The Dwyer Disruption (pt. 2)

Need to know(s):

Theme song: Enemy Fire ~ Bea Miller

Characters: Loki, Brynn, (that bitch) Ms. Dwyer

Rating: T (implied abuse)

Genre: Family, Angst

Summary: As requested, Loki meets with Ms. Dwyer. The meeting leaves the god questioning his role as Brynn's guardian and wondering if he is doing enough for his little sister, or if he's even the best thing for her.

"I'll be back at the end of the day to pick you up," Loki informed the sixteen-year-old as he pulled up in front of the school and parked. He switched off the engine and undid his seatbelt.

"Good luck with Ms. Dimwit," Brynn said as she gathered up her school things.

"Brynna May," Loki warned, giving her a scolding look.

Brynn rolled her eyes but let every other insult she'd had ready for Ms. Dwyer die on her tongue. It didn't matter anyway; Loki would be agreeing with her in the end. Leaning across the console, the girl pressed a kiss to her guardian's cheek, winning a smile from the god—the first one he'd had all morning. Brynn couldn't help but smile back. She nuzzled his cheek a bit, wanting that smile she adored so much to get brighter and last longer. "Love you, Big Bro. Good luck."

Before she could slip away, Loki cupped the back of the teen's head in a hand and kissed her forehead in return. "Thank you," he murmured, giving her a little nuzzle back. Then he gave her a gentle push towards her door. "Have a good day."

With a smile, Brynn popped open the passenger door and slipped out to join the flow of kids that was surging towards the school. "Later, Merlin!" she chirped, waving over her shoulder and she jogged over to catch up with her friends.

Loki got out of the SUV as well and stood with his hands in his pockets for a moment beside the vehicle as he watched Brynn hook up with her group and disappear into, returning one last wave from her before she vanished from sight. Then the man took a deep breath and released it in a heavy sigh. Time to find Ms. Dwyer. This meeting was literally the last thing in the world that Loki wanted to deal with, but the sooner it happened the sooner it was over, and the sooner he could get the woman out of Brynn's and his hair and never have to worry about her again.

Resigning himself to his fate, Loki strode out for the school.

The door to the therapist's office was open when Loki got there, but he paused outside and knocked anyway. "Hello?" he called into the room. "Ms. Dwyer?"

The little woman was seated behind her desk with her back to the door. She had a drawer open on one of her filing cabinets and was flipping through it. At the sound of Loki's voice, she stopped and turned. "Ah, Mr. Odinson, correct?" she asked with a polite smile. She swiveled around in her chair before standing to move around her desk to the door. "Brynn Hagel's guardian." She held out a hand.

"I am," Loki affirmed, taking the hand. The woman was young, curvy, attractive, dressed with a sharpness even Loki could admire and smelled of some sort of delightful perfume, but the god found his skin crawling at her touch. A master of masks, he could very clearly see behind the feigned expression of pleasantness in Ms. Dwyer's eyes, and what he saw were suspicion and judgment. He was much too used to being looked at in that way by now; and, while it didn't hurt him, it most definitely put Ms. Dwyer on his blacklist. "You wanted to meet with me?"

"Yes, please come in and have a seat." Ms. Dwyer motioned to a folding chair seated directly in front of her desk. She moved back to take her seat in her swivel chair. "Could you close the door as you come in, please?"

"Of course," Loki replied, doing just that. Then he moved to the chair and sat down. The chair was so short; Loki's long legs were practically doubled up as he sat there. He felt like an idiot. He felt even more like an idiot when he took note that Ms. Dwyer and he were not nearly eye-to-eye, as her chair was much higher so that she could leer down her nose at him. The chaos god figured that he feeling like an idiot must have been the entire point of the setup. But, as previously stated, Loki was a master of masks, so he easily hid his discomfort, as a reaction was undoubtedly what the woman wanted to see. That was the thing with Midgardians in any position of power, they developed a superiority complex and went on a power trip to try and convince others of said superiority. Well, it wasn't going to work with Loki. But it probably would give him that headache he and Brynn had discussed last night.

Ms. Dwyer smiled patronizingly down at him. "Now," she said, sounding the slightest bit smug, "Mr. Odinson. First of all, might I say what a… unique name you possess? Loki Odinson—it sounds very uh… Norse."

"Norse Pantheon actually," Loki replied still using his best polite tone. He had a feeling he'd be sick of it by the end of this meeting.

"Yes, I noticed. Your family must have been big fans of the Norse gods."

"You could say that."

"Are you from Norway? You sound rather British if you don't mind my saying."

"My family has history with that general region."

"Fascinating," Ms. Dwyer murmured, looking down at the file on her desk. "Fascinating." Silence fell for a minute as the woman scanned the file, maybe thinking of how to smoothly dive into the topic at hand. "Mr. Odinson," she said after a moment, looking back at the god, "I'm guessing I don't need to tell you why I've asked to visit with you today."

