Hi! This is my first Avengers fanfiction and the first one that I wrote in english (I am italian, so I am sorry if there are mistakes). I love Steve Rogers and I have written a bunch of stories about him in the last year, but this is the first one that I was brave enough to post here and on my blog.

The three characters that I introduce in the prologue are from the videogame "Life is strange", but I don't think my story is a cross over because I used only their name and Max's power.

I hope you like it and I'll try to update as soon as possible.

Prologue

"Max! Max, wait for me!"

I turned around and saw my blue-headed best friend Chloe running toward me with her bag on her shoulder. She was pulling her girlfriend Rachel behind her, but the beautiful girl didn't seem to mind.

"I stopped, Chloe. You don't have to shout." I said with a sigh when they stopped by my side.

"She thinks that you will dump us to go snap some photo at the museum again." told me Rachel giving her soulmate a side glance and ignoring the frown that appeared on said girl.

"It happened just that one time! I promised I would go with you to the park and I would make some photo for your photobook, so don't worry Chloe. I keep my promises."

I started to walk again with my friends and together walked through the park in front of our high school to reach the parking area where Chloe truck was parked.

My name is Maxime Stark if you were wondering about it and the girls with me are Chloe Price and Rachel Amber. We are in the same classes at school even if they are a year older than me, but they lost a year for family reasons that kept them away from classes. We have known each other since we were kids and we are like sisters.

"Ok, what do you exactly want in this photobook of yours?" I asked sitted in the far right side of the truck's bench.

"We want to have something to celebrate our fifth year of relationship and we thougth that a photobook of us during this time period is a wonderful idea." explained Chloe from the driver seat.

"We collected a lot of old photos already, somes you took some time ago and somes we printed from our phones, but we want some fresh ones for the last pages." added Rachel with a smile on her red lips.

"Wow, five years already? I can't belive it!" I said suprised, but I've always knew that those two where made for each other even before I discovered their soulmarks.

In this crazy world if you are destined to be with someone, his or her name appears on you right shoulder when you turn ten and thats exactly what happened to them. I know both of my best friends were scared when they found each other names on their shoulder and it took me three years to convince them to reveal their secret to their soulmate.

"Yeah and we have you to thank for, you made us see reason." said Rachel smiling to me and taking her girlfriend's hand in hers.

"You were just scared, I know I would be in you place." I replied turning my head to look outside the car window with a faraway look in my blue eyes.

"You will find him." Chloe said to me knowing what thoughts were passing through my mind in that moment.

"You know I won't." I said turning towards her again with a hard glare on my face.

"How can you be so sure?"

"He is dead, Chloe. If you discover how to revive a corpse let me know, but until you do I don't want to talk about it."

"Maybe he is another..." tried to say Rachel playing nervously with some strands of her blond hair.

"You know he is THAT guy, so please let it go." I pleaded turning around with tears in my eyes trying to hide them with my short chocolate brown hair and they listened to me knowing how much talking about it hurted me.

We stayed in silence for the rest of our ride and walk to the park, my mind lost in the memory of the first time I saw my soul mark….

...It was the 21st of September in 2004, I turned ten that day and I was taking a shower in my house in Malibù after spending a wonderful afternoon with my best friends. It was a friday night and my dad was coming home from New York where he had worked for the previous month. We were to go to dinner in a fancy restaurant where his assistant Pepper Potts had reserved a table for us than we were to watch some movies in our private cinema in the house eating sweets.

I was drying myself when a strange black line caught my eyes and it made me freeze in place. Through the mirror, I could see three word tatooed on my skin and they clearly were three names. I started to run my fingers along each letter in awe, but I was too shocked to read them.

"Pumpkin? I'm home!" shouted my father from the living room on the floor below, but I was too engrossed in my reflection that I didn't hear him.

"Sugar, are you alright?" asked Tony Stark knocking on my bathroom's door. Yeah, my father is THE Tony Stark, rich, self-centered philatropist also none as Iron Man since 2008, even if he wasn't his alter ego at the time, that concived me almost eleven years ago during a drunk night out and decided to raise me when my mother left me on his door step with just a letter.

"Dad!" I cried startled turning around and trying to cover my mark, but my bathrobe didn't seem to agree with me falling down my shoulder everytime I tried to put it back on.

"Wow! Calm down! I didn't want to startle you! I called you for five minutes and when you didn't answered me I started to get worried."

"I..." I stuttered starting to panic.

My father put his hand on my marked shoulder and I flinched. He noticed and removed his hand quickly looking at me with worried eyes: "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"

"No, I'm fine, dad. Can you give me a minute? Give me the time to dress up and I'll come down ready to go to the restaurant." I tried to distract him turning again towards the mirror, but my father was having none of it and grasped my shoulder again making me face him.

"What are you hiding, Maxime?" asked with a frown.

"Dad..."

"Do not dad me! Show me or I'll make you." he said sternly locking his hazel eyes with mine.

After some minutes of stare contest, I sighed and without saying anything I removed my bathrobe from my right shoulder.

