Disclaimer: Avengers, Hunger Games, and all other elements belong to their relevant owners; I merely borrow them to write this story
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Falling Hope, Rising Threat
"OK," Johanna said, looking urgently at Thor. "You're telling me that only is this girl not even fully human, but now we've got to tell her that we're going to need to turn her into something that isn't even human if she's going to live?"
"There is no 'we' in this-" Thor began.
"You gave me your old axe and let me come up to this freaky ass other dimension to confront one of your biggest, most shameful secrets; you trusted me with enough of your little secrets in the last few hours that I think we can say we're in this for more than just the fact that we're Avengers together," Johanna said, looking at him with a pointed stare before shifting to a brief smile. "Besides, I came up here to be sure you took the human factor into account; I'm not going to stay out of things just because you don't find it comfortable."
"I appreciate your perspective, but this is… with all respect, this is not a situation that you should be involved in," Thor explained solemnly. "You are not responsible for what has happened to Octavia-"
"We're Avengers, Thor; you might have screwed up when you ditched her like that, but that doesn't mean you deserve to take all the guilt for screwing up once when you're trying to do better," Johanna said. "Let's just fill her in and let her take it from there."
Staring down at herself as she sat in the room set aside for her- a room almost the size of her family's old residence on the Ark, but even larger now that she was the only person in it- Octavia wasn't sure what to think.
She'd spent every moment since she first set foot on Earth trying to define herself outside of her family, whether by learning useful skills to running off with Lincoln to training with Indra, and she'd never felt like she'd found her place. She'd started to wonder if there was just something broken in her, if her screwed-up upbringing meant that she could never adjust to being part of a 'community' bigger than her and Bellamy, and then…
God, she thought, smiling morbidly as the thought hit her again, my bio-dad is basically a freakin' GOD…
She was never going to fit into a human community; she was something more than human…
Raising her hand, she tried to call upon those icy abilities she showed during her struggle with her 'uncle'. She could feel the temperature actually drop within her hand as she fought to bring it out, but the moment frost had covered her hand, the outstretched limb began trembling uncontrollably. She tried to hold it steady, but a sudden pain overcame her before she could really focus, forcing her to the ground while icy streams were coming from her hand.
Damn it! Not again! Fighting back the pain, she willed herself to cut off the source of the frost and the streams stopped coming from her hand, which had turned blue once more and was taking longer to return to her human skin tones.
"Why does it hurt so much?" she asked through clenched teeth. When she had been so angry with her 'uncle' she had created a snow storm inside the prison without even trying and she didn't feel any pain. Try to create some ice at will and she felt nothing but pain.
"What have you been doing?"
Hearing Thor's voice she looked up from her spot against the wall, the last active original Avenger staring solemnly at her, Bloodaxe just behind him. It wasn't hard to work out what he was referring to, given how parts of the walls were still iced over from earlier failed attempts at harnessing her power.
"What does it look like?" she spat at the two Avengers, inwardly grateful for something external to rant at. "I'm trying to make this work whenever I want to."
"And you're intending to turn the room into a popsicle?" Johanna quipped.
Shaking her head, Octavia slowly started to get up. "I have powers. Actual powers which I already know can manifest without warning. If that happened around my friends or Bell, I could hurt them. Trying to get a grip on them seemed like the only thing worth doing while I'm here."
"And yet you're only hurting yourself," Thor said, sounding concerned as he looked towards her hand, which showed signs of her failed attempts.
"Pain I can handle," Octavia rebuffed him. "This power I have, I want to control it. I want to use it to help protect the people I care about. To make sure I am never the victim, never again. I just have to find a way to control it without the pain."
"That won't happen."
"What?" she glared at the self-proclaimed god of thunder. "If this is about-"
"It has nothing to do with your resolve, Octavia; it is deeper than that," Thor explained. "There is an imbalance within you, awoken due to your exposure to Mjolnir."
"An Imbalance? What imbalance? And how does your special hammer have to do with it?" Octavia questioned.
"My hammer was forged from a dying star, soaked with cosmic energy. This energy reacted with your unique physiology, awaking your Jotun blood from your father that had been suppressed by the traces of the magic that he used to stay in his Asgardian form, as well as your human half from your mother," Thor explained. "It is because of that awakening that your powers have been activated as they were back on Earth, but the unnatural nature of this upheaval has created an imbalance between your two halves… An imbalance that will claim your life if left untreated."
She had nothing to say to that. The powers that she wanted to get control over were actually killing her? How messed up is that?
She took a breath to calm herself before looking back at Thor, focusing her mind on the key detail of that last sentence. "You said it would claim my life if left untreated. What is the treatment?"
"That's… where it gets tricky, apparently," Johanna put in.
"Indeed," Thor said, turning slightly so that he was standing just outside the door to the room. "Follow me, and I shall explain at the Vault."
Having a lower-level room in this castle might suck in terms of the view it offered, but it did have the advantage of making it easier to visit anything on those lower levels relatively discreetly. Within a few moments, the trio had descended down a flight of thick stone steps and were walking along a circular blue corridor with various alcoves on either side of it, each alcove containing some strange object. Octavia briefly noted the large gold glove and the sharp contrast of its position beside a strange blue cube.
