Author's Note: Welcome to my Infinity War/Endgame Interlude, featuring Nebula and Tony Stark. Why these two lovelies? Well, because I had so many questions about their situation. Why didn't they just make a jump back to Earth? How bad of shape was Quill's ship in to begin with? Why didn't a distress signal contact someone out in the cosmos? How did Tony and Nebula's relationship build up in those 22 days?

So many questions, zero answers... until I made some.

I hope I answer them all within reason and do the MCU-verse justice, and I also hope that you, dear reader, have some questions answered as well while reading.

This story is also complete. [Shocked]. So a chapter will trickle out at a regular pace for a change. [Gasp] This is not my usual style, though I like the feeling of completion. Very satisfying.

Sorrynotsorry for all the space/sci-fi references. You know Tony would.

Some quick notes:

-I use some comic-verse things in here, such as the planet Titan being based off Saturn's moon.

-I used the distance from Earth to Saturn with this in mind.

-Though I don't think Marvel's planet Titan is meant to be in our galaxy... Space is big after all, but I am putting them in our galaxy anyway for 2 reasons:

1: because the comics said it was based on Saturn's moon, and

2: I doubt Captain Marvel could safely carry a ship with a dying human on board over 1,000 Light Years (referenced with a throwaway comment by Tony), in less than 1 Earth Day before the oxygen ran out onboard. OP or not, sorry Cap. Sooo... give me some credit for trying to make it a little realistic at least, yeah? 1.6 billion kilometers (746 million miles) is still so very far.

Anyway... Enjoy.

Warning: Involuntary administered sedative. Multiple incidents of aggravating/reopening of a major injury. Mentions of panic/anxiety attacks. Survivors guilt.

This story is dedicated to my friend, HecateA, for being an awesome supporter during the making of this piece.

Chapter 1

(Bzzzt… Tick… tick…)

Tony: Is it—Are you working?

Testing… One. Two. Three.

(Shhhhh… bzt… tick…)

Tony: Space… The Final Frontier. This is the voyage of the Starkship Enterprise… and companion Nebula...

Tony: Playback…

(Audio that was just recorded replays on command.)

Tony: Okay. Great. It works!

(Sounds of throat clearing is made.)

Tony: Captain's Log—

Nebula: Who said you were the Captain?

Tony: It's just a saying used to document information.

(A crashing noise is heard.)

Nebula: We need to get to work.

(Several hours later…)

Tony: Captain's Log, Earth Year 2018, September 1st. Day Zero.

It has been several hours since Pollyanna, Vin Diesel, Quail, Dr. Strange, and—(A heavy, stuttered breath is released.)—Peter were turned into ash. We can only assume that this is the result of The Snap.

The Blue Meanie and I are the only survivors remaining on the desolate moon-planet Titan.

If my astronomical calculations are correct, that places us near Saturn, which is about one-point-two billion kilometers from Earth. Nothing a ship with warp speed can't handle…

Unfortunately the only two spacecraft we were able to salvage from the battlefield are Quill's and Nebula's, but both are in pretty rough shape and heavily damaged. Squidward's ship is beyond repair, but it makes for good salvaging at least.

We were able to pick through the remains of the Donut Ship that put me here for rations and parts, but the tech is foreign to me… Nebula is the only living instruction manual available who knows just enough to make one of these things functional again so I am at her mercy if we are to have any chances of getting off this rock.

Despite the damage, it seems like Quill's ship holds promise to become operational once some more TLC is given. The distress signal is working, but that's pretty much it for now…

Tony examined every angle he possibly could of Quill's ship, taking in the mechanics, technology, general development, and operations behind it. He was half lucky its owner was of Earth, so the manual he found in a pile of junk was at least written in a language he knew—English. It offered little help in understanding the craft of spaceship maintenance despite the small blessing of its readability, though. He was not going to let that minor detail hold him back, however.

Swallowing hard, Tony studied the material anyway while Nebula came and went, bringing in scraps of the ship she used to crash into Thanos and the Donut Ship that transported him here onboard before stripping it down for parts that could be used or needed later. He sat in what he assumed was the Captain's chair, flipping through page after page of the manual, attempting to focus on the task in front of him instead of the overwhelming failure and loss they had just faced.

He needed to get back to Earth by any means necessary.

A metal ripping sound startled Tony out of his trance-like studying. He looked to his left to see Nebula crouched in front of the operation panels dashboard, the base of it was removed, and she was pulling at wires and things and attaching them to her fingers.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hit the brakes, Smurfette. What are you doing?"

Nebula's dark eyes looked over at him before she started tinkering with her robotic arm again. "Getting us out of here."

