Tony glared as he waited for Peter to think of a plan. Back on Earth, they'd—as in, Tony, Pepper, Bruce and the two wizards, Dr Strange and Wong—had a meagre amount of time to plan before Thanos' minions had shown up. That said, the fight in New York did have a slightly different outcome. Though not by much, since Dr Strange still ended up captured by the alien but Tony was able to instruct Peter to follow onto the ship and didn't have to worry too much about his safety.
Tony looked back down at Peter, who was still deep in thought.
"So, what's the plan?"
Peter looked up, a little startled as if he'd completely forgotten where he was.
"Pardon?"
"The plan? To rescue the wizard?"
"Oh. Yeah. Um…"
Peter stood up from his crouched position. He looked back down and side-eyed Tony before properly facing him.
"You ever see that really old movie, Aliens?"
Peter explained his plan a bit more. Tony quickly caught on as the vague memories of that film resurfaced.
Ebony Maw taunted Dr Strange below. Strange knew that Peter and Tony were close by; the Q-Ship was surprisingly quite echo-y in Strange's ears and he could easily hear the metal suits of the two Avengers. In an attempt to get his mind off the microsurgery needles painfully entering his body, Strange wondered how Ebony Maw couldn't hear them.
As the needles prodded deeper into his body, causing the once-pinpricks of pain to flare up, Strange wondered where the hell Tony and Peter were. Stephen yelled in pain and could barely register what was happening in front of him.
"Painful, aren't they?" Ebony Maw said. "They were originally designed for microsurgery and any one of them…"
Tony landed with a soft thud. Ebony Maw turned around and spat out his next words.
"… Could end your friend's life in an instant."
Tony just rolled his eyes under his helmet. "He's not really my friend, not yet anyway."
Ebony Maw levitated containers of metal and gradually got closer to Tony. He had been easily bested back on Earth—a sentiment that echoed through Maw's mind. How could this imbecile possibly be a match for him?
"You save nothing," Ebony Maw started. "Your powers are inconsequential compared to mine."
"Yeah, but we've seen more movies," Tony nonchalantly told him.
Without hesitation, Tony launched a shoulder missile towards the side of the ship. Ebony Maw had no time to prepare himself, and as such, was sucked out into the cold vacuum of space.
Dr Strange was sucked in as well however, the Cloak of Levitation caught him. Peter swung in a few seconds later and shot a web, to which Strange was able to grab onto. The legs of the Iron Spider suit extracted themselves at Peter's intuition and tightly gripped the metal pole. It was a struggle and as the seconds ticked by, Peter found it harder and harder to keep a grip on Dr Strange. Soon enough, however, they were able to be let go as the vacuum had been sealed by Tony.
The three sentients dropped to the ground.
"Thank you," Strange murmured to Peter, nodding his way. Peter did the same and faced the Cloak of Levitation.
"Uh, thank you as well? We haven't officially met—" Peter held out his hand but the Cloak dismissed him and settled onto Strange's shoulders.
Strange smirked before climbing his way to the command centre of the ship. Tony was standing there as well, suit dissolved and safely stored away its container. The huge viewing screen stood behind Tony, who had his arms crossed, and showed the darkness of space. Streaked around the edges were the blue and purple of lightspeed, though they mostly showed up as blue and white on the screen. Various control panels surrounded the command centre.
Dr Strange stepped up onto the command centre. "I guess you want a thank you."
It wasn't a question. Rather, a statement.
"It would be nice but," Tony waved his hand away. ", whatever. There are more… pressing topics at hand."
Stephen nodded. "Yeah. Well, we are not going to Titan."
At this moment, Peter came bounding up the steps to the control centre.
"Did you, doing your magic-y see that that human and racoon and their friends weren't there?"
"Yes… sort of. But even if they did, hopefully they caught on that we're not coming and are heading someplace else."
Meanwhile, Tony was pacing. He paused to look at one of the control panels. An alien language appeared on the grimy screen, as well as some weird diagrams that Tony was sure he would quickly understand.
"So I suppose we're heading back to Earth?"
"The Time Stone is safe. Why shouldn't we?"
Seeing Steve Rogers again, ate away at Tony's subconscious. He bit his lip to prevent him from saying it. No doubt the wizard would start an argument.
"Thanos is waiting on Titan," Tony said instead. In his mind, Tony argued that it was another reason he wanted to stay on course for the planet.
"So?"
"So?" Tony turned to face Strange. "He's there. Waiting. We almost got him in that movie, except Quill ruined that plan. He's not going to be there now so why don't we do the same thing?"
Peter raised his hand to step in. "Didn't the antenna lady put Thanos to sleep or something?"
Strange pointed to Peter. "He's right. Not surprising seeing as he didn't forget."
Tony slowly moved forward as he spoke.
"Oh, I'm sorry that our kidnapper took me and the other Avengers from 2014 and not a few months ago. So sorry that we were not able to prepare for the coming disasters. Time Stone? It's not like you could have warned us as well."
"That's not how the Time Sto—"
"Hey, hey, hey, cut it out," Peter stood (figuratively and somewhat literally) between the two arguing adults. They both looked at him. Peter swallowed before moving his arms towards the viewing screen and continuing.
"We have a job to do. And that is to return to Earth, not argue about weird time-kidnappers and whatever."
Tony nodded. "Your right kid."
And with that, Tony turned back to the controls panels to start deciphering the alien technology. He heard Dr Strange sigh in the background but did his best to ignore it. Peter looked at the control panel opposite Tony in a similar effort to understand the technology. Strange settled into a meditative position and activated the Time Stone.
