HIM & I
Cross my heart, hope to die
To you, I've never lied
For you, I'd take a life
It's him and I, and I swear
Cross my heart, hope to die
This is our ride or die
You can confide in me
There is no hiding, I swear
Halsey – Him & I
– łł CHAPTER ONE łł –
She slammed through the metal service door and into the stairway railing. It rang up the shaft as she closed her fingers over the smooth black metal piping. She tipped her head back, felt her braid slide like thick rope down her back. Ninety-three stories rose above her, ending in a massive LED light.
Go Raine on his parade.
Raine grinned, jumping into motion like a racehorse from the gate; leaping up the stairs, boots pounding, hands ringing on the metal every time she slapped her palms to it. Her braid bounced against her back, and words spun through her conscience as she ran.
'He turned Barton… Selvig… who knows who else...'
'Agent Coulson is down. He killed him.'
'Approach target with extreme discretion.'
'Don't die, Agent Fording.'
'I don't plan to, Director.'
She shook her head as she grabbed the rails on either side and jumped three stairs; her smile slipped when she thought about Coulson.
Finally, she mounted the final flight of stairs and came to a brushed-metal door; she could see her fuzzy image in it as she approached. For a moment, she stood still, inhaling in the quiet. Reaching for her left arm, she pulled off the vibranium and admantium bracelet that clasped like a watch. It beeped shrilly once, before the blue light winked out. She slid it into a pocket on her uniform's pants and did the same with her right wrist.
"This is for Coulson," she muttered under her breath, inhaling and running at the door.
She slammed her hands against the touch-bar and came out in the penthouse at the peak of Stark Tower.
In the middle of what looked to be a face-off between the target and billionaire Mr. Stark.
Both men turned to look at her. Stark with a bewildered 'who are you?' expression, but the target turned his head slowly, serpentine, and when he focused on her she wondered if this was how it felt to have a staring contest with a cobra.
It was still, electricity charging the air, making it heavy.
Raine heard a thousand lives, a billion souls—sensed them in her blood and in her mind, screaming pleading. She felt the beat of Stark's heart and heard his fear. But from the target there was nothing… except for the steady pulse of shimmering blue-green humming over his heart.
Motion exploded all at once from the stillness.
The target heaved Stark through a window and whirled on her.
Rockets fired. The target lifted his alien technology and aimed, but the shot careened wide.
Something SLAMMED into him, knocking him flat.
Raine crouched near the floor, watching the rocket launch out the broken window Stark had pitched through, the compacted suit following his path.
A suit. Neat. Her mind flickered away from Stark and his advanced prosthesis.
Broken glass crunched under heavy boots.
She turned her head.
'His name's Loki. He's from Asgard. Related to Thor, but lacking his goodwill to earth.'
Loki came toward her, stepping with care like a lion on the prowl, holding his weapon lightly in his fingers, the wickedly curved blade pointed toward the ground. Sunlight danced off it, a bright spot of light against the grey floor. The alien tech glowed, humming softly, like a whisper.
Suddenly something in it screamed at her, shrill, high, relentless. She grimaced, shook her head. The sound rose, broke out, mounted into a crescendo like a wave. With a yell she lept to her feet, throwing out a hand toward the staff—
POWER boiled from behind Loki at a torrential pace like a ripple of heat.
He turned as it towered over him, throwing up his free hand before his face. A green blast came from his open palm—
SLAMMED against the sound-wave with a deep boom.
More glass shattered in the windows.
The tile beneath his boots splintered, snapped, cracked. He sank into the ground, refusing to give against the sound-wave.
Raine grit her teeth, pressing her outstretched hands toward the sound-wave.
Loki screamed—unbridled rage ripped it from him.
He lifted the gold staff, braced, and threw his weight against it as a cerulean blast burst outward from the living gem set in the blade, throwing the sound-wave toward the windows in shimmering ripples.
Silver and violet blinded her.
Raine heard herself shriek as the sound-wave shattered against her will.
PAIN raced though every vein. Two solitary tears tracked down her cheeks.
Forcefully she opened her tight-shut eyes and gasped in a breath, anger leaping up.
She felt the staff's alien strength, felt the power slithering, rippling, shimmering from—around through over within—Loki.
He breathed through his nose once very hard. His exhale rasped out between his lips.
She lifted her head, jerked herself off her knees unsteadily like a newborn colt. At the same instant he spun around, leveling the staff toward her. Raine locked her eyes onto it, saw it pulse like nebulae within the casing of azure crystal.
She stiffened all at once, felt her spine lock, hard. Blue threads spun outward in a black-velvet night, slithering like strands of a spider's web outward from the throbbing cobalt heart. Dozens—scores—of human souls, caged, beaten down, repressed with only a weakly-fluttering fragment unleashed; all of them bending to the will of the one who held the golden staff.