"Right, good plan. Bad execution," Tony said.

She paused to glare at him. "At least I am not reading and wasting time."

"You can't just tear apart the—" he gestured with his hand at the operational panel, at a loss for words on what to call it. "—this all willy-nilly and expect to hotwire the thing."

Nebula looked utterly confused by the comment before going back to what she was doing. Tony ran his hands through his hair, flinching from the stab wound in his side as he watched the damage unfolding in front of him while the cyborg tinkered with the foreign materials. She knew more of what she was doing than he did, which was fine, but seeing it unfold with no proper planning made him extremely uncomfortable. She haphazardly ripped apart something he was pretty sure was a crucial element to making the ship work.

Who knows, maybe she was doing just that; hotwiring the thing. He felt like there was going to be way more to it then that; the thing had to get them a very long way in a short amount of time without falling apart.

At least, he hoped it could.

The sudden shock that surged through Nebula, causing her to scream in response, had him startle and stumble back into the seat. His injury screamed in response to the jerking motion, sending a fresh wave of pain coursing through him. Getting back to his feet, he held his hands up in front of him, not knowing what else to do.

"Look, Nebula was it?"

"We established names already," she hissed out heavily, recovering from the shock. "But yes… Tony."

"We've got to work together on this. It's just you and me on a dead floating space moon. Unless a miracle something decides to drop in and is friendly enough to pick up hitchhikers, this ship is our only shot on getting out of here."

Nebula rose to her feet and faced him, arm still connected with wires and cords from the dash. She tilted her head while she listened, seemingly to observe him in the meantime. It was hard to tell with her alien eyes having no pupils.

"At least keep me informed of what you're doing? I'm no space-savvy mechanic, but I'm no Average Joe, either."

"A man who is capable of making himself a machine at will is not average, even for interstellar standards," Nebula said, pausing her task to look at her hand longingly before promptly resuming.

"I'll take the compliment," Tony said. "Just… tell me what needs done and I'll do it. Deal?"

Tony held out his hand to her and she stepped back immediately, instinctively going into attack mode before realizing what he was doing. Nebula looked at the outstretched hand and back at him, relaxing her posture slightly when she saw the gesture was not threatening.

"What are you doing?"

"You, uh, shake it."

"For what purpose?"

"It's like a casual peace treaty, of sorts," Tony explained. "A way to show an agreement—a temporary contract with someone else. Here."

He reached for her un-tethered right hand, flinching again from the movement transferring to the wound, and gave it a shake. Nebula then shook it again before letting go, seeming to understand the explanation and gesture.

"I am transferring the energy I siphoned from my ship into this one in order to charge it enough for its mainframe to come back online. This will help with diagnostics to determine what works and what needs to be repaired," Nebula explained, tinkering again with her arm and adding another plug at her elbow. "If we are lucky, the navigational and jump drive systems are still intact and functional."

Tony nodded as she spoke, watching her carefully. "That… is starting to sound like the language I am familiar with."

"As soon as it becomes capable of flying, I'll siphon Ebony Maw's Q-ship in order to give it a boost for take off."

"Wonderful," Tony said, gasping suddenly from the forgotten pain.

He sank back into the seat, holding his bleeding side.

Nebula was kneeling before him when his vision returned and his head stopped spinning. She lifted up the tattered shirt he wore to inspect the injury. He tried to stop her, but the robotic strength held his hand firmly away. "You are lucky to survive the impaling from your own weapon by my father."

"Wouldn't call it lucky," Tony stuttered out, trying to stay conscious as Nebula prodded at the gash. "It's just a flesh wound."

"Don't move."

Nebula disconnected her arm from the wires quite carelessly, in his opinion, before disappearing out the back of the ship. Tony did as he was told and stayed in the seat, trying to focus off the pain and back to the manual he still gripped in his hands. His Iron Man helmet was propped on the top of the space dash beside him, and after several attempts to skim the manual's blueprint he flipped open to, Tony's gaze kept drifting over to his helmet.

The nanotech was toast, Thanos made sure of that, but he had to celebrate the small stuff; at least he was able to get the helmet working well enough to record and playback messages in case.. .

He shook his head and put a mental pin in the idea to properly document their progress soon. It was what every sophisticated Sci-Fi show and movie did, right?

Tony noticed a red blinking light beside the helmet. Leaning forward just a bit with a small wince, he was able to match the manual's dash blueprint with it to decipher that it was the ship's distress call signal pinging every thirty seconds or so. It wasn't doing that before, so whatever Nebula had just done managed to activate it.