Clint is teaching Lila how to shoot a bow and arrow.
"Is that Lila?" Natasha asked, shocked.
"She's so big now." Clint said, feeling himself get a little choked up. His Lila is still his little baby girl. And now, or not now now but as he's seeing her now, she looks so much more grown up even though she's still so young.
"She looks just like you. It's almost scary. You guys have almost the same face." Pepper said.
"And you're teaching her how to use a bow... that's adorable." Hope said, smiling.
Clint nudges her feet and then covers her eye after asking if she could see.
"Ankle monitor." Clint sighed, still on house arrest he supposed.
Cooper and Nate are playing catch. Laura asks everyone if they want mayo or mustard on their hot dogs.
"Mayo? On a Hotdog?" Peter asked. "What sort of war crime...?"
"Exactly." Clint agreed. "It's a food war crime."
Lila asks who puts Mayo on a hotdog.
"Don't knock it till you've tried it." Happy said.
Clint says its probably her brothers and tells Laura they'll each take mustard.
Laura asks Nate if he wants mayo or mustard.
Nate says he wants Ketchup.
"See, that's my kind of dude right there." Ned said. "Ketchup is superior."
Lila shoots the arrow and hits the target dead center.
"Nice." Clint said, nearly bursting with pride. That's his daughter right there.
Lila goes to grab her arrow, Laura calls everyone to the table. He goes to get Lila, finding that she's not there.
"What?" Clint asked, a deadly calm tone to his voice despite the extreme panic that he was now feeling. "Where did she go."
Clint calls Laura only to find her and the boys gone too, he looks around for them but doesn't find them.
"Oh no no no no no no no no this... this is not happening. I- I can't... this can't..." Clint started. "Oh god." Tears sprang to his eyes. Thano's took- his family was- they were gone. How was he supposed to-what is he going to do?He tried to keep his composure as best as he could but tears were dripping onto his cheeks. Not just tears of sadness, but tears of rage. Thanos has taken so much from them, all of them, and Clint wanted to see him get ripped apart for it, wanted to rip Thanos apart himself.
Next to him, Natasha didn't seem like she was faring much better. Laura and Clint were family to her, the kids too. She didn't want to imagine a world with them gone. If there were one thing that she's never been more sure about its that she will find a way to make Thanos pay for what he's done. He took so many lives without a second thought, reduced them to nothing and still believed that he was doing what needed to be done. It was disgusting.
Nebula and Tony are on the Benatar playing paper football. Tony flicks the paper toward her, she moves her hands.
Tony says she doesn't need to do that because she's just holding the position. Nebula flicks one toward Tony but misses, she flicks another and makes it.
"Yay!" Peter cheered.
Nebula says she'd like to try again. They continue playing. Tony makes one and says they're tied.
Nebula makes the next one and wins. Tony congratulates her and asks if she had fun. Nebula confirms.
Those words brought a smile to Gamora's face. It made her very happy to see her sister actually relax a little around someone and have a little bit of fun. Nebula, on the other hand, looked more contemplative. She hasn't done anything for her own enjoyment in... she can't even remember how long. She doesn't even know if she remembers what that feels like.
Later, Tony records a message for Pepper. He says not to post the recording to social media because it'll be a tearjerker. He says he doesn't know if she'll see them or if she's still...
"I hadn't thought about that." Tony realized, now panicking. What if Pepper didn't make it? or Happy. God he hoped they'd managed to survive. He doesn't know what he would do without them.
Tony says it's been 22 days and that he'd say he was feeling better if it wasn't for the existential terror of staring into the void of space.
"That is an experience that I don't think I'd even wish on my worst enemy." Loki said. Falling through the void was...- if he could forget it he would.
Tony says the infection has run it's course thanks to Nebula, whom he calls 'Blue Meanie.'
"Fitting nickname." Quill said.
He says Pepper would love her and says Nebula is very practical and only a tiny bit sadistic.
"Thank you for the compliment." Nebula said.
Tony says the fuel cells were cracked in battle and they found a way to reverse the ion-charge and bought themselves 48 hours of flight time and says that is now dead in the water.
