Disclaimer: not mine.

Summary: An amnesiac Harry enlists in the British military in the middle of a war against magical terrorism. He runs into familiar faces and must unlock his past while hiding his discoveries from the soldiers around him...or he just might find himself the enemy of both sides.

Warning: SLASH, mature situations, profanity, violence. Not for kids.

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Prologue

Private Benjamin L Thatcher knew that he was dead the moment the black-haired Angel fell from the sky and onto the street-cum-battlefield below.

At that moment, no longer was he the three-month-old recruit of Her Royal Majesty's army, who joined said army under the esteemed ambition of taking out as much terrorist ass from his beloved British soil as his gun could pick off, who prided himself in his own courage and daring in leaving his still-fuckable wife to undertake said task. No, at this moment he was the son of Owan Thatcher, proud owner of five Chemist shops in London, and Fanny Thatcher nee Fletcher, head stylist at the local curl Up and Dye Salon, husband of Gertrude, the newly promoted head clerk at March and Banks. He was twenty-one years-old-going-on-five and he had never been to Spain.

His life didn't flash before his eyes. Truthfully, there wasn't much of it to see anyway; but in that moment, when eyes green as the open fields of his homeland and empty as November rain lifted up and brushed Benjamin's soul, leaving it shriveled and gaping in a purposeless existence, he felt his own insignificance like a fly beneath the hand of God and did not protest his ending.

He was not alone. All around him, men and women once strong in their naive faith in logic and order and surety in the basic laws of gravity and cause-effect and action-reaction and all that crap they teach in high school science classes, found themselves frozen powerless under the conflict of sight versus mind, reality versus fiction, unable to shake off the vision of insanity before them. Gunfire ceased for the first time in hours; arms lowered; some even lowered themselves upon the Grand Hotel's Victorian carpeting like children settling down for afternoon storytime. In the windows of the three-story terrorist base across the street, shades were drawn; muzzles pulled back through the glass; shadowy figures blended into darkened rooms.

Then the Others appeared. Hooded and masked like ritualists in those vampire shows that Benjamin's little brother was enamored with, they snapped into existence like two slides of a splinted film, now three, now five, black spots in the evening streetlights. The number doubled. Doubled again. Yet only the Angel bared his face to the heavens.

One by one, the soldiers began to wake from their daze. Orders were shouted. Following them came instinctively to the forty-second division. To Benjamin, son of a Chemist store owner, husband to an aspiring bank clerk, three-month recruit in Her Majesty's army, whose own sense of purpose had just flown away as neatly as the Angel had glided into his sight mere minutes before, the only instinct left in his emptied mind was to hide behind the nearest closed door, which happened to lead to a richly decorated water closet.

He listened to the gunfire, the screams of horror, the running of panicked feet. He told himself that he did not hear the incantations, the words of a dead language revived in the mouths of God's own avatars, as colored lights flickered through the gaps in the door.

And when silence descended and Benjamin knew that the world had truly ended under a vengeful god's wrath, he dared a last glimpse out of the open bathroom window onto the darkened street below, and beheld a wondrous sight.

Zeus himself had arrived.

For it could only be Zeus, with his white flowing beard and the multi-colored lightning bolts strewn upon the hairless demon that opposed him. They shook the earth with their anger. All around them, smaller battles raged, but Benjamin could not look away from these two, whose power even he felt like an electrical current on his skin. Fire turned to water, to ice, to glittering pieces of flying glass, all in the space of seconds. Concrete shattered to dust. Lightposts melted off their foundations. The Hotel shook and wavered in protest to such violations in the fabric of reality.

Benjamin felt the change as a sudden desire to rejoice in his own questionable freedom. He couldn't understand the lifting in his heart when the battle below still raged just as fiercely, but he stood a little straighter, lifted his head a little higher, breathed a little deeper. The hairless demon moved fluidly, struck out faster and harder against the ancient god, whose movements had slowed but remained powerful.

It happened in a split second. From the sidelines raced a streak of black hair and robes. Like a genie released from its shackles, the Angel flew toward the center of the battle between god and demon, caught in a crossfire of power beyond Benjamin's imagining; for one breathless moment, haloed in green and golden light, Benjamin caught a glimpse of utter desperation in those eyes like the fields of his homeland, like November rain.

In the next moment, the Angel was gone.

And the world came tumbling down.

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A/N: Short, yes, but it's just a prologue. I'll post the next chapter next week.

If you/ve read my other story, Whatever it Takes, I'm sorry but it's on hiatus. I didn't have much of the plot in mind. This time, I already have ten thousand words written and will continue to post only when I have the following chapter drafted. Also, note the warnings of this chapter; this story will be very different from the previous and really should not be read by younger readers.

With that said, please review. It inspires me to write faster!

RT