"That should be me, yes," Harry said, his voice carrying the quiet confidence of someone who'd grown accustomed to his own legend.
Fury strode forward eagerly, hand extended. "I had no idea you were still alive!"
Harry: ???
Fury caught himself, grimacing. "Christ, sorry—occupational hazard. When you spend your life reading about historical figures, you assume they're all six feet under by now."
Harry managed that particular smile reserved for awkward social situations—polite but slightly strained. The two men began the sort of stilted conversation that happens when legend meets reality and neither quite knows what to do with it.
"Found it!" Gemini's triumphant cry cut through their uncomfortable pleasantries like a blade. Harry immediately moved to her shoulder, peering at the line of ancient text her finger traced. Of course, he might as well have been staring at hieroglyphics for all the good it did him.
Both men exchanged that universal look of masculine helplessness when faced with something completely beyond their understanding.
"What does it say?" Fury asked, his tactical mind already working.
"@#￥!%%￥*" Gemini began reading the archaic words aloud, then stopped abruptly as the syllables that emerged made no sense even to her own ears. The ancient language seemed to resist being spoken in this modern world.
Harry's hand landed firmly on her shoulder. "Don't read it aloud," he said, his voice carrying the authority of hard-won experience. "Just give us the gist in plain English. Some knowledge isn't meant to be spoken—it has a way of... listening."
Gemini nodded, her expression growing serious as she absorbed the text silently. After reading through it twice more, she closed the book with reverent care and tucked it into her enchanted bag. When she looked up, her eyes held the weight of revelation.
"The book records that Merlin was born from the union of a Carmarthen nun and an elf from Alfheim," she began, her voice taking on the cadence of someone recounting ancient history. "After Merlin's birth, his father returned to the realm of the elves. It wasn't until Merlin came of age and his extraordinary nature became apparent that the elf reported to the gods of Asgard. They wanted to bring Merlin home, to claim him as one of their own."
She paused, letting the implications sink in.
"But Merlin refused. Asgard sent an envoy to persuade him—a divine messenger wielding a hammer called Mjolnir. That messenger was Thor Odinson, the Thunder God himself."
The silence that followed was the kind that accompanies paradigm shifts—the moment when everything you thought you knew about the world cracks open to reveal something infinitely larger and more complex.
"So gods are... real?" Coulson's voice came through the comm, barely above a whisper.
"Norse mythology isn't mythology at all," Harry breathed, running a hand through his perpetually messy hair. "And here I thought fighting a dark wizard was complicated."
"According to this record, yes—it's all true." Gemini's matter-of-fact tone somehow made it even more unsettling. "This book was written by Merlin's personal attendant, an ancestor of the Black family. The ink on these pages is twelve centuries old."
Coulson's sharp intake of breath was audible through the speaker. "Then that blond man claiming to be Thor—he's over a thousand years old?"
Gemini stroked her chin thoughtfully, her expression growing troubled. "You need to find him. Now. If he can't lift his own hammer, something has gone seriously wrong. And if we're talking about Thor—the actual Thor—then his father Odin is still very much alive. When the heir to the throne of Asgard goes missing..." She let the sentence hang, but the implication was clear as crystal.
The communication cut abruptly as Coulson began barking orders to search teams.
Fury's face had taken on the expression of a man watching his carefully constructed worldview crumble in real time. "Doesn't Earth have any defenses against this kind of thing? If these gods decide humanity needs... adjusting... what exactly do we fight back with?"
Gemini barely suppressed an eye roll. This man's paranoia was exhausting. First wizards, now gods—did he spend his entire existence looking for new things to worry about?
"Does the book mention how Merlin managed to refuse them?" Fury pressed.
Gemini consulted the ancient text once more, her eyes scanning the flowing script. "Nothing dramatic. He simply said no, shared a drink with the Thunder God, and Thor departed on the Bifrost—the rainbow bridge."
"So this Thor is reasonable," Fury mused, his strategic mind already working angles.
Gemini's laugh held no humor. "I'd strongly advise against whatever scheme you're hatching. Thor might be reasonable, but Odin..." She shook her head. "The All-Father didn't become king of the gods through diplomacy."
"Even if the Eastern Heavenly Court intervened, they might not be able to protect you from Asgard's wrath. And that's assuming you had any relationship with them, which you don't," she added pointedly.
Fury's eye widened. "Eastern Heavenly Court? More gods?"
Gemini waved dismissively. "Don't even think about it. The Central Land Daoist Sect keeps to themselves unless directly provoked. They prefer soft approaches to hard ones—but when pushed, even gods tread carefully around them. Their lineage stretches back to humanity's dawn, and they've put more than a few local deities in the ground over the millennia."
Fury leaned forward desperately. "If Earth faced a real threat, would they help?"
"How would I know? I'm not their spokesperson." Gemini shrugged. "From what I understand, they're currently in alternate dimensions, holding back extraterrestrial demons. Without them, Earth might already be overrun. Those 'demons' are probably what you call aliens."
The color drained from Fury's face. He looked like a man who'd just realized he was standing in a minefield.
"And when you say 'Earth,'" Gemini continued with a sardonic smile, "do you mean America specifically, or humanity in general? Because I won't be used as anyone's weapon or excuse. We have a business arrangement—nothing more. The contract makes that crystal clear."
Fury managed a weak smile. "Of course I mean all of humanity. We would never—"
"Maybe we should head back," Harry interjected quietly, his protective instincts flaring. "These people seem... complicated. If you want to open a shop, I have connections in London. Diagon Alley could use some fresh blood."
Gemini tugged affectionately at his sleeve. "It's fascinating here, Harry. Don't worry—with Tony and George watching my back, I'm perfectly safe. Besides, what I've shown them barely scratches the surface of what I can do." Her eyes sparkled with mischief. "We'll talk tonight—I actually need your help with something."
Harry's entire demeanor brightened like sunrise. The legendary Boy Who Lived was, at heart, still someone who just wanted to be useful to the people he cared about.
"Right then," Gemini said briskly, producing a contract with a flourish that would have made Lockhart proud. "Payment time. I need to get going."
Fury stared at the parchment as if it might bite him. "We already paid."
Gemini's smile could have powered Diagon Alley for a week. "That payment covered repairing the containment unit's magical matrices. The materials were your expense, remember? This consultation is separate. Plus, I had to call in a favor to get Harry here from Britain."
Fury looked like he'd swallowed something unpleasant. "How much are we talking?"
"Very reasonable," Gemini purred. "One million dollars."
"Are you out of your goddamn mind?!" Fury exploded.
Gemini's expression didn't waver. "I'm practically giving you a discount. Do you have any idea what those repair materials cost? Dragon heartstring doesn't grow on trees, and phoenix feather is worth more than its weight in platinum. You're getting the deal of a lifetime. Now pay up."
The silence stretched taut as a bowstring, filled with the weight of cosmic revelations and the more mundane tension of contract negotiations. In the background, teams scrambled to find a god walking among mortals, while the fate of Earth hung in the balance of ancient powers stirring once again.
Harry watched it all with the weary patience of someone who'd learned that the universe had a twisted sense of humor—and that somehow, he always ended up in the middle of its jokes.
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