A/N: What did I start writing at 5 am? I don't know, but Thanos is now my favourite MCU character, and I'm making him meet my favourite FSN character – which means feels and a lot of BAMF. Hopefully. I suck at writing.

If anyone familiar with Xhosa can find a better translation of Wakanda's capital "the Golden City" into Xhosa - which is as I'm told the language behind what is spoken in the movie - I'd super appreciate it! While the capital is called the Golden City, I figured that the Wakandans don't name their cities in English (-_-).

x

What Thor found in an hour's flight from Kwisixeko Segolide was a solitary figure of red among white sand. The king had flown the direction of Stormbreaker's curious pull almost immediately after regrouping with the rabbit and the remains of the Avengers, and regardless whether he acted in an escape from his grief or from further witnessing the others', he descended for his target in equally thoughtful silence. The sun climbing towards noon overhead — when he finally grew aware of it — managed to ease the lump of lead in his chest with a bittersweet recollection of his brother's words, a farewell more than a promise. The sun has risen on Thor many times, from every star he approached to Nidavellir's dying heart beaming through Thor in full-force, but not once had Loki been with him, and not once would he.

Landing close to the stranger in the sand strengthened the attraction of Thor's axe-hammer as a magnet towards its match more than a weapon to its king, but only until Stormbreaker crooned in his grip to the stranger's presence as it did to its parents' – the star, Eiri, Thor, the tree, the rabbit – did Thor understand that the silent man in red was a creator of note more than a destroyer. Only later would he reflect on his first impression with irony.

When Thor approached, the stranger apathetically watched in wait from the crest of a dune, his eyes tellingly drawn to Stormbreaker first before observing the rest of Thor.

"King of Thunder," the nameless man spoke first. "What draws you here?"

The title sounded like a name, and Thor had to wonder if Stormbreaker had somehow spoken to the man in the second he had looked at the axe-hammer.

"A curious presence." Thor's lips twitched in a helpless smile. "I sensed one who, native or not to this land, stands uniquely above it. After Thanos's so-not-cool fingersnap, help from anyone and anywhere would be appreciated. Would you be a warrior? Captain? Tree?"

"Right, I've heard enough."

Thor caught the man, excited. "You're a blacksmith!"

"Release my arm, King of Thunder, before I remove yours."

"You know," Thor bulldozed, because he excelled at holding conversations with those who didn't want to, "Eitri spoke of those who forged weapons with the heart of planets as he and his dwarves did with that of stars. I did not think such blacksmiths still prevailed on Earth after the last construction of – what's it – Caledfwlch."

"Say what you mean and choose 'Caladbolg' or 'Excalibur,' else you risk insulting either's smiths by confusing them as one."

To the man's mildly offended tone, Thor patiently smiled. "You are a blacksmith."

The stranger shrugged Thor's hand off and faced him properly.

Emiya would have been challenged to describe the Earth's position in the cosmo-political landscape, but he could delineate its personal circumstances from that of the typical timelines he'd been sent to. For one, Alaya had no presence in this universe, nor Gaia or the other eight Ultimate Ones. This Earth had no Mage's Association. While the Throne of Heroes existed beyond the reach of Worlds or time – and Emiya's reality marble a Counter Guardian's lonely alternative – the only Heroic Spirit crazy enough to answer a distress call from the dark without reward or basic knowledge of the era was the hero who selflessly, stubbornly desired to help for the sake of helping, the man upon a hill of blades named Emiya Shirou. He had lost count the times he had rescued humanity from a path of sure extinction in this universe just as he had in all the others. He had not been spared blood on his hands in any of them.

Emiya sighed, still unaware of his mission in this universe. "How can a blacksmith help you recover from a fingersnap?"

Thor straightened. "The fingersnap killed a lot of people, so Earth's mightiest warriors and I wish to hunt down the titan Thanos responsible for the deaths. We would have an easier time with mystic weapons in our hands."

"Thanos the Destroyer will sooner die than hand himself over to governmental justice. You will do no one a favour except take vengeance."

"We are called the Avengers," Thor reasoned.

