"Well that was excillerating," Tony said excitedly when everyone was back in the present at the avengers headquarters.

Natasha said, "Speak for yourself! I had to kick all of Hydra's asses and knock Steve out when we he wouldn't let me leave with this stone." She turned to look at Steve only to see Bucky putting him gently on the ground.

Worried, Bruce asked, "What happened over there, Bucky?"

"The soul stone requires a sacrfice," Bucky said shakily, "and he wouldn't let me do it." He stood over Steve's body as he heart broke.

"He did what?" Tony asked in horror, "WHAT?!"

Sam whispered in horror, "Oh my God."

"You heard me," Bucky said as he stood up.

Natasha examined Steve and desperately checked for his pulse, only to find nothing. "He's right," she said sadly, "he's dead. Steve's gone."

Tony demanded angrily, "You couldn't have killed yourself to save billions-trillions-septillions of people across the entire universe!? You had to make him do it!?"

"Tony," Bruce said calmly, "now isn't the time to get angry at him." He put his hand in front of Tony to hold him back carefully.

"If not now when?!" Tony shouted, "He murdered Steve!"

"I didn't want him to die!" Bucky shouted desperately, "I tried to save his life!" He dropped the stone onto the ground at his feet.

"Bucky," Natasha said nervously as she watched him leave. She turned to Tony and asked, "Are you happy now?"

Tony demanded, "Don't talk to me."

Bucky sat on a bench at the edge of the pond and overlooked the water as best as he could with watery eyes. Instead of enjoying the peaceful sounds of nature he hated it. He didn't want the birds to chirp joyfully or the ripples of the small waves made by frogs to calm him down. Eventually, he heard the lightest footsteps ever, walking toward him.

When Natasha appeared, she sniffled and asked, "Mind if I sit here?"

Bucky looked up to see her with bright red watery eyes, similar to his own. "Do what you want," he said.

She sat to the left of him and said, "It's not your fault."

"If he pushed me off of that cliff," Bucky explained, "no one would be this upset."

"I'd miss you," she confessed, "I'd mourn your loss. Steve would be so beside himself I don't think he could cope. Sam would miss you too, and so would Nebula. Listen, I don't blame you for what he did. Sacrificing himself for the greater good sounds exactly like something Steve would do; as does him believing in second chances for someone no matter what they've done in the past."

"Thanks," he said awkwardly without looking at her.

Natasha looked out over the greenery and confessed, "I used to be an assasin."

"I know," he said, glancing at her and sitting up straighter.

She asked, "Steve told you?" He shook his head. "You looked me up on the internet and saw all of my leaked files?" He shook his head again.

He explained, "Your footsteps are much lighter than a normal person's. I almost can't hear you coming. Almost. Judging by your gait you were a ballerina at one point, probably for several years."

"Wow," she said, "I'm actually impressed. You didn't even guess 'dancer,' you knew it was ballet from the start. They trained you to do that?"

He nodded and said, "It's easier to take out your targets when you know everything about them."

She smiled and said, "My point is, I never thought I could redeem myself after I stopped working with the Russians. I had so much red in my ledger I wondered if I could ever get rid of it all and make things right. You can't make things right when you're dead."

"Do I even deserve to try?" Bucky asked.

"You're still breathing," Natasha replied, "you're still taking in the same oxygen as everyone else whether or not you try. Do you really think Steve would want you wallowing in misery of his death thinking you don't deserve to live?"

Bucky looked away from her as he refused to answer that. He knew she was right but he didn't want to admit to himself, not yet.

She took a deep breath, relaxed, and said, "A couple of weeks ago, Steve asked me to do something for him. It was going to be a surprise, for you."

"Did he ask you to distract me as he tried to pour ice water onto me?" Bucky asked.

"He did but that's not what I'm talking about," she explained, "he wanted me to look up different people for you. The only one I found still alive was an Elenora Gushchin, maiden name, Barnes."

Bucky's face changed to shock and asked, "My youngest sister? You're sure it's her? She's still alive?"

She continued, "Born December 3rd, 1925, in Abraham Hospital. She lives in Stamford, Connecticut now, in her home, as a widow. 94 years old. Your brother died 15 years ago, and your other sister died 8 years ago. Your dad in 1974 and your mom in 1981. Elenora Gushchin is the only one still alive."

Bucky, still in shock, said, "You're saying I should go and see her. I don't think I should."

"If you knew she was still alive after being killed in action after several decades," Natasha said calmly, "would you want to see her again, even if she looked like she was still young?" Bucky smiled at her with tears still in his eyes. She stood up and added, "Let's join everyone inside. Maybe we can bring Steve back with everyone else. We have to at least try."

Inside, a tearstained Bruce was beginning to use the hologram in the living room of the avengers headquarers to scan each of the stones. Bruce, Loki, Tony, Scott, Natasha, Mantis, Sam, and Bucky sat or stood around the table in a melancholy mood. Even Loki couldn't manage a smile.

"Loki why are you so upset?" Tony demanded, "Don't you hate all of us?"

"Captain America was my favorite one of you to pretend to be for fun since he's so self rightous and patriotic," he replied, "it is sad to see him gone."

Natasha said as she leaned against the table with her arms outstretched, "As hard as this is, we need to focus." She couldn't lift her head up to look them in the eyes.

"I have all of the stones lined up in Tony's glove," Bruce explained as he brought it out and put it on the table.

Loki asked, "Who's going to do the snap?"

