"Good. I'll see you tomorrow then, at the palace."

Dramatic Exit Portal, engage.

Acata waves goodbye as he dramatically exits.

The peaceful hilltop continues to be very peaceful.

Thanos doesn't sleep.

He waits.

A few minutes after the sun clears the horizon, Solekaran descends from the sky on a pair of soft grey owl-like wings whose span is impressive even at Thanos's scale.

He lands at the far end of the hilltop some twenty feet away, nods distractedly to the titan, turns to face the dawn, and holds out his hands. Blood pours from his open palms and flows into the air in loops and arcs, the two streams twining around each other like a pair of gravity-defying snakes. He frowns and closes his eyes, concentrating intensely. The grisly calligraphy twists itself into ever more intricate knots, until finally it collapses to form a familiar shape. Gradually, from the ground up, blood transmutes to flesh; simultaneously, the grass around her feet grows fast enough to keep pace with the transition. The Gamora-in-progress stands perfectly still until her construction is complete: then the blood still drenching her newly formed body turns to water, and the grass wrapped around her becomes a pale green sundress in a shade that complements her skintone, and Solekaran opens his eyes and inhales in time with her first breath.

Breathes.

"Gamora?"

!!!

"Calm down, please--"

Guttural scream!

Has a space gem.

Telekinesis.

"Calm."

"Maybe I should've asked a couple more questions ahead of time," Solekaran remarks.

"I don't know what this monster's told you..."

Struggling against glowey blue energy grip.

"...he's no friend to you. He wants to kill half the universe."

"Yeah, that happened. I was annoyed about it."

"You see, Gamora?" Thanos slowly lowers his adopted daughter to the ground, still keeping her out of arm's reach of himself or the emperor. "There's nothing left for us to fight over."

"You threw me off a cliff."

"What?"

Thanos frowns. There's no elegant way to recount the events of Gamora's death.

He glances down at her. She's still staring daggers. He wishes he could give her his full attention right now, but the emperor deserves an explanation.

"Solekaran." Thanos leaves his his daughter's side and takes a few steps towards the emperor. "You wanted to know the source of my power?"

"Yeah?"

Thanos draws forth the soul gem and holds it out between himself and the emperor. Resting in the palm of his open hand, the diminutive bauble pulses with a wispy orange effulgence.

"Whoever holds this stone holds power over life and death--can either re-balance the universe as I did, or plunge it instantly into desolation."

He closes his hand.

"But you could not hold it--not for more than a fleeting moment, at least--by simply snatching it from my hand. It would require an arduous journey to a distant, secret world and then... a sacrifice."

Thanos puts the soul stone back into its socket and, as he does so, recalls the words spoken to him on the hidden planet Nidavellir by the soul gem's spectral guardian.

In order to take the stone, you must lose that which you love. A soul for a soul.

A solitary tear streaks a weary titan's face.

"It was the single hardest thing I've done in all the years of my life," Thanos says. "I stood at the cliff's edge, with Gamora beside me, and I almost turned back."

"Well, that sounds like it must've sucked for you both," he says reflectively.

"It's a cruel test, but an effective one. A power available only to those who would give up what they love most." Thanos rubs his face with the back of his hand, sniffs once, and narrows his eyes slightly. "It bars both the heartless, and those lacking the necessary altruism to deny their own hearts in service of a higher cause."

He wants to be hard in this moment. He isn't.

"Go to hell. You don't actually love me. You don't love anyone."

"The universe, apparently, disagrees."