A personal mission. Given that this King of Thunder, as the traced axe-hammer implicated, was the first soul for Emiya to meet in the motionless stretch of land he had materialised in, at least trailing after the king would draw Emiya closer to civilization and perhaps an answer to why he had been called.

"I'll think about it after seeing the land and materials the Destroyer has touched," Emiya decided. Tracing the site of battle could provide memories that might give insight to his mission.

Thor hesitated at the thought of inviting a stranger to Wakanda's capital still recovering from Thanos's work, but if a mystic weapon like Stormbreaker recognised the man's existence, then the Avengers might need his aid more than one would expect when before the blacksmith's cool, deceptively passive demeanor. Thor wanted to convince the smith to help them, and the smith wanted to see the site of Thanos's destruction for himself? One could argue that it was the same thing.

Thor held an arm out as if to catch an animal. "I'm going to hug you now."

Emiya immediately stepped back.

"It's that or you cling to my back," Thor argued, already lifting Stormbreaker. "I need one hand to fly."

Emiya's brow twitched with gifted expressiveness. "King of Thunder," Emiya commanded slowly, "you shall speak of this to no one."

Thor grinned.

x

In a graveyard of swords under a cloudy, flame-coloured sky, a work of white, black, and red sat upon a hill. Bound in leather and born from fire, the sword understood death better than most, and, with a battle experience stretching out into eternity, understood the grief born of death better than most. With every new confrontation of an apocalyptic scene, every world demanding justice for those lost and those who would be, anguish found a way of numbing the face until one couldn't summon an outer expression of pain anymore.

Unless the sword was pushed over the edge faster than he could reel himself back in.

He knew this like he knew the weight and scratches of a golden chip lying in the dust of his world. The metal shard itself carried no battle potential except perhaps information that could be applied towards the creation of new swords, but the chip's original arrival to the bladed wasteland had been rooted in the tracing of the experiences attached to it, from how it was wielded to who wielded it, and then kept in the hill of swords for memory's sake.

Steel-grey eyes lifted to the fragment's location and recalled a memory less miserable than most. Though names and faces bled together, a single concept remained starkly clear.

The Destroyer.

x

At the site of Thanos's destruction, Thor silently followed his nameless guest through scarred plains and splintered forests. Despair still permeated the air around them, yet Emiya's face and shoulders remained as firm as when he had blindly arrived, a strong front born of experience. With this level-headedness, Emiya trod the trenches as tall as he, felt between his fingers the leaves and dirt where blood spilled or should have spilled, scavenged twisted remains of weapons…

And wept.

"Blacksmith," Thanos consoled, and Emiya trembled, eyes at his hands and knees in the dirt. He was a humiliating sight.

"I'm sorry," Emiya hiccuped. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

The words spilled from Emiya in soft loops. A fragment of Thanos's glove that Emiya had found in the forest dully shone in his hands, and once upon a time, the precious metal would have encountered its colour carried in Emiya's eyes. It still possessed its wielder's last thought, a brief vision of terraces and a sunrise.

"Your hands can provide the means to Thanos's death." Thor's wide palm nearly swallowed both of Emiya's, the shard between them. "I will not judge if hatred more than justice moves you. I only advise that one should not allow it to rule as one's master. Thanos will die."

"How deeply you must despise his actions." Emiya gazed up at Thor with broken, cynical eyes. "Even if you have no more energy to mourn for those you have lost, you will always have the will to condemn his genocide. How can you not? You are a true hero. You should never have to understand why the Destroyer would go this far."

Thor furrowed his brows, but not in confusion. Loki had once been his brother, after all. "You speak in grief, blacksmith. Cutting populations in half is never an answer."

"An answer no one wants to hear," Emiya muttered softly, gaze falling down to the hands that hid the shard, "is still an answer." The path of a Counter Guardian was never easy. Even when someone else fulfilled his mission for him. "King of Thunder, if I don't overstep my place, may I request you fly me East? I would like to peacefully gather myself in a certain place."

