"What is your objective?"
"Does my objective matter? Yours is the stones, and there they are, use them," Leonardo smiled.
Thanos took the stones and placed them into his gauntlet.
"I hope you know what you are doing," Steve said, appearing behind Leonardo.
"Have I ever not known what I was doing?" Leonardo replied.
At the same time, Thanos raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.
The Avengers could not understand how, after fighting so hard to prevent Thanos from obtaining the stones and snapping his fingers, he had succeeded because they themselves had handed them to him.
And Thanos could not understand how, after fighting so hard to obtain the stones, he had acquired them because his own enemy gave them to him willingly.
But he did not care. With victory in his hands, how he had achieved it no longer mattered.
However, he soon realized the flaw. No matter how many times he snapped his fingers, nothing happened. He looked at the stones in confusion, but as the bearer of the gauntlet he could feel that they were real.
"What is happening?"
The answer came immediately, in the form of a light blue screen that only he and Leonardo could see.
[Warning: The current image has a 95 percent similarity to the work titled "The Blip", by the author Leonardo Valentino. Due to copyright restrictions, you cannot perform this action.]
"W what is this?" he asked in disbelief.
"You can think of it as a negative fixed point in time, something that, no matter what you do, will never happen."
"Impossible," Thanos exclaimed.
"So you think you tried hundreds of possibilities, even going as far as committing unimaginable madness, and still lost by pure chance?"
Thanos remained silent for a moment.
"Why are you showing me this?"
"You were about to leave, so I had to make you come back because I wanted the stones, and since you are here, I wanted you to know why you lost.
No, more than that, I wanted you to know that you cannot win, that no matter what you do your dream is impossible to achieve."
Leonardo looked at him coldly.
"I am not a saint, but even so, thinking about the billions of lives you ended disgusts me.
And it also disgusts me that you feel no remorse, believing it was all for a greater good.
That is why, before you die, I wanted you to know this, you are the villain, Thanos. You killed all those people because you are a monster, for an idea that can never be fulfilled."
"May I?" Thor asked from behind, sensing that the conversation was over.
Leonardo nodded, and the scene repeated itself, with Thor cutting off Thanos' head.
Then Leonardo crouched down and picked up the gauntlet.
"What will you do with that?"
"What do you think I will do?"
"You have saved us countless times so far, we trust you," Steve said, and the rest nodded.
With Thanos dead, the battle was over. Most of the people nearby had seen what happened and looked at Leonardo holding the gauntlet, however, Leonardo saw neither fear nor distrust in any of their eyes.
Whatever he was going to do, everyone trusted that he would do the right thing.
Using all his strength, Leonardo raised the gauntlet and snapped his fingers. The sound echoed across the entire battlefield and, in front of everyone, the gauntlet and the stones disappeared, turning into dust.
With that, the Infinity War that never happened finally came to an end.
---
"Daddy, Aunt Nat is here."
A small girl, with light blue eyes and short white hair, ran toward Leonardo. He picked her up and lifted her into his arms.
"Did she come alone?"
"No, she came with more people," the little girl shook her head.
"With whom?"
The girl made a serious expression and spoke in a rough, fake voice.
"The Avengers."
"Ah, my little Lia is adorable," Leonardo smiled and played with her before heading to the yard.
Although Lia said "the Avengers", they were not all there. Only those closest to Leonardo, Natasha, Wanda, Pietro, Tony, Loki, and Hela.
Besides them, Pepper was there accompanying Tony as his partner.
And two little girls, daughters of Loki and Natasha, so similar that anyone would think they were the same child.
And, of course, Gwen, although she did not count as a guest, since she lived there.
They sat at a long wooden table in the yard to have lunch.
"So, does your daughter have any powers?" Tony asked curiously, looking at the little girl.
"Of course," Leonardo and Gwen replied at the same time, proudly.
Lia also nodded and placed a hand over her eye. The visible eye became an even brighter blue, an ethereal color, and she smiled while looking at Tony.
"Uncle Tony, you are going to choke on your food."
"Can she see the future?"
"That is right, is not it incredible?" Leonardo said.
"Do you not do the same thing?"
"It is different."
"In what way?"
"She looks adorable when she does it," Leonardo replied.
