REVISED 8.10.16

Austria, 1943

Nothing was going right for Semira Stark as of late.

For one, there was the lack of communication from her brother. Answering phone calls and texts seemed to be an issue for him apparently; especially when said texts and voicemails mentioned the word urgent. Using the word 'urgent' was something she never said to her brother unless it was a serious emergency. Of course, he was probably having a wonderful time with some classy lady on his flight from Afghanistan to Germany, but his slow response time was concerning. Even though they were currently fighting for the better half of the year after a fiasco she created, he wouldn't ignore an emergency. Urgent matters usually erased any grudges held.

It was almost as concerning as her current position on a foreign slick floor. Blacking out was definitely not on her agenda and neither was being surrounded by a group of soldiers. Especially soldiers that happened to have the swastika glaring from their left arms.

The sight sent her reeling in confusion as she tried to piece the chain of events that led her here. Brown eyes widened as memories flooded her mind.

"Shit."

It all started that sunny afternoon with a man named Nick Fury.

Guests were a commonality at the twenty four year old's penthouse. From the redheaded and gorgeous Pepper Potts to the handsome James Rhodes. Sprinkle in a few friends she met at different times in her life and it was a bi-weekly occurrence she looked forward to.

What she didn't look forward to were Men-In-Black wannabees in her home after a quick run around the block.

"Who the hell are you?"

Standing in the middle of her living room was a man, head shaved clean and skin color several shades darker than her own. He was the only one of the men present not wearing a suit. Instead, black leather covered his body along with an patch over his left eye. She had half a mind to mention if she stepped into the matrix but decided against it with the grave expression on his face.

With a nod of his head, the suited men left her apartment in a matter of seconds.

"Nick Fury. Director of Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division, Miss Stark. I think you should sit down for this," he said. As soon as those words left his mouth, Semira thought the worst. Something must have happened to her brother.

"Is Tony okay?"

"Your brother is fine, Miss Stark," he said reassuringly, keeping his eye on the young woman.

Then that only meant he was there for her.

The last thing she wanted was for some government agency or corporation to try and recruit her for the thousandth time. It didn't exactly end pretty with Justin Hammer. The bastard had the audacity to not only badmouth her brother, but question her intelligence. The only good that came from it was a vacation with her brother and Happy as a celebration after the weasel had tried and failed to press charges for his broken nose, courtesy of one Semira Stark.

Since then, no one tried to contact her until now.

She made a mental note to contact Tony as soon as their little meeting was over. She'll need for him to reinstall JARVIS as a security measure. "I'm here to talk about the Avengers Initiative."

Semira shook her head at the man's words, releasing a small laugh at the man's audacity. This was definitely a recruitment.

"I'm not looking for a job, Mister Fury. You found your way in, so I'm sure you can find yourself out."

"I think you'll want to take a look at this before you decline."

Several steps was all it took to reach her as he stood tall, one hand clasped behind his back and the other held onto a plain manila folder. Curiosity drew her in. The man seemed so confident, eye unwavering as he watched her and she him.

It wouldn't hurt to take a peek.

Semira took a hold of the file, immediately noticing her name printed on top. Flipping the cover open, her eyes widened at the grainy picture sitting on top of the several sheets of paper.

There she was, staring at herself in a black and white photo; a white lab coat snug on her petite frame, black curls pulled back into a pony tail with a smile adorning her face. Though that wasn't what caused her eyes to widen. It was the man who stood next to her in the photo. His dark hair coiffed to perfection as well as his groomed mustache. The man looked eerily similar to Tony. And if she had taken a quick look, she would have thought it was her brother at first but she knew exactly who this happened to be.

It was her late father, Howard Stark. A much younger version to be more precise as the man looked full of life, his smile wide as his arm was wrapped around her shoulders.

Her eyes landed to the bottom of the picture where the year was scrawled in print. Nineteen forty-three. This picture couldn't possibly be true considering her father was long dead and during this time of his life, she wasn't born for another forty years at the least.

"Wow, nice Photoshop," she said slightly impressed, whistling lowly. Whoever created this even decided to print it on vintage stock. "Can I frame this?"

"That's not Photoshop," he said, causing Semira to glance at the man with a raised brow. "Don't believe me?"

The last thing Semira would believe was her somehow going back in time to when her dad was in his twenties. Flipping to the next several pages, her eyes quickly retained the results of DNA tests and logs on the pages as well as several more photos. It didn't take long for her eyes to look at the man again and made certain she didn't let it show that she was perturbed by the DNA samples they had of hers.

"Papers and pictures can be manipulated," she told him, her lips twisting up into a small smile as she looked at the man. "As amazing as I am, I'm no Doc Brown or Marty McFly. Time traveling isn't possible. Ask my brother, maybe he'll entertain you."

