A/N: I was meant to start writing and posting these back in January, however life happened, and progress didn't happen, so now here I am, a little over two months late but finally kicking things off! This coming July, as I've done for the past two summers, I'll be leading a 100-day countdown story set across the Arrowverse (featuring Supergirl, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow). I decided to do things a little differently this year. For one thing, the entire 100 days will be a single story spread over 100 days, one chapter to every day. And for another, the more planning I did, I saw the possibility and the need to lay in some ground work in the form of preludes.

Twenty-four prelude one-shot stories, six each to the four series (again, it was meant so that each month from January to June would have one of each show, but now… yeah ;)), posted every 5 (or 6) days.

The story this will all be leading to, Once More Unto the Breach, is an alternate universe story (not another Earth, ha :D), which will soon become evident enough. It's very possible you do not watch all four of the shows, but I highly encourage you to seek out the other preludes, as they will help to fill in this world I'm very excited to share with you guys!

Alright, enough chit chat, let's go! If you have any questions, send them my way and I'll be happy to answer them!

STARCROSSED
Prelude to ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH
(15 of 24)

Location:
THE BREACH SHIP WAVERIDER
(ARGUS designation)

It was an undeniable fact that the main endeavor of the crew of the Waverider was to monitor the comings and goings of breachers, and of potential trouble coming from Breach Earth to the Main… and even from the Main to the Breach. A few among its crew would be all too glad to point out how even though ARGUS would suggest they were the ones in charge of looking after everything, it was not quite so. Any breacher, branded as such for having crossed the great breach or simply existing on the side of it that was quartered world that bore its name, would look to the ARGUS agents as having little to no perspective, while the ones on the ship showed much more awareness of what it could really be like, to be one of them. This was aided, in no small part, by the fact that a third of the crew were breachers themselves.

They had all four of them been born to the conflict of what ARGUS had designated the War Quarter. And it was their coming together which had led to their being taken out of it, when Leonard Snart had found them and brought them on to his ship. In all this however, it might have been that none of it would have happened, if not for the choice one of them made, to try and save another.

Every child of their quarter born into the war would grow up with a sense of duty nurtured in them. A duty to serve. And those who didn't answer the call were few and far in between, be they prevented by any ailment or physical condition, or family obligations… or cowardice. Countless of them served, in whatever way they were needed, but some… some had the privilege to be called on by special projects, to push the boundaries, the better to acquire some element of power that would put them ahead of the enemy, that they might someday, somehow, just… see this dreaded war end. It was a particular honor to be called on for one such project, and Rip Hunter had received this honor.

None of them ever knew what the project they were assigned to would entail. You just didn't ask. You reported where and when you were told to report, and you did as you were told. And he did.

They ran many tests on him in the beginning, physical tests, medical tests, psychological tests… Whatever they had needed him for, they were going to make absolutely sure he was the candidate they needed. And, evidently, he was, because he reached the next phase, and he became one of their subjects, for something they called Project Horus.

There were two of them being put through the treatment, though he had not been aware of who the other subject was, not at first. He was kept to his own rooms, as they… as they transformed him. There was no better word for it, truly. And it was not a smooth transformation at that. He could still recall the pain, the dizziness, the fever… hallucinations… That was when he had first become aware of her, the other subject. After those first few days, the agony of it all, all of a sudden it seemed like somewhere inside his head, or his heart… his soul… he knew she was out there, going through what he was going through, feeling what he was feeling, only… something was wrong with her, something about her treatment was going wrong. He told them as much, told them to help her. They wouldn't acknowledge that she was real, that she was out there, even though he knew, he knew… I can feel your pain…

That was the day his wings had come bursting from him for the first time. He had come so very close to tearing them apart, if they would stand in his way, kept him from helping her. Evidently, they had been ready though, because they'd hit him with a tranquilizer and knocked him out cold. To them, this was a success. To him, it was a discovery, of what had been done to him.

The outburst must have been something good for them, because when he'd woken again, she was there. They were in another room, both of them restrained to a pair of beds on opposite sides of the room. He had never seen her face, and even if she hadn't been restrained like him he would have known it was her. She'd still been unconscious, but when she opened her eyes, it was almost as though his being awake had been the thing to wake her in return. She looked down at herself, at her restraints, and she struggled against them at once, for several seconds before she abandoned the attempt and collapsed back against the mattress, staring at the ceiling, and then… she turned her head and her eyes locked on to him, lying equally restrained and looking back at her. Neither of them said a word, but just as he knew her for what she was, she knew him in the same way, and his presence there… calmed her. Finally, she spoke.

