There are too many questions and not enough answers. The idea of a call through time and space is mind bendingly possible-but unlikely. He asks the voice on the other end to prove it, and so Loki breaks the years apart piece by piece-hissing out his frustrations.
"I joined a company that was obsolete. I revived it. Cultivated it. Brought it up from the bottom and made it a name across the galaxies." Which, yeah, sounds like something a God would do. Names are everything. If he were a God he'd want a name for himself no matter where he ended up. He'd want the pomp and bright lights.
Tony isn't one to disbelieve things on principle. His existence is something that should have been impossible. His suit should have been impossible. The voice that is speaking to him through the left speaker of his tv should have been impossible.
But Tony is not crazy. He is precise in his own way and as the call continues he draws up the security feed he heard about through the grapevine of tapped S.H.I.E.L.D computers. On it, there is a man the size of a small house and a hammer that seems to shoot lightning just before the image on the footage dissolves.
"Are you there, human?"
Tony listens like he rarely does and doesn't ask, doesn't want to know-not then: That company-was it mine? That company-where is mine?
Tony swallows, "Yeah, I'm here."
Because there is nothing worse to find that your legacy has died and everything in it.
The first time Kirk meets anyone outside of Riverside, Iowa, he's just driven a car off the quarry ridge. He's sitting in a waiting room-not a cell. Even if the sheriff shakes his head at Kirk and tells him there's a spot of the devil in him, he's still twelve. He has a juice box cupped in one scraped hand and when he isn't looking at it in pent up frustration, it shakes. He's too old for juice boxes, and this one is orange cranberry. He hates orange cranberry. He prefers the taste of dry soil turned muddy on his tongue. It keeps him grounded as he braces the ball of his right foot on the white tile to thrum out the tune of I'm falling, I'm falling, the ground, the ground, the ground.
The man who walks into the room is not his mom (it never was anymore), or his brother, or his step dad. Jimmy looks from the stranger's crisp shiny black shoes to his black suit and can't help but think Frank is sueingme. He swallows and squishes the round juicebox until three drops slip out of the straw at the top. Maybe he was old enough for juice boxes after all.
"Jim Kirk." The voice is as smooth as the man's suit jacket-so overdressed for Riverside, Iowa Jimmy thinks the small town charm might be mortally wounded-and Jim forces his chin up to look at him in his face and wishes he hadn't. "It's nice to meet you again."
Jim frowns, squints his eyes in a way that his mom always-used to -touch his chin for and tell him, Eyes open, Jimmy, you have to have your eyes open to see everything before you miss it. "Do I know you?"
The man is dressed in blacks and greens and he's so pale he looks like he could have lived in a well. There's something oddly cold about him, too, that Jim can feel from four feet away. Cold and dark and wet-like the sucking feeling of clothes after falling through the ice on a cold winter's day. It's wet and unwell-and worse when he smiles. "We've met."
"Oh, like when I was a baby, right?" Everyone had met him as a baby-no one seemed to be interested in meeting him now.
"Oh, we have known each other for much longer than that."
Jimmy squints again, a frown following the assent of his eyes under his tousled blond hair. He decides the man might be a little off his rocker. Maybe he just looks like a lawyer-maybe he's supposed to be in the one room cell around the corner instead of the crisp white welcoming room. "Has anyone told you, you might need some sun?"
If possible, the man's smile widens into something truly unnerving. "Perhaps from time to time, yes." He leans on a cane he doesn't need and Jim hadn't noticed. "You can call me Loki. I served with your mother... and your father."
That doesn't impress him, shouldn't impress him. After all, running away from his father was what sent his mother away. Thinking about the crew and the stars is what sent his mother away. It sent Sam away, too, but later. Or, no, Frank made Sam run away-but it might as well been his mom. Always absent, always off world, always looking out for number one (except, his traitorous mind reminds him, when she stayed up with him all night showing him the constellations, when she came in like demon on horseback when he got sick at school, except when she purposefully his birthday that was never much fun anyway- but made it up by kidnapping him from math class two days later and kept him out of school for a whole three days).
"Where's Frank?" The question isn't the one he wants to ask, or even one he ever thought he would-but Frank was in charge so Frank should be here. Or his mom should be on the vid phone yelling at him. It's been long enough-they could have gotten her.
"Indisposed. You seem to have made an impression on the chief of police."
Jim scuffs the front of his shoe against the tile and snuffs with false pride, "Not that hard."
"Yes, well." The man looks at him like there's something hovering over his shoulder and it makes him uncomfortable even if it's not quite threatening. "While your step-father sorts his paperwork, you've been given an opportunity."
"An opportunity?" He's dubious. This sounds like work. Jim remembers a high school kid picking litter off the side of the road for six months after he shoplifted. Shoplifting is nothing like throwing his dad's antique over a cliff. He'll have to clean up road trash for forever.
"I work for Stark Enterprises, and I want to invite you to the teens and preteens science summer program." The grin is less wide now-almost thoughtful. "Unless, of course, you'd like to spend your summer here doing menial services."
"His mother believed everything she said," Loki confides-voice crackling through the improbable soundwaves. "It's what made getting her to agree to summer camp instead of juvenile detention so terribly easy."
Tony, who isn't sure he ever wants to imagine the man he's talking to with children asks, "Why did you rescue him?"
There is a pause so long Tony wonders if the line has dropped out of existence once more. "I didn't."
Tony let's out a huff-Loki knows exactly what he's talking about, "Why did you invite him, then?"
Another pause, shorter than the last but hanging, "He reminded me of Thor."