That earned her a raised brow from the man standing before, a smirk on his lips as he revealed what he was holding behind his back. The black case glinted against the soft light above as he slid it onto the glass table beside them. The sleek black steel coated case looked similar to an advanced computer prototype she produced just a week ago. If she didn't know any better, she would say this was hers.

The gloss of her manicured fingers glinted in the right as her right index finger slid over the smooth case to the area where on her device, she built in the scanner. The glow behind her finger and the small hiss emitted from the machine was all she needed.

This was her computer and somehow this man had it.

"How did you get this? No one knows this exists besides Tony."

"It's not a matter of how, it's when, Miss Stark," he replied slowly as she pulled apart the black case, connecting the two large polycarbonate screens together. "Howard Stark obtained it with your disappearance in nineteen forty-five. He was a cofounder of SHIELD."

Files upon files as well as a few videos popped onto the screen but one thing caught her attention. It was a video relaying the image and analysis of a bright blue cube. Tapping on the video to enlarge it, Semira observed the object. Variations of blue and white moved within the cube, a brighter light emitted from the core.

It was as if she was suddenly entranced by the light. Eyes watching the shades of blue, her finger stilled, inches from the projected video. She could not understand why, but she felt a pull toward the object as if it were calling to her.

A sense of familiarity.

She couldn't place when or where, but this was not the first time she has seen this.

"That is the Tesseract."

In a short matter of hours Nick Fury had explained it all to her, from the Avengers Initiative to her supposed time in the past, before leaving her to think on the offer. As soon as the man walked out the door, she descended to her lab and froze in place, eyes landing on her workstation where her most recent project sat with the duplicate beside it.

Two of them when there should only be one.

Pulling out her phone, Semira called Tony. He would know what to do. He always knew what to do. He was her big brother, the man who raised her and looked out for her when their parents died. Her chest clenched at the thought of how long it's been since she physically saw him. Sure their daily video calls and messaging was constant up until her little fiasco. A vacation to his Malibu house was definitely in order. It was about time she visited him.

Of course, the time that she truly needed him he happened to not pick up any of her calls or answer her messages that instant. She had waited minutes for him to answer back but nothing. It didn't matter that he was in Afghanistan for a weapons demonstration. If she stated it was urgent in her texts, J.A.R.V.I.S would have alerted him and he'd most likely would have called her back while already on a plane to New York. The long winded silence on his end had started to make her nervous for him.

A director of an unknown organization was in her home followed by her brother not responding...

She did not have a good feeling about all this.

The hour mark hit when she called in to prep a jet for Germany, Tony's next scheduled stop before heading back to the States. She grabbed her most recently used purse as soon as her call ended and left the penthouse. The last thing Semira was able to recall was dialing Rhodey's number, everything seemed to be a blur afterward. Only the sensation of falling was her last feeling.

Now here she was standing in a room surrounded by Nazis, guns drawn and pointed at her, with the exception of one man.

"Nicht schießen!"

The response was immediate. Guns no longer pointed in her direction, Semira turned her head in the direction of the voice.

Dark brown hair sat atop the man's head contrasting greatly with sallow skin; beady eyes staring at her. His face…

Johann Schmidt.

She had to blink several times to process who exactly she was looking at. Not only was she just staring at his picture for what seemed to only be about an hour ago, she had seen his face in multiple text books during her prep school days. This man was in the same ranks as Hitler when it came to his ideologies.

This couldn't be real. It was either a very realistic dream or Nick Fury was playing with her, but a nagging sensation in her head was telling her otherwise. That this was far from being a set up as surreal as this seemed.

"Very funny, Fury. You can come out now."

The occupants in the room all seemed to look at her as if she grew two heads as she stepped forward to the stoic Schmidt. He stood still before her and she mistakenly dismissed the curiosity in his dark eyes while he looked down at her.

He was about a good foot taller than her, matching the description of the real Schmidt she just read a file on.

Unconsciously, her hand slowly reached up to the his face. The man didn't flinch when her fingers touched his skin, but as she dragged her fingers down she found the skin moving ever so slightly with showing a hint of red where his skin should have been near his eye. Before she could retract her hand and move back, the man took a hold of her wrist in a vice-like grip while his other hand adjusted his...face.

"Shit. I've seen some botched surgeries but this takes the cake," she breathed out, eyes wide as she looked up at him.

The files told her exactly who and what Schmidt was, corrected text books from prep school be damned. The man was injected with a product of an incomplete super soldier serum courtesy of another German doctor, which essentially turned his skin red among other things. An image flashed before her eyes of the man without the human flesh mask before bringing herself back to the present.

She didn't know if she could believe that this man was Johann Schmidt or somebody Fury hired to act as him, red face and all. The director seemed like a no nonsense kind of man and this Schmidt looked uncannily like the real one. Would Fury really pull a stunt like this and would he go this far?

