#the blip

The next few days drag by in thin, unbearable strips. Morning becomes afternoon. Afternoon becomes evening. Evening becomes the strange blue hour where neither of you says much because every word feels like it might summon something.

Nat doesn't call again, neither does Steve.

The apartment becomes smaller every day. Not physically, but in the way waiting takes up space. It fills the corners. Sits heavy on the couch. Crawls into the bed with you and John at night, sliding between your bodies even when his arm is around your waist and your cheek is pressed to his chest.

Sometimes you sleep. Mostly, you listen to him breathe. Sometimes he sleeps. Mostly, he pretends.

The cigarettes stay by the kitchen window.

At first, you only smoke one when the silence gets sharp enough to cut. Then one becomes two. Then John stops pretending he's only standing beside you for moral support and starts taking the cigarette from your fingers halfway through, his mouth twisting in distaste every single time like the smoke has personally offended him.

"You hate it," you tell him on the second morning.

He exhales badly through the cracked window, coughing once into his fist before glaring at the street like Brooklyn is responsible. "I hate a lot of things."

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting."

"You're terrible at this."

"I know."

"You don't have to keep doing it."

John looks at you then, cigarette burning between two fingers, face tired and unshaven and stubborn enough to make your chest hurt. "Yes," he says quietly. "I do."

That shuts you up. Not because it should. Because it does.

So you smoke together, badly. Like two people lighting small fires because the larger one has already started somewhere neither of you can see.

Lemar finds out, of course. Lemar always finds out. He walks in on the fifth day with groceries, one eyebrow already climbing when he sees both of you near the cracked kitchen window.

"Absolutely not," he says.

John lowers the cigarette like that might make it disappear through military discipline alone.

You look at Lemar through the smoke. "Hello to you too."

"No," Lemar says. "No greetings. No pleasantries. What is this? What happened to mutual containment?"

John clears his throat. "We're containing."

"You're poisoning yourselves in formation."

"That's dramatic."

"That is accurate." Lemar points at the ashtray. "That thing looks like it has witnessed a war crime."

You glance at it. "It has character."

"It has evidence."

John puts his cigarette out. "You done?"

"No." Lemar looks between you both. "You two are going to give me stress wrinkles."

"You already had those," you say.

"I got them from you."

"You met me less than a year ago."

"And aged fifteen."

John's mouth twitches.

Lemar catches it and points at him. "Don't you laugh. You're the adult in the room."

John blinks. "Since when?"

"Since she started moving your spices around and you didn't call the police."

You sit up straighter. "That was a controlled experiment."

"It was domestic terrorism."

John mutters, "It was pepper before paprika."

"Thank you," Lemar says. "My point."

You almost smile.

Lemar sees that too, and the lecture softens into a sigh. He drops the groceries on the counter and starts putting things away, loudly enough that each cabinet becomes an emotional statement.

He comes back the next day.

And the next.

Sometimes with food. Sometimes with no excuse at all.

Just a knock, a familiar voice through the door, and that stubborn warmth of his barging into the apartment like he can annoy the fear out of the walls if he keeps showing up with enough force.

By the time a week has nearly passed since Nat stood in John's apartment and told you Clint went into the past, your nerves feel rubbed raw.

You wake that morning to the sound of running water.

For a few seconds, you don't move.

The bed is cold on John's side, sheets wrinkled where he left them. Pale morning light pushes through the blinds and lands across the wall in narrow, unforgiving lines.

The apartment is too quiet.

Then you hear the scrape of a razor.

Your body loosens by a fraction.

You sit up slowly, pulling John's shirt tighter around yourself as you swing your legs over the side of the bed. The floor is cold beneath your bare feet. You pause at the doorway, listening.

Water.

Razor.

John breathing through his nose.

Alive.

You follow the sound.

He's in the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror with a towel slung low around his hips, shaving cream along one side of his jaw. His hair is damp and pushed back messily, his shoulders bare, scars and muscle and exhaustion caught under the yellow bathroom light.

He sees you in the mirror before you say anything.

"You're up early," he says.

"You're shaving."

"Observant."

"It's suspicious."

His mouth tugs faintly. "Habit."

You lean against the doorframe, arms folded loosely over your chest.

He drags the razor carefully down his cheek.

You watch.

Not in the casual way someone watches a person get ready. Not even in the soft, hungry way you have caught yourself watching him before.

This is different. This is cataloging.

The angle of his wrist. The faint crease between his brows. The tiny twitch in his jaw when he tilts his head. The way shaving makes him look younger and older at the same time, soldier-clean on the surface, tired beneath it.

You count the details because you don't trust time anymore.

John's eyes flick to yours in the mirror. His hand stills. "You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Looking at me like you're trying to commit my face to evidence."

You swallow.

His expression softens.

"Em."

"Maybe I am."

The razor slips. It's small. A thin red line blooming along his jaw, bright against the white shaving cream.

"Shit," John mutters.

You move before he does.

He reaches for a towel, but you catch his wrist. "Stop."

"It's nothing."

"Stop moving, Walker."

His brows lift, even as blood beads at the cut. "Walker?"

"You nick yourself and you lose first-name privileges."

"That feels unfair."

"You wounded yourself under my supervision."

"Pretty sure you distracted me."

"Pretty sure you were holding the blade."

He opens his mouth, then wisely shuts it.

You wet the corner of a washcloth and step between him and the sink. The bathroom is small enough that your hip brushes his thigh. His hands hover for a second before settling carefully at your waist.

You dab away the shaving cream first. Then the blood.

John watches you instead of the mirror.

You feel it.

The attention. The weight of him. The quiet ache of being close to someone you're afraid the world is already reaching for.

"Does it hurt?" you ask.

"No."

"Liar."

"It barely hurts."

"Better."

His thumb presses lightly into your hip.

You clean the cut again, gentler this time. It's tiny, nearly ridiculous for the amount of emotion lodged in your throat.

A small wound. An ordinary morning.

A man you love standing under bad bathroom lighting while time travel and dead gods and half the universe wait somewhere outside the walls.

Your eyes burn.

John notices.

"Hey," he says softly.

"Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

"You were about to."

His mouth curves, but his eyes stay careful.

You reach for a small square of tissue and press it to his jaw. "Hold that."

