Assassin's Revenge

7- Passing the Gift

I love days like these, being surrounded by snow and family at a ski resort in the middle of winter. Younger me would have hated it because of the cold, but thankfully I haven't been able to feel the effects since I was given the family gift. Unfortunately, I don't plan on keeping it much longer.

Lou is getting very old for humans so I know his time is coming within the next five years or so. The only thing I am struggling with is who to give the Underworld to. Everyone in the family could easily take over and be great, I just feel like they all deserve it and everytime I choose someone I just can't go through with it.

For now, I just take one day at a time and wait. I feel like one of these days the universe will give me a sign, tell me which person needs it the most. Sure it may sound odd, who would NEED the Underworld and the power that it gives you? Truth be told I am not sure, even I didn't need it, however my dad only had two people to choose from.

"Mac, what are you thinking about?" Ivy asks, coming up from behind me.

"Nothing important, just taking in the scene and engraving it into my mind." I say, glancing at her before looking back at my kids and grandbabies.

"Okay, I just wanted to invite you to the movies. I know you don't really like places we can't talk but the new Avengers movie just came out." Ivy teases me, knowing how big of a Robert Downey Junior fan I am.

"That sounds good, what time?"

-- -- -- --

"I call bullshit!" I yelled as I left the movie theater.

"Legends aren't supposed to die!" Ivy yelled, completely agreeing with me.

"Everyone dies eventually girls." Louis tried to butt in but we were not having it.

"Tony Stark, the KING of The Avengers is not allowed to die." Ivy retorted, fuming over the ending of End Game.

Louis turned to Ivy and I, arms crossed and eyebrows raised. "So all good guys are supposed to live forever?"

I looked into Louis' eyes, challenging him. "No, but they are supposed to have a legacy to leave behind. Sacrifice that everyone World Wide will acknowledge, will respect till the end of time."

"Are you saying that The Avengers aren't a legacy?" Ivy asked dumbfounded.

"Of course not, I just mean... statistically speaking they should have been able to over power Thanos EASILY. If they wanted to kill off his character he should have died in a more humanly way." I tried to reason even though I knew I wasn't making any sense.

"Babe, I love you but you are completely wrong. There is no better way for a legend to die than to sacrifice themselves in a heroic way. He literally saved the entire Universe and you are upset he didn't die more realistically? A hero is supposed to die sacrificing themselves for countless lives." Louis explained making me mentally roll my eyes.

Not to brag or anything but I like to think of myself as a hero. And personally I would rather die sacrificing myself for my family than people I don't know. For people who would not know the sacrifice or even care enough to ask 'how' or even 'why.' This generation is so selfish that I feel like I would just take my family to the Underworld and live out our lives there. I know that's not a very hero thing to say, but I don't care. I will always put my family above myself and everyone else.

"Momma, your phone is ringing." Ivy announced, tugging on my arm to snap me from my thoughts.

"Kathy what's wrong?" I asked worried. Kathy is our trusted Nanny, since the twins are at boarding school she has watched my grand-kids while we are out having fun.

"It's Illias, she fainted while we were playing games and her pulse is very faint." Kathy replied worried.

"We will be right there, bring her to my room." I replied before hanging up the phone and running to the car.

-- -- --

I quickly ran up the stairs and into my room, immediately going to Illias' side. "Everyone leave the room, I will text you everything I will need you to get me." I said while focusing on analyzing Illias.

After doing a quick evaluation I texted Louis everything I will need to run tests and equipment to monitor her vitals. It is very uncommon for anyone in the family to get sick yet alone faint unless due to pregnancy. Given that Illias is only twelve I know for a fact that is not the case. If the tests I run come back clean then I will need to take her to the hospital to get her throughly checked out. Fingers crossed that it is just a minor illness or possible infection but by the looks of it, I highly doubt it is something that simple.

Ivy POV

I paced the living room, the wait slowly driving me crazy. Why my baby girl? Why my only girl? Why my family? My heart has not been able to stop aching since momma got the call from Kathy. I knew something has been up with Illias but she wouldn't tell me what it was. Every time I tried to question her about it she would pretend she didn't know what I was talking about.

She is the smartest and sweetest kid ever and she doesn't deserve this. Nobody deserves this yet alone a KID. What kid of God does this? Bringing this much pain on a family for no reason, we haven't even done anything. For f***s sake my baby girl hasn't even had time to do anything!

I heard movement from the stairs and looked in that direction. Taking a deep breath, I walked over to the staircase and looked at my other four kids sitting on the stairs. All of them looking worried for their sister, my eldest son, Jackson looked like he was about to cry. Picking him up I walked over to the couch, sitting him on my lap while hugging him tightly.

"Let it out Jack." I whispered in his ear while rubbing his back.

My other three boys soon joined us on the couch. They might've heard Jack's sobs and came to comfort him. All four of them trying to fit onto my lap at once. Eventually they formed a big ball, hugging each other as they all cried together. I wrapped my arms around them, bringing them as close to me as possible and kissing their heads. I might not cry in front of them, but on the inside this is tearing me apart on so may levels.