Barton–there was Barton!
—The tie to him was weak, she snapped it.
It broke with a clarion ring that echoed in her head. Distantly she heard someone snarl, an angry keen of pain.
Her eyes flew open when the azure center of the web flared. For a moment, her eyes shone brilliant sapphire. They faded to grey.
She stared at Loki. Hatred burned in his eyes; a radiant lapis lazuli.
He gripped the staff until his fingers turned a bloodless-white, braced his shoulders and his arms as the gem sent a whistling blast toward her.
Raine flew away from it, ducking down behind a length of padded bench-seating. The sound of the blast hitting the wall hummed in her mind, the path it left through the air burned into her brain like a contrail in the sky.
A wordless scream came from Loki.
Boot-steps crunched over broken glass.
Raine skittered to her feet and leapt up three shallow steps, ducking and rolling behind the bar. A small blast shuddered against the metal and stone barricade between her and him. Raine felt her heartbeat pound madly against her breastbone.
She threw her mind out, toward Loki's power signatures.
If she could only get close enough.
She set her jaw, wracking her brain for a plan. Nothing came up, nothing but one thought. She had to lunge at him, make as if to wrest that damned staff from his hands. With a nod to herself, checking her comm—it died when Barton hijacked the helicarrier—in case someone had managed to get the wavelength back on. But it was dead. Raine pulled it from her ear, flicked it away from her, and slid along the sleek tile to peer around the end of the bar.
Loki leapt on top of the counter in the same instant.
His boots slammed against the granite.
The sink head snapped in half.
The metal on his war-coat slapped and jangled like the chrome trappings on a parade horse. His leather hissed as it rubbed together.
Loki growled and lashed out a hand for her braid.
Raine ducked her head away and threw herself around the edge of the bar.
She rolled down three steps to the main floor of the penthouse. Each drop jostled her, and she felt breathless as she cambered onto her hands and knees.
Loki rose from his crouch on the bar. His head nearly hit the ceiling.
She jerked into movement. He leaped off the counter, reconnected with the floor, and without pause, pursued her. She came up short, whirled on him, and he nearly trampled her, but halted, wheeling back on his heels.
Raine lunged into him as he raised the staff. Her palms stung as they came into contact with the metal.
The power surged through her, fire swarmed through her veins. She gasped, her head reeled—
HEAT cleaved her core like a knife, and the ice flew after it in wild, chaotic disorder.
She breathed, it hitched. But her mind cleared, blocking the dazzle of saccharine power.
Loki attempted to tear the staff out of her hands with brute force. Raine drew down on the power in the air, weaved it into her muscles, willed it to fight back against Loki's strength.
The taut muscles in his jaw flexed, his eyes an incensed azure when she met them with her own soft grey. He shook the staff with a wild desperation, as if hoping that would throw her off, but she held on with renewed tenacity.
"I'm going to kill you, woman," he snarled, his voice rasping malevolently. "And when you are dead, I will bind your body to a pole and set it up high so all know what fate they will face when I am tested!"
Something cold clamored over her heart. Her lungs felt as if she had inhaled morning air on a winter day. Raine gasped, stared at him wide-eyed.
What…
A choked pant came from her; violent blue glazed over her eyes. Something in her mind screamed desperately. She felt as if she were drowning—an abyss of blue covering over her, enveloping like a blanket, whispering to succumb, to give in, to submit—the call of the void a siren song in her ears.
Loki smiled, and it was backed by the anticipation of victory. His eyes glimmered with absolute madness. Softly, like embers almost dead, fear—and something else her subconscious could not interpret—shone in the form of unshed tears.
Raine felt herself sinking toward the floor, her joints going weak. Her palms were damp and slipping, her fingers ached with holding on—
Let go, let go, let go!
—It pulsed through every beat of her heart out into her fingertips until they hurt with holding on. Stars shinned like a kaleidoscope overhead. PANIC filled her. No, no, no. She did not want to die; but what had she now? The void called to her sweetly, she could not ignore it; she had nothing left, she was done, failure, outcast—
Let go, let go, let go….
LET GO, LET GO, LET GO!
The strange flash of vision faded out, the chant in her head turned to a shrill, relentless scream. Dogged determination pressed against the onslaught of hypnotizing deep blue.
LET GO, LET GO, LE—
"N-no!" Raine panted, grimacing as she fought back against the crippling azure coursing throughout her body.
"Stop fighting it, Midgardian!" Loki's hissing voice pierced through the blare of sounds united in indecipherable cacophony in her head. "In the end it's not worth the suffering!" He bore down on her from his side of the staff.