He does.

You turn to the medicine cabinet, find the little box of bandages, and peel one open with more focus than the task deserves.

John's voice is quiet behind you. "You don't have to memorize me like I'm leaving today."

Your hands freeze.

There it is. The thing neither of you has said in days.

You turn back to him.

The tissue is still pressed to his jaw. His eyes are steady on yours, but you can see the fear beneath them. Not frantic. Not dramatic. Something worse. Controlled.

"I know," you say.

His jaw tightens beneath your fingers when you take the tissue away.

You put the bandage on carefully, smoothing it down with your thumb. "I'm doing it anyway."

John closes his eyes for half a second. When he opens them, the blue in them looks almost painful.

"I hate this," he says.

You nod. "Me too."

"I hate not knowing."

"I know."

"I hate that every time your phone lights up, I wonder if it's the call that takes you somewhere I can't follow."

Your breath catches.

He looks away, jaw ticking under the tiny bandage. "And then I hate myself for thinking that before I think about everyone coming back."

"John."

"It's ugly."

"Yeah," you whisper. "It is."

His eyes return to yours.

"So am I."

That lands.

His face changes, sharp and immediate. "No."

You give him a look. "Don't."

"No," he says again, firmer now. "You don't get to call yourself ugly because grief has teeth."

Your throat tightens.

He reaches up and cups your cheek, thumb brushing just beneath your eye. "You're scared."

"So are you."

"Yeah," he says. "I am."

The honesty sits between you, raw and unarmored.

Then, because he's John, because there's only so long he can stand in the open before trying to put a roof over both of you, he glances toward the mirror and mutters, "Also I look ridiculous."

You blink.

He points to the bandage. "This ruins the symmetry."

A laugh slips out before you can stop it.

His mouth twitches.

"You're vain," you say.

"I am wounded."

"You are dramatic."

"You were the attending medic. I expected compassion."

"I cleaned your face."

"With judgment."

"You bled on my watch."

"You distracted me with emotional eye contact."

You shake your head, but you're smiling now, and the smile feels like something stolen.

John leans down and kisses you.

Soft and careful.

The kind of kiss that knows exactly how fragile the morning is and refuses to break it further.

When he pulls back, his forehead rests against yours.

"You'll tell me?" he asks.

You know what he means.

If Nat calls.

If Steve calls.

If Bucky is suddenly not a ghost anymore.

If the world changes.

You close your eyes. "Yes."

That afternoon, Lemar shows up with sandwiches and a paper bag full of fruit because he has apparently decided scurvy is the next enemy in need of defeating.

"You brought six oranges," John says, peering into the bag.

"You own one vegetable and it's a lime with secrets."

"The lime is gone."

"Exactly. I handled it."

"You threw away my lime?"

"It was either that or call a priest."

You sit on the couch with your knees pulled up, watching them argue in the kitchen like the world is not holding its breath.

The TV is on, muted.

Some news anchor moves her mouth beneath a headline about global instability, relief efforts, memorial infrastructure, government response plans. You stopped reading the chyron twenty minutes ago.

It all sounds the same lately.

Everyone waiting. Everyone wounded. Everyone pretending the next disaster is not already pacing outside the door.

Lemar looks at the television, then at you. "No call?"

You shake your head.

His face tightens.

John notices, and his own expression goes rigid in response.

You hate that you have become a weather system in this apartment. One shift in you and both men start checking the horizon.

"I'm going outside," you say abruptly.

John turns. "Balcony?"

You nod.

His eyes drop to your hand before you even reach for the cigarettes.

Lemar sees it too. "Oh, come on."

You ignore him and take the pack off the counter.

John follows.

Lemar looks personally betrayed. "Both of you?"

John opens the balcony door. "Don't start."

"I have already started. I'm mid-start."

"Stay inside."

"Gladly. I enjoy breathing."

You step out onto the balcony with John behind you, the sliding door left cracked enough that Lemar can still frown at you from the living room.

The afternoon air is strange.

Warm, but not comfortably so. Heavy at the edges. The city below hums with normal noise, traffic and distant horns and someone shouting half a block away. Above you, the sky is pale, cloud-thin, washed out in a way that makes the buildings look too sharp.

You light your cigarette.

John holds his hand out without looking at you.

"You're still terrible at this," you say.

"I've accepted that."

You pass it to him anyway.

He takes one drag, grimaces, and hands it back.

"Coward."

"Survivor."

Inside, through the glass, Lemar stands with his arms crossed, watching you both like a disappointed school principal.

You raise the cigarette in a tiny salute.

His frown deepens.

John glances over his shoulder and almost smiles.

"What?" you ask.

"He looks like he's planning an intervention."

"He already did."

"It wasn't very effective."

"He brought oranges. That was step one."

"What's step two?"

"Judgmental eye contact."

John exhales a quiet laugh.

You lean against the balcony railing, the cigarette burning between your fingers.

For a moment, neither of you speaks.

The city spreads beneath you, alive and unaware and waiting. Somewhere out there, people are going to work. Buying groceries. Arguing over parking spots. Calling loved ones. Not calling loved ones because those loved ones have been gone for five years and grief has become a room they live in.

And somewhere out there, maybe beyond somewhere, your friends are reaching into the past for the stones that might undo the worst thing that ever happened to the universe.

You press the cigarette to your lips and inhale.

Your chest aches.

John shifts beside you. "You okay?"

You glance at him. "No."

He nods.

It shouldn't comfort you, the absence of false reassurance.

You look back out over the street. "I keep thinking about Nat."

John's face changes.

"She said as long as I can," you continue.

His silence tells you he remembers.

"I didn't notice when she said it. Not really."

John leans his forearms on the railing, cigarette smoke curling past his face. "I noticed."

"Of course you did."

"I notice threats."

You look at him. "Is that what she is?"

"No." His jaw tightens. "Whatever she's walking into is."

Your fingers curl around the cigarette. "Do you think she's scared?"

John takes too long to answer. "Yes," he says finally. "I think brave people are usually scared."

You let out a humorless breath. "Steve would love that."

"Don't tell him I said it."

"Never."

The corner of his mouth lifts but disappears almost instantly.

You put the cigarette out in the little tin John found for the balcony because he's still John, even in the middle of self-destruction. Organized damage. Labeled ruin.