"That's..." murmured Tony studing my soulmark.

"Yeah..."

"And it says..."

"I don't know, I… didn't read it yet."

"What?" he asked surprised looking back at my face snapping out of his stupor: "I called you for five minutes and you just stayed there staring at it without reading it?"

"I was surprised." I confessed blushing: "I never thought I would get a soulmark."

"Maxime..." started to say my father struggling for words, something that rarely happened: "You should look and… be prepared."

"What do you mean?" I asked confused facing the mirror again.

"You… Just look." was his only reply and I did.

On my shoulder, the name Steven Grant Rogers was written in a elegant black line…

..."Come on, Max! Take your camera so we can start!" shouted Chloe from a tree she just climbed while she helped Rachel doing the same.

"You want your photos to be on a branch?" I asked skeptically.

"Well, it's a start." replied the blue-headed girl with a shrug and mirth in her blue eyes, so I just started to snap photos following their demands.

After more than an hour of work, the couple moved to a pic-nic table sitting on one of the benches and I started to take pictures moving around them.

"Ehi! I got an idea!" I said suddenly running back to the tree and starting to climb it.

"Max, be careful!" shouted Rachel, she always was the mother hen between the three of us.

"I will!" I shouted back, but my foot faltered on the trunk and I slipped stopping my fall with my hands just in time. My camera wasn't so lucky and shattered on the ground in a lot of pieces.

"Shit." I cursed climbing down the tree and taking my broken camera from the grass.

"Can you do something to repair it?" asked Rachel studying the object with her hazel eyes. The two girl had run to me after the accident hoping that the damage wasn't so bad.

"No." I answerd angry with my self. That camera was an old model, I prefered old photocameras to the modern ones, and it was a gift for my sweet sixteen from my father, it was precious to me and I should have been more careful, but it was too late.

"Of course you can!" exclaimed Chloe looking at me as if I was crazy: "You can use your power!"

"Chloe, I can't use it for something so stupid."

"It's not stupid, you love that camera." shot back my friend.

"Chloe is right, Max. You treat that camera as if it was alive and you can repair it with your power." tried to convince me Rachel with a nudge on mu shoulder.

I sighed and looked at the broken machine. It was worth a try so I concentrated and things around me started to move. I saw my two friends walking toward the pic-nic table backwords just like everything else was doing and my camera repairing itself, but there was no sign of myself as always. Everytime, everything came back to a previous position but me.

I discovered I had the power to control time two years ago. My friends and myself were fooling aroung by the sea and Chloe fell from a rock breaking her leg. I started to panic and to move my hands around without knowing what to do. Everything just froze before my eyes and than started to go backward with Chloe standing again and walking the road we just did with Rachel as if everything was in rewind. After some minutes, I started to feel light-headed and the world around me started to move normal again. Chloe and Rachel noticed me far ahead of them and they were confused so I told them what just happened deciding not to say anything to anyone else. Not even my dad.

Other accidents happend after the first one so I decided to learn how to control it and my friends agreed to help me in everyway they could.

"What happened?" asked Rachel from her seat noticing my sudden change of position. Nobody remembered the previous timeline but me, but Chloe and Rachel knew how to read the signs.

"My camera was broken and I repaired it." I answered checking my camera and I noticed that something was off with the lens.

"Is everything ok?" shouted Chloe.

"I don't know." I murmured placing the lens before my right eye and looking through it.

Suddenly I saw a blinding light and felt myself free fall with a scream coming out of my lips until I felt the ground hit my back hard.

"Ah..." I moaned in pain arching my back.

"Ma'am, are you alright?" asked someone from above me and I opened my eyes to stare in a pair of blue one that were looking at me with worry.

"I'm fine, thank you." I said accepting the hand that the short guy was offering me.

Once I was on my feet again, I studied the boy noticing that he was short just like me and thin with blond hair and a sweet face. He was wearing a white shirt with a grey jacket and brown trousers.

"Are you sure? You fell from the sky and it can't be normal, right?" he asked unsure if what he had said was right. Maybe he was thinking that for me it could be a normal thing falling from the sky and he didn't want to offend me.

I blushed at his words, but I didn't know how to answer that so I just looked to the ground putting my hands in the pockets of my jeans and in that moment I noticed that my camera was missing.

"Did you see my photocamera?" I asked looking fervently around.

"No, you didn't have it on you when you hit the ground." he said observing my movements with a confused look on his face.

"No, it can't be. I had it with me."

"Ma'am, are you absolutely sure?" he repeated putting a hand on my shoulder halting my movements.

"Yes." I snapped back angry feeling immediately guilty: "I'm sorry, but that camera is a gift from my father and I can't lose it."

"I understand. Why don't you describe it to me and we can start looking around here together?" he offered with a smile.

"Thank you." I said sincerely looking into his beautiful eyes: "But you have to stop calling me ma'am. I'm Maxime, but my friends call me Max."

"Steve." he said shaking my hand: "Steve Rogers."