CHAPTER 2

How long had he had the beard at this point?

Steve Rogers couldn't remember exactly.

It was at least a couple of years. Or maybe it just seemed that way. And now here he was, standing over a sink in Avengers headquarters, razor in hand. As warm water ran from the faucet, Steve shook the razor beneath the stream, and then dragged it from the bottom of his neck, up toward his chin. He ran the razor beneath the water once more, then shook it, setting it down on the porcelain.

Grabbing a towel, he cleaned his face, blotting it dry, and then stared into the mirror. Steve hardly recognized the clean-shaven man staring him in the face.

Thanks to the effects of suspended animation, it was the face of the same man who had gone down in the ice more than 70 years ago.

And in many ways, thanks to all he had seen in the short time since he had been revived, it was quite different. More world-weary, if not older.

Looking into the mirror, he adjusted a smaller side mirror on a metal arm to get a closer look. The mirror started to shake, so he reached out to steady it.

The mirror continued to shake, and then the bathroom itself started to rock as well.

A second later, Steve was out the door.

*　*　*

Outside the Avengers headquarters in upstate New York, Steve Rogers had assembled with his teammates Natasha Romanoff, Bruce Banner, and James Rhodes. Each Avenger gazed into the night sky, as an aircraft, the likes of which none had seen before, hovered above.

No, not hovered.

It was being held aloft.

By Carol Danvers.

They had met the mysterious woman only a short time ago, when she had barged into Avengers HQ demanding to see Nick Fury. She had received an SOS from the pager she had given him years ago, and had traveled from the furthest reaches of space to answer his distress call. When she arrived, she didn't find Fury. But she found the Avengers.

Carol set the ship down on the lawn outside the compound, where Pepper Potts was waiting, anxiously. A moment later, the hatch opened, and a blue-skinned woman emerged, helping Tony Stark carefully walk down to the ground below. Steve bolted over to help his friend, taking his weight from Nebula.

Steve thought he heard Tony say something, but his voice was so weak. "Couldn't stop him," it sounded like.

"Neither could I," Steve replied. He simply didn't know what else to say.

For a moment, they stopped walking, and Pepper rushed to Tony's side. She wrapped her arms around him, hugging him close.

"I lost the kid," Tony was angry and guilt-ridden. Steve knew that he meant Peter Parker.

"Tony, we lost," Steve answered. So very much .

As Pepper led Tony away from the spacecraft, Steve turned to see the blue-skinned woman sit down on the stair coming out of the ship. Rocket approached and sat down next to her.

They clasped hands and grieved together in silent understanding.

*　*　*

Tony Stark didn't look like himself, not at all. The battle with Thanos, the infection and illness from his wounds, and the deprivations of deep-space travel on limited resources had all taken their toll. He looked gaunt, skin stretched over bone, eyes sunken in their sockets. He was pale, and seemed almost paranoid. He sat in a wheelchair, hooked up to an IV to replenish fluids and nutrition as quickly as possible. But he clearly had no patience for the time it would take to heal his physical wounds. The mental ones would take even longer.

He looked up from his wheelchair, recognized that he was inside one of the lounges inside the Avengers headquarters. Around him were his teammates. Well, some of them. As well as some new faces.

And hovering above them on holographic displays were the faces of Tony's other teammates, and comrades that he had only just come to know. Beneath each photo was a name. And next to each name, a word that Tony had come to loathe.

JAMES BARNES

MISSING

STEPHEN STRANGE

MISSING

ERIK SELVIG

MISSING

SAMUEL WILSON

MISSING

HOPE VAN DYNE

MISSING

WANDA MAXIMOFF

MISSING

HENRY PYM

MISSING

SCOTT LANG

MISSING

PETER PARKER

MISSING

SHURI

MISSING

T'CHALLA

MISSING

NICK FURY

MISSING

The moment when Thanos snapped his fingers and unleashed the full potential of the Infinity Gauntlet, those people—and trillions of others across the universe—simply ceased to exist.

Tony was lost in the world of the missing, when he heard the voice of his friend, James Rhodes—Rhodey, to his friends and teammates.

"It's been twenty-three days since Thanos came to Earth," Rhodes said solemnly.

"World governments are in pieces," Natasha added. "The parts that are still working are trying to take a census and it looks like he did... he did exactly what he said he was gonna do. Thanos wiped out fifty percent of all living creatures." She tried to stay matter-of-fact about this revelation as the truth was just too overwhelming even for her cool nature to fully absorb.

