An Engineer's Quest
By Rey
11. Interesting Methods
There was an odd intensity in those unnaturally electric-blue eyes, some sort of vacantness mixed with concentration, accompanied with the rather slack and empty look on the face with not-so-healthy complexion. – Laufey points it out to everyone present, a little stumblingly, by help of the photo of the encounter between Nick Fury and Loptr, once they are mildly recovered from their own prior struggles and subsequent reunion with their… child.
It's not the only clue, they admit after Pepper presses for more details, finding it a little hard to find the evidence that would make it so compelling. Apparently, Loptr died once, briefly, not long ago, and it caused all wards, disguises, spells etc that had been tied to the child's life to lose their anchor, allowing the mum to at last notice that they're once alive… a little too late. Quite fortunately for Laufey's sanity, Loptr's back alive soon enough – `Like a restarted computer,` Tony thinks – and from then on they've been trackable by some sort of soul-bond.
It all sounds like a magical fantasy novel's plotline. And then Laufey recounts all that they have done to free Loptr, namely by battling mind-to-mind with a powerful, horrible entity within Loptr's own mind as the battlefield before wrestling and yanking it out from there, and it sounds even more 'out there'… but strangely real.
Well, Tony, the genius billionaire and philanthropist extraordinaire Anthony Edward Stark, tries to focus on that, just that, and not on the fact that, past the jarring initial reunion, the mum's wholely focused on just Loptr.
He listens raptly as they recount the vicious mental struggle they were involved in with whoever that had taken over Loptr's mind. He wonders aloud about the interesting type of energy they must have stored in the "spell sphere" they had sent him for Loptr prior to that. He absently slurps on the smoothie Dum-E has made for him without budging his arse from the bit of carpeted floor beside the nest of cushions and blankets and pillows Pepper made for the mum. He even shares that smoothie with them, and they take it, just so, in-between the recountings in that alarmingly weakened, wheeze-tinged voice.
But still, it's not enough.
`How can I get their attention? Do I want to? Do I want this? Didn't I say no to this before, with compelling reasons at that? Will they be angry with me if I steal their attention away from Loptr? Can I leave earth behind? Will I have to leave earth behind? Can I live with being a second fiddle to anybody, even a kid – an earth-invading kid?`
Tony is never known for carefully thought-out, well-planned social interactions, regardless of the fretting. And, in the end, this trait wins out.
By the end of the mum's series of recountings and Q&A, with a second smoothie in hand, in a bigger glass with three straws poking out of it and two more pressed flush against it, he crawls into the nest and presses himself right by them.
And, shockingly, a huge but skinny arm is once more wrapped round him, and a small body is nestled against his front.
And neither Peps nor Brucey hesitate when he – with the backing of the mum – beckons both to join the three of them in the nest.
Now, Anthony Edward Stark has a family once more.