-- -- --

I woke up to the boys being lifted off of me. Louis laying the boys on another couch and covering them with a blanket and kissing their heads before walking into the kitchen, soon followed by me.

"How is Ellias?" I asked, worried about her more than anything.

"Your mother has run tons of tests on her and they have all come back negative." My father commented making me sigh in relief.

"So I can see her?" I asked, getting my hopes up.

"Honey.. I hate to tell you this but you should not be relieved by her tests coming back negative." Father tried to explain making me confused. I thought negative tests meant your child was healthy?

"Ivy, it means that her health problem is more severe than we thought. Simple tests won't give us an answer so we will have to take her to the hospital. Something is seriously wrong with her and it's our top priority to figure out what it is. With that being said, the tests she will need are more so related to potential tumors and cancer. Underlying issues that involve brain scans, MRI's, etc."

I took a moment to process what Louis had just told me. My daughter could have a disease or even cancer. My twelve year old angel could be taken from me at any second.

"When are we going to move her to the hospital?" I asked, wanting to know answers sooner rather than later.

"First thing in the morning. Your mother and I are going to watch over her all night and make sure her vitals stay steady before we move her since she hasn't woken up once."

I sighed, running my hand through my knotted hair, stressing for my baby girl. "That sounds good, can you get me before you bring her to the Hospital? I want to be with her through the entire thing in case she wakes up scared and alone."

"I will honey, now go to sleep, you will need it. Stay strong for your family kiddo."

I walked over to my father and kissed his head before heading into the living room to sleep.

-- -- --

Two weeks later

Macs' POV

It has been a hell of a two weeks with trying to figure out what is wrong with my grand-daughter. Today something finally showed up on Illias' scans so we can finally diagnose her. However, it is the one thing we were hoping that it wasn't.

"You're lying right? Pranking me? You know I can't lose her Momma, she is my everything. Our family will be ripped apart." Ivy has been rambling on for the past twenty minutes, as if it will magically change what the scans show.

"Ivy, Hun, I know this hurts, it hurts me too. However, scans don't lie, I sure as hell wish they did though. We can't change facts though. Our precious Illias has a tumor on her brain. It is unremovable because it will compromise at least half of her brain. If it was a slim part I would say take our chances but it's not. If they operate on her and try to remove it then you are going to get a vegetable back, not your daughter." I carefully explained for the third time, trying to get her to accept the fact that Ellias is going to have to live with this for the rest of her life.

"You have powers momma, can't you heal her or something?" Ivy begged, making me think of all the different things I could try to do but there isn't really anything that will 100 percent work. All we can really do is hope I can come up with something that will work, even if it's temporary.

"There's something I can try but I don't know if it will work. Literally nobody has tried to do it before, I will accept the risk of doing something sketchy but will you?" I ask, still unsure of my thought process on how to carry this out.

"I am willing to try anything momma. literally anything." Ivy admitted, looking at me with tear filled eyes.

"Alright, give me an hour alone with her and then I will re-scan her to see if it worked correctly or not." I said, sighing resentfully.

I thought about every potential solution that I could try to work onto Illias while I walked towards her room. All of them are fairly dangerous, not for her but for me. Normally I would not use dark magic to try and heal someone but this is my grand-daughter. Of course it's going to be tricky but there is this one thing all types of black magic has in common. Whatever you take has to go somewhere. So if I take her tumor out of her I have to place it into someone else.

Of course my daughter and nobody else would know that. So if they ask I can just say that I used a spell of sorts, which isn't a lie, just not the full truth. A spell is needed in order to make the exchange happen, in order for the tumor to be placed onto me. Resulting in my family living a healthy and happy life, and that to me is worth it. It's worth lying to them, it's worth sacrificing myself.

Five Hours Later

Thankfully I have access to everything in the hospital and do not have to request to use certain machinery until a resident signs off on it. After I cured Illias, I ran a scan on her to make sure it came back clean. While I wait on the results I figured I might as well do a scan on myself as well just to make sure I knew I did the magic correctly.

So after waiting on both results and evaluating them I was satisfied with everything. The mission was successful and hopefully Illias will wake up soon. That is what all of us are waiting on so that we can get the release forms filled out.

Since we have time I might as well fill you in on how this decision will effect my life. In order for the black magic bullshit to be fulfilled I had to give up everything my father had handed down to me. What does that mean exactly? Well, let's just say that Illias is now one of the most powerful beings in the World, she just doesn't know it yet. Being untrained she isn't really going to be up to the standard set by generations but she will be some day and that's all that matters. She will be healthy enough from now on to carry on the legacy and build up to where she needs to be.

However, this means I can get sick easily, and I unfortunately do not have any of my super human abilities. Well, other than being able to touch fire, that's just a genetic thing. Does this change my view on life? Obviously not, I mean I did what I wanted Tony Stark to do at the end of End Game. Sacrifice yourself for family and be known by them, don't let them forget your name. I will forever be known by my family, I don't care about the rest of the World because my family is my World... I know, I'm starting to sound like Vin Diesel now, shame on me.