"Alright, let us leave it at that," Tony finally said. "And what about spider powers?"
"She has those too. Yesterday she lifted half a ton," this time it was Leonardo's turn to brag, and for a good while the conversation revolved only around that.
"By the way, I have been wondering something," Loki said after a while. "How is it that you even know each other?"
He pointed at Hela and Leonardo at the same time.
"I am a member of her secret organization."
"He is a member of my secret organization."
Leonardo and Hela replied in unison.
Loki looked at them with annoyance, but before he could say anything, Hela spoke.
"It is fine, little brother. You do not need to get angry. You already have two daughters, you cannot set a bad example for them."
Loki looked at the two girls, who were eating calmly while pushing the peas aside, and smiled before falling silent.
"To be honest, I did not want her to destroy everything when she came out of her seal, so I used the Space Stone to let her see the outside as if it were a television. We became friends in the process," Leonardo explained, dropping the joking tone.
"Really? I cannot imagine Hela becoming friends with someone just because of that," Loki said, and Hela nodded.
"I pretended to be friendly so I could keep extracting information from him," Hela said.
"And did you end up becoming his friend for real?"
"No, it just turns out he still has information, so I keep pretending," Hela replied.
"Speaking of information," Tony said, drawing everyone's attention.
"Are you finally going to ask, Tony?" Leonardo said, knowing what he was going to say.
"Since you already know what I am going to ask, let us skip the detours. Did you really only wish for the stones to be destroyed? It sounds like a waste."
"I never said I wished for that, did I?" Leonardo replied.
At that, everyone reacted, except for the girls, who did not care, and Gwen, who already knew.
"Then you made a wish?" Tony asked.
Leonardo smiled.
"One? Tony, you have become more humble. I made three."
"Three?" everyone exclaimed in surprise.
"That is right. Being able to do anything I want, why would I ask for only one?" Leonardo shrugged, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"So what did you wish for?"
"Tony, since you are a good friend of mine, I will make an exception and tell you. My first wish was..."
Everyone fell silent, waiting.
"...to be able to make a wish."
Tony looked at him in disbelief.
"Are you kidding me, right?"
"Why would I joke? Do you know what those things are? Primordial energies, six of them, and I am just a mortal, obviously I asked to be able to use the wish without any problems. I do not want to die, after all."
"Alright, and what about the second one?" Tony asked, for some reason Leonardo's explanation felt directed specifically at him.
"That one is complicated." Leonardo made a gesture as if thinking about how to explain it. "Have you heard of mutants?"
"Mutants? You mean people with some kind of physical mutation?" Tony asked.
"No. I mean people with a special gene, called the X gene. Even among those who possess it, there is a very small chance that it will awaken, and when it does, it grants a superpower."
Leonardo continued without giving him time to respond.
"However, even if at first they are few, over time humanity will continue to advance. Eventually, everyone will be a mutant, and each generation will be more powerful than the previous one."
"Do not talk nonsense, not even Fury has ever heard of something like that. Those mutants clearly do not exist," Tony exclaimed, indignant, not believing him.
"Well," Leonardo replied calmly, "now they do."
Tony fell silent for a few seconds.
"Why would you do something like that?" he asked, understanding the implication.
"Because future threats will become more and more powerful. I did not give humanity power, I gave it the ability to keep evolving. The stones were turned into energy present on Earth. People will gradually absorb it, becoming stronger over time."
"In the early stages, there will probably be fear toward those mutants. I am counting on the Avengers to handle that situation," Leonardo concluded.
For quite a while they continued discussing the topic, so much so that they completely forgot to ask about his last wish. When they were finishing eating, Leonardo decided to change the subject.
"We have been talking about me this whole time," he said, looking at the group. "Does nobody have something to share?"
"Do you think that after the mutant thing anything can still surprise us?" Tony asked while eating a piece of bread.
"Actually," Pepper said, "I am pregnant."
Tony choked instantly.
---
That night, in bed, Leonardo was lying with Gwen in his arms, thinking about everything that had happened since he obtained those movie memories in his mind.
"Is something wrong?" Gwen asked when she noticed his expression.
"No, I was just thinking about everything that has happened since it all began."
"Why so nostalgic?" she joked.
"I do not know. I just felt like it was the perfect moment to remember."