Pepper's lip quivered a bit. Tony was in space right now. What if they got stuck there? What if no one finds them? What if he never comes back? Tony looked beside him and at Pepper. "Hey. Pep. It'll be fine. We're not going to get stuck in space." He said trying to bring her some comfort, even though there was no way he could be sure of that.
Tony says their oxygen will run out the next morning.
Everyone felt their hearts stop in worry. They were going to die in space. They had no fuel, nearly no oxygen, and it seemed like they also had no one to contact for help. They were on their own, stranded in space.
'Is this really how I go out?' Tony thought to himself. 'Floating in space?'
Nebula was also pondering the same question, albeit a little differently. She had come face to face with her own mortality again and again for years. Training under Thanos, she always thaught that he'd eventually kill her when he made another modification to her body. She remembers thinking that 'this is the last one. I can't take any more of it.' So yeah, she's okay with facing her death. But not like this, she was not going to die stranded in space, she refused.
He says he knows that he promised no more surprises but he was hoping he could pull off one last one.
"It'd take a miracle." Pepper said, choking on her words.
He says she shouldn't feel bad about it and to grovel for a couple weeks and move on with enormous guilt and that he should rest his eyes. He tells her that when he drifts off he'll be thinking of her as always.
Pepper wiped the tears off of her cheeks with the side of her hand but that didn't stop them from coming. Tony brought Pepper's hand to his mouth to kiss her palm to giver her some semblance of comfort, then brought his arm over her shoulders and held her. The hopelessness and realness of the situation was starting to settle in again.
Tony ends the recording, and lies down using his jacket as a blanket. Later, after Tony falls asleep, Nebula moves him to one of the seats.
Tony smiled at Nebula in silent thanks.
The camera panned to show the view of space. A warmer colored light reflects off of Tony's face.
Tony and Nebula felt a little spark of hope. Were they going to be saved? They hoped they were being saved.
Tony struggles to adjust to the brightness and looks out the window to see Carol in front of the ship.
"Oh thank God." Tony sighed, feeling like he could cry with relief. "Or- or I guess thank you." He said to Carol.
Steve rinses his razor in the sink. He looks up in the mirror, revealing his beard is gone.
"Oh. Why'd you shave it? It suited you." Natasha asked.
He notices the mirror shaking. Outside, Carol is arriving with the Benetar.
"Thank you so much, you saved our lives... returned us to Earth so... thank you." Tony said to Carol, voice shaking with emotions. "And- and I'm sure he's grateful too." He added, referring to his onscreen future self. Carol smiled in acceptance of Tony's thanks.
Natasha, Steve, Rhodey and Bruce go outside and join Pepper.
Tony felt yet another rush of relief. Pepper lived. "I'm sorry for making you worry." Tony said.
"You are never leaving this planet again." Pepper said. "You keep your feet on Earth and only Earth."
Carol brings the ship down. Nebula helps Tony down the stairs, Steve runs up to help. Tony says he couldn't stop Thanos.
Steve says he couldn't either.
"None of us could." Natasha said. "We didn't stand a chance."
Tony says he lost the kid.
Tony felt the guilt swell up in his chest, it was a familiar feeling at this point. His future self- he- should never have involved Peter Parker in this mess, the kid should have never been on Titian, he should have been on Earth with his aunt where he would have been safe... or at least safer.
May let out a shaky breath. She doesn't think she could ever forget looking at that screen in front of them and watching her nephew disappear into thin air, the way he pleaded, said he didn't want to go. Just the thought of it was enough to make her start crying. She promised that she would look after and keep him safe and now he's gone. Her nephew was gone.
Steve says they lost.
"We did. We lost big time." Tony agreed.
"But we can fix this, right? Please tell me we can fix this." Scott said, desperately.
Pepper runs up to them and hugs Tony, crying. Tony kisses her cheek and they all walk back. Rocket and Nebula sit on the stairs of the Benetar and hold each other's hands.
"We're the only ones left. Gotta stick together, right?" Rocket said, sadness replacing the usual angry and condescending tone he had.
The next day, everyone is gathered in a meeting room. Pictures of 'snapped' people are shown.
Thor looked down sadly when he saw Selvig's picture among them. Okoye and T'Challa gasped when they say Shuri's picture.
Rhodey says it's been 23 days since Thanos left Earth. Natasha says that governments are in pieces and the parts that are still working are trying to get a census.
