Chapter Eighteen

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Everything on Titan seemed to stop all at once. Nothing moved. Not even the Guardians when the loudest scream they could've possibly ever heard had woken them up. Mantis remained still against the rubble of the building while Quill and Drax sat up, but did not move away from Mantis for fear that something terrible was about to happen.

But nothing terrible could happen anymore. 

The pain was gone.

The hurt had vanished. 

No one could ever be tortured or made to kneel before Thanos' irrational form of mercy.

This feeling of superiority and pride swept over (Y/N) like a tidal wave. As his body turned to ashes and dissipated with the light she'd destroyed him with, she watched the color fade from his ugly purple to the prettiest hue of orange she'd ever seen. Not even the soil or the sand or the pockets of dirt so commonly swept through Titan could top the way it looked as it fled from Thanos' body. 

For a moment, she forgot that she'd just saved the entire universe. Her main objective throughout her entire time fighting off Thanos was not to save the whole galaxy, but to rekindle the fire that lay dead beneath the very planet she slept on. How many nights had she spent reading book after book on Titan? How many nights had she wandered the endless terrain only to find nothing? How many days had she spent walking from one end of the planet to the other? An exact number for anything would be outrageous and nowhere near close to the legitimate amount. Time became nothing to her after her parents had passed away. 

She had nothing but time now. 

To do whatever she pleased. To fix what Thanos broke all those years ago. 

--

It was nearing nightfall and had been for quite sometime. The three Avengers and the Guardians still sat at the exact same spot of rubble where they'd been to begin with. A conversation had soon broken out between the group right after the screaming had stopped, right after the light disappeared and there lay only silence and reluctant darkness. 

"She did it," Strange breathed out, relief coveting his body like a blanket, "She actually did it." 

"Who is she?" Drax asked. 

"She's now the last remaining Titan," Strange answered, "There are no others like her anymore." 

"Okay, yeah, we get that--but who is she?" Quill asked. Irritation was incredibly evident in his rather sinister tone of speaking. 

Tony got up from the ground, knees covered in dirt. It looked like he'd just defeated the beast himself. 

"Her name is (Y/N)," Tony said with a sigh, sauntering over toward the group of Guardians, "She's been alive for over a century. She was here when Thanos first destroyed Titan--her home," He gestured around all of them and then pointed toward the small shack the woman had grown accustomed to, "She's stayed in that very hut ever since her parents were murdered. Walking inside, it's not hard to tell this girl was hell bent on trying to kill him, and understand herself as well as her home in the process."

Quill's face showed some type of sympathy. It's not like he could understand how the girl felt completely, but there were certain aspects of Tony's abstract that he could relate to. Not having parents around. Luckily, growing up Quill had Yondu. He couldn't imagine not having a parental figure at all. 

"What will she even do now?" Drax chimed in, "There are no other Titans for her to make offspring with. How will she repopulate Titan?" 

Strange chuckled inwardly, "She may not want to." 

"Then what's the point of rekindling a planet if you're not going to begin again?" Drax looked to Mantis, "Please tell me that I am not the only one who does not understand this." 

Mantis nodded in agreement, "He's right. Why would she save an entire planet but not start again?" 

"There's no point in even discussing this," Peter piped up. He'd been sitting on the ground for quite some time, listening in on the conversation but never actually saying anything. If (Y/N) really didn't want to make the planet some type of home again, he could understand why. "Some things are better off fading away. Maybe she wants that." 

"She could've had that with Thanos." 

"But that would've completely defeated the purpose of her studies and her powers," Peter retorted, "Years and years and years of being alive only to allow the person who murdered your parents and your people to make you fade away into nothing? How could someone be okay with that?"

Tony placed his hand on Peter's shoulder. He could hear the frustration in the young man's voice. He was sure that, if possible at all, Peter would have spent more time with her, tried to get to know her more. As shy as he was, the kid had a huge heart. He was capable of incredible empathy. Being able to consider a rather pessimistic outcome for (Y/N)'s actions wasn't unnecessary and wasn't out of the blue completely. Maybe it was possible she wanted to fade away but in peace. Tony had to give him that--he wasn't dumb at all.

"You guys have to remember that she's not human," Tony's eyes wandered toward the Guardians, "She may not even have a desire to have a family or even remotely begin to do it with anyone she's not used to." 

"But Titan was always so well-known for its technology," Drax commented. With each passing second he was getting more and more frustrated, "She cannot just let that go!" 

"It's been over a century, big guy," Quill patted Drax's back in light comfort, "If the cosmos really needed anything tech-wise from Titan, I'm sure we would've tried already." 

"Maybe every existing organism was just scared," Mantis suggested.

Quill shook his head, "Based on my past, if anything was valuable here, I would've already known about it."

"She was talking about something called the Wanderers recently," Peter informed them, "Maybe everybody knows Titan's worth but she was too strong to actually allow them access." 

Strange crossed his arms and cocked his brows, looking to Tony in confusion, "You sure this is a kid? He sounds like a mini you." 

"Just smart," Tony praised the boy who looked up at him with a half-smile. 

For just a little while, silence overcame the group once more. Soon, the horizon was coveted with darkness and the temperature dropped slightly. The initial shock of it all left the group desensitized to anything else; their surroundings, the temperature, the sun, the moon. Nothing could've seemed as important as the deletion of a monster. 

However, many of them couldn't help but think about how many different ways it could've ended. Strange already knew every single outcome and when (Y/N) had somehow shifted the future, he still couldn't wrap his head around it. There had been millions of different endings and he only seen one where they survived. But after her change, suddenly those millions of endings that seemed so terrible were all good and the only one thing that was bad was their defeat. 

Thoughts such has these did not only belong to Strange, however. They belonged to each individual. How different could it have been? Could there have been casualties? Loss of limbs? Pride? How many different ways could they have defeated him? 

The only reality they needed was the one right in front of them.

But how many realities had there been where it wasn't so obvious? 

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