The village is quiet, and remains quiet as half its population disintegrates into silent puffs of dust in their beds. All along the scattering of crudely built huts that straggles away from the coast along the bank of a small smooth-flowing river, no one and nothing stirs—except, after a few seconds, a broad stream of spilled water that flows out under the door of one of the better-looking huts and drains away down the riverbank, glittering in the light of the lamppost.

A weariness hangs heavy upon Thanos' titanic frame.

He holds his right fist tight to his chest, applying pressure to the gaping wound there.

Given time, he'll mend. He always has. Even before he was a savior, even before he was a conqueror or a visionary, Thanos had always been a survivor.

He turns his back on the quiet village, takes a few unsteady steps out towards the coastline and sniffs the briny air. Beyond the churning waves, he can see a distant glow along the horizon.

In a slow, carefully measured motion Thanos kneels down in the wet sand and then settles into a sitting position.

When he's found a comfortable position, he fixes his gaze straight ahead. Out over the ocean.

"Sunrise." Thanos slows his breathing and quiets his mind. "This Universe owes me a Sunrise."

The glow brightens gradually. A golden sun rises over the waves.

As the first rays of the morning sun touch the roofs of the huts, villagers begin to emerge; either human, or indistinguishable from humans at a casual glance. They are confused and alarmed by their missing friends and relatives, but amid the gathering crowd under the lamppost, someone finds the time to look to the sea and notice the giant bleeding alien. A young woman with dark hair hurries down the beach toward him, calling out nervously, "Are you all right?"

Are you alright?

It's a fair question.

Did he accomplish his goal? Yes, to all indications he did.

What did it cost him? Everything.

He's been weighing them against each other in his head, over and over again since collapsing on this beach.

On the one hand: Gamora. His other children. His ships and armies.

On the other hand: the destiny of the universe.

Fair trade. How could it not be?

Thanos draws a long breach. Composes himself, hardens his features.

These people, they're scared. Understandably. How could they possibly comprehend what has just transpired?

If he falters he could panic them further, but if he keeps it together perhaps he can help set this tiny corner of this tiny planet a little better at ease.

Are you alright?

"I am well." He speaks the words with conviction. "As you too shall be."

Carefully, Thanos props himself up on his good arm and turns himself to face the young woman from the village. His muscles protest the renewed movement, but he doesn't let himself wince or convulse.

She's probably now staring at his gaping wounds.

"This is a day of great pains, little one. But the pain will pass, and a bounteous future awaits."

As he speaks, her face charts a course from concern to confusion, making a brief detour into alarm when he turns, and settles at last on a deepening suspicion. Nevertheless, the next thing she says is:

"If you need a healer, the nearest city is Southport, a ways up the coast. We'll be sending a boat as soon as my mother comes back. I'm not sure they'll have anyone willing to make the trip back here for you, but you could go along if you're up to traveling."

"Healing. Yes, I could use some."

Thanos rises ponderously to his full height, towering over the small humanoid he's speaking to and the townsfolk behind her. He regards his interlocutor thoughtfully. She doesn't look too frightened anymore, at least. That's good. Thanos has strong preferences about fear: everyone who stands as an obstacle to his will ought to be utterly terrified, everyone who doesn't ought not to be.

And this frail creature has made herself helpful.

"Thank you." Thanos nods when she mentions the boat. "I'll do that."

She nods acknowledgment, and turns back to rejoin her fellow villagers. They're organizing, somewhat shakily, to prepare the expedition she mentioned; several people move down the beach to ready a boat, and the young woman steps over the still-damp threshold of that one hut to retrieve a bundle of cloth, with which she goes to stand at the place where the river meets the sea, peering out across the waves.

A few minutes go by. Preparations continue. The young woman seems increasingly worried by the continued absence of whatever she's looking for.

Then an unusual peak begins to form on an incoming wave: at first just a shapeless column of water, it gains detail as it glides up the shore toward the young woman, until it's a perfect facsimile of a much older woman, made of seawater and standing unsupported on the sand. The young woman unfolds the bundle of cloth into a dress, which she helps arrange around the sea-crone's watery form; then the seawater ripples and solidifies into something outwardly indistinguishable from ordinary flesh.

"I was starting to think you'd disappeared too," the young woman tells her, pulling her into a quick hug. "Are you all right? What happened? Half the village vanished overnight, you included!"

The older woman shakes her head. "I don't know. I'll take you to Southport, but after that I'm heading straight on to Skygarden."

This news alarms her daughter even more than the gaping wound on Thanos's chest. "You think it's that serious?"

"It's hard to imagine what could be more serious." She glances at Thanos. "Who's the blue fellow?"

"I didn't ask his name. He said he was all right, and accepted a place on the boat to Southport when I offered."

"Mm," says the old woman, frowning slightly. Her daughter nods.

This crone. She vanished, but returned?

Hmm. It's possible. The cosmic realignment had not taken place under ideal circumstances, Thanos had acted more hastily than even he would have liked and it's possible he might've made some small mistake when he unleashed the infinity stones' ultimate power.

His actions should have laid low mortals and gods alike. A flip of a coin. Perfect balance.

But maybe the young one's mistaken, and the older one was not among the half culled. Perhaps it's all just a coincidence. Yes. That would be better. Thanos has strong preferences about fairness: if it turns out he misaligned the infinity stones somehow yesterday--and that as a result the culling has disproportionately snuffed out the weak while being shrugged off by the strong--then, well, that wouldn't sit right with him at all.

Yes. Surely just a coincidence.

The young one mentions her lack-of-knowing-his-name.

"Thanos," he says.

"And I am Viasarae," says the sea-woman. "Let's go to Southport."

Viasarae and her daughter and two other villagers get on the boat. It's a big enough boat that there is still plenty of room for Thanos; Viasarae beckons to him.

Thanos lumbers aboard, doing the best he can not to rock the vessel with his weight.

He doesn't say or do anything else for a while unless directly prompted.

He isn't sure what to do.

He's spent his whole life, since the destruction of his homeworld, planning for a single moment.

That moment occurred.

He saved the universe. He got his sunrise.

What next?

The boat slides out into the sea, and... moves unsupported along a smooth path carved through the waves as though by the hand of a god. The sail stays furled; at these speeds it would only slow them down.

