Disclaimer: Avengers, Hunger Games, and all other elements belong to their relevant owners; I merely borrow them to write this story
Feedback: Always a pleasure to receive.
AN: Parts of this chapter were written with the assistance of David Knight, who inspired a key plot twist that will be revealed in this chapter; hope you like it
Falling Hope, Rising Threat
Johanna had heard a few stories from Thor and Steve about what it was like to travel through the Bifrost, but the actual experience was still the most incredible thing she'd ever seen. As she literally flew upwards, her artificial hand's tight grip on Jarnbjorn the only thing that kept her where she was, she watched the rainbow-patterned lights flashing around her, accompanied by brief glimpses of various landscapes ranging from some kind of ice field to a more conventional farm, before the lights vanished and she found herself staggering forwards in a large round room, a tall dark-skinned man in gold armour looking probingly at them.
"Heimdell-" Thor began, before he turned around and registered the presence of his fellow Avengers. "Lady Johanna? What are-?"
"Hey, you abduct a friend of one of our new members and think nobody's going to worry about her?" Johanna countered, adjusting her grip on Jarnbjorn as she stared the Asgardian king down. "I get that you've got your reasons, but I've got a big axe and I don't like it when the big guy thinks they can do whatever they want; you got a problem with that?"
"I would not recommend arguing with this woman, my king," the man who was apparently said, looking thoughtfully at Johanna. "She has endured great hardship at the hands of those who considered themselves her superiors even before she suffered her most obvious loss…"
"OK, can you people please stop talking about me as though I'm not here and tell me what the hell is going on?" Octavia yelled, looking indignantly at the two strangers before her gaze settled on the only Avenger here she knew. "What… what just happened to me?"
"Long story short?" Johanna shrugged. "Congrats, Miss Blake; you've made it to the place where gods hang out."
She wasn't surprised when Octavia merely blinked at that statement.
"Excuse me?" she said.
"You are in Asgard, Octavia Blake," Thor put in. "The jewel of the Nine Realms, guardian of all the others, and my own kingdom; I have brought you here because… to be blunt, I have questions that must be answered."
"Questions about what?"
"We knew that, we wouldn't need to be here," Johanna pointed out, before she smiled and nudged Octavia's side with her real arm as she indicated the view outside the room. "But hey, long as we're here, I say enjoy the view and roll with it while they're running a few tests."
Under normal circumstances, Johanna felt that Octavia would have had a few questions about what kind of tests Johanna was talking about, but when the girl saw the sight of Asgard spread out before them, it was easy to see that she had other things to think about. Johanna might have become fairly jaded about beautiful things since she'd first seen the Capitol and realised that everyone in it was waiting for her to kill or die, but with the knowledge that she knew the guy who ran this place, it was easier to appreciate the wonder and scale of Asgard as Thor led them along the gleaming bridge to the main palace.
Speechless.
That's how Octavia felt the moment she walked out of that chamber and started walking rainbow colored bridge of glass, seeing a vast star filled space to either side. Yet forward was a vast, majestic city off to the horizon.
An actual city; not the ruins of one that she saw on Earth but a city with golden towers taller than she could imagine stretching into the sky. It was all so majestic it felt like a dream. The closest thing she had to compare how she felt now was when she stepped out of the drop ship and became the first person from the Ark to touch the earth.
"Care to fill me in on why you dragged our little witch all the way up here?" Octavia's musings were interrupted by Bloodaxe's voice.
"I have a theory that must be confirmed."
"A 'theory'," Johanna repeated, looking pointedly at the Asgardian king, Octavia only able to watch in silent uncertainty as the two Avengers discussed her. "And you could only check this 'theory' by taking some girl all the way to your world which is somewhere else in some weird way I can't even really think about without getting a headache?"
"You will understand if I am right."
"Take your word for it," Johanna shrugged out of a lack of anything else to do.
"I don't," Octavia spoke up, looking at Thor when she said that. "Can't imagine how people are going to react to what you just pulled, but I sure as hell know my brother is going react."
"You have a brother?" Thor asked, sounding curious. "I thought no one on the Ark had siblings."
Octavia let out a mirthless chuckle. "No. Bell and I are the only ones and we aren't even full siblings. We both had different fathers, same mother. Our last name Blake, we get that from her."
"Ah."
For a moment, Octavia thought that Johanna was going to say something, but the chance was lost when the three of them were suddenly surrounded by a group of men and women wearing either robes or some kind of medieval-looking armour.
