The Fight Of Our Lives (one-shot)

41 3 0
                                    


Summary: Thanos might have succeeded, and not only erased half the universe, but hope in general. But humans are stubborn little bitches. And so are the Avengers. No matter if dead or not, the fight of their lives is coming and nothing will stop them from righting the wrong. (AKA this is me trying to cope with Endgame.)

Pairing: Peter Parker x f!Reader

but is very much so Avengers x f!Reader; Platonic!Steve x f!Reader; Dad!Tony x f!Reader; Platonic!Loki x f!Reader as well

Genre: angst, fluff

Warnings: mentions of death, blood, swearing, injuries

Word count: 10074 (THIS IS THE LONGEST FIC I'VE EVER WRITTEN, HOLY SHIT!!! STRAP IN< GUYS)

________________________________________________________________________________

       When the snap happened, everyone was in a state of shock. Even Thanos himself didn't necessarily understand he had succeeded, glazed eyes watching the gauntlet and his surroundings. Only when Thor backed away did he realize his goal was accomplished, so he used the Space Stone to disappear in an instant.
Y/N's head turned to the side, eyes on Steve clutching his abdomen and looking at Thor with inexplicable fear. "Where'd he go? Thor... where'd he go?
"Steve?" Bucky's voice cut through the buzzing in her head, but maybe she shouldn't have glanced at the other super soldier. Maybe then he wouldn't have turned to ash and been swept away by the winds.
People all around her either felt their hearts drop to the soles of their feet or their bodies disintegrated, and when numbness spread through Y/N's toes, she knew what was going to happen.
"Steve." His attention was immediately on her.
"Oh, no, not you too," the Captain was already rushing to her side, but his hands wrapped around a non-existent middle.
"Tell my dad, I'm sorry."
Steve was left with nothing but an empty feeling in his stomach and an even emptier field. "Oh, God."
They had lost.

