Chapter 30
“Jane!” Darcy yelled as soon as Thor brought her back. “Jane, are you ok?”
“Yeah.” Jane smiled. “I’m ok.”
“You have that look about you.” Darcy muttered. “Wait, did you two finally-”
“No” Jane answered very hastily to Darcy’s hand-innuendos. “No, look.” She showed off her necklace. “He proposed. The necklace is an Asgardian thing.”
“Awesome. Now, can you confirm or deny some of the things I’ve heard?”
“That’s going to be the end of the good news. Asgard was attacked, Thor defeated the bad guys and there’s an army there, mounted on literal dragons, they say they’re also from Earth but I barely believe them and that’s also only because the Ambassador does. They were backup. Thor’s dad died in the battle so now he’s the King of Asgard. He offered me to come to Asgard, for good, to continue my research there.”
“Jane, that’s awesome for you.”
“I wanted to ask if you could come too. As a friend, and for research. Lab partners forever.” Jane asked.
Darcy hugged her, and for once, she was unable to keep the emotion from her face. “Jane, that’s awesome for you, and I did tell you I’d go to the ends of the universe, not only Earth, with you, but I can’t. Not to Asgard. Even while Thor’s King.”
“Darcy, Asgard’s awesome.” Jane said, as she looked in Darcy’s face, pulling out of the hug. Then she saw the emotion in Darcy’s eyes. “Why are you so afraid?”
“Jane, can I tell you a story?” Darcy asked, and she did. She told from her perspective, even smoothing it over a bit, the tale of how an Asgardian god had come down to Earth. Jane started saying she knew the story, it wasn’t a story, she had been there, but Darcy continued. “It wasn’t Thor,” she said.
She told of how the Asgardian god had been fascinated by the world that was off-limits to his people and then when a local girl, but also a witch, a very powerful one, had fallen for him, he had married her in secret and eloped. “Well, at least that’s how my sister told it.” And then she told of how the marriage had a child, a daughter. But there was an evil wizard who thought the woman, because of her parentage, no magical, didn’t deserve to live. He killed her, and he tried killing her daughter, but the woman had created a shield fo sorts, so that her daughter couldn’t be killed. And so the orphaned girl, because few knew of her father, was sent to her aunt to be raised. Her father raised her as well, raised her as he had been. For ten years she prospered. And then her father had gotten remarried and had another daughter. The second daughter, she never got to know her father. The father left before the second daughter could even see his face beyond pictures with her elder half-sister. The elder sister went to a school of magic, but the evil wizard. wasn’t actually dead, it turned out. The younger sister grew up on stories of her father, fang Irving from her mother, and unbiased truths, of the good times and the bad, from her sister. When she was 5 years old, the evil wizard who had tried to kill her elder sister for so many years made a return to his full power, and in the process of trying to kill her sister, he had exterminated a whole species, including himself. He had killed everyone who had served him and everyone the elder sister had held dear. But the sisters still had each other, and their pain only made them stronger. The elder sister, while raising her best friend’s son, also taught her younger sister all that she knew, of magic, and of the world. When her younger sister honed her magic, she found a place in the oval network her sister had built. The younger sister built a name for herself, nobody ever seeing her face, and met her boyfriend that way. The younger sister never could find a way to tell her best friend the truth, the truth about both her parentage and her other work. “I am that girl, Jane. And can you guess who, exactly, was my beloved sperm donor?” Darcy asked, meeting Jane’s eyes.
“Your eyes…”
“I only ever looked at Thor’s muscles. Not boyfriend poaching involved, I was just deathly afraid of what would happen if he found out. It took Lilith until she was pregnant, three years into her marriage with Tony and 12 years after they started raising Teddy together that she told him. None of the Avengers know, Dudley Dursley and Hope Van Dyne know because he grew up with the guy as an uncle and they’re practically married.”
“And me? Why has it taken so long? Darcy, I don’t care who your father is, I've always known it’s been a touchy subject, whether it be because he left or, well, like I always assumed, in prison or something, or because he’s an alien, it doesn’t really matter.”
“Janie… oh my gosh, you think it’s Thor?” Darcy exclaimed. “No, no, no. You're overthinking this.”
“His mom has the same eyes.”
“No, Jane. I’m not talking about Thor, I’m talking about the guy who plopped down on Earth a few years ago to do some mass-murdering with an army he got from hell if i know where, coincidentally Thor’s younger brother.”
“No…” Then Jane hugged Darcy. “You’re still the same Darcy to me, whether Loki’s your biological father or not.”