Southport, when they reach it after ten minutes or so of high-speed magic boating, is buzzing like a dropped beehive. It might have been a pleasant preindustrial seaside town not long ago, but right now there are buildings on fire, people running around screaming, and a couple of slowly sinking shipwrecks clogging the harbour.

Viasarae contemplates this picture, sighs, glances at Thanos with a mild, fleeting look of disappointment or disapproval, and steps out of the boat onto the swell of a wave. The boat continues toward the dock without her; assorted debris sweeps itself out of the way. The three villagers tie the boat up at the dock while Viasarae takes a minute to clear the harbour and then rides a column of water out of the ocean and into the city, headed for the nearest fire. Townsfolk scatter out of her way.

Ah. It's a nostalgic sight, in some ways.

Before the stones were within his reach, Thanos brought salvation to a number of worlds in particular bad need of such--sites of squalor and starvation, now set right for hundreds of prosperous generations.

In some ways, it's more elegant this time.

No leviathans, no Chitauri, no scything beams of scorching energy.

Just brisk, transitory chaos. A chaos that he knows will, in time, give rise  to a better order than what came before.

Thanos disembarks from the boat, right forearm still clutched tight over his shattered ribcage.

The young one said her people had healing available. He doesn't know precisely what that means on this particular planet, but it's unlikely that even primitive medicine could make his condition worse right now.

The reality gem glows softly at his side, like a faint ember in a burnt-out log. With its powers still exhausted, after the great work he wrought with it and its sibling the day before, he'll need fend for himself here for at least a little while.

No trouble. Before he had his ships and armies and cosmic artifacts, Thanos got by just fine ranging through the cosmos under his own power.

This is just that all over again.

One foot in front of the other.

While her mother puts out fires with large-scale hydrokinesis, Viasarae's daughter helps to sort out the chaos at the docks. As soon as she's got things in a manageable state, she sends one of the locals to find a healer. "I don't think it's urgent but it certainly looks uncomfortable," she says, with a backward glance at Thanos. "Don't interrupt anything lifesaving, but bring someone if you can."

In the distance, Viasarae atop her column of water is dousing the last fire and retreating toward the harbour, where she dives underwater and vanishes from sight. The water-column collapses without her.

He likes this little one. Compassionate, but with a good sense of how to prioritize others' needs.

She's completely correct that his condition isn't urgent. He waits patiently at the edge of the docks, keeping out of the way of the frantic smaller creatures rushing back and forth from the waterside.

Thanos surveys the scene more closely, trying to pick out a spot where his prodigious strength could be put to good use.

Provided these 'healers' the young woman speaks of can patch him up adequately to do so, Thanos would like very much to make himself useful.

He's always enjoyed working with his hands.

There are a few non-urgent tasks in sight that could use the help of a giant - a street blocked by a toppled wagon, a section of dock closed off by fallen lumber - currently being deprioritized in favour of things the townsfolk can handle unassisted.

Another couple of minutes brings the local back with a middle-aged woman in dusty, battered clothes.

"Goodness," says this newcomer, craning her neck to look up at Thanos.

"I don't have an explanation either," says Viasarae's daughter. "We found him outside our village, watching the sunrise—can you—"

"Yes, of course," the middle-aged woman says. She squints at Thanos's wound, makes a mildly unsettled noise under her breath, and nods sharply as the torn flesh begins to knit itself neatly back together. "There, that'll get you sorted. On to the next emergency with me." And she turns and strides off back into the city.

"Thank you."

Thanos takes a moment to appraise the healer's handiwork. He's quite impressed--the mending goes more than just skin deep, the burning in his lungs has simmered down and his voice sounds like it ought to again.

"Come with me," he says to Viasarae's daughter as he sets out across the dock. "You seem to have a good sense of which things here need most urgent fixing. Point them out to me."

As he speaks, he clears away the fallen lumber: hefting it up with one arm and slinging it over his shoulder. Without looking back to see whether the young woman is following him, he pivots back and deposits the debris elsewhere--someplace ashore where it doesn't look like a pile of logs will get in the way.

He makes for the toppled wagon next, unless something else gets brought to his attention.

Viasarae's daughter snorts and shakes her head, but follows along. At the wagon, she points out a good place for him to move it to, then solicits a next task from a passerby, who directs them further into the city.

There they find a fire-ravaged inn, half the roof caved in and the remainder blackened by soot, the whole thing damp and smelling of seawater. A pair of locals with a somewhat dented wooden mail carriage and no visible means of propelling it are trying to drag some of the wreckage away; the carriage strains against its harness of scavenged rope, wheels creaking and slipping on the grimy cobbles, entirely failing to move the tangle of wood and metal they've tied to it. They welcome his help.

Thanos appraises for a couple of seconds before moving to intervene. With several of its central support beams burnt halfway through, the inn teeters and creaks under the strain of its own weight. If it gets tugged on the wrong way, or has its mass shifted around wrong, the whole thing could collapse.

The titan grins, and strides carefully into the rubble. If there's one sort of puzzle he's well suited for, it's this: keeping things balanced.

Trigonometric equations play out in his head as he ducks down to put his shoulder to the tangle of debris. He shoves it slowly back, at just the right angle, using the ropes from the carriage as a counterbalance to the force he applies.

The upper floors of the building protest loudly, but do not give way.

"Thank you," says one of the two men with the carriage.

"Is Father back yet?" the other one asks him. He shakes his head.

"Is this the sort of back where you've seen him since this morning—" says Viasarae's daughter, and they both nod emphatically. "Oh good. Do you know anyone with enough Land to shore this up?"

"That's what Father went looking for."

"If I see anyone I'll send them your way," she promises.

Thanos smiles reassuringly at the thankful carriage man, waits for him and the other frailer creatures to get back a safe distance, then backs away himself and lets the debris fully settle.

They say something about a father looking for land. The words don't particularly make sense given present context, but it could just be that his translation symbiote is having trouble with local idioms.

Probably not important.

He strides back out to the roadway and casts his gaze up and down it, scanning the area for further sites of interest.

The air twists itself into a knot, and the knot spreads out into a tall oval with rippling edges, and a man steps through the portal as it's already beginning to close. He's around Thor's height, though with a little less muscle. The sight of his arrival causes both of the local men present to scramble away in fear; one hisses, "Shit! It's the Emperor!"

