It was Janet's choice to give her life for her country. She knew that Hank would blame both SHIELD and himself for her death. Her only regret, though, as she shrank further and further, was that Hope would grow up without her mother.
She tried to grow big again, but it was no use. The suit was out of power.
Janet shrank rapidly, past atoms, past particles, until time itself had no meaning.
There was no space or time. There was simply her, and she was everything.
-‹◊›-
Frigga had seen that her death would follow on the heels of Thor's mortal Lady long before he had ever been banished to Midgard. Therefore, she had been prepared when the Lady Jane arrived in Asgard, reeking of an infinity stone to those who could sense it.
Frigga was Queen of the Nine Realms, and she wouldn't allow death to remove her from her post, not now. Not with ancient dangers such as Malekith or the Mad Titan resurfacing.
She had used her magic to almost completely sever her soul from her body, so when Malekith killed her she didn't ascend to Valhalla. Instead, she sent her soul to the Hidden Realm that lay just beneath the surface of reality. The Asgardians had discovered it centuries ago, and none had explored it more thoroughly than Frigga.
She was greatly surprised by the presence of another being in the Hidden Realm.
Time and space were meaningless there, so it took a bit of magic and mental trickery to figure out a reliable method of communication. Frigga was eventually able to figure out that her companion was a mortal woman, a superhero like Thor's shield brothers and sister, and that the poor woman had become trapped in the Hidden Realm while saving her land.
Frigga had enough power to pull herself out, but not enough to bring the mortal shield maiden with her. So she stayed in the Hidden Realm, learning about her new friend and sharing her own life with Janet.
-‹◊›-
It was a fair trade, his life for the child's and the archer's.
Pietro was sad that he was leaving Wanda behind after years of being her twin. Maybe it was better that he was taken from her though; without his rage to feed hers she would be able to free herself from the pain of their parent's death, finally healing. It would take her a long time to come back from the grief that his death would cause her, but she was strong. He had faith in her.
Pietro's last thoughts before the pain and blood loss dragged him under were of his twin.
However, the power given to him by the infinity stone hadn't just altered his body and mind; it had changed his soul. It hadn't been a noticeable change; he was still the same person he had been before the experiment. His soul was just had slightly different properties than the normal human soul, just a little bit extra.
It was this extra bit that prevented Pietro from reaching whatever afterlife he had earned, and so his soul instead got lost in the Quantum Realm.
His body remained behind, stuck in a coma in the new Avengers' facility, where the best doctors in the world tried to figure out how the young hero had survived the multiple bullet wounds and how to wake him up. Even his sister, with all her powers, couldn't wake him. He wasn't there.
-‹◊›-
The newest arrival to the Hidden Realm had given Frigga the power she needed to pull the three of them out because of his link to one of the infinity stones. However, she and Janet had been settled in to the Realm for so long that they needed something to pull them out. Hopefully before the brave young man also settled.
Therefore, when a man arrived wearing a suit that Janet recognized and then was pulled out by his daughter's voice as it echoed through the Quantum Realm, the three lost souls were able to hitch a ride out with him.
Of the three of them, Pietro was the only one with a working body outside of the Realm, and so they were drawn to his bedside.
Pietro's soul sank back into his body, and Frigga pulled on the power of his link to the infinity stone one last time, giving both herself and Janet their bodies back.
Frigga's actions had repercussions that reached farther than startling Clint Barton, who was sitting vigil over the comatose body of Pietro.
While in one room Pietro Maximoff opened his eyes to the sight of his new friends and Barton's shocked face - to which he cheekily croaked "You didn't see that coming?"- in next room Peggy Carter was reminiscing about the Howling Commandos with Steve Rogers.
It didn't take a genius to see that she was dying, with her rattling breath, unsteady gaze, and the tears in the eyes of the man sitting next to her, gently cradling one of her fragile hands in his.
There was excess energy left over from the infinity stone, magic, and quantum power that Frigga had used to restore the bodies that she and Jan remembered to them, and it was driven by the mental energy of the infinity stone, seeking out the weakest mind in its vicinity.
In her youth, Peggy had been a force to be reckoned with, but her mind had been weakened by Alzheimer's. She was the perfect target for the leftover energy.
However, Frigga had given that energy a purpose: to restore the body that they remembered to them, and Peggy had been reminiscing about her life immediately after World War II.
And so it was that, with a sudden flash of light, Peggy Carter was returned to the prime of her youth, her mind and body completely restored.