Bucky took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and saw a beautiful pink, purple, and red landscape in what looked like the most reflective water he had ever seen. Across from him stood Steve, standing at 5 foot 4 and weighing 94 pounds.

Bucky looked down at himself and realized he was in his old blue and black garb and had the short hair that he wore while helping Steve in World War II and had his natural left arm again.

"What'd you do?" Steve asked, smiling.

"Saved the world," Bucky replied, "the whole universe. I took the stones from Thanos' gauntlet and I divided the power with Nebula and together we snapped him out of existence and we won. Why do you look like that?"

Steve said, "We look like however we perceive ourselves to look like here. Why, what do I look like to you?"

"Young," Bucky said, "and little. What about me?"

Steve replied, "You look happy. Enjoy it now that everything's is back to normal in the universe."

Bucky smiled at him and said, "I will."

Nebula looked around herself and saw the same amazing pink, purple, and red landscape with reflective water. Across from her, Gamora stood in her adult form.

"We did it," Nebula said as tears welled up in her eyes, "We saved the day. We saved the universe! I did something right, I won against our father like I have always wanted to do, deep down."

Gamora replied, "I'm proud to call you my sister."

"I'm glad," Nebula said, smiling at her.

"You're free from our father forever now," Gamora said, "how does it feel?"

"Perfect," Nebula confessed, "I can finally be me."

Back on the battlefield, Thanos looked around him to see the dust settle once again. He turned to face Bucky and Nebula again and saw they were laying on the backs on the ground, their left arms missing and their necks scarred from the burns of doing the snap.

"Why?" he demanded as he only saw his men and children disappearing before his eyes, "That's impossible!" He looked at the glove and saw that the stones were gone.

He looked over and saw the stones by their hands on the ground and dove for them. His legs disappeared first, and before he landed on top of both of them, they didn't bother to move out of the way, he turned to ashes above them and moved through the wind.

Natasha looked over at Bucky and Nebula from her place in the battlefield as the enemies were now gone. "No," she whispered desperately as she saw them laying on the ground, motionless, "please, no..." She ran over to their sides and sat beside them. "You can't die!" she pleaded.

"Ah," Bucky wimpered, "I'm not dead. Oh God." He squeezed his eyes shut from the pain coarsing through his body.

"Let's not do that again," Nebula complained as she tried to roll onto her right side away from her now missing arm.

Natasha breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Oh thank God. You know, it was bold of you two not to move when Thanos jumped on top of you guys." She extended her arms to help them to their feet.

Bucky took a deep breath and confessed, "It wasn't bold, I can't get up."

After Natasha helped him struggle to his feet, Sam shouted from above them, "Hey Bucky! You remember when you mentioned landing like this with a broken leg? Well we're crossing that bridge right now!" He started flying lower and as slow as he could.

Thor walked over to them and asked, "What's wrong with him?"

"Look out below!" Sam shouted as he flew straight for Bucky.

He raised his right arm to help stop the impact but they both slammed into the ground. "Oh God," Sam said, rithing in pain, "That hurts like a bitch! Damn."

"You had to choose me to crash into?" Bucky asked, still reeling from doing the snap.

"I was aiming for Thor," he confessed, groaning in pain.

Bucky struggled back to his feet and glanced over at Doctor Strange, who was now standing upright beside Tony. His body was still on the ground, not moving. Pepper and Peter ran over in desperation and kneeled beside him. "He's gone," Doctor Strange said sadly, "he saw Thanos disappear right before he passed, and he was glad."

Everyone turned to look at Tony's now lifeless body with sadness and horror.

Doctor Strange continued, "He said that the arc reactor core in his chest was heavily damaged when the building exploded and fell into pieces on top of you guys. Even if the rebar hadn't pierced his chest he was a goner, but he fought against Thanos' forces anyway."

"He was dying the entire fight?" Natasha asked, "And he still kept going?"

"Yes," he said.

"Where's Steve?" T'Challa asked as he walked over and his mask disappeared. Bucky's face fell.

"Yeah," Thor said, trying to remain optimistic, "where is Captain America? We should celebrate our victory together with him, it's what Ironman would have wanted. We'll let him know that noble sacrifice wasn't in vain."

Bucky's voice cracked as he said, "Steve's dead."

Shuri analyzed Loki as he held the power stone back in Wakanda in her lab long after the battle was over, around Bruce, Thor, and T'Challa.

"I don't get it," Bruce said, "no one else can touch that thing bare handed but he can for some reason."

T'Challa asked, "Are you sure this is the stone that incinerates all life that touches it?" He reached out and was immediately burned by the power stone's energy. He shook his hand wildly in the air and added, "Nevermind, forget what I just asked."

Thor said, "Of course we can touch it without getting hurt, we're Gods." He tried to take it from Loki's hand but it burned him too. "Ah, okay, guess not."

Shuri asked, "Did you know your body temperature is extremely low? You should be beyond hypothermic and near death if I'm being honest."

"I'm well aware," Loki answered, "it's part of being a frost giant."

"That's what seems to be causing this nonreaction," she explained, "your body temperature is so low the stone doesn't register itself as being held or touched by an organic lifeform, therefore it doesn't react to you. It can't."

Bruce asked, "So does that mean he can't use the stone for himself?" He glanced over at him.

"Loki," Thor said, "Try to use the power stone against me." He held his arms up to brace himself.

Bruce said, "Thor, he's not going to-Loki!" He scolded him as he watched and tried to reach out to him but it was too late.

Loki touched it to Thor and he was mildly burned, but still, nothing happened to Loki himself and it was clear the powers of the power stone remained neutral. Shuri said, "It didn't do anything to him."

"Nothing happened," Loki said.