"Hello," the Emperor says to Thanos. "I have been having a deeply obnoxious morning and I heard you might be able to tell me why."

"I am Thanos. I was cast into this land from somewhere far away."

The titan strides up to the emperor, planting his feet firmly a couple of feet away from where the portal appeared.

"Are you the ruler of this world?"

He looks up at the approaching giant.

"Yes," he says. "Emperor Solekaran. Not especially pleased to meet you. What do you know about all this nonsense?"

Emperor Solekaran is undoubtedly a terrifying figure. The manner in which he appeared here suggests access to substantial power.

The smaller humanoids cower in his presence.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Thanos is aware that in his present weakened state there's a chance--a sliver of a chance--that he's not currently the most powerful being on this planet. However, this possibility does not concern him overmuch.

Thanos meets eyes with the emperor.

"Some time before the sun rose on this particular coastline, half of all advanced life forms died--at complete random, with no bias towards any particular kind or creed. It happened suddenly, ended just as quickly, and caused very little pain. It will not happen again, at least not for a great many lifetimes. Your people are safe."

"Funny definition of 'safe' you got there."

"Don't be obtuse." Thanos takes a breath, leans back, shakes his head slightly and spells out his meaning in more detail. "Your people will be safe, in the future, from the specific hazard that is currently under discussion."

"Eh, fair enough."

He glances over at the townsfolk, who are edging away, and Viasarae's daughter, who is standing very still but doesn't look nearly as terrified. "Your mom says hi," he tells her. "Nice lady, I like her style."

Viasarae's daughter nods stiffly.

Solekaran sighs slightly and returns his attention to Thanos. "Why don't we go talk about this somewhere less crowded," he says, and summons another portal, this one big enough for Thanos. The shimmering oval is stable enough this time to show what's on the other side: a peaceful hilltop with a beautiful view of the ocean.

Thanos likes peaceful hilltops.

He steps through the portal.

Solekaran follows him through and closes it behind them.

"So. What the fuck did you do? And where'd you come from?"

"I saved the universe."

Thanos sits down at the crest of the hill, reaching out a hand (not the one currently encased by tangled metal) and running his fingers through the grass beside him.

"To tell you which direction I came here from, I'd first have to know where 'here' even is."

"Saved... the universe," he repeats slowly, with a mix of skepticism and confusion. "From what?"

"Depletion, ruination, uninhabitability." Thanos glances meaningfully at the gauntlet molded to his left fist. "People talk a lot about 'Infinities' but the truth of the universe is that all things are, ultimately, finite."

The gems flicker intermittently, they've only retained a minute reservoir of cosmic power. Thanos coaxes a sustainable allotment of power from that reservoir, conjuring into the air around the emperor a projection of the local galactic supercluster--in which the Milky Way where he fought his battles is only a tiny blip.

"You wanted to know where I'm from? It hardly matters--it's a dead world. Overrun, overtaxed and now desolate." Scenes from earlier in Thanos' life play out amidst the illusory projection from the reality gem. In the course of these memories the planet Titan goes from a verdant paradise, to a strife-strewn warzone, to a graveyard. "I've sent survey teams to countless stars across a multitude of galaxies, and found the situation that claimed my homeworld was hardly unique. The universe was dying, to a threat no one in all the cosmos had the will to face head on. Perhaps it hadn't reached your world yet? But it would have."

Thanos heaves a long sigh.

"Someone had to do something. You understand that, don't you?"

He frowns, thoughtfully.

"I've ruled this world for five thousand years and in all that time we've never come close to running out of even the amount of land we've got. And there's room for me to raise more continents if we did. Was the rest of everywhere really dying that fast?"

"The people you rule. They're... humans, yes?"

It seems a safe bet. For reasons nobody can adequately explain, the species Homo Sapiens recurs upon more distinct planets throughout the universe than any other, and the small humanoids back in the city certainly resembled said genetic stock at a cursory glance.

"If so, their lives are probably too short to appreciate the imminence of the universe's depletion."

The illusory galaxies orbiting the two of them wink out one by one.

"But to beings operating on a longer time-frame, like you and me? Yes. Absolutely. The end was frighteningly close."

"So my next question is, why do that about it?"

"Because the perfect is the enemy of the good. I could have spent countless millennia searching for a more palatable solution, but during that time more planets would die and there'd be no guarantee I'd even succeed. To alter the destiny of the entire universe is no mean feat, and the few powers capable of enabling such a feat are not subtle ones."

 "So I did something unsubtle, unpalatable, but certain."

"...I'm not seeing 'certain' here."

"I don't mean that this is a permanent solution. Just that it is certain to push back the end by a substantial degree. If worst comes to worst, I'll do it again in a few hundred millennia. I'll buy us all time, and make quality of life that much higher for the majority of people living in the intervening era."

"And maybe someday in the far future, on a day that I bought with this sacrifice, somebody smarter than me will devise something more palatable or more permanent."

He sighs.

"I'm not normally in the business of saving worlds, but I am gonna be annoyed if this happens again. So I guess I'd better get off my ass and do something about it."

"Noble words," Thanos said. "Ones that, if acted upon, should be applauded wholeheartedly."

He snorts.

"What'd you use to kill half my people, anyway? I've never seen magic like that."

"I hesitate to divulge the precise methods necessary to inflict death on a universal scale."

Thanos frowns, and gives the emperor a sidelong glance.

"I'm sure you can imagine how horrible things could go, if knowledge of such a power ever fell into the wrong hands?"

"Oh, I already have the power to kill half the people in the universe if I felt like it," he says cheerfully. "It'd just take me a while. But if you really did your thing all at once, everywhere, then maybe if I had something like that and I wanted to, say, give everybody a second planet, I could do it on the kind of scale you're talking about without having to spend five straight centuries conjuring rocks one at a time."

"Five centuries?" Thanos blinks. "You really believe you have the power to reshape the universe to such a degree, in a mere five centuries?

Needless to say, in the meandering course of his cosmic quest the titan called Thanos has Seen Some Shit. But the casual claim that Emperor Solekaran just made has successfully roused his seldom used sense of skepticism.