Your fingers press the cigarette down until the ember dies.

Then the air shifts. Not wind, not exactly.

It moves through the city like a held breath being released all at once.

You freeze.

John lifts his head.

Below, car alarms begin to chirp.

One.

Then another.

Then three at once.

A flock of birds explodes upward from the roof across the street.

They fly wrong.

No pattern. No clean direction. Black shapes scattering across the pale sky like someone has thrown a handful of ash at the sun.

Inside the apartment, the muted TV flashes red.

Breaking News.

Your heart stops.

John turns toward the glass.

Your phone pings.

Once.

Twice.

Then again.

And again.

A flood.

The sound becomes frantic, sharp little bells piling on top of each other.

Inside, Lemar's phone starts ringing.

Then John's.

Then yours again.

"Em," John says.

You're already moving.

You yank the balcony door open and stumble inside so fast John catches your elbow from behind. Lemar is standing in the middle of the living room, phone in one hand, eyes fixed on the TV.

The volume is still muted.

The chyron screams without sound.

GLOBAL EVENT REPORTED.

UNEXPLAINED REAPPEARANCES.

EMERGENCY SERVICES OVERWHELMED.

John grabs the remote and unmutes the television.

The anchor's voice floods the apartment mid-sentence, shaking around the edges despite every inch of professional training.

"…reports coming in from multiple cities, multiple countries. People appearing suddenly in homes, streets, hospitals, schools. Authorities are urging everyone to remain calm, but emergency lines are already overwhelmed…"

Lemar looks at you. "What's going on?"

Your phone keeps pinging.

Emergency alerts.

Old Avengers systems.

Unknown numbers.

You stare at the TV, at the footage.

A woman standing in the middle of an intersection sobbing while people run around her.

A school hallway packed with children who look exactly as they did five years ago.

A hospital entrance swarmed with people in dust-stained clothes.

Dust.

Your hand goes to the wolf charm beneath your shirt.

The room tilts.

John says your name, but his voice sounds far away.

You take one breath. Then another. The words come out barely above a whisper. "They did it."

Lemar's brows pull together. "What?"

Before you can answer, his phone rings again. Not a normal ringtone. Not personal. Official.

John's follows half a second later.

The sound slices through the room.

Lemar looks down at his screen, and whatever he sees strips the confusion from his face. He answers immediately.

"Hoskins."

John answers his too, eyes still on you.

"Walker."

You watch the soldier come down over his face.

Not the man in the bathroom with a bandage on his jaw. Not the man coughing around cigarette smoke. Not the man who held you after Nat left.

Captain John Walker.

Even without the title. That's what happens to him when duty grabs him by the throat.

"Yes, sir," John says.

Lemar goes still.

You look between them. The same order. You know it before either of them says it.

All military personnel are being called in immediately.

All available units.

Mass reappearances.

Infrastructure collapse.

Airports. Highways. Hospitals. Schools.

People returning in places that no longer exist.

People appearing in homes where strangers live now.

People coming back in the middle of roads, on operating tables, in locked buildings, in countries they have not seen for five years.

Chaos blooming across the world because half the universe has just come back and there's no gentle way for a miracle to land.

John hangs up.

So does Lemar.

For one second, no one speaks.

Then John turns toward the bedroom.

"Lemar."

"Already on it."

They move at the same time.

Not panicked.

Worse.

Trained.

Lemar grabs his jacket from the back of the chair and starts checking his pockets. John disappears into the bedroom and comes back with a duffel you have seen before but never asked about. He opens it on the kitchen table, pulling out gear with quick, efficient hands.

You stand in the middle of the living room while the world comes apart on the television behind you.

Boots hit the floor.

Metal clicks.

A zipper tears open.

John checks a handgun, then another.

Lemar's phone buzzes again. He glances down. "They're routing us toward downtown first. Hospitals are already overrun."

John nods once. "We'll cut through Atlantic."

"You think we can even get through?"

"We'll make it through."

That shouldn't make you want to cry. It does.

John looks up and catches your face. Something in him fractures. Only for a second.

Then he crosses the room to you.

"Listen to me," he says.

You swallow. "John."

"Listen."

You close your mouth.

His hands find your shoulders, firm enough to hold you in place, gentle enough to ask forgiveness for it.

"You do not leave this apartment."

Your breath catches.

"You hear me?" he asks.

Outside, sirens begin to rise. One after another. A whole city finding its emergency voice.

"I hear you."

"I mean it, Em."

"I know."

"No roof. No street. No checking the hallway because you heard something. No answering the door unless it's me or Lemar."

Your eyes burn. "Bossy."

His jaw tightens, but his mouth almost moves.

"Promise me."

You look at him.

The bandage is still on his jaw from that morning. Small and ridiculous and devastating.

You spent the whole week memorizing him because you were afraid time was sharpening its knife, and now here it is. Not the blade you expected, but still cutting.

"I promise," you whisper.

John's grip loosens like the words hurt him. "I need you safe."

"I know."

"I need to know you're here."

"You will."

His eyes move over your face, desperate and hungry and furious with the universe. "Don't make me come back to an empty apartment."

You shake your head. "I won't."

Lemar appears beside him, jacket on, expression grim. He looks at you once and immediately hates whatever he sees there.

"Trouble," he says quietly.

You point at him. "Don't start."

He lets out a breath that might have been a laugh if the world hadn't crushed it first. "Then don't make it easy."

John turns back to the table and grabs one of the handguns. He checks it fast, efficient, hands steady even though his face is not. Then he presses it into your palm.

You stare at it. "John."

"Just in case."

"You told me not to answer the door."

"I also know you."

You huff, broken and small. "Unfortunately?"

"Unfortunately," he says, but his voice nearly gives out.

He closes your fingers around the grip. "Safety on. Keep it away from the windows. Stay low if anything happens."

"John."

"Please."

That stops you.

Not the order, not the weapon. The please.

You curl your fingers around the gun and nod. "Be careful," you say.

His eyes soften in a way that ruins you completely. "I will."

"You say that like you can promise it."

"I can promise I'll try."

"That's not good enough."

"I know."

Lemar steps closer. "We'll watch each other."

You look at him. "You better."

He gives you a tight nod. "Always."

