Nat held Grace tightly for as long as she could, long after people stopped disappearing, every moment thinking that Grace was blowing away too. Feeling it, believing it, having to look down and make sure she was still there, still solid.

Even after they got up and found the others that were left, Nat kept her arm around her, as if she would still blow away if Nat let go. They found Grace's helmet, discarded, and Grace picked it up and held it like a teddy bear. She worried that Sai was gone, and, deep down, something she refused to really think about, that her father wouldn't return to fix it — and that Peter wouldn't be with him.

Bucky was gone. Sam was gone. Wanda. T'Challa. Shuri. The alien tree Thor brought with him; he and the raccoon — Rocket — said the tree's name was Groot.

And Vision was murdered.

Grace kept asking for a phone, especially when they reentered the main building, when those left were running around, scared and confused, trying to just do something. Anyone who wasn't too panicked to listen to her didn't know where to find one, and she was forced to worry for her mother until, after promising Okoye to keep in touch, they finally got back on the Quinjet to go home.

Steve was the one flying the jet, and he called Pepper through it once they were in the air. To Grace's relief, she answered almost immediately.

"Hello?" she said, sounding worried. "Grace, is that you?"

"Mom?" Grace said, already crying again. "Yo-You're okay?"

Pepper sounded relieved. "Yes," she replied. "Yes, I'm okay. Are you?"

"Savior is broken," Grace said, dissolving into tears — that, unfortunately, being the least painful thing to say out loud.

"That's okay..." Pepper said gently. "That's okay. We can fix it."

"How are things back home?" Nat asked, as Grace wasn't able.

"Happy's okay. But I... I can't get ahold of May," Pepper replied. "She wouldn't come to the compound; she wanted to stay where Peter knew she would be when he came back. She won't pick up the phone. Happy left to check on her. I-I told him not to..."

"Have you heard from Tony?"

"No..."

Grace let out a strangled sob, and Nat held her closer, trying to comfort her. Steve glanced back at them, then turned back to the call. "We're on our way back now — me, Bruce, Nat, and Grace. We can... try to make sense of this when we get there."

"Okay," Pepper breathed. "Be careful. I'll see you soon."

"See you soon." Steve hung up, then tried to focus on flying, tried not to feel the ache in his chest the shock, the busyness, and the sadness of everyone else had been numbing. Bucky was gone. Sam was gone. Wanda. Vision. He'd lost so much already and there was a possibility that there was more to come.

Nat sat with Grace on the floor, and Grace buried her face in Nat's shoulder, her broken helmet in one arm. Thor took off his cape and draped it over her, the last time he did so being such a different situation. He feared for her life then, and he did the second time too, but in a different way. He did what he thought he could to help, and he could do no more. Rocket just sat in the corner, grieving. Rhodey only watched Grace, a pit in his stomach.

He walked over to Steve, spoke lowly. "I don't know what we're going to do if Tony's..." He couldn't say it, but Steve understood.

He sighed. "I don't either. But we'll deal with it if we have to."

Rhodey shook his head, looked back at Grace.

He remembered years ago, when Tony was captured in Afghanistan. He'd visited Grace a few times, when he could. He heard from Pepper and Happy how she was taking it, how devastated she was. She was younger then, but this was no different.

"It'll kill her," he whispered, and Steve knew it was true.

~~~~

Tony remembered the cyborg's name — Nebula — soon after he persuaded himself to stand up. It took even longer to get himself to actually leave the planet, step onto Quill's ship that they'd managed to get running, though it was unlikely it would run long enough to get to Earth. He didn't want to leave where Peter was — where he'd been — but he had to get home. To Grace and Pepper. His family.

He's been with only Nebula, now for just a few days — and they've already been through it. Repairing the ship together, trying to get home, and hopefully help to make it there. She's even healing the infection in Tony's wound, which would've killed him otherwise.

He looks at her now, balancing a small, metal triangle on its point on the table between them. He holds the tip of the triangle with his finger, then proceeds to flick it with his other hand, trying to get it through Nebula's goalpost hands, both in a thumbs up, connected at the fingers. Instead, as it comes at her, she tries to grab it with a sort of battle growl.

They're attempting to play paper — well, metal — football. Nebula isn't quite getting it.

"You don't need to do that," Tony says after the football falls to the floor. "You're just holding position." Nebula is still slightly confused, so Tony says, "Okay, you just get the football and take your turn. Try get through my fingers and I'll hold the position. Okay? Cool."

She balances the triangle the same way Tony did, and it was a process in itself of getting her to understand how to. She figured it out, though, but missed when she flicked the football.

"Okay, yeah, that was close," Tony says. Then, he takes his turn and scores. Nebula goes and misses once again, but then Tony does too. Finally, Nebula goes once more and scores. "That's a goal," Tony says. "We're now one apiece."

Nebula seems almost excited about this, to a degree. But she's still somehow serious. "I would like to try again." She does, and misses. Tony goes again, scores, and they go back and forth until they each have four points, and they're playing to five. It's Tony's turn.

"We're tied up. Feel the tension? It's fun." He flicks and comes up short. "That was terrible. Now you have a chance to win."

Nebula flicks, the football flipping up in a perfect arc, right towards Tony, then in between his fingers and past the edge of the table, through the gap between it and Tony. It hits the floor.

"And you've won," Tony says, and Nebula looks entirely surprised. "Congratulations." He reaches across the table to shake her hand. "Fair game." She hesitates, out of shock or confusion or what, Tony doesn't know; she isn't very expressive. But she takes his hand and shakes it. "Good sport," he says. "You have fun?"

She sits back and very seriously replies, "It was fun."