"It is possible that you don't fully understand the scope we're discussing here. As we speak, there are one billion trillion stars systems contained in just the tiny sliver of the universe that you could survey from your present vantage point on this planet, and countless more cast radiance from so far away that their light has not even reached here yet."

"That wasn't an actual estimate. I've never built a planet before, I have no idea how long it takes. But conjuring rocks isn't hard. Resurrection is hard, conjuring rocks is easy. I bet I could scale up much quicker than you think."

If you really thought you had the power to help so many people, why haven't you tried to apply it yet?

Thanos has an uncharitable gut reaction to Solekaran's casual words, but he takes a second to think them over consciously before speaking a response aloud.

He casts his gaze out across the countryside beyond the hilltop, drinking in the unspoiled natural beauty with a slowness he he'd rarely allowed himself in the years of his earlier quest. The emperor had implied that this particular planet was in no immediate danger of overcrowding, and at a glance he certainly looks correct on that count. Provided he never traveled off-world, and that his planet was far enough out of the way that it hadn't yet encountered refugees from a less fortunate one, it's completely plausible that Solekaran never would have had any reason to suspect that conditions elsewhere in the universe were less idyllic than in his own back yard.

Yes. Thanos has spent his life in perpetual conflict with the willfully ignorant. But the gaps in his current host's knowledge do not seem a willful sort.

"Perhaps fate brought me here for a reason." Thanos rises to his feet and plods back to the emperor's side. "If you have the sort of capacities you claim to, I would gladly aid you in the pursuit of applying them at a universal scale."

He laughs softly. "Until this morning, I didn't even know there was a universe out there with other people in it. What a day."

Thanos steals a glance at his mangled infinity gauntlet. His gaze lingers on the soul gem in particular.

"Indeed. What a day."

Solekaran follows the glance. "Mm?"

Keep calm. No weakness. Mourn only when all threats have passed.

The dead don't care about our tears.

"I had a family, yesterday. Today I am alone."

"Is this 'cause your family was upset about you killing half the people in the universe, or do you need somebody resurrected, or what?"

"You have that power? To resurrect the departed, even across gulfs of time and space as vast as this?"

Since watching the sunrise on that shoreline, Thanos has felt barely a glimmer of tangible desire for anything much at all. He'd made the sacrifices he'd needed to, he'd accomplished his all-important quest, and from that point onward he didn't care overmuch about whether he lived or faded away.

But now, suddenly, something has tugged him to the surface from that mire of indifference.

"If you returned my family to me, I would be indebted to you." Thanos says these words with the solemnity of a being who has rarely been indebted to anything before.

"I normally don't, because they take half a day apiece and people'd go crazy over it if they knew I can do it at all, but you're not from around here and I don't see why I shouldn't. Might have to wait a while, though, because what with all the emergencies I bet I'd get interrupted in the middle if I tried to do it now. Unless you've got magic that'd let me do it faster, I guess."

Gears turn in Thanos' head. Sixty hours. Increased by interruptions.

Maybe with the right application of the time gem? Maybe with...

No.

He shouldn't take any chances with this if he doesn't have to. It took him decades of study to devise a means of safely using the six infinity gems to amplify each other... attempting to amplify a seventh cosmic power, one that he has virtually zero understanding of, could have disastrous consequences.

"I appreciate your trust, and your generosity. It sounds as though this is an undertaking that should not be rushed, and I understand if you prioritize restoring balance to your planet over reuniting me with my family. I know I'd see things the same way, if I stood in your shoes."

Thanos takes a deep breath, burying his emotion and renewing his outward projection of calm.

"So? How would best I go about minimizing the sort of emergencies that could otherwise interrupt you?

"Depends what you can do, I suppose. When someone wants my attention it's generally because of a problem only I can solve - half a city fell into the sea, somebody crashed a ship into the docks of my flying city and now everything's on fire and nobody can land or take off, that sort of thing."

Thanos gives a brief accounting of the options at his disposal:

"Nearly inexhaustible strength, and a good sense of how to intelligently leverage it. Can even apply it at a distance to a limited degree."

"Portals. Probably as good as yours. Also a limited resource."

"Temporary matter transmutation, have to concentrate--can't create anything permanent."

"Can repair most anything, though it gets harder to do the longer something's been damaged."

"Oh and, obviously, able to kill large numbers of people with no collateral damage."

"Heh. Yeah, you can probably help a lot. I'll introduce you to what's left of my government." He opens a portal.

Ayup. Gonna step through that portal.

The imperial palace is very, very pretty, and everyone there is very busy but not too busy to glance fearfully at their Emperor when he appears without warning. Of Thanos, they seem less intimidated and more just confused.

The Emperor looks around the sparsely staffed office, spots the person he's looking for, and beckons slightly. A thin and harried-looking man hurries over.

"This is Thanos," says Solekaran. "He's helping clean up the mess. He's good at moving things around and fixing them, and he can apparently do portals but I think less casually than I can. Got anywhere he can make himself useful?"

"Ah—yes," says the government official, blinking. "I can definitely integrate that skillset into the relief efforts."

"Great. I'll be bouncing around trying not to terrify too many people while I fix things," says Solekaran. "You can get my attention if you need me for something. Do we have enough airships yet?"

"We - could use a few more."

"I'll start there, then." He makes another portal, nods acknowledgingly to Thanos, and steps through.

With the emperor gone, and with skittish underlings surrounding him, Thanos does the most natural thing possible.

"I'll need a list of priority jobs, coordinates for those jobs, and a detailed set of maps." He motions for the thin, harried human to walk with him as he assesses the busy scene. "I'll also need a team, preferably four or fewer members, with relevant expertise regarding local technology, local customs, local architecture and local logistics." He stops for a moment, gazes up at a light fixture on the wall powered by the same sort of glowing rock as the one he saw back at the fishing village, and scratches his chin. "And get me an expert on 'magic' too."

It feels good to have a goal again.

"Where did he find you?" the government official wonders rhetorically; then he shakes his head and sets about efficiently acquiring the requested resources.

No one reacts to Thanos with the fear they displayed toward Solekaran. Some people are nervous, most people are confused, several people are both, but no one is frightened. The harried man - who seems to be more or less in charge of the place - assembles a team of three people: a young, round-faced architecture student named Isvey, an organizer/liaison named Kiell, and a teenage girl named Acata who seems to be distraught but coping and introduces herself as an 'artificer'.