John leans down and kisses you.

It's supposed to be quick, it's not.

For one second, the apartment, the sirens, the TV, the impossible flood of notifications all fall back.

There's only his mouth on yours, his hand at your cheek, the heat of him, the terrible human shape of goodbye trying to disguise itself as see you soon.

When he pulls away, his forehead rests against yours. "Stay here," he whispers.

"I promised."

"I love you."

Your throat closes. "I love you too."

His eyes shut.

Then he steps back like it costs him muscle to do it.

Lemar is already at the door, one hand on the knob, phone pressed between his shoulder and ear as he listens to another update. John grabs the duffel and slings it over his shoulder.

The TV behind you blares over fresh footage from Times Square.

People screaming.

People laughing.

People collapsing.

A man on his knees holding someone's face in both hands like he's afraid they will turn back into ash if he blinks.

John opens the apartment door.

The hallway beyond is loud with other tenants, voices overlapping, doors opening, someone crying, someone praying.

Then the air in the living room tears open.

Gold light burns across the apartment.

John moves instantly. So does Lemar.

The door slams shut.

They shove you behind them at the same time, so fast your back hits the edge of the couch. John drops the duffel. Lemar steps wide to cover the angle. Both of them reach for their weapons.

The portal widens with a crackling hiss.

Sparks spin in a perfect circle where empty air had been.

Beyond it is not the hallway. Not the street. Not anywhere that belongs inside John's apartment.

Beyond it is smoke. Rubble. A sky choked with fire. A battlefield.

John's gun comes up. "Get behind me," he snaps.

"I am behind you."

"Further."

"John."

"Further, Em."

Lemar's voice is lower, sharper. "Whoever you are, you better start talking."

A man steps through the edge of the glowing circle, dark robes shifting around him, one hand raised. His expression is urgent, not hostile, but that doesn't stop John from planting himself more firmly between you and him.

"Mara Hart?" the man asks.

Your blood goes cold.

John's voice drops into something dangerous. "Who the hell are you?"

"There's no time."

Lemar's hand tightens around his weapon. "Make time."

The man's gaze flicks between them, then lands on you. "You're needed."

John shifts, blocking you harder. "By who?"

"Everyone," the man says. "The fight is happening now."

The TV screams behind him. Phones keep buzzing. Sirens wail outside. The city is splitting open under the weight of everyone coming home wrong, and now there is a hole in John's living room breathing smoke into the place where you learned how to sleep again.

You step around John.

He catches your wrist immediately. "No."

You look through the portal.

The battlefield beyond moves in flashes.

Fire. Metal. Figures running. Something enormous crashing in the distance.

You can smell it now. Burnt earth. Blood. War.

Your stomach hollows. "Steve?" you ask.

The man's face tightens. "He's there."

"Nat?"

He doesn't answer quickly enough.

Something sharp slides beneath your ribs.

John notices. His hand tightens around your wrist. "No. Absolutely not."

You turn to him.

His face is pale with anger and fear. "I'm coming with you," he says.

Lemar steps up beside him. "We both are."

The sorcerer looks past them toward the door, toward the chaos roaring outside. "Your world needs soldiers out there too."

John whirls on him. "Don't."

"It does," the man says. "People are appearing in the middle of collapsing streets. In hospitals. In planes. In places no one prepared for because no one could prepare for this."

John's jaw flexes.

"You have seconds," the sorcerer says. "Not minutes."

John looks at you.

For one terrible moment, you watch him split himself in half.

Every part of him wants to go through that portal. Every instinct, every promise, every selfish and loving and terrified piece of him says follow her.

But outside, people are screaming.

The world has come back wrong and needs hands. Needs order. Needs someone to stand in the middle of the panic and keep it from becoming another kind of death.

John knows it.

You know he knows it.

That's why his eyes look broken.

"I'm coming with you," he says again, but softer now, like he already knows the sentence is bleeding out before it reaches you.

You step closer. "No."

His jaw hardens. "That wasn't a question."

"It wasn't an answer."

"Em."

You catch his face between your hands. The bandage under your thumb is still there. "You need to go help the people coming back."

His breathing turns sharp.

"You heard the call," you whisper. "They need every soldier they can get."

"They have soldiers."

"They don't have you."

His face tightens like the words hurt.

You force yourself to keep going. "You know how to make chaos move. You know how to get people out. You know how to stand in the middle of something awful and make other people believe there's a way through."

His eyes search yours desperately.

"You need to do that here."

Lemar steps closer, quieter now. "Em."

You look at him. He already knows. You can see it. He hates it, but he knows.

"And you," you tell him, voice trembling, "need to keep him out of trouble."

Lemar lets out a sound that nearly becomes a laugh. "Trouble," he says softly.

That almost breaks you.

You point at him. "Don't."

His mouth presses tight.

John's hands close around your wrists, holding your hands to his face like he can anchor you by touch alone. "I can't let you go into that alone."

"I won't be alone."

The portal crackles behind you. Through it, something explodes in the distance.

John flinches but doesn't look away from you.

His eyes are wet now, not crying, but close enough that you feel it in your own body.

"You might see him," he says.

There it is. The thing under the thing.

Bucky... alive, on the other side of the portal.

A ghost with flesh again.

A love dragged back from dust into blood and breath.

John looks ashamed the second the words leave him, like even naming the fear makes him cruel.

You slide your thumbs along his jaw. "I know."

His breath catches.

"I don't know what happens," you say. "I don't know what I'll feel when I see him. I'm not going to lie to you."

John's eyes close.

"But I know what I feel right now."

He opens them.

You look at him, really look at him, because you have spent the week memorizing his face and somehow it still doesn't feel like enough.

The cut on his jaw. The tired blue of his eyes. The little freckle on his left earlobe. The man who gave you a key. The man who stood beside you in smoke.

The man who learned the shape of your grief and stayed anyway.

"I love you," you tell him.

John's face crumples for half a second before he forces it back into place.

"I love you too."

His voice breaks on it.

You lean up and kiss him.

It's not gentle at first.

It's fear. It's promise. It's all the words you don't have time to say pressed into his mouth while the portal burns behind you and the world screams outside.

John kisses you like he's trying to send something with you. Like he's trying to mark the shape of home into your bones.

