These Things We've Gained: Eternal Love, Building Hope, Just Honesty

by Tales of Suspense

In the aftermath of "These Things We've Lost" people strugggle to create a new normal. (Slice of Life)

3. Chapter 3

- Chapter 3 -

23May2023 – Early Morning

Vanaheim Royal Palace Sitting Room

Once Frigga stepped back from Odin she noticed that she could feel James Rhodes seidr from outside the door, as well as Jay's seidr. They were waiting patiently so she went to the door to let them in. A wide smile touched her face when she opened the door and saw Jay standing behind James Rhodes.

The older man was wearing a buttoned up, long sleeve, charcoal grey shirt that was buttoned at the cuffs but unbuttoned at the top button. His pants were crisply ironed and made of black jean, along with his black leather belt, and black leather shoes. Though James only looked like he was in his early forties, he wasn't. He was an older man in his fifties and held the maturity of that. While the older man was wearing somber tones the younger man was wearing was wearing blue jeans with green suede belt and a loose, light green, tee shirt that had a sort of crest on it and 'Queen' written under it. His partially laced up combat boots were a solid black. He looked like a sloppy teenager, an ordinary young man when he was anything but ordinary. Jay was a true and unseen soul created in a machine by his father. His name was Jarvis once. Jay was his real name, the only name he wanted. His mother created the body that he was wearing currently. Just because he inhabited the body didn't mean that he was tied to it though. Jay could leave his body and frequently did, and was tempted to do so at that moment. Embarrassment was beginning to seep into his mind.

"Are we in the right place, ma'am?" James had to ask because the room he was directed to was a garden instead of an office. The garden didn't have a table in it. He didn't mind conjuring one but wasn't sure if he was allowed to. He needed something to write on to finish the paperwork in his hand. His pen was always ready to go.

"Yes, yes. Come in, please." Motioning to the interior of the room, Frigga moved out of their way so that they could enter. She closed the doors after them and followed closely along behind her grandson. The boy was carrying a tray with several small plates of food, and one with an opaque lid. They smelled delicious and were foods unlike any she had ever seen. The Asgardian Queen was wary of them though. They didn't look like foods that the Culinary College would approve of. James Rhodes motioned for the boy to set his tray down on the small coffee table, telling him that he would get the boy more if it wasn't enough. Lady Audhumbla approved of James Rhodes, and she knew that the College couldn't go against her. Frigga could only hope that the food was healthy enough for the boy.

Nodding once, James finished reading over the papers, set them down on the table, and signed each one as Jay's Guardian ad Litem, then he handed the pen to the boy. "Sign and date each one, please."

Thin strands of nervousness and embarrassment crept quietly throughout his mind. "Yes, Uncle Rhodey." Jay signed and dated each one, noting that his uncle signed as his guardian. That was odd in his opinion. It wasn't odd enough for him to ask about it. There were two other things that were holding his attention. The countdown in his mind and what was coming. His face felt like it was warming up again.

After Jay signed each of the papers, James dismissed one to his interdimensional pocket, placing his pen in his back pocket. The apology would be filed in the archives later on. He handed the other one to Jay. Turning to the three monarchs, he spoke calmly while strengthening his soul song of stillness. "We didn't really have an opportunity to be properly introduced last night, so I thought we should take care of that." Motioning to himself, "I'm James Rhodes, please call me James. It's lovely you meet the three of you."

Frigga took the opportunity to speak for the three of them. "My name is Frigga," motioning to her husband she said, "This is my husband, Odin," then motioning to her brother, she spoke again, "This is my brother, Frey. Please call us by our given names. There shouldn't be titles between family."

"Thank you very much, I appreciate that." Introductions had gone well, not it was time for the first order of business. James turned Jay to face his younger grandfather. In a soft but firm voice he directed his nephew. "Now we apologize." He gently put a hand on his nephew's shoulder and walked the boy forward. He strengthened his soul song of stillness to help Jay deal with having to apologize.

