ENDGAME SPOILER RATING - LITE
Twenty-two days after the Snap
Eva was working late in the coffee shop, using the quiet to sit and sketch garden plans. She had brought Rachel Carson in with her, and the cat was snoozing on her lap while Tchaikovsky played on the radio. She was so absorbed in the reforestation of Prospect Park that, when her phone started vibrating, it took her a moment to even notice. She glanced at it, considered ignoring the call altogether, but when Pepper Potts' caller ID flashed up on the screen she grabbed it as fast as she could.
"What is it –"
"Tony's back," said the voice on the other end. "We're at the compound. Can you –"
"I'm on my way," Eva replied, standing up and sending Rachel Carson flying. She grabbed the cat and a bag of Stark's favorite Columbian roast coffee blend, pulled her motorbike helmet on and ran out onto the street.
Moving through New York City took less than half the time it used to, what with the traffic having all but vanished and pedestrian footfall being rare at best. Eva blitzed through Manhattan and out into upstate NY, wind prickling at her exposed skin (she had not stopped to put on her leathers) and muffling the sounds of Rachel Carson's yowling from the box mounted on the back. She got to the Avengers Compound in record time, flew past the abandoned security post at the gates and pulled up outside the main block beside what appeared to be a massive spaceship.
Eva grabbed her cat and the coffee beans, kicked the unlocked door open and ran through the corridors into the rec area. Natasha and Steve were stood waiting for her, along with a tall and bald blue woman because apparently nothing normal could happen anymore.
"Where is he?" she asked, dropping Rachel Carson onto a sofa.
"In the med bay," Natasha replied. "Out cold. Pepper's with him."
"Is he okay?"
Natasha hesitated before answering. The normally inscrutable expression she wore was gone, replaced by something that looked rather like worry. "Not really," she said. "But he's alive."
"Right," said Eva. "Right. I – I brought java. I panicked. It's meant to be grapes you bring to the hospital bedside, isn't it? Shit."
Meanwhile, Rachel Carson had wandered over to the blue woman and was now rubbing against her legs, purring loudly. "What is this?" the newcomer asked in a strange, echoing voice, as though she was speaking through a sound system mounted in her own throat.
"That's my cat," Eva said.
"What's it doing?"
"Saying hi. She likes you."
"Make it stop."
"Eva," said Steve, "this is Nebula. She was on the ship with Tony."
"It looks like a Flerken," Nebula growled, nudging the cat away from her with the toe of her boot. "You should keep it locked up."
"It's not a… whatever you just said. She's a cat," Eva replied. "If you're some space person and you were with Stark, why didn't you bring him back earlier? What were you doing?"
"I don't have to explain myself to you, child," Nebula said, her black eyes flashing.
"Don't call me a child, Smurfette."
"What did you just call me?!"
"Alright," said Steve, stepping between the two women with his usual diplomacy. "Eva, we have to leave for a while."
"Why?"
"We think we've found Thanos," Natasha explained. "We might be able to get him to undo… this."
Something in Eva's chest twisted. "You can bring them back?"
"Maybe."
"Everyone."
"We think."
"Vision?" she asked, her voice shaking with hope.
Natasha looked away. "I'm sorry," Steve said. "His death was before the snap."
"… Right."
"Would you stay?" Steve asked. "We don't want to leave Pepper alone while we're gone."
"And how long will you be gone, anyway?"
"The garden is only a few hours away if we use jump points," said Nebula. She was still glaring at Rachel Carson, who had not left her ankles.
"Scratch her behind the ears and she'll leave you be," Eva informed her. "Promise you'll all come back."
"We'll do our best," Steve replied. The last promise he had made – and broken – hung silently in the air, defined by its absence. "If it works, then – well, you'll notice if it works."
Eva nodded. "Good luck, then," she said, a little awkwardly. As she did, Nebula crouched down and stroked Rachel Carson with long, metallic blue fingers.
%
After they all left, shaking the air around the compound with the blast of the space rocket taking off, Eva walked to the med bay and found Pepper asleep in a chair next to the bed. Eva put a steaming mug of coffee on the table next to her, and the gentle clink of china hitting wood woke the woman up.