Bruce said, "Good thing we didn't have you do the snap, or else nothing would have happened...probably." He looked at them weakly and Loki and Thor smiled nervously at him and then at each other.

Two weeks later, Bucky sat with his back to Steve's headstone away from the freshly manicured lawn of the newly dug grave.

"Shuri gave me a new vibrainium arm," he explained, "again. She was half amused by that and said 'What are you now, broken white boy number 4 and number 1? I already fixed you once!' Some guy, Everet Ross, was the 2nd one, and she counts that red robot thing with the mind stone as number 3."

He took a deep breath to brace himself as he continued.

"The burn scars I got from the infinity stones are fading," he said as he reached up to touch the now faded black burn scars around the left side of his neck, "I wondered if they ever would. I guess you know this by now, but Tony didn't make it through the fight with Thanos. I thought he hated me but in the end, he told me to do the right thing from now on with his last breaths. On a lighter note, Sam has to be on crutches for the next two or three months and he's not happy about it."

He smiled to himself, then struggled to hold back more tears.

"Steve," he continued, "I made sure you were buried next to your mom and dad. They made this honorary empty grave after you 'died' in 1945, since that was in your will, when they couldn't find your body back then. I think it's nice that you're with them now. Tony's with his parents too. The whole world is still reeling over both of you. Oh yeah, I gave Sam your shield. I think he'll be better at it than me. I'm still so lost at trying to remember who I am, I can't take up something new like that but he can. He's a good man. I can see why you're friends with him."

He glanced over to the left and saw more people coming over to put down more flowers.

Bucky said, "I promise I'll come back soon, Steve." He stood up and looked at the grave memorial with hundreds upon hundreds of flowers, candles, and gifts that seemingly covered half of the cemetery. Then he glanced over at Sam leaning against a large tree off to the side, several hundred feet away, with his crutches in his hands. Natasha came up behind him with her own flowers in her hands and stopped to talk to Sam out of hearshot from him.

Sam whispered, his back turned to Bucky so he couldn't see, "Did Tony's chest light thingy really fail after the building fell on us? He seemed fine to me."

"I asked Doctor Strange about that after everything started to settle," she confessed, making sure to turn away from Bucky as he walked over so he couldn't get a chance to hear her, "And he told me Tony wanted Bucky to hear that so he wouldn't have to live with the guilt of killing yet another Stark." She shook her head. "He lied. His arc reactor core was fine."

Bucky struggled to walk through the flowers covering the ground towards them. Sam said as turned to him and said, "Steve would be proud of everything you've done for everyone. We should celebrate his life together, have a drink."

"I can't get drunk," Bucky replied, "it's side-effect of the super soldier serum in my DNA."

"I was wondering about that," he said, "now that I have the shield, I should get super soldier serum somehow too, right, in order to become the best Captain America ever of course. You think the Hulk or Shuri could make some up for me?"

Bucky explained, "They have some in Wakanda. That's how the Black Panther exists. Some guy tried to burn down all of the plants that produce it a few years ago but the roots survived. I'm sure they'd let you have some if you asked."

"Is that because I'm black?" Sam asked jokingly, "You think they'd help a brother out with that?"

Bucky gave him a blank look and answered, "No. They'd let you because you know me, and Steve."

"That makes more sense actually," he said, "I can see that. Yeah."

Natasha said, "Don't let me interrupt you guys." She quickly wiped away tear, hoping they didn't see.

"Actually," Sam said, "I don't mean to bounce on you or anything but I really need to sit down." He turned to hobble away on his crutches.

Natasha nodded and said, "Go ahead."

"I'll catch up," Bucky replied.

As he hobbled away slowly, Natasha asked, "Did Steve ever tell you about everything I've been through?"

Bucky shook his head and said, "No, whenever we saw each other he'd try to help me by remincing on old times from back in the day. It helped me remember things but we didn't talk much about who everyone else is, or why these things were happening."

"Wow," she said, "so that final battle must have been seriously confusing for you."

"That's the understatement of the century," he said.

She explained, "I was born in Russia, and given away as a baby to an orphanage ballet school that was a front for the Black Widow school for girls. I worked with the KGB when I was little and even as I got older and the Soviet Union collapsed, I was a Russian spy for quite some time. I was trained to seduce and kill and was sterilized to prove my allegiance. I killed countless people, most of them were innocent or at least didn't deserve to die the way they did. When I was taken out of that life I never thought I could live a normal one."

"I'm sorry all of that happened to you," he said sincerely.

"I mentioned what I've done," she said, "to let you know that you've been given a chance to live a normal life. You should take it."

"Thank you for the advice," he said in a monotone voice.

"I also came by because I knew you'd be here," she said, "Bruce has the time machine ready for tomorrow. After you return the stones, do you think you'll go back to the 1940s and live out a normal peaceful life?"

He answered, "No."

Surprised, she said, "Really?"

"It's easy," he explained, "to look back and see everything as positive and good but it wasn't. My first memory is of my mom literally jumping up and down for joy and picking me up and dancing around in front of the radio in our living room. I didn't understand why she was doing that but I was happy because she was. Years later when I asked her about what happened, she said she was so excited because they announced on the radio that for the first time ever women were legally allowed to vote."

Bucky glanced at Natasha, who was giving him a heartwarming smile.

He continued, "Growing up I remember hearing about people getting lynched for things about themselves they couldn't control, like the color of their skin or their sexuality. When people got sick, they were more likely to die than to live. There was so much we didn't know about space, the human body, technology, basically everything everyone takes advantage of today. I can't go back to that way of life even knowing that in the future everything will be different."

Natasha nodded and said, "I'm glad you're staying here, in the future, with us. It'll be a good life. You'll see." She walked toward the grave with her flowers.

"With time," Bucky replied as he walked away in the opposite direction toward Sam who was waiting at the car.