What are you really getting at when you sing?
There's something wrong and beautiful
Kill a snake and make yourself pariah king

"Pariah King" The Shins

"We need you to come in and get tested," Nick Fury said as soon as Sigi Maddox answered her phone.

Sigi sighed. She had just been in to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s new headquarters a few days ago to meet with Fury and answer a series of questions he'd had. Ever since the Avenger's Initiative had gone through and New York had half ripped apart by giant metal centipedes or something, Fury had become much more interested in her "abilities," as he'd dubbed them. He didn't call them her powers; at least he wasn't trying to make her into some superhero. Though she had managed to save the life of a man Fury trusted more than any other and indebted herself to Fury in a way he could never repay, there was no getting out of any of this; Fury and his organization knew what she was capable of. And he wanted her on hand.

"It's a waste of time," she smirked. "You know I can't get sick."

"That's of course not what I mean, Maddox. We need to sample your blood and test it for alien DNA."

"What? Why?"

"Well, as we know, your abilities are not connected to a human mutation. And ever since we've had these interactions with Asgardians, I'm wondering if it isn't something more… alien. The only others who have similarities to what you can do come from outer space."

"True, how many people do you know who make the song 'I Get Knocked Down' a reality and have some sort of bizarre mind power?"

Fury sighed. "Maddox, if you have more in common with that crazy minded brother of Thor's, I'm going to be really concerned."

"And you're not already?" She'd only briefed him a few days ago on the full array of what she was dealing with after she'd gone into PTSD after healing his agents in the aftermath of the New York incident. Neither one of them knew what in the hell they were dealing with.

"Just get in here, Maddox."

Fury hung up and Sigi wrinkled her nose. She'd been hoping for a day of R and R, but clearly that wasn't going to happen. She'd gotten too used to the long stretch of doing not much of anything that had been her everyday life the past few years and all this activity from Fury was going to take its toll. But this is what she'd wanted. She'd nearly begged him to allow her to come work for S.H.I.E.L.D.

When she'd turned eleven years old, Sigi Maddox had come to realize that something was not quite normal with her. In her youth, she'd always healed quickly and had a knack for making people feel better. But spontaneously, hours before her birthday party, she'd fallen down the stairs and broken her arm. At least, she thought she'd broken her arm. Instead, before her mother and stepfather could even drive her to the hospital, it'd knitted itself back together and she was as right as rain. Sigi's mother had always told her that perhaps she'd imagined the severity of the injury but Sigi would never forget what her arm looked like, hanging from its impossible angle. Years later, after she'd graduated from high school, she wound up in a terrible traffic accident that should have killed her and her passenger. Yet it hadn't. Somehow, Sigi had healed herself and, upon seeing her friend who'd been shotgun besides her bleeding and terribly injured, Sigi had reached out towards her and had done… well, done something. What, she couldn't recall. All she knew was that when the EMTs arrived, they'd found two passengers without a scratch on them in a tin can of a car with Sigi screaming hysterically. She'd been in and out of psychiatric hospitals and therapy centers for years after that but she couldn't explain what had happened. She couldn't make them understand that her hysteria had not come from the accident but what she had seen when she'd touched her friend. In that moment, when Sigi had apparently healed her, she had seen exactly how her friend would die. And Sigi knew that she would be completely powerless to stop it.

When her friend did die, exactly in the way Sigi had seen, several years after the accident, and many healings – and predicted deaths – later, Sigi had sent herself to a psychiatric hospital indefinitely, unable to cope with what had occurred. However, when a nurse had given himself a simple paper cut and Sigi instinctively had reached out to grab his hand, the very same thing happened. The cut healed almost immediately and Sigi saw that the nurse would die in his sleep, from old age. Sigi had been relieved at this revelation. Not every death she saw would be dramatic. Perhaps she could learn to deal with this ability after all.

But it was still seeing a death, having access to a knowledge that should remain unknown. She couldn't turn it off, try as she might. So though she had finally begun to deal with the repercussions of that what she could do, it was a long way to feeling any way comfortable with it. Perhaps she never would. After dealing with those injured in the New York battle, she was afraid any sort of control was out of her hands.

"Morning, Phil," Sigi said as she walked into Fury's office.

Phil Coulson had been mostly dead when Sigi was brought to him on the aircraft where havoc had most certainly been wreaked. Whatever sort of spear that had been used on him had nearly done its job. Except that Coulson had a trump card that only he and Fury were aware he possessed.