"Eva," Pepper breathed. She held her arms out and Eva leant in to hug her, feeling as though the other woman was desperate for any kind of physical contact. "Oh, I'm so glad you're okay. The others said you had survived, but –"
"I've been working," Eva said, letting go. "Sorry." She looked to the bed, where a frail-looking man that looked far too pale and broken to be Tony Stark lay. "Jesus…"
"It's a miracle he's alive," Pepper said. "Danvers found him drifting in deep space."
"Danvers?"
"Oh, just some other super we never knew about."
"Just what we needed," Eva said, and Pepper smiled weakly. She sat down at the foot of Tony's bed and pulled her knees up to her chin. "The others said they're going to find the guy that did it. Thanos. They said they can make him undo it, maybe."
"Maybe," Pepper echoed. "Eva, I'm so sorry about Vision. I haven't told Tony yet. I didn't get the chance, and he's already been through so much…" she looked down at Stark and bit her lower lip. "It's selfish, but all I can think is thank God he survived when so many others didn't."
"That's not selfish," Eva said. "It's human."
She sat with Pepper for an hour or two, and then forced the CEO to go and catch a few hours' sleep while she kept watch on the patient. She drank the now-cold mug of coffee herself, wincing at the bitter taste and wondering for the umpteenth time why anybody liked this stuff. Still, it did the job of keeping her awake, and by five in the morning she was so buzzed that she was tapping out the 1812 Overture with her fingertips on the arm of the chair at twice its proper tempo.
She was just getting to the crescendo when the beeping of the heart rate monitor changed and the bed springs creaked with movement. "I've died," Tony said in a tremulous voice. "I've died, I'm in hell, and you're my torturer."
Eva grinned. "Screw you," she said. "You got my hopes up that you hadn't made it for the best part of a month. It was great."
"Sorry to disappoint," Tony replied, tilting his head to look at her. He looked awful, scary awful, awful enough that it seemed impossible he would ever truly recover. "Can you sub out for someone a little more hospitable, please?"
"No," said Eva. "Pepper's asleep for what I think is the first time since you left."
"Everyone else?"
"In space."
He looked back up at the ceiling. "Figures," he murmured. "Trying to undo everything?"
"Yeah."
"It won't work."
"What makes you so sure?"
"Because I'm clever." He clenched his jaw, muscles tensing beneath his blue-tinged skin. They sat in silence for a moment, the only noise the beeping of his life support machines. "Vision," he said eventually. "I'm guessing that –"
"Yeah."
Tony nodded. "Well, he did have a plot device in his forehead," he said.
"You made him," Eva said.
"And?"
"You can fix him," she continued, leaning forward. "Can't you? I mean – the others said, before, that he could survive without the stone in his head. So –"
"No," said Tony, without bothering to look her in the eye.
"What d'you mean, no? You're Tony Stark! You can do anything!"
"I really can't. He's dead. Add him to the list of people I've got killed if it makes you feel better, but I can't bring them back and the same goes for him."
"You don't even know what state he's in!"
"The deceased state," Tony muttered, pulling himself up into a sitting position with a groan.
"That's not funny."
"No. You know what else isn't? Being Tony Stark," he snapped back. "Being the guy who can do anything. Because guess what, Kresk – I can't. I failed. I let half the world die because I'm not good enough, and I'm done. I'm retired. I can't bring Vision back because I don't want to. Move on. I am."
Eva stared at him, eyes stinging with hot, wet tears. "You bastard," she said, and stood up. "I wish it had been you that died instead of him."
"Join the club, kiddo."
Eva turned on her heel and stormed out of the med bay, kicking at a plant pot on her way out with a scream. Screw Tony Stark, screw the Avengers, screw all of them. It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair!
A/N sup, nerds. It's been a while, huh? Fortunately my last ever uni deadline is less than a week away and then I'll have SO MUCH free time to write the rest of this and make it all Endgame-y. Which, by the way, has made me cry every time I've seen it so far. Anyway. I love you. Thank you so much for all the reviews while I've been gone, and to those asking for more chapters, don't worry fam I got u