Good. They should not be frightened. Everything will be alright in the end.

"Stick together, stay sharp, and be ready to leave immediately after we clear each disaster zone." Thanos closes his fist, and a billowing blue portal opens up in the air behind him. "We have a lot of ground to cover, and no time to waste on miscommunication or poor coordination."

He motions for Isvey to take the lead, passes the maps to Kiell, and then stoops down to offer Acata his hand.

"Don't fret, little one." He gives her a reassuring smile. "You're stronger than you know. You're going to do a great job today."

Acata sniffles, straightens up slightly, and returns him a firm nod. The other two approach the portal.

Thanos leads her to the portal, stepping through it right on the heels of the liaison and the architect.

The spatial rift dissipates like so much smoke once Acata passes through. Thanos raises a hand to his brow, screening out the glare of the morning sun, and surveys his team's first target.

Lots of disaster relief superheroics ensue, across a series of exciting and exotic locales.

Fun isn't something one considers when patching up a world after a mass extinction event. But this work... does put a smile on Thanos' face.

All three of his new assistants are very good at their jobs. Isvey consults on architecture, Kiell tracks their task list and interfaces with local rescue efforts, and Acata repairs broken artifacts and distributes small conveniences - lamps, water purifiers, a levitating wheelbarrow for traversing rough ground with heavy loads.

The flood of emergencies is beginning to slow by the time the sun starts to set on the capital, about twelve hours later. There are still a lot of things going wrong, but fewer of them require the kind of intervention that Thanos and his team can offer.

Not coincidentally, that's also around the time when Solekaran comes back.

"Nice work," he says to all four of them; and to Acata, "Aren't you that clerk's kid—?"

She shivers unhappily, and nods. "I—was."

"Ah, sorry," he says, with a sympathetic wince. For a moment he seems to struggle with words; then he says, "I'm really gonna miss her attitude. We need more people around here with that kind of backbone. Never be afraid to call me an idiot, all right?"

This draws a wavering smile out of her. "I won't be, I promise."

Thanos doesn't wince--wincing isn't really his style--but he does shift a little closer to Acata and put a protective hand on her shoulder.

When the girl's stopped shivering, the titan turns his gaze to the emperor.

"I think we've got time to take a break," he says, and opens a titan-sized portal back to that peaceful hilltop.

Before taking Solekaran up on his offer, Thanos takes a second to appraise their present location and make sure that the three humans in his care have a clear path back to the safety of the palace.

Once satisfied in that regard, he gives Acata's shoulder one last squeeze and then strides through the portal.

Solekaran follows.

As soon as it's closed: "Who do you want resurrected first?"

There are so many ways Thanos could elect to order the rebirth of his children. He could prioritize immediate utility, and resurrect the Obsidian Maw? He could prioritize durability, and reconstitute Cull Obsidian? He could go for subtlety, and call Corvus Glaive back into service?

"They all died as heroes." Thanos conjures up reality gem figments of his departed family. "They gave up their lives, to restore balance to an ailing universe."

There are so many logical ways for Thanos to order his children... ...but instead he listens to his heart.

Four of the figments flicker out, leaving only a single lithe silhouette floating beside the titan.

"Gamora. I choose Gamora."

"All right."

He studies the image for a few seconds, thoughtfully, and looks from it to Thanos (and at the ruined gauntlet, just for a moment). Then he nods.

"I'll be back here around dawn," he says. "Anything else you think you'll need before then?"

Thanos notices the emperor eyeing the sundered artifact that encases his left forearm.

"I would like to have it repaired, yes."

"Sure. I don't know offhand where to find somebody who'll do that for you, but I bet you can ask at the palace."

"I'll be back at dawn." Pause. "Thank you for doing this."

Portal back to palace?

Portal back to palace.

Once back at the palace, Thanos grabs the first important-looking underling present and tells them that the emperor has passed along one last directive to be addressed before sunrise.

"I'll need access to the best 'artificer' available." He tries out a word that Acata taught him the definition of earlier today. "And access to your best repair facilities. I can provide portals if the artificer and the facilities are far from here, or far from each other."

"The best artificers in the world all live in this city," says the person he interrupted, "but unfortunately half of them are dead and we don't yet know which half—let me see—" She flags down a nearby coworker and passes on the request, and the message propagates to several more people, and after five minutes Thanos has directions to a street by the airship docks on which he will find the workshops of the three best plausibly-alive artificers in the city: an airshipwright whose survival has been confirmed, and a clockmaker and a generalist who haven't been seen since this morning but have at least not been confirmed dead.

While he waits, Thanos dispatches another palace servant to check if Isvey, Keill and Acata made it back alright.

The first person he interrupted hands him a hastily scribbled, but legible, note--it describes the most likely coordinates of the planet's best surviving artifact crafters, and their workshops.

Probably won't stack up to a dwarven ring-forge around a neutron star, but they'll have to do.

It's not far, and he doesn't want to take any chances with overtaxing the space gem, so Thanos sets out for the airship docks on foot.

When he's only a few streets away from the palace, Acata catches up to him.

"Isvey and Kiell are fine, and I heard you were going to Quartz Street to talk to Imai so I decided to come along," she says.

Thanos smiles when he sees Acata trailing him.

Good attitude. Good initiative. Good ground speed on such tiny legs.

Very promising.

"You're welcome to join me. The work we're going to do tonight could be very educational."

"What do you need an artificer for?"

Thanos carefully plucks the infinity gems, one by one, from the knuckles of his mangled gauntlet and tucks them away under under an undamaged section of his body armor.

Once he's sure that all the crackling nexi of deadly cosmic energy are Kept Out Of Reach Of Children, Thanos lowers his arm and gives Acata a closer look at the gauntlet itself.

"This artifact. As you can see, it's badly damaged." He turns his hand over slowly, letting her see the gauntlet's every angle and even run her fingers across its non-jagged surfaces. "It's very important; it keeps my powers under control."

She inspects it with an artificer's eye. "I've never seen anything like it."

"It is not of this world." As they talk, Thanos keeps moving but slows his gait enough that Acata doesn't have too much trouble keeping up. "I had it forged in a dark, distant star... out of the gods' own metal."

