7

CAPTAIN

'𝕎hy can't we eat something else?'

It had taken a while to force Kit away from the park once the sky started to darken, lulling him back and using his newfound neighbour slash friend as bait. He had an angry pout etched on his face throughout their journey back home but Luna's slow conversation had managed to keep him preoccupied. The topic had taken a shift once Kit had glimpsed at the nearly empty diner on the opposite side of their apartment. Luna quickly ushered him inside the building when thunder wracked the sky unnaturally and efficiently ceasing the topic. 

'Because we can make something for ourselves at home,' Luna said quietly, lowering her head when the gazes of a familiar neighbours fell on her. She skipped the elevator, using the staircase nearby and guided Kit's small figure up the stairs.

'I like burgers,' he said with a smile, breathlessly ascending the stairs with a hand around the vertical bars nearby. Luna smiled when she heard him, shaking her head.

'Not tonight,' she refused but quickly tried to make up for it. 'Maybe...pancakes?'

A low hiss of a yes! left him as he jostled past the last set of stairs, immersed in a small game of tag as they scrambled up to their floor. She grappled his waist with an animalistic growl, eluting a screech out of Kit and giggling when she launched him up into the air. She chuckled when he struggled in her arms, her heart full when she recognized the smile on his gaunt face. Quickly sifting through her coat for the keys, she fit it into the hole. Just as she could close the door behind them, a voice called out to her.

'Luna.'

'Bucky!' Her son was first to greet in an exultant voice before Luna turned to meet her neighbour. She pulled on a smile herself when she nodded at him. 'Hi.'

'Mother's going to make pancakes,' Kit excitedly said when Bucky scooped the boy into his arms in a fluid motion. This action surprised Luna, a low gasp leaving her lips. 'D'you want to come?'

Bucky looked at Luna with a half-smirk. 'Can't say no to an invite.'

'I would love it if you could join us,' she said, stretching the door farther open for them to enter. Just as Kit bounded past the open door to slam his body into their bed, Luna realized that Bucky's apartment wasn't empty. He was having company at the moment. The thought didn't go unnoticed when the door opened behind him to reveal a tall, rugged stranger who stepped into the light. 

Luna's immediate instinct was to lock her apartment door shut behind her. Bucky glanced at her action, knowing that her protective side was coming to play. Her eyes were guarded and strained on the other man in the hallway, her stance defensive than ever.

'Who is this?' She asked Bucky, her eyes aloof in the dull lights above. 

The man was towering, north of a six-foot and his light-coloured face unable to be read because of the lowly hanging cap over his eyes. There was the dust of scruff over his cheeks and jaw as if he had willingly grown into it to keep himself undercover. Luna couldn't get possibly get more suspicious when Bucky took his own sweet time to answer her.

'Bucky,' she urged. 'Answer me.'

Bucky let out a resigned sigh, craning his neck to catch the stranger's gaze. He was only an inch shy of the outsider's height, able to look him directly in the eye. 

'It's okay,' he responded to him. 'I trust her.'

The stranger nodded once, opting to remove the cap over his head to reveal the pensive dark blue eyes which drunk her in. He had tousled, dark hair which curled to the sky and a stony face that changed into reluctance when the realization struck her like a hundred bricks. She inhaled sharply when she recognized the familiarity of the stranger, a palm going to her lips.

'Goodness,' she whispered, casting him a wide-eyed look. She pointed a shaking finger towards him in recollection. 'Y-you are - '

'Luna,' Bucky slunk to her aid, trapping her shoulder in a gentle embrace. She flung his friendly hand a surprised look, the warmth making her stomach flip and knot in all sorts of ways. She gulped when she faced the sunken superhero once again, nodding at him.

'I'm sorry for the intrusion, Miss Shear,' the man said, her ears perking up when she heard her last name. Had Bucky already introduced her to this man? 'I'm an old friend of his. Steve Rogers.'

'Luna,' she introduced in a rush of breath, dazzled to meet a superhero in real life. The star-spangled man who the people on the news couldn't seem to stop jabbering about. That was one of the cons of this planet - people were too nosy. In her moment of daze, his rough hand slipped between hers for a short handshake and she fisted her hands back into her coat. 

'I have seen you on the television and we, I mean, my son adores you.'

A grin stretched across his features. 'Or so I've been told. Kit, is it?'

She smiled in acceptance. 'I cannot blame him. You are all the world seems to talk about.'

'They don't exactly love me, so, yeah,' he muttered, pitching in a one-shoulder shrug. 'Got that going for me.'

