- Chapter 57 -
Gasping softly, Frigga looked quickly back at Frey. Joy lit up her face when he gave her a small nod. She held onto her husband's hand tightly as she watched the small boy laying on the floor. There were papers and little colored pencils scattered out around him. He was slender with long limbs. Pale little feet poked out of loose pants while a slender neck and arms came from under a soft tee shirt. His dark brown hair was an unruly mop. Untamed brown hair being the only noticeable exception let him remind her of her own son as a child. Considering what both Odin and Frey said, Frigga wondered if Loki found woman to assist them to have children. She wondered if perhaps this boy wasn't truly the child of her son and Stark. It seemed more likely than not that he was. Frigga couldn't see his face yet. She sat with baited breath waiting for him to turn so that she could see him, so that she could see her grandson.
Sweet relief bubbled up in Frey when he heard the joy flood out into his beloved sister's seidr. He smiled with it. It swiftly overtook the grief. It wouldn't last for long, but it was better than listening to her accusing him of betraying her or listening to her fear her own child. It was a small reprieve that he would gladly take. His smile broadened some as he looked over Edward. He loved his first grandson very much. Frey missed Edward then. He wanted to see the boy again as soon as he could. They were halfway through Meade's Book of Svartalfr Poetry. His grandson was enjoying the collected works of the poet Meade. Edward liked it when they sat in front of the fireplace in his office and read together. Frey very much wanted to spend some time with Edward. His grandchildren were all very calming for him.
While Odin was pleased to finally see one of his grandchildren he was less pleased to notice the small red cube sitting on Stark's worktable. A small metal cube painted red with golden accents at the corners and a smaller golden cube in the center of the top face. The golden cube had a small flashing light in the center of it. It looked familiar. The coloring was wrong, but everything else was similar enough. If it were any other Midgardian, he wouldn't have wondered over it. Since Loki was involved, he wondered. What are you doing with that? If it was what he thought, then it was something that a Midgardian ought not have. There was nothing Odin could do besides take note of it for later, so he turned his attention back to his grandson. He looked like a fine young lad. Truly, the boy reminded him of his own son at that age. The only difference that he could see so far was the brown hair. It was the exact same shade as Stark's hair. Odin still disliked the very thought of this man having claimed Loki without his approval, but he still wanted very much to meet all his grandchildren.
.-.-.-.
He'd typed the wrong command into the wrong line of code again. Tony frowned at his screen. I'm too tired to do this, he thought. As he rubbed his hands over his face he could feel a small tug on his sleeve. When he looked down he saw Edward standing by him with a drawing in hand. "Hey little buddy, what's up?" Tony asked as he ruffled the boy's hair. He knew that he should put Edward to bed with the other children, but he had a hard time saying no to his first child when Edward wanted to spend time in the workshop with him. Edward didn't make it any easier on him by being so well behaved either. He had almost no reason to kick the boy out, not that he wanted to anyway.
"I drew this for you, Daddy," Edwards said as he held up a piece of paper.
.-.-.-.
A soft smile touched Thor's face as he saw his nephew for the first time. While the boy looked a great deal like Stark, he clearly had Loki's eyes. There was even a pretty shimmering in them. Somehow, he was going to have to find a way to meet the boy. Hopefully, he would be able to meet all of his nephews and nieces. He wanted to get to know them. Beyond them being a part of his family, they were his Little Brother's children.
Initially Steve looked over the little boy next to Tony to satisfy his curiosity. When he noticed that the boy had Tony's face and Loki's eyes he couldn't stop looking. The boy himself was very graphic proof that Loki did indeed have children with Tony and was indeed a woman. Lilith wasn't wholly a disguise. It was shocking to see. He still didn't understand how it happened, but the boy was proof that it did.
Looking over the little boy next to Tony, Clint had the very odd feeling that Lilith wasn't as much of a disguise as he first thought. Even though it was Tony's face the boy had, it was Loki's eyes he was looking at. This was just another emotionally confusing thing to try to deal with. His anger at Loki was fading rapidly, being replaced by a renewed ability to focus on the mission instead. There were still barbs and stings from it in his thoughts since it was Lilith who taught him how to be rid of the anger. However, like seeing Lilith with blind eyes, this made him uncomfortable as well. Tony had never been known to treat women well. Pepper was the only woman who Clint was certain that Tony tried to treat as more than just a momentary distraction. The thought that Lilith might be mixed up with a man like that was uneasy. He felt that she deserved better than that. Unfortunately, his thoughts kept circling back around to it being Loki that he was concerned about. Clint was still trying to settle it in his mind that Lilith was Loki, and that Loki might have tried to help him. None of this was helping him to settle anything. It was only making it more difficult to try to set it aside to deal with later.
It was then that Frey noticed the ongoing mental dissonance in Clint Barton. It was still severe but settling quickly. There was nothing he could do about it then, which would displease Loki, he was sure. Without anything else to do, he turned his attention happily back to his grandson.
.-.-.-.
