Nikaido Tsuki was never supposed to fall in love. It wasn't in her programming. She reflected on that as she brushed her hair in front of her bathroom mirror.

"It's more than knowledge. It's truth."

That quote ran through her mind as she placed her brush down. Quickly brushing her teeth, she messily tied her hair into a bun and wandered into her kitchen. New York had fallen some time ago, and she reflected on the fact that she probably could have helped prevent it. "What's done is done. They could have had my help," she said to herself. "They didn't have to program me like a weapon."

And she was right. Director Nick Fury had programmed the Japanese girl, planning to exploit her powers. A fire mage by birth, her magic had been kickstarted by Project X, the project that also ingrained in her the need to obey.

The need for self preservation.

The need to never fall in love.

But... there was a single loophole.

Something the designers of the project never though of.

Tsuki had been able, from the first time she'd seen it, to touch the Tesseract. To hold it. While it was, as Selvig so aptly said, misbehaving, she had run a finger along it. Pictures, images, words... They'd all flashed through her mind, shattering the chains that the Project had put on her. Shattering the control Director Fury had.

So she'd left SHIELD.

So she'd watched Manhattan burn.

So she'd helped its destruction.

So she now stood on the ashes.

So she now stood by Loki's side.

Perhaps, somewhere, she knew it was wrong to forsake her people, her race.

She shook her thoughts away as her hair began to spark, flames eating at the tips as they did when she became too stressed. She extinguished the small flames as the same God she had been thinking of joined her.

"Glorious, isn't it?" he asked, twirling a strand of her hair around his finger.

"That all depends on your state of mind. And your definition of glorious," she replied, quietly.

"My definition of glorious... Why, you know it, don't you, my dear Ember?"

Ember. Her nickname. Her "hero" name. And now he used it as a pet name.

"Of course I know it..." she replied with a small smile. "It's ruling. It's decimation of those who dared oppose you. It's-"

"You," he cut in, wrapping an arm around her waist.

Smiling, she fell back to thinking.

So what, if she'd killed hundreds, maybe thousands?

So what, if she'd betrayed everyone?

So what, if she'd destroyed a meca of human life?

She was happy.

Was she to be denied that right, too, along with the right to die?

~Fin~A/N: A little short, but I like it. It's... nice. In a very weird way.