***

Steve had always been a good leader. He was Captain America, the man with the plan, always ready to jump into action and give out orders while following his own like the good soldier he was, but for the first time since he could remember himself, he didn't know what to do. The reflection staring back at him as the remnants of his beard were washed away down the drain was unfamiliar.
This was a man completely lost, let alone out of his time. What was worse, he didn't know where Tony was. If he was alive. The thought gnawed at him, eating at his brain day and night for almost a month now.
He sighed deeply, letting the air enter his lungs, holding it for a second before exhaling. With a clank against the sink, he let the razor fall out of his hands. Taking the towel that was on the counter, he observed his own features in the mirror.
Steve was more than a hundred years old, yet he looked barely thirty, and despite how tired he was, mentally and physically, his counterpart looked ready to fight, if not for the exhausted look in his eyes... the eyes that were shaking.
Steve's brow furrowed when he saw the smaller mirror to his left start moving as well. A hand went to steady it, but then his razor rattled and fell into the sink, as the whole building started to tremble.
Nat, Rhodey and Pepper were already rushing outside when he joined the three. What he saw in the courtyard made his knees almost buckle from relief. He didn't care about the strange glowing woman that placed a space ship on the grass, he didn't care about Rocket moving forward with them. All he cared about was getting to the two people stepping down from the stairs.
When Steve's arms wrapped around Tony's shoulders, he could feel just how much skinnier the genius was, how malnourished and dehydrated he must be, but all that was a secondary thought to the one blaring in his mind – Tony was alive and on Earth.
"I couldn't stop him," were his first words to Steve, voice laced with pain and guilt.
Steve's eyes dropped to the ground before flitting back up. He realized what he would have to inform him of, and he wished Thanos's snap had also taken him. "Neither could I."
"I-" Tony started, unable to find the words before gulping and getting them out, solidifying them as truth. "I lost the kid."
Fuck.
"Tony, we lost."
We lost so much...
"Is umm," he struggled for a second, not wanting to ask, terrified of the answer, but he didn't even have to. Pepper was right there pulling him in her embrace, a choked back 'oh my God' escaping her before both hid their faces in the crook of their loved one's neck.
"It's okay," Tony muttered, pressing a kiss to the soft skin of her collarbone. If only for a second, it was okay.
He slowly limped back inside the compound, heavily resting against Pepper and Steve for support.
Everything was pretty much the same way he'd left it in Rohdey's care as he and Pep had gone to New York on a business trip before the whole Thanos showdown happened. Apart from the giant hologram pulling up each and every face of the people that had been dusted or were unaccounted for. With every word that Nat explained what was happening Tony felt more and more hollow. Until Peter's face went up in the air. That took the last breath out of Iron man.
"Where is he now?" he asked, rubbing at his goatee referring to Thanos, "where?"
"We don't know," came Steve's solemn response.
"He just," Rhodey shook his head, "opened a portal and walked through."
It was a lot to process. The same way he had disappeared from Titan with the Time Stone on the gauntlet was the same way he'd vanished from Earth after completing his insane task. As he looked behind him to where Thor was sulking, it turned out the god had had a chance at taking Thanos out. But revenge came with a cost.
When Steve said Tony had fought the Mad Titan it seemed like the most ridiculous thing ever.
"Who told you that? I didn't fight him," Tony pointed at himself. "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."
The cruellest thing was that they'd almost had the glove, but in the blink of an eye, it was lost once more. All that effort, and here they were – broken and beaten to a pulp.
But Steve didn't seem to give up. "Did he give you any clues, any coordinates, anything?"
Even in Tony's nightmares, it was never this bad. He surveyed the room, the people he used to call family now with gaps in it, his new acquired Blue Meanie friend and the stranger that had saved them from aimlessly floating through space, but then it hit him.
"Where's Y/N?"
Nobody dared to meet his gaze, but when Pepper squeezed his hand tighter, he didn't need words to confirm his worst fear.
"Rogers," he seethed, "where is my daughter?"
Steve's chest rattled as he exhaled. "Tony, I'm sorry." Unshed tears glistened in the Captain's eyes. He was ready for an outburst, for him to stand up and pummel him to the ground, but he didn't. Instead, Tony just turned his head to the side, looking into Pepper's eyes where tears had been streaking down her cheeks ever since he'd returned. He clenched his jaw and nodded.
"The one thing I asked of you after you broke the Avengers apart was to look out for her. Look out for my daughter, keep her safe, do not bring her into this mess," Tony was fuming and with good reason. "It was a simple thing, Rogers," he sneered, "so no, I got nothing for you, Cap! I got no coordinates, no clues, no plan, no options. Zero. Zip. Nada. No trust," Steve could feel each word cut through him like a knife, but the last word sliced his heart completely in half, "Liar."
Then Tony did something no one expected. "Here, take this," he ripped off his arc reactor and slammed it in Steve's hand. "You find him," he pointed at the blond, "and you put that on. You hide."
He was just about to start apologizing when Tony's legs suddenly gave out from underneath him, and he collapsed onto the floor.
"I'm fine," the genius waved everyone off like usual, "I'm..." but he didn't get a chance to finish his sentence before his eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he was enveloped by darkness.
Everyone was already up and acting, Bruce setting up a makeshift hospital room, Steve taking Tony in his arms and rushing him to the bed, Pepper following everyone behind, so there was not even a second more she'd be separated from Tony. Never again.
It took everyone a couple of minutes to regroup but Rhodey finally came to inform them of Tony's status. "Bruce gave him a sedative. He's gonna be out for the rest of the day."
The Avengers nodded in relief. It was a small victory to have him back. It was something. So often they were used to loses and casualties, but this time, it was already way too much, and one more would just break whatever was left to break.
Rhodey dragged a hand down his face as the holographic monitor showing who was missing flashed, and Y/N's face now stared back at him.
"God, fucking damn it," he muttered, wiping tears away. His best friend's kid. His goddaughter. His family.
When she had strolled in the compound walking in front of Steve and the rest of 'Rogue Avengers', he was ready to clock her in the jaw, knowing she would never back out of a fight. Too much of her father's genes were in her.
"You know he's going to kill me," he groaned as Y/N smirked before pulling him in a tight hug.
"Not if you don't say anything," she mumbled in his chest.
All guilt aside, Y/N had been most likely their best chance at winning, excluding Wanda. She was probably the strongest Avenger in the group. Rhodey remembered with fear the time Tony had been kidnapped, and how ballistic the seven-year-old girl had gone seeing the ransom video the terrorists had sent.
She wasn't supposed to know, but Y/N was a master at sneaking around the house, and as Pepper and Rhodey watched, she had caught a glimpse of her father. Let's just say the whole of California experienced some strong seismic activity as her powers rippled out of her.
God, and the other one? Peter? He was gone as well. In a way there was a silver lining to it all – both of the teenagers being gone meant neither could do impulsive and rash decisions. After all, the two were in love, and Rhodey was one hundred percent sure they'd go to the ends of Earth and bring down the sky if it meant getting the other one back.
"You guys take care of him," Carol's voice brought everyone back to the present. It seemed like Y/N's face on the screen had shaken them all up. "And I'll bring Xorrian Elixir when I come back."
"Where are you going?" she couldn't be leaving them now. Not at a moment like this.
"To kill Thanos."
People were up and rushing after the woman in a split second.
Nat was the first one to reach her, a strong grip on Carol's bicep pulling her back to face them. "You know, we usually work as a team around here, and between you and I, we're also a little fragile." That was an understatement, but the fight was not over. Not for them. "We realize this is more your territory, but this is our fight too."
On the outside, Natasha was acting like a leader, similarly as she always did by either Tony's or Steve's side, but on the inside, she was that broken little girl thrown into a single bedroom with a bare mattress and pillow, told she'd become the nation's greatest weapon at the tender age of six.
Build-A-Bear was the first one to ask the real questions. "Do you even know where he is?"
Carol shrugged. "I know people who might."
"Don't bother," Nebula interrupted. The whole time apart from when Tony was rushed to the hospital room, she'd stood to the side and watched. "I can tell you where Thanos is."
The hologram was up and running again, only this time displaying the map of the universe provided by the ship log from the Milano.
"Thanos spent a long time trying to perfect me. Then when he worked, he talked about his great plan. Even disassembled, I wanted to please him," there was such venom in her tone towards her past-self, even Rocket flinched. "I'd ask "where would we go once his plan was complete?" His answer was always the same: to the Garden."

You've reached the end of published parts.

⏰ Last updated: Dec 13, 2020 ⏰

Add this story to your Library to get notified about new parts!

Peter Parker MasterlistWhere stories live. Discover now