Maybe it’s the way time seems to slow, the rush of his blood falling into a thick trickle, his feet frozen over on the uneven ground beneath them. Maybe it’s the ringing in his head that echoes like church bells, or the look in Tony’s eyes when Steve lifts his head and finds him standing over the infinity gauntlet, haunted and trembling. Maybe it’s all of them, a twisted storm of sensation and emotion that he can hardly bear to think about, but Steve breathes in and knows.
This is it-the end.
And he may be bleeding out, he may be broken, and an idiot, and dying, but he’ll be damned before he lets Tony do this all on his own.
“Stark,” the robot girl who came with him from Titan says, her voice shaking. “Tony. You can’t, it’ll-it’ll kill you, Tony, you can’t.”
He smiles for her, brave and strong and tremulous even in the midst of all this death and destruction, because he’s Tony, courage and kindness and strength in the face of everything evil and pained, and it’s not within him to leave anyone suffering when he can help it.
“I have to,” he tells her, and she shakes her head, a sob building up in her throat as she tries to claw her way through the dirt to move, her broken legs sparking against the blood beneath her, and Steve forces himself to break through the pain blanketing his entire body to stagger slowly behind him.
“You won’t be able to come back,” she chokes out, a scream building in her throat, and a tear slips through Tony’s defenses at the jagged hurt in her voice, his eyes falling shut to push back against his broken heart.
“No,” he agrees, picking up the gauntlet with aching limbs and summoning his remaining nanites to cover the other arm in a thick glove, “but everyone else will.”
“It’s okay,” Steve rasps, coughing against the blood filling his lungs, managing the bare skeleton of a smile for her. “He won’t…be doing it alone.”
“Steve,” Tony warns, eyes sharp and wet in the light of the fires still blazing around them.
“No,” Steve shakes his head, taking two more stumbling steps to let his hand rest on Tony’s shoulder, his heart stuttering dangerously in his chest with exertion. “I told you…together.”
“I let you fight…on your own, for f-far too long,” Steve whispers, squeezing Tony’s shoulder and holding back tears of his own. “Not…anymore. Not-this time.”
Searching his eyes desperately for something, anything, that could possibly suggest this is a lie, Tony opens his mouth-and Steve covers it with this hand, leaning in to let his forehead fall against Tony’s, his hand curving around the scuffed curves of the jaw before him.
“Just. Let me do this,” Steve pleads, eyes falling for a momentary peace that escapes him all too quickly. “I’ve…I’ve lost you too many times. I’m tired…of losing the people…I love.”
“Steve,” Tony gasps wetly, his eyes wide in the harsh light of the flickering flames, “Steve-”
“I have…the worst timing,” Steve jokes, his breath cutting short and wheezing out of him, “I kn-know.”
Hand shifting down to touch the gauntlet, Steve meets Tony’s eyes and smiles one more time, weak and shattered as he is.
“Together,” Steve says, and Tony chokes down a hysterical laugh before he slides the gauntlet into place on top of his nanite glove, watching as Steve’s hand slips in to hold at its gleaming grooves.
“Together,” Tony whispers, and Steve watches the tears slip freely down his face as he raises their hands to the sky, a glow sparking inside each of the infinity stones and vibrating the very space around them.
Brown eyes turn a final time to Nebula, her furious wails echoing through the air as it hums, and Tony mouths his last goodbye before Steve threads their fingers together, the tips of their flesh peeling off in flakes of blackened violet as the stones take effect.
With one, last, lingering look between them, the firestorm of power and energy surrounding the gauntlet explodes into an all-consuming inferno, and the universe shifts back into place.
When the fire burns out, a fade of purple and black to darkness, there’s nothing.
I’m going to explain why one scene that they chose to remove actually puts the whole movie in perspective and answers a lot of questions fans had about the final cut.
Obviously this is definitely going to spoil you and I can list about 100 different trigger warnings so unless you have seen the movie and are prepared to deal with the same themes, don’t read on.
Cancer World Tour
We see in what makes the final cut of the film that Vanessa is desperate to find a cure for Wade’s cancer and in the edited scene called “Cancer World Tour” she does just as he predicts, drags him around the world trying every cure.