"Where are we? Are we captured?" she asked, her voice showing all the confusion she felt. Something about it felt wrong, felt like the thing that had worried him, even from far away.

"Still in the base, by the looks of it," he assured her, looking around as best he could. "If I'd have to guess, the restraints are merely a precaution. Have you experienced…" He struggled to even say it, for how extraordinarily strange the recall of it still felt. "The wings?" She nodded, but she didn't seem concerned by this. If anything, she looked as though she might have said 'of course,' as though those were the one thing in all this which made sense. "I suppose we know why it's called Project Horus now." And now the confusion was back. "What's your name, soldier?" he asked her.

"Soldier?" she asked, and even without her having to spell it out for him, he knew. The trouble he had felt come off of her before, the pain… it was in her head… Whatever they'd done to them, in her it had affected more than her body. It had affected her mind as well… her memory. She didn't even recall her own name, when he could see it there on the sleeve of her uniform, same as on his own. His sleeve was branded HUNTER, and above that was fixed a patch that identified him as being assigned to Project Horus, showing a soaring hawk. Her sleeve had the same patch, and beneath it…

"Gideon?" he tried, calling to her. She showed no recognition toward it, turning to look at him probably for the sole reason that she'd guessed he was talking to her.

The project had now entered phase two. They had been transformed, that was one thing. Now they needed to train, hone their new skills, before they could be deployed as the new weapons they were. That was what they'd been made into, hadn't they… living weapons… with wings, with changed instincts… But the strongest instinct he had, and maybe the one they would try and somehow curtail in the next wave of these hawk soldiers, was his bond to her. In the weeks that had followed, even as they trained, he knew that her memories had not returned. More than that, no one seemed to have any attention to help her jog those lost memories. They had not even told her what her full name was. She was only ever Gideon anymore. She didn't seem entirely bothered by it, didn't even seem to understand how that wasn't right. All she seemed to care about was training… and him.

If she ever lost control, or started to feel confused, or panicked, he was the only one who could help her find calm again. All he'd wanted, from the very first day with his wings, had been to protect her. It was just in him to do it. And after weeks… it was vital… and reciprocated. But the amnesia and the confusion left her just dependent on him enough that, after a time, it was him who came to the conclusion that would change their lives. Project Horus, whoever was in charge of it, as much as they had invested in the pair of them, they would not hesitate to put them down, given the smallest reason. They would have to get away before that happened. They had to run, to escape. And they did.

Where were they going to go? Even if they managed to find disguises, ditching their uniforms, if either of them ever used their new abilities it wouldn't be long that they'd be found, and even then… Soldiers were everywhere. The word would go out, that two fugitives were out there… deserters… And Gideon… Even after all this time, the defect in her treatment which had cost her memories continued to leave her just a bit unaware of what their situation really was. When they'd escaped, he hadn't called it an escape. As far as she knew, they didn't actually need permission, so they'd just left.

They'd made it through those first few days by some miracle, but he knew full well that wouldn't last. Their luck would run out in time, and it might have done so earlier, if they had not come into contact with Slade Wilson.

When he'd first approached them, Rip thought he was about to turn them in, and he could almost feel his wings itching to emerge from him, but then the man had held out what they saw at once was a piece of cloth, specifically a part of a uniform sleeve, like their own, only over WILSON, the patch showed a winged helmet. Rip knew what this was at once. Project Mercury… The initial special project, the one which had led to other such projects… like Horus. Little was known about it, except that for a brief, shining moment, it had led to a slight turning of the tides, and then… the project had petered out, until it was little more than history. When Rip met the other runaway soldier, he finally discovered the truth behind it all. For one, it hadn't started out as a project. Wilson was a scientist, and an incident had caused his transformation. When this had been discovered, when the effects had been found out, that was when Project Mercury had come together, and how could they not? A man gifted with such speed? What else could he become but the poster boy for hope, for the chance of victory?

But it had all gone wrong in the end, and he had done just as Rip and Gideon had done. He'd made a run for it… literally, in his case. He'd been in hiding ever since, but then he'd heard soldiers talking of the two fugitives, and he'd known he had to seek them out, to help them in what way he could. So, from that time, it was the three of them, doing their best to keep from detection.

