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prologue
THE MAN OUT OF TIME
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BATTLE OF NEW YORK
4th of May, 2012

NOT FOR THE first time, and certainly not for the last, New York City is in shambles.

Debris fills the air, creating a slightly smoky haze from the half-crumbled buildings and small fires littering the streets, stinging Ceres Dahal's eyes. She coughs and fights to clear her burning lungs of the toxic substances floating in front of her face. The clouds of smoke are so thick that she has to fight to see as she staggers along the vacant road.

It's incredible how quickly everything had fallen apart. Of course this had to happen on the one day Ceres has off from work. Normally, she'd be well out of the danger zone in the café she works at in Brooklyn, but today, she'd dragged herself out of bed after sleeping in and gone to grab lunch at a diner in Manhattan. She'd almost forced her roommate, Ilyas Ravel, to come with her, but he'd been out— probably to go buy more cigarettes, alcohol, or whatever substance he'd felt like poisoning himself with at the moment.

Ceres uses one hand to cover her mouth and nose with her shirt collar, then allows a small amount of light to pool into her palm in the other. The additional brightness doesn't do much to enhance her vision. The street is still dark, she's getting covered with white debris, and she really wishes she could tell which way she's going.

Before, she'd been relying on the horrid noises of battle. In the thick of the action, the sounds of alien spacecrafts zooming through the air, gunfire, and Iron Man's repulsor rays had been nearly deafening, but now everything is so ear-piercing that it no longer helps. Her skull pulses with pain after every step. It causes her vision to waver, blending the hazy sky with the ash-coated street, threatening to turn her stomach upside down. God, what she'd give for a second of precious silence right now.

The thought threatens to make Ceres laugh. She'd already given up her life. What more could she afford to pay?

Her body tenses as an alien spacecraft soars above her. It's some kind of flying motorcycle-type thing, running on alien technology and with one of the horrible-looking beasts on top of it. Blinking against the dirt getting into her eyes, she aims her palm at the invader and squints at the blinding burst of light that streams from her hand. The alien releases a guttural screech as her solar powers melt its armor, turning it a glowing orange through the smog, and threatening to char its skin as well. The heat would have melted it from the outside in if it hadn't been interrupted. The hovercraft veers dangerously to the right, smashing into a building and causing the beast to drop lifelessly to the ground. Molten bits of metal rain down onto the sidewalk.

Metal. Having Erik Lehnsherr here would make this job a hell of a lot easier, Ceres thinks wryly. He wouldn't be able to do anything about the giant blue portal in the sky, but he'd be able to crumple every piece of machinery and weaponry with a mere tightening of his fist. She can't believe it, but she almost misses that bastard. Part of her feels inclined to open her mind to her telepathic friend Charles just so he can hear that.

The sound of Iron Man's suit causes her to look up just in time to see him zoom past, a mere smudge against the plumes of smoke impairing her vision. Everything grows immensely dark as a shadow covers her. A horrible groan follows, and Ceres barely has time to scramble backward before a ginormous alien about eighty feet long flies above. The thing's body is almost serpentine and yet whale-like, arching its back and flipping its long tail to swim through the air.

One of its armored fins scrapes the side of the building to her left. Her eyes widen when chunks of concrete come raining down, her heart climbing into her throat as she attempts to outrun the inevitable.

She's not quick enough. Her stupid heeled boots make it difficult for her to sprint on the rubbish-coated pavement, and the shadows of the falling rocks begin to grow larger on the asphalt below her. Just before she can brace herself, a powerful arm snatches her around the middle. She feels a hard body press against her back as she's forced to hunch over. Even as her eyes squeeze shut against the teeth-shattering impact of the boulders, she still notices that the world is darker behind her eyelids. Someone is covering her.

The rocks pound against something metal instead of her body. Ceres flinches at the pressure, her heart thrumming wildly against her rib cage, every muscle tightened to the point of pain, and the person holds her tighter until the noises stop.

The arm slowly releases her. Ceres turns around to a sight that makes her jaw nearly drop in shock. Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America, is staring at her. His pale face is littered with small cuts and smudges of dirt, the skin slightly gleaming with oil and sweat. They're so close that she can pick out the crystal blue of his eyes looking down at her in concern. His blond hair is slightly brown from the sweat on his brow, a piece of it falling onto the smooth bridge of his nose. His circular shield is still raised above them. It creates a canopy of safety that Ceres never needed in the first place.

"Are you okay, ma'am?" he asks, slightly out of breath from what must have been one hell of a sprint to protect her.

Ceres nods. The action makes her head throb again. "Fine. Thank you."

It's true. Even if the concrete had fallen on top of her, she would have escaped relatively unscathed. Sure, her body would have ached like a mother and she'd have to call into work the next day as it recovered, but she would survive. It's her blessing, thanks to a broken deal with a witch named Agatha Harkness back in '65.

It's her curse.

Steve glances back toward the action once an explosion seizes his attention and slightly rocks the ground. He finally lowers his shield, which is still perfectly intact despite the tons of rubble that had just fallen on top of them. It just has a bit of dirt and soot that reduces its shine and the vibrance of its red, white, and blue pattern.

"You should get as far away from here as you can," he advises her, facing forward once again. His words carry the steady tone of a soldier; this is a man who is used to giving orders. "You're headed right into the worst of it. Keep going down this street until you hit Central Park. I'll make sure nothing follows you."

Even if Ceres hadn't been in mortal danger, every near-death experience activates her body's fight-or-flight response, flooding her veins with adrenaline and leaving her shaking from head to toe. It makes her look terrified to the unknowing eye. She manages a nod before turning and running as quickly as her trembling legs will allow her.

An alien screeches from behind. Ceres turns her head to see one emerging on foot from the smoke, but Steve arcs an arm back and hurls his shield at the beast like a frisbee. It knocks the alien out cold and then soars back toward the super soldier. He leaps onto the pile of rubble he'd saved her from to retrieve it, looking at her when he notices she's watching him.

"Go!" he commands.

Ceres almost trips as she pushes herself even faster, her heart a wild pounding in her ears, her body fighting to keep up with her rapid pace. The lack of clean air makes her lungs burn, but she doesn't stop. She owes Captain America that much— to keep running until she can't see him anymore, the smog covering him like he was never even there at all.

________

a/n:

welcome to the prologue!! i wanted to get something out for you guys to actually be able to read some of the physical story. i'm going to *try* to work on my other ongoing stories before committing to this one, but steve rogers has been calling me lately, so we'll see.

i hate j*ss wh*don but the avengers movie does something to me. it reminds me of the good ol' times where every fanfic was about the avengers living together in stark tower... we thought clintasha was gonna be a thing... we cried over coulson before AoS came out... today's kids will never understand

also this is just a PSA that steve will never call ceres "doll" in this series because that is one thing in fanfiction that makes me want to actually tear my hair out and fall off a cliff à la bucky :)

i hope you enjoyed this prologue even though it was short!

—kristyn

( word count: 1.5k )