Swan Song ✧ STEVE ROGERS [✓]

17 - The Start of a Team

WHEN STEVE RETURNED TO THE APARTMENT, HE FOUND RAEVANNA ON THE COUCH, WIDE AWAKE AS SHE SAT CROSS-LEGGED ON THE PIECE OF FURNITURE. There were two open briefcases on the coffee table, and she was flipping through the contents of one, with several files on the table and by her sides.

"Agent Hill came by," Raevanna said without looking up, hearing Steve enter. "She dropped these off."

Steve nodded, walking over and moving a file so he could sit down next to her. "Yeah. It's a mission."

"I figured." Raevanna glanced at him. "Where did you go?"

"Just to the old boxing gym down the street," Steve replied, then added when Raevanna frowned, "I just needed some time to think. It's okay."

Raevanna nodded, turning back to the files. "These are pretty crazy. I had no idea they kept tabs on all these people."

"People?" Steve frowned in confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"Only one of these files is about the Tesseract," Raevanna told him. "The others are about Loki, and some other people with special... gifts." She handed him a file.

Steve opened the file, glancing at his girlfriend. "Do you know him?" Raevanna cocked her head in confusion, so he explained, "Loki. Do you know him?"

"I know of him." Raevanna shrugged. "He's the Norse god of mischief. He's ambitious, power-hungry, and manipulative, and he loves to orchestrate chaos through the form of mass destruction and pointless murder."

Steve nodded, looking down at the file in his hand before looking up at her. "And what about these other files?"

"They're all about the candidates for this project called the Avengers Initiative," Raevanna told him. "Fury set it up in the nineties. From what I can tell it's a team made up of extraordinary people to fight the battles that man never could."

Steve's head moved up and down in a nod as he sensed the hesitation in Raevanna's voice. "Do you want to do this mission?"

Raevanna sighed deeply. "If I'm being honest, no, I don't. But I've read through these files, and I don't think these people are capable of stopping Loki on their own. They're going to need us." Standing up, she took her hair out of its loose ponytail and stretched. "I'll let you take a look at those. I'm going back to bed."

Steve nodded, watching her as she retreated down the hall to the bedroom. Once she was gone, Steve turned to the files and flipped through each of them, trying to get a better idea of who he would be working with. Then, he reached for one, but hesitated when he saw it was the file on Raevanna. Steve stared at it for a moment, feeling like it would be prying if he read it, but he was curious. So he picked it up and opened it before he began to read.

He was surprised about how little information they had on her. The bulk of it was just a basic profile of her and her abilities, but even that was limited. There were a few reports covering her heroic deeds back in World War II, as well as several post-war articles inquiring about where she had gone. But what intrigued him even more was when he saw a map tucked in the back of the file, and when he took it out he saw it was a map of the globe with a large red X in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle, and with several faded pencil lines stretching from the X to various spots all over the globe. When Steve saw Howard Stark's signature at the bottom, he realized that Howard must have been looking for Elyon, trying to find where Raevanna lived so he could go back. Though what the faded lines meant, he wasn't certain, but he figured it was all the routes one could take to Elyon.

Steve sighed, realizing that even though he was dating Raevanna, there was still a lot that he didn't know about her or her way of life. He wanted to know, that much was certain. But he had no idea if she would tell him everything.