When you pull back, he rests his forehead against yours. "I'll see you soon," he says.

You nod.

"You hear me?"

"I hear you."

"Say it."

Your throat tightens. "I'll see you soon."

He steps back like it costs him muscle to do it.

Lemar moves in next.

For a second, he looks like he might make a joke, he doesn't.

He pulls you into a hard hug, one arm around your shoulders, one hand at the back of your head.

"You come back," he says.

It's not a request. It's not a plea. It's Lemar, and because it's Lemar, it nearly takes your knees out.

"I will."

"You better."

You grip the back of his shirt. "Keep him alive."

Lemar's arms tighten. "Always," he says.

When he lets you go, his eyes are bright. One hand drops to the pocket of his jacket.

"Here."

He presses two extra magazines into your palm.

You blink down at them.

"Try not to waste the bullets showing off." he says, already closing your fingers over them before you can argue.

A breath catches in your throat, half laugh, half heartbreak. "Lemar..."

"Don't," he says quickly, like gratitude might be the thing that finally undoes him.

Then, because Lemar Hoskins would rather chew glass than let tenderness stand around naked for too long, he points at you. "And don't do anything stupid."

You look past him at John.

John gives you a look that says he knows exactly what you're about to say and hates it.

You smile weakly. "No promises."

Lemar closes his eyes. "I walked into that."

The sorcerer calls your name.

The portal flares brighter.

John reaches for you one last time. His fingers brush yours, then catch, then let go.

You step backward toward the light.

The heat of the battlefield rolls over your shoulders.

Smoke floods your lungs. Noise tears through the portal now. Screaming. Metal. The deep, monstrous roar of something too large to belong to Earth.

You look at John. At Lemar. At the apartment behind them.

The couch blanket. The TV flashing chaos. The cigarettes on the balcony. The life that happened while the dead were gone.

The life that is still yours.

John stands with his hands clenched at his sides, every inch of him fighting the urge to follow.

Lemar stands beside him, phone already buzzing again, eyes locked on you like he can drag you back by sheer force if the portal tries to swallow you wrong.

You press the gun close to your thigh. Then you step through.

The apartment vanishes.

Sound hits first.

A battlefield opens around you, vast and broken beneath a sky bruised with smoke and fire. The ground trembles under your boots. Figures move through the chaos ahead, running, fighting, shouting orders you cannot yet understand.

The portal collapses behind you in a shower of gold sparks.

For one second, you stand alone with John's gun in your hand and the wolf charm cold against your chest.

Then you run.

For the first few seconds, there's no strategy.

No clean line through the battlefield. No orders in your ear. No map of what this place is or where you are supposed to go or who is still alive enough to need you.

There's only smoke. Heat. The ground shaking beneath your boots. The gun in your hand. The wolf charm cold against your chest.

You stumble over broken earth and metal, catching yourself with one hand against a chunk of shattered concrete. Something screams overhead, too high and sharp to be human. You duck on instinct a second before a winged creature tears through the air where your head had been, claws dragging sparks from a piece of twisted steel.

Your breath comes fast. Too fast.

The battlefield stretches around you like the end of every nightmare you ever refused to name. Fires burn in scattered patches. Rubble lies in jagged heaps. Portals flare gold across the wreckage, spilling people and armies and shadows into a war already too large for comprehension.

For one horrifying second, you think of John's apartment.

The cracked balcony door. The cigarettes in the tin. Lemar's oranges on the counter. John's bandage under your thumb.

Then something crashes into the ground ahead of you hard enough to knock you sideways. You hit your shoulder against a slab of stone and grit your teeth through the pain.

Move. You have to move.

A shape lunges at you from the smoke. You raise John's gun and fire twice. The first shot catches it in the shoulder. The second drops it.

You don't wait to see if it gets back up. You run harder.

"Mara!"

The sound of your name cuts through the chaos so cleanly that your body reacts before your mind does.

You turn.

For one second, the battlefield rearranges around Wakanda.

Not because you're there. Because they are.

Shuri stands on a rise of broken concrete, both panther gauntlets raised, braids whipping around her face, eyes sharp with focus and fury. Okoye is beside her, spear spinning with brutal, beautiful precision as she drives back two creatures trying to flank them. Ayo moves like a blade given human shape, red and gold flashing through smoke.

Your chest cracks open.

"Shuri," you breathe.

She sees you fully then and her face changes.

Not enough for anyone else to notice. Not in the middle of a war. But you see it because you knew her before the world ended. You knew her in labs full of light and teasing and impossible science. You knew her when she looked at Bucky Barnes and saw a mind worth saving instead of a weapon worth fearing.

You knew her before dust took her too.

"Mara Hart," Shuri says, voice tight. "You are late."

A broken laugh rips out of you. It hurts. Everything hurts. "I got held up."

"Clearly."

A creature lunges at her from the left. Shuri turns and blasts it backward without looking away from you.

Okoye glances over, and for half a breath, the general's stern expression fractures into something warmer, something older, something almost relieved.

Then she drives her spear through the chest of a snarling thing and shoves it off with a snarl of her own.

"No standing around," Okoye calls. "This is not a reunion dinner."

Ayo appears at your side so suddenly you almost aim the gun at her. She catches your wrist before you finish raising it.

"Easy," she says.

Your breath shakes.

Ayo's eyes flick to the wolf charm where it has slipped free of your shirt. Something unreadable moves across her face.

Then she reaches behind her and pulls a spear from the back of a fallen Dora.

Your throat tightens when she holds it out.

It's not yours. It was never yours. But the weight of Wakanda is in it.

The memory of red dirt. The smell of rain on grass. Bucky laughing softly outside the hut. Ayo's voice reciting words that had once torn him open and then, finally, failed to own him.

You stare at the weapon.

Ayo lifts one brow. "Do you remember how to use it?"

Your fingers tighten around John's gun. For one second, you almost tell her no. Not because you don't remember. Because you remember too much.

You remember training until your palms blistered. You remember Bucky sitting nearby with half a smile, pretending not to watch you. You remember him saying, sweetheart, you're going to scare them, and you remember answering, good.

You remember being whole enough to joke about it.

Then you take the spear. The metal meets your palm like a ghost returning to its body. "I remember."

Ayo nods once. "Then prove it."

Something roars behind you.

