Welcome to my first Avengers Fanfiction. It is a StevexOC story, so please enjoy.

NOTE FROM THE FUTURE AUTHOR: Ashlyn is 22, Steve is 23, and it is Iron Man not Ironman.

Always yours, Loom.

Please Enjoy.


*~STUPOR~*


"And you're quite sure this is who you want?"

"What was that?"

Nick Fury's good eye shot up to examine the doubtful face of the agent before him. The younger man gulped slightly.

"I'm sorry, sir, it's just I don't understand why you want to pull some stranger off the street. It took me precise training to get this position and I just don't fully get-"

"This stranger isn't just anyone," Fury quickly cut in, slightly annoyed he was still being bothered. No one dared question his word but this recruit. "At this point in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s development we need this 'stranger'. You've noticed what is happening, correct? You've been debriefed?"

"Yes, sir, of course, sir, but-"

"Then you should know who and what we need at this point in time. Send out the troops, you know what to do." With that, Nick Fury waved his hand as if to swat at a pesky fly. The agent swallowed hard and nodded, dipping his head before scurrying off.

'The world is deteriorating at the hand of imbeciles,' Fury sighed with an eye roll. 'Maybe not from the hand of idiots, but at the hand of a new era. If she won't be recruited, then we'll force her too. For the sake of life as we know it...'


Ashlyn Harland's head bolted up, a sheen of fine sweat coating her forehead. Her teeth gnawed at the corner of her lip, the pencil quivering in her hand. She was deathly afraid of letting her eyes fall onto the scrap of paper on the desk for she had a heart sinking feeling of what was awaiting her there.

With a tiny, almost inaudible moan Ashlyn examined the frayed paper below her, letting her pencil roll across the desk. Scribbled frantically in her messy scrawl was a series of number. They spotted the page in random locations, the picture they orbited around indistinguishable. Ashlyn gripped the desk top, her nails fighting to dig into the wood as her teeth chomped down harder on her lip. She let her eyes flit across the room before finding the paper once again. The picture was sloppy, rushed, and sphere shape. Or maybe square. Ashlyn couldn't tell.

The woman heaved a long, exhausted sigh before her fingers traveled over the desktop, grabbing her glasses and placing them on her face. They were large, thick, brown, and circular, masking her face in a nerdy, invisible facade. And that was how she liked it. She didn't like to be noticed. Being noticed was the one thing Ashlyn despised. If she was noticed, she was hurt or used in some way. She was anti-social, shy, socially awkward, and a klutz. Ashlyn was a wallflower and she wouldn't have it any other way.

Ashlyn's head fell into her hands, closing her eyes as memories overwhelmed her. Ever since she was a small child, her life had been made up of number, of mathematical orders, of science, and of logic. Locked deep in the recesses of her heart existed fiction and make-believe. Every day she was troubled by spur of the moment black outs where one hand would grapple for a pen and the other paper. Her head would feel heavy and then a prickling sensation would set in, followed by a pounding series of unbearable head pains. A tremor would rocket up her spine and next her vision would go black. Sometimes only a few seconds passed, other times minutes. But when she awoke the paper she grabbed would be cover in numbers and a picture or two.

These trances (so she named them) were elusive and anything but charming. The blackout would result in some amount of pain. If the trance only lasted a few seconds, a headache would take place for a short duration of time. If the trance was longer than a few minutes, Ashlyn received a major, skull splitting migraine. Sometimes the pain also resulted in the amount of numbers or the detail put into the picture.

Ashlyn wasn't exactly sure if she could call it seeing the future, but some things that she did draw managed to take place. Once when she was ten she drew a flaming car. Her aunt died in a car crash a few days later, the numbers revealing a scrambled date and time.

Not only were they painful, but at one point in time before her parents had figured out what was going on, they had opted for her to be put in a straight jacket and locked in a padded room. The final straw had been when she was in in elementary school. The night before she had been in such unbearable agony for her latest trance had resulted in an actual vision. When she woke up on the floor, her parents told her she had been screaming and they had been unable to reach her. Ashlyn remembered ignoring their words and starting to bang her head on the floor, trying to figure out how to stifle the hammering in her skull. Then when they tried to drag her out of her room she shrieked at them that she couldn't leave, if she left her vision would come true, that they would all die, that they had stay there. Ashlyn could only remember that the vision had yet to come true. All she saw was fire and blood and when she tried to forget it, the more it was permanently implanted in her brain. That was when her parents figured out that there was something really wrong, that the "blackouts" were something beyond their comprehension.

The only upside to these trances was the memory. Since the trances began, everything Ashlyn had ever seen, read, or witnessed was filed away and committed to memory forever. No matter what she did the memory could not disappear. She liked the upside to the trances for the photographic part of her memory came in handy during tests and such. It made her brain more active and made it easier to comprehend things. Society labeled her as a genius. Her peers called her a freak. Her parents knew her to be gifted with a powerful burden.