As always Wade narrates the scene so he informs us that they have been all of the world and have already tried everything and now they were at rock bottom, in a very unlikely clinic in Guadalajara Mexico.
Wade has given up long ago but is keeping that to himself, spending the rest of his very short life indulging Vanessa in the fantasy that he can be cured.
He is in a waiting room bitterly observing the other hopeless patients indulging their own love ones, or perhaps even themselves, and he visibly has a hard time keeping his anger and sadness to himself.
Wade listens in as a mother tries to pay for her young son’s treatment and the nurse very coldly insists she won’t take any pesos, everything has to be in American cash. The little boy reaches for a sucker and the nurse says it will cost extra. Wade quickly puts his own cash on the desk, saying it’s on him.
Something is still bothering him. Wade watches the young boy sit as an older gentleman Wade himself was talking to earlier gets up to go in for his own appointment. Wade tells us in a voice over how he is at the end of his rope. He will indulge Vanessa, he will spend all the money that is needed to do so, but he can’t watch more of these innocent people being screwed over.
Wade sneaks into the operating room to observe that what is going on is that this miracle cure is not a miracle nor a cure. I don’t know exactly how much a layperson may understand this particular treatment by what they filmed so I’m going to explain in a bit more detail: this is an actual treatment that is offered for a great amount of money and the practitioner promises that they will remove your cancer without putting you under anesthesia or even cutting you open; they will somehow reach in and pull it out of you. The stomach is pressed upon by the practitioner and with sleight-of-hand they produced a bit of animal organ, presenting it as the removed cancer. There is a bit of blood but no incision, they claim to have healed that as well.
Wade waits secretly as the the older gentleman, relieved to have been cured, leaves the room and then he enters to confront the practitioner. Wade dryly remarks that the bucket of removed tumors smells like chicken, the practitioner reaches for a scalpel to defend himself, Wade has already taken it.
Wade loses it. He viciously beats and stabs the man. No fancy choreography, no clever banter. Wade gruesomely murders this man with his own two hands and blood is everywhere. The staff and waiting room rush in to see what is happened and Vanessa is among them.
Wade, in excruciating emotional pain, realizes what has happened. Vanessa is watching. This wasn’t a job and it wasn’t done efficiently. He isn’t being a mercenary, he’s being a murderer, is becoming what we will call Deadpool.
Fleeing, Wade runs away and leaves Vanessa to desperately scream in search for him to no avail. He is gone.
I don’t know why this scene wouldn’t of been included in the final cut. To me it solves a lot of issues that people have had with the characterization of both Wade and Vanessa.
Many reviewers asked why, despite the fact that Wade obviously was upset and beginning to show signs of mental illness, he couldn’t just go back to Vanessa and let her see his scars. She certainly didn’t come off as the type of character who would judge him for the way he looked but that wasn’t it. Wade is reluctant to show her what he looks like now, of course, but most of the reluctance comes from the fact that she has already seen a little bit of what he has become inside and that’s a completely different story. Vanessa fell in love with a different man, a man who killed people but wasn’t violent, wasn’t unhinged.
Maybe more importantly it gives the ending an entirely different tone. It’s not the happy ending it appears. Vanessa forgives Wade and despite his warning she is in Deadpool’s arms, not really understanding that Wade is gone. Deadpool very canonically gives into the bit of hope that it might be okay, someone might actually love him.
But what happens next? Vanessa is now going to meet Deadpool and realize that she has to again mourn the loss of Wade who she believes has come back from the dead. Will she love this new man? Should she? Is she safe to be with him?
Your feelings for Deadpool aside, try to imagine what Vanessa is walking into. Wade would never hurt her but Deadpool is not Wade and sometimes Deadpool is not even Deadpool. Sometimes this body is overtaken with pain and hallucinations. If Wade can viciously beat and stab a man to death when he disassociates, what does Deadpool do when he disassociates?
Deadpool doesn’t know.
Man.. I really wish they wouldn’t have cut this scene and the way OP explains/describes basically the ‘birth’ of Deadpool is perfect. Deleted scene here for those interested.
fadeslikewhispers 