She was heavily leaning on the fact that this could be real and that she may very well be in 1940s.

That would mean the man holding her tightly might be the real Johann Schmidt.

If all this was true, and she was currently in the forties, she was completely and totally screwed.

She'd be treated like a piece of dirt no matter what western nation she was in due to her skin color. And if she were with Nazis, then she would be sent straight to death. Something that she was surprised was not happening at the moment, but that could be because of her sudden drop into the room.

"Now who are you?"

His voice was softer than she would imagine Johann Schmidt to have toward anyone, seeing as she had just heard him bark out a command. No matter the lessened edge to his voice, she couldn't help but automatically retract from the close proximity. Too bad the man didn't budge and instead she was forced to look up at him. If this was the real deal, she needed to be as far away as possible. Preferably a country in Africa that was not currently under colonial rule. Guess that left a one-way ticket to Wakanda or Ethiopia.

"Semira," she replied calmly. On the inside, she was panicking. Anyone who would not panic at the presence of such an infamous and cruel human had to be absolutely and certifiably insane. Especially when said person was looking at her in an oddly fascinated way, the corner of his lips turning up.

"You speak English well, Semira."

"So do you," she replied slowly, brown eyes tracing over the room from her left to try and figure out an escape. It was a lab that was for certain. A lab with the most outdated equipment if she's ever seen it, but for the early forties, it was surprisingly advanced. Her eyes continued to scan the lab, until they landed on a familiar cube.

The Tesseract.

She had just seen the pictures and video of the cube moments before she opened her eyes to find herself sprawled on the cold floor of the lab. The constant movement of the multiple shades of blue swirled, creating a tantalizing show. The small hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she felt the familiar pull. Her eyes tried following the simultaneous flowing movements of the energy within, the ominous light emitted from the cube captivating her.

Light wisps of a whisper reached out to her ears, entrancing her even further. It was as if the cube were calling to her, trying to communicate.

Talking to her.

"May I ask you where you are from?"

She didn't know why but something clicked in her. Everything seemed more clear to her now for reasons she couldn't explain. It was as if the light whispers were giving her some sort of confirmation. Telling her what was actually happening. That she really was in the forties and this man was really the infamous Johann Schmidt.

And his polite tone all but told her what he truly wanted.

She had done this a million times herself for less harmful reasons obviously. He wanted to extract information from her. There was no other reason why a man so evil would act as polite as he currently did. His tactics reminded her of the ass hat Obadiah Stane.

Obidiah, she could deal with. This man? She had to tiptoe.

She couldn't exactly say she's from the United States. If she really was back in time and in Nazi Germany, she had no idea what year it was. The U.S. may have already declared war. So making any mention of being from the good old States was an absolute no.

Playing it safe it was then.

"I don't know where I'm from. I - I actually don't know how I even got here," she replied, staring at the man before her. Technically, she really didn't know where she originated from. Of course, her parents adopted her from Egypt, but her features greatly resembled the people from the Horn of Africa. And Semira had no way in hell of knowing how she even got here. "Where are we?"

"Months ago, my men have unearthed a most spectacular discovery in the desert regions in Northern Africa. You are of African descent, no?" he questioned, ignoring her question while referring to her darker complexion.

Semira didn't know what to say at the moment but stare right at the man known as the Red Skull. A man who was responsible for the deaths of so many people.

It hit her suddenly the danger she was in and that there a huge possibility she was going to die. There was no escape with one door acting as the entrance and exit. She wouldn't be able to take on a super soldier, no less a room full of men with guns.

She could either taunt him and die, or stand there silently and die. The first option seemed more her style and it was more fitting. Though there was one thing she was curious about before deciding to mock anyone.

"How did you get a hold of the Tesseract?"

"Ah, so you know of it."

The young woman didn't know much about the cube. Just the schematics and documented experimentation given to her by Fury. Though Schmidt had no idea how expansive her knowledge was on the object.

Shuffling occurred all around her, the armed men now surrounded her on all sides after a curt nod from the man in charge. Uneasiness squirmed its way into her mind with the soldier directly behind her, but she kept her gaze on Schmidt.

"And I know who you are, Johann Schmidt," Semira replied back. It really was all or nothing. The worst they could do was kill her, which she no doubt knew they would do sooner or later. Several of the men were definitely trigger happy, she noted looking at their once again drawn guns. "That red thing going on under there... I'm crying for your wife. Doubt you have one though, with a face like that... or lack of one."

Before another word could come from her lips, she felt a sharp object pierce her skin from behind. Brown eyes rolling back, Semira felt disoriented as her body swayed into something hard. And not another second passed when her vision darkened completely, the darkness taking over.