Raine felt her knees buckle again. Her hands held the staff inside of his wide grip. She slid her hands down the gold rod, until the outside of her hands touched the insides of his.
Loki frowned, slackened his press for dominance, gaze flickering to her fingers, brows furrowing in bewilderment.
Raine half-opened her left hand, and her forefinger grazed over the top of Loki's. He shuddered, exhaled a gasp of surprise. Raine's power surged, transcending her body into his through that momentary touch of skin to skin. Her power licked up through his veins, tracing each and every flare of emerald and gold magic Loki possessed.
Then, without warning, Raine felt her strength slam into a cold wall of endless blue. In the dark plains of her mind her violet power recoiled, and instantaneously the blue wall lunged outward, meaning to seize the hesitating tendril.
Loki cried out, but there were no words in it. His fingers suddenly enveloped hers, clenching tightly.
Raine bit her tongue, coming out of herself and back to the fight, as his fingers relentlessly crushed her hands. Tears sprang into her eyes. She forced her power back, searching for a way through the blue wall—she must get beyond it to end this contest of strength.
Raine grasped for more power in the air, and then hijacked Loki's own strength. A dulled sense of elated mischief clamored through her emotions, and her eyes sparkled at her cleverness. She gathered his strength up alongside hers and slammed it into the azure wall.
Loki's spine stiffened. His fingers curled like iron talons in immediate response.
Raine screamed in pain. Loki echoed it as she employed their joint strength in battering against the wall around his mind.
"Get OUT!" Loki suddenly keened.
He gathered his power, as if he had hidden reserves of it she had not found—then she realized it lay concealed beyond the wall—and drove it like a fine point into her mental battering ram. Raine felt herself being routed.
It burned with a fire; she fled before the onslaught. But then she stopped.
Mauve replaced the violet, and she drew it up and worked it hastily into a net of chains. Emerald and gold bore down on her, so she flung the net over it, binding it down—unbreakable. Her heartbeat spasmed five times, but she steadied, breathed deep.
The man in front of her gasped, and his eyes flew open; tears tracked down his face in shock. Raine imagined she looked similar.
They panted heavily, for a moment neither of them fighting.
A shudder worked over Loki's entire frame, like a horse unsettling flies.
Raine swallowed, her throat dry.
The emerald and gold bucked and jerked against the net, but the mauve links held fast. Loki's eyes flashed blinding sapphire, hard as diamond with hatred and soundless terror.
"What… have you… DONE?" Abruptly he lunged forward, pushing the staff outward. Raine felt her feet fly from beneath her. Fear welled up in her throat.
She let go, fingers clawing the air as she tumbled backward down three steps.
Her back struck the concrete hard.
Her breath wheezed from her.
She looked up at Loki hastily. The staff shimmered, became a spear. He screamed, gripped the shaft of the golden spear in both hands as he lunged off the top step.
He was going to pin her to the concrete.
Raine spun on her shoulder, rolling out from beneath the point of the spear. She rolled over and over and over.
Raine landed on her stomach five feet away.
Her knuckles ached from when Loki had crushed them together beneath his fingers. She whirled her head to the right to look at her assailant. Loki cursed in an unknown language as the spear gouged a white line through the concrete where she had been lying moments before.
He stumbled, fell to one knee, palm pressed flush with the ground. His dark head whipped around, and his fixed his calculating, infuriated gaze on her.
Slowly, he lifted himself up.
Raine braced her elbows, got her legs underneath her, clawing backward, trying to regain her feet as he advanced.
"You… fettered me." His voice was soft—with contempt or wonder or disbelief she couldn't tell.
Raine came to her feet, feeling unsteady; for a moment her vision clouded—she honed in on the mauve chain, but it held fast; the magic behind it screeched at such restraint.
Raine looked at him, focused, drew in a breath, steadied her limbs. "You've never had anyone hold you down?" She felt surprised. She was sure the blue wall….
"Never, and you will be first and last to do so." He leveled the staff.
Raine noticed it too late. She threw up her hands, a sound-wave rose in front of her like a shield.
The cerulean ball of fire spread around the barrier, licked at the edges, turned to liquid smoke; flying upward and vanishing into the ether in an eye-blink. Her limbs trembled. Exhaustion flowed through her like a river, threatened to close over her. But the fetter continued to hold fast.
Limbs trembling, she dodged another blast and then pounded once more at the blue wall.
Again, it shrieked, and Loki shut his eyes and screamed.
Raine pressed and pressed and pressed.
She snatched more strength from the air.
A flying thing raced past beyond the porch outside, so she drew from that fabulous, alien power. The vehicle plummeted from the skies.
