//------------------------------//
// 47. Worth 
// Story: Hero Souls: Awakening 
// by SvenFoxx 
//------------------------------//

"Now then, today I would like to discuss memories you may feel hesitant to relive,"  Luna said to Fluttershy, who was seated on a couch across from her, nodded timidly. "Memories of pain, of loss, of desperation. I wish for you delve within the darkness of your own mind, but only as far as you are willing to go. If you don't believe you can handle remembering something in detail, say so, and I will change the subject. Do you understand?" she asked.

Fluttershy nodded again. "I..." she hesitated, as Luna had completely expected her to do. Luna waited patiently. "I suppose... the darkest moment in my life..." Luna noticed Fluttershy's eyes glass over slightly, becoming unfocused. "Would be the day Thanos erased half the life in the universe... with the snap of his fingers."

Luna blinked. She blinked again. Such an admittance deserved two blinks, she told herself. "I'm... what?" she asked, unsure if she heard Fluttershy correctly. Half of the entire population of life in a universe? At the snap of a finger?

Fluttershy shifted uncomfortably, delving deeper into her own memories. "His goal was to thin out life in the universe, make it so there were less people consuming finite resources. In a demented way, he was right. Life growing unchecked will consume the universe it occupies. It was why Captain Marvel did her best to institute population control measures across the known universe, to prevent another Thanos from rising. But to get back to that moment...

"He had acquired the Infinity Stones..." she whispered. Fluttershy completely missed Luna's face becoming incredibly alarmed the moment she mentioned the stones. "Thor... Thor tried to stop him. We all did. We threw everything we had at him. Thor had buried his axe in Thanos' chest and was just about to finish him off. Unfortunately, none of us had our eyes on his hand. We had relaxed. We had won."

Fluttershy gulped. "Then he just... snapped his fingers." She clicked her tongue. "All with a smile." She spread her hooves. "There was a flash of light. After that Thanos was left kneeling there, Stormbreaker in his chest. The glove with the stones in it was melted to his arm, smoking, and ruined. I remember how he looked. He was... sad. Then he vanished in a portal."

Fluttershy looked into Luna's eyes. "That was when people everywhere began dissolving into ash, to just blow away in the wind." Her eyes gained a haunted look. "Bucky... T'challa... Sam... Even Fury. Across the universe life vanished into ashes, leaving behind a broken and heavily mourning second half."

"And... And after that?" Luna asked, her mind still reeling from Fluttershy mentioning the Infinity Stones. It was a subject none should know about... at least none in their universe.

"Twenty three days later we were able to track Thanos down again, but..." Fluttershy sighed. "He had used the stones again, this time to destroy them and prevent anyone from undoing his work. It had, by his own admission, nearly killed him." Her eyes suddenly grew hard. "Thor finished that job when it became clear that Thanos had attained the final victory." Then she slumped in on herself. "After that... after that was five years of grief and mourning as planets the universe over tried to adapt and move on." Fluttershy shuddered. "I lost a lot of friends that day."

Luna shook her head. "A loss, to be sure," she said sadly. "Did your world ever recover from the trauma?" she asked.

Fluttershy nodded, beginning to smile. "Yes... Like I said, five years had gone by. The world had changed, but not too much. Good and evil both had suffered from The Snap. When the shock had worn off however, it pretty much went back to business as usual." She grinned. "Bruce had even managed to gain control of his Hulk powers, becoming a beloved hero in New York in the process."

"Five years..." Fluttershy shook her head. "It took five years for Ant-Man to return from the Quantum Realm. A trip, in his own words, that took only five hours from his perspective." Seeing Luna's slight confusion, Fluttershy elaborated. "Ant-Man was a superhero who could shrink and enlarge himself. He had discovered a molecular universe by shrinking himself down far enough, and also discovered that time behaved differently there."

Luna gaped. "No... You did not..." she asked, shocked.

Fluttershy nodded with a grin. "With Tony's help, we created a device that could safely send people back in time." She raised a hoof, as if to stop Luna. "Don't get me wrong, we didn't intend to change the past. Tony and Bruce both made it incredibly clear that Time Travel cannot be used to change the past. But the future... the future we could change."

Luna frowned. "Alright. I am curious. How did you "win" if you did not change the past?"

"By acquiring the Infinity Stones from different time periods. With all six stones, the plan was to do the same thing Thanos did. We would snap our fingers. Then, everyone who had been killed by The Snap five years ago, would be back. After that the plan was to take the stones back to their respective times, making it so that the past was not in fact changed. We simply borrowed things from the past, and returned them."

Luna blinked. Truly, it was an unorthodox plan. Most who had access to time travel tried to change the past, not seeing the inherent flaw in that plan, but the Avengers... it seemed they were smarter than anyone had given them credit for. "It worked?"

Fluttershy frowned. "It did... but no plan survives contact with the enemy. The Thanos of the past caught wind of what was going on and somehow hitched a ride back to the present alongside us." She sighed. "Bruce had done the honors. His powers made him the most likely to survive using the stones, and even then it had destroyed his ability to use his right arm. With his sacrifice, everyone Thanos had killed was back... and then Thanos attacked, leveling our home with an orbital bombardment."

"The battle that followed was... brutal. Every superhero. Every police officer. Every civilian with a cause. The universe was against Thanos, and Thanos took us on with a smile." Fluttershy's eyes grew watery again. "He actually had managed to acquire the stones again, and we thought that was it. He said that he now understood the flaw in his original plan, and this time intended to destroy the entire universe, then rebuild it from scratch. Then Tony flew in and engaged him briefly, only to get knocked back. "I am inevitable," Thanos had said, just before snapping his fingers... to nothing."

"What?" Luna asked. She felt almost like a child hearing a war story from their grandparents. Say what you will about Fluttershy. She knew how to tell a story.

"That was when Thanos realized that while he may have the gauntlet... the stones were not in it." Fluttershy sighed. "Then he looked at Tony in horrifying realization, and found him holding up his hand, the stones affixing themselves to it. Tony said... Tony's last words..." Here Fluttershy choked up a little. ""And I am Iron Man." Then he snapped his fingers."

"Thanos, his army, his ships, and all of his weapons... vanished. Thanos even smiled in respect at Tony just before he vanished. But Tony..."

Luna shook her head sadly. The Infinity Stones exacted a heavy toll on any who sought to use them as one. On a mere human whose strength was his genius? The Stones probably killed him, and not gently.

"Tony sacrificed his life, leaving behind his wife and daughter, to end the tyranny of Thanos once and for all," Fluttershy declared. "I was later sent to the different timelines to replace that which we had taken from them, and had decided to take a page from Tony's book. I stayed behind, and lived out my life like I had originally wanted to. I returned to the present the long way, and, as a feeble old man, I passed the mantle of Captain America onto a friend." Fluttershy smiled. "I died a few years later, basking in the glow of a peaceful universe, and content with life."