Nervousness had threaded its way through the entirety of his mind and Jay couldn't root it out as he went to face the man whose kindness he'd abused. While Jay was unable to root out the nervousness he was able to at least push back it enough to let him hand his written apology over. Don't fidget, make eye contact, speak clearly, his uncle flared his seidr to him to remind him discreetly of what he needed to do. Meeting his grandfather's gaze, he spoke with enough volume to be heard, and shoved his hands into his pockets to avoid fidgeting. "I'm very sorry for not helping to resolve what was going on with mother and father before yesterday. I was wrong to come into your home and not introduce myself. I was wrong to treat you with fear and distrust. I was wrong to keep this dangerous situation to myself. I was wrong to not ask for help. I was wrong to not offer my assistance in handling this situation earlier. I was wrong to listen to the people telling me to keep these secrets. I'm very sorry for what I did, it was irresponsible, and I won't do it again." His gaze drifted down as it was hard to maintain eye contact for longer than he absolutely needed to. So far his grandfather wasn't angry at him. That didn't help him to not be nervous and somewhat embarrassed over why he was having to apologize. His face wasn't burning yet, but it was still getting warmer. The countdown was almost done.

Jay was so obviously anxious to apologize, just like Anthony. He wondered if perhaps Anthony had influenced Jay in a negative way. Frey wanted to begin helping Jay to get away from those habits. This was a perfect opportunity. "You were wrong to do those things, but I understand how doing those things could seem like the right thing to a child in the middle of a situation. I appreciate that you're going to make efforts to not repeat these mistakes. I forgive you, Jay. I know you didn't mean for these things to happen."

Looking up to his grandfather, Jay was still a little disbelieving that the man wasn't angry with him. There was no anger in his grandfather's seidr. He did make some very irresponsible mistakes though. Tentatively, he looked up. "Really?" The countdown was ticking down quickly.

"Yes, Jay. I forgive you." The boy's apology was more than he expected from a child. It encompassed what the boy did wrong and even promised to try to correct the mistakes going forward. Frey greatly approved of it. That he actually received two apologies, a written and verbal one, impressed him further.

"Thank you! I promise that I'll do better in the future. I really will." A bright expression lit up Jay's face. This was easier than his emotional modelling simulation made it seem. The simulation made it seem very likely that Frey would be angry with him when he laid out what he'd done wrong, but he wasn't. The countdown came to a close. "Oh." Jay turned to his uncle then. "The countdown has ended. Father's 'godkillers' have reached Asgard. Their cloaked and Asgard's shipping lanes are clear. What do you want to do now?"

"Can you reach them quickly ?" James attitude hardened the look on his face. He almost couldn't believe that things had come to the point where his younger brother was dabbling in WMD. This wasn't the righteous path that he should have been walking, the path his other younger brothers were walking. This too was going to be handled now that he had the time to handle everything.

"No, not without a communications spike." Jay was very nervous about the weaponry was father was using. He completely disagreed with it being built, let alone used. That was why he took his own measures as they were being built and told his uncle everything when he was asked about them. He wanted nothing to do with them and would have told his mother if his father's overrides hadn't stopped him. He hated those overrides.

Godkillers?! Worry streaked swiftly across the three monarch's minds. When Odin looked to Frigga then Frey he saw that they too were worried about what else Stark had done. Curious worry played across Frey's face and was matched by the concern on Frigga's face.

Unfolding his seidr let it shoot down his arm so that James could mount a Communications Spike Weave. It released to form a thick garnet spike that whose tip was brushing the top of the ceiling. Thin, advanced communications equipment threaded through the long spike. It was as powerful than what was found in the Elder Realms, but thinner and lighter. While he created the weave so that Anthony would be able to contact him anywhere he went on Earth without interruptions or excuses, it was not going to be used to reach out and touch something instead of someone. He stood next to the spike and motioned to it. "Use the spike and go through Vanaheim's communications system." Give me access to them.

Oh, that's much bigger than father's spike. "Yes, Uncle Rhodey." Jay walked over to the garnet communications spike and placed his hand on it. Garnet seidr flashed in his eyes. His silver soul flowed from his body, through his hand, and into the communications spike. Silver sparks glimmered over the surface of the spike as he accessed the communications systems of Vanaheim through the Royal Palace. Those systems allowed him to reach through them to access the WMD platforms. "I have the 'godkillers' now. Wait, they're fully automated?" He wasn't expecting that. "That's not good."

Quietly James stepped over next to Jay and placed a hand over top of his nephew's hand, touching both his nephew and the spike. Discreetly then he unfolded his seidr to extend it into the spike and make contact with his nephew. Once he contacted Jay's seidr, James wove his seidr into a tight cord to create a bridge between the two of them. Through it he could see what his nephew was seeing. What he saw was all four of the 'godkiller' platforms floating quietly in the empty space around Asgard. They were cloaked and headed towards Asgard itself.