Stephen looked through one of the timeline possibilities. So far, it showed a clear victory; The Avengers won, all life in the universe was preserved. But something felt… off. As the possibility continued, it became more obvious as to why it felt off.
The same thing came up with other timelines Dr Strange examined; They would start off seeming fine but the further he went into the timeline, the worse they became. Or it wouldn't take long to find out why certain decisions shouldn't be used. Stephen started to look for similarities in the timelines—why were they all ending in some sort of bigger disaster? Admittedly, he couldn't see that far into some since at some point or another, he died. Dr Strange figured that their odd kidnapper would rather have some sort of "perfect timeline".
After viewing thousands upon millions of timelines it suddenly hit as to why none of these timelines were working. Why this one particular person was so integral, Stephen didn't understand—though he did think back to his "perfect timeline" idea. He reset the timeline viewing and instead watched as he, Tony and Peter went towards Thanos' ship instead of away from it. He viewed the entire outcome and multiple other timelines to see what would happen if the slightest changes happened (after going to Thanos' ship).
Back in the real world, Tony had managed to work out the alien technology. Peter glanced over to Dr Strange—the green magic of the Time Stone wrapped around his arms and hands—then back at Tony. Peter opened his mouth.
"Uh, Mr Stark, I don't want to upset you—"
Bang!
Startled, Peter jumped at the sudden noise. Tony rubbed the spot on his head where he'd hit it in the control panel's opening. He pulled his hand back and inspected it, breathing a sigh of relief when he found no blood. Tony got up from the ground and rubbed his hands to prevent them from the cold that had settled in the spacecraft.
"What were you saying?" Tony asked.
"Are you ok?"
"Yeah, yeah. You just never know with… alien technology," Tony said, vaguely gesturing behind him.
"Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. So, anyway. Did you work it out?"
"Psh. Of course. What do you take me for?" Tony said with a tiny smile as he gave Peter a light clap on the back. "You learn anything?"
Peter looked around. Changing the large screen to show the navigation screen proved to be a small challenge as it required sticking his hand into one of the controls and needing to work them out.
But the screen changed, and that was all that was important. It showed symbols and lines that meant nothing. Peter studied it before pointing to a specific point—a dot with a ripple coming from it every second. The dot was travelling at a slow but steady pace along a light blue line.
"See that?" asked Peter.
"The blinking dot? Yeah."
"I bet that's us. So that," here, Peter pointed to the opposite side of the screen. ", would be Titan. I guess from there we could work out what everything else says… or at least, some of it. Seeing as we've got T, I, A and N."
Tony nodded and was about to speak. However, Dr Strange's voice cut in before he could. It caused Tony and Peter to turn around and face the magic user.
"I know what we have to do."
"Back to Earth?" Tony asked with a hint of bitterness.
Dr Strange shook his head. "Change this ship's course; we're going to Thanos' ship, the Sanctuary II."
Knowhere burnt. Flames licked around, merciless to anyone and anything. A cloud of thick smoke drifted in the atmosphere and the smell of death was prominent. That's what Thanos, the Mad Titan, saw. Anyone else would be tricked by the illusion—the false reality—he'd created.
It was perfect.
Thanos waited. Patience. He'd waited this long; he could wait a bit longer.
Waiting…
Waiting…
Waiting…
He waited so long that the flames around him were starting to simmer into embers. Where was Gamora? And that idiotic human and the rest of them? This couldn't have happened… everything had been planned to perfection! Centuries of preparation just for this small part not to work?!
In a rare moment of weakness, Thanos let out a roar of anger. He curled his fist in the Infinity Gauntlet and shot a beam of the Power Stone into the distance. The beam hit a faraway structure, which burst into a fiery explosion.
But the moment of weakness didn't last long. Because with centuries of planning also comes centuries of backup plans.
Yes… That would work…
The Mad Titan left Knowhere to burn. If Gamora wasn't here, then she must know where Nebula was. And therefore be going straight towards her.
This, Thanos knew, was a certainty.
A/N: I'm alive, and it's finally here! It only took half a year to do this! No, but in all seriousness, I'm so, so sorry for abandoning this fic for so long. I could go on and on about how difficult life has been and whatever, but I won't. Though, if you are wondering why I seemingly disappeared from the face of the planet, here are all the major reasons: School/Schoolwork, procrastination, my laptop started to show its age around March and some of the keys stopped working and only in the past couple of weeks did I get a new one. And what is probably the biggest reason: I really, really don't like this fanfic. That was, I believe, in part to my original plan but as I wrote the ending to this chapter, I realised that I had a much better idea that should actually be fun to write.
Don't worry, I will finish this fanfic (there's only 2 or 3 chapters left to write, plus an epilogue). And out of sheer stubbornness, I want to have finished writing this before the one-year anniversary of the first chapter being published. It may not be finished being uploaded, but I want the document to be finished by then.
Not going to lie, the epilogue and Dr Strange's thought of the "perfect timeline" in this chapter are kind of funny with the hindsight of the Loki show. By the way, what are your thoughts on the Disney+ shows? I've enjoyed them (and Black Widow), and it's exciting to think of all the upcoming stories and plans coming to fruition!
Last but not least, thank you to all the people who have reviewed, followed and favourited.
Guest review response:
Nightshade 12341: Please let me know if you've actually read this/remember it lol. Anyway, I do have Wattpad but I don't use it anymore. Here's the next chapter and hopefully Chapter 7 doesn't take as long. Glad you enjoyed the other chapters.