Steve's POV
Loki's composure just crumbled when Pepper said Mira's name. He fell against the wall, his entire body shaking as he wept. Dreyma startled with the impact and looked around, her eyes wide with fear. In that moment, she was a spitting image of her mother. I didn't realize I was moving towards them until I was there, sliding my hands under Loki's. He relinquished Dreyma without a struggle, but then sank to the floor. Natahsa knelt beside him, her movements hesitant and awkward, but she got him back on his feet and led him away.
"I'm so sorry." Pepper murmured.
"How much do you know about what happened?"
"Not much. The news was showing footage of people vanishing off the streets, just fading away and–"
"Yeah." Rhodey cut her off, "Thanos got all the stones. And he used them to wipe out half of all life."
"Oh my god."
"Yeah." Dreyma seemed to be adjusting to me.
"We need to start making calls. We have to assume the governments are in shambles."
"I never thought I'd say this," Bruce began, "But we should call Fury."
"I agree. I'll go start pulling security footage."
"I'll help with that." The raccoon–and I thought I'd seen everything–ran after Rhodey. The others seemed to scatter as well, off towards the bedrooms. I hung back with Pepper.
"Where's her crib?"
"She doesn't have one here. Loki and Mira dropped her off with me and left.
"Ok. I'll change and go to the store, see what I can find."
"I'll come with. I need some practice baby shopping. I'll have to do it soon enough." My heart stuttered a bit.
"You're not..."
"Yeah," She had a smile on her face and a hand on her stomach, "I am." But there were tears in her eyes, and I realized it was because Tony was missing.
"Congratulations." My tone sounded hollow, even to me. Now, even if Tony was gone, both Pepper and Loki would have precious treasures from their loves. I would have no such thing. Not that I wanted children of my own, being a godparent to Dreyma would've been more than enough, but it still hurt. The rings in my utility belt, the ones I'd been trying not to think about the entire flight back here, suddenly weighed more than the Earth itself.
"Here." Pepper handed me a tissue. I hadn't even noticed I was crying. I adjusted Dreyma to accept it, "If you don't feel like going right now–"
"No! No." I added more calmly, "Let's go now. Then we can come back and get to work.
The world was more of a mess than we thought. The roads were littered with abandoned cars, and there were hardly any employees in the store to help us, but three hours later, it was dark out and we were back at the Compound with baby supplies for Dreyma and lots of food for the rest of us. But that was the silver lining. Upon meeting Rocket, we were informed that both Nick Fury and Maria Hill had dissolved. And apparently, Rhodey had seen something in the footage that made him run out in his War Machine suit to the location. He wasn't back yet.
Natasha had managed to distract Loki long enough for Bruce to sedate him, he'd be out until morning, or so Bruce thought.
As a team, we were able to assemble the crib, put Dreyma in her newly-washed pajamas, and get her to go to sleep. According to Thor, she couldn't sleep alone, so we put her in my room for the night. We'd consult Loki in the morning, but right now, he needed to rest.
When Rhodey returned, he had some sort of device that I didn't recognize with him. According to the others, it was called a 'pager', one of the pieces of technology I'd missed. It had gone out of fashion a couple decades ago, apparently. And Fury's last act had been to send someone a signal with it. There hadn't even been a question as to whether or not we were going to do everything we could to keep it that way.
That had been a week ago. In that time, governments had begun to take censuses of all the missing people. Ever since then, the numbers had been skyrocketing. Dreyma seemed to be settling in well, given everything. She'd woken several times the first night. Not that I'd been doing much sleeping. But we'd still been taking turns these past few days. If Loki had his way, he would spend each and every minute with her, but that didn't change the fact that he also needed to rest, grieve, and take care of himself. The worst moment had come a few days ago, when Okoye had made contact with us. With Shuri gone, they had done what they could to preserve Vision, but there was no hope of restoration.
"There is...one more thing." Okoye shifted uncomfortably, "Loki, forgive me, but we do not know who else would have known...."
"Yes?"
"What was Mira's date of birth?" The room went silent and Loki froze. My chest ached when I realized it was because he didn't know. None of us did, it seemed. I searched my memories of her, of when she may have let on, dropped a hint, but there was nothing. Then, I heard Zola's voice in my mind.
"After 1981." I hadn't meant to blurt.
"That's right," Natasha murmured, "After HYDRA got control of the genetics division. They were shut down in 1995, not long after she escaped, and she said she was about a year old when that happened."
"So, shall we say 1994?"
"No!" I suddenly remembered, "Zola said 1990."