Thor watched Emiya before sighing. He stood up. "Where?" he asked.

x

In the Banaue rice terraces where hills ambitiously rose for the sky, the sun climbed higher still over them, lowering a curtain of gold upon the stepped faces of the valley. At the highest terrace where not a human soul stirred, Thanos absentmindedly prodded loose parts of his glove together, even as the mystic weapon could still function without his attention. Though warped after handling the force of all six stones, the glove was only one piece away from returning to its full capacity, as the dwarven king had not cut corners forging that which would carry the Infinity Stones. Thanos passively moved his hands simply to contemplate his victory that the sun beamed down on.

What would that mythical figure think, Thanos wondered, of his work? Many times had a ghost of sorts haunted humanity, but only in the recent century had Thanos heard how the ghost had referred to himself, or so the rumours went. Such myths had floated across the cosmos before, describing agents of death in many forms. Thanos himself had been one of them, until he had become fact and not myth. Would the spirit agree with Thanos's actions? Or would he hunt down Thanos to deliver what was due? The titan sighed, and rose to leave his perch.

And stilled at the sight of Emiya.

They watched each other, as quiet as death. Emiya recognised the dominant figure of the shard's memories, and Thanos acknowledged the solemn man in a red coat who had appeared in Thanos's range with incredible stealth, as if having teleported. Or shifted from spirit to material form, as had been whispered of one figure before, although Thanos found the man before him unassuming compared to his coldly violent depictions. Though it was a wild guess, the idea gained ground in observation of the man's somber aura similar to Thanos's own.

"Have you come to kill me, Counter Guardian?" Thanos asked quietly.

Emiya didn't blink at the title. He had shared it before in his missions, preferring to withhold his true name as if it would erase Emiya Shirou's existence, and the titan before him had lived many years. How often had humanity approached destruction, allowing the age-old Thanos to witness humanity's failsafe in gruesome action? Emiya had lost count.

"No."

They held gazes for a breath cycle before Thanos finally understood. "Ah. You mourn." The titan stared at his hands. "For me."

Emiya said nothing.

"I always grasped why humanity's protector would kill countless of its own," Thanos murmured, "but never his grief. Not until I sacrificed my Gamora." The titan didn't explain the name's significance or its association with him, as his expression did so for him. "I face now a new mystery, how you can find the spirit within yourself to commit to such sacrifice over and over, so long as a future where all life may expire exists."

"You possess it yourself," Emiya softly returned.

"Do I?" That inspired a subtle smile on the titan's lips, as if the confirmation assured him. "Your words honour me, Counter Guardian, though forgive me if I find them bitter."

Emiya sat on a rock, for once among peaceful surroundings and company. "If I had the right to forgiveness, it would be hypocritical of me to withhold it from you."

"You know once I learned of you, I admired you."

"Don't," Emiya bit out sharply.

"For the sake of life, you would take it." Thanos sat as well. "Many variations of death have I heard, some closer in demeanor to the apathetic lady herself than others, but none so faithful to the protection of life like you. I do not mean offense."

"Had anyone else said so, I would have been challenged not to reap it," Emiya replied, his anger reluctantly abating as slowly as it came. "As it is, you might be this universe's truer Counter Guardian than I am." He had not considered it, had only foolishly followed the flow instead of wondered how humanity could otherwise survive this universe. Perhaps whenever Emiya was called, it was simply a sign of this universe's humanity encountering a threat that required a hero. Instead, this humanity had received a false one.

The trees near them rustled, and Thor stepped out.

The king had searched for the blacksmith who had vanished upon landing in the archipelago nation of the Philippines, but all the thoughts Thor had nurtured during his search immediately died in his throat at the sight of Thanos. "Blacksmith," Thor called, raising his axe-hammer, "don't move. That's the titan I spoke of." He swung a bolt of lightning at Thanos with the precision of an arrow through a needle, but Emiya who could throw swords with such precision himself traced Kanshou and intercepted the strike. Bakuya materialised in his other hand in grains of soft blue light, drawing its tortoise-shell counterpart back to Emiya's hand.

"Blacksmith! What––!?"

"Please." Standing before Thor as a straight-backed, scarlet figure with a mystic sword in each hand – an image of mythical power – Emiya pleaded. "I have one purpose. Please don't make an enemy of me."