After Tony took the drawing and turned it right side up, he smiled as he recognized who his son drew. "This is a great picture of mom, I love it," he bent down to put a kiss on the top of his son's head. When he stood up he turned around to walk over to the wall opposite the welding table. Nearly the entire wall was covered in children's pictures. He looked over everything while scratching at his goatee.
"Hm, I'm running out of room," he said as he moved a page of scribbles that Forrest made over by a picture of a tree that Erik drew. Tony held up the picture and realized he had no tape to hold the picture to the concrete wall. As he walked over to one of this storage cabinets he looked at the picture his son drew for him. That's odd.
"You drew mom with interesting eyes, Edward," Tony said while fishing out a role of tape to hold the picture up.
"They're Mama's eyes," Edward said sleepily. A little yawn worked its way out of him, and he rubbed at his eyes. His Mama had the prettiest eyes, even if they were wrong.
Tony chuckled, "They just look a bit small. It's a pretty drawing. I like it." He walked back over to the wall.
"They're Mama's eyes!" Edwards said, his little voice louder and more insistent. He wished he had the words to tell his Daddy what he saw. He was gaining them at a slower pace than he liked. Like many other things, he was waiting for them.
Edward's tone of voice drew Tony's attention. Edward had always been special. Not only did he have a tremendous amount of seidr, but he saw too much for someone so young. Neither of these things surprised Tony. He knew how special Edward was. His son was still too young to explain many of the things he saw, but that didn't stop him from trying anyway. Tony had come to recognize the tone of voice Edward had when he was trying to tell them what he was seeing. It was his solid opinion that ignoring his son when he was trying to tell them something was a bad idea.
Walking over to Edward, Tony knelt down in front of the sleepy child. He held up the picture and said, "I know these are mom's eyes. I just thought they looked a little small. That's it. Is there something you want to tell me?"
Edward rubbed at his eyes again. "They're Mama's eyes. I see them, so I drew what I saw."
Perusing the picture again let Tony analyze what he was looking at. The eyes his boy drew looked like tiny circles in Loki's face. They were well drawn, but still looked out of place. Like a child's eyes, he thought. Tony was suddenly very awake. Just like a child's eyes. He tried to be calm as he asked his son, "When you look at mom, this is what you see?"
The boy nodded slowly and yawned again. "They're Mama's eyes, like little mirrors. They're shiny and pretty in front," he tapped the picture. Edward's Mama was always so pretty. She was the best.
"They are, and you drew them perfectly," Tony gave his son a kiss on the forehead. "How about we get you to bed?" He folded the picture up and put it in his jeans pocket before setting the tape next to his keyboard.
"I'm not tired, Daddy," Edward shook his head, he stopped as another yawn hit. "I don't want to go to sleep." He blinked again and again as he tried to keep his eyes open. "Not tired," he mumbled.
"Sure thing, little buddy," Tony smiled and picked the small boy up. Even though Edward was tall for a seven-year-old he was still easy for Tony to carry. As soon as he had Edward in his arms his son laid his head down against his shoulder and started snoring softly. It brought a smile to his face. Tony walked out of his workshop and into the grey concrete hallway outside it. Embedded lights lining the ceiling of the hallway provided bright white illumination. There were dark brown stone stairs at the beginning of the hallway. Those stairs led to the main living area of the mansion. He turned to his right at the top of the stairs, down the hall lined with doors. Each door was two inches of solid Quebracho wood with ornate carvings over the surface done in medieval stylings. The handles were forest green star-felled steel. Their hinges were also star-felled steel, though they'd been dyed gold. The doors were finished in dark brown along with most of the rest of the house. The walls themselves were painted a soft cream color while the floors were the same dark brown stone as the stairs. Tony went into the first door on the right.
Edward's room was decorated with a cosmos theme. The stars painted on the cream-colored ceiling were glowing dimly in the dark room. The miniature gold and crystal chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling was unlit. Toy rockets, tiny aliens and other toys littered the plush brown carpet of the room. There were glowing comets on the cream-colored walls and a mobile of the solar system hanging above the small twin bed. The wooden headboard of the bed was carved with depiction of the solar system. Even the small bathroom to the left of the door to the room had a star covered step stool as well as a space themed rug, little cup, toothbrush, and hamper. Tony held Edward with one hand and pulled the planet and moon adorned covers back with the other. He set the sleeping boy down gently then pulled the covers up over him. "Have sweet dreams," Tony whispered before he went to find his wife.
After exiting his son's room, Tony turned towards the stairs again. Past them was the living room and Loki was lounging on the sofa there. She was nodding her head in time to the music playing softly in the background. "I'm nuts, baby, I'm mad," the singer crooned along with the swanky song. She sang of her own madness and enjoyment of it, of how it made her a better friend to the listener than sanity would. "All the best people are crazy."
