Chapter Text
[Date Unknown]
Cradle of All Existence
Death’s Domain
Helena Rose Potter had never been what anyone would call normal. No — normality had been a luxury she’d never tasted, not in childhood, not in life, and certainly not now in death. Her earliest years had been forged in the cramped, joyless confines of Privet Drive, under the watchful eyes of people she only begrudgingly referred to as “family”. The word still felt wrong on her tongue.
They had christened her freak long before she ever learned her real name. For years, she answered to it, a title sharpened into a blade and thrown at her every time she dared exist too loudly. Endless chores, petty tasks and punishments had been weaponised to stamp out the spark inside her — the spark that had always defied them.
Magic.
Such a small word, and yet for the Dursleys it had been an obscenity. Even now, she could envision Vernon’s purple face, eyes bulging with a blend of fury and terror whenever anything even slightly abnormal occurred around her. The memory still made something cold coil beneath her ribs.
Helena exhaled slowly, placing the parchment she’d been reading onto her desk. The soft creak of her chair accompanied her as she leaned back, letting her gaze drift over the room before surrendering to the pull of memory — back to a life long finished, yet etched so vividly into her immortal mind.
She could still summon, with perfect clarity, the electric thrill that had coursed through her when her Hogwarts letter arrived on her eleventh birthday. Awe. Wonder. A desperate, fragile hope that the parchment bearing her name — her name — meant she belonged somewhere. That someone, somewhere, had reached out intentionally to her, not the freak, not the burden, but the girl hidden beneath all the Dursleys’ cruelty.
Hogwarts had been her first true home. Its stone corridors and shifting staircases had embraced her in a way four walls and a cupboard never had. The castle had been warmth, magic and belonging. But it had also been truth. Pain. Secrets. And horrors that still sent a faint ripple of cold down her spine when she dared linger too long in memory.
Her parents’ murder — at the hands of one Tom Marvolo Riddle — remained the darkest cornerstone of her story. Voldemort. He-Who-Must-Be-Named. The Dark Lord. Names layered in masks, yet each one a reminder that true evil cared little for labels or the innocence it destroyed.
Her first journey to Diagon Alley with the ever-gentle Rubeus Hagrid remained one of her most cherished memories. Even now, centuries removed from mortality, she could conjure the sensation of magic thick in the air as she stepped onto those cobbled streets for the first time. Shops bursting with impossible wonders, spellbooks stacked to the ceiling, cauldrons gleaming in the sun, and — most unforgettable of all — the moment her wand chose her.
And then there was Gringotts.
Helena let out a soft laugh, the sound tinged with fond exasperation. The goblins still hadn’t entirely forgiven her — or Ron and Hermione — for their infamous break-in during the Horcrux Hunt. They’d allowed the trio to keep their vaults and every last Knut within them, but only after extracting a meticulous, humiliating explanation of how three teenagers had managed to infiltrate the most secure bank in Magical Britain. The goblins had fixed every flaw afterwards, naturally. Goblins were nothing if not prideful artisans of security.
So many memories swirled through her, tumbling over one another like pages in a windblown book. It all felt impossibly distant now — another lifetime, another Helena. And with the memories came the echo of the titles once thrust upon her by a grateful, desperate world.
The-Girl-Who-Lived.
The-Woman-Who-Conquered.
The titles drifted through her mind like stale echoes, and Helena couldn’t suppress the faint curl of her lip. She had despised them — those grand, glittering labels forged from fear and expectation. The Wixen world had wrapped her in reverence she never asked for, never wanted. As if surviving the Killing Curse had been some deliberate act of heroism rather than a mixture of fate, sacrifice and sheer cosmic absurdity.