It has been four days, ten hours, thirty-two minutes, and five seconds since Spock found out his father considered his mother to be a logical choice. He's fifteen, old enough not to be bothered by sentiment, but he still finds it difficult to reconcile within his own constructs of his family.
Although never one to romanticize his beginnings, he finds fault with the idea that he had embellished his parents' relationship. Observations to the contrary appeared to be fruitful, even in the passing few days after the fight. His mother often brushes her fingers just around the wrist of his father's somber colored Tlor Thakal. It is not quite scandalous, but Spock feels certain that this is an indication of her favor to his father beyond rational choice. For his father-he notices the way his hand sometimes goes to the small of her back, the brief not-smile that is more of a feeling than a reality and only comes up when she's talking, and the way they bow their heads together in hushed whispered words.
"Spock." His mother stops two feet away-assent to his request that she allow him to maintain autonomy. He is not a child anymore and does not need to be coddled, even if he wants it sometimes still. "Why don't you walk with me. Your father and I have been talking."
They have long been talking since he came home with a fat lip. His mother had not been able to keep from smothering him with cool arms and soothing words he did not need...but endured (enjoyed). Spock nods his agreement and stands, putting down his pad to walk unhindered. "What is it you have been discussing, mother?"
"We believe it would do you good to leave Vulcan for a month." For a moment Spock looks stricken-there is a moment in time where his arms and legs lock up, his lungs seize, and he thinks rationally You're sending me away?
And in that moment his mother is upon him-gentle hands on his face and quick, softly spoken words. She has always, and will always, know him best. "No!" Her voice is insistent and fast, pummeling his initial response with a powerful burst of words. The words are so quietly spoken nothing in the hall stairs. There are no echoes. "No, Spock. I will go with you. Your father will go with you." And the moment subsides until they are both shoulder to shoulder again-or shoulder to hip as it is now. "But we will visit Earth. There is a remarkable new summer program for young people and we think you might like to attend."
This sounds an awful lot like a ploy. His parents have been scheming against him, likely thinking it is for his betterment. "And what will you do, mother?"
He glances up at her, straight faced concern. He is met with only delight and imagines that she wishes to press him into her shoulder again.
"Oh, Spock, I will teach."
Winona is beautiful but not in the way most think of her. When Loki steps up next to her on the viewing deck dressed in crisp black clothes next to her engine grease and reds he does so with enough distance to keep the mess from leaping between them.
"Jim is well." It does not elude either of them that he was able to come to her ship before she reached home. She hasn't even tried but he can see the muscles working under her face saying, I would have been late anyway. This is for the best. I tried. I tried. I tried.
"I'm glad. I was worried." This is not a lie and Loki nods his ascent with a carefully stifled smile.
"I know, but he will have the best care this summer." It is almost a barb at the lack of care she has invested in the past five years and she blinks away, looking towards the stars. "The best teachers. It's a shame that-"
"No." Winona Kirk's - because she will never give up her first husband's name; it's hers and she guards it jealously - eyes turn back to him, firm and tugging unhappily on her bottom lip. "This is only for the summer. After this summer..." There is a hitch, a pause. "My rotation will be complete, and I'll go back."
Back. Not home. So Loki nods again. Winona tells the best lies to herself-and they both know it.
The first person Spock meets - besides the man with slicked back hair and a tight, pressed suit - is a young boy about his age. He thinks he could be a little younger from the way he sticks his tongue out from the corner of his lips as he uses a glitter infused crayon to solve what appears to be a partially completed differential equation, but human ages are difficult to assess. There aren't that many kids there at all-or teens and preteens-but it's still early yet. He sits down and is poised to pick up his pad when the blond boy suddenly drops the crayon and snatches up Spock's hand. "I'm Jim, by the way." Then he parrots something that sounds like the old movies his mother sometimes watched about gruff men on earth. Jim is too young to pull it off. "What are you in for, kid?"
Spock is so startled by the hand on his that he fumbles, bursting out in perfect Vulcan poise: "A kid is the prodigy of a goat." He pulls his hand but it doesn't move, it is uncomfortably warm against the human's-Jims-and he can feel the throw thrum of nervous excitement where their skin meets. He can feel places where the skin pulls tight in healing. "We appear to be youths of approximately the same age."
The words don't detour Jim, if anything he seems more amused, "You always talk like that?"
Spock retrieves his hand and Jim picks up another crayon. Pink, this time, with blue glitter. "Yes."
"Cool." Jim twisted the crayon between his fingers. "You have a name?"
"My name is Spock."
"Okay, Spock." Jim rolls another crayon over to him-yellow with black glitter pitted inside. "I saw you looking at my math. Do one with me."
It's difficult to say no; so, Spock doesn't.
"You know," Jim says after a long moment and a string of numbers each done in different colors. "After dinner, they don't watch the cameras much."
The grin Jim gives is reckless, almost infections, and Spock can't help the way his eyebrows rise just slightly.
"You in?" Spock can think of a thousand logical reasons to say now-and a thousand logical reasons to say yes.
Jim continues the conversation and Spock works on the equation, trying not to stare at his unexpected companion. It's in looking, though, that he is sure that Jim is more than wildness wrapped in bravado. He sees him clench his teeth in a parody of aggression and draws his hands out wider and more energetically as their one sided conversation continues.
"What are you in for?" Jim repeats at last and stuffs a crayon behind his ear as though that will aid him in looking more than a lost kid in a shiny white compound with a dozen crayons. "I drove a car off a cliff."
That night Spock leaves his dorm room three seconds before Jim knocks.