INERTIA ↠ AVENGERS FANFIC

TWENTY FOUR- DUST

[THREE YEARS LATER]

"Hey Carol," Zara yelled from the front of the ship. 

"I'm... busy," she responded, her tone thick with struggle. A spark sounded from the ship and Carol groaned in frustration. Zara quickly put the ship on auto-pilot to see what Carol was doing, and to probably make fun of her. 

She laid on the floor of the ship, fiddling with exposed wires coming out of an access panel close to the ship's door. 

"What the hell are you doing?" Zara asked urgently, pulling Carol off the ground and assessing the damage to her ship. 

Carol crossed her arms. "I'm trying to fix the stereo in here because I'm tired of the silence. You said you'd do it three weeks ago, but-"

"Seems to me like you're trying to break my ship."

"Our ship."

"My ship."

Carol smiled. "Right. Well. You're obviously the one better at fixing things, so I'll leave you to it."

"Wow. You know Carol really wants something done when she admits someone is better at it than her. It'll get done," Zara said, closing the control panel. 

Carol groaned. She was many things, but an engineer was not one of them. "When?"

"Eventually."

"Come on, Keaton. You know I love my tunes. You've deprived me for three weeks, aren't you getting bored of sitting in silence all day every day?"

"Fine, Danvers, you're right." Zara begrudgingly opened the panel back up. "Go get the tool kit from the supply closet."

Zara fiddled with the wires, trying to figure out what Carol had broke and what was already broken. The rest of her ship was in good shape, so she figured it was just a faulty switch. Her search revealed a multitude of broken fuses, which appeared a problem because she didn't have any extra ones lying around. 

"Apologies, Danvers, but we're gonna going to have to stop at Xandar to pick up more fuses. And Zarg Nuts, since you ate the rest of mine."

Zara heard the echo of a shatter.  "And to replace whatever you just broke."

Silence ensued, and Zara didn't think much of it until five minutes had passed without Carol returning with the tool kit. She got up from the floor, tossing the broken wires she had removed to the ground. The supply closet door swing slowly and blocked the view of what was behind it, sending an eerie feeling down Zara's spine.

"Carol?"

No answer. 

"Danvers, I swear to god if you're trying to punk me again I'll boot your ass of this ship."

Zara crept down the hall, expecting to see Carol jump out at her when she pulled the door back. 

But all she saw was a small pile of dust. 

Zara reached down to touch the pile, it was so dry and loose that it disintegrated in between her fingers. She looked down the to the end of the corridor, panic sweeping across her face. 

"Carol, if you're pranking me right now I'm not fixing the damned stereo."

Zara's attention was pulled to the pile of dirt again, as she heard a high-pitched beep slightly muffled by the ash. 

The vibrations of a small pager pushed all the ash off of it, revealing a message written it a retro font. 

EMERGENCY ON EARTH. 

[24 HOURS LATER]

 Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff were nothing if not confused. And hurting. And confused. 

After two years of being on the run, they had gotten a call from someone they assumed to be dead who told them that their ex-best friend and coworker extraordinaire was in dire need of their help. 

But once they had arrived in Wakanda, it seemed to be too late. Tony was already gone and they had no idea who they were fighting against. Bruce described him as a giant purple alien who wants to murder half the universe, but the description did little to provide any insight on how he could be defeated. 

Apparently, it didn't matter. 

Steve and Natasha knew it was too late when they saw him for the first time. He was tall, diminishing and the aura around him took away all feelings of hope and optimism. 

The Avengers, or what was left of them, were in shock. They'd fought aliens before, but nothing like this. Nothing had ever been like this. 

Sam, Wanda, and Bucky were gone. Tony probably was too, considering they hadn't heard from him since Siberia. Fury was gone too. And T'Challa. And Maria. 

The air in the Avengers compound hung heavy. It felt like a bad dream, a nightmare, but they all knew there was no waking up. Half the world was gone. And there was nothing they could do. 

But they sat there anyway, trying to make sense of where the world was, and trying to make sense of the unknown energy source coming from Fury's pager. 

Natasha found it when she tried to track him down, and the pager served as a short distraction from reality as she tried to discover where it came from. Bruce helped her recognize the energy signature as alien, but they didn't know much more than that. 

A bionic arm held the pager in the room next to Steve and Natasha, who watched the global death rates increase into the three billions. 

"This is a nightmare," Steve said lowly. 

Natasha tried to stifle her emotions. "I've had better nightmares."

"Hey." James Rhodes entered the room, not much more chipper than his teammates. "So that thing just stopped doing whatever the hell it was doing."

Steve and Natasha followed Rhodey to the lab where the pager was, along with Bruce Banner who studied it. 

"What do we got?" Natasha asked Bruce. 

"Whatever signal it's sending finally cracked off."

Steve crossed his arms. "I thought we bypassed the battery."

"We did. It's still plugged in, it just stopped."

"Reboot it, send the signal again."

"We don't even know what this is," Bruce said, pointing to the device. 

"Fury did. Just do it please," Natasha said, knowing that the person on the other end of the signal was her last hope at maybe fixing this horrendous problem. "The second you get to the other end of that signal, I want to know who's on the other end of that thing."

Natasha turned to leave, but a familiar persona blocked her way. 

"What the hell happened here?"