She had not been born special. She had been made special — sculpted into a symbol by people too terrified to see her as a child. All it had taken was one prophecy whispered in shadows, and her life had ceased to belong to her. Her parents had died trusting a man who fancied himself wiser than anyone else, and that single miscalculation had set the trajectory for everything that followed. Her fingers curled tightly around the arms of her chair, the old tension returning as easily as drawing breath. Even after all this time — after death, after ascension, after centuries spent far from the mortal coil — simply thinking about Albus-too-many-names-Dumbledore stirred a hurricane of conflicting emotions inside her.
Once, she had believed in him with the fervour of a child desperate for guidance. She had trusted him, defended him, admired him. And then she learned the truth — learned the depths of his calculations, learned that he had quietly planned for her to walk to her death with a willing heart. Something fundamental had fractured then, a clean break through the bedrock of her faith.
Yet, when the world needed saving, she had gone. Not for him — never again for him — but for everyone else. For the innocents. For her friends. For the Wixen and Muggle worlds alike. She had walked into the Forbidden Forest and embraced Death not as an enemy, but as an old, inevitable companion. She had done it knowing that Tom would never stop unless she ended it herself, even if it meant surrendering the borrowed, fragile life she had fought so hard to keep.
Between life and death — walking in that strange, suspended space where time folded in on itself — Helena had held the fragment of Tom Riddle’s soul in her arms. It had been small, pitiful even, a wretched remnant of the man who’d sought her death since childhood. And there, in that white liminality, she had finally unleashed everything she had ever swallowed down. Her fury. Her heartbreak. Her profound sense of betrayal. All of it was hurled directly at the apparition of Albus Dumbledore.
And the old wizard had simply taken it. Worse — he had agreed with her. Agreed. He had even dared to look at her with soft, mournful eyes and tell her she was right. Even now, the memory made her blood simmer. She loathed that part of her — some stubborn shard of compassion — that had still felt pity for him. She had still, in some twisted corner of her heart, loved him despite everything.
When she returned to life — dragged breath back into her lungs, rose to her feet and fought her way toward Tom for the final time — none of that compassion mattered. She had ended him. Ended the war. Saved the world. But victory had not brought relief. The moment the dust settled, grief hollowed her out. Fred’s laughter snuffed too soon. Tonks and Remus — gone, leaving Teddy behind. Their losses had clung to her like raw, gaping wounds after the cheers had faded.
Once — long before immortality, before cosmic responsibilities, before Hallows and Prime Entities — Helena had imagined a future with Fred Weasley. He’d been her first love, all laughter and mischief and warmth. She had carried the confession on the tip of her tongue for months, waiting for the right moment, the right breath, the right heartbeat. But war didn’t care for timing, and she never had the chance to tell him. That regret haunted her for decades.
And Remus… Merlin, Remus.
He had been the final thread connecting her to her parents, to Sirius, to the remnants of the life she should have had. His gentle wisdom, his patience, his loyalty — gone in an instant. Taken with Tonks, leaving behind their son, little Teddy, with his ever-changing hair and wide, hopeful eyes.
A soft sigh escaped Helena. The grief no longer carved her open like it once had; time — both mortal and immortal — had blunted the sharpest edges. But even now, centuries later, the ache lingered like a faded scar: a reminder of love, loss, and all the stories left unfinished.
After the war, she had rebuilt; she’d had to. And she hadn’t done it alone. Ron, Hermione, Luna, Neville — even Draco in his own reluctant, grumbling way — they had all helped her stitch herself back together. It wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t easy. Healing never was. Years of therapy, late-night conversations and stubborn determination had slowly pulled her out of the ruins of her past.
She’d thrown herself into rebuilding Magical Britain afterwards, determined to help create something better, something gentler, something worthy of the people they’d lost. Hermione, unsurprisingly, rose through the ranks with meteoric speed — first Undersecretary under Kingsley, then eventually as Minister for Magic herself. Ron was offered a place in the Auror Department, which he accepted with a proud grin and a nervous laugh.
Helena chose a different path. After a lifetime of battling monsters in one form or another, she had no desire to make danger her profession. Instead, she walked through the doors of the Department of Mysteries and immersed herself in its sprawling labyrinth of knowledge. There, she devoured every scrap of information she could find — driven by curiosity, by necessity and by the weight of three very particular objects that had shaped her fate.