She thinks about this for a second, then asks, "Which gods?"

Smirk.

"Puny ones."

Acata giggles.

"So how does it work—? I guess I can wait until you tell Imai," she says, as they make the final turn onto Quartz Street. "That's his house, third one down, with the blue roof."

Thanos knocks on Imai's door.

It is not a subtle knock.

A middle-aged man yanks the door open, scowling—stops short on seeing the enormous blue man at the door—double-takes when he sees who's with him.

"Acata? What?"

"This is Thanos he's been helping with the relief efforts all day he broke his magic gauntlet and he wants somebody to fix it," she says all in one breath. "And the Emperor wants us to help."

A slight, nervous flinch at the mention of the Emperor. "Well, all right then. Come on in, both of you. I'll..." he looks at Thanos, looks at his doorframe, looks at Thanos again, changes what he was about to say: "—open up the delivery entrance around back so you can get into the workshop. And then make tea. And you can tell me about your magic gauntlet."

Thanos appreciates the use of Imai's delivery entrance.

"The gauntlet functions as a channel for cosmic energies, creating resonance between six different nodes." He lowers himself into a sitting position upon a sturdy-looking trunk, and then sets his left arm down on a workbench beneath a bright glow-rock light. "Its underlying material does not, in all likelihood, exist anywhere on this world. It is impervious to kinetic rearrangement in its current state, but extended exposure to immense heat can make the metal slightly malleable. I don't know precisely how it'll interact with the 'magic' you use on this world, but that could provide an avenue for realigning the gauntlet's resonance channels."

With his right hand, he slips a couple fingers under his belt and squeezes the reality gem. A large gadget sitting on the tabletop a few feet away morphs into a replica of the (undamaged) infinity gauntlet. "That's what the artifact looked like when originally forged. I can maintain the simulacrum for a couple hours if I concentrate, which should give you time to study the design in depth."

"Hmm—Acata, can you hand me that magnifying glass—"

Acata hands him the magnifying glass. He examines the replica, then the damaged original.

"You're right that I haven't seen this material before. I'd appreciate anything you can tell me about its properties. And will restoring the physical structure suffice for repair—and to what tolerances, if so—or does it have magical functions as well?"

This is a somewhat confusing line of question for Thanos. In his experience, all energies--including the ones that more primitive species refer to as magic--draw from material resonance structures of dimensional geometry. Imai, and others of this world, seem to be laboring under the assumption that magic is a Tangible Thing distinct from the other building blocks of the cosmos.

In any case, he doesn't know that much about the high-level cosmic science underlying the gauntlet or the exact properties of the material it's comprised of. He does have an intuitive 'feel' for how the cosmic energies flow through the gauntlet, and can take an educated guess that misalignment of the internal structure accounts for the current misalignment of those energy channels. Returning the gauntlet to its original form should at least mitigate the problem, even if it doesn't fix it entirely.

Thanos imagines that hashing all this out verbally with Imai will take quite a lot of words, and he'd rather just not.

Instead he simply says: "Get started. Don't worry about the tolerances."

He'll pay attention to the feel of the energy channels as the artificer reforges it, and tell him which changes have positive, negative or neutral results.

If nothing else, they ought to figure out a great deal tonight just through trial and error.

Imai blinks, slightly taken aback, and then turns to Acata. "Remind me your elements exactly—?"

"Self-dedicated Light and Fire, birth-dedicated Ice and Shadow, born Sky," she says.

"No Land, lots of Light—you focus on the externally visible details, then, I'll do what I can with the subtler internal aspects."

Acata nods. They each take up tools and begin examining the replica gauntlet and altering the damaged one to match. They don't seem to need to use heat in order to reshape the metal; they just concentrate and apply firm pressure, and it slowly bends to their will. Sometimes Imai does the same thing to a particularly hard-to-reach component without even touching it, although it's much slower this way.

"Very good. I can feel the energies flowing more smoothly."

                                       "No, that just made things worse. Turn it the other way."

            "That's very clever, Acata. The first and fifth node can communicate directly now."

                                                                                  "The palm serves as a contact switch for the overall mechanism"

      "Don't worry about the vambrace, it's mostly decorative."                                                                 "Are you tired? It's alright if you need to take a break."

Thanos coordinates the two artificer's efforts throughout the night. Though his instructions are brisk, he has a gentle tone and pays the little humans occasional compliments so that they'll know their work is appreciated.

Acata and Imai work very well together. Under their hands, the condition of the gauntlet steadily improves.

Then, at around half past midnight, Imai rubs his eyes and glances at a clock. "Depending on the urgency of the repairs, I might like to call a halt for the night and pick it up in the morning after I've slept," he says. "It's been a very long day."

"I understand." Thanos lifts his arm and flexes his left fist. The joints still catch in a few places, but the repairs have restored most of the gauntlet's range of motion. "These repairs should suffice to get me through another day without a resonance overload. That's all that's necessary for now."

He rises to his feet, gives Imai a nod of thanks, then turns to Acata.

"Little one, do you have a place to spend the night?"

"I live near here," she says. "I can walk home on my own."

"Good. I'll see you tomorrow then, at the palace."

Dramatic Exit Portal, engage.

Acata waves goodbye as he dramatically exits.

The peaceful hilltop continues to be very peaceful.

Thanos doesn't sleep.

He waits.

A few minutes after the sun clears the horizon, Solekaran descends from the sky on a pair of soft grey owl-like wings whose span is impressive even at Thanos's scale.

He lands at the far end of the hilltop some twenty feet away, nods distractedly to the titan, turns to face the dawn, and holds out his hands. Blood pours from his open palms and flows into the air in loops and arcs, the two streams twining around each other like a pair of gravity-defying snakes. He frowns and closes his eyes, concentrating intensely. The grisly calligraphy twists itself into ever more intricate knots, until finally it collapses to form a familiar shape. Gradually, from the ground up, blood transmutes to flesh; simultaneously, the grass around her feet grows fast enough to keep pace with the transition. The Gamora-in-progress stands perfectly still until her construction is complete: then the blood still drenching her newly formed body turns to water, and the grass wrapped around her becomes a pale green sundress in a shade that complements her skintone, and Solekaran opens his eyes and inhales in time with her first breath.