"This is the Vault," Thor explained, as he walked to the end of the corridor while the two young women watched him. "My father used it as a storage place for the most dangerous weapons belonging to those entities who would go to great lengths to ensure their final success."
"All of these?" Johanna asked, looking around the vault in surprise. "What do they do?"
"It is safer if you do not know," Thor clarified solemnly. "At this moment, the only thing that should be of interest to you is this."
As Thor indicated the end of the corridor, Octavia and Johanna found themselves looking at a strange box, apparently made of blue glass with curved black edges. The box was just an unusual artefact to Johanna, but Octavia stared solemnly at it, her eyes slowly widening as she held out a hand towards it.
"Hey!" Johanna cut in, slapping Octavia's outstretched hand down. "Hands off until Thor talks!"
"Right…" Octavia said, shaking her head as she looked at the two Avengers. "Wh… what is that?"
"The Casket of Ancient Winters," Thor explained, his tone solemn as he stood to the side to display the casket. "My father Odin took this from Laufey, King of the Frost Giants, when he tried to use the Casket to bring about an eternal ice age upon the Earth many years ago. It has remained hidden from them ever since, and its power has never been tapped, save once."
"Someone used this thing?" Johanna asked.
"After a fashion," Thor clarified. "When Loki touched it out of curiosity, my father told me that it temporarily undid the magic that made him appear as an Asgardian."
"Uh… OK," Octavia looked uncertainly at Thor. "Not that learning about my bio-dad isn't interesting, but what does any of this have to do with me?"
"Loki had become aware of your condition before even I was aware of it. Just seeing you was enough for him to become aware. He is of the belief that if you hold the Casket, given its very nature and his own experience, that contact will in fact help to stabilize the imbalance within you." Thor explained.
"She touches this thing and that's it?" Johanna looked between the box and the other girl in surprise. "That's… simple?"
"Even if it correct, it will not be that simple," the Asgardian king noted solemnly. "I must be honest with you, Octavia Blake; there is no way of knowing what holding the casket will do to a hybrid such as yourself."
"You said my dad-"
"Loki had simply been a Jotun, masked by magic to look Asgardian," Thor clarified. "You are a hybrid of enchanted Jotun and human; I am comparatively confident that this will not kill you, but that is all I can guarantee. You may go through some actual physical changes, and then again, you may not; there simply is no way of knowing, but you deserved to know the risks involved."
"OK," Octavia said, looking between the two Avengers. "So in a nutshell, I touch this and it might stabilise whatever's up with me, but even in a best-case scenario, I won't be human any more afterwards?"
"And you'll die if we do nothing; I'd like to stress that part-" Johanna began.
"I get that," Octavia said, looking solemnly at the one-armed woman for a moment before she looked at Thor. "In other words, I have to change everything I am just because of your mess?"
"OK, this part isn't Thor's fault!" Johanna cut in. "You'd have been in trouble even if he hadn't taken Loki away like that-"
"But I'd have known what to expect when I was growing up," Octavia noted.
"Maybe," the ace-wielding Avenger acknowledged. "Or maybe you'd have just known that something was going to happen; he said himself this kind of… cross-breeding doesn't exactly happen a lot!"
For a moment, Octavia stared silently at the one-armed woman, before she turned to study the Casket.
"If I don't do this," she said grimly, "I will die. Bellamy will be alone. Lincoln will be alone. And if I do this there's the chance I'll change into something else."
Neither Thor or Johanna said anything at first, and then the younger girl turned around to look Thor dead in the eyes. "There's no choice to make, really."
Without warning she grabbed both sides of the Casket, the blue box emitting gusts of wind and snow like never before as if it reacted to the one holding it. Johanna was almost overwhelmed before Thor moved in front of her, spinning Mjolnir to create a small counter-storm against the force of the elements in front of them. Staring in awe at the sight in front of her, Johanna watched as snow and ice whirled through the air, her vision only just blurred by the hammer spinning between them, until, after a couple of minutes, the wind vanished once again.
With the storm faded, the two Avengers could only stare at the chances in Octavia. She retained her long black hair, but her skin had become a lighter blue shade, as opposed to the blue-grey skin hues of the Frost Giants, and her eyes were a dimmer shade of red as opposed to the burning red of Asgard's old enemies. As the last of the impromptu storm vanished, Octavia took her hands off and stepped back, taking deep breaths and bent over. After a few moments, her skin returned to its original tones, even as the Ark's first younger sibling remained in clear shock.
"Octavia, are you alright?" Thor asked, even as he saw her straightening up, yet her head was bent down, not allowing him or Johanna to see her face.
"Am I alright..." the girl replied, her voice strong despite its disbelieving tone. "Am I alright?"
With those words, she opened her right hand and generated a beam of ice from her open palm, which swiftly formed into a crude ice sabre. It was a basic weapon after some of those Johanna had seen in the Games, but considering the level of control she had before holding the Casket, the progress spoke volumes of its power.
"I have never felt better," the girl confirmed, now staring at the Avengers with a satisfied grin, even as the dark shade of red that still dominated her eyes made it clear that the process of tapping into her newly-learned heritage had changed her in other ways. The smile on her face left Thor in particular unnerved, as it put him in mind of his brother in the days when Loki had still been an ally, presenting them with a grin that promised nothing but trouble for any who stood in her way.