Avengers Compound, August 17th, 2018
Twenty-three days after the Snap
Victor Faust POV
The world turned into a blurred silence. There were images, yes. Some sensations like his shoulder being grabbed, his back patted, or his lips meeting cold liquids. In truth, none of it might exist at this point. With just one snap of his fingers, Thanos eradicated half of the life in the universe. Just to prove a point.
There was another blurred voice coming to his ear.
Victor trusted the Mind Stone so much, and he still failed. His plan should have worked!
Again, the blurred voice in his ear.
He should have stayed behind and protected Vision. Wanda would surely kill Thanos if his failure did not distract her. She would save them all where he fucked up. Why did he think he could protect them all? A pathetic waste of space—that's what he was now.
The blurred voice grew louder. Someone shook his shoulder.
"Victor! Are you in there?" He turned and saw those baby blue eyes of Steve. His strong and shaved jawline was now clenched hard. There was this pattern of tight muscles on his face that all morphed into the visage of an old man. As Faust looked closely, he started to notice the tiny red veins in Steve's sapphires, the small bags forming under his eyes, and the fact that the color of his skin was gradually going paler. "Victor?" Steve repeated.
"Huh? I mean, what did you say?"
"I said that Tony was back from space."
A tiny, miniscule spark of hope lit up inside Victor's soul, like a lonely matchstick in the winter storm.
"Is Strange with him? With Stephen, we can figure something out."
"I'm afraid not. It's just him and two ladies, who I'm guessing are aliens, since one has a blue skin and the other brought back their ship with her hands." Steve sighed as Tony rolled up in a wheelchair hooked up to an IV.
Stark went on a tirade about how they all failed, which is true as far as Victor is concerned, but no one needed to listen to that. Stark started to blame Rogers for breaking up the Avengers until he dropped to the floor with a loud crash. The chronic exhaustion finally put him to sleep. He hardly looked like his former self. His hollow cheeks swallowed his pale skin. From the small opening in his robe, Victor could count his ribs.
The blurred, white silence was starting to get a hold of him again. The thought of leaving once again appeared in his mind. However, the only place Victor wanted to go was where Wanda left.
A metallic scrapping sound brought before him a can of opened beer. Faust nodded gratefully at Thor, who was slowly munching on roasted chicken. It's funny; as a child, he would be ecstatic to have a connection with the God of Thunder, but now it all seemed like a bad, morbid joke. Thor and Victor barely spoke to each other. Since the battle, they have been communicating through their eyes and gestures. Both blamed themselves for losing. Yes, everyone did that, but the unfair truth is that they had a real chance at killing Thanos.
Victor eagerly drank the bitter drink. Since the battle, he could barely hold any solid food. It's definitely one of the aftereffects of using Edmund's spell. His soul couldn't handle something so disgustingly different from Order magic or the energies from Avlee.
"Father rarely spoke of what he would do after his mission."
Who said that? Victor started to pay attention to his surroundings.
"-But every time he mentioned 'The Garden,' that's where he would go."
"Oh shit!" Victor jumped at hearing the talking raccoon. Rocket, as he was calling himself, ran to the console. His small claws tapped the room's floor. He furiously punched keys and pulled out a space map. "When Thanos did the snap, he generated one of the biggest power surges in history. Two days ago, we were able to pick something similar." The raccoon turned to the blue woman. "Nebula? Can you find his planet in this sector?"
After a few minutes, they had the coordinates. They knew where Thanos was and, more importantly, where the stones were.
"Good, I'm leaving." The new blonde, Carol Danvers was her name? Headed towards the door.
"Where to?" Steve called after her.
"To kill Thanos." Victor snorted into his beer can, while Thor's posture turned stiff.
"We tried that before." Said Natasha dryly.
"But I wasn't here last time."
"How cocky is this woman?" Victor thought, drowning in the last of his drink.
Thor stood up and approached Danvers. He lowered his head just to gaze into the woman's eyes. Studying her, he summoned his axe from the other end of the room. The Stormbreaker flew right next to her ear. She just smirked unflinchingly.
"Seriously... How cocky is she?"
Everyone was hastily preparing for departure. Victor only grabbed another beer as his rugged clothes turned into his Merlin regalia. Most of the team doesn't understand... The only way to undo what Thanos did is to repeat the snap. That is true; however, a normal human being won't survive such a thing. Thor can probably take it. The cocky woman likely believes she can do it. In theory, Victor could too. He would just need to use a ridiculous amount of magic to shield himself, which currently...
His body felt like it was made of glass. Each step put his bones and skin under pressure, which riddled his insides.
Yeah, currently that won't be possible for him, but still, he will bring Wanda back. One way or the other.
After Victor's first space flight, where he was solely focused on not throwing up, they landed on the planet. It really was a garden. There were no buildings aside from a simple wooden cottage among endless fields and lush forests.
"Such a monster doesn't deserve to live in a place like this."
Victor started to feel a growing fury that was slowly eating away at his apathy. He touched the alien flower's thick stem. As he did countless times, he tried to draw on the energies of Avlee mesmerized by the foreign fauna. He felt nothing. There was no vivid, almost electric pulse of life he always experienced when connecting with nature. Come to think of it, he barely felt anything at all, especially one or six crucial things.
