The last two years have been the hardest years of her life.

Maybe it's a little cliché for someone in her position, but May hadn't been actively seeking out having any children with Ben, even after they'd decided to get hitched. She'd grown up fairly isolated from a family that was absolutely terrible at dealing with their own kids — really, it's a miracle she came out halfway decent — and meeting the Parkers and their small baby had not endeared her to the idea, at the time. It wasn't that she didn't like children, not at all. Peter was cute and she loved being the carefree, young auntie who held him and commented on those ears of his... but he also cried, was always catching something, took up date nights and celebrations, and ate up money that May couldn't imagine having to spend.

Mary and Richard had always been so busy, she couldn't grasp how they made it work. Being untethered and free, that was her personal American dream, and she and Ben roamed without concern for the past or future. It was a wonderful time in her life that she'll always look back on with youthful smiles and twinkling eyes.

Then Peter's parents died.

And Peter had nearly died with them.

As luck would have it in the most miserable of unlucky circumstances, Peter had come down with an ugly flu before the Parker's planned flight — some kind of partial business trip that left room to take a six-year-old boy along for fun in the sun vacationing afterward — and she'd been more than okay with watching out for the little guy while they were gone. Peter had been running a small fever while May laid beside him, combing her fingers through his soft locks, when Ben took a phone call that would leave his legs crumpling beneath him. She remembers it well. Thomas the Tank Engine had been playing on their small living room television, but everything else was unforgivably still in the aftermath.

She had lost track of how many tear-induced headaches she'd gotten that week.

Then at some point, wordlessly, Peter was ushered toward her by a proper woman in a dated business skirt, and she took his hand in hers; he looked up with those curly, wild locks framing thick-rimmed glasses, and she knew that she would do everything she could to make sure he would be okay. It wasn't a matter of not wanting children anymore; it was a matter of wanting Peter.

That first night as a family, Ben counted his money at the kitchen table while she made Peter Mickey Mouse-shaped pancakes that had nearly burned in the process, and they created something workable. It wasn't easy. Nothing in life is promised to be easy, and she'd learned that in her youth, when she would sneak out of her window to avoid parents who she was fairly sure didn't mind if she never came home again.

("Aunt May, did you and Ben want kids?" Peter had asked her in a wobbly voice one night, when he was nine, maybe ten, curled up and miserable on the couch in his Iron Man mask, "Someone at school said you didn't want me and it's okay if you didn't, but I promise I'll be better; I'll be so smart, I'll get a job so you don't have to keep worrying about money so much—")

It's some kind of sick joke, that now she's a parent herself, clinging to the hope that her child would crawl through his window again, smiling sheepishly and sporting new bruises from a world she feared him being involved in. She would come home from a busy day at work and cook a meal for one, desperate to eat and go straight to bed. In the mornings, when she had no energy left in her to rise from her pillow, she would force herself to play old video tapes and let Ben and Peter's infectious laughs recharge her as she walked the cramped kitchen floor: Peter's seventh birthday at the museum, the trip to the arcade with twenty dollars Peter had won on a lottery ticket, Richard looking helplessly while Peter cried, until Mary swooped in and plucked the toddler from his hands...

Peter protected the streets. Peter was a hero with a good heart. Peter did all the hard work.

But everyone else just wonders where Spider-Man went.

When those billions of lives began flickering into existence again, she had sat with her phone pressed to her chest, waiting for a call. Any call. She anticipated a shy voice, relenting to whatever punishment she'd dole out. He would say something like, "I'm so sorry, May, I swear this one wasn't on purpose. Please don't ground me forever."

Peter didn't call her that night, but Tony Stark did, the next day.

He had told her that Peter was alive. That he would contact her again when the ship carrying him returned to earth. She'd cried into the palm of her hand as he sat miles away upstate, listening in earnest, quieted by her broken relief. Thank god, she'd said. Thank god thank god thank god, my family is okay again. She'd wanted to hold onto him and never let go. And make no mistake, she's going to ground him forever, and she's going to tuck his unruly head of hair under her chin, and watch terrible cable infomercials with him in the dead of night, and — and she won't have to apologize to Ben anymore, for losing what little they'd defended so adamantly.

("I'm sorry, Aunt May, it's my fault he's gone, it's all my fault," Peter had sobbed, hidden under a hoodie as he buried his face in her shoulder; he couldn't stop shaking, and nothing she said had worked to ease his hysteria where they stood in the dark of their apartment, "Y-you don't understand...! I was right there, and I could've done something — a-and I didn't, and I didn't —")

She stands now in the doorway of his silent room and looks at the carefully wrapped, untouched gifts sitting on his desk with the hope that soon — soon — he'll be able to open them all excitedly and see that he was always — is always loved here. She runs her hand over the rumpled jacket left on the back of his chair, and it soothes her instantly. Four days. Four days ago, Tony Stark had contacted her. And now he has not returned a single call or message. The relief curdles pretty quickly into something she didn't want to entertain: that the wool is over her eyes.

The next call she gets is from Ned, who had been in the middle of his first year of college.