She had never confessed everything to Ron and Hermione, though she suspected — keen as they were — that they’d pieced more together than she’d ever spoken aloud. After the war, after the hunt for Horcruxes, after carrying each of the Deathly Hallows in turn, Helena had discovered she’d earned yet another title. One far more literal, far more binding and infinitely more irritating than any conjured by newspapers or desperate wizards.
Mistress of Death.
She remembered the moment the truth struck her with crystal clarity. A year after Voldemort’s fall, she’d walked into her bedroom to find all three Hallows resting neatly atop her bedspread as though they had simply decided to pay her a visit. Shock had frozen her; outrage had followed. And then Death itself appeared — quiet, inevitable, impossibly real — to explain what the title meant and what would one day be required of her.
That conversation had changed everything.
“And now here I am,” Helena muttered, a wry smile tugging at her mouth. “Nothing more than a glorified secretary of the dead.”
Because in the end, that’s basically what the title meant. Mistress of Death — the grand, ominous name boiled down to maintaining order among Souls, shepherding them, guiding them, protecting them in the afterlife. Hardly what she’d envisioned back when she still breathed.
But before any of that, she had lived a full, quiet, utterly precious mortal life. She had watched Teddy Lupin grow from a bright-eyed child into a kind, confident wizard, his hair changing colours with every emotion just as it had when he was small. She had stood on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters year after year, waving him off alongside the next generation — Weasley children bounding about in excitement, Luna’s little ones drifting dreamily, even Draco’s son standing stiffly before softening under their warmth.
She had watched friendships bloom — unexpected, beautiful ones. Most memorably: Hugo Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy becoming inseparable, to the mutual horror of their fathers.
Helena, Hermione and Luna had nearly collapsed laughing at the expressions on Ron’s and Draco’s faces when the boys returned home for the holidays — arms slung around each other, grinning with the kind of mischief that could topple castles.
A Gryffindor-Slytherin alliance of the ages.
She had watched, lived, laughed and loved — just not in the way others expected. Helena never married, never had children of her own. But she had been content. She became the aunt — the dependable one, the safe one, the one who understood without judgment. Every child knew they could run to Aunt Helena with scraped knees, broken hearts, or the embarrassing confession that they’d accidentally turned a treasured teapot into a hedgehog. And she had cherished every moment of it.
Her mortal life had been fulfilling in a quiet, gentle way. All the while, she kept the truth of the Hallows — and the immense weight of the Mistress of Death mantle — locked away. That burden was hers alone
Years passed as they always did. She watched her friends age — slowly at first, then all at once. She attended weddings, held newborns, sat through first days at school, and last days of school. And she went to funerals, too many of them, her heart growing simultaneously heavier and softer with each one.
When her time finally arrived — quiet, peaceful, and just as inevitable as for everyone else — Helena had not been afraid. She had been surrounded by the people she loved, even if not a single one shared her blood. Family born of choice, not lineage. She remembered smiling, her last breath soft and sure, as she embraced Death like an old friend for the second time in her existence. This time, there had been no war, no prophecy, no sacrifice. Just acceptance.
Back in the present, Helena released another sigh and straightened in her chair. She reached for the parchment she’d abandoned minutes before, scanning it with all the enthusiasm of a flobberworm. “I am really bored,” she muttered to herself.
Death had wasted no time putting her immortal Soul to work after her second death. The moment she crossed fully into Death’s Domain, she’d been handed responsibilities — monumental ones. She’d become the steward of passing Souls, the one who oversaw their transitions, their evaluations, their destinations. And she’d assumed that meant the Souls of her world.
But no. Of course not.
Death’s Domain encompassed every Soul from every universe that ever existed, currently exists, or will exist. Every timeline. Every branch. Every world beyond mortal comprehension.