"I hadn't even thought about the political side." Maria admitted.
"I don't even want to imagine what the world is going to look like once the dust settles." Natasha said.
"It's going to be a nightmare." Wanda said, blankly.
Natasha says it looks like Thanos did what he said he would and wiped out 50% of all living creatures.
Everyone remained silent, just letting the words sink in. If they ever were in denial, they weren't anymore. This happened and now they needed to figure out a way to fix it or work through it or something.
Tony asks where Thanos is now.
Steve says they don't know and tells Tony that he opened a portal and walked through.
"He could quite literally be anywhere and it would take longer than our lifetimes to find him." Bruce sighed.
Tony notices Thor sitting alone and asks what's wrong with him.
Rocket says Thor's pissed because he thinks he failed and says that he did fail but there's a lot of that going around.
"That's one way to put it." Valkyrie said.
Tony says he thought Rocket was a Build-A-Bear the whole time.
Rocket says maybe he is.
"Do you even know what a Build-A-Bear is?" Tony asked Rocket.
"No." Rocket said, frankly.
Steve says they've been hunting Thanos for 3 weeks and came up empty.
"What about tracking the stones? Like what we did with the Tesseract." Bruce suggested. "If we were able to do that on a grand scale, maybe we could find him."
Steve says Tony fought him.
Tony asks who told him that and says Thanos wiped his face with a planet while Strange- 'the Bleeker street Magician'- gave the Time Stone away.
"I did what had to be done." Strange said. "It was the only way to ensure that we could still win."
"And we still lost!" Tony nearly shouted.
Tony says there was no fight because Thanos is unbeatable.
"No one is unbeatable." Gamora said. "If he bleeds, which he does, than he can die."
Steve asks Tony is Thanos gave Tony any clues or coordinates that they can use.
"Now why would he have done that?" Tony asked. "Why would he have told me where he was gonna go after he did what he set out to do?"
Tony says he haw this coming a few years back.
"In the wormhole... his ship was there. Obviously you now know that, you saw it too" Tony said. "I wish I could've done something.
Tony says he had a vision and didn't want to believe it. Steve asks Tony to focus. Tony says he needed Steve and that it's too late.
"I refuse to believe that. It can't be too late." Steve said. He couldn't just give up, not when they haven't tried everything.
Tony stands up and says he needs to shave and says he remembers telling them that they needed a suit of armor around the world.
"Now is not the time to be fighting." Natasha said, angrily. "Now is the time that we need to actually work together for once instead of the two of you butting heads about everything."
Rhodey tries to sit Tony back down. Tony says they needed it whether it impacted their freedoms or not.
"Tony I get what you're trying to say. I get what you mean, I do. But you cannot control everything. No matter how much you want to believe that you can, some things happen that you can't stop. This is one of those things." Rhodey said.
Steve says that didn't work out. Tony says he told Steve they'd lose and Steve said that they would do that together, then says they lost and Steve wasn't there.
"You weren't either." Steve said.
"We broke apart. That's how we lost the first time. Do you two really want to go for round two?" Clint asked.
Tony says that they do their best work after the fact and says they're the Avengers not the Pre-vengers.
Rhodey tells Tony to sit down and that he made his point.
"Yeah you should really sit down, you aren't looking too good." Bruce said. "You're stressing yourself out and that is the exact opposite of what you should be doing."
Tony looks at Carol, calls her great and says that they need her.
"Thank you?" Carol said, feeling a little confused.
Tony breaks free from Rhodey's hold and tells Steve that he has nothing for him including trust and calls him a liar.
Steve flinched, even though he hadn't done it yet, he felt a lot of regret for lying to Tony about his parents and Bucky's apparent involvement in their passing's. They didn't really know each other very well in their own time and it seemed like any friendship that they may start was becoming more doomed by the second. It was like the two of them were destined to dislike each other.
Tony rips the nano-particle housing unit off his chest and shoves it into Steve's hand, and tells Steve to find Thanos, put the housing unit on and hide, then he collapses.
Bruce gave Tony a look that said 'I told you so.'
Tony is now in bed. Rhodey tells everyone that Bruce gave him a sedative and he'll be out for the rest of the day.