Tony looked away from the holographic images and over at his teammates. He noticed that one of them wasn't inside the room. Rather, he was outside, brooding.

Thor.

"Where is he now?" Tony wanted to know about Thanos. "Where?"

Steve sighed. "We don't know. He just opened a portal and walked through."

Tony bit the inside of his cheek nervously, and pushed his wheelchair. Staring in Thor's direction, he inquired, "What's wrong with him?" Besides the obvious.

Even though he wasn't in the room, Thor looked up, through the window, at Tony.

"Well, he's pissed," Rocket observed, sitting with his back against the wall. "He thinks he failed. Which, of course, he did. But, you know, there's a lot of that going around, ain't there?" They all felt it.

Tony stared at Rocket, then without missing a beat, said, "Honestly, until this exact second, I thought you were a Build-a-Bear."

"Maybe I am," Rocket replied. He enjoyed defying expectations. His life was a testament to it, in fact.

Tony wasn't sure what to do with that.

Rather than debate the merits of Rocket's Build-a-Bear-ness, Steve continued the briefing. "We've been hunting Thanos for three weeks now. Deep space scans, satellites, and we got nothing. Tony, you fought him."

Tony whipped his head around to look at Steve. "Who told you that? I didn't fight him. No, he wiped my face with a planet while the Bleecker Street magician gave away the stone. That's what happened. There was no fight, 'cause he's not... he's not beatable." He couldn't hide the bitterness. Or defeat.

‘The Bleecker Street Magician’ was Doctor Stephen Strange. Tony was still reeling from the way the sorcerer had just given away the Time Stone—the Infinity Stone entrusted to his protection—to Thanos. Just to save Tony's life. Making it somehow doubly Tony's fault that they lost.

"Okay," Steve tried to figure out a next step rather than focus on the negative. "Did he give you any clues, any coordinates, anything?"

Tony looked at Steve, then touched his hand to his temple as if he was thinking of something. Then he blew a loud raspberry.

Natasha and Steve exchanged concerned glances. This wasn't the Tony they knew. Would he be able to come back from this dark place?

"I saw this coming a few years back," Tony complained, his voice taking on the tone of a rant. "I had a vision. I didn't wanna believe it. Thought I was dreaming."

"Tony, I'm gonna need you to focus," Steve said gently.

"And I needed you," Tony snapped. "As in past tense. That trumps what you need. It's too late, buddy. Sorry."

Tony leaned over the table, sniffing a bowl of food. He reached a hand out, and knocked the bowl to the floor. Then he stood up from the wheelchair.

"You know what I need? I need a shave," Tony declared, ripping the IV right out of his arm.

"Tony, Tony, Tony!" James called out. His friend was going over the edge fast.

"And I believe I remember telling all of you that what we needed was a suit of armor around the world. Remember that? Whether it impacted our precious freedoms or not. That's what we needed." Tony was growing manic in his misery.

"Well, that didn't work out, did it?" Steve reminded him.

"I said we'd lose. You said, ‘We'll do that together, too.’ And guess what, Cap? We lost. And you weren't there. But that's what we do, right? Our best work after the fact?" His voice continued to rise in an accusatory tone.

Tony seemed delirious, and staggered backward. James took a step forward, and grabbed Tony's arm to steady him. Then he tried to push him back down into the seat of his wheelchair. But Tony wasn't having it.

"We're ‘the Avengers.’ We're the ‘Avengers,’ not the ‘Pre-Vengers.’ Right?" He was consumed by what they hadn't done.

"You made your point," James said to his friend. "Just sit down, okay?"

Pointing to Carol Danvers, Tony said, "Okay. No, no, here's my point. You know what? She's great, by the way." His thoughts were awhirl in his mind, moving too fast for his mouth to keep up.

"Tony, you're sick. Sit down," James urged.

"We need you," Tony said to Carol, who simply watched as the madman raved amidst the circle of her new companions. "You're new blood."

And then he looked at Steve Rogers.

"Bunch of tired old mules," Tony snarled. "I got nothing for you. Cap, I got no coordinates. No clues, no strategies, no options. Zero. Zip. Nada. No trust."

And then he condemned his former teammate in a harsh whisper, "Liar."

Then he tore the housing from his chest that contained the Iron Man armor, ripped it clean off. And he handed it to Steve.

"Here, take this," Tony insisted, nearly losing his balance. "You find him, you put that on. You hide."

Then Tony Stark collapsed to the floor.