And they all flowed through Death’s Domain.
Yes, she had underlings — though calling them that felt both accurate and absurd. Helena was the highest-ranking Soul beneath Death itself, the right hand of a Prime Entity. Reapers answered to her because Death was perpetually occupied: crossing universes, balancing cosmic scales, negotiating with the other Prime Entities, or — when necessary — quietly dissolving doomed timelines before they could poison the Multiverse.
“It’s a stressful job!” Death had complained once, skeletal hands flailing dramatically. And for all the theatrics, Helena knew it was true.
As the ages churned on, the Prime Entities devised a solution: trials scattered across thousands of universes. Tests crafted to identify Souls capable of wielding a sliver of a Prime Entity’s authority — Souls resilient enough to handle the delicate work that fell within any one of the Prime Entities' Domains.
Some had succeeded across the Multiverse throughout the ages. And yet, as far as she knew, only Death currently had a Chosen, which was her.
Helena held the command of thousands of Reapers that now operated under her, each one bearing their own origin, their own story, their own scars. They were loyal, efficient and unfailingly respectful. Souls chosen because they were useful and willing to work for eternity.
Except she was different. She was Death’s Chosen, titled and favoured above all other Souls in Death’s Domain.
Which, of course, meant Helena somehow ended up special even in death. A cosmic promotion she’d never asked for but couldn’t refuse.
A sharp rap on the door snapped Helena out of her spiralling thoughts. She blinked, re-anchoring herself in the present.
“Come in,” she called, bracing herself.
The door opened to reveal a tall, impossibly elegant figure. Sylwen — for there was no mistaking him — glided into the room with the ethereal grace only a Reaper of his calibre possessed. His silver-toned skin shimmered faintly under the soft light, contrasted by dark-blue hair tied in a loose, effortless bun. Wisps framed his sharp, fae-like features, enhancing the ageless beauty of his face. His eyes—liquid silver flecked with starlight — sparkled with quiet amusement.
“Sylwen,” Helena said slowly, already suspicious. “What is it now?”
He approached her desk and inclined his head in the formal gesture of respect reserved for her alone. “Lady Helena.” He said, his voice smooth like polished obsidian. “Death requests your presence in their office. Immediately.”
Helena let out a low, theatrical groan and dropped her forehead into her hand. “Please tell me this isn’t about another genocide cleanup. I swear, the last one took weeks. And the paperwork…” She shuddered.
Sylwen’s lips twitched in a rare show of humour. “I cannot say, my Lady. I was only told to fetch you. The reason,” he added delicately, “is for Death to explain.”
Helena levelled a narrow-eyed glare at him. Sylwen was beautiful, dangerous and altogether too clever for anyone’s comfort. He had been the one to guide her when she first arrived in Death’s Domain — teaching her the hierarchy, the systems, the ancient rites and impossible logistics of shepherding Souls from across the Multiverse. He was her highest-ranking Reaper, her most trusted lieutenant and someone she owed deeply.
Which only made it more irritating that he enjoyed her exasperation so much.
Helena pushed to her feet with a stretch. “Fine,” she sighed. “Let’s not keep the old skeleton waiting.”
Sylwen offered his arm in silent escort, and together they exited her office. The corridor outside hummed with soft, otherworldly energy. Reapers drifted through the hallways — some humanoid, some decidedly not — bowing their heads respectfully as Helena passed. Most bore faint wisps of lingering Soul-light; they had clearly just returned from the Soul Room.
Ah, the Soul Room.
A cavernous expanse where the newly departed arrived in shimmering waves — some confused, some resigned, some furious, some simply relieved. Souls from every reality, every timeline, every branching universe converged there, waiting to be processed, healed, judged or guided to their next destination. Death had not exaggerated: it was exhausting, never-ending work.
People, creatures, beings, constructs, so-called immortals — everything that could die eventually did. And when you multiplied that by the infinite tapestry of the Multiverse…
Well… the paperwork alone could drown galaxies.