You turn.

The first swing feels wrong.

Too wide. Too angry. Too much arm, not enough breath.

You pivot, correcting your grip, and when the next creature rushes you, you move with the spear instead of against it.

The blade cuts clean through its throat. Warm blood splashes across your cheek.

You don't flinch.

Ayo's mouth curves by the smallest amount.

"There she is."

There's no time to answer.

The fight swallows you.

For a while, there's only motion.

Shuri's gauntlets thunder beside you, violet-white blasts tearing through the enemy lines. Okoye barks orders over the chaos, every word precise, every movement lethal. Ayo stays close enough to correct you once with the end of her spear, knocking your elbow into place before she buries her blade in something's ribs.

You fight like someone trying to remember your own body.

Gun in one hand. Spear in the other. John's metal and Wakanda's metal.

The life you built after the snap and the life that was buried inside it, colliding in your hands until you cannot tell which one is keeping you upright.

A creature drops from above.

You fire upward, emptying two rounds into its skull before it lands. The impact knocks you back a step. Ayo turns to check you, but you're already moving, spear sliding beneath another attacker's guard.

You twist.

Drive.

Pull free.

The thing falls.

"Not bad," Shuri calls.

You look over in time to see her send three enemies flying backward with one blast.

"Still showing off?" you shout.

"Someone has to make this look good."

You almost laugh.

Then the ground opens beneath you.

Not fully. Not enough to swallow you. But the earth splits with a violent crack as something massive slams down nearby, and the force tears you away from them. Your boots skid over loose stone. You reach for balance, but bodies surge between you and the Wakandan line.

"Ayo!"

You catch one glimpse of her turning. Then smoke floods the space between you.

Something hits you hard from the side. You slam onto your back.

The spear skitters out of reach.

The gun stays in your hand because John pressed it there, because John's voice still lives in the grip, safety on, stay low, don't make me come back to an empty apartment.

A shadow rises above you.

You lift the gun.

Too slow.

A blur of red and gray drops out of the sky.

Wings.

Metal.

A boot slams into the creature's chest, knocking it off you before it can bring its weapon down. The winged figure lands, pivots, and fires with clean, brutal accuracy. Two more enemies drop before you can get to your knees.

Sam Wilson turns just enough for you to see his face.

For a second, your heart catches.

Not because he's impossible. Everyone here is impossible.

But because he looks at you like no time has passed at all.

"Em?"

You push yourself up. "Sam."

His eyes flick over you in one rapid sweep. Blood on your face. Gun in your hand. Spear somewhere behind you. Wolf charm against your chest.

Whatever he sees, he files it away with soldier speed.

A creature rushes him from behind.

"Sam!"

He turns, wings snapping wide, and catches it with the edge of one wing before kicking it backward.

You grab the spear from the ground and drive it into the creature before it can rise.

Sam looks at you.

For half a second, something like grief crosses his face.

Then another explosion lights the smoke orange.

He grabs your arm and yanks you behind a slab of rubble just as a blast rips through the space where you had been standing.

"Focus," he says.

You suck in a breath. "I am focused."

"You're looking at everything like it's a ghost."

You glare at him.

He doesn't soften.

"Breathe later," he says. "Fight now."

The words land with the force of a slap. Then his wings snap open again.

"Sam."

He looks back.

There are a hundred things you could ask.

Where were you? Did it hurt? Do you know it has been five years? Do you know Steve has been breaking himself against the shape of your absence? Do you know Bucky might be here? Do you know I don't know who I'm supposed to be if all the dead come back and find me changed?

What comes out is smaller.

"Be careful."

His mouth tightens.

"You too, Hart."

Then he launches himself into the smoke and is gone.

For one second, you let yourself stand there.

Just one.

Then you reload John's gun with one of the magazines Lemar shoved into your palm. Your fingers are steadier than you expect.

"Focus," you whisper.

You move.

The battle worsens. There is no other word for it.

More enemies pour across the broken field, a living black tide crashing against every line the heroes manage to hold. You see flashes more than people. A red cape twisting through smoke. A hammer flying past with a scream of displaced air. A giant shape punching something out of the sky. Arrows streaking through darkness. Wakandan shields flaring. Blasters firing. Magic sparking gold in every direction.

You should be terrified. You are. But fear has become weather now. Everywhere. Unavoidable.

So you move through it.

You cut down anything that comes too close. You drag a wounded fighter behind cover. You fire until the gun kicks empty, reload, fire again. You lose the spear once, retrieve it from the chest of something that had almost reached your throat, and keep going.

Then the battlefield changes.

Not with sound. With pressure.

Every fight around you seems to tilt toward one point.

You turn.

In the distance, through smoke and moving bodies, you see her.

Wanda.

For a second, your mind refuses to place her here. She belongs to another grief. Another room. Another sentence that has haunted you for five years.

You didn't know?

You see her standing before Thanos, red power blazing around her hands, hair whipping around her face, every inch of her fury made visible. The air around her bends. Metal groans. The massive weapon in Thanos's grip strains beneath her power.

Your breath leaves you.

Wanda lifts him. Actually lifts him.

For one bright, impossible second, hope turns vicious.

You stop moving. You know better. You stop anyway. Because he's there.

Thanos.

The reason your life split open. The reason Bucky turned to ash in front of you.

The reason your body carried a loss you didn't even know how to name until it was already gone.

The reason John found you half alive in the ruins of yourself.

The reason every person on this field has a wound that predates the first strike of this battle.

Wanda's power tightens.

Thanos's armor begins to break.

Something inside your chest rises with a soundless, savage prayer.

Do it. Please. End him.

She's going to do it. She's going to kill him.

The thought blooms so suddenly that you almost choke on it.

Then a voice behind you says, "Sweetheart?"

Everything stops.

Not the battle.

But you do.

The word finds the old door inside you and opens it with one touch.

Your fingers go numb around the gun.

You turn slowly, smoke moves between you at first. Then it thins.

Bucky stands several yards away, half lit by fire, rifle hanging in his hands, hair tangled around his face exactly the way it was the last time you saw him.

Exactly.

No new lines. No added years.

No proof of the time that has chewed through you with iron teeth. He looks like he turned to dust five minutes ago.

You feel your body forget how to breathe.

