The sweat dripped down from your neck onto your back. Your muscles protested as you lifted your arms once more and pulled your chin over the bar for another set of pull-ups.
The gym got unnaturally warmer as you controlled your breathing and held your breath. A fire, settling in the atmosphere, waiting to be unleashed.
"I could help, you know. With your powers." The deep voice said from behind you.
"I don't need your help." You grunted pulling yourself up one more time. "What I need is for you people to leave me alone." You dismounted the bars and gathered your belongings.
"You can't just stay isolated forever. It's been months now. We've already taken down two HYDRA facilities with your help. When are you going to accept that you're a part of this team? Whether you like it or not."
"I am not a part of this team. I will never be a part of this team. I will never be a suck-up! Like you." You threw your bag over your shoulder and headed for the exit.
As you reached for the bar of the door, a sharp 'thwip' of a blade landed where your hands were about to push.
"Come on, darling. One round." Loki said trying to goad you. You took in a deep breath, the air around you circulating, then you exhaled.
"What will it take for you to leave me alone?"
"Tussle with me." He said and you raised your lips in annoyance. You just knew that he had a different definition of 'tussle.'
"Fine. If I win, you leave me the hell alone." You barked as you dropped your duffel bag onto the floor.
"And If I win..." he said as his smirk grew nauseatingly wide, "...I get to take you out on a date. Do peanut butter and jelly sandwiches sound good?"
"Pathetic. For a prince, I thought you'd have something more luxurious in mind."
"Ahh, so you have thought about me." Loki's grin couldn't be wiped off. "So, what should we do on this date that you've already thought of?" He started circling you. A dagger formed in his hand and he twirled it in the air.
"Why don't you just look inside my head? You're good at trespassing into other people's privacy."
"As much as I want to see what goes on in that delectable mind of yours, I won't do it unless you beg me to. And I do mean, beg."
You picked up a rattan staff perched on the weapons rack on the wall. You twirled it behind you as you lunged down into a battle stance. "Come on then." You said beckoning him.
He lunged and twirled towards you, unleashing hidden daggers in his wake. You used the staff and twirled it in front of you, blocking his onslaught attack. One of the sharp blades caught itself at the end of your stick. You dislodged it and threw it in the air. With a swing of your staff, you propelled it like a baseball towards his head.
It went straight through his image, lodging itself into the wall behind him. In a matter of seconds, he duplicated himself and surrounded you with his clones.
Your breathing got heavier. Your body needed more oxygen. You were tired from having already worked out an hour prior. The heat in the room rose higher as more and more particles tried to alleviate the need for air in your body.
You swung your staff quickly in a circle, passing through each clone until it got close to the true Loki. He stopped the staff from hitting his head with his hand and that's when you pulled him towards you.
You let go of the staff and cradled his head in your hands. The look on his face was priceless. Arrogance. Shock. Confusion. Acceptance. Then...smugness.
Your lips nudged his, telling him to open. As he did so, his hands trailed down the side of your torso, holding you delicately. He tilted his head giving you further access.
You pressed your lips into his and you began to suck the air out of his lungs. He realized too late what you were doing. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. He couldn't yell out for help as he fell to his knees.
He tried to claw your hands away from his face. but he was too weak and winded to do anything.
You continued to coax his breath out until his lips started to turn blue and his eyes turned red. You pushed him down onto the gym floor and finally let go of your hold on his lungs. "And stay down!" you growled, angrily.
Loki took a huge gasp of air and coughed. He's alive. He'll be fine, you thought as you gathered up your belongings and headed towards the exit.
Months. He was right. It had been months. You would never admit that you had a better chance of stopping the HYDRA facilities with the help of The Avengers. With their information on where certain SHIELD and SWORD facilities were, you were able to ascertain which ones had been compromised and which ones were ok to leave alone. For now.
But in all your dismantling and self-righteous justice, you still weren't able to find him.
So you decided to do some searching of your own. You went out each night and stalked from the shadows. You didn't trust anyone to go with you. If SHIELD was just a front for HYDRA activities, then what were The Avengers a front for?
Sure they were great against apocalyptic events, but real life is a lot more than big events thrown together. It's the small ones that, if left unchecked, snowball into those big events. Maybe, just maybe, in all your dealings and vigilante justice, you could've stopped someone's villain origin story from happening. Stopped them from becoming someone like you. Jaded and just angry.
In the end, you decided that you couldn't trust these people. The ones that were formed by the same organization that imprisoned you for your powers. You would use them, then you would leave.
"Ahh, did he get to you again?" a deep voice rattled in the shadows behind you. You turned from the building ledge you were sitting on to find The Devil himself landing next to you. His horned helmet looked sharp and menacing under the city lights.
"How would you know?"
"Cuz I can hear it. Your heart does this weird rhythm every time you have an interaction with him." Ugh, there is no way you have any sort of feelings for Loki.
"Ya. It's called homicidal anger," you retorted. Red just laughed. He didn't have the heart to say that it sounded more like a romantic infatuation to him, an attachment. But, in this crazy world that you supers live in, one can be interchangeable with the other. So who was he to say what you were feeling?