Breathes.

"Gamora?"

!!!

"Calm down, please--"

Guttural scream!

Has a space gem.

Telekinesis.

"Calm."

"Maybe I should've asked a couple more questions ahead of time," Solekaran remarks.

"I don't know what this monster's told you..."

Struggling against glowey blue energy grip.

"...he's no friend to you. He wants to kill half the universe."

"Yeah, that happened. I was annoyed about it."

"You see, Gamora?" Thanos slowly lowers his adopted daughter to the ground, still keeping her out of arm's reach of himself or the emperor. "There's nothing left for us to fight over."

"You threw me off a cliff."

"What?"

Thanos frowns. There's no elegant way to recount the events of Gamora's death.

He glances down at her. She's still staring daggers. He wishes he could give her his full attention right now, but the emperor deserves an explanation.

"Solekaran." Thanos leaves his his daughter's side and takes a few steps towards the emperor. "You wanted to know the source of my power?"

"Yeah?"

Thanos draws forth the soul gem and holds it out between himself and the emperor. Resting in the palm of his open hand, the diminutive bauble pulses with a wispy orange effulgence.

"Whoever holds this stone holds power over life and death--can either re-balance the universe as I did, or plunge it instantly into desolation."

He closes his hand.

"But you could not hold it--not for more than a fleeting moment, at least--by simply snatching it from my hand. It would require an arduous journey to a distant, secret world and then... a sacrifice."

Thanos puts the soul stone back into its socket and, as he does so, recalls the words spoken to him on the hidden planet Nidavellir by the soul gem's spectral guardian.

In order to take the stone, you must lose that which you love. A soul for a soul.

A solitary tear streaks a weary titan's face.

"It was the single hardest thing I've done in all the years of my life," Thanos says. "I stood at the cliff's edge, with Gamora beside me, and I almost turned back."

"Well, that sounds like it must've sucked for you both," he says reflectively.

"It's a cruel test, but an effective one. A power available only to those who would give up what they love most." Thanos rubs his face with the back of his hand, sniffs once, and narrows his eyes slightly. "It bars both the heartless, and those lacking the necessary altruism to deny their own hearts in service of a higher cause."

He wants to be hard in this moment. He isn't.

"Go to hell. You don't actually love me. You don't love anyone."

"The universe, apparently, disagrees."

"Tough luck for me if I wanted to use those," he says, eyeing the stones. "I'm pretty sure I don't love anyone. Wonder if resurrecting my father would count...?"

Gamora groans.

Initially, she'd had high hopes for the asgardian-looking fellow in the fancy duds who brought her back from the dead.

Then she'd seen that Thanos was with him.

But hey, she'd told herself, maybe he's being coerced somehow? Or tricked? Maybe he doesn't realize how astoundingly terrible my nemesis/captor/father-figure is?

Nope.

As the emperor begins to opine on the hypothetical benefits of necro-patricide, Gamora writes that notion off quite conclusively.

"Now Gamora, I'm going to let you loose." Thanos drops his concentration on the space gem, and the azure energy holding his daughter in place dissipates. "I expect you to behave yourself, understand?"

When she drops into a ready stance, and glances furtively from the emperor to the ocean surrounding the island, Thanos elaborates further.

"At this point I'm immune to anything short of god-killing weaponry. I have reason to believe that my friend Solekaran here is as well?" Thanos still doesn't know quite as much as he'd like to about the emperor's abilities, but supposes that's only fair considering how close to the vest he's kept his own power sources up until now. "You're on an uncharted planet, whose entire population answers to him. There are no interplanetary comms here, or vessels to hijack." Again, not something Thanos knows with absolute certainty, but it seems a plausible supposition given the tech level of the natives.

"In summary? There's nowhere to run, no way to call for reinforcements, and nobody you'd like to kill that you're capable of killing. If you want to make something of this new life that my friend has so graciously bestowed upon you, you'll have to stop sulking and use your words."

"Oh, I'm incapable of dying," Solekaran says cheerfully. "Could be worse, though! I'm trying to figure out a way to use some combination of my magic and Thanos's mysterious powers to solve the resource constraints problem so he doesn't ever feel the need to kill half the people in the universe again, because having half the people on my planet suddenly die and everyone else riot about it was really annoying and I do not ever want it to happen again. So if you have objections to that sort of thing, you're in luck. Comparatively speaking. You'd be better off if he'd landed on the planet of a magic emperor with resurrection powers who was opposed to half the people in the universe dying and was also a good person, but I'm not sure there are any of those around to land on."

"Why?"

Backing away. Shivering.

"Why bring me back? You've... I..."

Agitation. Confusion. Sensation of falling.

"There's nothing left for you to take."

"I wanted us to be a family again. That's all."

He extends his right hand towards her, palm up. Like he did on the day they first met. The day the the Chitauri scoured her homeworld.

"After the future of life itself, you were always the most important thing to me. After the universe was back in balance... you must have known I'd come back for you as soon as I could?"

"That's sick." Pause. "You're sick."

"Yes. We've established that I'm a sick, loveless monster who belongs in an uncharitable afterlife."

Thanos plods closer again. From her perspective, his massive outline eclipses the sunrise.

"But enough about me, Gamora. Outside of vindictiveness, fear and old grudges... what do you want for yourself?"

(Solekaran smiles wryly, glancing away. It's weird how he empathizes with both sides of this argument.)

Deep breath. Emotions. Rage on the surface, yes, but something below that worth reaching for.

It's not easy to get words out right now--without her steely fury propping up her syllables, they become shaky.

"What happened to Nebula? Where's my sister?"

"After you gave up the location of the soul gem, I ordered my technicians to reassemble Nebula." Thanos thinks back to those fateful hours, where the destiny of all life hung in the balance. So much happened so quickly. It's hard to keep all the threads straight in his memory. "Evidently, once her cybernetics were back online, she killed the technicians and then summoned your other friends to come and ambush me."

Bleak chuckle.

"It was a good ambush. They used the time gem as bait, and then hit me from every direction. If I'd had my wits about me at the time I might've seen it coming but obviously, after what I'd just had to do on Nidavellir, I was somewhat distraught." 

Solemn frown.

"I didn't kill her there on Titan. I don't think I killed any of your little space adventure friends, either, though I can't make any promises there given how kinetic the action got in some places."