His eyes move over you, confusion striking first, then recognition, then something that looks almost like fear.

"Em?"

Your name in his mouth almost takes your knees.

He's here. He's solid. He's looking at you. His chest rises. His hand tightens around the rifle.

Alive.

Bucky Barnes is alive.

The wolf charm burns cold against your skin.

You take one step toward him. Your vision blurs.

He says your name again, softer this time. Like he can see something wrong but doesn't know the shape of it yet. Like he doesn't understand that five years are standing between you with your face and John's gun and blood on your cheek.

You take another step.

Bucky starts toward you too.

The battlefield narrows to the space between his body and yours.

You think, absurdly, of the hut.

Of sunlight. Of his fingers brushing yours. Of the pregnancy test hidden in a small cardboard box.

Of dust.

Of John's bathroom, yellow light, a bandage on his jaw.

Of two men separated by five years neither of them asked for.

Your mouth opens.

You don't know what you mean to say.

Bucky's eyes drop to the charm. His expression breaks.

Then the sky opens.

Fire rains down.

The first blast hits the ground between you with a force that throws you backward before you understand what's happening.

You fly.

Your back slams into broken earth hard enough to punch the breath from your lungs. Heat rolls over you. Dirt and metal shower down. Your ears ring so violently the battlefield becomes a muffled, underwater nightmare.

Bucky shouts something.

You can't hear it.

You push yourself up on one elbow. Another blast strikes nearby. The force knocks you flat again.

Through the smoke, you see Bucky trying to get to you. He fights against the chaos, one arm raised to shield his face as fire tears the ground apart around him. He looks furious now. Panicked. His mouth moves around your name.

You claw at the dirt, trying to stand. A blast erupts to your left. The shockwave rolls you sideways. Pain flashes white through your ribs.

You gasp, choking on smoke. The gun is still in your hand. You don't know where the spear went.

Bucky is closer now. Too close to the impacts.

"Bucky!" you scream, but your voice is swallowed by the sky breaking apart.

He reaches for you. His metal hand stretches through smoke and falling ash.

For one impossible second, you think you might catch it.

Then another blast hits. The ground between you explodes.

You're thrown backward again, tumbling over stone and dirt until your shoulder cracks into a twisted piece of metal and the world whites out at the edges.

You lie there, stunned, staring up at a sky full of fire.

This is it, you think distantly. Not death. Interruption. Again. Always.

The universe keeps putting him in front of you and ripping the moment away before either of you can survive it.

Then the fire stops. All at once. The sudden absence of it is almost worse.

Your ears ring. Your lungs burn.

Somewhere far above, something tears through the clouds and the enormous ship overhead erupts into light. You can't process it. You only see the sky flash, the cannons lift away from the ground, and the battlefield inhale.

You roll onto your side, coughing.

"Mara!"

Not Bucky.

Ayo.

A hand grabs your arm and hauls you upright.

The world tilts violently.

You nearly fall into Okoye, who steadies you with one hard grip at your shoulder.

"You are bleeding," she says.

You touch your temple. Your fingers come away red. "I've had worse."

"That is not reassuring."

Shuri appears on your other side, eyes scanning you quickly. "Can you stand?"

You look past them, searching through smoke.

Bucky. You saw him. He was there. He was right there.

"Mara," Shuri says, sharper now.

You drag your eyes back to her.

Her expression shifts as she understands at least part of what has happened.

"Later," she says, not unkindly. "Survive now. Fall apart later."

You breathe once. Then nod.

"Good," Okoye says. "We need to move."

Across the battlefield, a shout rises. Not one voice, many. Urgent, converging, desperate.

Your gaze follows the motion.

Something small and terrible moves through the chaos.

A gauntlet.

The stones.

Even from this distance, you feel them.

Not physically. Not the way the witches and gods might. But every cell in your body seems to recognize the thing that ruined you and the thing that might have fixed what it broke.

People are trying to get it across the field to a portal, to somewhere safe.

Enemies swarm toward it from every direction.

Shuri's face hardens.

Okoye lifts her spear.

Ayo shifts beside you.

You look down and realize your spear is gone. Your hand is empty except for John's gun.

Okoye notices.

Without looking, she pulls a short blade from her belt and presses it into your free hand.

"Try not to lose this one."

You almost smile. "No promises."

She gives you a look that could have disciplined entire armies.

Then you run with them.

The battlefield becomes a corridor made of women.

You don't understand how it happens at first. One moment, you are pushing through smoke with Shuri, Okoye, and Ayo. The next, more figures converge around the gauntlet's path.

A warrior with wings flashing in the firelight.

A woman with a blade and grief carved into every line of her body.

Wanda, eyes still burning red, terrible and beautiful in her rage.

Pepper Potts in armor, bright and airborne.

Women you know. Women you don't. All of them moving toward the same impossible task.

Protect the gauntlet. Get it through. Don't let the end of the universe happen twice.

Your body hurts but you keep moving.

An enemy lunges toward the carrier's flank. You shoot it through the skull.

Another comes low. Ayo takes its legs. Okoye finishes it before it hits the ground.

Shuri fires over your shoulder, close enough that the heat of the blast skims your cheek.

"Duck next time," she says.

"You could warn me next time."

"I assumed you liked dramatic timing."

"Not today."

You shove forward, blade in one hand, gun in the other, every step dragging pain through your ribs.

Ahead, the gauntlet changes hands in flashes. It feels less like watching an object move and more like watching hope get passed from heartbeat to heartbeat.

The enemy line surges. You fire until the gun clicks empty. You reach for another magazine. Your fingers close on nothing. Lemar's extras are gone.

For a split second, panic opens its mouth. Then you remember John's voice.

Stay low.

Keep moving.

Survive.

You tuck the empty gun into your waistband and switch the blade into your dominant hand.

A creature slams into you.

You hit the ground with it on top of you, teeth snapping inches from your face. You jam your forearm under its throat and drive the blade up beneath its jaw.

Hot blood spills over your wrist. You shove it off and scramble up. Someone grabs your hand.

Wanda.

Her fingers close around yours just long enough to pull you away from another blast of debris.

Her eyes lock on your face.

The battlefield disappears for one breath.

She knows you. You know her. You see the same memory in her expression.

A false negative. A truth she knew before you did.

