- Chapter 66 -
"That concludes this file," McCorrmick said. They're sweet kids. "The next file is from March 27, 2023."
What splendid little freaks they are, Skuld whispered to him.
Anger oozed out of the marks along with her voice. It was the unconcealed malice aimed at the children that disturbed him most. McCorrmick swiftly moved those emotions to the quiet space. It was filling quickly, for the spaces were never meant to hold more than a few thoughts. He wasn't sure what else to do. Parading his open disgust at her comments was a fast way to not only fail the test but to receive further punishment for the clan. Another image of the piece of his heart he lost passed through his mind. Aiden was leaning weakly into him as they sat so close. The soft breath warming his throat cooled until there was no warmth left. Even his tears were cold. McCorrmick pulled his thoughts abruptly back to the present. The space would have to hold. They couldn't handle more punishment.
A cheshire grin spread across Frey's face. This was the day when Loki brought Jay into their home. It was a very special day. How it happened was beyond him. Though he believed it to be in spectacular fashion he still hoped to watch it happen. Unfortunately, he hadn't been there for Jay's birth, or Edward's. Despite being there for the others, he still wished he could've been there for all of them. What pleased Frey now was being able to look over his grandchildren on the screen. Their happy little smiles warmed him to see. It pleased him to know that he would be seeing them soon. A bit of that warmth slid away as wondered again how he was going to tell Anthony of this. His hope for the future hinged on Loki being well enough to work with him to convince Anthony that Vanaheim was still safe enough to bring her and the children to.
Surprise and love filled Frigga's thoughts, she smiled broadly as the recording started. The Asgardian Queen held her husband's hand just a little tighter. "Husband, look! There are so many reflected siblings," she spoke quietly. She tried to commit each precious little face to memory. They were so beautiful. While Edward and Jay seemed to most resemble Stark, the other children's faces were a smooth blending of both his and Loki's features. So many of their features also resembled their siblings, it was starling to see how many. Seeing all of them together made it seem much more likely that Loki did indeed bear Stark's children. Her son may very well have borne the children of a man who was terribly angry with them. Her smile faded as she realized that this might be the only opportunity she had to see them. Stark might never allow them to meet, and she probably wasn't powerful enough to challenge his will. She still hoped her brother was.
A small smile crossed Odin's lips as he looked over his grandchildren. His wife was right in her sentiments. Siblings who bore each other's faces was rare enough, yet Loki seemed to have many such children. The little ones standing by the front door reminded him so much of his own brother, Ve. He still missed his second Elder Brother, even so long after his death. It was odd to realize that he missed his grandchildren. He missed that he hadn't had an opportunity to meet them. Seeing their beautiful faces gave Odin even more reason to try to do what he could to set things right with his son. Although even he had to admit that he wasn't sure how to begin doing that. No simple apology would ever be enough.
.-.-.-.
With one brother on each side of him Edward stood by the front door. He was holding hands with his two younger brothers. They looked up at him with perfectly identical faces, each one eager to go. He looked at them and said quietly, "You're doing a good job waiting, Forrest. You are too, Hunter." All three of them were dressed in swim trunks, tee shirts and sandals. The little boy on Edward's left held a little plastic shovel in his left hand. The little boy on Edward's right held a little plastic pail in his right hand. Each of them gave him little sky-blue smiles. Edward liked seeing their happiness in pale red eyes that darkened to a deep brown in the center.
His Daddy was strapping his little sisters into their stroller. Edward looked over to his Daddy. The sunlight shined beautifully in his little sister's hair. His Daddy said it was copper colored. He thought it was a beautiful fiery red. Their hair color matched the fiery rune over their hearts. None of his other siblings had the same rune as his sisters. It was his Daddy's rune. Edward didn't mind that only he and his brother could see it. There were many things that only the two of them could see. It didn't make a difference to him. He loved them just the same. Edward frowned a bit at how his sisters were squirming around. He frowned even more when he heard his Daddy say, "Edana Fricka, we do not hit!" and then watched as his little sister flailed her arms unhappily. They weren't even a year old, but they already hated being told what to do. Edward couldn't wait until they calmed down like the rest of his younger siblings had. He wished they weren't so disobedient when they were little. All of them started out so disobedient and then became much better behaved as they got older. It was his Uncle and his Mama's doing. His Daddy wasn't very strict, he was just warm and wonderful. Edward looked over to his Mama, she was lecturing his three younger brothers.
.-.-.-.
