ACATALEPSY ➺ loki

28 , home alone

It was hard saying goodbye to Vision and Wanda the next morning, knowing that the next time I would see them was going to be in the midst of a war that neither may make it out of alive, but I had to put on a brave face as I hugged the girl and shook Vision's hand—knowing that I was the one here who was meant to know what they were doing. I had tried to take Loki's advise and managed to actually get at least an hours worth of sleep, but even so, I knew that there were dark circles very visible around my eyes this morning no matter what I did to conceal them.

T'Chaka had sent one of Wakanda's transport ships very similar to the kind Shuri had come in a little while prior, for Vision and Wanda to travel back in, and the whole team was standing out in the lawn waving goodbye to the two as the ship lifted off the ground. I stayed standing there in the chilly weather until I could no longer see the little black spot that had become of the ship in the flurry of falling snow. As I made my way back inside, I caught bits of Tony and Pepper's conversation as they walked ahead—the latter quite rightfully wanting to know of her partners plans for the next few weeks. Especially since they consisted of quite a lot of life threatening things. "So... you're going to be leaving with the others as soon as you get the go ahead from Wakanda, right?" Pepper was asking.

"Yes, Honey. Reindeer Games and Elaina will be the ones left in the compound since she's decided to trust the guy with her life, so you won't be alone. We'll all be alright, trust me. Besides, it's not like I could stay back and let the others have all the fun even if I didn't need to be there. Nothing's getting in the way of me seeing that smug son of a bitches face when he realises exactly what we've done. Not even you, babe—I'm sorry." Pepper rolled her eyes as Tony gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before walking back into his lab to start working on god knows what. It seemed all the avengers were working with a new passion ever since the news had been broken that Thanos had one of the stones. It almost felt like we had all been too scared to really make any moves, but now it felt like things couldn't exactly get much worse, so just... screw it and do whatever. It might not have been the best motto for what we were about to do, but it would have to suffice.

We new that Thanos couldn't get to the stones on Asagrd, so we knew that the ball was in our court for the moment. He couldn't do anything until we moved them... and he was going to get them eventually... so why fight it? Why not instead use that knowledge to our own advantage rather than try fight the inevitable? I just hoped against hope that it wouldn't be too long before Shuri and the others over in Wakanda could find a way to safely get the stone out of Vision. I knew that it would take longer than it had in the movies as we were still around three years early to when it happened—meaning that obviously technology wasn't as good as it had been then. But I trusted Shuri, and she said that she could do it... so she would. What worried me more than that was knowing that the avengers would all be leaving for Wakanda in another few days as well incase it was taking longer than expected to get the Mind stone out of Vision, so that they could one, be there to help protect the people of Wakanda if there were any surprise attacks, and two, so that they could start preparing the country for the war that was going to take place there soon.

I didn't shy away from telling the team about all the deaths that had taken place during that battle, all the ones that had happened before the snap. The people who hadn't come back at all. Those were the deaths that the avengers were going to Wakanda to try and prevent to the best of their abilities. It was mostly going to be a lot of battle planning based on what all I'd told them happened during the fight, and gathering a lot of equipment that would be needed for it in advance. I really hoped that everything the avengers were doing would make a deference in the outcome of the war, but I still felt very uneasy knowing that I wouldn't be able to join the rest of the team until the battle was already underway, as Loki and I would be somewhere else completely. I had really wanted to be there for as much of the battle as I could—knowing that there would most definitely be moments during it that I could help with, but it made the most sense for Loki to had 'kidnapped' me out of all the people who could have done it. After all, I was just the mortal damsel in distress who had been caught up in a world I didn't understand the half of, and Thanos wouldn't bat an eyelid in believing I was just stupid enough to get caught and give up the infinity stones just as easily.