Her mouth parts like she might say something.

You shake your head once.

Her face tightens with pain.

Then she lets go, turns, and throws a wave of red power so violently that half the enemy line is flung backward like paper.

You keep running.

The gauntlet almost reaches the portal. Then the path collapses.

The enemy swarms too fast, too many, coming from every side. Fire and dust and bodies crash together. Someone shouts. Someone falls. A blast throws you to one knee.

You look up just in time to see the gauntlet knocked away. It tumbles across the ground.

Everything in you goes cold.

No.

You try to stand. Your leg nearly gives out.

The battlefield bends toward the stones.

Thanos moves toward them.

So does everyone else.

You see Steve fighting through bodies, shield broken, face smeared with blood and dirt. Thor. Carol. Wanda. Strange. Every hero left standing trying to cross an impossible distance at the same time.

You force yourself up.

One step. Another. Too slow. You are too slow.

Thanos reaches the gauntlet.

Your chest hollows. "No," you whisper.

He lifts it.

The world seems to gather itself around his fist. You see the stones burning with that horrible, familiar light.

You think of Wakanda. Bucky turning to ash. Your body realizing what your mind had not.

You think of John standing in his apartment, hands clenched at his sides, letting you go because the world needed him too.

You think, not again. Please, not again.

Then Tony Stark is there.

At first, you don't understand what you're seeing.

One second, Thanos has the gauntlet.

The next, Tony is on him, fighting for it with a desperation that looks too human for gods and monsters and stones.

A sharp sound tears out of you.

Maybe his name. Maybe nothing.

You stumble forward, but Okoye catches your arm.

"Wait."

"I can't."

"You cannot reach him."

Tony is thrown back.

For one suspended second, Thanos stands tall again.

Certain.

Inevitable.

He raises his hand.

Your whole body braces for the end.

The snap comes.

But nothing happens.

No light.

No dust.

No bodies disappearing around you.

Thanos looks at his hand.

The stones are gone.

Your gaze jerks to Tony.

They burn along his armor, embedded in metal and light, crawling with a power no human body was ever meant to hold.

The battlefield goes silent in the way a world does before lightning strikes.

You understand before he moves.

Before anyone says anything. Before the universe takes the shape of sacrifice.

"No," you breathe.

Tony lifts his hand.

The light builds.

Every wound in existence seems to hold still.

Then he snaps.

White light devours the field.

You hit the ground hard, one arm over your face, the force of it tearing through the air and into your bones. It's not like the first snap. Not to you. That one stole sound and warmth and left you holding dust.

This one burns. This one shakes. This one feels like the universe screaming as it corrects itself with a blade.

When the light fades, you hear the enemy falling apart.

Not bodies.

Ash.

Dust.

All around you, Thanos's army begins to vanish.

One by one.

Then dozens.

Then hundreds.

Creatures dissolve mid-step. Ships crumble into nothing. Weapons fall through empty air and clatter uselessly against the ground.

You push yourself up on trembling arms.

Across the field, Thanos sits alone among the ruin.

For a moment, he looks less like a god and more like an old wound finally running out of blood.

Then he disappears too.

No triumph rises.

Not at first.

The silence after is too enormous.

You stagger to your feet. Your ears ring. Your ribs scream. The wolf charm rests against your chest, slick with sweat and blood.

People begin to move through the aftermath, slow and disbelieving. Some collapse. Some look around for the faces they almost lost again. Some stare at the empty places where enemies had been.

Your eyes search without permission for Bucky.

Then Pepper's voice breaks across the field.

Not loud.

Not even a scream.

But grief has a frequency all its own.

Everyone turns.

Tony is on the ground.

For a moment, you can't make your mind accept it.

Tony Stark has always felt like a man made of sharp edges and impossible exits. Someone who could talk his way through a burning room, build a door out of scrap metal, make death wait because he wasn't finished being difficult.

But he's very still now.

The stones have burned through him in ways your eyes don't want to understand.

Pepper kneels beside him, her armor open, her hands on him with a gentleness that makes the battlefield feel obscene around them.

Rhodey is there.

Peter is there, trembling, folding into himself with the kind of grief that belongs to someone too young to be asked to hold it.

Steve stands nearby, face broken open in silence.

Your feet move before you decide to move them.

Not close enough to intrude.

Just enough to see.

Just enough to understand that victory has teeth too.

Tony's face is pale beneath the ruin of blood and burns. His eyes move, but barely. Pepper leans close, saying something too soft for you to hear.

You watch her smile through tears. You watch Tony look at her. You watch the light in his chest go dark.

For one second, no one moves.

The whole battlefield seems to hold its breath around the absence of him.

Then Rhodey lowers first. One knee to the broken earth.

Peter follows, folding down like his body has forgotten how to hold him up. Steve sinks beside him, head bowed, the remains of his shield still strapped to his arm.

T'Challa drops to one knee.

Shuri. Okoye. Ayo. Sam. Wanda. Clint.

One by one, across the ruined field, heroes and soldiers and kings and survivors fall to their knees.

No order is given. No one has to ask.

Grief moves through them like a tide.

Your knees hit the ground before you realize you're falling too.

The impact sends pain up your legs, sharp and grounding, but you don't care. You bow your head, one bloody hand pressed to the dirt, the other closing around the wolf charm at your chest.

Somewhere on this field, Bucky Barnes is alive.

You saw him. You heard him.

Sweetheart.

The word still sits under your ribs like shrapnel.

Somewhere beyond this field, people are coming back to homes that are not theirs anymore.

Somewhere in Brooklyn, John and Lemar are standing in the middle of chaos, pulling strangers out of wreckage, keeping the returned from dying twice, trying to make a miracle survivable.

Somewhere, Natasha is not answering.

Here, Tony Stark lies still beneath a smoke-choked sky, and the universe he saved doesn't know how to thank him without falling apart.

You keep your head bowed.

If you look for Bucky now, you will break.

If you think of John now, you will break.

If you ask where Nat is, you already know.

So you kneel there with blood on your skin, John's empty gun at your waist, Wakandan steel lost somewhere in the dirt, and Bucky Barnes alive somewhere behind the smoke.

The dead have come back.

The living have paid for it.

And somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, the world begins again without asking if you're ready.