'Ma, I'm starving!'

The leash turned their heads to the sharp exclamation from behind Luna's door, her face scrunching up with desolation. She faced them with pinkened cheeks, biting down on her lip harder. 

'Just a moment, sweetheart,' she called out to her son which ended up sounding like cat's strangled mewl. She palmed the handle to her door, looking back at the two friends apologetically. She didn't want to invite them in but it felt like a moral obligation around here. Clearing her throat, she asked softly. 'Would you like to come in?'

'I should get going,' Steve spoke up in a sullen voice, glancing quickly at Bucky. 'Thanks for the invite though, Luna.'

'My pleasure,' she disavowed, shaking her head. 'Maybe another time.'

'Of course,' he smiled. 'Still gotta meet the little guy.'

Luna laughed softly and watched the soldier depart from the hallway with a prompt departing nod at Bucky. Soon, the hallway was theirs alone. Her heart started to thunder in her chest when the silence grew deafeningly loud, closing the distance between them warily. She looked up at him with an immobilizing gaze, starting to feel disconnected from her very limbs.

'I did not think you were the old friends' type,' she mused. 'It's different.'

'And I didn't think you were the inviting type,' he countered with a wavering smile. 'I guess we're both unpredictable.'

'Imagine if Steve were to walk in there this moment,' she said, turning her gaze to the slightly cracked open door. She heard Bucky chuckle lowly. 'Kit would lose his mind.'

'It's nice to have an idol,' he offered. 'At least Kit can grow up knowing that there's someone out there risking his life to keep him safe.'

Luna shook her head in aversion, casting him a borderline cold look. So many words bubbled to her mouth but she forced herself to remain silent. One of the many reasons why she wouldn't let Kit watch the news was because of her fear of building faith. She didn't want him to believe in faith. It made him gullible and made him hope. Build confidence in something that is never going to happen. Believe in something that would never occur. It required nothing and in one second, it could turn against them.

★

'They live, my child.'

Kit was paralyzed, unable to move his deadened legs any steps closer. The room he stood in was dark, cold and inauspicious. His breaths were coming out in short pants and he forced himself to remain unmoving when a figure brushed past him, moving into the annular light that shone from above. Something nudged him forward, pleading him to follow him in. And so he did, sneaking behind a pillar to watch the scene unfold. Just a nightmare, he told himself, Mother will wake me up now. 

'Your grace,' the tall man said as he bowed deeply, bending a knee in front of the rocky throne that adorned the centre. Someone was sitting on the dais but Kit couldn't make out the face. 'I don't understand.'

'Your family,' the dark king explained, his fist shining in a golden glow as he tightened it. 'We found them. On C-53.'

The man's head snapped up to the shadowy king. His silver and blue armour gleamed from underneath his billowing cape, a pointed hood over his keeling face.  

'Earth.'

'Asgardians have been obliterated and Xandar has been taken care of,' the head afforded. Kit saw the man unfurl his fist to reveal two brightly-coloured spots on his knuckles. One was a dim violet and the other was glowing cerulean. He watched on in awe. 'The work is done. You will start to Earth at dawn.'

'Father, does she live?' the bowing man started in a soft drawl, his voice holding a plea. The king who started to rise to his full height turned back to the soldier with a sharp stare. 'My Lou. Does she?'

'You will see,' he said, cryptic and shallow. The king ascended from the throne, his skin a bedraggled purple and a helmet over his fighter size. He must've been as tall as a building, Kit realized, a pale fist reaching out to touch the kneeling man's head. 'Show me, my son. Show me my infinity.'

Wake me up. Please, wake me up.

Kit saw it, too. He heard the screams and the furtive colours that glowed from the shadows of the people to be exterminated. Kit shut his ears to block the blood-curdling screams, his face twisting with pain. He saw a war, with creatures ravaging a land vaster than his town and conflict arising from within the saviours. And when the battle was hard-won, the result was not just blood. There was no remembrance of those who were lost. There was only dust.

'I see it, El'vira.'

An impending jangle frightened the little boy out of his nightmare, every instinct in his body clawing up to an upright position as he clutched the mattress to his chest. He was bathed in sweat, his eyes shining a deep ochre as he brushed away the silent tears of his cheeks. He met his mother's startled eyes with a tremble. She was biting her lips to hold back a sob as he cradled Kit's cheek and shushing into his ear as he shivered to the touch.

 'Mother,' he whispered ominously. 'He's coming.'

★

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