Yay, new story! I've had this one for a while and just edited it and decided to post. This may not make a whole lot of sense now, but there is a twist coming in the next few chapters that will solve all of the questions. This prompt has been done before, but I wanted to try my hand at it, especially after writing Nothing Lasts Forever. Chapter lengths will range between 1-4k words. Alright, with all of this said, I hope that you guys enjoy! I will get the next chapter posted hopefully within the week, and feedback lets me know what to improve upon and change! Thanks for reading!
Dreamscape1675 made the amazing cover photo!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Marvel related except for a poster that I bought from a store.
He had been woken up by the feeling of falling many times. Honestly, who hadn't? To be thrust from a dream by the terrible sensation of going right through the floor, or out the window of a skyscraper. Tumbling and flailing to no avail. The wind rushing around your ears until your eyes snap open and you are still.
But this time, it was different. Steve awoke on the cold stone floor, trying to get his bearings. The feeling of falling had awakened him once again. From or in what, he had no idea, but he blinked his eyes a few times to get used to the sudden brightness. As he sat up, a terrible stabbing started in the back of his skull. As if a piece of metal was lodged in it. It made him grind his teeth and clench his eyes, riding out the wave of agony until it dissipated. He moved his hand back and brushed his silky blonde hair, feeling nothing out of the unordinary. The feeling gradually began to decline, stopping as suddenly as it had started.
Steve shook it off and looked around. He was on the ground on the communal floor of the Avengers Tower. He had no idea how he got there. Why would he fall asleep on the floor in the first place?
Warm afternoon light was coming in through the windows as he shakily stood up. The tower was dead silent as Steve made his way into the elevator to go down to the gym, where he hoped Natasha would be.
The elevator dinged open and Steve set his eyes on the gym, expecting to see a flurry of red hair around one of the punching bags. He saw nothing. The bags sat still, suspended in the air. He walked over to the corner of the room and opened the door to the small dance floor, complete with mirrors and various bars. Natasha was nowhere to be seen. Confused, Steve shut the door and turned back to the gym.
"Natasha?" he called out, his voice echoing in the empty room. The assassin was nowhere to be seen. Shaking off the feeling that creeped up his spine, Steve decided to head down to Stark's lab.
"Friday, where is everyone?" Steve asked to the AI, expecting a robotic reply as always. There was none. "Friday?"
After the battle with Ultron, the new team had set up shop at the new facility in upstate New York, save for Steve and Natasha. JARVIS was meshed with Vision, so Tony had set about making Friday and new JARVIS. They all lived at the tower most of the time, and went to the facility for training and mission debriefings.
The elevator doors slid open to reveal Tony's workshop. "Stark, what kind of a game is this?" Steve yelled. His voice reverberated back to him among the glass and metal walls. Steve walked around, careful to not step on any of the multiple unfinished projects that lay scattered around the floor.
One, in particular, caught his eye. Steve bent down and stared at the coffee express, a robot looking thing that Tony had designed to bring him coffee. Long story short, it kept going haywire and spilling coffee all over him, so Tony dismantled and melted the robot to use for parts.
But no, the robot was all there, not melted. It sat before him just like the last time he had seen it. Steve shook his head and stood up.
For the first time ever, the coffee fueled inventor was not in his laboratory. Steve got back into the elevator and pushed the weapons level. The silence of the place was starting to get to him. After the battle with Ultron they had all moved back to the tower, except for Bruce who was still missing and Thor who had gone back to Asgard.
Clint and his family moved to the tower and there was always some amount of organized chaos going on. The tower without noise was simply eerie.
Once the elevator opened, Steve approached the long hallway with caution. Maybe someone had taken the team hostage. Steve was relieved when he saw his shield sitting in its usual spot on one of the shelves. He didn't remember placing it there, but he still slid it onto his arm, grateful for the familiar sense that it gave him.
A Quinjet, which was out of the ordinary, took up the majority of the space in the first level hangar. Before a mission, they would sometimes be dispatched a Quinjet to the tower to stock up on supplies for the mission. But it was scorched, smoke still rising off of it as it sat on the ground. The front cockpit had multiple holes in it, fracturing the material with icy looking cracks.
