Author's Notes: My deepest apologies, dear readers, for the long wait for this final installment! Work was brutal and I had a health scare on top of it! Now here it is, looking for emotional satisfaction I doubt we'll get for the movies, and hopefully making up for the angst of the first four chapters!

Canon Note: This follows a comic canon I read somewhere that part of Thanos' obsession with Death is that he himself is immortal, so can't ever experience dying.

Chapter 5: Endgame

It turned out there were other ways to travel through time, and it was quite a trip. But in the end, they all ended up in nearly the exact same places.

The survivors of Thanos' slaughter knew what was coming and fought that much harder. Master Vong had warned them that small efforts on the part of small, individual people wouldn't be powerful enough to change the timeline. They needed a team. A team more powerful, more unified than ever before. Even then, the odds of success against Thanos were only one out of 14,000,000.

But the teams all chose to unite, combine their powers and their knowledge, and returned to reenact the final confrontation with Thanos – together.

So when Thor, Rocket, and Groot arrived from Nidavellir, after taking out the ships and monsters in defense of the Wakandans, Thor detoured back to Titan.

He returned with Iron Man and Nebula, then for Iron Man and Doctor Strange, and he was waiting when Thanos came for Vision and Wanda.

The Titan laughed at them and brandished the time stone. "Do you think I don't know we've done this before?"

Thanos threw them all off as easily as the first time and even managed to rip the mind stone from Vision.

But this time, when he raised Stormbreaker, Thor aimed for the Titan's head.

Thor missed.

Or rather, Thanos ducked, and Stormbreaker came down through his shoulder, severing the arm that held the gauntlet.

Bellowing in pain, Thanos staggered away while Nebula lunged for the gauntlet, but it made a fist in her hands. Thanos laughed triumphantly and snapped his fingers.

While Nebula was still struggling to pry the gauntlet free, dust and ash filled the air and the screaming started.

"Steve?"

"Wam kumkani!"

"Groot? NO, Groot! No, no, no!"

"Peter - oh God, no - "

"I don't wanna go, please, sir, please - "

Thanos lunged for Nebula and his arm, but Thor rallied and swung Stormbreaker again, roaring vengeance - and caught Thanos in the face.

The fingers of the gauntlet went slack, and Stark, choked with tears and pain, aimed one of his weapons into it, firing and firing until the flesh of Thanos fell out as charcoal and cinders - not all that dissimilar from the ashes of the billions of people Thanos had just slaughtered, again.

Thor went flying as Thanos rallied with his good arm, blinded but still powerful enough to throw an Asgardian into the air. The Titan blundered toward them, and Nebula shoved her flesh arm into the gauntlet.

Blinded or not, Thanos must have sensed it and rasped, "It's too large for you, Nebula!" She snarled at him and scrambled away, feeling the gauntlet eerily twitching in her grasp. "Even your own sister's shoes were too large for you to fill. You can't hope to fill my gauntlet, poor inadequate child."

She shoved her hand defiantly inside... and the Gauntlet shrank on Nebula's hand to fit her, and the universe came with it. Life, thought, power, reality, time, and space, all were visible to her in their myriad incarnations and variations.

She grinned as Thanos staggered to a stop, with Thor charging behind him wielding Stormbreaker again. "I'm not your child."

She snapped her fingers. Restore them.

The Infinity stones obeyed. Ash swirled and matter re-formed and flesh and hearts and minds solidified in the places where they'd fallen only moments ago.

Thanos grunted and staggered towards her, but took Stormbreaker in the back of his head, cleaving his skull in two. It was a gruesome sight, but Stark was oblivious to it as he rushed towards the boy who lay coughing and stunned on the ground.

"Peter! Pete!"

"Miss'r Stark? What happen..."

Stark crushed the boy into his arms as if the boy were his own child. Thanos had never embraced any of his so-called children with such passion, let alone spoke to them as Starkk did to the boy: "It's all right, it's all right, it's all right..."

She could see farther than ever before. In worlds that had descended into chaos and despair as half of their people vanished, the survivors screamed first in shock, then joy as their loved ones reappeared.

Here on Earth, a continent away, an archer had fallen to the ground in agony from seeing his wife and children dissolved again. Now he gasped as they returned, trying to clutch all four of them in his arms.