"Yes," Loki replied, shifting in the chair a little bit to try and get more comfortable. "Brynn informed me of your conversation yesterday."

"And I'm sure she didn't frame it in the most positive light."

Something about the woman's tone pricked at Loki a little. It seemed like Ms. Dwyer was trying to minimize the encounter she and Brynn had had; make it seem like Brynn may have blown things out of proportion. While Brynn did tend to be a bit over-dramatic, Loki knew for a fact she would never try to intentionally take something out of context and frame it to suit her. Brynn wasn't so conniving and manipulative as that. "You upset her," Loki answered carefully. "She said you made insinuations about me—about our relationship." The god narrowed his eyes as he suddenly decided to test the woman before him. "Did she lie?"

Ms. Dwyer met his gaze unflinchingly. "No," she said truthfully. "She didn't lie. But I think she may have made it sound more sinister than it actually was."

"How so?"

"I'm a therapist, Mr. Odinson. I've studied and trained to be a therapist and have earned several degrees in the field. I know what I'm doing and what I need to do. If I'm to make sure that these children—especially in the ones with circumstances such as Brynn—are safe I have to ask these sorts of questions. Child abuse—all kinds—typically come from the people that know the child in question—the people the child is closest to. And if they are experiencing some kind of abuse, I need to let them know that I am someone they can come to—that this office is a safe space."

"And you do that by making blatant accusations against the child's guardians when you barely even know of them?"

"Oh, they weren't blatant accusations. They were just questions."

"Brynn said you accused me of being predatory towards her. She said you claimed our situation was similar to one you had when you were her age and that yours didn't turn out very well. She said you were projecting."

"And I'm sure she's as much of an expert as every other person whose only experience with psychology is via crime dramas and documentaries."

"Is it true that you were in a similar situation once?"

Ms. Dwyer was silent for a moment as she gave the green-eyed man a slightly miffed look. Clearly, this conversation wasn't going quite how she'd intended; Loki was not someone she was going to be able to intimidate and railroad. "That's… no really any of your concern," she stammered.

"You distinctly told my sister that your home life was similar to ours when you were sixteen," Loki pressed, not to be deterred. "You told her this in order to provide an example of how a situation may not be as safe as it seems. You brought your own history into the matter, Ms. Dwyer." He couldn't stop the little smirk that curled his lips as he challenged, "Were you lying?"

Again Ms. Dwyer lapsed into silence. The look on her face had darkened a great deal and she pursed her lips in annoyance. Her manicured nails ticked out a rapid beat on her desk. "Yes," she finally answered. "My circumstances were very similar to Brynn's when I was her age. My parents were killed in a car crash; my grandparents were gone and the only family I had left was an uncle. He'd been a prominent figure in my life for my entire life and I trusted him as I knew him very well. At least, I thought I did. It wasn't until I was alone in his house and in his care that he… changed considerably towards me. I didn't have anyone to help me, anyone to look out for me and ask me if I was all right or safe. I wasn't able to escape until I went to college and even then it took me a long time to process what had happened to me and start to heal from it."

It seems to me as though you haven't healed from it, Loki thought to himself.

"So with that," Ms. Dwyer continued, "you may understand why I was suspicious of your situation and worried for Brynn. She's incredibly vulnerable and impressionable at this stage, Mr. Odinson; and with her history, she's likely to attach to anyone that supplies even the tiniest amount of stability in her life. Even if that person is someone she hasn't known for very long." She gave the man a pointed look.

Loki's lips turned up in a tight smile. "Well," he responded, "I'm truly sorry for what you had to endure at such a young age, Ms. Dwyer; and I appreciate your desire to look after my charge. But I assure you, your concerns involving my acting in a predatory manner towards Brynn are quite unfounded. Brynn is my little sister—in many ways she's something of a daughter to me, and I love and treat her as such. I have no intentions of inflicting any sort of harm upon her."

"No," Ms. Dwyer said slowly, looking the god up and down in consideration. "I don't think you do. Now that I've met you, you don't seem the type."

"Well, then, I'm glad we have that settled."

"But that doesn't mean you won't or don't inflict any sort of harm to her."

Loki was taken aback by this statement and gave the woman an incredulous look. "I'm sorry?"

"As I mentioned to Brynn, the fact remains that you two haven't known each other long, Mr. Odinson—not long at all."

"The anniversary of our meeting was at the beginning of June."

"Yes, I'm aware. And it's only just been the two of you for about… eight months now?"