This went on for over a year, although in that time they were never allowed to come down from assuming that any day could be the one where someone finally caught up to them. There was one in particular they had spent many of those months dodging at many turns, another soldier and, as unlikely as it could seem back then, their future crewmate aboard the Waverider. His sleeve announced him as Dibny.

By the end of it, it could almost be said the man was hunting them. They couldn't know his motivations at the time. To them, he was little more than a dog on the hunt. They couldn't know of the injury that had sidelined him, that had nearly sent him down another path, that his attempt to bring them in was about more than just retrieving fugitives. It was his way of trying to come back on the right path, for his life, for his beliefs… It was not his fault he couldn't understand their reasons for running, and they would never have assumed he could understand. But then there came the day where his months of failing, and failing, and learning, had finally paid off. He'd cornered them, and even with Slade's speed, even with Rip and Gideon and their wings, all of this and everything in between, despite all of that, he had them… he finally had them.

"Whatever you think you're achieving, handing us back to them, you have it wrong," Rip had told him, maybe little more than a last ditch effort, but he simply couldn't let it end without trying.

That was where the conversation had started, before deviating into what was now more than a year of their lives, and how they had been affected by the choice they'd been forced to make, which turned out to be the way it needed to go. Ralph Dibny, as they came to realize, was as reasonable of a man as they could have hoped to find. For all the troubles brought on by this hunt, he was not the person they'd thought him to be… Well, he wasn't the man Rip or Slade thought he was. From the beginning, Gideon had insisted that the best course would be to speak to him, but they foolishly hadn't listened, because what else would he do except capture them if they gave him the chance? But he had them now, he could see them, from up close, and…

And he let them go. Not until later, not until the Waverider would take them away would he tell them how as much as they had seen him as little more than a hunter, he had only ever allowed himself to see them as targets, fugitives he had set himself to apprehend, because it was what he'd been told to do. But then, when he finally had them, when the endless failures had become success, he had been forced to see it wasn't a success he wanted. He believed them, their words, more than the orders put on to him by their superiors.

For a little while he had actually covered for them, pretending to carry on hunting them, even as he worked to foil any others' coming any closer to tracking the trio down. It might have all gone on much longer, but then they started to hear about a new asset acquired by ARGUS. A ship, sailing the skies, and though none of the four of them knew just what their task really was, they quickly got the feeling it wouldn't be long that these people would find them, and then… it would all be over. And then, as he'd tried to find a way to protect the three of them, their man on the inside had learned of the breaches, of the other Earth. If this wasn't the perfect escape, he didn't know what would be.

Dibny had come to alert them, inadvertently leading the ship's then fledgling crew right to the fugitives. They had sought out one of those breaches, and the way to cross it. Wherever they ended up, they figured, would be better than where they were. They hadn't managed to cross on to Main Earth, not then, but they had reached Haven, and after the world they had all known, it really earned its name. It had been such a breath of relief, in moments, Gideon's wings spread at her back and she took to the skies. She looked like a bird, sprung from her cage, and they would have gladly allowed her the moment, if not for how very aware they were of their need not to draw too much attention to themselves, not until they could figure out where they were and what their situation would be. But it was too late. The ship found them, and right then they realized it wasn't just bound to their world, to their war. The ship could cross these barriers between worlds, too, these breaches.

The man who had approached them was called Leonard Snart, and as ready as they'd been to flee, he had listened to their tale, requested it even. And when he'd heard it, rather than marching them back across the breach and into the hands of those who would have seen them captured and locked away, forgotten, he had made them a deal. He wanted them for his crew. Their position was one he felt would make them ideal to the task. They were soldiers, understood duty, but they also understood the limits of that duty, could understood the plight some other breachers might be suffering under, and for that they would act in consequence.

Their circumstances might have made them blindly accept any alternative to capture or to more running, but that wasn't so. They heard what this man had to say, about his task, how he'd come to it. They walked through his ship, met his crew as it stood at the time. And in the end they accepted the offer.

Not one day had passed where they regretted their choice. Since then, not only had they been able to stop running, able to breathe and find a way to have a life again, they were able to do work that fulfilled them again. Their abilities, small burdens as they had been for a time, now became gifts. And they all did just what Snart had recruited them to do. There were still some troubles, of course. In all this time, Gideon had not regained her memories, likely never would, but however this would go, she would never be alone. He belonged at her side, and she at his.

THE END

Check out the next prelude, coming May 20th!