Thor glared hard at the titan passively standing past Emiya. "Step aside, and it won't happen. The dead reside in that Soul Stone, blacksmith, I know what I must do."

"You don't understand," Thanos replied with surety, and directed to Emiya, "The saved will never understand, will they?"

Emiya didn't tear his eyes from his possible opposition, expressionless.

"Blacksmith––"

"Kill Thanos, if you wish." Emiya rose Kanshou's tip to the titan. "Scatter or destroy the stones, I don't care. Just leave the dead be. If it means anything to you, reviving the lost will only pour more grief into my already overflowing cup. I ask you spare me the sorrow."

"You want to talk about sorrow, then look to the half of the universe currently gone because of him!" Thor argued, confused and incensed. "You honestly can't support taking the life of a murderer but reject the return of those who weren't supposed to die!"

"I can and I do," Emiya spoke with finality. "King of Thunder…" he addressed solemnly, and Thor obliged with an attentive gaze despite his anger, "out of the spirit of your patience towards me, I share with you this: should the dead be revived, I will be forced to cut each soul down with my own hands. This will not be my first time."

Thor grit his teeth and shook his head. "Why did you have to side with him, friend?" he mourned, and threw his axe-hammer.

Although young in its battle experience and thus legend, Thor's weapon still possessed mysticism as an idea born from an ancient dwarven kingdom's vision of "the ultimate weapon"; inherently "flawless" yet also "flexible," the axe-hammer possessed bladed and blunt sides which allowed for both classes of armed fighting, a long handle which encouraged close-combat while its homing ability opened the long-range possibility to be used as a missile, and as the perfect conduit of power, it could link dimensions and focus the powers of Thor – who as both a concept and a man personified the universal definition of "lightning" and "might." If the incarnation of an Infinity Stone like Vision wielded it, it wouldn't have been a stretch to say that the axe-hammer could focus the stone's full power just as easily.

The weapon's "flawlessness" was recognised even by the six singularities that defined the universe, and had repelled their united power on Wakanda without a scratch or blowing Thor's arm off. With its first appearance in the grand battle against Thanos's forces, the axe-hammer had already earned itself a legend despite its youth, and linked with Thor's reputation, it qualified as a Noble Phantasm beyond Emiya's reach.

Its name was Stormbreaker, and it was flying for Emiya.

"I am the bone of my sword."

Durandal, the Peerless Sword, formed before Emiya who upon catching it immediately called on its ability to grant three miracles, needing only one. Swinging at Stormbreaker in the blink of an eye, the king's weapon in Emiya's hands deflected the king's weapon that Thor had thrown, and when the God of Thunder recalled the axe-hammer to jump and strike at Emiya with the ozone-white realisation of his namesake, Emiya ran and leapt a kilometre away with a bow and the spiral sword Caladbolg already in his hands and his abandoned swords dissipating before Thor could return them to Emiya as missiles with brute force.

"Steel is my body, and iron is my blood."

Caladbolg coiled further as Emiya notched it – twisting his body in the air to time his shot with Thor's jump – and upon its release, the sword capable of changing entire landscapes descended on a peak of the valley with Thor at the centre of its path. Faster than the wind and with its power tightly concentrated around it, the arrow that Emiya had fired twisted space itself in the arrow's path and exploded with its Excalibur-inspiring power upon contact. Yet Thor and his axe-hammer shook it off even as their blackened surroundings sizzled like the lava-touched sides of a volcano and were missing a perfect sphere of material, measuring the extent of Caladbolg's destruction to half a kilometre in diameter. The Broken Phantasm couldn't compare to the heart of a star.

With every verse of Emiya's aria, however, did the realisation of his reality marble draw closer. It was why he chanted a line when he wanted to call on a Noble Phantasm's more genuine power, but deeper in the script, Emiya's chant allowed for more vivid glimpses of his infinite creations. Furthermore, Thor had fought and travelled before facing Emiya who in contrast had come fresh to the fight, and Emiya didn't fight fairly.

"I have created over a thousand blades."