Most of the burden fell to her, and through her, to the countless Reapers she now oversaw. Being Mistress of Death was — without question — absolutely nothing like what she’d hoped for when she passed away.
They reached the looming double doors of Death’s office — massive obsidian slabs veined with silver light, pulsing like a heartbeat. Helena didn’t bother knocking. She never bothered. Instead, she pushed the doors open with the confidence of someone who was far too tired for theatrics.
“Well?” she demanded, not even attempting politeness. “What is it this time?”
Death looked up from their desk, and the sight still had the ability to unsettle her despite centuries in their presence. The Prime Entity appeared exactly as she had known in life: a towering hooded figure, skeletal frame, cloaked in darkness, empty eye sockets glowing faintly with blue fire. It was ironic, really — Death was perceived differently by every Soul, shaped by belief and culture. Some saw a comforting guide; others, a blazing angel; others, a gentle grandmother.
Helena saw the traditional Grim Reaper.
Of course, she did. Fate had a sense of humour... in a manner of speaking.
And yet — impossibly — the skeletal face smiled. Or at least performed an unnervingly successful approximation of one.
“Helena, my most precious Mistress!” Death crooned, sounding far too pleased. The bones of their jaw shifted into what could only be described as a manic grin.
Her eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “No.”
Death’s eye sockets widened in mock confusion. “But I haven’t even said anything yet.”
“I don’t care. I know that look. Whatever you’re planning, whatever disaster you’ve created, whatever universe you’ve possibly shattered — no. N-O. NO.”
Death’s shoulders — bone and shadow and ancient presence — slumped into an unmistakable pout. “No faith in me at all,” they lamented dramatically.
Helena opened her mouth to retort, but then Death’s tone shifted. The air chilled. The faint crackle of cosmic energy around them stilled, as if the Domain itself were listening. Helena straightened instinctively.
“It seems,” Death said slowly, “that one Mother Universe is on the brink of complete and utter destruction. And when it collapses, the unravelling will spread. It will consume the Multiverse.”
For a heartbeat, the room fell utterly silent.
Helena exchanged a sharp look with Sylwen — his silver eyes wide, posture rigid. This was not routine. This was not paperwork. This was a catastrophe.
“Can we stop it? Fix it?” she asked, voice low, masking the spike of dread in her chest.
Death’s skeletal form sagged. For the first time since she had known them, they looked… old. “No,” they said softly. “We cannot.”
Helena’s stomach dropped. She gripped the edge of Death’s desk, grounding herself against the sudden tilt of the world. “Are you telling me this is an irreversible event?”
Death’s eye sockets flicked toward Sylwen in silent request.
Helena understood immediately. “Sylwen,” she said sharply, “you’re dismissed. And you will not repeat anything you heard in this room.”
He bowed deeply, the gesture more solemn than usual. “My Lady. Death.” Then he vanished through the doors without another word.
The moment he was gone, Helena turned back to Death, all pretence stripped away. “Start talking,” she commanded. “Tell me everything.”
Death dragged a skeletal hand over their bare skull, fingertips rasping against bone. “It is a Mother Universe far removed from your own,” they began, voice drooping into a sombre timbre. “One of the more volatile ones — the one with superheroes, aliens, cosmic threats, the usual brand of chaos.” They paused before continuing. “It is the home of my Merchant of Death.”
Helena inhaled sharply.
She had heard that title only a handful of times; it was spoken with reverence, Death rarely showed anyone besides her. The Merchant of Death was a mortal man — brilliant, flawed, reckless in the noblest way — who ran toward danger even when he trembled, who saved others even when it shattered him. A man who feared Death yet embraced its call when it meant protecting the lives of those he cared for.
A man, impossibly, frustratingly self-sacrificing.
The only mortal, as far as Helena knew, whom Death cherished as fiercely as they cherished her. Death’s other Chosen.
Anthony Edward Stark.
