Chapter Text
You were falling.
Where, exactly? You didn’t know. One moment there was a bed, sheets twisted around your legs, the ceiling familiar and walls—and then the floor came up fast.
Stone slammed into your palms and knees. The impact rattled through your bones, sharp enough to make you hiss as air left your lungs in a rough burst. The cold of the night seeped through the fabric of your pajamas. Before you could even push yourself up, the ground shook with movement.
Footsteps. Too many. Running.
Your eyes opened to shoes and hems and flashes of polished leather rushing past your face. Someone screamed. Someone else stumbled and cursed. No one slowed. No one cared to look down.
Right. When people run, you run.
You dragged yourself upright, head light, ears ringing, and let the current carry you. The night air burned cold in your lungs. Police sirens coming from the street beside you as you followed the crowd, shouting and the hard echo of panic bouncing off stone walls.
The building to your left spilled people down its steps in a flood of silk dresses and dark suits. A museum. Tall banners hung overhead, lettering sharp and unfamiliar.
Germany, your mind supplied distantly, with the calm certainty of a thought that hadn’t been argued with.
Outside, police shouted in German. Red and blue lights cut across the street. A guard on the roof raised his rifle—and dropped, an arrow punching through him before the sound even registered. Another guard lifted his weapon. Another arrow. He fell out of sight.
You barely processed it before the crowd surged again, bodies colliding, someone knocking into your shoulder hard enough to spin you half around.
Then the running stopped.
Not because people wanted it to—but because the street ahead exploded.
A blast of blue energy tore through the line of police cars, flipping metal like toys. Heat washed over you, followed by the concussive thud of wreckage hitting stone. People screamed again, louder this time, scrambling in every direction.
He stepped forward through the smoke.
Gold armor caught the streetlights, sharp and unreal. A helmet settled into place, the scepter in his hand glowed faintly, restrained, patient.
Loki.
Your brain stalled on the name, looping uselessly. This was fake. Obviously. A dream had stitched itself together out of familiarity and stress and bad sleep. That was fine. Dreams did this sometimes—dropped you into scenes you knew by heart.
“Kneel before me,” Loki said.
No one listened.
People bolted instead, dragging you with them until the air itself bent. Light fractured, green and gold, and suddenly there were more of him—three, four, surrounding the street, blocking every path forward.
“I said, kneel!”
All around you, bodies folded downward in a wave—knees hitting stone, hands bracing, heads bowing. The movement pulled at you like gravity itself, the instinct to follow overwhelming in its simplicity.
Loki spread his arms, smiling.
“Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It’s the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.”
You lifted your head just enough to look at him properly. Dark hair framed his face, eyes bright with satisfaction, voice carrying easily over the silent street. Loki.
An older man stood.
“Not to men like you.”
Loki smirked, “There are no men like me.”
Your lips moved without sound, shaping the words along with him. A faint smile tugged at your mouth before you could stop it.
“There are always men like you.”
Loki’s expression sharpened. “Look to your elder, people. Let him be an example.”
The scepter brightened, blue light bloomed—violent and alive. You inhaled sharply.
Metal rang.
A shield crashed into the beam, sparks skidding across its surface as Loki was knocked back.
“You know,” a voice said, calm and dry, “the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing.”
You stared at the man– Steve Rogers, Captain America. Wow. This was a great dream.
Loki straightened. “The soldier.” He chuckled, “A man out of time.”
“I’m not the one who’s out of time.”
A Quinjet roared overhead, lights flooding the street. A machine gun whirred into position.
“Loki,” a woman’s voice—One you knew well, Natasha Romanoff came over the speakers, “drop the weapon and stand down.”
Blue energy flared as Loki fired upward. The jet veered aside, giving the man with the shield time to throw it. It struck Loki, sending him back again. They closed distance fast. Metal, magic, force colliding.
You stayed down, watching from the street as chaos layered on itself. Loki, the alluring god, flung the man aside. The shield flew back, was swatted away. Loki stood over him, scepter aimed at his helmet.
“Kneel.”
“Not today!”
A blur of motion—then Loki hit the ground.
“The guy’s all over the place,” Nat muttered, even though you couldn’t hear it. You’d watched this scene enough to know what happens next,
Music blasted suddenly, loud and jarring.
“Agent Romanoff,” a new voice drawled, “did you miss me?”
Something red and gold streaked out of the sky and slammed Loki into the pavement. The armored figure landed, weapons deploying in a quiet, lethal bloom.
Your smile grew.
“Make your move, Reindeer Games.”
Loki raised his hands. His armor vanished.