Dozens of swords formed above Emiya and rained down on Thor faster than bullets and targeting his moving vital points with insane accuracy at the same time Thor called down bolts of thunder from above, and Thanos watched aside as the bladed works of art didn't simply shatter against the lightning, but explode. Thor eyed Emiya's projectiles more warily as Thor wielded Stormbreaker to pull Emiya in for close-combat – a range Thor sensed would be to Emiya's disadvantage – and Emiya pushed for distance to be able to fire his endless swords without catching himself in the blasts.

Thor directed a curtain of lightning bolts as he would to sweep crumbs off the table, and more swords – each as unique as a snowflake – self-combusted in the air. "With this many blades, you're as troublesome as my sister!" As if on cue, a sword as big as a truck crashed down where Thor once stood, which Thor and Emiya used to propel each other off of at the same time. Except Thor had leapt for Thanos's direction, and was already winding his axe-hammer arm back.

Emiya narrowed his eyes at the tossed statement, finding mental space between drawing his swords and predicting Thor's moves to analyse the king's armour for any advantage – fighting habits, other abilities, combat experience––

"Unknown to Death."

––And it clicked.

Thanos deflected Thor's lightning with a gloved hand and caught Thor's wrist with the other before bending it enough to allow Stormbreaker to slip free. Thanos's gloved hand closed around a sword instead of air.

Emiya landed a hundred metres away to Thanos and Thor's shocked gazes.

"Destroyer," Emiya urgently pressed, "I see now my true mission, where for humanity to survive in the future, it needs those heroes trapped in your stone. I ask from one reaper to another that you release them from the grasp of death."

Thanos crushed the sword in his hand, but Emiya fired a slimmer one in place. An arrow through a needle. "I am rather fond of her."

"Her?" Thor repeated.

"Humanity is not," Emiya spoke over Thor's bewilderment. It didn't matter which form of death Thanos referred to, even if it was Lady Death herself. "Though we share philosophies, we do not share missions. I do not desire to have you as an enemy."

Thanos caught Stormbreaker without looking as Thor now pressed on against Thanos with both arms. "The Asgardian still looks ready to fry both of us, Counter Guardian. You will have no allies."

"I need none," Emiya replied, green lightning crackling around him. "I've warned you once, but I shall do so again; when it comes to fighting a near-immortal warrior wielding limitless power and who is immune to failure..."

Emiya's eyes narrowed confidently.

"...You will be the second I've defeated."

Thanos tossed Thor aside and rose his glove, but Emiya had already seen ahead of the titan.

"Nor known to Life."

Within a second, the red knight pierced Thanos's shadow with tossed Black Keys, traced Heracles's unnamed sword, and at godspeed sliced at the titan's arm, collarbone, windpipe, temple, diaphragm, rib, testicles, and thighs. To anyone else's eyes, Emiya appeared to have materialised before Thanos in a blink with a sword taller and more intimidating than either figure, followed by delayed bloody cuts drawing themselves across the titan's body.

Thanos fell backwards with a choked shout and the vanishing of the Black Keys that had secured him in place, but the one second it took for Thanos to fall and Emiya to discern his slashes as non-fatal against Thanos's tough skin allowed Thanos's fingers to instinctively curl, forming a fist.

Emiya cursed.

His body immediately sank into the ground with the Reality Stone's influence, but at the same time a blinding crimson light howled into existence near Emiya's arm winding back, the presence of a sure-kill Noble Phantasm turning the air in everyone's lungs into lead and freezing all prana in place. Between Emiya's reality marble and mind's eye, and the missing chip that allowed Thanos to use more than one Stone at a time, their exchanges and predictions flickered between blinks of an eye with defeat for either of them only one miscalculation away. Yet Emiya had walked away from countless Heroic Spirits and Noble Phantasms, and Thanos...

Thanos had employed the wrong stone.

For not only did Noble Phantasms find their power in the concepts tied to them, but the barbed spear materialising in Emiya's grasp was synonymous with the permanent, flawless curse of death. Thus as he began to swing his arm and declare the lance's name, the spear was already transforming from a legendary weapon to a reversal in causality itself, converting "the spear was thrown, thus the heart was pierced," to "the heart was pierced, thus the spear was thrown."