"Oh! What are you doing here?" Jay startled when he felt the bridge form between himself and his uncle.

"I'm just making sure things are handled appropriately." His voice was quiet and hard as he spoke. James touched at the platforms with his mind, able to give them commands though his nephew. Once he had that access he took personal command of each of the four platforms, directing them at full speed towards Asgard.

"What are you doing, Uncle Rhodey? That's not towards the shipping lane's gate." A sense of ominous foreboding touched Jay's thoughts. There was no need for his uncle to be involved in bringing the platforms home for reclamation operations in his opinion.

"They don't need to go to the gate." The platforms were speeding along towards their final destination.

"But that's going towards Asgard." There was no cessation of speed in the platforms.

The entire situation concerned Odin. He didn't want to doubt a man who had Lady Audhumbla's approval. He also didn't want weapons named 'godkiller' that Stark made near his kingdom. Most of all he wanted to know what was happening.

Squirming didn't break Jay free of his uncle's grip since his mind was too strong for the digital boy to get away from. "Uncle Rhodey! You can't dock them …" He cut off his own sentence with a sharp gasp as he watched the 'godkiller' platforms angle down at full speed and ram into the center of the singularity beneath Asgard. Each was expertly aimed, ripped apart and destroyed utterly. There could be no bringing them home now to reclaim their parts. They were completely gone. Horror washed over his young mind.

With the destruction of the 'godkiller' platforms James released his nephew and broke down the bridge between them. He urged the boy back into his body then broke down the Communications Spike Weave into seidr and stowed his seidr back into his core. "There. Now they've been appropriately handled."

"He's going to be so angry at me!" Little tears misted over Jay's eyes at the thought of having to tell his father that all of the platforms had been destroyed. His throat tightened. He had nothing to give back to his father to keep him from being angry. Cold tears of shock trickled down his cheeks.

After he noticed that his nephew was crying James summoned a handkerchief from his interdimensional pocket and began wiping the tears away. "He won't be angry at you. If he's angry at anyone it'll be me." His lips quirked up at one side. "That's fine."

Sniffing a little, Jay asked what was most on his mind. "Why didn't you tell me what you were going to do?"

"You're a good boy, but still misguided. You would have argued with me trying to defend what you think are your father's interests. It might have dragged on to the point where I wouldn't have been able to intercept the platforms." James wiped the last of the tears from his nephew's face.

"I don't argue."

"You're arguing now."

"I am not." Jay grumbled discontentedly, calming down slowly. "Why did you destroy them? I could have reclaimed them."

"Which is why I destroyed them." James dismissed the handkerchief back to his interdimensional pocket. Looking back to his nephew showed him a disbelieving look on the boy's face. "Jay, there is a price to deploying weapons of mass destruction. There's a moral price that the side who deploys that level of firepower pays. There's a price in blood that the other side pays. This has only ever happened twice in the history of humanity. Once at Hiroshima and once at Nagasaki. Our country has the dubious distinction of being the one to deploy nuclear firepower on both of those occasions." James paused for a moment. "However, we were at war when those deployments happened. The targets were lawful, and in consideration of everything else that was happening, moral, all of this despite targeting a civilian populace."

Alarm widened Odin's eyes. Nuclear was the name for Galdr's Flame on Midgard. Do the 'godkillers' contain Galdr's Flame? How could they? Odin didn't want to think that Galdr's Flame was pointed at his kingdom. Again, Odin had the same worrying thought; He's a King of Machines, is there anything Stark can't build?

"We aren't at war with Asgard, so what your father did was neither legal nor moral. It was cowardly, disgraceful, and dishonorable." James paused again, looking harder at his nephew as he continued to explain. "Dishonorable because your father sent weapons of mass destruction to target the unarmed civilian populace of a sovereign power that we aren't at war with. He would force Asgard to pay a blood price. Disgraceful because your father chose weaponry instead of words to deal with his anger. Anger is to be dealt with peacefully. Does sending WMDs to strike at his wife's parents sound peaceful to you? It doesn't to me. Finally, it was cowardly because he tried to force Vanaheim to pay the moral price, instead of paying it himself."

Jay looked swiftly to his younger grandfather then back to his stern uncle. "Vanaheim?"

"What do you think the other sovereign kingdoms of the Nine Realms would do if the implements of an entire kingdom's destruction were found to have come from Vanaheim's shipping lanes?" The boy was thinking about what he was saying, which was enough for James right then.