"My lord?" one of the men in robes said, looking curiously at the two humans. "What is-?"
"I have questions about Octavia Blake that must be answered," Thor said, indicating the woman in question. "Johanna Mason is here as her friend and guardian; I shall attend to immediate matters of state and will join you momentarily."
"You what-?" Octavia began.
"Word of advice; don't yell at the king," Johanna said, grabbing Octavia's arm with her metal one to reinforce the point before she smiled politely at the robed man. "Lead on."
"He can't just drag me up here and then-"
"Did you miss the 'king' part of what we just talked about?" Johanna asked, as the two Earth women began to follow the gathering of Asgardians while Thor twirled his hammer and flew upwards. "Besides, we can't exactly follow him when he's doing that."
"Yeah, that's you all over, isn't it?" Octavia shot a frustrated glare at the other woman. "Get us all worked up, and leave other people to do your work…"
"OK, seriously, what's with the attitude; I thought you liked us?"
"I liked the original Avengers because they got things done," Octavia countered. "What have you actually done since you met us, apart from giving Clarke a fancy jetpack and everyone else a lot of fancy promises?"
"Hey, toppling a bunch of paranoids with a massive ego in one of the most secure facilities on the planet isn't something you can just do, you know!" Johanna countered. "Believe me, I'd love it if everything came down to a swing of my axe and the bad guy's dead, but we've got a bunch of people in that mountain whose only crime could be that their leaders are a bunch of dicks who didn't give them an option; we just want to find some way to stop the Mountain that doesn't get those people killed at the same time!"
"Yeah, keep making excuses for holding back; it's not like you've ever lost your family-"
Octavia's opinion of her reflexes was swiftly readjusted when she found herself lying on the rainbow bridge with the large axe practically collaring her neck, the other woman glaring at her with such intense hatred that Octavia suddenly understood how she'd earned the name 'Bloodaxe'.
"I not only lost my family four years ago, but I spent those years forced to live with the knowledge that they died because I told the ruler of my country where he could stick his plans to make me a goddamn prostitute after I had to kill kids my age just to come home," the Avenger said, the axe pressing down so hard that Octavia almost thought she heard something crack to her side. "The next time you dare to say I don't understand what it's like to lose family, I'll make sure you lose something important when I bring this axe down."
There was nothing that Octavia could say to that statement that wouldn't sound weak to her ears, so she simply nodded awkwardly at the other woman.
"Good," Johanna said, removing the axe from her neck and helping Octavia back to her feet, wincing slightly as she released her grip on the other girl. "Is that bridge cold?"
"What?"
"Your hand just felt a bit chilly…" Johanna began, before she shrugged dismissively and turned to the other Asgardians, who were looking at the two Earth natives with uncertain stares. "What? We had things to talk about."
Standing alongside Octavia as she hovered in what Johanna could only think of as a red energy version of that first-prep make-up table from back in the Games, she wondered what exactly Thor was looking for. She appreciated that she wasn't exactly the best Avenger to bring along on a mission where any kind of high science was required, considering that she even relied on other people to do anything with her arm if it so much as twitched in a manner she hadn't asked it to, but she knew enough to gather that this thing was some kind of scanner like that 'MRI' thing Steve had dug up for the Avengers' medical facility back at their compound, and these people were definitely concerned about whatever it was they'd found.
This was one moment when Johanna supposed she should be grateful she'd never been a normal girl; she appreciated new sights, but when she had a mission to focus on, she wasn't going to worry too much about the fact that she'd been cheated of the chance to look around Asgard. She could probably talk Thor into giving the Avengers a proper tour at some later date, but right now, her main concern was that her new charge was all right.
"Problem?" Octavia asked, looking impatiently around at the various Asgardians running their hands over the energy surrounding her.
"Oddity," the woman who seemed to be in charge corrected.
"What kind of 'oddity'?" Johanna asked, not expecting the answer to be something she could understand but feeling obligated to ask anyway.
"Is it what I expected?" a familiar voice cut in.
"You're back already?" Johanna asked, looking at Thor in surprise as he walked into the room. "I thought you said-"
"As king of the greatest of the Nine Realms, I must be prepared to deal with any matters of state that arise when I am available, but I also make sure that my advisors are prepared to deal with most of those when I come to Midgard," Thor clarified, smiling slightly at Johanna before he turned to the woman. "I apologise for the interruption, but I must know; is it what I expected?"
