Content: Before the Sokovia Accords, before S.H.I.E.L.D., even before the S.S.R., the men and women we know as the Agents of SHIELD lived many lives. They wore different faces, walked in foreign lands, and spoke forgotten languages, but even over thousands of years, some things never changed.
Disclaimer: This story strays outside of the purview of the MCU, but the characters and mytharc are still very much the property of Marvel.
The Great Rift Valley (c. 6000 BCE)
"Something in your eyes took a thousand years to get here." -Iris, U2
In the beginning, there were two.
The man and the woman lived on a grassy plain that ended in an abrupt drop where a wide canyon began. In those years, the rains fell for months on end when the sun was at its hottest. When the air cooled, the rains ceased, and the savanna erupted in a spectrum of color. Herds and flocks of wildlife swarmed across the plateau to graze and quench their thirst in the cool waters of the flood plain.
The two hunted side-by-side, the woman charging fearlessly into the midst, the man close behind, watching their flank for predators.
When the sun set in the evening, they rested by the fire, eyes trained upward on the endless canopy of stars. The man made up stories about the ancestors and gods that lived in the light-flecked darkness of the heavens. The woman listened quietly with a grin on her face.
The child was born in the year that the rains stopped falling. She took her first shaky steps gripping her mother's hands as her father watched with unconcealed concern. The air was cool again and the herds had not returned.
When the girl was three, she sat on her father's shoulders as the family began their long journey to the north. His heavy steps jolted her jaw and made her teeth rattle as she rested her chin on his head. The man scolded her and told her to sit up straight. The woman offered to carry the girl, but the man refused. He rubbed the bruise forming on the crown of his head and readjusted the toddler on his shoulders.
They made their new home along a river.
The rains no longer fell, but the streams were thick with perch and catfish, and berries grew along the banks. The girl shrieked when she caught the slippery fish in her hands and the woman smiled with pride.
That was the year that the girl disappeared.
When the cool winds blew in from the north, huge, grey birds filled the sky. The massive beasts were wreathed in flame and shrieked as they soared overhead. The girl ran to her father and he gathered her in his arms. The woman and man looked at each other in fear as the man whispered words of comfort to his daughter.
The hunters arrived soon after. The family hid in the brush watching as hulking, blue-skinned monsters stalked along the riverbank, their dark eyes alert and hungry.
They came upon the family in the night. A pair of them wrenched the sleeping child from the arms of her father. The woman cried out and launched herself at the assailants, stabbing one between the shoulders with a spear-point. The giant yelled at her in a guttural tongue and threw her to the ground.
The man stalked the kidnappers for two days, until they came to a clearing on the riverbank. He watched in despair as they approached one of the massive birds resting on the ground. An opening appeared in the belly of the bird and the hunters carried his daughter inside. As the bird took to the sky, the man could only stare helplessly as his girl flew away forever.
The woman refused to be consoled when he told her what had happened. In the morning, she gathered her spear and set off in the direction that the bird had vanished. He watched her figure grow smaller as she approached the horizon. When she was nothing more than a dark speck against the glare of the rising sun, he rocked to his feet and set out after her.