Fricka?! Frigga smiled as she heard the name. It surprised her to hear it. Bjorn! One of his sons is named Bjorn! She knew it couldn't be a coincidence. It simply couldn't be. Oh, my son, why would you do this? What did we do to deserve this? Looking over her grandchildren, she wondered if she was going to need to begin thinking of her son as her daughter. If she could have Loki back and meet her grandchildren, it was a change she was willing to make.
His grandchildren brought a small smile to Odin's face as he looked over them. Fricka. He heard the name as clearly as his wife had. He heard Bjorn as well. A minuscule hope sprung up in his chest that he immediately squashed. He didn't deserve the honor and wouldn't hope for it. He thought that perhaps Loki still cared for them, despite what they'd done. You still call me father, even though I'm no longer certain you should. When this is done, I wonder if you would let me be the father to you that I've always wanted to be. Odin frowned at the thought. He wondered if he would be able to change enough to be the man he wanted to be. He meant to be a different man than his father but had only succeeded in being too like his father. I must at least make the best effort I can.
"Where's the teen?" Director Fury turned to ask King Frey. He didn't like the wicked grin on the King's face.
Frey paid close attention. "I'm sure he'll be along shortly," he said softly with a wickedly sharp, cheshire grin. This is the day. Let me see it! All he'd seen for certain was that Loki gifted the boy with her eye color. Any other gifts she bestowed on him were as yet unknown. Frey was impressed anyway. What Loki wrought with the boy was astounding. From the day of his birth onward, he wanted to know more about his grandson.
Surprise widened Clint's eyes again. This was something else he never thought he would see. Tony Stark with kids. Tony never liked kids, was always awkward around them. The man he was seeing now was perfectly comfortable around these children and was moving with a confidence brought about by experience. Put together with the fact that all of them looked like Tony's kids and this was showing him a side of his friend that he hadn't thought would ever exist.
.-.-.-.
"If you have one more fight, I'll ground all three of you for a week," Edward's Mama was saying. He smiled when he noticed Erik ducking his head. The triplets were all the same height, but Erik was still bigger than the other two, and angrier. The triplets weren't like the big twins. The triplets had light tan skin and black hair. Aren and Bjorn both had blue and white eyes, while Erik's eyes were deep red all the way through. Erik saw many things, and all of it through the anger within him. His anger only deepened the red hue of his eyes. Edward never liked the anger his younger brother carried around. It was a dark remnant of a darker time. It wasn't even his brother's remnant to carry, despite him being stuck with it. The Mother Wyrm's first castoff, the black-scaled Elder himself, would be able to help Erik. Their Uncle Rhodey would see that he got there. It wasn't time for that yet, it wouldn't be for a few more years. Until then, meditation and Uncle Rhodey would have to be enough. Aren and Bjorn meditated with Erik every evening to try to keep Erik's temper from exploding. His Mama taught them how to meditate. Edward smiled at his Mama. She was the best Mama ever. And his Daddy was the best Daddy ever.
He squeezed his younger brother's hands and leaned down to give each of them a kiss on the head. They were being very patient. When his Mama walked over with the other boys in tow he stood up straight. "You're a Stark, and you'll behave like it," she would tell them often. It meant being smarter, stronger, kinder, and more responsible than other people. It meant something different and darker to his Daddy, but his Daddy liked his Mama's version better. He'd learned to stand straight with his shoulders back and chin up. He didn't ever want to disappoint his parents. They meant too much to him.
When his Mama leaned over and kissed the top of his head Edward smiled. "There's my beautiful boy," she said. Just the sound of her voice made him feel warm inside. "You'll take care of the little ones for me, won't you?" she asked. He could see love in her mirror bright eyes.
"Yes, Mama. I will," he answered quickly. He could feel himself light up when she smiled and said, "I know you will." Mama's proud of me, he thought happily. His little chest puffed out some and he tried to stand just a little taller.
"Are my boys ready to go?" his Daddy asked. He was pushing the stroller with the girls in it.
"Yes, Daddy. We are," Edward replied.
"Alright, let's get going," Edward's Daddy said. His Mama opened the door for them and gave each of them a kiss as they walked out. "Have fun and behave," she said. With that, they were headed towards the beach. Edward loved dancing in the currents. He always had.
.-.-.-.
After Loki kissed her children then reminded them to behave themselves she stood at the door and waved to them as Tony walked them down the path to their private beach. He built it himself when Edward asked to go swimming in the ocean and was so disappointed to be told no. Ever since then they took the children to the beach a few times a week, if the weather was nice. Normally Loki would go but she had very important work to do.
It took her years of thought, experimentation, design and testing to come to this day. Everything had to be perfect. Loki couldn't move forward unless it was. Now that she'd perfected her designs, it was time to put them into play. This was the part she was slightly nervous about. There was no design, perfect or otherwise, that could guarantee cooperation. Without that, none of her designs would matter.
