Thanos stood where he was, head lowered as he looked at his left hand.
The six stones on the gauntlet were still glowing, and his entire arm looked as though it had been seared by fire.
The skin along his arm had wrinkled, covered in horrifying scars.
Yet he ignored his injuries completely and closed his eyes.
Deep within his consciousness, in the most secret corner he had never shown anyone, he saw Gamora.
It was not a memory, not an illusion, not a projection from the Soul Stone.
It was something more fundamental, a real existence at the other end of time, at the farthest edge of space.
She stood there with green skin, black hair, and defiant eyes.
Her lips moved, saying something.
He could not hear her.
But in his heart, he knew what she was saying.
"You did it," she would say.
"I did it," he would answer.
"What was the price?"
"Everything."
"Was it worth it?"
He fell silent, not because he did not know the answer, but because he did.
But that answer was too heavy, so heavy that even his Soul Stone could not bear it.
He opened his eyes.
All around him were ruins, ashes, and silence.
The skyscrapers of Manhattan had been leveled by the battle between Android 18 and himself.
Times Square had become a massive crater, while the waters of the East River still churned violently from the spatial severing moments ago.
The dust in the air slowly settled like gray snow.
Half of all life had vanished.
The remaining half, the humans who had not been randomly chosen,
were crawling through the ruins, crying and searching for their family, friends, and lovers.
Their screams and sobs came from every direction.
They bounced off the walls of the ruins,