Death had spoken his name with quiet pride the first time they’d told her of him. He was destined — when his natural life finally ceased — to sit beside her as her equal. To share her responsibilities. To balance her power.
And if his Mother Universe was collapsing…
“He’s dead?” Helena whispered, the word scraping out of her like broken glass.
Death’s expression — skeletal as it was — shifted into something deeply troubled. “Yes,” they confirmed quietly. “Before his time. Which should not be possible.”
Helena stared. Blinked. Tried — and failed — to make sense of it. A Chosen of a Prime Entity could not die prematurely. Their lifeline was protected, fortified, shielded from any death not sanctioned by the decree of the Prime Entity that had chosen them. It was a cosmic rule, older than stardust.
It shouldn’t have been breakable.
And yet it had been broken.
“The other Prime Entities?” she pressed, dread crawling like ice beneath her skin.
Death’s bony fingers twitched with irritation. “Fate,” they said with a dramatic sigh, “is — how do humans phrase it? — being a bitch.” The last word echoed like a crack of thunder. “She insists her threads were intact before it happened. Claims she only nudged negligible events that had nothing to do with my Merchant.”
Helena rolled her eyes. Fate never “nudged” anything. She shoved.
“Time,” Death continued, “says the timeline only just started unravelling from the inside out without his input. Fraying like rotted thread. Neither Chaos nor Order can determine the exact cause, and they are extraordinarily incensed about it.”
Helena winced. When those two couldn’t figure something out, it meant the Multiverse was playing tricks even they couldn’t decode.
“And Life?” she ventured carefully.
Death’s eye sockets flared in exasperation. “Do not even get me started on Life. She is flouncing around every multiversal nexus, complaining that everything feels “off” and demanding cosmic hugs.”
Despite the looming catastrophe, Helena couldn’t stop the small grin tugging at her lips. Life was impossible not to adore. Rambunctious, radiant, dramatic and endlessly affectionate, she preferred the shape of a woman draped in blooming flowers and starlight. She visited Death’s Domain the most out of all of Death’s siblings, bursting through the doors with bouquets and chaos in equal measure.
Helena had shared countless cups of tea with her, listening for hours as Life rambled about newborn universes, improbable romances, or the scandalous behaviour of certain galaxies. Helena rather liked her — perhaps more than she should.
Not that she’d ever admit that to Death. They were jealous enough when Life so much as brushed Helena’s sleeve.
She quickly smoothed her expression when Death’s empty sockets narrowed suspiciously. “All right,” Helena said, dragging herself back to the crisis at hand. “What do we do now?”
Death rose slowly from their seat, skeletal hands clasped behind their back as they began to pace the room with grave deliberation. The air stirred with each step, as if the Domain itself held its breath once more.
“You’re not going to like it.” Death warned.
Helena’s heart sank. She had learned — usually the hard way — that that sentence never preceded anything good. “In what way?” she asked, bracing herself for the worst.
Death inhaled sharply, preparing to speak — but the words never made it out.
Helena felt it long before she saw a single thing.
Power.
Raw, unfiltered, newborn-in-its-purity power. It hit her like a tidal wave, slamming into her lungs and ripping the breath from her chest. The air thickened, humming with ancient resonance. The pressure spiked, sharp and bright, crackling like a star being born inside the room.
Then everything exploded into motion.
Books were torn from shelves. Scrolls unfurled midair. Quills, ink pots, parchments — every object not bolted down spiralled into the air as if seized by an invisible storm. Energy surged, coiling and snapping through Death’s office with wild hunger.
A white mist burst into existence, swirling into a focused cyclone that illuminated the entire room in ghostly light. Helena shielded her face from the force of it, eyes narrowing. Inside the vortex, a silhouette formed — slender at first, then sharpening into the unmistakable outline of a body.
Then—
Silence
A void-like calm.
