The ride in the Quinjet had been mostly silent. I was sat next to Wanda while Sam flew the jet and Nat was with Bruce. I considered them my best friends and yet, I felt so weird around them. Maybe it was because of how long it has been since we've actually spoken. Who knows.

Rogers made his way up to Sam in the pilot's chair to give him more direction. I didn't remember how I got to Wakanda the first time, so this was very new to me. From where I sat, I could barely make out mountains we were heading towards.

"Rogers better know what he's doing. I didn't come all this way to crash into a goddamn mountain," I mumbled to Wanda. She put her hand on my shoulder, as if to comfort me and tell me he was right.

The scenery was gorgeous, though, so at least I would die somewhere beautiful.

"So, you and Vision?" I asked Wanda quietly. Her cheeks turned a light shade of pink but that was the only response I got. "You two are very cute together."

She smiled and mumbled a small, "Thank you." It was clearly still a new subject for her so it's awkward to talk about, especially when Vision's right next to her on the other side.

I looked back out the front of the Quinjet and saw us heading right towards the mountain. "Here we go," I mumbled. The mountain in front of us started to fade away in several layers until we were staring at a beautiful city.

Everyone was looking in awe, especially Bruce. He didn't even know this is what the country looked like- that the exterior 'developing' façade was just that. I looked over at him as he gazed out and took everything in.

"This place is really amazing. I'm glad you finally get to see it," I said to him. He looked over at me with a smile, and then back out the front as we started to land. As we were standing and getting ready to exit, I painfully realized I was in my workout clothes still. Considering the battle outfit I did have was almost destroyed, I didn't even think about changing.

The back opened and we were greeted by King T'Challa and the Dora Milaje that always came with him. Rogers and Nat led the group while I stayed with Wanda to help her with Vision. We all stopped right in front of him as Rogers shook his hand.

Bruce cleared his throat, catching my attention, and I watched as he awkwardly bowed. It was hard to hold back my laughter. "We don't do that here," King T'Challa said. Bruce looked annoyed as Rhodes shoved him with his shoulder and laughed.

The group started walking again. Wanda and Visions broke off so he could get settled but I chose to walk with the others. "So how big of an assault should we expect?" T'Challa asked us.

Bruce stumbled forward to answer. "Uh, sir, I think you should expect quite a big assault," he answered.

"All he wants is the stone and he's not going to stop until he gets it, so yeah, quite a big assault sounds about right," I added on. T'Challa gave me a quick glance, not knowing how I knew all this probably, but then looked forward again and kept going.

"How we looking?" Nat asked next.

He looked back at her while responding. "You will have my Kingsguard, the Border Tribe, the Dora Milaje and..." He trialed off and gestured to in front of us.

Where Barnes finished the sentence. "A semi-stable 100-year-old man." He was wearing a new Wakandan made arm that no longer brandished the fading red star of Hydra. It was a small thing, but it made a huge difference for him. I would know.

Rogers went up to him immediately and they hugged it out. They exchanged some quiet words, but then we were moving again. With Wanda gone with Vision, I walked alongside Sam.

"The new beard looks good by the way. You and Steve just decide to stop shaving for a while?" I asked him, teasing just a little.

He smiled back and gave my shoulder a bump with his own. "Well you know, hiding from authorities causes you to change your looks even just a bit," he reasoned. "But thanks. I work hard to keep this baby looking good."

I laughed and we entered the palace. It was a pretty quiet walk the rest of the way except for the quick words exchanged up ahead between Rogers and the King. I felt weird being back here especially considering my departure was less than formal.

"I'm sorry, by the way," I said lowly to Sam. He looked back at me confused. "For leaving the last time we were here. I guess I wasn't ready to do the stuff Hydra used to do to me, you know?" I told him.

He nodded. "Barnes told us that you left the next morning. Said you knew what you were doing. I think Wanda was the most hurt at first but she moved on well enough."

"And you?" I asked. "We're friends too, you're allowed to have opinions. Do you think I did the right thing?"

It was a question I had been mulling over for a while now. I left here to try and get the same help out there. It was idiotic the more I thought about it and there were so many days I wanted to try and come back here. But on those days I just busied myself with something else to distract from the stupidity that was me.

"You knew what you needed and it wasn't here. I get that. I wouldn't be too keen to trust some strangers either," he answered. "I was sad when you left without a word but I didn't have a right to judge."

I smiled. We walked in a comfortable silence until we got to Princess Shuri's lab, where Wanda and Vision were already set up. Bruce went over to Vision where Shuri was doing scans of him with her bracelet.

I tried to listen to what she was saying but a lot of it didn't make much sense. What I did understand is this was a tedious process and she needed time to take care of it. Then, an alarm was going off.

