Half-Full

The sound of Lilith’s heels reversed her into the hall. “It’s time to step up our game.” She announced as she entered. 

“What do you mean?” Darcy asked, mouth full. 

“Manners, please.” Lilith said. 

“Excuse me if I’m not the lady of the most ancient and noble house of black.” Darcy bit back without any venom. 

“What happened?” Wanda asked. 

“The universe happened.” Lilith said. “Either that or it has a personal grudge against me.” She said. 

“Drama Queen.” Darcy said. 

“You mean you haven’t heard yet that Daddy dearest just ascended to the throne of Vanaheim weeks after being made heir, Princess Darcy of Vanaheim?”

“What?”

“Frigga’s intervention. The sight or something.” Eugenia clarified. 

“Great. Fucking great.” Lilith said. 

“You two literally hold the power of the universe in your hands. What’s the problem?” Bucky asked. 

“Because that’s the thing about chaos. Fighting it only makes it stronger.”

“How do you know for sure?” Darcy asked. 

“Practice duels. How else do you think he taught me magic? The stronger I got the more easily he beat me. The more I threw at him, the stronger he got. All those Asgardian god of this goddess of that, they’re not mere titles from ancient Vikings and their limited comprehension of the world.”

“You mean there’s a legitimate connection?”

“I can feel it.” Lilith said. “Always have been. Especially recently.”

“Why now?”

“The magic of Asgard touched me as soon as I set foot in the bifrost bridge. It should have touched you too.”

“I got nothing.” Darcy shrugged. “Youngest curse. Are you sure it doesn’t activate after you’ve lived for like a Millenium or something?”

“No. Youngest:… Darcy, you are the only one who will be able to control him.”

“Why?”

Lilith smiled a smile hinting at the venom within. “Because,” she says, “sister dear,” she said in the tongue of Asgard, “Ragnarok.”

Darcy tested the Asgardian words on her tongue. “The end of eternity?” She asked, translating it instinctively. 

“Almost. The end of the realm eternal. Asgard’s prophesied apocalypse.”

“Wait, prophecies? Really?” Bucky asked, unashamedly in disbelief. 

“Prophecy. First uttered by Queen Freya of Vanaheim, in theory our great-grandmother. I only believed it when I heard it come out of Luna’s mouth.”

Darcy asked, “What does it say?”

Lilith’s eyes fogged up as she channeled seer’s energy, although it might have been just an illusion for dramatic effect. “The youngest child of the House of Odin Allfather, half Aesir and half that of the one he looks down on most, will bring about Ragnarok. Through the eternal flame, a brought about by the half-sibling of death, the bringer of Ragnarok will set the realm eternal ablaze, and put in motion the end of the reign of Odin’s house, leaving the remnants to be ruled by a queen less connection to the people than to their demise.” The fog disappeared from Lilith’s eyes. “That’s just a rough translation though, it makes more sense in the original Vanir. Freya expected the bringer to be Frigga’s child, Thor, though she said the prophecy before he was born and therefore gender known. The half sibling of death, she expected to be Hela. And the Queen, she wanted it to be either herself, or, worst case scenario, Frigga. Odin would have expected to, after his death, Hela to come back in, somehow get her younger half-brother to say, lure Surtur to Asgard with the eternal flame, or maybe just reanimate her old army in Asgard’s crypts. Then Thor might have abdicated or something, going on adventures and the like and left the throne to Sif, or another such personage. But it’s about you, I’m the sibling of death, and the eternal flame can fuel fiendfyre, fiendfure that isn’t suicide. And the Queen? That’s going to be Jane Foster if it isn’t you.”

“How do you know this so well, Lil?”

“Because it’s the reason everything happened. This prophecy is the reason I was born. He’d always only loved the idea of me, what I could do. Then I got my hogwarts letter, ignored his ban and went anyways, and he realized raising a child to be the destroyer of worlds wasn’t a good idea. So he had you, and he left. I was just surprised he didn’t return when he realized that sixteen year old me had helped destroy one civilization. I was broken. Mind. Body. Soul. Half of me expected him to swoop in and point me in the direction of Asgard. I would have done it. But he didn’t. And now we have the one thing that can control him.”

“Me?”

“Us. Together.” Then Lilith looked around the room. “And not just us. All of us. This si why the Order of the Phoenix exists. Just like why Albus Dumbledor founded it to face Voldemort, now we stand here, together, to face the threats of the universe. To help where agencies like SHIELD and the Avengers cannot. Because we are more than they could be, because we stand together, united even when we are geographically apart.” Lilith said, and Bucky saw how she could get so many loyal to her. Lilith was born to be a leader. “Because we are the Order of the Phoenix, and we will always be there.” She declared, as the entire hall let go of any of their doubts, and joined in the feverish planning for what came next.

She closed out the last window after double-checking she had saved her code. Go-time. 

Only one person has declined being oh so cordially invited, the Winter Soldier’s protege. He had moped around for a few hours, and wasn’t that surprised, when he had gotten the news that the kid had joined Tony’s re-creation of the Avengers instead, with only 3 of its original founding members, himself, Rhodey, and Carol, the latter of which they knew could not be held by any chains and would instead leave Earth if the restrictions she signed got too bad. 

They were going to be better. 

Skye knew she was one of the lucky few who were close enough to the leader of the Order of the Phoenix to be able to see her face, or even meet her at all. Ward couldn’t, but she was more important than him, even as his rank had been boosted for bringing her in. 

She was officially third-rank, but in truth, she was in the inner circle, given the value of her probes. Skye could hack anything on the internet, and she could do so unnoticed.  She managed the Order’s online network, and, she thought satisfied, the hack me if you can banner on Stark Industries websites nobody had been able to take up, she had passed, and Tony Stark didn’t know. She had been waiting for that particular go-ahead for quite awhile now. 

 Her virtual probes idled, as she got up from her monitor. She walked back to her room, her nerves settling. 

A few hours later both she and Grant (because what kind of girl calls her boyfriend by his last name) exited her room, as Skye pulled on the last parts of her uniform. Bring the legendary Skyenet didn’t have a dress code, but when she went out as her other alter ego, the kick-ass vibrokinetic code named Quake, she couldn’t look as anything but Quake’s image. And she didn’t know, much less trust, the other members of the Protectors Program, also known as Project Kneazle, with her real face or identity. It might be necessary for going back into SHIELD, or rather what was left of it, under Coulson’s command since Fury went off the grid. She knew better, the White Witch had handed in a death certificate for him. 

This was going to be her biggest endeavor yet, but she would do it. She was Quake, she was Skyenet (and boy was she surprised none of the team had figured it out, not even Grant), but most importantly she was Skye Nikaia (a last name she had invented, sounding Asian enough to the uneducated American to match her looks, and American enough for the average Asian to not warrant a second look, overall combining words in multiple languages that meant no-name, mainly Russian because it was the best language to have words that sound like they come from elsewhere. Skye would be the first to admit she had a thing for irony as well as a healthy  sense of practicality and pragmatism, because choosing the Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean, or any other Asian language word for nothing nobody or no-name was just lazy and begging for someone curios to look into her).

And Skye Nikaia would persevere, and she would come out on top. She always had, through blood, sweat, tears, grit, and sheer force of will she had. 

And now? Now the Protectors Program would be her next step up. And now, she wasn’t alone. She and Grant were so alike in that sense, and they would climb higher together. 

"Now that we're all here, let's get started shall we, doll?"