"So....just 1990?" We all looked to Loki, and he nodded. His jaw was clenched tightly, so Natasha spoke for him.
"Yes, unless we're able to find more accurate data." But from her tone, that was very unlikely. We hardly saw Loki at all the next day.
For the moment, we were all taking shifts, watching the numbers of the missing rise constantly. The sun had gone down not long ago, and we were all getting tired. Aside from Bruce, Rhodey, and Natasha who had the upcoming night shift. Loki had already fallen asleep in the swivel chair with Dreyma on his chest and I'd been yawning for the past hour. But I didn't want to be alone. I didn't want to keep watching these numbers either, Kenya alone had already passed twenty seven million. Not to mention the world. More than three billion.
"This is a nightmare."
"I've had better nightmares." Natasha was dressed to spar.
"Hey." It was Rhodey. Loki jerked awake, "So that thing just stopped doing...whatever the hell it was doing." Natasha left and we followed. Any excuse to get away from those numbers.
"What have we got?"
"Whatever signal is was sending finally crapped out."
"I thought we bypassed the battery."
"We did, it's still plugged in, but it stopped."
"Reboot it, send the signal again."
"Hang on, we don't even know what this is." Bruce protested.
"Fury did." Natasha's voice was hard with determination, "Just do it please. Tell me, the second you get a signal, I want to know who's on the other end of that thing." She turned to leave, but stopped. At that, I turned too.
"Where's Fury." There was a strange woman standing behind us, whose outfit matched what had been on the screen of the pager. I sighed. This was going to be a long night.
Loki's POV
This new woman, Carol, was certainly unused to being given orders. However, she agreed to go out and look for Stark, once we convinced her that he was out last hope. She'd left more than two weeks ago, the very night she'd arrived. We had been able to confirm Carol's story as to her identity, but that didn't account for her attitude.
We had managed to have some semblance of a celebration for Dreyma's first birthday, although it was as much a celebration of Mira as it was for Dreyma. Everyone had shed tears at some point, but laughter as well. But the air that hung around us after was heavy as the final count for the lives lost in the snap came in. Exactly half of the population. Stark would find a way to fix this. He had to. We had to get them back. Get her back, before Dreyma could remember losing her mother. Or rather, never remembering her in the first place. The first few days, the days that had been hardest to be around her, she continued to cry for Mira, not understanding why her mother suddenly wasn't there. The others had been wonderful in taking care of her during those times. But she hadn't done that in over a week now. I wasn't sure to be grateful that there were fewer unexpected reminders of Mira (aside from the split seconds when she had a very 'Mira' expression on her face), or to grieve for the few memories Dreyma had of her slipping away.
We had tried to put her to bed with the sun over an hour ago, but she had fussed so much I was afraid she'd make herself sick. For most of the day, she'd been trying to stand on her own, walk on her own. She had mastered standing a few days ago, but didn't quite have the walking thing down yet, even when she was leaning on something.
The last rays of daylight were slowly receding from the room, and I could feel my eyes drooping with them. It would be past my bedtime soon, and she would have no choice but to wait until tomorrow to achieve her next goal. Steve was sitting on the floor a few feet away with Dreyma. The soldier had been keeping odd hours ever since Carol had arrived, but no one had yet plucked up the guts to confront him about it. Not that I needed to, I knew full well of what he had planned for after the battle in Wakanda. I'd walked within earshot one morning, while he was holding Dreyma. He'd been in tears, telling her how he'd planned to propose, why he'd gotten the rings he did, and how scared he was that Bucky wasn't going to accept. But only a fool would have thought that. Even from the little I had seen of them, Steve had been Bucky's entire world, the most important thing to him. I'd kept that accidental encounter to myself. When he was ready to talk about it, he would.
"Come on, up you get." He placed Dreyma on her feet for the upteenth time and I reached out for her.
"I'm right here, sweetling. You can do it." After saying that more times than the number of years I'd lived, it was difficult to have the same enthusiasm. But my daughter was determined. She put on foot in front of the other, wavering a bit, teetering forward, but this time she figured it out, bringing her other foot to the front. When she didn't fall, a huge smile broke out on her face.
"Yes! That's it! Now do it again." Steve had his hands inches from her back, ready to catch her, but that was unnecessary. Dreyma staggered forward again, with very little grace and constantly on the verge of falling, but when she fell it was into my arms.
"Yes!" I lifted her into the air and she shrieked with laughter, "I'm so proud of you." I lowered her enough to kiss her on the cheek, "But now it's time for bed."
Unlike before, she did not protest.