~~~~

Grace stayed at home with Pepper and Happy while Steve, Rhodey, and Nat went out, trying to figure out what was going on, who was gone and who wasn't. She called Harley, and he picked up. His mother and Hannah, thankfully, were fine. His sister wasn't.

She still had Ned's number, tried calling him. He didn't answer, and neither did MJ, after she found her number.

When Steve, Nat, and Rhodey returned, they brought back some sort of pager, left next to a pile of dust near a SHIELD vehicle, which was definitely Fury's. He was gone — a fact that sent a pang through Grace's chest — and Maria Hill wasn't answering calls either. It was likely she was the second scattering of dust neither the car.

Nearly a month later, and that pager has been sitting in the lab, held in a claw, in a decently sized chamber, behind glass. Just in case it's dangerous. There's a picture on a long, small rectangular screen on it: a sort of star in the center, the background divided into blue and red by two, thin yellow lines through the middle, the edges in triangles.

Steve and Nat are looking at projections in the living room, the number of missing people in each country, globally, just going up and up. Grace is just sitting in the corner with Pepper, holding her phone, waiting for someone to call her back, tell her they're okay. She's plagued by worry, so much so that she's tired but unable to sleep, and almost used to it by now.

"This is a nightmare," Steve says quietly.

"I've had better nightmares," Nat replies.

Then, Rhodey walks in from the lab. "Hey," he says. "So, that thing just stopped doing... whatever it was doing."

Nat and Steve walk in, then Pepper gets up, and Grace, half interested, follows them.

Nat sighs. "What do we got?"

Bruce looks at her, turning away from the pager. "Whatever signal it was sending finally crapped out."

"I thought we bypassed the battery," Steve replies, coming to stand next to him. They all look at the pager, its screen now blank.

"We did," Rhodey answers. "It's still plugged in. It just... stopped."

Steve thinks for a moment, then says, "Reboot it, send the signal again."

"We don't even know what this is," Bruce points out.

"Fury did," Nat replies. "Just do it, please. And you tell me the second you get a signal. I wanna know who's on the other end of that thing." She turns around, then suddenly stops, and Grace looks back, along with everyone else.

A woman is standing there, wearing a suit with the same star the device had on it, red and blue and gold. Her hair is blonde, down to her shoulders, and her face is stony.

"Where's Fury?" she asks.

Everyone is silent, shocked, wondering where in the world she came from.

Grace, after a long pause, speaks up. "Gone."

The woman looks at her. "Where?"

Grace doesn't know how to answer. She shrugs, shakes her head a little. "Wherever everyone else is. Dead. Missing. Dust, I guess..."

The woman closes her eyes, breathes. "I was afraid of that."

"Where did you come from?" Rhodey speaks up.

"The other end of the galaxy, practically," the woman replies.

"Space?" Steve says.

The woman looks at him strangely. "Yes...?"

Grace's heart swells. "Space?" she repeats. "You-You came from space? In a ship-?"

The look is turned on Grace again, the woman confused at her apparent, building hope. "No, just me. I don't have a ship. I don't need one."

Grace steps closer to her, not caring about those details. "Have you seen my dad?"

The woman quirks a brow. "Who's your dad?"

"Tony Stark," Grace says. "Iron Man." The woman looks at her blankly, so Grace pulls a picture of him up on her phone, shows the woman. "Him. Have you seen him?"

The woman looks at it, shakes her head. "No. Sorry."

Grace pulls up a picture of Peter, an easy task considering he's her lock screen. It's a recent photo, from the last time he visited, a goofy selfie he took on her phone when she left the room, that cheesy smile on his face. Grace shows it to the woman. "What about him? His name is Peter. Peter Parker. Spider-Man."

Still, the woman shakes her head. "I haven't seen him either."

But Grace refuses to give up. "Do you think you could... Do you think you could find them?" Grace's voice drops, and she almost reaches out to grab the woman's hands, to plead with her. "Please."

"Please," Pepper repeats, and the woman looks up at her then, sees her desperate face, silent tears running down it.

The woman nods. "Of course. I'll do what I can. In return, if you could fill me in on why Fury tried to contact me and everyone is turning to dust, that'd be great."

"As long as you got time," Bruce says.

The woman nods again, then looks down at Grace, who looks nothing but grateful, her eyes filling with tears. The woman smiles softly at her. "I'm Carol Danvers, by the way."

"Grace," she says, and Carol can't help but think of how fitting it is.