State of Grace ; The Avengers

01; preface

"An 0-8-4? Cool! The last one was Thor's hammer. Do you think I'll find a godly nail or something?"

Lara chattered distractly, watching carefully where she was putting her feet. The ground was covered with fallen leaves and soft moss that muffled her steps, but she had stumbled upon roots and rocks more than she would have liked to admit. The light that seeped through the branches of the softwood was almost green and she smiled slightly, enjoying the view and the silence.

That morning, S.H.I.E.L.D. had dropped her in Québec, with nothing else but a gun to protect herself and no other agents to keep her company in the middle of the woods. At least, she surely had a chance against bears.

She heard an exasperated sigh on the other end of the line. "Please, Agent Griffin, concentrate. We don't know what we are up against yet."

"There's no need to worry, Coulson, I'm pretty sure I can handle it, I'll call you later."

She kept hiking through the wood, following the coordinates they had given her: there was supposed to be a small lake in less then two hundred metres, the site where S.H.I.E.L.D radars had intercepted an abnormal activity of energy.

She started to worry when she came across the first fallen tree, followed by many others. The grass and the moss were soon replaced by burned soil of a dark brown, arid and hard under her boots. She began descending the slope, careful not to trip and tumble down. Only when her foot almost stepped on the carcass of what had probably been a fish, did Lara realized: she had reached the lake, even if the water barely grazed her ankles. The 0-8-4 had precipitated on Earth and had either dried up or evaporated everything, forming a huge crater and destroying the surrounding area in the meanwhile.

Her finger trembled a little when she lifted it to press on her earbug. "Agent Griffin?" Coulson replied quickly to her call, a bif of an edge in his voice. His concern made her feel a little better while she kept climbing down the inclined plane. "I've reached the crash site."

"Good."

"Yeah, there is no lake. The 0-8-4 crash made a bit of a mess."

Right at the center of the crater there was a spaceship, pretty similar to the S.H.I.E.L.D. jet that had brought her in Québec, made out of metal and with two impressive engines placed on the tail. The energy running through them was glowing purple, but the light flickered like a bulb on the verge of burning out. The right wing was buried deep in the ground, while on the left side something had pierced a hole through the metal, which had probably been the cause of the fall. "There's an entrance, I'm going to check the inside." She slipped through the gap and her eyes quickly recognized the silhouette of a person.

It was a woman. She was lying on the ground, unconscious or dead. Lara hoped it was the first one. She was wearing an armor chest plate underneath a ripped purple cloak and there were two swords hanging from a belt fastened around her waist. Her arms and legs were covered too with dark fabric, but most of her clothes were torn and dirty with dried blood. The warrior was still bleeding from a wound on the right side of her stomach, where the armor had failed to protect her, and red drops trickled down her forehead too.

Lara quickly crouched down next to the woman and rested her head on her lap, ignoring the blood already staining her pants. "Coulson, there's an injured person here. You need to send some back-up, and quickly." The other agent agreed and closed the call once again. Lara moved away the dark strands from the stranger's face, placing her hands on the stomach wound to keep the bleeding at bay. She saw her eyelids flicker.

"Miss? Can you hear me? If you're awake, you need to stay that way." She called, pressing a little harder on the injury. The woman let out a small, weak groan of pain.

"I'm sorry, but I really need you to stay awake." Lara repeated as the warrior's eyelashes trembled again, then she blinked, revealing a pair of purple eyes that resembled the color of the energy sustaining the spaceship. She didn't say a word. Her hand shot up and her fingers tightened around Lara's wrist, catching her by surprise, but she didn't get to do anything about it: the eyes of the woman glowed violently, the purple in her irises shimmering brightly, and Lara was suddenly reminded of a starry sky. Then, she felt like her head was being opened in half.

Her mind went blank, the pain tearing her apart from the inside as she heard herself screaming. She saw the stars, quite literally. The space collapsed on itself in front of her eyes, the planets cracked and shattered, the clouds swivelled and formed a white hurricane of destruction that wiped away the entire sky. Nebulas of vibrant colors shaped in black holes that sucked all the light, leaving her in the dark. Then, a pair of purple eyes blinked at her.

Lara was violently thrown back into the real world as she found herself lying on the ground beside the woman. She felt like all of the energy had been drained from her body, leaving only a weak shell. Her head was throbbing in pain and it took her a few attempts to finally sit straight. When her eyes laid on the warrior, she sucked in a gasp: she was dead. All the color had drained from her face, the blood had formed a dark red pool under her body. Lara put two fingers on her cold neck, just to be sure, but there was no pulse. Behind her, she heard someone calling her name.

"Coulson?" Lara mumbled, squeezing her eyes shut to hold back the feeling of dizziness. The man put a hand on her shoulder and kneeled down in front of her. "Lara, are you alright? What happened?"

She shook her head slowly. "I'm fine. It's just... She's dead, I'm sorry." She rubbed her forehead in discomfort, her eyes trained on the lifeless body.

"It's alright. You did your job, she was just a casualty. Let's get you out of here." Lara accepted gladly the hand Coulson offered her and tried not to stumble while they made their way towards the S.H.I.E.L.D. jet.

"Are you sure you are okay?" Coulson asked her again. "Never been better!"

She hated lying. It was something she tried to avoid doing. It made her feel uneasy and it always sent a wave of nausea through her, but would have anyone believed, if she told them she had seen the whole universe crumble down?

- -

A/N: HELLO! This is @-hyacinthus, welcome to the prologue of State of Grace!! I'm sorry I don't even know what I'm saying, I'm too agitated. So, Emma ( @peggyscarter ) and I have been plotting this for days, literally. We are really excited about this and can't wait to publish the first chapter, that will come in a few days! We have a lot of ideas for this book!

This story is set during the first Avengers movie and here we meet one of the two protagonists, Lara Griffin, an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Her face claim is Natalie Dormer, who is queen af and hella hot *wink*

Please vote or comment, we would like to know what you think!

-Elda