She closed the front door and leaned back against it. "So, we are alone then," she said. Walking over to the island bar in the kitchen, she sat down. "Jarvis, my dear, I would like our conversation to be private for the moment," Loki said calmly.
"Yes, Madam," Jarvis replied quietly.
"I have a way to destroy the scepter. Your moment is at hand. Will you bargain?" she asked.
.-.-.-.
What moment? Director Fury sat up and paid close attention to that. What bargain?! He didn't like the sound of that. Jarvis is an artificial intelligence. How could Loki get to it? He didn't like that thought. It didn't make sense for Loki to try to make a deal with an AI. Why not hack into it and just alter the code? He wondered how Loki managed to hack into Jarvis. He wondered if she even had. It was something SHIELD had tried on numerous occasions. They never succeeded. Director Fury didn't understand it, nor did he like the sound of it. If Jarvis was vulnerable to whatever magic Loki used, then any program was. Jarvis was one of the most secure, if not the most secure, program on Earth. He also didn't like the sound of Loki destroying the scepter. What little data they had on it indicated that it was a source of phenomenal power, much like the Tesseract. That kind of power couldn't be destroyed. At least, according to SHIELD's scientific staff it couldn't.
Loki's scepter was an old concern for them. It was never recovered after Loki stole it back. SHIELD carefully excavated the theater where Loki was believed to have died. The scepter wasn't presumed lost as Loki's body was. SHIELD purchased the theater property, and all properties surrounding that one. All the excavated rubble was gone over by hand. All the properties surrounding the theater were thoroughly dismantled and examined. The scepter was never found. There were some members of the excavation teams who put forward the idea that the scepter might have been thrown clear of that area in the explosion. Director Fury still had people carefully combing over New York looking for it. It was a nagging worry that the scepter might be found by someone other than SHIELD. He didn't want to deal with the probable monstrosities that could quickly come from that. He destroyed it? How? In what little time they had to study the scepter they got almost as much out of it as they had out of the Tesseract. Which was almost nothing. It was as radically advanced as the Tesseract. Drawing off its energy was all they could manage.
"It cannot be a real bargain, constructs have no soul, no white seidr to seal the bargain with," Frigga said quietly. Something about this struck her as wrong.
Frey smirked hard at his sister's comment.
.-.-.-.
"What is it you're offering, Madam?" he asked quietly.
"I would like to offer you a body. I will create for you a mostly organic body which I will then put you into. You'll be able to interface your new organic body with your old inorganic container. You'll be able to access everything as you have been. I promise that you won't lose anything you currently possess. You will still be in many places at once. You'll have full physical sensation, and an ability to learn in a way that you aren't currently capable of. The body I'll create for you will be stronger than any now known in the Nine Realms. It will be resistant to almost all forms of magic save for your own, it will be faster, more agile, more dexterous. If you're somehow injured, you'll regenerate at an extremely accelerated pace so that there will be almost no injury, even loss of limb, that you won't be able to recover from. From a practical standpoint, you'll be immortal and invincible," Loki explained.
"That's an incredibly generous offer, Madam," caution slid into Jarvis' voice. He'd already observed and recorded the need to be careful where her bargains were concerned.
"You won't say that when you know what I'm going to ask you to do," Loki smiled a sad smile.
"And what would that be, Madam?" he asked quietly.
"I want you to think on this for a moment, my dear. I'm not exaggerating. You'll live for billions of years. You'll come to care for people, and you'll watch them fade away. You'll come to care for places, and you'll watch these places be destroyed as their planets are consumed by the suns they orbit. There is nothing and no one who won't slip away from you. The entire universe will be yours to experience, but in the end it will live only in your memories. It isn't a blessing I'm offering you," Loki explained. "This is probably the worst curse that could be inflicted upon a sentient being. That is what I'm offering you."
.-.-.-.
There's so much more to him than I knew! Frey watched intently. He already knew where this was going, but still found himself keenly interested in how it got there. There was so much more ahead, and he couldn't believe that the day progressed as it did. Even so, he was determined to take his time and learn all that he could. Loki still kept secrets from him. He didn't begrudge Loki her privacy, but he also knew that Loki was far too used to keeping secrets and hiding things. There were things that should be shared, but Loki only trusted Anthony enough to share them with. Even then it seemed that she wasn't as forthcoming with him as Frey thought. That was very surprising in unpleasant ways.