Carol tells them to take care of Tony and she'll bring him a Xorrian elixir when she returns.
"Whoa whoa whoa, where are you going? Now is not the time to be splitting up." Sam said.
Steve asks her where she's going.
Carol says she's going to kill Thanos.
"You don't even know where he is. And this is something we should be doing together." Natasha said. "Especially considering where splitting up landed us."
Natasha tells Carol that they usually work as a team and their morale is fragile.
Steve says they know that space is more her territory but this fight is theirs too.
"You're right." Carol admitted. "If we're gonna do this, we should do it right."
Rhodey asks if she even knows where he is.
Carol says she knows people who might.
Nebula tells her not to bother.
"You know what happened to him?" Bruce asked.
"It was our bedtime story." Nebula said, morbidly.
Nebula says she can tell them where Thanos is. She says Thanos spent a long time trying to perfect her and he talked about his plan when he worked. She says she wanted to please him even when she was disassembled.
Only when she revisited those memories now, was Nebula finally able to acknowledge the damage that Thanos did to her. Only know was she able to realize how horrible the things he'd forced her to do were, how horrible the things that she'd done of her own volition were.
'That's Stockholm Syndrome if I've ever seen it' Bruce thought.
Nebula says she used to ask where they'd go when the plan was complete and that Thano's answer was always the same and says he'd said they'd go to The Garden.
"The Garden?" Sam asked. "You're kidding, right?"
Rhodey says Thanos had a retirement plan and says it's cute.
"He wiped out half the universe and thinks he can just retire peacefully?" Clint asked. "I don't think so."
Steve asks where he is.
Rocket brings up a hologram of Earth and says that when Thanos snapped, the planet became ground zero for a power surge of ridiculously high cosmic proportions.
"Makes sense. That much energy had to catch the attention of something. It couldn't go unnoticed." Bruce said.
Rocket says no one's ever seen anything like it until two days ago on another planet.
"Wait wait wait wait wait. Does that mean that he used them again?" Peter asked.
Nebula says Thanos is there.
Natasha realizes that Thanos used the stones again.
"I don't know what he'd need to use them for." Gamora said. "He already got everything he wanted." She added, bitterly.
Bruce warns them that they'd be going in shorthanded.
Rhodey says Thanos still has the stones.
"What so we go in there, beat him up and take the stones, snap our own fingers and hope that it fixes everything?" Bruce asked, skeptically.
"It's worth a try... we can't just do nothing and let him win." Carol said.
Carol says they should get the stones to bring everyone back.
Natasha says that they owe it to everyone who isn't in the room to try even if the chance is slim.
"Okay." Bruce said. "God, I hope this works."
Bruce asks how they could know it won't end any differently than before.
"He has a point. What if you guys go in there and more of you don't come back?" Tony asked. "What then?"
Carol says they didn't have her before.
"With all do respect, I don't think that will make a difference. Especially if he has the stones." Rhodey said.
Rhodey tells her that everyone in the room is about the superhero life and asks her where she's been the whole time.
"Defending other planets of people who don't have a team of people do do it for them." Carol explained. "And looking for the other displaced Skrulls."
Carol says there's lots of other planets that unfortunately didn't have Avengers.
"Yeah okay that's a fair point." Rhodey said.
Thor steps up to Carol and summons Storm-breaker. Carol doesn't flinch as it flies past her head. Thor says he likes her.
"Thank you, Thor." Carol said. "You're pretty cool too, dude."
Steve says they should go get Thanos, and calls Thanos a son of a bitch.
"Steve, such language." Tony said, scandalized. Steve sighed, he should've seen that coming from a mile away.
Everyone is on the Benetar. Rocket asks who hasn't been to space. Natasha, Steve and Rhodey raise their hands. Rocket tells them not to throw up in his ship.
"Our ship." Peter corrected, laughing breathily. "Even if the rest of us aren't there... still our ship."
They go through the jump point that leads them to The planet Thanos is on. Carol flies down to the surface for recon. Steve looks at a picture of Peggy in his compass.
"You still have it." Peggy said, shocked and also touched.She didn't think it would have been recovered in the wreckage of the Valkyrie. She thought it belonged to the ocean now, but evidentially she was wrong.
Natasha tells Steve that this is going to work.