"If he is here, then why don't I feel the stones?"
Victor thought as he sneaked closer to the cottage under the invisibility spell. Once in place, with a silent signal from Captain America, he conjured thick white bands that glowed with his order magic. The bands flew into the house by punching through walls, piercing rooftops, breaking windows, and ripping the floor. As he blinked in a puff of smoke and got inside, he saw Thanos completely immobilized by his spell. However, something was wrong. Half of Thanos body was disfigured, burned almost to a black shell. Furthermore, Victor's spell was designed to suck away the target's energy, but now he barely sensed anything from the mad titan.
Thanos opened his mouth, but at the same second, Thor descended from the sky and, with one fluid motion, cut off his arm. The Infinity Gauntlet rolled around the floor.
"Why does it look like it was burned?"
Rage was starting to disappear inside Victor. Now he was starting to feel something much worse: fear. As soon as the rest of the team entered the hovel, Banner's metallic voice came from his suit.
"There are no stones here." He kicked the broken gauntlet away.
"Where are they?" Thor demanded as lighting crackled around his body.
Rather than listening, Victor observed and think...
"Thanos looks barely alive, there are no stones in the gauntlet... There was an energy spike earlier..."
"He destroyed them." Victor whispered as his bands silently disappeared. "The stones are gone."
"You are bright, young one." Thanos gave him a strained smile. "I've destroyed the stones so that no one will ever be tempted to undo what has been done. The prosperity of the universe is now secure." The mad titan breathed hard. Barely conscious, he held his small smirk as his burned body waved from left to right.
"No... That's not possible." Natasha whispered, stepping outside.
"YOU LIE." Thor's scream merged with thunder that pierced the sky outside.
"My father is guilty of many things, but lying is not among them." Nebula said. Her dark eyes were fixated on her boots.
"I am-" Thanos words, along with his head, were cut off by Thor. As his neck was sliced at blinding speed. As the heavy and disfigured body dropped to the ground, a grave silence engulfed the insides.
The blurry nothingness took control of Victor yet again.
"There is no way to bring back Wanda now. I'm alone."
Everyone on the ship must have felt that because, for once, his silent haze wasn't disturbed. They landed back on Earth. Some said goodbye, some didn't. Rocket, Nebula, and Danvers went back to space, and Thor silently disappeared in the clouds. Victor didn't pay any mind to Steve and the rest. He walked through the grassy fields of the compound until he stepped inside a cold shade. He sat cross-legged on the ground, rubbing his bare hands.
His disgustingly normal hands.
"I messed up, Pietro." His throat grew tight as the vision before him got blurry. "I've tried so hard to make it work, to make her happy." He started to feel a painful sting in his chest. "And now she is gone. Forever."
Victor pulled out the velvet box he had never let go of. The opened lid revealed a golden ring made entirely out of tiny diamonds. The painful sting continued to strangle his heart.
"I was supposed to propose. I've planned everything; I even asked Clint and Laura for some advice. Do you think she would've liked it?" Victor pointed the ring at the stone tablet. Bitter tears drilled through his cheeks.
"I think she would love it. As everything that came from you." Natasha said softly as she took a sit next to him.
"It's all right, Natasha. You don't need to be here." As Victor spoke, Natasha gently rubbed his shoulder.
"But I want to Victor. You shouldn't be alone in this."
Victor's mind went back to the time of Pietro's funeral. Back then, his hand, adorned with red veins, was rubbing Wanda's shoulder.
"It's funny... I said something like that to Wanda during the funeral." Their eyes meet and Victor saw the same sorrow and misery in her as he felt inside. "We all lost Nat. It's our choice how we learn to live with it."
There was another part to that, but he reserved that to the privacy of his mind. Natasha was now gently rubbing his back. Her small but strong hand moved in circles as she placed her head on his shoulder.
"When you were on your secret and ever-so-sudden training in Kamar-Taj I spent some time with her."
"I know. She mentioned it a couple of times." Victor tried to clean his face.
"During this whole thing, I knew her mind was solely focused on you." Natasha continued ignoring his words. "It was adorable, really. I wanted to show her a couple of my tricks. How to figure out if someone is lying, how to lie convincingly, and how to seduce people."
"You really thought this was necessary?"
"I didn't finish my story, Victor." Natasha nudged his ribs. "She said she already had a man she always wanted, and she never had to seduce him; she will never lie to him, and he will always be honest with her."
"Why are you telling me this, Nat?" The former Russian spy just kept smiling. She turned to look into his eyes.
"Even back there, you were her whole world, Victor. I know this isn't fair or doesn't change much, but you gave her everything she ever wanted." She put her arm around his shoulder and pulled him closer. "You made her happy."
Victor hid the ring back in the velvet box. The pair just sat there in the shade. The tree was gently rustling its green leaves. However, he still lacked his previous connection to nature. Tired as he might, nothing came to him.
He felt nothing.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for reading!
This chapter pushed us into the five-year break between the Infinity War and the Endgame.
There is a lot planned ahead, and I can't wait to show you the path Victor, filled with grief, will take.
I hope I will surprise you a bit ;)
Take care :)