"Is something going to happen?" Gwen asked, knowing him far too well.
"No. Nothing is going to happen. In fact, everything will stay just like it is now."
Gwen narrowed her eyes for a moment, trying to figure out if he was lying.
"Alright then," she said before leaning in and quickly kissing his lips. "I love you. Sleep well."
"I love you too," Leonardo replied, closing his eyes.
---
That night, Leonardo dreamed of a great tree.
On one of its branches there was a man with long black hair, dressed in green, with a crown of horns.
"You completed your mission."
"Loki, it has been a long time since the last time I saw you, or at least this version of you," Leonardo said, sitting on a nearby branch, not entirely sure if he was supposed to be there.
"Yes. Yours is madness. Husband of Natasha? Father of Jean Grey? And two additional versions? I must say, the timelines are a mess."
"Are you not used to it after so long here?"
"I do not know how much time has passed. Maybe it was an eternity, maybe yesterday. But let us not talk about me, let us talk about you," Loki replied.
"You are smart enough to realize that all of this was a test, right? And that you passed it."
"And what exactly was it about? Everything was going to turn out fine anyway."
"Exactly. And with you there, it still did. That is far rarer than it seems."
"Because of the butterfly effect?" Leonardo asked.
"That is right. You change one detail and everything collapses into disaster.
And yet you managed it. Despite being a variable in itself, you made the future turn out well.
Of course you can believe that seeing the future helped you, but everyone in the TVA can do that and they still fail."
Loki continued.
"There are temporal criminals. People who travel through time, or hide within it while fleeing. They alter things without thinking about the consequences. Before, those branches were simply erased, so there was no real problem.
But since, well, since me, we do not do that anymore. Freedom and all that.
But those timelines need guidance, or they will collapse on their own."
"And you cannot intervene yourself?"
"Do you think I can be everywhere? Besides, intervening personally is, inelegant."
Leonardo laughed.
"Really? The ability you gave me at level seven, no matter how elegantly you call it a Concept, is just you forbidding someone from doing something in the timeline.
Is that not the same as intervening?"
"It is not. It was you who acted, with my backing. Like an employee using the resources of his boss. Nothing strange."
Leonardo fell silent for a few seconds.
"Correct me if I am wrong but, all of this, the reincarnation, the system, seeing the future, the unique powers, was to, offer me a job?"
"That is right. Are you interested?" Loki replied with a smile, enjoying Leonardo's reaction.
"No," he replied without hesitation. "I like my current life. And I want to protect it."
Loki laughed and an image appeared before them both.
The Earth, seen from space. Then a giant appeared, larger than the planet, with a rectangular head, multiple eyes, and a massive mace.
"Earthlings. Your growth breaks the universal cycle. Judgment will proceed immediately.
Punishment: Destruction."
The giant extended his hand toward the planet, but a multicolored energy surrounded the Earth. Six colors took shape, revealing themselves as a colossal serpent that coiled around the planet.
"Celestial," said the entity, "Earth is independent from the universe and does not require your judgment. Leave, or you will be consumed."
The Celestial ignored his warning and attacked the semi transparent serpent with his great mace, but the serpent bit the weapon, turning it into energy that it absorbed.
Its body grew even larger, it stretched itself and stood face to face with him.
"Will you leave, or will you become part of my lunch?"
The vision disappeared.
"That thing you created just scared off a Celestial," Loki said. "And you still think Earth will be in danger?"
"Better safe than sorry," Leonardo replied, shrugging.
"Even if it sounds quite complex, it is actually very simple, when you die, you will go to another timeline and live there, guiding it slowly like this one. You will live infinite lives."
Leonardo thought for a moment.
"I do not know. I am quite alive right now. Look for me when I am dead."
Loki accepted it and made him disappear.
---
Leonardo woke up in his bed without remembering much of his dream.
Gwen felt the movement and woke up as well beside him.
Finally, Lia ran into the room.
"Good morning!"
"Lia, I told you not to use your powers to know when we wake up," Gwen said.
"Daddy, mommy is yelling at me!"
Leonardo picked her up and lifted her, smiling.
"I think you love her more than me," Gwen said.
"That is not true," Leonardo replied, hugging them both. "I love you both."
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+7 chapters in advance on Patreon.
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(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)