Nick Fury and his fucking Infinity Formula. Though Fury was no Captain America, the serum he took annually allowed him to sustain more injury than the typical human and heal quickly. Coulson had just agreed to begin the annual regimen himself (which honestly didn't take much persuading on Fury's part; all he had to do was namedrop the Cap and Coulson was in) as Fury knew he'd need his right hand man no matter what and felt Coulson deserved a promotion.

"So promotions come with a side of immortality in S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Sigi had said when this was explained to her. "Nifty."

But no matter how much Infinity Formula Coulson had in his system, an alien spear through the heart would still have been deadly. And thus, while Fury lied to the Avengers and convinced them Coulson had died in order to "give them a push," as Fury had said, Sigi made damn certain that Coulson did not die.

"Good morning, Ms. Maddox," Coulson smiled. "Fury's waiting for you in the first lab on the right."

"Thanks." Coulson had never asked her about what she'd seen when she'd envisioned him dying (again) and she was grateful. Mostly because she was none to certain of what she had seen for him.

Fury was pacing about the lab as Sigi arrived, flipping through a file of notes. Her notes, recently complied, she presumed.

"Let me cover what we've got so far, Maddox," Fury said, scanning the papers with his one eye. "Healing abilities, macabre divination while healing, inability to get ill, spontaneous self-treatment… mother is half-Welsh, half-German; biological father is unknown. You have never had the flu, chicken pox, any human illness, not even the common cold. Sound about right?"

"Yep." Suddenly a tech appeared beside her, and stabbed a needle into her arm, collecting. "Ow! Shit!" she cried. The tech removed the needle and Sigi looked down. A drop of blood rolled out and, a moment later, a tiny scab appeared.

"Sorry about that, Maddox," Fury sounded like he was trying not to smile. "We weren't sure what affect drawing blood would have on your healing so we thought it best to do it while you were off-guard."

"Well congratulations on that one," Sigi grimaced. "Still hurts. I don't have invulnerability to pain."

"Scan that and get me the results ASAP," Fury said. The tech nodded and left the room. "What you did on the boat, in New York, for Coulson… Sigi, don't take for granted that what I think you can do is amazing. But it worries me that we don't know where it came from. Even you can't remember."

Sigi shrugged. "It was just there. I think it was always there. I never really got injured as a child; I can't remember if I was just overly careful or if I was healing myself. Until I broke my arm, I had no idea what I could do."

"I do have to pry at something. Your father…."

"Never knew him." They'd been over this, repeatedly.

"Sorry, I meant your stepfather. He told me that your mother had an interest in Norse mythology. That didn't happen to affect your namesake, did it?"

Sigi sighed. "It did. My full name is Sigyn."

"I was afraid you were going to say that."

Fury left the room and Sigi stared after him in confusion. Nick Fury: international man of mystery and royal pain in the ass. Coulson came back in to chat with her though, so at least she didn't have to sit in the lab alone. It seemed he'd been going to Portland a lot to meet up with that cellist of his and Sigi couldn't help but gush with glee at this information.

Fury burst back in half an hour later, waving a sheet of paper on her nose.

"Asgardian. You're part Asgardian."

"What?"

"The planet Thor is from. Your father was an Asgardian. Has to be."

"Whaaaaa…." Sigi drawled, unable to formulate actual syllabic pronunciation at the moment. When she'd regained the ability to speak, she cried, "How is that even possible? My mother did not sleep with a space alien."

"The evidence begs to differ," Fury shrugged.

"But have you seen Thor? He was probably a good-looking space alien," Coulson assured her.

"Do I look like I could be related to a good-looking space alien?" Sigi cried.

Coulson opened his mouth a few times, making no sound. "I'm not going to answer that question.

Sigi rolled her eyes. Her appearance didn't much matter to her, but she was certainly no Thor. Strawberry-blonde hair, freckles, green eyes. There was nothing powerful or enigmatic about her appearance. But perhaps that didn't matter. Perhaps there was something more than attractiveness that marked her a something other than human.

There was something other-worldy about her eyes and her mother had always said her ears and cheekbones made her look elfish. But she thought that had just been her mother's way of making her sound unique and pretty in her awkward teen years. But now…

"I'm part alien," Sigi said slowly, saying it more for the benefit of her mind to register and accept it.

"Asgardian," Fury clarified.

"So what does that mean?"

Fury raised his eyebrows. "Want to meet your kin?"