STARGIRL

twenty-five.

Peter slowly helped Eleanor to her feet, and caught her when she collapsed against him.

"Everything hurts, Dad." she whimpered.

Peter placed a rough kiss on her hair, "It'll be okay, Els. I promise you."

She shivered, and buried herself further into his jacket as they stumbled towards the rest of the group. The two Parker's were helping Tony onto his feet and Drax was helping Mantis over. Nebula was walking over also. Eleanor gave her a swift nod. She still wasn't too overjoyed with the blue assassin joining their team, but Gamora had trusted her in the end, so she would as well.

Hell, she missed Gamora so goddamn much. Her body hadn't felt this much pain before and she stumbled forwards, breathing in sharply. Peter steadied her with his arms, "Maybe you need to sit, El?"

"No, I'm fine."

"Eleanor."

"I'm fine!" she snapped, glaring at Peter. But then her face melted and she looked worried, "I'm sorry." she muttered.

"It's okay, it's normal. You're scared and tired." Peter comforted her.

Mantis stopped, causing Drax to look at her, "Something's happening." she commented, and Eleanor held her breath fully expecting Thanos to come back in his cloud of blue smoke to taunt them about their loss.

But what happened next caused Eleanor to stumble back in fear. Mantis dissolved into nothing but ashes. Everyone else had an equally disturbed look on their face, "Mantis?" Eleanor shouted, looking around wildly, "This isn't funny! Where did you go?"

Then Drax disintegrated. That's when Eleanor knew this wasn't a joke anymore. She turned her head up to her dad, "Dad, what's happening?"

"I don't know." his reply didn't comfort her in any way like he was supposed to. He was supposed to have all the answers of the problems, and all the solutions to the tricks. He was her dad for crying out loud. He had to know.

"Pete." Eleanor whipped her head at the sound of Teddy's hoarse voice. He was starting to go. Teddy looked sadly at his younger brother as his arm started to turn to ash.

"No! No!" the younger Parker yelled, hurriedly reaching out for his brother, but as soon as he touched his brother, Teddy's body turned to ash, "Teddy!"

Eleanor felt an unusual tingling in her arm. It wasn't like the tingling she got before when she landed on it funny. This was different. This was new. She glanced down to see her hand starting to disintegrate. "Dad!" she yelled out in fright, "Dad!"

Peter's eyes widened as her arm went, "Oh, Els." he sounded disappointed. He had lost almost his whole family - only Nebula remained here and he had no idea what had happened to Rocket and Groot. Peter held his daughter close until her body had turned into ashes. Tony looked over at him with wide eyes, "Steady, Quill."

"Oh, man." Peter replied, before he met the same fate as his daughter.

"Tony," Strange's deep voice came from behind him, and he turned to be met by Strange still sitting on his rock. Tony Stark breathed out roughly, "There was no other way." Strange told him before his face broke into ashes.

"Mr. Stark?" the young spider-kid said, sounding uncertain, "I don't feel so good." he looked down at his hands.

"You're all right." Tony tried to comfort him, but it was more to comfort himself. He was scared. He didn't know what was happening, but everyone around him was disappearing. He didn't want to be left alone on a completely random planet with no way of getting home. Not when everyone he knew seemed to be turning into dust. He didn't want to leave them and he didn't want them to leave him.

"I don't... I don't know what's happening," stammered Peter, throwing his body onto the surprised Stark. He wrapped his arms around Tony's shoulders, pulling fearfully on his jacket, "I don't know..."

His eyes started to fill with tears, "I don't want to go," he sobbed, as his hands started to dust away. He made one last pathetic grab at Tony's jacket again, "I don't want to go, sir. Please. Please, I don't want to go. I don't want to go."

Tony placed him down onto a piece of rubble. Peter looked dead already as his skin was so pale and his large brown eyes stared up past Tony's head. He took a sharp breath in and turned his head slowly to Tony, "I'm sorry." he whispered softly, before staring into the distance again, and his body turned to ash.

Tony's hand fell onto the rubble as Peter's body disappeared. He sat back up, balancing himself, as he stared at his hands.

The alien stared down at Tony. He didn't see her expression, but there wasn't much to see. Her face didn't look any different from the blank expressions she gave everyone, but there was a small hint of sadness in her voice, "He did it."

Tony looked down in despair. His nose had a small gash on the bridge that ran down the side of his face. The rest of his face was aching and slightly dirty, as well as his hands. His whole body felt like it was on fire and the fire didn't seem to be dying down anytime soon. He was angry at himself for not being able to save anyone, but he was also angry at Strange for just giving up the Stone. Even if he said that 'there was no other way'. Bullshit. There was always another way. There was the way that didn't have to cost so many people their lives. Tony didn't know who was still alive and who had gone. He prayed that Pepper was still there, somewhere down on the probably panic-stricken Earth, not knowing where he was now.

He was left with an alien he didn't even know the name of, and the part of a broken ship, and the loss of the many on his shoulders.

The alien sat down on the rock next to Stark's, as he stared into the distance. His head was rested on his grimy hands. He shut his eyes, praying, hoping, that this was all going to disappear and that he would still be down on Earth talking to Pepper about children, and the Parker kids would still be in school, and that he never had to meet the weird Earthman who seemed to be more alien than Earthman, and his crew.

"What do we do now?" his voice came out gruff, as he lifted his head and glanced over at the blue alien.

I did it. I think I've managed to write my favourite chapter in this whole book.

I've decided because there's not that many chapters in this act that I'll just merge Infinity War and Endgame together especially as Eleanor won't play a huge part in Endgame too, so it felt stupid doing a whole act just for like 1 or 2 chapters.