“Good move.” Tony said, lowering his weapons.
“Mr. Stark.” Steve said with a nod.
“Captain.”
You didn’t realize you’d been holding your breath until it finally left you in a slow exhale.
Men moved in quickly, weapons trained. Loki was cuffed and hauled upright, still smiling faintly as he was escorted away. No one spared you more than a glance as the street emptied again, SHIELD agents flooding in to secure the area.
You stayed where you were, shoulder throbbing dully now, fingers pressed into cold stone. Quite the dream, if you could say so yourself. Seeing your favorite characters ‘in person’ was a great experience, you thought. No better time to wake up.
Wake up.
Wake. Up.
...
Okay, that was fine. You’d just walk around until your time was up.
No one stopped you.
That was the first thing you noticed once the noise thinned out and the street stopped vibrating with engines and boots. People were being ushered away, clustered behind barricades, questioned in quick, clipped bursts—but no one reached for you. No hand closed around your arm. No voice called you back.
You stood up slowly, brushing grit from your pajamas, testing your shoulder. It still ached, a dull, persistent throb from your fall, but not enough to matter. Dreams were inconsistent like that. After all, it didn’t hurt that much, if at all.
You stepped away from the museum without thinking much about direction.
The streets nearby were quieter, lamps casting warm pools of light across old stone and narrow sidewalks. Storefront windows reflected you back at yourself—rumpled clothes, bare feet, hair a mess from sleep and impact. Normally, that would’ve earned more than a glance. Tonight, a few people looked, then looked away again, distracted by police tape, by the lingering echo of something impossible having happened only blocks away.
Loki, your mind supplied again, almost lazily.
That had been cool. Objectively. Like being dropped into a movie set and allowed to wander around after the director called cut. You replayed fragments as you walked—the sound of his voice carrying across the street, the way the illusions had snapped into place, the exact angle of the shield when it hit the beam. Your memory filled in lines before they were spoken, a familiar rhythm you’d known for years.
You smiled to yourself, faint and private.
Of course your brain would pick this.
Germany stretched out around you, old and modern folded together. You drifted without purpose, reading signs you half-recognized, passing bakeries already dark for the night, the smell of bread still clinging faintly to the air. Cobblestone gave way to smoother pavement. Somewhere in the distance, sirens rose and fell again.
You checked your pockets out of idle curiosity.
Nothing. No phone. No wallet. No keys.
Right. Because you’d gone to sleep. You remembered that much clearly—your phone plugged in, the room dark, the heaviness settling in. It was fine. You didn’t need anything. Dreams always ended eventually.
You wandered through a small square with a fountain at its center, water catching the light as it spilled over stone. You sat on the edge for a moment, feet dangling, watching ripples spread and fade. Somewhere nearby, people were talking in low voices, still wound tight, replaying the same story from different angles.
You stayed quiet, just absorbing everything around you.
This version of yourself felt like an outsider, and it seemed intentional, as if the dream had peeled away all the layers until there was nothing left but a witness. No job to go back to. No destination in mind. No one there for you.
Just a simple, effortless existence. You got to your feet and continued walking.
A SHIELD vehicle rolled past at one point, slow and deliberate. The symbol on the side caught your eye. You watched it go with mild interest, noting how real it looked, how your mind had gotten the details right. A couple of agents stood near a corner farther down, speaking quietly into headsets, eyes scanning.
One of them looked at you, taking in the pajamas, the lack of urgency—then he looked away again, attention pulled back to the perimeter.
You passed a tram stop with shattered glass still scattered near the tracks. Someone had tried to sweep it up and given up halfway through. Your reflection fractured in the pieces as you stepped around them, distorted into angles that didn’t quite line up.
It crossed your mind, briefly, that you might wake up soon.
That maybe this was the part where the dream started to thin, where everything blurred and folded inward. You half-expected the street to melt or the sky to peel back.
Nothing happened.
So you kept walking.
Eventually, fatigue settled in—Weird. Fatigue in a dream? You brushed it off as you found a sheltered spot near a closed café, tucked against a wall that still held some warmth. You sat down, back against stone, knees drawn up loosely. Above you, a streetlight buzzed softly.
You tilted your head back and stared at the sky.
Maybe if you tried falling asleep in your dream, you would wake up in real life.
— May 4th, 2012 —
You woke up, sun drifting over your eyes, just enough that it pressed against your closed eyes until ignoring it took effort.
You shifted, expecting the familiar weight of your bed, the sound of your room—but your shoulder met stone instead.
You opened your eyes.