A wife rushed to her husband, and her daughter flew into the arms of her father.

The boy's aunt saw the people reappearing on the street and screamed with joy. Even though her child was on the other side of the world, she knew this meant he was coming home.

A spear-bearing warrior saw her king fall stunned among the brush and cried out in triumph to her com: "The Black Panther lives! The Black Panther lives!" In the palace, a young princess raced through the corridors to find her mother. On the battlefield, a tribal chieftain who had been king bellowed a renewed challenge to the surviving invaders and led the charge to destroy them.

Only yards away, Steve Rogers threw his arms around his friend with a sob of relief.

Rocket dropped his gun as a confused tree asked, "We are Groot?"

Over Bucky Barnes' shoulder, Rogers looked up and shouted, "SAM?! SAM!"

"I - " In the dense undergrowth where he'd been thrown, a winged man coughed and called out, "I'm here!"

Rhodes shoved through the bushes as a red drone flew up and went in search of Thanos - only to find Thor still hacking him to pieces. The Hulk grunted and began to shrink back into Bruce Banner.

Even closer, Wanda Maximoff huddled over Vision's body and wept. Nebula looked down at her and said, "I understand." Then she grimaced; she hadn't meant to sound like Thanos.

The girl, the only one whose hope hadn't been restored, looked up. "Who're you?"

"Bucky!" Rogers' dark friend struggled to his feet, prepared to charge back into a battle with no knowledge of what had happened since. "It's okay...uh..." he trailed off at the sight of Stark, still clutching the boy to his chest. Rogers caught his friend and started to pull him back, ready to put his own body in Stark's way.

But Stark waved them off. "Relax, Cap, I'm good."

"Huh?" The winged man appeared, assisted by Rhodes, and Rogers rushed to embrace him, only adding to his confusion. "Why do I get the feeling I missed something big here?"

"Good, it's not just me," muttered Bucky, shooting a half-nervous, half-confused look at Stark.

"We'll fill you in later," said Rogers. "Thor, how're we doing?"

Standing over the thoroughly-dismembered body of Thanos, Thor admitted, "I might've become carried away." The others started to laugh - but something in that mess of flesh and bone and armor twitched, and half of them leaped away with shouts of alarm.

"Holy shit, he's still ALIVE?!" the boy squeaked.

Nebula sighed. "He can't die - why do you think he likes death so much?" She considered him through the stones and mused, "I could give him the fate he tried to give us - but then there's the chance someone could do what I've just done and reverse it."

Thor grinned. "Or we could continue reducing him to small pieces and then scatter them throughout the cosmos, into stars, into black holes, into countless worlds and galaxies, across a span of time and space so vast that no being of any world would ever live long enough to find them all."

"Son of Odin, I like the way you think," Nebula said. "Are you up for a little more chopping, then?"

Hefting Stormbreaker, Thor sketched a mock-bow and announced, "I assure you, my lady, no manual labor has ever given me greater PLEASURE!" He resumed hacking while Stark pointedly made the boy turn away, but many of the Avengers nodded as Thor bellowed, "This is for my brother! For Heimdall and my people!"

Strange and Thor were distributing pieces of what had once been the Mad Titan via portals and the Bifrost to the farthest reaches of the universe when Nebula opened a portal with the space stone to bring the recovered Guardians back to Earth.

Quill eyed her and the gauntlet, while Mantis went immediately to Wanda's side. "I don't suppose you can save Gamora?"

Nebula tilted her head, and knew the answer immediately. "Not yet."

"Not yet?"

"No. But soon." She didn't even have to snap her fingers. Yet...the cost would be great, if she looked at it from her erstwhile stepfather's perspective.

"Maybe do something about Thanos's space dogs," Rocket suggested.

Relatively-speaking, there weren't many left, but why force the Wakandan warriors to keep dealing with them? Nebula reduced the ships and what remained of Thanos' forces, including his surviving children with the exception of Gamora and herself to ash. The Wakandans' roars of triumph echoed from the field.

"Wakanda forever!"

Wanda Maximoff sobbed quietly in Mantis' arms. Nebula looked down at her.

The Wakandan princess had warned, "Whoever takes that gauntlet will want to keep it. Who wouldn't want absolute power over life, death, and the whole universe?"

