After the War

The aftermath

Gamora

"You have to sacrifice the person you love the most," the hooded man had told him. That's what would have gotten him what he wanted. That's what would have sealed the fate of the universe. I had turned to him in triumph, told him there was no way for him to get what he wanted because he had never known love. But then... then his expression changed. It was as if he was about to do something he would regret, but he was determined to do it because he thought it was for the greater good. It scared me, it really scared the hell out of me because for a moment I thought he might have known love. Then I realized what he was about to do... he was about to sacrifice me. He loved me? I had thought at that confusing moment. But soon my confusion was replaced with fear as he drove me closer to the edge of the cliff. The fear mixed itself with hatred and another wave of confusion as I realized that he was indeed about to sacrifice me. But I was not willing to go down without a fight, I was not willing to lay down my life for a cause he thought was good. I took out the blade he had given me once, the blade he had given me when we first met and he decided to kidnap me. It was a small knife, which he had once used to demonstrate balance to me, with which he had distracted me anyway because, if I ever had the chance to kill him, I wanted it to be with that blade, with the first thing he had given me. I wanted him to see, even for just a second, the monster he had created within me and maybe realize that whatever he had done was wrong. That's the blade I tried to use to kill myself with before he had the chance to murder me. But it was to no avail, of course, for he could control reality, now that he had destroyed Knowhere and took the Reality stone from the collector. The blade turned into bubbles, just like the bullets from Peter's gun had when he had tried to kill me... A favor I had asked of him, because I didn't want to be in the hands of the man who was about to throw me of a cliff, not alive at least. "No, this isn't love," I told him then, hoping that maybe, just maybe, he would realize that he didn't love me or that he was doing was wrong if he did indeed love me. But he threw me off the cliff anyway. I fell, just a few seconds, but it felt like years as I saw my life flying by. The last thing I saw was Peter, right before Thanos took me with him. "I love you more than anything," I said. "I love you too," he replied. Then I hit the ground and everything went black. That was the end of my life... Or so I thought.

I felt my body again, I opened my eyes end blinked slowly, adjusting to the light. I looked around and found myself lying on a surface of... water? No, it wasn't water, it couldn't be water, I would have been swallowed up by water. But it sure did look like water, and it was cold to the touch like water. "That's Strange," I mumbled. I looked up at the sky, which was the orange shade of sunset, maybe a little brighter even, and I was sure I wasn't in the normal world anymore, or normal universe as I should probably state it. My memories of that place are quite vague from that moment on. I remember whispers and cries of agony, as if from people in pain, souls long lost. I do remember figuring out where it was that I was. I was in the Soul Stone, the stone Thanos obtained by throwing me off that damn cliff. I remember feeling terrible about that, feeling terrible about probably being the cause of mass slaughter. If only I hadn't told him where to find it... But I couldn't stand it... I couldn't stand it to just stand by as he tortured Nebula, my sister. She might not be my real sister, but it sure as hell feels like she is. We grew up together, we were trained together, we made plans to kill Thanos together when we were young and still had hopes and dreams. We had almost grown apart, but we had become closer over the past three years or so. And so I couldn't stand by...

I remember feeling a change, it felt as if the world turned upside-down for a moment, and then spinned back to its right position, as if it made 360° spin. Something was wrong, something was very wrong. I remember Thanos being there and me being in the form as he cherished me most. The little girl he had kidnapped. Being a child again only increased my feeling of wrongness, but I pushed it away. I pushed it all away to ask him one question, but it was the only question that mattered. "Did you do it?" I asked him. He looked down at me, he even dared to look sad, as if what he had done pained him. "Yes," he said. So he had done it, he had collected all the Infinity Stones and snapped his fingers to erase half of the universe, if I were bigger, and if I felt like I could have reached I might have tried to punch him in the face. "What did it cost?" "Everything," he replied and he looked even worse than he did when he had answered the first question. And I thought that maybe, maybe he did care. Maybe he had not wanted to do it. But that thought vanished as he did and I was alone again. And I was myself again. Not knowing how much time I had spent in the Soul Stone and somehow fearing the eternity of loneliness that waited for me in there... I didn't know what was about to happen. I didn't know that there where people out there who would fight to win back what they had lost. I didn't know there was a plan, how could I? I was trapped. So I got myself as ready as one could be for eternity spent alone.