"What the hell?" Steve whispered to himself, as if Tony would pop out of somewhere and call him out on his language. It had been a running joke since the attack on the Sokovian HYDRA base, and did not seem to be going away any time soon. Steve opened the door to the hangar to let out some of the smoke, which had been collecting in the room and gave a fuzzy glow to everything.
Light flowed into the room as the doors opened, smoke flowing out. Steve stepped towards the doors and looked outside. It was too quiet. No bustling people, no honking cars, no street vendors yelling at people to buy hot dogs. Everyone was gone.
Steve stepped away from the door in surprise. He closed it quickly and ran back to the elevator. He went up to Clint's floor first, checking for the archer, his wife, or one of the three kids.
"Clint! Laura!" Steve yelled to the quiet floor. No response. He did the same to Tony and Natasha's floors, but they were both empty as well. There were no sounds other than the ringing in his ears and the heartbeat that thudded alongside it.
By the time he had finished scouring the tower for any signs of life, the moon was shining above the empty city. The tower lights came on automatically. Except for the street lamps, some of which were broken, the once busy, bustling, and brightly lit city was cloaked in darkness.
Steve walked up to his room, thoroughly confused. He was not hungry, as he should have been. Everyone was missing. And he had no recollection of anything that had led him to this point in time.
Sighing, he lie down on his bed, telling himself that it was just some sort of a dream or a trick of sorts. Maybe Wanda had been experimenting with her powers and accidentally set something off. It had happened before, so it was likely to have happened again. Steve fought that idea through his mind, saying it over and over until he believed it.
Just a vision. Nothing bad. She'll have him pulled out soon. For what felt like the first time in a long time, he closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep.
Fire. Burning. The air around him danced and swayed with waves of heat. Alarms were ringing, making his head pound even more as the plummeting feeling in his chest took over his body. He was thrown mercilessly around the interior of the Quinjet, trying to get ahold of something.
"Steve!" a pained voice shouted over his comms. Red light blinked on and off, illuminating everything in a fuzzy crimson glow. He felt something slippery beneath his fingers. The unbearable pain started in his head again.
The last thing he saw was blackness.
Steve jerked awake, the collar of his shirt drenched with sweat. His eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room as he sat up from the bed, chest heaving. Another nightmare. Steve pushed himself up from the bed and went to the bathroom to splash some water on his face, as he so often did when he was woken by a dream. Although the cool metal knobs against his fingers did give some relief, when they turned they did not yield any water. Confused, he walked over to the elevator, taking it up a few floors before stopping again and trying the faucet. Again, nothing, The whole tower was waterless.
The burned Quinjet in his dreams, not unlike the one he had seen earlier. The elevator dinged and opened once it reached the weapons floor. Steve stepped out and walked over to the Quinjet. The ramp at the base of it was closed. He got his fingers into the seams of the metal and pulled. With a grunt of effort, the ramp opened before sliding down to the ground. As Steve wiped soot off his hands, smoke obscured his view of the inside. Once the smoke had cleared, however, he gaped at what he saw.
Everything was askew. Parachutes were misplaced and thrown about. Glass shards were everywhere, glittering in the faint morning light that came in through the windows. Various pieces of metal and crates were lying on the floor in disarray.
But the thing that got to Steve was the deep red liquid that was pooled inside. The blood that was streaked across the floor of the Quinjet was still red, glistening against the cold steel hull. It was mostly collected in one area, although there were some drag marks on the other side of the jet. Steve bent down and pressed a light finger into the crimson liquid. His finger came away stained with red. He stared at it for a second, confused. He had swept the tower thoroughly the day before, there was no way that someone had gotten into the tower, much less the broken Quinjet. Steve wiped the blood off on his shirt and got up, feet padding back into the elevator, bound for the garage. It was time to clear his head.
Again, any kind of feedback is greatly appreciated ;)
