Flicker Beat | Peter Parker

Prolouge

The year was 1989, and Astrid Thornton was eleven years old. The Berlin Wall fell, "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking came out, and "Miss You Much" by Janet Jackson was one of the two longest-running number-one singles. And Carol Danvers went down in a crash in the Mojave Desert.

In 1989, Astrid Thornton lived with her father. In 1989, a scientist of the name Callen Thornton was an eccentric man, mind racing with ideas that stunned the average person. The kind that was labeled a "mad scientist", the kind that people shied away from. In 1989, there was an absent mother, present only in the old photographs that a father kept. In 1989, there was a young girl growing up in a lonely world.

Science was the savior and the destruction of Astrid's father. His work on P.E.G.A.S.U.S. was genius, but it caused him to rot from the inside out. Sleepless nights and 12 hour days stuck in a lab are enough to turn even the strongest men to madness. And Astrid's father was never a particularly strong man. The words tossed at him by his old wife, by his superiors who called his work impossible, by the general population that pushed him away, cut deep into his skin.

In an old log cabin, buried deep in the words of southeastern California, Callen bled over Astrid. Homeschooled, hidden from the world, the blood of her father melded into her mind. She was his pet project, his favorite science experiment of them all.

In 1989, Astrid grew up in a home filled with science chemicals and equations, chalkboards covered with strings of numbers and letters. She grew up with a ghost of a father, with mutterings under his breath and hands buried in his hair.

But in 1989, at least for Astrid, there was peace, there was a sense of happiness. There was the wild roaming of a child set free, experiments and exploring in a world of her own, innocent to the horrors of the world and the rough carnage of violence.

In 1989, the first touch of ill struck Astrid in the form of blue light, flattening everything in its wake.  Flinging a frail body into a wall full of chemicals, the breakers breaking and the liquid spilling onto a limp body. Absorbing into her skin, melding and mixing with her DNA, into the very essence of her body and soul.

In 1989, Callen Thornton died and Astrid was left in a coma, left alive as some freak of nature.

In 1990, S.H.I.E.L.D. found a girl who by all accounts should be nothing but a rotting corpse. Instead, they found a girl who didn't have a heartbeat, whose chest didn't rise and fall. They found a girl surrounded by a cerulean glow, in turn, surrounded by death and destruction.

----------

The year was 2012, and The Fault in Our Stars by John Green was published, the game Candy Crush Saga was released, and Loki stole the Tesseract. Astrid Thornton was still eleven years old.

In the future, in a world unlike her own, Astrid gasped, her body shooting itself upright. She was drenched with sweat, her hospital gown clinging to her thin body.  Flashing lights blinded her vision, sirens ringing in the air with a force to match the pounding in her head. The cracking of the floor around her shook the metal of her bed, her frail bones rattled and her teeth chattered in fear. This place was sterile and foreign, so unlike the log cabin that to Astrid, felt like she had been there only moments before.

Pushing aside the blankets, she pulled off the small circles stuck to her face and arms. Putting one foot onto the floor, she paused as it shook. When she decided that it felt secure enough, she put the other down and stood up. Padding on bare feet across a room devoid of other people, Astrid looked around the room. Her mind was spinning, in pain, in confusion, in a pulsing feeling behind her eyelids that was fighting to punch into her vision. She didn't know where she was. She didn't know where her father was. The room was filled with gadgets and blinking screens that she had never even seen in her wildest dreams. They were not the chalkboards and the barely working machines of her childhood. They were not the familiar scenes where she had grown up. The world was shaking, Astrid feeling like she was breaking apart.

The door burst open, startling the girl standing in the middle of the room. "Oh god, you're awake," a woman said, her voice hoarse with exertion. "We have to get you out of here." A hand on Astrid's arm pulled her towards two men clad in all black. The woman's shouts turned into a haze in Astrid's ears, the sound fading in and out with her vision. It was a daze, a blur, lights and sounds and colors overwhelming her mind.

She didn't know what was happening. The spinning of the world dazed her, doubles of the strange woman and men lurking in the corners of the room. This wasn't her home. This wasn't 1989, that much was evident by the gadgets stuck in hands and on walls. Where was her father? Where was she? "Who are you people?" She cried. In 2012, her voice shook and the world was an unfamiliar blur, frightening and pulsing her mind, her brain, a scared child out of time.

A blue film was pulled across her vision, light emitting from all corners of the room. It pulsed in her head, bringing images of darkness and dust. The man rushed towards her as she teetered on her feet, swaying in time with the rocking of the floor. "He's coming! He's coming, he's coming! He will kill everyone! He will take them!" She screamed as her eyes shut and violent scenes played across the back of her eyelids. Tears were dripping down her face as her vision went black, the man in clothes made of shadows catching her before she hit the floor.

----------

When Astrid awoke again, she was in another white, sterile bed. There was a screen beeping beside her, a flat line present on the screen. A man with a patch over one eye was sitting beside her, his face creased in concentration as he stared at a file. Pushing herself upright on shaking arms, she whispered, "Who are you?"

He looked up, closing the file. "I should be the one asking you that question," he said, "but my name is Nick Fury."

Astrid looked around the room, taking in its white walls and machines. "Shouldn't your file tell you all that you need to know about me?" She asked, her mind racing. Thoughts were beating into her brain, pushing at the cracks of her memories. "Can you take me home? I want to see my father. Where's my father?" Tears were dripping down her face, her arms wrapped around skinny legs.

"Astrid, your father is dead. You should be dead too. It's 2012. Twenty-three years after you were found half-dead in California, your heart not beating." Fury said. His face stayed stone-cold, not a man accustomed to comforting lost girls.

A beeping sound came from his earpiece, signaling that someone was trying to talk to him. He reached up to press it, letting the transmission go through. "Director Fury, we need you down here," the tinny voice said.

Fury stood up, collecting his belongings as he went. He took one final look at Astrid, giving her a glance that could almost be pity. He told her some cut and dry speech about reestablishing her in the modern world, but Astrid barely heard him. Her mind was too caught up in trying to wrap it around where she was, what century she was in. When he left, he left a girl with tears dripping down her face, by herself in an unfamiliar room, an unfamiliar world.

She was alone, decades after where she thought she would be, with no family or friends near. She didn't know where her father was, if he was even alive or even if he wanted her still, a girl whose health monitors stayed flatlining. The questions raced through her mind until she exhausted herself, tears soaking through a scratchy pillowcase.

----------

The year was 2012, and she was still eleven years old. In 2012, The Battle of New York caused destruction and the Avengers were formed. In 2012, two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents adopted a girl out of time and gave her a home.

In 2012, Astrid was given a second chance at life, even if it was a half-life, and she wasn't going to let anything stop her.

Author's Note

I hope that you liked the prologue of Flicker Beat. Act I will start out during Civil War, so Astrid and Peter will both be fifteen. I think that I have my timeline right, but if I don't, please let me know. Thank you so much for reading!