A serious expression of realization passed over Jay's face. He hadn't thought about the point his uncle was raising. "Oh. I didn't think of that." His voice was quiet as his gaze drifted down to the floor and he felt cold. This wasn't the straightforward situation that he thought it was. More people than just the ones who lived in Asgard were in danger. His simple sabotage wasn't enough. His efforts weren't enough. Jay's chest felt a little tighter with the realization of just how many people he'd helped to endanger.

"Your father stole those shipping lanes and would have forced Vanaheim to pay the price for his actions." A guilty look came over his nephew's face, so James continued. "And you helped him to put these things together. The only reason I'm not so angry with you is because the overrides restrained your speech, and you chose to sabotage those machines. Instead of simply letting your father get away with free range murder you chose to try to save lives. However, both of you are going to pay a price for these machines. Your father has lost all of the materials, including the seidr diamonds and precious metal alloys, as well as all of the effort and time that he sunk into these weapons. He's also going to offer restitution for his actions. You played a much smaller part in this debacle but will offer restitution to your grandfathers as well."

The warmth of embarrassment crawled across Jay's face. It was hard to swallow around the lump in his throat. The shock of realization widened his young eyes. Tears of distress misted over those eyes. Difficult emotion surged through Jay. He sobbed lightly and put his hands over his face. "I'm sorry! I didn't know."

Acting on instinct, James gathered the boy to him. He let the boy cry it out for a few minutes before he summoned another handkerchief from his interdimensional pocket and began to wipe the boy's face clean again. There was distress in Jay's eyes that James disliked. "We're going to make this right again. Don't worry." He increased the strength of his soul song of stillness to ease his nephew's distress.

"How?! Everything is messed up!" Jay was so ashamed that he had anything to do with this. "All I wanted to do was help father. Why does he keep doing this?"

"Anthony is reactionary, especially to his own emotions. He doesn't think about the consequences of what he's doing, he just reacts." James felt badly for his nephew that this had happened, but he wasn't surprised. Starks were what they were, and his father was a Stark.

"What has happened?" It sounded to Odin like James may have spared Asgard an attack, but he wasn't sure.

James turned to face the two Kings. He unfolded his seidr from his core and let it run down his arm to marshal in his hand. He mounted a Wavering Visions Weave and the Learning Spell, and drew his memories into the Learning Spell, the released them in the palm of his hand when he held up his hand. They combined to create a holographic image of a 'godkiller' platform just above his hand. The platform was an icosahedron floating in space. There were three triangular prisms on each face of the platform. They formed a kind of 'Y' at the center of the face. Each face could draw in the sun's light, and fire it back out again. At the bottom of the icosahedron was a heavy, upside down, four sided pyramid. "This is the 'godkiller' platform. It's made specifically to destroy Asgard by focusing the light of the sun down into blasts of nuclear fire." Each King looked distressed at this, so he continued. "A year ago, Anthony started using Vanaheim's shipping lanes going to Asgard to study Asgard. He discovered something interesting." James mounted another Wavering Visions Weave and another Learning Spell, which he gathered his memories into. When he raised his other hand a picture of Asgard as seen from the shipping lanes appeared. The picture flipped over to show the underside of the golden kingdom. In the midst of the bits and bobs, and plates, and sections extending downwards, making up the underside of Asgard were four elongated half-spheres. Each was glowing softly. James used his unfolded seidr to draw garnet circles around each of the half-spheres.

"The stabilizers!" Odin feared to think what could have happened if those had been attacked. "Those are well armored and have embedded cannons near them. Attacking them would be foolish."

"Directly attacking them would be, yes." James flipped over the picture of Asgard so that it was facing right side up again. "But these weapons aren't meant to attack directly." He combined the two Wavering Visions Weaves to show what the 'godkillers' were going to do. The four deadly icosahedrons moved to positions over Asgard that aligned them with the stabilizers on the underside. Once aligned the platforms each fired steady streams nuclear fire down into Asgard. The silver edged golden flames chewed through the land beneath them. In a matter of minutes, the stabilizers had been broken into and destroyed. Without them Asgard buckled and collapsed down into the singularity beneath it. "The platforms had other armaments that would have shot down any ship trying to fight or escape. There would have been no survivors." James glared at the pictures. It would have taken his younger brother less than ten minutes to do something irredeemable. "It's cowardly, dishonorable, and disgraceful." His voice was hard as he spoke. The looks of alarmed shock on the monarch's faces only hardened his dislike of what Anthony had done, what he tried to do. James broke down the weaves and spells back into raw seidr then stowed it back in his seidr core.

