Lila. Nathaniel. His family, who never did anything wrong in their lives.
On every birthday and every wedding anniversary that passes, his sword spills more blood and his arrows find more targets.
Natasha
knows that she has to be the one to make the sacrifice. She doesn't tell Clint that he saved her years ago when she was knee-deep in blood and up to her neck in the red that is gushing from her ledger. You saved me, she doesn't say, years ago when you found me. You gave me hope. You gave me a family. Let me protect them. Let me protect you.
She has always known that she is going to die. In her profession, it is nigh impossible not to meet an early death. She wonders if it will be a stray bullet in the middle of a gunfight. An enemy she underestimates. An undercover mission gone wrong.
When she falls, she is glad it is none of those outcomes, because if she had to choose her death, the most honourable one she can manage will be to die for her family.
Thor
knows he is a disappointment. He has fallen from his golden throne, motivated only by alcohol and games with the only two people in the cosmos who have a shred of respect left for him. Why does it matter, he slurs when asked. Why does it matter to wield his hammer and to be fit and strong, because the one time he needed to be strong, he wasn't strong enough. Why does it matter to pick up the fragments of his life and move on, if he has already lost everybody he loved. Why does it matter if he is king, when he has failed all the people he once ruled over.
He is fifteen-hundred years old, but the five years after the snap is the longest five years he has ever lived.
He hears Loki's whisper sometimes - "I assure you, brother. The sun will shine on us again." And he drowns himself in even more alcohol, thinking of it as Loki's last lie.
Steve
knows this is his last battle. It has been five years. One thousand eight hundred and twenty-five days. Countless seconds and hours, spent picking up the pieces of a world he failed to save. Encouraging people to move on (the way Sam would, his mind whispers) when he knows they are all lies. That you never move on. You live with the loss, the failure, and sometimes you don't know what motivates you to open your eyes day after day.
Steve is tired. A tired that even the super-soldier serum running through his blood will never ease.
When he sees Peggy through the blinds of her office, time slows down, and he has to fight every cell in his body not to call out to her. Seeing her in flesh and blood hurts more than the mild sting he has gotten used to when he looks at the black and white photo in his compass. When she leaves - never knowing that he is there - he takes a deep breath and tells himself it is time to return to another life.
Tony
knew that he was going to die.
Not certainly, but he had a vague inclination. He had cheated death enough times for heaven to spare him once more. He knows he is one of the lucky ones. He has Pepper, he has Morgan. He has a family. That is more than some (half) of the people (left) can say.
But somewhere in the depths of his mind, in the Pandora's box where he stuffs all his insecurities in, he thinks of the brown-haired kid who shouldered responsibilities beyond his age and who left his arms in ash and dust. And he knows that even if he went to bed that night without telling Steve - without telling The Avengers - that he has found a way, it will plague him at night. Every night. In the seconds of silence between conversations with Pepper, whenever he looks at Morgan and sees the reflection of another child there; every time he looks at the framed photo in the kitchen and wonders: could I have saved you?
When he asks Pepper, he expects a fight. An argument. A jab at how his promises of retirement never seem to last. A question on how he can leave behind Morgan.
But she raises her head calmly, and when their eyes meet, he thinks she already knows that he will never stop being a hero.
.
.
.
Pepper
knew Tony was going to die. That is part of the reason why she suits up as Rescue - so she can be with him on the battlefield, the first and only time. Tony has cheated death once, twice - way too many times to go back to his family. She knows he will go to bed if she tells him to drop the plan. He is different now, different from the Tony Stark she first knew, different in the promises he keeps - the retirement that will never last because there is always that one last battle he needs to fight. His last atonement.
And she knows that if he drops the plan, he will never be able to look at the framed photo - his only photo of Peter - in the kitchen again. The one he dutifully cleans every week without her having to tell him to, so it's as new as the (memory he has of the child) first day he framed it.
So she lets him go.