To Destroy Him

by

Epona Harper

"You only want to kill him. I intend to destroy him."

Nebula looked up from the controls to glare at the battered human leaning against the copilot's seat. Titan was far behind them. Titan - birthplace of Thanos and grave to her sister's friends. And to this human's…son? She wasn't sure.

"Kill. Destroy. It's all the same in the end," she responded. The human, Stark, gave a broken chuckle as he half sat, half fell onto the copilot's seat.

"Oh, no, Bluebell," he retorted with a smile as thin and sharp as the edge of a knife. His eyes were cold, though. Calculating. "You can kill someone without destroying them, and you can destroy someone without killing them." He shifted in his seat and hissed as the motion pulled at the wound in his side. "And the latter is much more cruel."

Now this was an interesting shift from their prior argument. Nebula had been determined to track Thanos down straight away. She even had a pretty good idea of where he had gone. As ruthless and sadistic as the Mad Titan was, he did have a streak of sentimentality. He'd probably retreated to his favorite daughter's home-world. But this Stark had been insisting on returning to Earth of all places.

"Very well, human," she said, pausing before putting in the last coordinates for the jump. "Just what is the difference?"

Tony leaned back and gazed at the star field out the front viewport. "You kill someone, well, then it's all over. You can't kill them more. And, if you don't have the Goddawful Gaudy Glove of Power, you can't rewind time and do it all over again. They say death is the ultimate cure for all pain. That it's a mercy in the end."

Nebula snorted in derision. "I would torture him before I kill him if there wasn't such a risk he'd somehow escape…"

"Ah, ah, ah!" Stark almost playfully interrupted. "I said destroy him. Not torture him."

A snarl twisted her lips as she slammed a fist down on the console in front of him. She savored the fleeting flash of satisfaction as he jumped…and immediately groaned from the pain of his wounds. "Get to the point, human!"

Stark gently probed the weblike bandage on his flank to check to see if any bleeding had broken through, then looked up into Nebula's eyes with an expression she knew all too well. She'd seen it in her own eyes in every reflective material she chanced to glance at for years. "Thanos thinks he's won. He's saved the universe. Everyone left will have plenty to food to eat, clothes to wear, endless energy to power their toys and unicorns will prance about, farting rainbows all over the place." He tilted his head to the side and that smile, that knife-edge smile was back again. "But what if he's wrong? What if he's not saved the universe but damned it. What if he's shown that all his work, all he's sacrificed was not only a failure, but produced the exact opposite of what he wanted?"

The thought sent a chill across Nebula's nerves and circuits. She had never given thought to the idea that Thanos' grand plan was simply…wrong. And not morally wrong as the mewling weaklings of the galaxy would insist, but wrong in PRACTICE.

"How?" she asked hesitantly. Stark settled back in his seat and his voice took on the cadence of a teacher lecturing.

"Let's ignore the immediate aftermath: the deaths from vehicles crashing because their operators vanished, the mass rioting in the ensuing panic and the military flailing as various governing bodies collectively lose their shit. Let's ignore that not insignificant, additional body count to address the Great Grape-Ape's central thesis. The problem: too many people for the available resources. The solution: cut the population by half to free up resources. There's just a little error of omission in that equation." His eyes went hard as he looked up at her. "People are a fucking resource!"

She stared blankly at him for a second, then her eyes widened as she started to catch his meaning. Stark nodded grimly.

"Not sure how it was on Titan in the good old days. Not sure how it is on the rest of the planets out here, but, with every civilization on Earth that's past the hunter-gatherer and early agricultural village stage, gathering, processing and distributing those resources requires some fucking complex systems of people working together to get shit done. And lots of those jobs…" he shrugged "…can't just be filled by some fresh hire right off the street. They need training to get the jobs done without doing more damage and that takes time our reeling civilization doesn't have. Technically, there's more resources available, but practically?" Stark shook his head. "Practically, there will be even less resources for the average Joe on the street. Add in the civil unrest and governmental flailing we ignored earlier? You get a run-away systems collapse. Cue the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Thousands, maybe millions die and whole civilizations crumble." He lightly drummed his fingers on the blue, glowing panel on his chest as he turned to look out at the stars once more. "So, Xena, if it could be really brought home to Thanos that he killed his favorite daughter for nothing. For even worse than nothing…"

"It…would destroy him," Nebula finished. "And that's your revenge?"

Stark snorted in derision. "No, that's the first step to beating him and fixing all this shit. Remember, he's still got the Godawful Glove. I figure the best way to get it away from him is to destroy his will to fight first." He turned back to Nebula with an intense look that almost made her physically recoil. "Yeah, he's killed half the universe. But he took Peter, and I'm not going to stop until I get him back."

There was a pause, then Nebula asked, "Peter. Your son?"

The human's smile was soft this time and full of grief. "Close enough."

"And you need to go to Earth to do this."

"I need to get to Earth to get started. Allies, resources, information and, most importantly, the best analytical A.I. in existence: my girl FRIDAY." Stark leaned toward her. "I am going to destroy that son of a bitch and get my kid back." The corner of his mouth then quirked in a wry expression. "And, if you want to kill him after, it's no skin off my nose."

Nebula sat back and thought for several, long, silent seconds. Then she reached for the controls.

"Setting course for Earth. Let's get your son back, Stark."