Okoye pulled up a hologram of the Earth from her bracelet. "Something's entered the atmosphere," she said and we saw what looked like a target appear on the hologram showing where it had entered.

My body went rigid. Thanos. He was back, or his children were, to finish what they had started. "It's him," I said quietly, but Rogers heard me.

"Sam, Buck, get outside and tell us what you see," he ordered. They both nodded and quickly left the room. A few minutes later, Sam was communicating over comms something. It must've been about a ship coming down from the sky because the next thing I know, there's a huge rumbling sound above us.

"Oh my god," I whispered. Was he going to try and destroy the dome around us? What was the motive? What was the plan?

Rhodes, who also was outside, warned us of more incoming outside the dome. We all went to the window to watch as each thing came crashing into the ground. Clouds of dust soared out from underneath and hit the dome.

"It's too late," Vision said from behind and we turned to look at him. "We need to destroy the stone now."

Nat walked to him and said, "Vision get your ass back on that table now."

"We will hold them off," T'Challa stated. My breathing increased as I watched the alien craft outside. Was Thanos on one of those? Or was he coming in at the end, once all the dirty work was over with?

Nat touched my arm and broke me from my trance. I had missed something, because everyone was leaving. "Let's go. It's time to fight for a living," she said.

I gave a quick nod and started to leave. Wanda and I shared a look before I was out of the room and going down to the frontlines. I followed the others down and outside to transports that would take us close to the dome where the ships were landing.

We all boarded the transports and filled them with Avengers, Wakandan soldiers, and other fighters. When Bruce was ready to get on, they gave him a surprise: a giant version of the Iron Man suit. It was about the same size as the Hulk and I figured that's why they gave it to him.

Then, we were off. My hair whipped behind my head as we sped to our drop off location. Bruce was... still getting used to the armor as we did. It was rough watching him trip and fall, but he got back up quickly and was figuring out the ins and outs.

Once we got off the transports and lined ourselves up with the Wakandans, T'Challa, Rogers, and Nat went up to the edge of the dome to talk with the female alien and Big Guy. I stayed standing next to Barnes close to the front of the army.

It wasn't even a minute later when the she-alien lifted her sword and the fronts of the ships slid open. "What the hell..." I mumbled as the other three came walking back up.

"They surrender?" Barnes asked.

Rogers took in a deep breath and answered, "Not exactly."

T'Challa started to do a war chant and the she-alien brought her sword down. At that movement, hundreds building up to thousands of strange aliens came sprinting through the trees and hurtled themselves at the dome wall.

"They're killing themselves..." I whispered in horror. "All for Thanos." They were able to get limbs through before they were cut off, some pulling their whole bodies through the dome before they would get cut in half. Some aliens were able to get through alive, but the Wakandans were so much more advanced. They put up shields and shot the aliens down with their spears.

Now that they were getting closer, I could see they looked almost like dogs.

Barnes shot a few down with his machine gun, Sam flew overhead to shoot them down from there along with Rhodes. Bruce even had his hands up and was firing his repulsers at him. I went to lift m hands to do something when Nat put her hand on my arm and pushed it down.

"Not you, not yet. You've got to save your energy for the big stuff," she said. Even if that's not who she was implying, images of Thanos popped into my head and I stiffened.

She was right, however. I needed to be more helpful with big things they couldn't do. I wished I had grabbed a gun or something to help out in this situation, though. Standing and staring made me feel pretty damn useless.

Rhodes dropped a few bombs right at the edge, and we watched as they exploded and took out a good amount of the alien dogs. When the fire and smoke cleared some, I could see them starting to run around the edges of the dome. "Shit..."

And I wasn't the only one. "Cap, if these things circle the perimeter and get in behind us, there's nothing between them and Vision," Bruce said over the comms. The thought made my heart sink to my stomach.

"I can get back there quick enough and provide more defenses," I offered quickly.

Rogers, however, had a different plan. "Or, we can keep them in front of us." I looked at him confused, and so was Okoye.

"How do we do that?" she asked T'Challa.

He hesitated before answering. "We open the barrier." I wanted to lose my shit, ask how in the hell that was a good idea in the slightest, but held back. Because it was a good idea. Opening the barrier gave the aliens a place to go and that place was at the barrel of our guns.

"It'll be chaotic," I said. "Hope everyone's ready."

T'Challa looked at us while we looked at him, then he lifted a finger to his ear. "On my signal, open North-West section seventeen." There was a reply. "On my signal," he confirmed.

He then shouted something that caused all the shields to go down. We stayed where we were as T'Challa stepped out and got ready. "Wakanda forever!" His mask came on and the war cries came roaring in around us.