"What are you implying, Ms. Dwyer?" Loki found it harder and harder to control his tone and his temper as this conversation continued to drag on. "I've told you that I possess no deviant inclinations of any kind when it comes to Brynn. I don't know what other assurances I can give you on that apart from my word-"

"That's not what I'm speaking of, Mr. Odinson—not anymore. As I've said, I agree, you don't seem the type for that sort of abuse."

"I'm not the type for any sort of abuse," Loki declared indignantly.

"I'm not just talking about abuse, Mr. Odinson, I'm talking about neglect."

"I assure you Brynn is not being neglected. Her clothes are always clean; she eats regular, full meals; we try to make sure she receives the recommended hours of sleep-"

"I'm not just talking about those things, Mr. Odinson," the woman cut him off. "I'm glad that those things are taken care of, of course, but neglect can be more than just failing to provide and follow the basic necessities. No, I'm talking more along the lines of her mental and emotional health; as a therapist, those are what I'm more interested in. Does Brynn feel loved? Does she feel secure? Is she happy, Mr. Odinson? That's what I want to know."

It was Loki's turn to go quiet as these words suddenly hammered into him like Mjolnir. Was Brynn happy? The god's first instinct was to say "Yes, of course," but the more he thought about it, the more Loki couldn't help but wonder. The fact was, while he seemed to have done a sufficient job so far, Loki had a lot to learn in terms of raising a teenage girl. There were still plenty of things he didn't understand or know about that either Brynn or one of the other adults in her life had to explain to him. He could very easily be missing a very crucial part of the guardian role and never know it. But Brynn would tell him if he was, wouldn't she? She had no qualms about telling him if he needed to change, or do something, or not do something: Like all those times when she'd ranted in frustration over her math homework and had told him "I don't want your advice or help with it, right now—I just want you to listen while I vent," when he'd tried to help explain the theories of the lessons to her.

Unless Brynn didn't know something was missing either.

Apparently sensing that she'd finally tripped him up; Ms. Dwyer smiled in a slightly triumphant way and pressed further. "As I've said, it's only been the two of you for all of eight months, Mr. Odinson. And it was only a few months before that that you met. You're still learning about each other. Do you really know Brynn all that well to say with complete confidence that she's happy?"

Of course, he knew Brynn well enough to say she was happy. He could read the girl like a book—had been able to since the very beginning of their acquaintance; he was intuitive and Brynn was far from being complicated to understand. And now this whole new development with being able to actually sense each other's emotions made understanding each other and connecting easier than ever before. Of course, he knew Brynn was happy. Then why couldn't he answer in the affirmative to the question posed? Why did he feel a slight, niggling doubt at the back of his mind?

"There are many ways a child can be damaged, Mr. Odinson," Ms. Dwyer went on. "Brynn has enough trauma as it is. As her guardian, it's your job to help give her, her best chance at life. If you're not sure you're doing that, I suggest you take stock and figure it out. And if you can't, then I suggest you either find people that can help you or people who can give her that chance."

That last statement made Loki feel like he had been impaled by Algrim again. "Find people that can give her that chance"? Was Ms. Dwyer suggesting what he thought she was suggesting? "You mean… relinquish custody of Brynn?" he quietly asked, hoping he'd misinterpreted.

The woman gave him a smile that she probably thought was sympathetic and understanding but was really infuriating and patronizing. "I know it's not what you want to hear or think about, Mr. Odinson. It's clear to me that you and Brynn love each other very much and to be split apart would be a tragedy. But again, you are Brynn's guardian and it's your responsibility to see to it that she gets her best chance at life, even if it means not being with you. So you need to think long and hard and ask yourself: is Brynn truly happy? Are you the best thing for her? Or would she be better with someone else?"

Loki continued to sit in silence and stare at the woman before him, for once at a complete loss for words. Those questions rang in his head, haunting him: Was Brynn happy? Was he the best thing for her? Would she be better off with another guardian? The questions caused that niggling little doubt at the back of his mind to grow and stretch out to the forefront, bringing with it, once again, the guilt that came with knowing that Brynn was punished for his past just as much as he was, if not more so. Because of him, she would be targeted by those who wished to cause him harm or use him for their personal benefit: She'd already nearly died because of such a scenario! Because of him, she was subjected to intrusive and stressful monthly check-ins with both S.H.I.E.L.D and CPS, most of which were always unexpected surprises: Brynn hated surprises, especially when they consisted of her life being scrutinized. Because of him, she was scowled at and judged by almost anyone and everyone who knew of him: Her own kind for loving him; his kind for loving him, and because she was Midgardian. That and more was all because of him—only because of him. With another guardian, she never would've had to deal with this. With another guardian, she never would have tasted of death. With another guardian, she may have been happier and had a better chance.

Like a master manipulator herself, Ms. Dwyer had found Loki's weakness and exploited it to her benefit: She'd intimidated and railroaded him after all.