across New York City once more. Every place Iris called home temporarily, death seemed to follow her. She had been sitting in a coffee shop, writing a letter, when she heard screams from outside. She watched as Bleeker Street transformed into an epicenter of catastrophe. Debris was flying through the air, making glass shards out of windows that faced the street. Traffic became entangled, cars beginning to pile up on one another. New Yorkers and tourists alike ran away from the chaos, their panic and alarm made audible by their yells.

A thick layer of dust settled over the scene, permanently coating New York in a sheet of disarray the city could never escape. The brunette exited the coffee shop through a broken window, stepping onto the pavement of the sidewalk cluttered with debris. She stayed near the line of buildings, making her way towards the chaos epicenter.

She saw the figures of four men standing before a large circular ship that hovered above the street. One of the men did a series of hand gestures, the thick coat of dust consequently clearing from the street. Two gray beings descended from the ship via transmat.

"Hear me, and rejoice. You are about to die at the hands of the Children of Thanos. Be thankful, that your meaningless lives are now contributing to-"

"I'm sorry, Earth is closed today! You better pack it up and get outta here," the voice of Tony Stark filled the street, cutting off the smaller alien in true Stark fashion.

"Stonekeeper... does this chattering animal speak for you?"

"Certainly not. I speak for myself." Two circles of pure energy were produced from the man's fists, magical shields readied. He stepped forward and continued, "But you're trespassing in this city and on this planet." A third man, similarly dressed, emulated the first, producing magical shields of his own.

"It means get lost, Squidward!"

Tony Stark had no clue who he was taunting but Iris did. Before the two sorcerers, Iron Man, and another man, were Thanos' generals. She had seen them before many moons ago. Her master, Oblivion, had a sibling, Death, who often courted Thanos.

The woman began running down the street, the whispers of the damned filling her ears. They were warning her against doing such things. Many had fallen by the hands of Thanos' generals. There would be a price to pay for her actions.

As she closed in, Cult Obsidian began to face off against Tony who had now been transformed into Iron Man in a span of three steps. With the use of his technology, Tony easily sent the oaf flying backward. Brute force and a battle ax were no match.

Ebony Maw, dawning the power telekinesis, tossed his adopted brother to the side and simultaneously sent Stark flying into the air. By the time she reached the action, one of the sorcerers was held hostage by the bricks of a building, Maw reaching for the amulet that hung around the man's neck.

"Enough!" Iris shouted, making her presence known.

Maw threw the caped man to the ground, utility cables wrapping around his limbs, hindering him from performing any more spells. With his opponent restrained, the alien general turned to address the person who had called out.

"Iris," he spoke, his feet touching the ground. "How is your master?" He continued to approach her until she was within reaching distance of him. "It must be lonely being the only pupil that survived."

Maw's hand began to move to summon a car to wipe out the woman but she caught his wrist, her nails sinking into his skin. The alien's eyes widened with shock and he began to grunt as his gray skin became darker. His whole hand has become black before he could manage to use the other to summon the car.

She let go of his wrist, throwing her body to the ground before the car could take her out. Utilizing a spiraling column of pavement, Ebony Maw rose in the air, easily dodging the vehicle.

"The strongest pupil yet you still have no control over your powers. What a shame." With a smirk, the alien began to fly away, the now unconscious sorcerer following behind him.

Amid more commotion, the unconscious man disappeared, the alien not far behind. The woman clenched her jaw in pain as she rose from the road, pieces of cement indented into her hands. She needed to find the scattered Avengers and warn them of what was to come.

Death had come knocking on their door.

upon his jagged throne protruding from the planet in which he inhabited. Under the ceiling of the Outer Void cosmos, Oblivion berated his pupil for interfering with Thanos' affairs.

"How dare you defy my sister's lover!" He spoke, his voice coming at the woman from all sides, enveloping her senses completely. "Remember your place in this universe, my child."

"My place?" She laughed in short exhales, her hands balling into fists. "I knew my place until you ravaged my planet, left my race for dead, and spared me amongst the slaughter. You called it mercy, a gift! I call it murder, eradication!"

"I saved you!" Oblivion rose from his throne, his tone cutting down her words. "Your planet was going to die anyway, they always do. I simply sped up the process so part of the universe could return to the quiet nothingness it should have stayed in."

His cosmic force imposed upon her, bringing her to her knees before him as he approached her. "I have given you infinite life, Iris. I allow you to reincarnate endlessly while my sister begs me to hand you over. You are my star pupil, the only one strong enough to survive. If you disobey me again, I won't hesitate to hand your soul over to Death."

"You can't give Death my soul," Iris laughed, craning her neck to look up at her master. "You are the embodiment of non-existence. When you tore me apart and remade me in your image, you flooded my veins with your power. That makes me part of you. How can you give your sister something that doesn't exist?" She asked, his face twisting in anger.

"Foolish girl, I destroyed my other students. You watched as I did so, slept in their blood that night. You know I can destroy your very being."

"They weren't remade in your image! I survived. You tried to destroy me and I survived!" She spat, her fingers digging into the ground around her. "You can't truly kill me without killing yourself," she continued, drawing power from the bodies of the other pupils buried under them. "Except you can't be killed. Your very essence is non-existence. How can one kill something that doesn't exist?"

"Enough, you insufferable child!" He seethed, using his abilities to tear her from her power source. Levitating above the planet's surface, she was once again helpless to the cosmic entity. "I am the nothing which watched the birth of everything, the breath between life and death, and the nothing from which everything springs! I have had a hand in every instance of chaos and destruction! You are nothing but a girl with no family, no friends, no planet! Your race may have been a breed of ancient warriors but that is nothing compared to an entity of the cosmos!"

