Avengers: Endgame (Rewritten)

Chapter 3

"It's been 23 days since Thanos came to Earth," Rhodey begins. The rewiring was finished not too long ago and the satellites and deep space scanners were now searching for energy signatures. Carol arrived moments after, so they decided now was a good time to debrief. Images of those who succumbed to the snap rolled through on a monitor.

"World governments are in pieces," Natasha continues on. "The parts that are still working are trying to take a census, and it looks like he did—he did exactly what he said he was going to do. Thanos wiped out fifty percent of all living creatures." Her breath is shaky as she relays the information.

Tony rubs a hand over his face as an image of Peter flashes before him. Thor sits on a bench further in an adjacent room, not daring to be near the team. "Where is he now? Where?" Tony wonders allowed. He knows the scans just begun, but he's hoping they picked up some signal by now. There hasn't been any notification that there has been though.

"We don't know," Steve replies. He's sitting atop a table with his arms crossed across his chest. "He just opened a portal and walked through."

Tony looks around and his eyes catch on Thor. The lightning is long gone, but the god of thunder was still as mournful as ever. He points over at Thor. "What's wrong with him?" Tony was obviously aware something was wrong the first time they made contact and again the second, but he was still baffled at the normally optimistic Thor being the most shut off, so he let his mouth run once again.

"He's pissed," Rocket supplied. "He thinks he failed. Which of course he did, but there's a lot of that goin' around, ain't there?" Failed. That word rings in his mind like a church bell. If anything, Tony's the one that failed, so the raccoon had a point, there is a lot of that self blaming going around.

"Honestly, at this exact second, I thought you were a Build-A-Bear."

"Maybe I am." Rocket didn't know what a Build-A-Bear was, but he played along anyway.

"We've been hunting Thanos for three weeks now," Steve adds. They'd been looking for sightings and scanning as far as they could, maybe they had a chance now. "Deep space scans and satellites, and we got nothing."

The fact that the team had already been scanning for signatures before Tony had made it home honestly surprised him. It's been so long since they were all last together that he forgot how capable they were. For some odd reason it made his skin boil with unreleased anger. Now wasn't the time though. They could argue about the past later.

It had been a few hours since Tony had arrived and he suddenly remembered he should have probably gotten checked out by Bruce. The only reason the thought came to him was because he tried to stand up from his seat, only for a piercing pain to rip through his abdomen. That's right, he had been stabbed by Thanos. Why had he only just remember that? It was healed fairly well when he last checked it out, so the constant strain he's been putting on himself for the past couple of hours might have been the culprit. Tony collapsed to a heap on the floor.

"Oh, yeah," Tony let out a painful laugh. "Did I forget to mention that I was stabbed?" Nobody else found it funny.

Bruce eyed Tony in shock. "Why didn't you tell us sooner!" Tony only gave a sheepish smile in response.

"Oops?"

Nebula's face was one of skepticism. "You told me that the wound had closed and no longer hurting you."

"Well, it was until just a few seconds ago." Rhodey walked over to Tony and helped him back up and over to the med-bay. Bruce followed quickly after the pair. Those reaming adjourned the meeting for now and dispersed among the compound. In reality, the majority stood outside the med-bay.