Nebula could do anything. She could undo every death Thanos had ever caused, destroy every creature he'd ever made. With a flick of her fingers, the Aesir refugee ship was whole, and the murdered half of the Asgardians found themselves sitting bewildered on its decks. Thor would see his brother and his friends alive when the ships reached Earth in a few days.

The dwarves of Nidavellir lived again. Eitri had earned that.

Do I stop? If so, where do I stop?

How angry Thanos would be to see her undoing so much of his work.

How long would it be wearing this gauntlet before she found herself playing with life and death the way he had?

No.

She knelt next to Vision and the grieving girl. With a little more time, Wakanda's brilliant princess could have freed the stone and saved his life. With all six stones, Nebula accelerated Shuri's work, weaving and reorienting Vision's brain to function without the stone, finding new ways in the vibranium of his cells and the flesh of his partly-human brain and body for his life and his awareness to survive.

The mind stone couldn't stay with him. But Vision could live without it.

The onlookers gasped and Wanda cried harder as color returned to his body. Banner hurried past the others, wrapped in a blanket, and knelt next to her, gently holding her back while Nebula worked.

When Vision opened his eyes, the first thing he whispered was, "Wanda?"

Nebula stood as the girl threw herself on him, sobbing. "I think that's enough. He doesn't need the mind stone anymore. Now we need to get rid of it."

Quill looked skeptical, then shocked as Nebula plucked the yellow stone from the gauntlet and tossed it to the ground. "Hate to break up the reunion, kids, but Wanda, can you handle that?" Stark asked.

Startled, Wanda looked up, then at the stone, then at Vision. He felt his forehead. "It's gone. I no longer need it..." He smiled at her. "I think I agree with Tony. We should get rid of it quickly."

Nebula handed the time stone to Strange. "You can't keep it. No one can keep any of them. They all have to go."

"I know." Strange said reluctantly. "With this, anyone could go back and undo what we've done. I'll take care of it."

Seeing the Guardians having told hold Quill back, Nebula returned her attention to them. "Now… Now, I can…" It was such a relatively small act, to restore one life on the rocks of Vormir, to open a portal for the bewildered Gamora to step through. Yet in a way it was the most drastic. One light from the beginning of the universe flickered out so that one woman would breath again and rise to find a portal awaiting her and step through.

"What...Nebula...?!"

Gamora watched, stunned, as Nebula pulled the remaining stones from the gauntlet and gave them away. "Destroy them. All of them." The gauntlet, she gave to Thor. "Return it to Nidavellir and tell them to destroy it and destroy the mold."

"I think they'll be all too glad of the task."

Steve Rogers was either unwilling or simply unable to let go of his friends. Barnes and Wilson stared from him to each other in confusion. "Steve, hey," Wilson tugged in vain at him. "What the hell happened?"

"I...you..." Rogers looked a little crazed as he clutched both of them, afraid they'd dissolve if he let go.

It was Rhodes who interceded, coming in to give Rogers and Wilson a clap on the shoulders. "Long story, guys. Longer than you realize. Damn." He released them to scrub sweat – among other things – from his face and shot a weary smile at the baffled Wakandan king, returning with a group of celebrating Wakandans surrounding him. "Welcome back, your highness. Good to see you."

Staring around the group, T'Challa said slowly, "Thank you. I take it someone used the gauntlet to finish off the invaders…now where exactly did I go?"

A shuttle landed not far away, and with a cry of "Brother!" young Shuri sprinted down its ramp and threw herself at T'Challa. He caught her in alarm and looked over her shoulders at the full eyes of Rogers and the other survivors.

"It worked, my king," said one of his bodyguards grimly. "For nearly a year, Thanos had succeeded. Half of all living people in the universe were gone."

Shuri mumbled confirmation, and T'Challa stared at M'Baku and the other Wakandans and Avengers who nodded. He tightened his grip on his sister. "How bad was it?"

"Bad," said Rogers. Suddenly he and everyone else Nebula had come to know over the past year looked completely exhausted and drained. Bucky put a hand on his back in concern, while the winged man stared at each of his friends.

"May…" Stark still hadn't let go of the boy, but he started to pull away. "I've gotta go home – I've gotta find May!"