The café was still closed. Chairs stacked inside behind glass. The streetlamp above you was off now, useless in the daylight. The air smelled different—less smoke, more bread and coffee drifting from somewhere nearby.
For a long second, you just stared.
“...Hm.”
Dreams didn’t usually bother with continuity. You wondered what time it was in the real world to have this much time to continue.
You sat up slowly, half-expecting the street to dissolve when you moved. It didn’t. Your shoulder still hurt from falling however long, not sharply, just enough to be annoying.
Okay. Weird dream.
You stood, brushed yourself off, and started walking again. Daylight Germany looked calmer, like the city itself had decided last night was enough. People moved with purpose now—some tired, some shaken, most trying very hard to act normal. A few glanced at you, took in the pajamas, frowned briefly, then kept going.
Fair. You’d look twice too.
You passed a small café that was open this time. A TV was mounted above the counter, volume low but visible from the street. You slowed, curiosity catching.
Smoke filled the screen.
A familiar skyline.
New York.
Your brain stalled for half a beat, then slid right past it. Right. That was today. Of course it was.
Someone inside the café sucked in a sharp breath. Another person raised a hand to their mouth. You watched aliens pour out of a hole in the sky like it was background noise.
You moved on.
Finding a phone felt like the logical next step. Dreams liked logic when you supplied it. You stopped a woman outside a tram stop, asked—in English, because of course you did—if you could borrow her phone. She hesitated, then handed it over anyway, eyes flicking briefly to the TV behind her.
You dialed your roommate’s number from memory, wondering what your dream would come up with. You’d wish you woke up already.
It rang.
Once. Twice.
Someone answered.
“Hallo?”
You froze.
That... wasn’t right.
You hung up immediately, heat creeping into your face. “Sorry—wrong number. Thank you,” you said, handing the phone back.
She nodded distractedly, already turning away.
Okay. That was new.
You walked again, slower this time. Noon crept closer without you really noticing it, the sun sitting higher, the streets busier. TVs were everywhere now—shop windows, bars, electronics stores—all tuned to the same footage.
New York burning. Heroes fighting. A man in red and gold streaking between buildings.
You watched for a minute longer this time, arms folded loosely around yourself.
Cool dream, you thought again, but the words didn’t land as cleanly as before.
—
You didn’t know where you were going, you’ve been wandering around for hours. The sun would be setting soon. From what you heard from passers by and the occasional radio, the battle of New York has finished, ‘thanks to the newly found Avengers’ you thought to yourself. It was starting to get chilly again, even though you’re pretty sure it was around May here. It had been the start of a new year in the real world, not to mention not 2012.
You walk.
That’s the first thing that makes sense. Walking doesn’t require a plan, and dreams never care where you’re going anyway. The street stretches out in front of you, stone buildings still standing like nothing monumental happened here tonight, like gods didn’t just tear through a museum a few blocks away.
Your pajama pants brush your ankles with every step. Soft cotton, faded, real enough to register. No shoes—just socks, already darkened from the street. You think, briefly, that this would bother you if you were awake. You decide it’s another point in favor of this being a dream and keep going.
Germany is quieter than you expected. Not empty, just subdued. People cluster together in low voices, phones in their hands, eyes flicking skyward every so often. Sirens pass in the distance. Somewhere, glass is still being swept up. No one stops you. A few people stare—longer than polite, shorter than concerned—but no one says anything. Everyone looks like they’re busy processing something bigger than a girl in pajamas wandering past them.
You drift through streets you don’t recognize, reading signs without really registering them. You stop at a storefront with its lights still on and stare at your reflection in the glass. Same face. Same hair. Same sleep-soft expression, like you might blink and wake up any second. You wave at yourself, just to check. The reflection waves back.
“Yeah,” you mutter, nodding. “Definitely a dream.”
At some point, you sit on the edge of a fountain, feet dangling above the water. It smells faintly like metal and rain. You watch people hurry by and think about how cool it was to see the Avengers up close. Loki especially—your brain replays the gold armor, the arrogance, the way the crowd reacted to him like gravity had shifted. Your subconscious has good taste, you decide.
You don’t notice the men watching you at first.
They’re subtle about it—no uniforms, no weapons out—but they stand wrong, too still, eyes tracking patterns instead of people. One of them glances at your clothes, then at a small device in his hand. Another murmurs something into his sleeve.
When they approach, it’s calm.
“Miss,” one of them says, voice even, polite. American accent. “Are you injured?”
You look at him, then down at yourself. You feel fine. A little cold, maybe. Mostly tired. “No,” you say. “I think I’m dreaming.”