"Anthony actually tried to do this?" Frey could hardly believe what he'd seen. Anthony truly is standing on the edge of darkness. He was so glad that Odin, Frigga, and Thor were on Vanaheim. They were clearly safer there while these things were dealt with. After that he was glad again that they had been able to heal Loki. It would hopefully reduce Anthony's rage and desperation.

"Learning about Loki's heartstring pushed him over the edge, past what he could handle. It's not an excuse, just an explanation for what he did last night." There were no excuses in James' mind for what had almost happened.

"He sent them last night?" Odin felt that his earlier opinion was right. His son-by-law was teetering on the edge of darkness and careening from one disaster to another. He couldn't even blame his son-by-law for this terrible act. It was Odin's fault, and he knew it.

"He did four things last night. The first was to release the 'godkiller' platforms out into low earth orbit around Vanaheim and then direct them into Vanaheim's shipping lanes. The second was to order Jay to hack into Asgard's defense systems and disable them, which the boy decided to delay so that Asgard might have a fighting chance. The third was to order Jay to take control of Vanaheim's defense systems to deal with any reprisal from Asgard efficiently. He returned control of them to Vanaheimr forces last night half an hour after he showed his father that he had them. The fourth was to begin installing the Nanomachine Host Process Factory under the rose quartz generator. The fifth one would have been him putting the machine strand in Loki's chest, but you two gentlemen stopped that from happening, which I thank you for." James turned back to Jay. "The boy has been an unknowing and unwilling participant in this debacle."

Odin needed explicit confirmation that this was dealt with. "You dealt with them just now? What happened to them? Are they still above Asgard?"

"No. I aimed them directly for the singularity beneath Asgard. They were ripped apart in the gravitational tides. Anthony isn't getting those things back." From his interdimensional pocket James summoned two tablet computers. "I discussed the situation with Lord Ginnungagap before I came here. He suggested that these projects might be suitable restitution for what Anthony did. If there are other things you'd like done then please feel free to make the changes to the list. If you do makes changes please make sure you leave an adequate description of what it is that you want done that way we can get the right thing done." This wasn't the only restitution that Anthony had to offer, but the rest of it would be offered to someone else.

"The people of Asgard thank you for your defense of them." Odin let go of a breath that he didn't know he was holding. His people were safe again. Stark's Elder Brother continued to be surprisingly honorable, both defending Stark and defending others from Stark. It was enough relief to let him look at the small device that he was handed. It was the same kind of device he saw Stark using in the recordings shown in the meeting room.

"Thank you for preventing a massacre, James. The peoples of Vanaheim greatly appreciate your aid in this matter." Frey also moved to thank James. He wasn't sure that this man could be more exemplary. Guiding and defending Anthony and the children, caring for Loki and Thor, and now preventing Anthony from massacring an entire kingdom. The fact that he was offering restitution for this event, despite no one being harmed yet, just put a little bit extra shine on Frey's opinion of him. It let him move on to looking at the tablet computer.

Odin and Frey each touched the tablet and wanted to learn what it had on it. It was enough for the Learning Spell to activate and draw on the knowledge in the tablets. Sunny seidr runes streaked up Frey's arm towards his eyes as citrine runes streaked up Odin's arm towards his eyes. The runes sank into their eyes to give them an instant view and understanding of what the tablets contained. Sunny seidr glowed in Frey's eyes while citrine seidr glowed in Odin's eyes.

Frigga watched and was impressed again with James. Once more he'd only been there for a few minutes and was already solving awkward and distressing problems in an honorable fashion. Her gaze drifted from James to her grandson. Occasional soft tears slipped down Jay's face. He looked distraught over what happened. His own words told her why. He only wanted to assist his father and had unintentionally helped to do something terrible. Even in this was she impressed with James. He chided the boy sternly but then comforted him and gave him a path back to honorable behavior. She suspected that she was right in her opinion from yesterday; he was turning out to be a wonderful uncle to her grandchildren. Just then the seidr in her husband's and brother's eyes faded. Each looked impressed with what they were offered.