Fond memories of throwing a moon at Tony Stark. 

"I haven't seen Nebula since then. She could be alive or dead, roughly even odds either way."

"—what, you didn't leave your kids out of it?"

"As I told you before, the power I wield is a blunt instrument." Thanos regards the gauntlet on his left fist thoughtfully. "I'd certainly planned to make an exception, in the realignment, for myself and my children and for all others who had crucial roles to play in finding a more long-term solution to the universe's plight. I'd planned to retreat for a few days after fully assembling this cosmic power--to study it, acclimate to it--and then wield it with as much precision as possible."

His right hand traces the jagged edges of his splintered torso armor, recalling the blow that shattered it.

"But circumstances played out in a less accommodating fashion. Just moments after achieving the power to realign the cosmos, I found myself impaled upon the weapon of a vengeful god and beset upon from every side by superhuman adversaries. My time was short, my cognition was fading, I had a choice to make and nothing but sheer willpower to fall back on in making it."

Obviously, really. 'Kill Half of Everyone' will always be a simpler outcome to align than 'Kill Half of Everyone, except...'

"So no. I didn't have time to leave my children out of it. I didn't even have time to leave myself out of it."

"Huh."

He reflects on the picture painted by these words.

"...you know, I bet you'd get along with my father once he was done calling you an idiot."

Gamora finds the bright, open hilltop upon which she stands intensely disconcerting.

Give her a cramped spaceship, a crowded city or even a grimy prison any day over this.

She wants to duck behind something, or press her back up against a wall. She supposes, like everything else that's wrong with her, this is ultimately his fault. Thanos raised her as an assassin, and nothing frightens assassins more than a idyllic, open spaces.

"Y-you wanted to know what I want?" She's scrunched up, her elbows pressed tight against her ribs and her fingernails clinking intermittently against her teeth. She didn't even follow most of Solekaran and Thanos' most recent exchange, but she did glean that Nebula is no longer being tortured, so at least that's one small spot of comfort in this whole confusing mess. "You wanted to know what I--... I want to be left alone."

She looks from titan that killed her to tyrant who brought her back. "Please?"

...

...

"Of course. Take as much time as you need."

Aside, to Solekaran: "Please put her somewhere where she'll be safe."

He thinks about it for a few seconds, then opens a portal next to Gamora. On the other side is the village where Thanos first landed.

"There's this nice old lady I met yesterday, her name's Viasarae, I bet she'd be happy to help you out."

Gamora feels sick.

She always finds it disquieting to ask her adoptive father for things, when he says "no" she feels helpless but when he humors her requests it's somehow even worse.

She glares wordlessly at Solekaran, because she can't stand to meet eyes with Thanos again, and then ducks through the portal.

He closes it behind her.

Thanos has a Whole Lot Of Feelings.

He would like for Gamora to appreciate everything he's done for her or, failing that, at least appreciate what he's done for the universe.

He'd like it if she acknowledged how much he loved her. And he wished she'd accept that, somewhere deep beneath all the resentment, she cared about him too.

He wants to go and make all those things happen. Because that is his way, his default: when he wants something he simply Employs His Willpower and nothing can stand in his way for long.

...

Thanos sits down on the hill (in his usual spot, which by now has developed a significant indentation) and stares out across the sea.

"I don't blame her, you know. For anything." Thanos plucks a single blade of grass and holds it up so that the sun outlines its fibrous veins. "If I'd raised her better, she'd be more thoughtful. More grateful."

A breeze picks up. He tosses the grass blade up and watches it spiral away through the brisk ocean air. "I hope she can find solace in this place."

"Yeah, I hope so too."

For a few seconds, he stands silently, tracking the flight of that blade of grass.

Then: "Parenting can only do so much. I don't think there's anything my father could've done to make me less of a mess."

"Huh. I don't see how that word, mess, would apply to you?" Thanos glances over his shoulder, in Solekaran's direction. "You've cultivated immense power. You rule a whole planet, you keep its resources in balance, and its people obey you unquestioningly. If one of my children turned out like that, I'd be immensely proud."

"I murdered my father for his empire when I was sixteen and nearly destroyed it in the process. I've learned a lot since then but mostly by having to deal with the consequences of my own bad decisions."

"If you killed him and only 'nearly' destroyed his empire in the process, that's not half bad considering your age."

Thanos reminisces fondly on all the times his own children have tried to murder him. Nebula had been the all-time champion of assassination attempts, but at least half the orphans he's adopted over the years took at least one shot at it.

"And anyone put in that position would make mistakes. That you learned from them speaks well of you."

"Oh, sure. But I think if I'd missed my sixteenth birthday and grown up without immense amounts of magical power I'd have stayed the sort of person who thinks of self-control as a grievous moral flaw. I don't think the things I've learned from my life could've been taught."

"Maybe." Pause. "And you think Gamora could be like that? Unteachable?"

"I have no idea what she's like, I've known her for five minutes. It just - came to mind."

"Ah." He returns his gaze to the morning sun. "Well. It's a possibility, I'll grant you. But I won't be too quick to write her off. I... wasn't good to her, the first time around. I wasn't able to give her my full attention--I cared about her, yes, but balancing the universe always took precedence."

"Heh. Yeah. Well, if we fix the universe then you won't have to worry about it anymore."

"Indeed." Thanos shuts his eyes, smiles, and quietly chuckles. "I never dared dream I'd get a second chance to do right by her, but here we are."

He rises from his indentation on the hillside. Stretches. Opens his eyes.

"Alright, Solekaran. Let's fix the universe."

...

...

...

On a faraway beach, Gamora still stands where the portal left her, she's struggling to process everything she's just experienced. It's kind of A Lot.

One minute, she's falling to her death from a haze-shrouded necropolis.

The next, she's standing on a sunny hillside without a scratch on her.

And somewhere in the interim, Half of Everyone Died.

The tears finally come, now that there's no one around to watch.

She doesn't know if she's crying for the universe, for her loved ones, or for herself?

Everything's so muddled up in her head right now. Breathe. She lets herself cry, but she makes sure to breathe.

Waves lap at the shore beside her. Gulls shriek in the sky overhead.

This would all be so much less confusing if she wasn't alive.