He pauses, just a fraction. “All right,” he says anyway. “Can we help you get somewhere safe?”
You consider this. Safe sounds nice. You don’t have a home to go back to, not here. Not anywhere, really. In your dream logic, this tracks. Of course you wouldn’t have an address. Of course you wouldn’t have your phone. Of course you’d be stuck wandering a foreign country in pajamas after meeting superheroes.
“Sure,” you say.
They don’t ask for ID or for a name, yet, at least. One of them drapes a blanket around your shoulders, another offers you a bottle of water. You drink it, because dream water is usually hit or miss and this one tastes surprisingly real.
They guide you into a vehicle with darkened windows. Inside, a few other people sit quietly, wrapped in the same blankets, staring ahead or half-asleep. No one talks. The door closes with a soft, final sound.
Were you getting kidnapped in your dream?
...Nah.
The city rolls past outside, lights blurring together. You rest your head against the window and watch reflections slide over the glass. Your eyelids grow heavy.
You’re barely aware of being moved again. Of engines changing pitch. Of a low, steady hum replacing the street noise. Someone buckles a strap across your lap. Someone else says, “She’s out,”
You fall asleep thinking about New York, about how funny it is that your brain chose Germany as the setting tonight, and about how wild it’ll be when you wake up and tell yourself you almost believed it was real.
The dream obligingly fades to black.
–
Sound comes back first.
A low, constant hum, steady enough to fade into the background if you don’t focus on it. Your cheek is pressed against something firm, not stone this time—fabric, maybe. You blink once. Then again.
Light seeps in through your eyelids, dull and artificial.
You open your eyes.
You’re strapped into a seat.
Not tightly. Just enough to keep you from sliding sideways. A blanket is still around your shoulders. Your socks are still dirty. Good continuity. Your brain was really committing to the bit.
You glance down the row. More people, same as before—quiet, half-asleep, staring forward. The window beside you shows nothing but cloud, bright white stretched endlessly in every direction. An aircraft, you decide.
You lean your head back and close your eyes again. When you open them this time, someone is standing in the aisle.
“Morning,” a woman says, neutral but not unkind. SHIELD patch on her jacket. Short red hair pulled back tight. Clipboard in hand.
You blink up at her. “Hey.”
“How are you feeling?”
You think about it. “Cold. Hungry.”
She nods and checks something off without comment. “Any pain?”
“My shoulder’s a little sore.”
“Okay.” She glances at the clipboard again. “Can you tell me your name?”
You hesitate, then shrug.
That earns you a look, quick but unreadable. She doesn’t press. “All right. Sit tight.”
She moves on.
You watch her go, mildly impressed. Your subconscious was really nailing the bureaucratic realism.
Eventually, the hum changes pitch. The vibration lessens. Someone announces something you don’t fully catch. You’re guided off the aircraft with the others, down a ramp, into a building that smells like disinfectant and recycled air.
No windows. Long corridors. People walking with purpose.
A SHIELD facility, obviously. Your brain was flexing now.
They sit you at a folding table and slide a tray toward you—sandwich, apple, juice. You eat it without hesitation. Dream food usually disappears halfway through, but this sticks around. You take that as a good sign.
An agent stops by again, different one this time. Dark hair. Tired eyes.
“Do you know where you’re from?” he asks.
You chew, swallow. “Not Germany.”
He writes that down.
“Do you remember how you got here?”
“Sort of,” you say. “I fell. Then Loki happened. Then you guys.”
He pauses. Just a second too long. Then: “Okay.”
Hours pass. Or minutes. Hard to tell. At some point, someone brings you different clothes—plain, comfortable, generic. You change because pajamas were starting to feel impractical, even for a dream.
Later, you’re guided back onto another transport.
This one has windows.
You sit by one without being told to. Outside, the sky stretches wide and blue, clouds scattered lazily beneath you. You watch them drift by, chin resting against the glass.
You must fall asleep again, because the next thing you know, the plane is descending.
The city below is massive.
Gridlike. Dense. Familiar in a way that clicks immediately.
New York.
You lean closer to the window, interest sharpening. Smoke still lingers in the air, thin and gray. Scars cut through streets where something big came down hard. Even from above, you can see it—damage layered over a skyline you’ve seen a thousand times on screens.
“Wow,” you murmur.
When the plane lands, the air is different. Heavier. Warmer. You step onto the tarmac with the others, blinking against the light. Sirens echo somewhere distant. Helicopters pass overhead, low and constant.
No one gives you instructions beyond gentle nudges forward.