"May, I don't understand why," he says, his voice trembling and aching with betrayal. Her heart is pounding violently in her chest now, as violently as she knows she's going to be pounding on Stark's fancy front door. "I don't know why, but I dug into the security footage to make sure like you asked, and — and, and he's there, May. I saw him on the feed, at the facility. Why wouldn't he call us? Why wouldn't anyone tell us?"

In the video playing on the television, a young, naive Peter Parker covers his face in embarrassment; sitting cross-legged in his pajamas, he opens a present that reveals another box, and under that box is another box, and under that box is another box — it never seems to end — "May, c'mon, this is torture," he laughs.

A feeling comes over her, not new, but certainly not felt in a long time.

She's going to fucking kick Anthony Stark's ass.

"You haven't told her yet?! Tony."

Pepper's eyes are wide and full of disbelief, locked on Tony's grimace as he sits newly awoken on the edge of their bed. Morgan is still knocked out cold on the pillow beside him, her small fists clutching a color-vomited rainbow rabbit she's never let leave the bed — and wait, just when did Tony start sharing nap times with a toddler? — and he watches her breathing for a little while, just to make sure she is, because apparently he can't go five seconds without thinking a kid he loves is in mortal danger. He can blame Pete for that; he started it years ago. He groans at the thought of facing May Parker, head dropping as he starts sluggishly putting his shirt back on. "I didn't want her to come here and see him like this, Pep. She's already had a royally fucked up time since the snap — do you really think she'll be okay learning oh, wait, never mind, she doesn't have her kid back?"

"It doesn't matter whether she's okay with it or not," Pepper cuts in, sharp and unhappy, "It's not your choice to make."

"I'm going to tell her. Today. I just... I wanted to fix him before it came to this."

She steps forward, running her hand over the crown of his head. "If it were Morgan, and you weren't told what happened to her, how would you feel?" He looks over to her sleeping face, and knows the answer immediately — his expression pinches to match the ache in his chest, and Pepper tips his chin so that he looks up to her. Her voice is level, eyes reading every line of code that makes up a Stark. "If it were Peter, and you'd never been told, how would you feel?"

He'd lose his damn mind, is what. Silenced effortlessly, he presses his face into the soft stomach in front of him, and they stay that way for a long moment. It's only when Morgan begins to stir that she finally pulls away, and his hand holds hers until it naturally trails away from him. It's the first time in a long time that he's looked at Pepper sweetly chattering with his daughter and found guilt coiling so venomously in his stomach. He was supposed to shove Morgan into Peter's awkward arms and announce his new gig with the Avengers as a professional babysitter, when he came back.

That didn't pan out.

Not long after, Pepper is following a clumsily running little girl toward the bathrooms while Tony walks the opposite way, into the overwhelming smell of lunch in the kitchen area that is located just outside the living quarters. Usually they have a cook that can prepare things to their heart's content, but then Sam Wilson came back to life — and, well. Now he's just taken over the kitchen wholesale. Tony can't complain; the man is a damn good cook, and he cautiously approaches the scene of Bucky and Steve and Peter, all sitting at the table, two of the three engaged in conversation. Expectedly.

"Oh hey, you're finally up again," Steve says from his stool, where he meditates over an overstuffed plate of southern-styled comfort food.

"Just in time to actually eat a real meal, too," Sam adds, waving a pair of tongs and immediately preparing Tony something edible — without waiting to see if he actually wanted it, go fucking figure. His stomach flips at the plate of food sitting in front of Peter, untouched. Sam motions to the boy, talking to him as plainly as he would anyone else at the table, "Can you believe this asshole, kid? Off napping while I'm doing all the real work."

"Being a mother hen is optional around here," Bucky mumbles at the coffee cup raised to his lips.

"I'm gonna pretend you didn't just say that."

"What, like you're pretending the kid didn't kick your ass in Germany, too?"

"I'm pretty sure you were right there with me, you backstabbing bastard—"

"He won't eat that," Tony says suddenly, maybe too suddenly, too tensely. They stop and turn to look at him, the playful banter draining from their downturned lips. He's not trying to airstrike their fucking pleasant lunch, but he can't help but feel the unease tenfold at the way everyone's talking to Peter like he can just talk back — but none of these people know him like he does, none of them can really grasp just how unsettling it is, that Peter can just sit there without a word. Peter is a motormouth. Peter would be starry eyed at being at a table with Avengers like Rogers. They would've never been able to shut him up.

He clears his throat and says, "He's... not going to eat that, I mean."

"I know," Steve says after a pause, "But it might help."

Tony blinks. "Help, huh?"

"The smells," Bucky clarifies, though he seems quieted, maybe by his own dark thoughts.

Sam wipes his hands off on a hand towel, his usually carefree way of handling things exchanged for shades of competency befitting a man who has worked with the most broken sort of man. "One of the first things you learn, going into the business of helping soldiers with deeply rooted trauma: if they're in a state of shock, or going through one of their post traumatic episodes, it's important to use their senses to ground them. Remind them where they are, when they are. It helps remind them everything's going to be okay, eventually. Soothes 'em. Gives them some kind of agency over their lives."