Swinging the spear was a formality. Emiya held death in his hand, and by the time he finished speaking, it had already struck.

"Gáe Bolg!"

Emiya's arm lost his centre of gravity at the last moment and flung the spear into the sky with a clap of thunder – completely off-target – but the spear of barbed death would not be denied its heart and sharply corrected its course straight down and through Thanos's chest in a beam of red light. Thanos's split-second decision to alter his form of matter with the Reality Stone had rescued him from Gáe Bolg's finger-long barbs trapping the spear in Thanos's heart even against the spear's speed, however the Soul Stone acknowledged the spear's curse and didn't spare Thanos from immediate death, and merely prolonged his cursed suffering. Emiya sank up to his neck trapped in stone and dirt, and Thanos fell to his knees in agony. The red knight knew his odds and shouted first.

"Go!"

Thor stood from where he had crash-landed, and had not witnessed how Emiya and Thanos had reached the point where they were. He only knew Thanos was distracted, which was enough of an opening. "I refuse!"

"I disagree," Thanos commented, and – not flinching even a centimetre from Thor's lightning-ridden axe-hammer already swinging for his cheek – quickly struck Thor's vulnerable diaphragm with the closest fist and sent Thor flying into a portal opened by his other. The Space Stone's blue clouds dissipated before Thor could think of returning. Thanos turned on Emiya.

"Further oppose me, and I'm willing to destroy this planet with you."

Emiya unhesitantly fired more swords from above at Thanos. "You picked the wrong planet to threaten, Destroyer." In the second that Emiya risked exploding a Broken Phantasm to free himself and Thanos protected himself from Emiya's blades, Emiya struck a deal.

Gaia, Alaya, too often have we not seen eye to eye, but I call on you now, in whatever form your counterpart takes in this universe, to cooperate. Allow my blades to outlast me for as long as there is conflict, and I shall forge you the sword that always rises a level above its opposition to protect life, the sword of promised victory.

"Have withstood pain to create many weapons."

Thanos caught another sword in his gloved hand at the same time a burst of golden light like the rising sun itself blinded him from ahead. In Emiya's hands was an idea in the appearance of a broadsword, a sight of incredible beauty that transcended its physical form to the point that no human word could attempt to describe it without tainting it. How could it not? The illusion of a sword Emiya held was simply the physical crystallisation of the prayer named "glory"; where Stormbreaker was the "ultimate weapon," the sword Emiya would have otherwise been unable to project was "hope actualised."

The Infinity Stones could control all of which described the universe's framework, but the Sword of Promised Victory itself was not reality but fantasy.

"Ex––!"

The sword suddenly jerked in Emiya's grip the same time Thanos punched at Emiya with an ungloved fist, and the red knight huffed as the inconvenience nearly cost him his eye. Emiya slashed at the greatest threat to recover his balance, and a streak of blood followed the palm-wide scar on Thanos's glove just as the titan released the fragments of a crushed nameless sword in his grip.

"I see I was merely invited, and not needed," Emiya remarked. "Fly, then, to those unfortunate enough to be burdened with a task worthy of a Counter Guardian!"

Emiya one-handedly threw the holy sword into the air, and – with Thanos hyper aware of it – traced Bakuya in his other hand and struck at a blindspot afforded by the titan's split-second distraction. Blood splattered at their feet.

x

Thor stumbled to his feet, bruised, battered, and beyond exhausted. He crested the dune at his feet and found himself back where he had met the nameless blacksmith, only to find himself in the company of the Avengers below.

"Thor, where were you?" Bruce asked. The group's footprints implied they were currently crossing the greenless land for a location farther west.

Thor found the energy to descend the other side of the dune and join them. He was panting. "I...found...Thanos..."

"You did? Where is he!"

"Gone by now," Thor admitted, recalling the Space Stone. Had the nameless blacksmith survived facing Thanos? Or had the titan vanished before they could further fight? "What...are you doing?"

After the destruction of Wakanda's best lab, the group was moving for an emergency Wakandan hangar and laboratory with the hopes of finding a method for space-travel to find help and hunt for Thanos. Shuri and Rocket were in the middle of an odd attempt to translate each other's science when a dune three-hundred feet ahead of them suddenly exploded with enough force to still throw the distant Avengers off their feet.