Steve says he knows it will and that he doesn't know what he'll do if it doesn't.
"This isn't the kind of thing that you can just move on from." Steve said. "We won't be able to just go back to living out our lives again."
Carol comes back, saying that it's only him down there and there's no defense of any kind.
"He's alone?" Nebula asked. "That doesn't make any sense."
"Maybe it makes perfect sense. If he wields all 6 stones, he's one of the most powerful men in the universe. Maybe he didn't see the need for defense." Gamora suggested.
"I don't know... this all seems weird to me." Bruce said.
Nebula says that's enough.
"At least we don't have to fight another army." Rhodey said, trying to find some sort of silver lining. "But something about this still seems fishy."
They all go to the surface of the planet.
Everyone was taken aback by the beauty and... serene calmness of the planet. It definitely didn't seem like the type of planet someone like Thanos would want to live out the rest of his life on.
Thanos' armor is on a pole outside of a cabin, Thanos harvests some fruit. The gauntlet is fried.
"I'm surprised that that gauntlet is still in one piece after taking all of that energy and radiation." Tony commented.
Inside the cabin, Thanos prepares some food. His scarred side is revealed.
"That snap really did a number on him." Quill said.
Carol bursts through Thanos's cabin, and puts him in a chokehold. Bruce, in the Hulk-buster armor- Grabs the arm with the gauntlet. Rhodey flies in and pulls his other arm. Thor uses Storm-breaker to cut the arm with the gauntlet off.
Thor seemed a little pleased with himself, but the act also filled him with intense regret. Why hadn't he- or any of them for that matter- thought to cut off the gauntlet rather than continue to try and pry it from his body, failing every single time they tried?
Steve and Natasha walk in. Rocket turns over the gauntlet, revealing that the stones are gone.
"No." Thor said, angrily. They cannot fail again. The stones had to be around there somewhere, right?
"Hey, hey they might still be there." Valkyrie tried to assure him. "We shouldn't give up hope just yet."
Steve asks where the stones are. Thanos says the universe required correction.
"Was that before or after you decimated half of it?" Carol asked, rhetorically.
Thanos says the stones served no purpose beyond temptation after that.
"That doesn't explain what he did with them." Natasha said.
Bruce says Thanos murdered trillions and shoves him to the floor.
Thanos says they should be grateful.
"Grateful for what, exactly?" Wanda asked, voice shaking with anger and sadness. "Half of all life is gone. And you don't seem to feel any remorse for it."
"You took away my family. You took away everyone's loved ones. Destroyed lives, governments, environments, planets. And you think we should be grateful for that?" Clint asked, a deadly anger in his voice. "Thankful for all of that destruction? I don't think so."
Natasha asks where the stones are. Thanos says they're gone and that they've been reduced to atoms.
Everyone felt like sobbing or screaming, or both. This couldn't be happening. This had to be- this was the worst possible outcome of these events. They have to live in a world where Thanos wins and they can't do anything to fix it.
A sob escaped May's throat, and that set Peter off which set off a chain reaction of people in the room with them breaking down in tears of hopelessness because they can't do anything to get their loved ones back. They can't do anything correct what Thanos caused.
Natasha's breath hitched and she wiped a few tears off her face. "What are we gonna do?"
Bruce mentions that Thanos used them 2 days ago. Thanos says he used the stones to destroy the stones and it nearly killed him.
"I wish it would have." Nebula growled. Thanos took away her sister, she wanted him to feel that same pain.
Thanos says the work is done and always will be because he is inevitable.
Rhodey says they should tear the cabin apart because Thanos might by lying.
Nebula says Thanos is many thing but not a liar.
Thanos thanks her and says he may have treated her too harshly.
"May have? You tortured me. All of us because we didn't fit your image and claimed that it was to make us better." Nebula said, wanting to scream the words but kept them hushed anyway.
Thor uses Storm-breaker to cut Thanos' head off. Rocket asks what he did.
"I think it's pretty obvious what he did." Quill said.
Thor says he went for the head. Nebula closes Thanos' eyes. Thor leaves the cabin and uses the Bifrost to leave the planet.
Thor frowned. He thought Thanos' death would have been more gratifying but it was anything but. Sure the threat is gone but what he did still can't be reversed and they still have to deal with that.