"It is," the woman said, waving her hand to disperse the red energy web that held Octavia in the air, sending her gently back to the ground below her. "What I cannot understand is how this could have happened-"
"How what could have happened?" Octavia asked, swinging her legs over the side of the 'table' as she looked impatiently at Thor. "What's happening to me?"
"That is a complex story, but I believe I know who can provide us with the answers you seek," Thor said, indicating another door in the room. "Come with me, and I shall explain."
Lost for anything better to do, Johanna shrugged and walked off after Thor, Octavia falling into step beside her as they moved further into the palace. Johanna noted three vastly different men- one who looked like an older, grimmer Monty, one with blonde hair and a dashing edge to his manner, and one with a thick beard and a thicker belly- give Thor warm smiles as he walked past them, but otherwise the walk was a simple stroll through the palace.
Under other circumstances, Johanna might have asked who those men were, but it was clear that they had more urgent priorities right now. As they began to walk down the stairs, she started to develop a theory about where they were going, but it wasn't until they walked into a room filled with large white rooms with transparent walls that Johanna's theory was confirmed.
It wasn't the same as what they had back on Earth, but if this wasn't a prison, Johanna would eat her remaining organic arm.
"Wait here," Thor said, holding out a hand to the two women before he walked towards a particular cell.
Looking at the man inside, Johanna noted that, for a prisoner, it looked at least like he was housed humanely, even if the only furniture was a bed, a table with two chairs, and a bookshelf. The prisoner himself was a dark haired man dressed in green clothes, his hair long in a manner that could have been a stylistic choice or simply the lack of a barber, as well as an edge to his eyes that put Johanna in mind of some strange combination of Gloss and one of the morphlings in the Quarter Quell.
"Almost twenty years since we saw each other last," the man said, looking up from his book with a slight smirk as he registered Thor's approach. "You told me it was the last time before you had your guards drag me down to these cells. What has happened that the Almighty King Thor has come down to greet me?"
Johanna had to wonder why they'd come all this way to see someone who was far too smug for a guy who'd been a prisoner for almost twenty years. If he'd been in this cell for as long or longer than Octavia had been alive, what could he possibly know about her situation?
"The Maestro is dead."
The prisoner's smirk dropped for a moment, his eyes widened as he looked at the King closer, nothing the hammer at his side. "You have Mjolnir once more," he said in a more subdued voice. "You would only be able to carry it if you were worthy again." He looked past Thor, seeing the two women behind him. "And you must be, because you have brought humans with you. That's a far cry from the brother I last remember. You could not care less to help them."
Johanna listened to those words, but Octavia's eyes widened as she realised who they were addressing before Johanna could.
"Brother?" she said, looking at Thor in shock. "This is Loki, the guy who led that alien army that tried to conquer Earth?"
"I'm still of the mind it would have been better than the nuclear hell that came later; I wouldn't have scorched the planet," Loki said offhandedly. "So brother, why have you come down here, and with two girls from Earth? Are they your new pets?"
If Thor was angered by his brother's comments he didn't show it. "Johanna is a fellow Avenger and a friend. And my other guest, Octavia Blake isn't from Earth, not originally. She comes from the Ark."
The reference to Johanna as an Avenger had prompted nothing from Loki but a curious raising of his eyebrows, but when Thor mentioned the Ark, Loki's entire body shook, as if having a physical reaction to the name. His posture and stance became unguarded as he looked at Octavia with new eyes. The range of emotions playing on his face were varied but none were of the smugness or arrogance they had seen since they first walked into the prison. "...impossible..."
"What is your problem?" Octavia asked, unable to fathom this sudden turn.
"He sees what I saw in you, that and more," Thor responded, making Octavia hate this cryptic runaround she had been given. He looked to Loki once more. "The tests that we ran on you, it confirmed what I had suspected. You have Frost Giant blood, Jotun blood, running through you along with your human blood."
"Wait a minute, you're saying she's half human?" Johanna asked. "How's that possible? Last I checked, the Ark didn't exactly have any guests up there; how could she be half human on a space station that only had humans on it? "
"Because I was there."
Octavia's head snapped back to the cell, her entire attention now on Loki. "I was there, for three years, in hiding from my brother. I look at you, my child, and I see Aurora looking back at me."
"How..." Octavia breathed, her voice trembling as much as her body felt like shaking. "How do you know my mother? How can you..." The realization started to dawn her and yet she couldn't even voice it. She couldn't believe it to even be possible.
And yet Thor was the one to confirm what she already knew to be true. "Octavia Blake, allow me to properly introduce you to my brother. Loki of Asgard and Jotunheim. Your father."