Just finished a pivotal point in the story.

“Do I want to know what this is about?”

“You give a guess, and it will be as good as any of mine,” Wanda said. “I had no say in coming here.”

“Yes, that was me.” Strange spoke a little faster than usual, as though he was distracted or concerned. “I’ve brought us out of time because I remember the outcome of this scenario. It comprised, oh, about a quarter of a million possibilities. None of them ended well.”

“You’re saying we’re in the middle of a battle that we’re going to lose? And you couldn’t remember this half an hour ago?”

“Half an hour ago, time had no meaning for us - or, at least, not the same meaning it does now.” Strange was snippy. “You accused me of not knowing anything more than the signpost, but I remembered this signpost and the ending was not good.”

“You’ll have to be more specific than ‘not good’,” Maria began.

A whirling jumble of images, sounds, and feelings slammed into her, the forces of time splitting and separating out into different strands - choices upon choices upon choices. She reeled with shock as Barnes slammed the glove into the ground and burned Thanos’ armies from sky and land alike. She shivered with disquiet as he forced open a blue-rimmed portal to Earth and went home. And she shuddered with fear as the power of the glove corrupted a good man, act by needful act, piece by fragmented piece, until what was left held nothing dear - not even the life of his truest friend.

Perhaps there is a personal reason the White Wolf will not take up arms until battle is required of him, Okoye had said during a meeting with Maria and Pepper shortly after Barnes’ rehabilitation. I trust the work of the Princess Shuri, yet I find myself...comforted in the knowledge that the White Wolf has bound himself to limits of his own choosing.

But there were no limits to the glove - none that mattered - and something in the mission had pushed Barnes past his self-imposed boundaries.

The torrent of foreknowledge ceased, and she grabbed for the table edge beside her, uncertain of her balance, but certain of where the mission was headed.

We get the glove, whatever the cost.

It seemed that this was the cost.

I've written this section in about a week, it's been kind of crazy. And I am really hoping that there is screaming in the comments at the end of this chapter.

But now I have to pick everyone back up again, dust them off and gently nudge them towards the finale.

A writer's work is never done.