AN: Hello! This story started out as just a little fic for myself, however after I got some positive encouragement I decided to upload it here. This story will generally take place seventeen years after the Battle of New York with an OC of mine (well actually a few, but we'll get to that later). Much of this work will be heavily influenced by Norse mythology, and though it is set in the MCU, I will pull a lot of things from the Comic universe as well. I would love to read reviews to hear comments and/or constructive criticism. I would also like it if you could follow or favorite this story as well if you enjoy it. This story is by no means complete at the moment, I still only have this working title for it. I'm not sure if I will continue this story on here, I've been on the fence about it. I've decided to upload this sort of "prologue" for now, and if I think others will enjoy it as much as I do I would love to continue with it. Thank you so much and enjoy!

Chapter I

The Broken Morning

Two Years After the Battle of New York

His left arm hit the ground first, the sharp sound of metal scraping against cement echoing through the building. As he had fallen, he had tried to turn his head behind him. His descent to the floor looked as if it was going in slow motion, a delayed movement to have one last glance behind him. By the time his eyes finally met hers, they were glass. When he hit the ground, he shattered.

The pieces of him scattered, as if a tidal wave had crashed through the room. But it only hit her. She felt as though she were drowning, gasping at air she couldn't find, being slowly dragged down into the darkness that threatened to consume her. She felt death through his, though she wasn't done breathing yet.

"The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout…"

Her eyes snapped away from his broken form, instead settling on the one she wished to break. When she fought she didn't focus on who it was or why she was doing what she was. Her movements flowed through her, fitting together like a ballet she hadn't quite forgotten. It was always there, archived and catalogued throughout her memory. She never purposely used them, she simply knew when to. This battle was no different from those that had come before it, but this time there was an edge that was threatening to throw her off of. Every battle she knew in that place of her mind, she won. If she didn't, she would. This time, a foreign sharpness lingered to each of her well-planned attacks. For a moment she reflected on the shattered pieces of him on the floor, wondering if one had cut her. She couldn't fall into the pain of the glass. Not yet.

"Down came the rain…"

Every strike she initiated, he blocked. Every kick she threw, he caught. Though she scarcely realized it, her sweeps and attempted throws were becoming more desperate. Still locked into focus, she barely acknowledged the fact that the unbroken man had done the impossible.

For her, the unbroken man would forever be known as the unbreakable man.

For her, the unbreakable woman would now be known as the broken woman.

"…and washed the spider out."

The sound of blood dripping onto the floor made her wake from her place of nothing. His eyes were the first things she saw when she awoke. Everything else seemed to blend into the background. They were the color of an anger she had never seen before. A type of rage that was hard to define. By the time her left arm hit the ground, she realized his eyes were the color of the sharp edge she had felt during her battle. He was the edge that she had fallen off of.

On the ground, she was finally able to give into the shards of broken glass that was the last of him, her broken man. Even though his face wasn't his own anymore, she looked into it with what was left of herself. Memories flowed freely through her head, smells and sounds and vague impressions. They were all scattered on the floor now, the last of themselves. It only seemed fitting that their pieces would lay together in the end.

She let a tear fall, running down her face into her hair. She liked to think that was the first time she had ever truly cried, and here lying beside her broken man, it would be her last.

"James."

He almost fell onto the floor with the heaved sobs he was trying to suppress. With a shaking hand against the table top counter, he turned away from the man that was once iron.

The man looked at him in a way he hadn't ever before, a feeling that shone through the crack in his iron. Today was a day of breaking.

The other man was now weeping freely, no longer having the strength to hold them back even in the presence of the man of iron and the man of stone.

"We had no idea this could happen. You have to understand that," the man of stone stated calmly. Iron may bend, but stone could never be broken. He gazed intently at the weeping man's back, as focused as one with only one eye could be.

The weeping man's world was falling in on itself, the pieces of her cutting into his side. He felt so wounded he wondered if he himself would break as she had simply by her permanent absence. Without her, the world felt wrong. She had never been his, and yet she left him in a way that suggested they would never be their own. Deep within himself he realized that he would always be hers, even after she was someone else's. He had always known that, after she had found her lost soldier. But he never let go, not completely. Now, he never would.

"Where is he?" His voice wavered, his throat scratching and aching.

The man of iron was the first to answer. "We don't…we don't know. I only came in time to make sure he didn't stay, but when I got there he was already gone," he sighed, eyes clouded. "They were already…gone."

And then the weeping man screamed. It was something he had never done before, a sound he had never heard before even from himself. In it was the pieces of himself, the pieces that she took with her. However, she was a compassionate thief. She left him with what he needed, but lost what he wanted. It was always her. It would always be her, in the end.

When he had finished he collapsed against the table, the exhaustion of the absence of her and himself weighing in on him. "There's something else," the man of stone said. He looked up at the man of stone, a small glimmer of a question shining through his tear-filled eyes.

"Come with me."

The man of iron helped him off the floor, gently averting his gaze. There was something hidden in his own eyes, something that looked like regret shining through the crack in his armor. The man of stone lead them to another room, blindingly white and lit up.

"There was something we didn't know before the attack, something we probably should have known. I doubt even she herself knew, and if she did she didn't tell anyone. For now, she doesn't even exist." The weeping man roughly rubbed his hand on his face, wiping away the tear stains and the cloudiness that plagued his eyes. he glanced down through a window to what seemed to be the hospital wing of the SHIELD building. Among the uniform beds, some filled and some unfilled, was what looked to be a small container. Inside was something even smaller, something that may or may not have been able to fit in the man's hands if he had tried to pick it up. It moved weakly, slowly as if it were trying to swim.

"We couldn't save them, Clint. But we did save her."