"Was that a meteor!?"

A breathless sight met them when they ran to the edge of the sandy crater.

"No..." Bruce said first, astonished, "a sword."

"Blacksmith," Thor uttered quietly. He recognised the dunes surrounding them; the sword had crashed exactly where the nameless blacksmith had stood, as if coming full circle. If the smith had intended to aid the Avengers in their hunt for Thanos and the stones, the nameless man had only wait in his place, forging this sword, until the Avengers would have stumbled across his location and been able to receive it from him.

"Do we touch it?" One of the Avengers approached the blade still glowing white-hot. Upon contact, however, the handle was cool and firm. The sword could have been forged with the heart of a star.

Or a planet.

Thor's lips loosened into a faint smile. "Draw it," he suggested, and watched the mystic sword rise from the earth. He wondered how the blacksmith's exchange with Thanos had went, and if the man had retired back to undisturbed anonymity that Thor was willing to give.

He wondered where is nameless friend was now.

x

Emiya coughed, his grip on Bakuya failing, though the hazy-white sword remained fixed between Thanos's ribs. Beyond Thanos's shoulder, clouds parted like stretched plastic wrap for a perfectly circular hole, marking bullseye where Excalibur's flight had pierced the troposphere and vanished for its temporary wielder. Had Thanos not been crushing Emiya's windpipe against the ground, Emiya would have been tempted to admire the sight.

"A shame, Counter Guardian. You will not see this to the end." Thanos rose a fist, and a knuckle glowed orange before brilliantly flashing to, for the first time––

Deny him.

"What?" Thanos muttered, bewildered. The Infinity Stones had no flaw, being the singularities of reality themselves. "Impossible," Thanos rejected, "the Soul Stone governs death!"

"A shame, Destroyer," Emiya returned, and – even bloody, covered in dirt, and choking in Thanos's grip – smirked with bitter triumph. "For I am unknown to death. Break me now, and a hill of swords shall have me instead of your stone. If you are particularly stubborn, you will see me again."

Thanos snapped his neck.

Before the statistical possibility of invoking Unlimited Blade Works in every world Emiya was sent to save, he was not always lucky. His departure from this world was instant and ugly, befitting of the one who modeled the modern-day hero regardless whether he was in the desert or the valley, with his hands never grasping anything. Only reaping death and not what he deserved, Emiya was not victorious, but, as was the course of his life,

...He had not been defeated, either.

Thanos removed the white sword in his gut as Emiya vanished in motes of blue light, leaving not even a drop of blood behind. The married sword, missing its pair, was the only true proof that Emiya had existed. Elsewhere, true heroes had in their grasp the sword that would protect the world, ignorant of the sacrifices that had allowed them to find it.

x

A/N: The Marvel and Type Moon universes are vast, and I tried to "merge" them as best as I could. If Gaia rejects copies of Noble Phantasms that thus shouldn't exist in reality, would that make one of the cosmic entities (like Infinity) Gaia's pseudo-counterpart? And Gaea? How many entities would technically describe Gaia and Alaya, and who would be worthy to wield Excalibur, I don't know, that's what ambiguity is for LOL.

I also tried not to make Emiya hax, but then Thor must have been exhausted from the events of T:R and IW, and you bet Emiya would take full advantage of the fact Thanos can't use the Stones unless he fully closes his fist. Even still, Emiya struggled, and ultimately "lost."

Edit: I've heard speculation that Hela, Mephistopheles, etc. might be the next Big Bad after Thanos, and since they're all tied with death, I made Emiya figure out – by tracing Thor's armour and thus experiences with this sister – that they were going to be the Big Bad, and that the heroes in the Soul Stone needed to be freed for there to be hope against extinction in the future. This is why things then "clicked" for Emiya, and he turned heel to fight Thanos instead of Thor. Because ambiguity is a double-edged sword, I chose to emphasise the above with the line "unknown to Death," but since there's still confusion, I've added this mini-meta here. Sorry if this wasn't clear.

Please be gentle and review!