"What agency is there, here?" They all turn toward the unhappy retort and find Wanda standing in the adjoining hallway with her hands fidgeting in front of her, dressed in a sweater much bigger than her. Her expression is one of discontent, and she glances sparingly at Peter's unwavering back before stepping forward to join the others — or at least partially join them, never quite passing some imaginary line she's formulated in her head. "It does not seem fair to him at all, to treat him like he's here. At what point does someone decide whether he is truly alive or not?"

"What the hell?" Tony glowers, twisting to face her. "Don't say shit like that. He's alive."

"He has no brain activity, and Mantis and I haven't found any trace of someone left in this body — and trust when I say, I had tried everything I could to find him in there. I am only asking what should be asked upfront: does this boy want to be a zombie roaming the halls of this building forever? Is this fair to him?" The unyielding stream of words leave Tony cold all over, the fiery outrage snuffed out by the thought — by the thought of Peter being in his thirties, forties, fifties, and still being sweetly spoken to in a one-sided, hopeless conversation. The hopelessness must be palpable, because Steve stands to full height, hands pressing the edge of the table.

"Wanda," Steve says sharply. "We're nowhere near entertaining these kinds of thoughts. This is one of our own we're fighting for here. Stand down."

She looks defiantly at him for a moment, something too heavy and bludgeoned beckoning from the depths of her gaze. It's not quite a broken look. More like someone who has let the scar tissue build and build and build until she's made of steel-like skin. Her voice is even and far too calm and sure. "Not everyone can come back. We need to understand that before it becomes too much, or we'll all lose our minds... Sometimes losses need to be accepted."

"And sometimes they don't," Bucky cuts in. "... Steve didn't accept when I was too far gone."

"We didn't accept when you were gone, either," Tony speaks up, looking at her again. But I'm starting to think you wished we did.

The look she gives him could cut through his iron suit, he's pretty sure, and she turns sharply to leave the area. Probably to go back to a room she hardly comes out of, during the day. But the room holds a collective breath for a moment before four pairs of shoulders relax in unison.

"... Well, that was unpleasant," Sam mutters, side-eyeing the room. "I'll, uh, take her a plate."

He dips past them, while Steve sighs, "She didn't mean anything by it, Tony. She's just—"

—fucked up. Like the rest of us.

"It's fine. I get it," Tony replies, glancing at Peter with new thoughts to try and not entertain. "I probably deserve a little bit of that, anyway."

Wanda had come back to the news that Vision couldn't be fixed, after all. Tony's no stranger to loss, but Wanda has absolutely out-raced him on this particular track: her parents, her homeland, her brother, her reputation — and then her lover. Tony imagines that death may have been a mercy for her by the time their defeat came along, because ever since she'd come back, she'd been quieter... more withdrawn. Bruce asking her to peer into Peter's mind had been the first time Tony'd seen her in more than just passing in weeks, though he's not sure where the hell else she could have been.

"Yeah, you probably do," Bucky grumbles, poking at his potatoes.

Tony rubs a hand down the whole length of his face. "I'm heading out to a meeting with the mayor — and then, uh... I'll be hitting Parker's residence to speak with his — guardian. Do you think you can...?"

"We've got him," Steve replies, with an understanding nod. As much as Tony'd like to take Peter all over the goddamn globe with him, there's so much to do still. The world is still fractured, new problems rising out of the ashes of the old, and people need guidance. They need men like Tony Stark, who can throw money at problems like an extinguisher to small house fires. He rubs a hand against Peter's back, wondering if it was always that broad.

"I'll be back in a couple of hours, Pete. With your ridiculously attractive aunt in tow."

Which is a hilarious coincidence, because as he adjusts his tie and steps out into the metallic hallway leading towards the front of the facility, he nearly slams right into the tiny figure of May Parker, nostrils flaring and eyes scalding in their fury — May, who is being trailed by a clearly panicked Happy Hogan. That's about as far as Tony's able to assess the situation before May's fist flies forward and punches him right in his perfect teeth.

Yeah, I think I might deserve this one, too.

"... Um. Hi, I'm Peter. Are you okay?"

The small figure uncurls where she sits, dark eyes studying the curly-haired boy in front of him. He's her age, at the very least — no older than eight or nine. She tries to decipher him like he's a riddle: he's wearing odd glasses that seem as big as his face, as well as a red jacket with sleeves that are too long on his skinny limbs, so much so his fingers peek out from under the cuffs; there's a funny little man on his shirt holding a blue sword made of light, and it reminds her of warriors from stories passed; his eyes are round and kind, his lips thin, and one shoe is untied and dragging laces.

The boy — Peter — is clearly afraid, bathed in warm colors from the sky above.

(Peter, Peter, Peter...)

But despite this, he still extends his hand to help her stand, holding his breath.

"... I am fine," she says. She places a small green hand in his, suddenly too relieved. His name is soothing, like a song. "My name is Gamora."

And she is finally no longer alone, in this strange, endless place.