Steve Rogers/Captain America One Shots

On The Edge

Debris fluttered down from the shadowed sky like snowflakes falling in the middle of winter. But instead of iridescent flakes of heavenly shaped snow, what fell around you was made of something much heavier. Although paper thin, just as the flakes of snow that would melt the moment they hit your flesh, these flecks that fluttered down upon the Earth wouldn't disappear. For they lined the street that your feet ran down, hitting the pavement harshly, as the fragments settled along the cement below your thundering steps. What fell from the sky it seemed, and swirled itself around you as though a blizzard, weren't made of magical sprinkles from the sparkling winter clouds, but rather the buildings of your home crumbling to rubble around you. The ash that clouded the air like smoke and the floating fragments that consumed your sight for miles, was made of the loss of the city that you had always called home. The flakes were pieces of someone's life, someone's home, someone's family, some one. What fell around you, to the human eye resembled that of glittering snowflakes, but as they collected along your shoulders with a heavy weight, as they flew through your hair as you ran, these flakes were pieces of a humanity crumbling to its feet before you.   

Chaos screamed at the top of its lungs as it echoed around you. The piercing cries of those trapped, those injured, those in terror as the home they knew fell from the sky. The clashing of metal that rang throughout the sky and the city like a siren. It sounded like war; the bullets flying and popping through the air like someone had lit a parade of fireworks down the city streets. The screeching of the invading army scraping against the buildings as they rained hell down upon the citizens. The overwhelming thumping sensation that felt like someone was playing the loudest drum they could possibly find in the depth of your ear. It beat harsher with each breath you inhaled, and as the sound radiated as though a thrust against a gong, you could feel the sound rattling through your tired and aching bones. 

The dust that coated the city burned your lungs, for it felt like thick smoke obstructing your ability to breathe. You could feel the ash of the crumbling buildings stinging your eyes, making tears water and fall over the edges, trailing paths through the itching soot that covered the flesh of your face. And each time you tried to cough out the feeling of the debris somehow in your lungs, your footsteps stumbled. Your body burned, the muscles strained and begging for relief as your body and mind had long since been lost on where or what to do. You watched as the destruction around you whirled, knowing your feet were still keeping you moving in some capacity, but it felt as though the world around you suddenly moved in slow motion. For your eyes couldn't comprehend what it was they tried to see, and yet everything seemed slow enough that all you could do was watch your homeland crumble to pieces around you.

Rubble lined the streets, boulders made from the walls of once stable and inhabited buildings now blocking exits and collecting across the roads around you. It looked like the city had been hit with a bomb, for everything was strewn and broken apart. Cars crushed and turned over, buildings crimpling and falling apart. Foundations being pulled apart at their very seams. But it wasn't the sight of the world ending that finally brought your feet to still below you, it was the casualties that you had never seen before in your life. 

You didn't feel when your feet stopped moving, you didn't even realize your body had stopped. You were frozen, as though your feet had been trapped beneath the cement poured where you stood. You felt numb; for the crippling sound of fear around you suddenly disappeared and the pain that coursed through your weakened body was no longer perceivable. Your body was deathly still, as your eyes fell upon a sight that made the sky falling seem less horrific. 

The world around you was bathed in beige, a colorless shade of the home you once knew falling apart. It lined the streets and it coated your flesh in a monotone color that made the Earth look hopeless. But beneath a chunk of the nearest building, that stood nearly toppled over with it's interior beams and foundation sticking out like a cry for help, a new color arose. A deep crimson red oozed like a thin stream through the path of colorless debris and ash. It looked darker than any color you had ever seen, like it wasn't real. As though your tired eyes were playing tricks on you. But as your eyes slowly followed the trail, leading out from beneath the piece of concrete, it came to life as it touched the soul of your tennis shoe. The red grabbing hold of the --now dusted and smudged-- white canvas fabric and painting itself across the surface. Your stomach lurched at the sight of it swelling beneath your frozen stance, the thick liquid flowing from the boulder that showed off a single hand trapped within the rubble.