Never in a Million Years |N.R|

|53| Picking up the pieces.

"It's been twenty three days since Thanos came to earth" Rhodey started.

And after a deep breath, Nat carried on from there. "World governments are in pieces. The parts that are still working are trying to take a census and it looks like he did..." she trailed off as her eyes met mine, and I gave her hand a squeeze of reassurance that was enough for her to carry on. "He did exactly what he said he was gonna do. Thanos wiped out fifty percent of all living creatures."

Then the room fell silent once more, the air filled with trepidation at the fact that we'd been roving over this information for over three weeks, and yet we had nothing to show for it. We were well and truly stuck at square one, and it was grating on all of us.

Tony's eyes jumped across the group before he asked, "where is he now? Where?"

It was hard to meet his gaze, even if it only settled on me for a millisecond, due to feelings of both hurt and shame. Hurt, because the pain that came with seeing him so broken and weak was strong enough to be physical, and shame because whilst he'd been fighting to stay alive, we'd done nothing to offer him some kind of relief once he got back to us.

For all intents and purposes, we'd failed him. And the last person I ever wanted to disappoint was Tony.

Steve was the one to voice our disappointing position amongst this all, "we don't know. He just opened a portal and walked through."

To nobody's surprise, Stark's response to that was a displeased sigh and the shake of his head, until his eyes focused on something behind us. When I turned my head slightly to follow his line of sight, I realised it was trained on Thor, who was sat outside away from everyone.

"What's wrong with him?" Tony eventually asked.

The raccoon, Rocket, spoke from beside me. "Oh, he's pissed. He thinks he failed. Which, of course, he did. But there's a lot of that going around, ain't there?"

He was right. Thor had been drowning in guilt, worse than the rest of us, and whenever he finally managed to break the surface for a lungful of air, he forced his head back under. He was punishing himself over and over, convinced that he was the only cause of all of this, and nobody could tell him anything different. We'd all tried.

Although Tony's response to the raccoon was a lot less cynical than I'd predicted. "Honestly, until this exact second I thought you were a build-a-bear."

The joke bought a smile to a few of our faces, which was exactly what we needed, as well as being a harsh reminder of just how much he'd been missed.

The furry, speaking animal shrugged. "Maybe I am."

I appreciated his willingness to go along with the joke, before Steve got the conversation back on track. "We've been hunting Thanos for three weeks now. Deep space scans and satellites, and we got nothing. Tony, you fought him-"

"Who told you that?" Stark cut him off abruptly, shaking his head. "I didn't fight him. No, he wiped my face with a planet while the Bleecker Street magician gave away the stone. That's what happened."

Steve remained stone faced, "okay."

But Tony wasn't done. "There was no fight, 'cause he's not beatable."

"Did he give you any clues, any coordinates, anything?" Rogers questioned desperately, although his tone did well to hide it.

Tony feigned wracking his brain, "uh..."

I saw Nat shake her head out of my periphery at his theatrics. None of us particularly had much patience for anything other than getting to work in finding Thanos, and Tony's dazed ramblings weren't included in that.