As far as the social hierarchy went, she was at the bottom in high school. In the real world she was placed at the top, ranked far above the simpletons who bullied her who now had the scummy jobs. Her parents had forced her to continue her "high school experience" for they were oblivious to the taunts and the excluding. The only thing that made her life better were the college classes. She graduated with degrees in Biology and Physics, and later on when she got her Masters she earned a few other degrees. Now at twenty-two she was working on one for Chemistry.

Ashlyn blinked hard, preventing herself from fainting as the migraine set in. She whimpered, rubbing her temples as she got to her feet. Maybe a hot bath would help.


Ashlyn shivered, tugging on her mittens as she trudged down the street through the wind. She readjusted her flapping scarf before pulling her knit hat over her ears. The weather in Portland, Oregon was much more frigid than usual.

Ashlyn spotted her destination, releasing a sigh of relief. She slipped into the coffee shop, warm air washing over her. Her glasses immediately began to fog ans she wiped them off with the swipe of her hand before moving over to the counter.

The little coffee shop was much quieter than normal. The weather must have discouraged many from going out to fight the blustery, bone-chilling outdoors. The only others in the cafe was a man dressed in a nice looking suit, a little old lady with a tiny dog, and the cashier.

"Can I get a mocha and an apple turnover?" Ashlyn asked the teen behind the counter. She nodded before busying herself in making the order.

Ashlyn glanced around, pulling of her mittens and unwrapping her scarf before tucking them away in her jacket. She rubbed her hand against her left rib, making sure her folder and notepad were still secure and tucked away. Ashlyn then waited a few more moments before her order was ready, grabbing her mocha and her turnover before moving over to a table by the window.

Ashlyn drank and ate in silence, her mind on her latest trance. She observed the scare pedestrians, every once in awhile one when one passed, they looked her way. Ashlyn refused to look them back in the eye, instead becoming very intrigued in her half-eaten turnover.

"Ashlyn Harland?"

Ashlyn nearly fell out of her seat at the sound of the new voice. Her heart leaped up in her throat and she gave a little gasp, clutching her chest. The man in the suit from the corner table stood at her side, a briefcase in his hand.

"Uhumhuh...um...hi?" Ashlyn stuttered, still startled from her shock. She fought to compose herself, but the nervous twinge still remained.

"I'm Blake Davis." He extended his hand but Ashlyn didn't take it. His tongue revolved under his lips before he took the seat across from her, his eyes focusing on hers. Ashlyn stared down at her plate.

"I work with S.H.I.E.L.D. I believe you have heard of us before from your studies?" Blake Davis went on.

"How do you know my name?" Ashlyn asked quietly, ignoring his question.

"That doesn't really matter right now," Davis continued on. "What does matter-"

"Sorry, sir, but it does matter," Ashlyn broke in again. "I don't know you, but you know me. Have we met before?"

"No, we haven't," Davis responded coolly. "I work for S.H.I.E.L.D, and we have heard of your work and we were hoping you could come work with us."

"No thank you!" Ashlyn moved to get up, freaked out by the stranger. He quickly stopped her by banging his case up on the table and clicking it open.

"Please sit down again, Miss Harland."

Ashlyn did as she was told, her hands nervously drumming on her leg. "I really have to go-"

Blake Davis ignored her, pushing a folder out onto the table. "You can't leave till I am done talking with you, Miss Harland."

"You would think S.H.I.E.L.D would want to keep this private," Ashlyn mumbled. Davis only smiled, knowingly pointing up to the camera in the corner. That hadn't been there before. And where did the teenager and the little old lady go?

"We know quite a bit about you, Miss Harland. More than you would want us too. For instance, we know that you were bullied quite a bit in high school. We know that you attended college while still in school and that you have a very very high I.Q. and a photographic memory to boot. We also know that you have had a series of reoccurring...what did your father call them? Blackouts?"

Ashlyn froze, her hand clamping down on her rib where the folder lay. She could only hope that he didn't know about the folder, that the one she carried everywhere contained every article she had ever scribbled on during her trances.

"All we are asking is that you come back to base with us and be debriefed. You contain a very vital gift that can be put to good use. That can be figured out and have the annoying loopholes smoothed over."

Ashlyn took a deep breath as she tried to process this new information. "You've been stalking me?"

Davis was very blunt. "You could say that."

Ashlyn got to her feet, setting her tip down on the table before throwing on her scarf and mittens before storming out of the shop. She then took off running down the street, her light brown hair billowing about as she sprinted home. When David showed no sign of pursuing her, she came to a halt, slowing to a walk. At home she quickly locked her doors and windows before sinking to the ground, her breaths shallow and panicked.

What would they do now if she refused? Would they use her if she didn't? Would they harm her if she didn't come?

There was suddenly a faint prickling at the back of her mind as her vision began to be spotted with black. Ashlyn gulped in a breath of air, a shiver rocketing up her spine. Her hand fumbled for her notepad and pen before she went under.

All she remembered was a sickly sweet smell leaking into her trance before she woke up hours later in a room she did not know.


~Illumini