"I WAS BORN WITH MY HEART ON MY SLEEVE, FIRE IN MY SOUL, AND A MOUTH I CAN'T CONTROL."
In which only one of the Cunningham sisters will make it out alive.
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Iris was still trying to get used to the feeling of watching her body fall toward the concrete roof while Bruce went straight to begging.
Even in his weird holographic form, Bruce made a serious effort, but the pleads fell to deaf ears.
"I'm sorry, I can't help you, Bruce. If I give up the Time Stone to help your Reality, I'm dooming my own."
"With all due respect, I'm not sure the science supports that."
"Or common sense." Iris chirped.
The woman paused and turned around, and with a few quick movements of her hands that looked eerily similar to Stephen's motions, a ray of black smoke stretched as far as she could see.
It vanished over the horizon on both ends, and Iris wondered briefly if others on the street noticed it too.
"The Infinity Stones create what you experience as the flow of time. Remove one stone and that flow splits." On her last words, the woman waved her hand, and a stream separated from the main river, spiraling off into who knows where. Iris watched it expand until it vanished behind a building. "This may benefit your reality, but my new one, not so much. In this new branched reality, without our chief weapon against the forces of darkness, our world will be overrun. Millions will suffer. So, tell me, Doctor, can your science prevent all that?"
She waved her hands, and the streams disappeared into thin air. Iris was stumped (more confused than stumped, but whatever. She didn't know how this time travel stuff worked, hell, she barely registered it was happening in the first place.)
Bruce, however, seemed to have an answer for everything. "No, but we can erase it. Because once we're done with the stones, we can return each one to its timeline at the moment it was taken. So, chronologically, in that reality, it never left."
"But you are leaving out the most important part. To return the stones, you have to survive."
That, Iris realized, is a really good point.
Bruce and the woman argued for a moment before Iris decided to step in. "This is nice and all, but riddle me this: Why did Stephen give it up in the first place?"
The bald woman looked surprised. "What did you say?"
Iris was half shocked she'd gotten through to her. "Stephen, he gave away, to Thanos."
"Willingly?"
"Yes, for me. For all of us."
She paused. "Why?"
"I don't know, maybe because he's a good person and not a complete dickhead?"
The woman in yellow rabes began to pace, walking back and forth until she stopped and mumbled under her breath. "Perhaps I've made a mistake." She stretched out her hand in Bruce's direction and pulled back. Bruce's holographic form lunged back into his hulk body, and he stumbled for footing.
