my endgame : stony

15: post

maria sits on the ground, tears rolling down her face as she looks down into her hands. she looks up at nat with quivering lips. rhodey finds his way to where maria, nat, rocket and thor are standing.

"did.. did we just lose?"
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maria and the rest of the remaining avengers return back to HQ.

maria cracks her way into tony's lab. she begins to upgrade her suit and repair it. as she's welding a piece back into her suit, a screwdriver falls out it maria's hand and lands on tony's laptop.

"hey kid"

maria stops welding as she hears tony's voice, she wipes her forehead with a rag and turns around. a hologram of tony projects from his computer,

"you probably won't understand this right now but.. when you're older"
"i'll have to show you these recordings"

a little giggle escapes the recording and a little girl runs across the hologram. it's maria, someone else walks into frame and picks up maria and holds her,

"tony, what are you doing?" maria's eyes tear up

steve goes to look directly into the lense,
"it's a recording for future maria" tony motions steve to sit next to him

"say whatever you want to say to future maria"

steve sits down and hands maria to tony, he takes a breath in and looks directly at maria.

"maria, you are such an amazing little girl. you will always be my baby girl and i will always protect you."

"you will grow up into a strong woman and fight along side me and your dad" he looks at little maria and then back into the lens

"love you lots" the hologram cuts out

maria stands there, crying. she goes to sit down at the desk. she wipes the tears from her cheeks and looks at tony's desk, his first arc reactor, a picture of steve and a picture of him, maria and steve. she goes to pick up the family picture, she admires it and then gets an idea.
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somewhere in space

tony turns on his helmet to record one last message to maria,

"hey maria... if you get this recording don't show your dad, it'll be a real tear jerker. i don't know if you're ever going to listen to these. i don't even know if you're still.. oh god i hope you are. it's the 21, wait... 22 days out here in space. i'm feeling better today, thanks to the blue meanie.. you'd love her. some fuel cells were cracked during battle but we bought 48 hours of flight time when repairing some things.. oxygen will run out tomorrow. i was hoping to pull off a surprise, but that looks like.. well you know what it looks like. i should probably lie down, please know that when i drift off, i will think of you... it's always you"

tony shuts off his helmet and grabs his jacket and puts it over one side of his body and lies down next to his helmet, smiling before he closes his eyes.
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HQ

maria walks out of tonys lab and into bruce's. nat, rhodey and bruce are staring at something,

"what's. going on?" maria walks up to them

"a pager fury or maria dropped"
"it's been on since thanos happened" bruce takes off his glasses

suddenly the objects shuts off,
"i thought you bypassed the battery?" rhodey questions bruce

bruce walks up to it and checks it out,
"yeah, i did.. maybe the signal went out"

"well whenever it decides to turn back on, i need to know who's on the other side of this" nat turns around

a blonde haired girl in a space suit is standing there behind all of them, with a serious yet concerned face,

"where's fury?"