As Tony came around to the front of the sofa he could see that Loki was working on tablet. His gaze traveled over her ridged cobalt skin. It disappeared underneath a plum colored tank top and an old, grey pair of his sweatpants with the cuffs rolled up. There was familiar burn in his blood leading to pleasant sparks of heat in his groin as his gaze traveled over that beautiful cobalt skin. Some God of Mischief, he thought. He knew better than to say it, unless he wanted to have his hair changed to some gaudy neon color for a few days. He smiled as he watched her. Cobalt skin didn't detract from the comfortable, casual and common look she had; like any other woman on the planet. Tony loved that he was the only one who got to see her like this with all masks dropped. This was his Loki, and he didn't share.
.-.-.-.
Loki! Thor sat up and leaned forward. He was interested to see his nephew, but now he was seeing a side of Loki he'd never seen before. This was Loki's true skin. He sighed heavily, bitterly ashamed of the many times he told Loki that when he was King he would destroy all the frost giant monsters. The magnitude of his foolishness was breathtaking. As he looked at Loki he could still see his sibling under the ridged blue skin and red eyes. In that moment, Thor wasn't sure he could ever raise arms against another Jotunn without seeing Loki's face. I'm so sorry Loki, I was such a fool.
After taking a deep breath Clint had to look down from the screen. Even though he knew that this was what Loki really looked like, he could still see Lilith. All this looked like was a blue Lilith. In a very unsettling twist this just made it clearer to him that he could still see Lilith even though he was looking at Loki. His best friend and his worst enemy were still there. Clint didn't know if Loki was still his enemy, he didn't think he still was. Even more than that he didn't know if Lilith was still his friend and couldn't deny that he hoped she still was.
.-.-.-.
Tony made little noise coming up the stairs and only a little more coming out of their son's room, but Loki heard him moving about. She heard him walk up behind her and waited for him to say something as he stood next to the sofa. When he just stood looking at her, she asked, "Did you need something, Love?"
Tony sat down on the sofa next to her and took the tablet from her hands. He looked over what she was working on. "The 2nd Chance Homes?"
Loki picked up her mug from the low sitting dark hardwood coffee table and took a sip of her mocha. She tapped on the tablet's screen to bring up the overall status reports. "Yes. They're doing quite well. In fact, homelessness is down by 80% across the whole of California. The halfway parks are doing well. The security forces have reported an overall decrease in violence among the populations there, and there hasn't been a violent incident in any of the homes in almost three weeks. In addition to that almost all of the House Directors are reporting a 100% response to medication needs. Many of them are coming in under budget as well." Loki sat up and looked at Tony. "Those tax breaks are assisting us nicely. They were what we needed."
"Tony, the 2nd Chance Homes are doing well enough for me to be confident in the model. I think we should start expanding out into other states. The homes in conjunction with the infrastructure projects and retraining programs are bringing many people back into society from the fringes. If we expanded this out, one state at a time, imagine how many people we could bring in out of the cold," she took the tablet out of his hands to set it and her mug on the table. Loki threw a leg over him and situated herself comfortably in Tony's lap. She was pleased when he rested his hands on her hips. She loved to have his hands there. "We have the jobs, we have the training, we have the housing, we have the money, now we need the people. They're waiting for us. Hundreds of thousands of them. I want them." My King shall see to all of his people.
.-.-.-.
It was unseemly to Odin that a Prince of Asgard should be seeing to the vagrants of Midgard. It was such a lowly enterprise to be involved in. He couldn't imagine one of his sons being subjected to the presence of someone so filthy and shiftless. Yet Loki seemed to show compassion for those people. These actions seemed consistent with Loki's assertions that the trillions of lives in the Nine Realms should be protected. Odin still rankled at his son being subjected to such people. You were ever a gentle child, weren't you? Perhaps you were too gentle for Asgard, but I've ever loved you as my own. I couldn't give you up. Had we not driven you from us, what care would you have shown for Asgard? Odin thought back on the many reforms to the judicial system Loki made. His son focused mainly on the treatment of prisoners, particularly on the reforming of the people who found themselves in the dungeons multiple times. "We must ensure that they understand why the law is beneficial to them, instead of teaching them to fear and hate the City Guardsman and their punishments," Loki told him. Odin frowned as he remembered scoffing at the notion. Is it any wonder that Loki left us?
A small smile crossed Frigga's face. This didn't truly surprise her. Loki spent many decades in the Hall of Justice working to improve the laws of Asgard so that they were more compassionate. It was only slightly displeasing that Loki had taken this approach to Midgardian vagrants. They were certainly beneath her son's position, but not beneath her son's notice.
A smile touched Frey's lips then. Loki told him of her 2nd Chance Homes. He hadn't wanted her near vagrants at first. He hadn't wanted her near those kinds of people. They could be dangerous, and he was unwilling to risk her safety. It wouldn't normally concern him, but her bones were left so brittle that it had to be a concern. At the end of the discussion it wasn't her reasons as to why they deserved aid, but the sparkle in her eyes that convinced him. She was happy. More importantly, Anthony made certain that she was safe. It was all he needed.