"Have you stopped anything tonight?" He asked you.
"No. You?"
"Petty robberies and a thieving ring up by the docks."
"Ugh. You always get the good ones. Why don't they come around my neighborhood anymore?"
"You're complaining that your neighborhood is...safe?" Red said with incredulity.
"I just needed something to do. I feel like I'm not getting anywhere in my search." You said rolling your eyes, exasperated that your search for him has turned fruitless.
"Aah. I see."
"Says the blind man." He let out a puff of breath as a laugh. He then patted your shoulder with his knuckles.
"There." He said pointing to the dark alleyway. An unmarked van just pulled up and two men walked out in dark clothing. "There's a third person. In the van. A woman. She's breathing, alive. Unconscious."
"I got this."
"Are you sure?" he asked. Just then Red's head turned to the side as if he heard someone call out his name. "Hmm. I got to go." He said with a grin. He turned back to you. "You got this. I'll see you next time."
"Laters, Red." You said and watched him jump to the ledge of the next building. You took in a lungful of breath as you jumped the five-story building. You blew out through your mouth, slowly and down, helping you float to the sidewalk.
The two men looked at you suddenly. "Boys, whose in the back?" you asked.
"Would you like to join her?" asked one of them while the other moved behind you.
"No." you took a deep breath and let it out quickly, blowing a windstorm, knocking out the first man. The man behind you grabbed you by putting his arms around you and caging you in. You struggled to get loose, but he was strong. You tried to hold your breath to start a fire, but the first man recovered and gave you a backhanded slap. It knocked the wind out of you and you struggled to breathe. Your assailant behind you squeezed harder.
The lack of oxygen in your body made the surrounding particles encircle you. You tried to breathe, your bout earlier with Loki made you tired and faint. Your body couldn't get air fast enough.
Embers started at the man's pant leg and traveled up his body. Another flame erupted on your captor's arms. He soon let go of you as the flames grew higher. You fell to the ground, no oxygen, almost blacking out.
That was when you heard the soft purring of a motorcycle engine stop in front of you. You heard a scuffle. Some grunts and a painful yell as a fight broke out while flames surrounded your vision.
"Come on, darling."
"No!" you screamed. Then blacked out.
A constant beep from a monitor made its way through your consciousness, forcing you to wake up. Your eyes squinted and watered at the bright light overhead. You held out your hands to cover your eyes and noticed an IV stuck on your hand. You slowly got up feeling the tubes of oxygen in your nose.
"Sorry about that. We had to make sure you got enough oxygen or you'd start a fire in the infirmary." Stephen said to you.
"What am I doing here? What happened?" You moaned.
"Karma, if you ask me. You got the wind knocked out of you." Loki said from behind you. You let out a sigh of disappointment and tried to get yourself out of bed.
"Nope. You are staying here. Until I say so." Stephen tried to push you back down. "You're lucky I was in the tower when Loki came in with you. Otherwise, you'd have suffocated and died of smoke inhalation." You unconsciously took a deep breath and let it out. Swirls of air drifted past your lips making a small hurricane on top of your hand.
"I'm fine." You huffed showing your demonstration to the doctor.
"Just stay. If you're truly fine, I'll let you go in an hour. Perks of being an Avenger." He said winking at you. Ugh, I am not an Avenger!
Dr. Strange left with your chart, leaving you and Loki behind, alone, in the medical room.
"So, do you often go out at night seeking thrills?" he asked you seriously. Your eyes raked over him up and down, noting that he quickly recovered from your bout earlier. Although, perhaps, you heard a slight twinge of hoarseness in his voice.
"I don't see how that's any of your business."
"You are a part of this team! You should be glad that someone was there to help you. Those two criminals would've likely dragged you off with their other victim."
"I could've taken them!"
"Sure. Would that have been before or after your horned friend in red abandoned you?" Loki snapped. You realized that he saw more than you thought. How long had he been following you? Red must've known. Is that why he left so quickly? Ooh, he'll pay for leaving you with him.
"Jealous? Lucky Charms?"
"Not at all. But if that's what you're into, maybe I can wear my horned helmet next time we 'tussle.'"
"As, if." Just then, a huge commotion of nurses and agents ran through the window of your medical room.
"Ah, it seems that Sgt. Barnes and Sgt. Wilson are back from their four-month long mission." Loki noted under his breath.
A man with short, cropped hair and piercing blue eyes stopped in front of the window to your room. He was being assessed by the medical staff and greatly annoyed being done so. You took one look at his metal left arm and gasped a lung full of air.
"NO!" you screamed. "No, no, no, no." you continued saying as you hurried off your bed, pulling the IV from your hand and the tubes from your nose.
"Zee, what's the matter?" Loki tried to reason with you. You tried to shake his hand away from you. You tried to push him away. There is no one that'll stop you now. "Zee! Look at me." He yelled.
You pushed him back. "NO!" you yelled out. You screamed at him to let you go. The commotion in your room attracted the attention of the people outside. For a brief moment, you locked eyes with the metal-armed man. You locked eyes with Sgt. Barnes. You locked eyes with him, your abuser.