The cyclone vanished as suddenly as it erupted, collapsing into a single soft pulse that dissipated into nothingness. The room looked as though a battle had torn through it: books and parchments strewn across the floor, shattered quills, toppled shelves, Death’s paperwork scattered around the office like fallen snow.
And at the centre of the chaos lay a man — crumpled, unmoving, fragile in a way that twisted something deep inside Helena’s chest. A pull — not magical, but instinctive — dragged her forward before she could think. She dropped to her knees beside him, hands steady as she gently turned him onto his back.
Death crouched beside her, but Helena barely registered the towering figure. Her focus tunnelled wholly onto the man before her.
He was breathing.
Dark, chocolate-brown hair lay tousled across his forehead, and his goatee — immaculate even in unconsciousness — framed a face she knew far too well. He wore red and gold armour, battle-scarred and brilliantly crafted, the suit that earned him the mortal moniker Iron Man.
A marvel of engineering. A miracle first made in captivity.
Helena’s gaze traced the familiar lines of the suit, the genius woven into its every plate and seam. She had watched — through Death’s Seeing Orb — how he built the first version in a cave with scraps and desperation, while enemies circled like vultures. She had seen him improve it over the years, each iteration a testament to resilience and brilliance.
Her eyes drifted to the Arc Reactor embedded in his chest plate.
Once, it had kept shrapnel from reaching his heart.
Now, the triangular-shaped reactor powered only the suit — an evolution from the circular version she remembered.
She lifted a hand, hovering just above the glowing light, careful not to touch.
Helena wasn’t ashamed — would never be ashamed — to admit that she had watched Tony Stark through Death’s Seeing Orb more times than she cared to count. She had watched him grow, stumble and fall and then rise again. Watched him drown in guilt and claw his way back toward hope. Watched him make mistakes — terrible ones — and then fight tooth and nail to repair the damage.
She watched because she knew what he was meant to become.
That knowledge had softened something in her as time rolled by. A quiet fondness. A strange familiarity. A sense of connection she had never expected to feel toward someone she had never met in person.
The realisation hit her like a blow, stilling the hand that had unconsciously risen to brush his cheek.
Her breath trembled. “What happened to him? For him to die before he was supposed to?”
Death let out a sound that was part sigh, part growl — a deep, ancient exhale that shook the air around them. “He was beaten to death in Siberia,” they said grimly. “The Captain — Rogers — was a bit too zealous in his attempt to save James Barnes.”
Death’s skeletal hand drifted through Tony’s hair with surprising gentleness.
“He should have survived,” Death continued. “He should have been injured, yes, but alive. Something changed. Interfered. Something none of us sensed before it was too late. And instead of being found injured… he died there.”
The words landed like stones in Helena’s chest.
She looked down at Tony, peaceful in unconsciousness, unaware of the cosmic catastrophe his premature death had triggered. Unaware of the Multiverse on the verge of unravelling around him.
“So what do we do now?” she murmured, voice barely above a whisper.
“As I said,” Death muttered, exasperation rattling their bones, “you are not going to like our solution.”
Helena tore her gaze from Tony and fixed Death with a hard, unflinching stare. “Tell me anyway.”
Death opened their mouth —
— but the universe had other plans.
A low groan escaped the man on the floor.
Helena’s heart lurched. Both she and Death leaned forward as Tony Stark’s eyelashes fluttered. Slowly, he blinked awake, sapphire-blue eyes hazy with disorientation. Those eyes — the ones she had only ever seen through the Seeing Orb — shifted between her and Death.
Recognition didn’t spark. Confusion did. Then alarm.
Tony’s breath hitched as his gaze darted around the unfamiliar room and on them.
Helena acted before his panic could spiral. She offered him the softest smile she possessed, one she hadn’t used in centuries.
“Hello Tony Stark… I am Helena Potter, and I welcome you to Death’s Domain.”
Tony stared.
Blink
Blink
The words sank in like stones dropped into deep water. “Wait…” His eyes widened to an impossible size. “WAIT — WHAT?!”