As she found more reserves, she grew stronger, and came nearer her opponent.
Loki stood still in the center of the wrecked penthouse, spine rod-straight, teeth clenched, breathing deep, ragged lungfuls of air through his nose. He trembled, then tossed his head violently.
Raine reached out, encircling her fingers around his gold bracers. She bowed her head, closed her eyes, pushed her strength into him, against the wall, flooded his mind. The wall rebelled, pitching and tossing wildly.
A soft cry came form Loki. Raine looked up. Tears made his face wet as if with raindrops.
A cracking sound emitted from her subconscious. A fissure ran jaggedly through the wall.
Loki's head lifted, his chest heaved with a deep breath, his eyes flashed open.
They almost glowed blue—
With a snap his eyes faded out to dazzling green—he panted, terror filled his expression, his hands made to clutch her arms—the blue crashed down again, turning gold and amber flecks in the green irises to silver-white. His gaze hardened.
Raine gasped as something bit along her strength, cold, heartless, cruel.
She felt something foreign—alien—touch her conscious. It hurt. A whimper crossed her lips. She bit back a scream as tears leaked from beneath her lashes. Loki shifted.
Raine's eyes opened wide. She stared at his face.
Loki flung her like a rag doll.
Glass cut through her uniform, caught in her braid, as she was thrown through a window. Her body rolled painfully over rough concrete, and then before she could reach for it with numb fingers, she fell over the balcony edge toward the streets of New York below.
Violet colored her vision. For a moment fear tousled with her, and then she let it consume her halfway. Bones shifted in her back, sound and scent amplified, she inhaled—
A roar shattered from her lungs.
She beat the air with her wings, tossed her head, felt her horns collide with a strange flying vehicle streaking through the air. It wheeled end-over-end before crashing into a nearby tower.
She looked, eyes rolling, to find the source of the noise overhead and saw a tear in the clear blue sky. Her mind fixed on blood and battle. Her bout with Loki faded out to nothing; for the moment.
– łłłł –
Raine transformed slowly.
She fell to her hands and knees amongst rubble and ruins and totaled cars, slowly raising her head as she watched the hole in the sky pop out of existence. Her leg was totaled, she mused as it bent two degrees and then would go no more. Director Fury would not be entirely pleased with being forced to ask Stark for another. Barton would joke, Romanoff would smile. Raine grinned herself, imagining the scene.
Then she closed her eyes, bowed her head.
Gleaming distantly in the dark of her conscious, the mauve chains still snared around the emerald and green—Loki's power pulsed, shuddered, flared, petered to nearly nothing, then pulsed bright again.
Raine swallowed.
He was exhausted—
As if he had fought a hundred fierce battles and not just their spat in the penthouse.
She followed the faint trail of his magic, weaving around in the dark, tracing down each path—she came to a swirling mass of deep green-nearly-black that whispered in the dark of her mind. Raine brushed against it.
AGONY made her see stars.
"Gah!" she bent over herself, arms wrapped around her ribs tightly. Tentatively she reached out, the whispers increased, but she could hear none of them distinctly. Then one voice—too much like Loki's own voice to not be his conscious—came to her thoughts. It babbled nonsensically about pain and avengers and defeat. There was something else—something he started to touch on but then shrank from in loathing. Steadily, slowly, one feeling dominated the others.
Violation.
Hatred seethed toward it, everything hinged on that sensation. Then—a soft, heady and sickeningly sweet, song came next—the desire for revenge.
Raine wondered, but then all at once everything fled into darkness. A soft orange glow appeared, and the name "Stark". The thought "drink" loomed up playfully, unsure, with longing. A flash of some drunken memory flared like a shooting star in Loki's mind and spun away.
Raine eased out from Loki's conscious; she dared not stay, dared not let him hear her, sense her, try to seize her. She left the fetter in place; it wasn't complete but it would be enough to restrain him.
Exhaustion overwhelmed her. Black swam in the back of her eyes. With shaking fingers she pulled the bracelets from her hip-pocket, latched them back on her wrists; the blue lights shone comfortingly as all the wails of a million New-Yorker souls fell silent.
Raine lay down on the uneven concrete, smelled the smoke and death and burning things, and pressed her eyes tight-shut.
A/N:
This started life as a one-shot. I intended it to be merely a gift for AnnMarie Pavese, but it grew as I wrote it. There are so many ideas to play with in this story, that I could hardly help myself. For the sake of propriety and feasibility, Raine is 24, not 17 like she is in SSTD. This probably won't be a very long fanfic, perhaps ten chapters. And yes, this fanfic was largely based off the song (the no rap version) Him & I by Halsey.
Enjoy, readers, and please review!
WH