"A breed of ancient warriors that received their power from Infinity, your opposite, your enemy!" The girl argued, thrashing in the air.

"And look how you have failed her." With a flick of his wrist, the girl dropped to the ground like a rag doll. "You will do well to remember which side owns you. For if you go against Death or Oblivion once more, I will hold you here forever. I may not be able to kill you, but I can make you powerless. You will help Thanos or suffer the consequences."

With the finality of his statement, he sent her flying through the various dimensions of reality, back to the planet Thanos was destroying. She was sent back to the planet she would have to destroy.

for the Time Stone played out above, Iris' internal fight played out within. After her forced meeting with Oblivion, she had realized why he had chosen to reincarnate here on Earth. She was bound to be part of the Avengers undoing, one way or another. She was then bound to help Thanos destroy the planet, one way or another. Oblivion had made his pupil an agent of chaos and there was nothing she could do about it. Her power, her very being, came from him.

Steve Rogers had tried to contact her multiple times, needing to allocate all the help he could get to defend Earth. However, his calls went unanswered.

Hiding from Rogers and running away from her imposed destiny, she had traveled back to Berlin. Using her connections as a retired JCTC agent, she managed to call in a favor.

Escorted by two armed guards, she was lead to the Solitary Confinement wing of the Berlin Correctional Facility. After a couple of security precautions, they finally left her in front of a door. Taking a deep breath, pushing the future out of her mind, she forced herself to focus on the present.

Through the door, she came to a wall made of thick glass. She stood in front of it, her eyes glued on the man that resided on the other side. He lazily looked up from his book but instantly closed it when he saw her.

"Iris?" His Sokovian accent was wavering, unsure of the woman he saw before him. No one had come to visit in the year since he had been transferred to the facility. There was no one to visit him.

"Zemo," she reassured him, approaching the glass.

He stood on his feet, placing the book on the side table next to the twin bed he had occupied. Mirroring her actions, he now stood before her.

"Are you alright? Your last letter read normally," he questioned, his eyes searching hers for any source of upset.

"The world is ending outside these walls," she told him, not able to meet his eyes. "The world is going to collapse and there is nothing I can do about it."

"It isn't your job to stop it."

"It's my job to do it," she uttered, the harsh truth finally being spoken aloud. Tears threatened to fall down her cheeks as she faced the present situation. "Steve Rogers has been calling me, trying to get me to help stop the destruction. I can't make myself confess to him that I have to help create it."

With the harsh truth revealed, she began to tell Zemo everything. Only pausing to breath, she told him of her murdered family, her decimated planet, her remaking into Oblivion's star pupil, the curse bestowed upon her by Oblivion, the ultimatum her master has given her, the current predicament she faced.

By the end, she was crying, tears running down her face. She cried for her murdered family, her fallen friends, her slaughtered planet. She cried for the people she had been forced to kill and those she would be forced to kill.

She cried for him.

Sinking to the ground, she leaned her weight against the glass, her right hand on the floor and her left on the divider. Zemo bent down so he was level with the crumpled girl, yearning to give back the kindness she had given him. The most he could do was place his hand on the glass where hers was, their palms separated by inches.

"Vöglein, weine nicht."

He sat down on the ground, leaning his back on the glass, "Death comes knocking at the door and we have no choice but to answer and invite him in. It has always been that way and it will always be that way."

Iris' sobs were softer now, his words soothing her despite the message they carried. She had been reincarnated hundreds of times, killed thousands of people; this was nothing new to her.

She had never grieved the loss of life as she did during her current one. She had found something beautiful in this lifetime on Earth. She had found friendship. She had never cared to before, knowing she was bound to kill them eventually but something was different this time. The beauty of life was calling to her louder than the temptation of death.

"I just wish it wasn't you that had to answer the door," she told the man she considered to be her friend. In some unexplainable way over the course of three years, they had forged a bond that couldn't be broken. Their grief had intertwined their souls.

"Dying by your hand will be a lovely way to go," he told her, turning to face her. "I will die with a smile on my face."

She shook her head no, refusing to acknowledge his words. "I told you that as long as I was here, you wouldn't die! I told you the living weren't done with you! I'm not done with you!" She was making herself upset once more as she hated his submission to death.

"Momento mori, vöglein."

"Yes Helmut, death is inevitable. But a reminder that you must die is a reminder that you must live. You are not living, not yet. I refuse to let you die until you have lived."

"Iris, I have lived," he reassured her, closing his eyes as he once again remembered the past. "I have lived and now am nothing more than a dead man walking. You know that. I am simply a dead man waiting to greet an old friend. I will open the door when death comes knocking."

"For as long as I live in this life, Helmut, I will not let death reach your door or allow you to open it."

"Iris, I am the husk of a man rotting in this cell. I have lived my life and am paying my dues. There is no reason not to let me answer that door."

"I have been forced to live hundreds of lives, reincarnated every time I have done what Oblivion has asked of me. I have lived so many lives that I consider my being dead and my soul barely alive. I have yearned for death since the slaughter of my people but I have never been able to open the door. I only see him through the windows and communicate with him through the walls. For the first time, I yearn for life. I found something beautiful in this lifetime: a will to live. I am not giving up this life and neither are you. You will not answer that door because I won't let you, even if it destroys me."

She stood up, determined to defy death and cling to life. He stood up with her, shaking his head. "Iris, if you defy him, there will be no more reincarnation. There will only be a life that feels like death."

The woman placed her hand on the glass once more, yearning to touch his skin, anchor herself to this life as she once had anchored him. "That's all I've ever known until now so it will be no different."

"What did you find in this life that makes it worth holding onto?" He asked, his hand mirroring hers.

"Friendship."

*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*✭˚･ﾟ✧*･ﾟ*