You lie back, hands folded on your stomach, staring up at the ceiling. Fluorescent lights hum softly overhead.
Any minute now, you think, you’ll wake up.
Any minute.
Dreams always end eventually.
...
They don’t usually come with folding tables.
You sit where they put you, hands wrapped around a paper cup that’s gone lukewarm, watching people move through the room with practiced efficiency. The space feels temporary in the way emergency rooms and disaster shelters always do—nothing meant to last, everything meant to function. Cots line one wall. Radios murmur softly. Someone is taping up a cracked window even though it’s clear the building itself isn’t going anywhere.
No one is watching you.
That remains the strangest part.
Agents pass by, glance at you the way you glance at furniture you didn’t arrange yourself, then move on. You don’t have a wristband. No clipboard with your name. No one’s asked again. You sip the water because it’s there and because your throat feels dry, and you decide this must be the part of the dream where your brain fills in downtime.
You lean back in the chair, eyes drifting toward the open doorway.
That’s when you see him. No shield, no helmet, no fanfare. Just a man stepping into the room with his sleeves pushed up and his jacket unzipped, scanning the space like he’s counting heads. He looks tired in a way that doesn’t photograph well. Smaller somehow without the costume, broader in the shoulders than you expect, posture still too straight to be accidental.
Steve Rogers.
You register it the same way you’ve registered everything else tonight: distantly, mildly impressed, not particularly alarmed. Your brain is consistent, at least. If it’s going to fabricate Avengers, it’s going to do it thoroughly.
He speaks to an agent near the door first, nodding as she answers. You don’t hear what they say, but his expression shifts—subtle, thoughtful. Then his eyes move, pass over the room, and stop on you.
Not sharply. Just enough to notice.
He hesitates, then walks over.
Up close, he looks even more real. Scuffed boots. A faint scrape along his jaw like he shaved in a hurry. There’s a smear of something dark on the cuff of his sleeve that might be oil or soot. He pulls out a chair across from you and sits without asking, resting his forearms on his knees.
“Hey,” he says, voice low, steady. “You doing okay?”
You consider the question. Your shoulder aches if you shift it wrong. You’re barefoot. You’re in a city you didn’t go to sleep in. You watched a god get arrested an hour ago, give or take.
“I think so,” you say.
He nods like that’s a perfectly acceptable answer. “You get checked out?”
You shrug. “Someone asked me some questions. I ate.”
“Good.” He glances at the cup in your hands. “You want something warmer? Coffee, maybe.”
“I’m fine.”
Another nod. He doesn’t push. He looks around once more, then back at you. “You have somewhere to go once we clear this place out?”
You think about it honestly. “No.”
“Family nearby?”
“No.”
“A hotel? Friends?”
You shake your head. He studies your face, not like he’s searching for lies, more like he’s trying to place you in a world that doesn’t have an obvious slot for you. His gaze drops briefly to your clothes, your bare feet, then returns to your eyes without comment.
“All right,” he says. “We’ll figure something out.”
You watch him for a moment. This is the part where dream logic usually breaks, where people start saying things that only make sense symbolically. Instead, he sits there, solid and unremarkable in the way real people are, and waits.
“You’re very calm,” he adds after a second.
You lift one shoulder. “It’s been a long night.”
He huffs a quiet breath that might be a laugh. “Yeah. That it has.”
There’s a pause. Not awkward. Just empty. You fill it by looking past him at the room again. Someone is asleep on a cot with their shoes still on. Another person is arguing softly into a phone in German.
Steve follows your gaze. “You were outside during... all that?”
“Some of it.”
“That must’ve been scary.”
You think about Loki’s voice echoing off stone, the way everyone moved at once, how easy it had been to kneel. You think about arrows cutting guards off rooftops, about blue light blooming against a shield you’ve seen a hundred times before.
“It was interesting,” you say.
That gets his attention. He looks at you again, really looks this time, like he’s recalibrating. Not alarmed. Curious.
“Well,” he says slowly, “if you need anything, you let someone know. We’re not in a rush to send people back out there.”
“Okay.”
He stands after that, pushing the chair back into place. “I’m Steve,” he adds.
You nod. “Nice to meet you.”
He pauses, then smiles, small and polite, and moves on to the next table. You watch him go, then look down at your hands resting in your lap. Dreams don’t usually bother with follow-through, you think. They don’t usually check on you twice or offer coffee or worry about where you’ll sleep. But then again, your brain has always been thorough.
You lean back in the chair and close your eyes, just for a moment. When you open them again, the room is still there, humming quietly around you, and the chair across from you is still empty.