“I’ve never heard it said out loud like that. Lilith first talk about him, but considering Tony barely restrained her from killing him after he attacked four years ago, I’d say she has a better reason. Well, daddy issues sort of run in the family.”
“Yeah, Thor told me.”
“So does being a drama Queen.”
“Technically you’re a literal princess.”
“The King of Asgard can sense all members of his family on Asgard, and if he looks, off it as well. Jane, I really don’t want Thor to find out. I didn’t get a firsthand Asgardian education like Lilith, but even I know parentage to them is far more important, yourloteral only last name on Asgard would be your patronymic, fathers name and then son or daughter tacked on.”
“So I would be Jane Johnsdottir?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t even change after marriage. Good thing is they don’t actually have sexism.”
“That’s good.”
“Jane?” Darcy asked.
“Yeah?” They were relaxing on a couch, ignoring all propriety.
“I have a lifespan of a minimum of five thousand years. I actually look 17 but I take these things that make me look in my late 20s like I am.”
“Why 17?”
“Magical maturity. I aged normally as a teen, acne and all, but I won’t actually look in my mid 20s for many centuries to come.”
“Darcy, what did you mean by the second part?”
“Have you ever heard the myth of the WhiteWitch? Not like the wizard of oz, like the intelligence myth. Never mind, why would you-”
“I’ve heard of it. SHIELD thought it was me, that’s why they shot. And then there’s the Winter Soldier”
“Me and Bucky.”
“He’s in his late 20s, how could he have been around since SHIELD was founded after WW2?”
“The whole Bucky Barnes grandson is a fake. He’s a super soldier, they also age weird, and he was brainwashed by Hydra for most of that time, he wasn’t himself. He got cut off from that when I brought him in, in 2002. He’s his own person now.”
“But you two are actually assassins?”
“I don’t kill for no reason, Jane, but some people are too exempt from the law for any other way. I’m no saint, but I’m not an insane person who kills for no reason anyways. I’m not like him.”
“I believe you, Darcy. I just…”
“What?” Darcy asked, apprehensiveness bleeding through her voice.
“It’s strange I guess. I’ve wondered about who the White Witch actually was for years, since I found out why they shot, but I never considered they chose the right house.”
“Do you believe I should have died?”
“No. Of course not. You killed the woman who killed the president. If that’s not a bad person I don’t know who is.”
“She was the one who invented Bucky's mind control.”
“And the president?” Darcy’s no answer was answer enough. “Then who did?”
“Natalia Romanova. Otherwise known as the Black Widow.”
“Good.” Lilith Stark told Wanda for the first time.
“Thank you.” She said, her slavic accent much lighter than it had been when she had first met Lilith in Sokovia.
“Pietro. What’s your record?”
“I broke the sound barrier, and then I broke my shoes. These stayed on for record-breaking time.”
“Good. Those were the old version, the new ones should stay for good.”
“What now?”
“You’re trainings done. Now, you get to choose your familiar.”
“Like Eugenia?” Pietro asked. Wanda and her were friends, but Pietro had finally gotten the guts to ask her out recently.
“Her training was smaller because her potential also was. Now let’s see who you get.” She said, shooting several charms at them.
“That felt strange.” Wanda noted, as figures shot out of their chests.
“Remember that feeling. That’s your patronus, you need to be able to summon one even under the strongest fire.” They did. “Now recreate it.”
Ten minutes later, Pietro had a Wampus cat, and Wanda a hippogryph.
“Good. Your patronus will change as events happen to you, but with the charm I just cast, it will temporarily be your familiar.”
“What defines a familiar?”
“An animal capable of sentience but without it, the bond occurs when your sentience is placed within the animal. Now,” she side-along apparated them to the Scamander Sanctuary, a place so heavily warded that it and all the animals inside it survived the xenocide.
She opened the enclosures with their respective animals, and helped them activate the bond.
“This feels so… strangely wonderful.” Wanda said, as her hippogryph flexed its wings.
“It’s awesome.” Pietro grinned, as his wampus jumped up and about.
“Without you they only have self-preservation instincts. The bond does not need close contact but it will feel better if you do. Now, the next step.”
“For familiars?”
“No. You are both powerful, and not only that. You ate up everything I could teach you and more. I don’t see myself in you, I see the potential for the future. Wanda, you’re going to be right under Darcy, you are a lot like her. Powerful and you can do things yourself, but also very much capable of managing a network. Pietro, I have a very specific task in place for you.”
“What is it?”
“You’re going off-world.”