"She's safe, kid, she's all right. Hang on, let me call Happy." Stark tapped a device on his own metal arm. "Hey, man, it's me. Yep, he's right next to me. Listen, can you track down May Parker and get her to the compound? She'll want to be waiting when we get back." Stark looked around. "So…damn, I still haven't wrapped my head around it. Does this mean we're done?"

"I think so," said Shuri, though she hadn't let go of T'Challa. "Once the stones are destroyed and Thanos is gone…it's over." She looked over her shoulder at Nebula. "Are they gone?"

"Mostly. The mind stone's gone. The time stone too; Strange and Master Wong have destroyed it. They'll adapt to life and defending the world without it. Together, the power stone and the reality stone destroyed the space stone. The Terran who once carried the reality stone in her own body unlocked the key to destroying it in this past year; Thor took it to her. The power stone…I'll deal with that. The soul stone's dealt with."

"What do you mean 'dealt with'?" Gamora demanded. "You're talking about disposing of elemental forces in the universe like it's dumping a little space trash! That stone…I felt it, when he traded my life for it. It's…different."

"Of course it is, they're all different. He traded you for the stone. I traded the stone for you." Nebula found it difficult to look at Gamora. "Funny, I could wipe out the Black Order and the Outriders as easily as he wiped out half of all beings. I could bring back all the beings he wiped out with the Gauntlet without breaking a sweat. I could even undo physical slaughters he carried out before. I could've gone on and on."

"But you didn't. You saved as many lives as you could safely, without the power going to your head. Then you stopped," said Rogers. It was gratifying, to hear such admiration in the voice of a man venerated throughout this world as their pinnacle of virtue.

"So what'd you mean about Gamora?" demanded Star Lord, standing close to her as the rest of the Guardians joined him. "Why was it so hard to bring her back when you could undo all the rest?"

"He sacrificed her to the soul stone," Nebula said. "The soul stone wouldn't return her. That's how I destroyed it. The soul stone's not just a powerful rock any more than the rest of them…even less, really."

Returned from his errand with his sorcerer friend at his side, Doctor Strange nodded. "It's the most powerful, the most dangerous, and the most beautiful. It's the power of life itself. I saw it used many ways in different timelines. Thanos even tried to bring his daughter back after his work was done, only to discover that with all the power in the universe, she was the one thing he couldn't have again. Not without giving up the completeness of the Gauntlet."

M'Baku spat an obscenity in Wakandan that Nebula knew. It seemed wearing the Gauntlet even for an hour surpassed even the Allspeak for understanding of languages. "Even if he did resemble either of you, I could tell you he was no father. A real father would've thrown all six stones into the void to bring back even one of his children. Speaking of which," he nodded to T'Challa. "My king, there's not much left to do with our enemies turned to dust, and I'd like to get back to my people – and my children."

"You saw this year that I missed?" T'Challa asked. M'Baku just nodded. T'Challa looked like he wanted to ask more, but stopped himself. "Go, then, my brother, with my blessing and gratitude. Take the shuttle. Get your warriors home to their families if they wish, but there will be celebrations soon in the city soon, and you'll all be invited."

"I never turn down a party. Until then." M'Baku marched off bellowing the Jabari rallying cry, soon joined by his fellows.

Nebula realized Gamora was still staring at her. "You gave up all the power in the universe. You had it, you could've used it for any 'greater good' you imagined, and instead, you gave it all up."

"The universe can find its own way," Nebula replied curtly.

She'd never seen that expression on Gamora's face before. "I could never have done that." She smiled. "You're amazing. You're the exact opposite of him. You're greater now than he ever was."

"And…who exactly is she, pardon the interruption?" asked Sam.

"Yeah, for those of us who fell asleep during the lecture," added Bucky.

"The blue girl who saved the world, what more do you need to know?" said Peter.

"All of you in the same place is stretching the fabric of reality with your sarcasm," said Romanoff. She had her phone in her hand and smiled broadly. "Clint just texted. Laura and the kids are fine. He's heard from Scott too. Cassie's safe at home."

"Everybody, meet us at Avengers Compound this weekend," Stark ordered. "For the biggest fucking party in the history of the universe."