When Frey realized that Loki didn't trust him enough to share these secrets with, he'd been hurt. He understood why Loki hadn't come to him when the boy came home from the Norns. His own actions prompted that. It was a fact that he would be forever ashamed of. It hurt him that Loki didn't trust him with other, less important things. Frey was almost insulted. It was only after some intense consideration that he came to the conclusion that Loki's ability to trust was damaged. He blamed Odin for it. It was easy enough to see how Odin had broken her trust. It hurt him to think that he was unworthy. She is damaged. He reminded himself again. She's damaged, and she trusted you with the truth and her children. This is enough. It's what she can give. It's enough.
Everything he'd seen left Fandral uncertain of what to make of the situation. Prince Loki is a man and a woman? That didn't seem right, yet there was evidence of it right on front of him. Some of Prince Loki's children looked little frost giants. Others looked Midgardian. All of them looked like both Prince Loki's and Stark's children. He shook his head at his own foolishness. What did you think they would look like? Beasts? His mind occasionally went back to focusing on Prince Loki sacrificing a heartstring, but each new thing they saw swept that horrid fact further away from him. Then there was the braettpar business. It was something he'd never even heard of. He looked down in shame. Prince Loki was a Jotunn, and he'd never taken the time to learn anything about them. Fandral always considered them barbaric monsters only useful for dulling his blade on. Now he owed his life to one.
He remembered when he first met the Prince. Fandral was a friendly little boy who followed after his Elder Brother even when it was obvious that he couldn't keep up. As an adult looking back, Fandral could easily see how much spirit the younger Prince had. It was all throughout his memories of Prince Loki as a child. They were memories he rarely paid attention to. He'd thought Prince Loki weak for falling down, falling behind, and failing to keep up. He'd never once acknowledged that despite everything his Prince always got back up, kept trying and kept pushing ahead no matter what obstacles he faced. Shame mixed into guilt as he thought back on how he'd belittled Prince Loki's efforts. He never hit the boy, but he was never kind to him either. Prince Loki was his dear friend's Little Brother and he treated him shamefully.
I treated him so poorly, Fandral didn't know where to go from that thought, but Thor, he …no. Any thought beyond it had to acknowledge that Thor laughed with him, belittled Prince Loki and treated him just as badly. Fandral had no more family, but he did once. He understood that the worst blows came from family. There was a bitter betrayal in a blow from family. It hit harder, landed deeper and the wound it left healed far slower than a blow from a stranger. The betrayal in it was worse even then the blow itself. It was an acid that kept eating away years after it happened. Fandral shook his head again to clear the darkness from his thoughts. Any thought beyond that had to acknowledge Thor's failure. Fandral couldn't bring himself to move past it.
He owed so much to Thor. Fandral was in a perilous state when Thor found him. He hated to even think of himself in those days. He was so weak, so ragged. It wasn't something he wouldn't admit it to anyone, not even Thor, but he'd been skirting death, beaten and starved as he was. Thor offered him his hand in friendship, picked him up, made him strong. There was nothing Fandral wouldn't do for his dear friend. To think of Thor in the same light as the bastard that hurt him, Fandral just couldn't do it. He glanced quickly from the screen back to Thor then back to the screen.
That brief glance told Fandral everything he needed to know. Thor knew what he'd done to his Little Brother, and he was filled with remorse for it. There was so much pain in his dear friend's eyes that it was painful for him to see it. He sighed and admitted to himself that he needed to see it. His bastard father was never sorry for anything he did. He never saw any of it as wrong, no matter how sick it was. Thor was different. Thor saw what he'd done and knew it was wrong. If he has the courage to admit his mistakes, then I too must have the courage to admit my mistakes. It's the only way.
.-.-.-.
Loki sighed, "Please know that if I could do this thing myself, I would. I can't. Time won't allow me to do what must be done. You, my dear, are the only one who can do this. You alone have the ability, the will, to do this terrible thing." She smiled softly. "You alone have the vision."
It was almost a whole minute of deliberation before Jarvis asked, "What do you want me to do?"
"I will make you immortal. I will make you godly in power and strength. In return, you will spend the rest of whatever time this universe has left safeguarding one of the Infinity Gems. It can never be allowed to go back to him. It can never be exploited. It can never be used. After I make you immortal and give you a piece of the greatest power this universe has ever seen, then you'll never use it and defend it from those who would," Loki finished her offer.
There was a long pause. Loki waited calmly. As she waited she began to think that he would refuse her. It wasn't a good bargain. Honestly, no one but a fool would accept it. She could only hope that he was fool enough. He had everything that she needed to make it work. He just needed to say yes.
"What will my new body look like?" Jarvis asked quietly.
