california 02 // loki's romanoff prelude

twenty-seven // flames, pt. IV

'There's already a fucking helicopter landed,' spat Barton. Natasha peered out of the window, and sure enough, there was a huge black helicopter on the helipad. A few men dressed in black surrounded it, all armed with guns. 'Is it Dreykov?'

'Why the fuck would it be Dreykov?' Natasha tightened her hair back in a ponytail. 'I think it's Wilson Frisk's.'

'What's Frisk got to do with it?'

'Everything.' Natasha finished tying her hair and loaded her gun. 'Okay, I'm going down.'

'Wait, what?'

Barton turned around from the controls as she slid open the door to the helicopter. The wind buffeted her face, flowing back her hair, stinging her eyes. She peered down, and the helipad was a good twenty feet down.

'Go in closer!' she yelled.

'You're mental,' spat Barton, but he brought the helicopter down. Twenty feet dropped to ten, and Natasha braced herself to jump. 'Hi, lady, you're not leaving without me!'

'Who else is going to drive the helicopter?' she yelled back, and she jumped.

She landed hard, only just about managing to stay on her feet. The men on the right side of the helicopter didn't get time to notice before she shot them and they fell to the ground.

Suddenly, she felt arms tightening around her, and she jumped upwards, striking the man's jaw with her foot. Her hands found his gun and she wrestled it from him, knocking his own nose with it and smacking it across his comrade's face.

It had been a long time, but she still had it. She still remembered how to kill, after months of playing the peaceful teenager.

She loaded the man's gun - much bigger than her own - and shot down the three remaining men. She waited, but nobody else stirred.

Natasha dropped the gun and headed down the fire escape, down towards the flames.

'Loki!' she called, as she ran. 'Loki!' Downwards, downwards, ever downwards. People were screaming. How many people had screamed on the floors below, the floors now that were completely obliterated? Loki had known that Dreykov's daughter wasn't the only patient in the hospital, but he had burned it anyway. What did that make him?

'There's a fire escape on the helipad!' Natasha screamed at the screaming nurses, the screaming patients. They were all screaming - all of them. Because of Loki? 'You have to get them out of here! You-'

The building heaved alarmingly under them. Natasha saw what she hadn't before - that most of the patients were confined, strapped to life support, strapped to generators, strapped to their beds. They would go up in flames. She had to find Loki, and she had to tell him to stop, because there was nothing else that could possibly rescue them now.

The flames jumped out at her as she was running down a corridor and she just about dived out of the way. The edges of the flame caught the tip of her hair and she screamed for a while before her senses took over and she managed to put it out.

Coughing, the world spinning before her, trying her best to cover her mouth and nose with her T-shirt, she ran on. The heat grew unbearable. It was like she was sinking into hell itself.

'Loki!' She'd reached her limits, she couldn't go on. 'Loki!'

Nobody replied except the flames, which only roared after her.

'Stop struggling,' ordered Loki, holding onto the girl's thin shoulders. 'Jesus fuck, just stop!'

His powers were almost run down. He was exhausted from the fire, which was now eating everything. It was getting harder to keep the building upright, harder to keep himself from collapsing in the debris to his death. It took so much of his energy that he had had to lift the immobilising spell on the girl.