"Mr. Stark, please!" T'Challa protested, covering his sister's ears (and getting a shriek of outrage and a shove). "Besides, you only have a compound; I have a country. I'll host the party."

Nebula and Gamora stood side-by-side as Avengers and Wakandans and Guardians made their way back towards the city. Peter Quill slipped up next to Gamora's other side and took her hand.

"He tore apart so many families, so many worlds. Now you've brought them back together."

"Not all of them. Just his most recent works, the ones he used the Infinity stones to carry out. I wanted to go on, but it wouldn't have been safe." Nebula mused, distracted. Somehow, she could still see far beyond Earth. In particular, Thor found his people's ship intact and rushed aboard, not daring to hope what he might find, then let out a howl of sheer joy and threw his arms around his very alive but very confused younger brother. Deaf to the demands for explanations from the Valkyrie and the other Aesir and the other aliens they'd picked up, Thor clutched Loki to his chest and refused to let go.

Heimdall, the far-seeing guardian of the Aesir, stared out across time and space – and met Nebula's eyes. It took some willpower not to blink and step back. "Thanos is defeated. By the strength and devotion of Thor, his Avengers, and many others, the Titan is fallen, his stones taken from him and destroyed, the Infinity Gauntlet torn asunder. All who perished under it now live. The universe is granted a second chance to find peace."

Someone caught Nebula's attention closer by. "So all of us who lived through it – we still remember it even though time went backward," Bruce Banner mused.

Nebula nodded. "We have to remember it. Otherwise we risk forgetting what we learned."

"Couldn't've said it better." He looked over his shoulder at Stark, who seemed physically in capable of letting the boy go more than arm's length away from him. It was the same with Rogers and his two friends, with Maximoff and Vision. Romanoff walked over and somehow managed to squeeze herself into Rogers' group between the three men. "It was…we were all sure some of us were gonna have to end up dead to reverse death on that scale."

"I would've thought so too," Gamora agreed. "It seems all that was necessary to restore life was to give up power." She smiled, a softness in her eyes Nebula had never seen. "Something I could never have done, or even imagined."

"Most of us probably wouldn't have managed that," said Stark, releasing the boy with one hand to put an arm around Rhodes.

Rhodes' phone buzzed. He chuckled. "That's Fury. Alarm's, over, Director, tell everyone to stand down?"

"Why have I got Thaddeus Ross and Ronald Bunt raving about time-travel?!"

"Er…they've both finally lost it?"

"Motherf-" The line went dead.

"Can I go back into retirement now?" Rogers' friend asked him.

"Only if I can join you," Rogers replied.

The boy under Stark's arm piped up, "Then who'll be Captain America?!"

Rhodes wrinkled his nose. "He's got a point, Cap. I don't blame you for wanting some rest in your old age - " Stark let out a snort of laughter, " – but you don't want Thaddeus Ross or President Bunt or one of their flunkies picking some new guy to carry your shield.

"Yeah," Rogers admitted. Barnes nudged him and whispered something in his ear, and Rogers grinned again.

Wilson looked up in surprise to see both supersoldiers grinning at him. "What?" He gaped when Rogers held out the shield.

"Nice, very nice," murmured Banner. "The Hulk approves," he called, while Wilson's mouth was still moving with no sound coming out.

"But – but – you can't - "

"I'm getting to old for this, Sam," said Steve. He smiled. "I want some beauty rest. What do you say?"

"I think I'm hanging up the armor for good this time too," said Stark. "Short of another apocalypse, I just want to get married and learn how to live like a human being again."

"What'll the world do without Iron Man?" the boy asked in dismay.

Stark tweaked his chin. "They'll still have Spider-Man."

"They'll still have War Machine," Rhodey added.

"They'll have Scarlet Witch and Vision," said Wanda, her arm around Vision.

"They'll have Black Widow," said Natasha.

"And the Black Panther," King T'Challa added.

As Wilson reverently took the shield from his friend, Rogers concluded, "They'll even still have Captain America."

"They'll have the Guardians of the Galaxy," said Quill. Nebula managed not to smirk at the dubious looks thrown their way."

"What if…I mean, god forbid, but what if something really bad happens?" the boy asked. "Like Thanos again."

Stark looked at Rogers and shrugged. "You need us, we'll be there. Just like always."

~Fin~