Scorpio

FORTY - A Gauntlet for Destiny

Tony hardly waited a second before diving headfirst to the ground when the dark shape went hurtling out the side of the ship. There were no questions asked - just the pounding of blood in his ears as the wind screamed against the sides of his Iron Man suit, and the sudden chilliness of his sides as nanobots detached from his spine, chasing after the falling soldier.

By the time he landed, nanobots rushing from his head to support his spine, Steve was already propped up on a nearby rock, nanobots staunching the particularly wicked flows of blood in the left side of his hip and his right calf.

"You got to get to a medic, old man," Tony said as he scrambled to the older man's side. With growing horror, he realized the streak of white hair in the supersoldier's eyebrow was not imagined - if anything, Thanos' attack had accelerated the speed in which his friend thawed.

"Can't," the supersoldier wheezed. He lifted a bloodied hand, sanded fingernails fussed over by a persistent nanobot, then pointed to the glowing abyss of a portal on the far side of the battlefield. "Portal's moving, and people are coming in. I could be the next face of the Indy 500."

"Not funny," Tony berated.

The soldier tried to shift himself up on his forearms, but the nanobots pushed him down. "I can still fight, y'know."

"Absolutely not."

"Tones, I can't stay in a treehouse and drink chili-chocolate until I inevitably melt away."

Tony hated how the older man was speaking in that slow, even voice - they both already knew what was bound to happen to him, but still - it was a bargain for death! He couldn't ever agree to hasten that.

He tried to pull his last stop. "The late Ms. Carter wouldn't want you to do something so stupid."

Steve smiled, actually smiled, as if the word stupid registered as something else to him. "I'll get to see Peggy, Tony."

Tony groaned, the atheist in him face-palming itself repeatedly. The boy was running out of time, and as badass as she was, he didn't want to leave him in the hands of Ms. Sunbeam-Superalien from space. "I gotta go," he told the supersoldier. "You. Stay. Here."

With one last warning point, he retracted his nanobots and took off, letting senile Steve's newly-burned stitches air in the fading light, and hoping the grandpa-of-an-old-man wouldn't tear them before Tony came back.

*******

His new, makeshift temple looked stunning as ever.

Of course, Thanos could never doubt Destiny's impromptu architectural prowess - welding beams of light to suit him, bowing corpses at his feet, palettes of colour and glory arcing high in the sky above him at every planet he's ever helped to satiate. She even suggested once she could prompt the civilization's constructors to build him a true temple, or at least a statue.

Thanos said no, of course.

But at this moment - this moment where the energy fields above blazed purple, orange, red, yellow; the glistening concrete painted in kind; gentle winds coasting through the puckered dent in the wall, stark reminders of the fate of his opponents; his people, crumpled bodies praying to him, having given their lives for this moment; and the boy with the blue light, crouching with his head bowed at his command, about to be sacrificed for the better of the universe -

He wouldn't mind having a reenactment temple built of this particular instance.

This was the moment he was waiting for.

"Rise, my child," Thanos intoned, beckoning with a hand. The mind stone whispered the suggestion in a wisp of gold, and the boy got to his feet, head still bent awkwardly towards the ground. "Speak your name."