"We saw how badly it hurt Thanos was after he did it," Bruce said.

Mantis said, "Then someone very big and strong should do it."

Scott explained, "Before we even do that we need to know what exactly we are wishing for."

"I think we should make everything the same as it was," Bruce explained, "and have Thanos and his armies be already dead by the time we get back to that final battle in Wakanda."

"I think that's two wishes," Loki said, "and I don't think it works that way with one snap."

Natasha said, "If we made it back to Wakanda with Thanos still alive, everything would be exactly the same way it was before. I'm assuming our memories would be wiped. We wouldn't remember what happened and Thanos would win all over again. We'd put ourselves in a permanent time loop. We can't do it."

Tony asked, "Why don't we just wish to bring them all here with us in the present?"

"Are you kidding?" Bruce said, "That would cause so much chaos!"

"Yeah," Sam said, "think of all the people in airplanes or something. Would they just reappear and then fall out of the sky to their deaths? What about on trains, or on boats, hell, even in the middle of cities!"

Tony said, "Alright, then we bring everyone here in a safe manner, even those who died indirectly from the snap like the ones in car accidents or who got lost at sea." Everyone glanced at each other, wondering if it would work.

"That," Scott said hesitantly, "works, I think."

"Sounds good to me," Bruce admitted, "now who's going to do this?"

Tony said, "Well first of all, I don't trust you," he pointed at Loki, "and I don't like you," he pointed at Bucky, "so they're not doing it."

"I'm surprised you even managed to put the power stone into that glove of yours," Loki said as he walked over to the table join them, "it incinerates any mortal that touches it."

Tony said, "That doesn't sound right." He tried to grab it and it burned him. He waved his hand in the air painfully and said, "He might have a point."

"Let me try," Bruce said as he reached out. When he touched it the same thing happened. "That stings."

Sam asked, "Does metal do anything to it?" He looked at Bucky. When Bucky tried with his left hand, he recoiled and grimmaced in pain. "So your arm feels it?"

"No," he answered, "the pain went down my whole spine. Ah." He moved his shoulders to help ease the pain in his back.

When no one was looking, Loki reached out and grabbed it easily. "How?" Tony demanded.

"I'm a God," Loki said, "I do what I want."

"Like take over Earth," Tony said, "And kill and brainwash a bunch of people for no reason. Why is no one here remembering or caring about that tiny little detail? Most of us were there when it happened!" He turned and glared at Bucky for not being there.

Bruce said, "Tony, he's been through a lot since that happened."

Loki shook his head while laughing and said, "You have no idea what I've done for you, for all of you standing in this very room at this very moment."

"You better tell me what you're talking about," Tony demanded, "before I break your neck!"

"I'm the reason everyone in this room is here at this very moment," Loki said calmly, not at all intimidated by Tony's empty threat.

Scott said, "I'm not following."

"Yeah," Natasha said, "what are you saying?"

He asked, "Who brought you, the avengers, together, originally?"

"Nick Fury," Tony said seriously.

Loki explained, "Oh please, if I really wanted to I could have brainwashed him just like I did with the bow and arrow man and I could have destroyed this world from the inside out and no one would have known until it was too late to fix it."

"You..." Tony said, struggling to come up with the right wording for Loki, "asshole! I know you're lying! You threw me out a window 100 stories off of the ground! Don't try to tell me that was for my own good!"

Bucky looked at Sam and asked, "What?"

"I don't know, man," he replied, "that was before I met Steve."

Loki said, "I saw you activating your suit. I'm not deaf, I heard you telling your special little computer what to do and I saw you collecting the things you needed for it. I knew as soon as you took off your old suit that you were getting a new one. If I truly wanted you dead I would have destroyed that suit and then thrown you out the window."

"I don't believe this," Tony said, "you tried to tear us apart, that's even what you told us to our faces! Why would you want all of us fighting you together?"

Loki replied, "I brought you all together because I knew what was coming."

Bruce said, "You taunted me!"

"That was a mistake," he admitted, "I'll confess to that."

"You knew all of this that we're dealing with right now was going to happen?" Tony demanded, "And you didn't tell us or say anything about it back then? You really are evil."

Loki said, "I can't see into the future, but I knew Thanos would come here eventually since you happily took the mind stone from me. If I were truly as evil as you feared me to be I would have set up over a dozen portals across the planet like I was instructed to and then you and your little avenger friends never would have been able to stop the destruction across the world. Instead I told The Other who told Thanos you were too much for me to handle. I knew a group of people would be needed in order to stop him. I didn't know you would lose."

"You!" Tony shouted.

"Tony," Bruce said, holding him back, "stop it! We need to stop arguing! I'll do the snap myself since the radiation from the stones is mostly gamma. It's almost like I was made for this." Loki put the power stone back into alignment with the others.

Bruce put the glove onto his right hand and struggled to maintain the power of all of the infinity stones. After he snapped, everything went white and faded back to normal. His arm and the right side of his face was burned to a crisp.

Tony asked, "Did it work?" They carefully looked out the window and saw birds and trees were coming to life right before their eyes.

Suddenly, there was a crashing sound in the distance. "Did anyone else hear that?" Bucky asked.

Loki said, "It sounds like something just crashed into the building."

Sam asked, "Where's Nebula right now?" He looked around the room at everyone and just realized he hadn't seen her. "Did she even come into the room with us? I don't remember seeing her in here," he said.

Everyone ran out of the room toward the noise.