project janus, 𝘳𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘴¹

eight

In her dreams, Eliyah Starr walked on a thin metal beam and tried not to fall.

Suspended thousands of feet above the ground, Eliyah gulped at the height—and while she wasn't afraid of it, she was afraid of dying. She was horribly, terribly afraid of dying.

"Eliyah!"

Eli glanced across the way. At the other side of the beam, standing on a steady rooftop, was Steve Rogers, looking very much the role of dashing, golden-haired hero he was supposed to play. He wasn't in his suit—he was in normal clothes, and so was Eli. So this isn't a mission then, she thought. It can't be, if we're both wearing normal clothes and not our suits.

Steve held out a hand. "Eliyah! Over here, I can help you!"

She trusted that he could. He was a superhero, after all; this was what he did for a living. So, inch by painful inch, Eliyah eased herself across the beam and across the wide expanse of nothingness, trying very hard not to crash down and splatter onto the streets of New York.

Eliyah grabbed Steve's hand when she got close enough, and he pulled her to safety. She quickly stepped back.

"Thank you," she said, genuinely grateful.

"It was no problem," Steve said. "It was easy."

"Easy? You weren't the one who--"

Steve grabbed Eliyah by the waist, his hands clasping around her middle. She had never realized how big they were, she thought--how big his hands were, how tough and calloused and utterly terrifying. Steve Rogers's hands were the kind of hands you heard stories about. Steve Rogers's hands were the hands your mother said grabbed for her that night in the dark. His hands were the ones your sister said were the ones that had led her upstairs when she was stumbling drunk at the party. Steve Rogers's hands, in Eliyah's dreams, were the exact hands that she feared with every fiber of her being. They were the hands of the men her mother brought home every night, drunk and stumbling but still upright. They were the hands of Eliyah's father, who reached for another woman instead of his wife. They were the hands of every man who insisted that he wasn't cheating as he lied through his teeth.

Steve Rogers's hands grabbed Eliyah Starr, and he smiled his dazzling, beautiful smile before he threw the girl in his hands over the edge.

When Steve Rogers woke up, Eliyah simply bid him a good day, closed her apartment door, and locked it thoroughly behind her. She did not mention the dream, or the echo of her own scream in her head, or anything else that she had experienced in the night.

She did, however, tell Nick Fury that she would be taking today off, and possibly even more time, if today did not help. And then she called Hayley.

Hayley had not gotten a phone call from Eliyah Starr in a long time—at least, not a phone call like this.

"Hayley?" Eliyah's voice sounded dull and tired. "Hey, um—" she sniffled, "do you have anything to do today?"

Hayley didn't need to look at her schedule. She knew what was on there.

LOGAN MISSION.
MIRANDA BRIEFING.
TRIAL REVIEW.