"Is this acceptable restitution?" James hoped that it would be. Getting Anthony to work on something other than weapons was going to be difficult since he was mentally unstable again. For what seemed like the millionth time in his life he wished that their parents were still there to help him. They would have been able to get Anthony on track easily.

"Yes, this is excellent. Thank you" Odin was only slightly disbelieving that Asgard was going to be receiving so much from Stark so quickly. The schedules on each item on the list had projects being completed in a matter of days. It was because Stark was able to understand the Bifrost, Celestial engineering, that he could believe. Someone who could understand such complicated engineering could accomplish marvels. He'd already seen that.

"Yes, thank you for this, but are you sure that this won't overtax Anthony?" Frey worried about Anthony's wellbeing still. He worried a little more when he saw how quickly these projects were scheduled to be completed.

That caused James to smile. "He'll be fine. I'll make sure that he rests when he needs to. I'll also make sure all the parties interests are balanced appropriately." His smile widened a little. "This isn't the first time I've had to help him rebalance, and it won't be the last."

"What can I do?" Jay wiped his eyes dry again with the handkerchief before shoving it in his back pocket. He always wanted to be part of the solution, and this was no different. Through being part of the solution, he could make amends to his grandparents. Just the thought of setting things right helped the uncomfortable warmth in his face to subside and the difficult lump in his throat to clear up.

Turning to his nephew, James was pleased to see the boy was eager to do the right thing. "You're going to do three things. The first third of your restitution will be making a copy of your personal Electronic Warfare Suite for each of your grandfathers. It's better than what they have, and they can make good use of it. The next third will be providing new security protocols for their internet so that it will be harder for it to be used to hijack the shipping lanes' servers . The last third will be new security protocols for the shipping lanes themselves to make it more difficult to break into them. You're going to resecure the avenue that you compromised to get the 'godkiller' platforms to where they went and make it easier for Asgard and Vanaheim to defend themselves against attack from that vector. Do you understand?"

"I'll begin on them right away!" Jay was pleased to be able to have a path forward that would make amends for what he did. He reached out with his mind to access the Elder Realms internet through the Vanaheim Royal Palace connection to begin a survey of its security protocols. The estimated time for the security protocols was going to take only a few hours. That made him quite happy. He wanted to make amends to his grandfathers as soon as he could. Jay already had a copy of the security protocols to the shipping lane gates from when he opened them for his father. The next thing he started in a different part of his mind was an analysis of those protocols to see how he could improve them. After that his seidr impelled forth from his core to rush down his arm and was written into a Conjuration Spell and a Learning Spell. He pulled his memories into the Learning Spell the released the Conjuration Spell to create two memory cubes. The cubes formed in front of him with a variety of enchanted mechanical parts and various bits of inscribed crystal. The solid exterior formed last. One of them was colored white with swirling silver accents while the other was colored red with angular golden accents. Jay released the Learning Spell into each of the cubes, imparting his knowledge of his personal EWS. His seidr called back to his seidr core then. When the cube supercomputers were done he handed the white and silver one to Frey. The red and gold one went to Odin next. "Uncle Rhodey is right, my Electronic Warfare Suite is better than what you have, and it will help you detect and deal with threats easier. I'm sorry that this happened."

"Thank you, Jay. I'll put this to good use." Odin spoke softly so that he didn't further upset the boy, since his grandson was so upset over what had happened already. The boy was trying to do the right thing. It impressed him.

"Thank you for this, my boy. Did you truly sabotage Anthony's machines?" Frey asked his grandson softly. He wanted a clearer picture of what his grandson had done.

Hunching in on himself felt like the right thing to do. Uncomfortable sensations gathered in his chest and his face warmed again. His body felt too small suddenly. The scrutiny felt intense. Jay felt like he was starting to be overwhelmed by emotion again. "Sabotage is a legitimate tool of business when dealing with father."

He set a hand on his grandson's shoulder, then Frey spoke. "I'm not angry with you, my boy. I just want a clearer picture of how you were involved."

"The platforms were supposed to be remote controlled, that way he could launch and control them from Vanaheim while they went to Asgard. He had to put in the commands to make them work. I deformed several of the parts as they were being manufactured so that he would have to be there physically to use the platforms. I only left the navigation systems fully operational so that when he went to use them he would only be able to recall them. I never thought he'd be able to use them, they were supposed to be disabled. He automated all four platforms completely though. I didn't think he would discover what I'd done and make the changes fast enough, but he did. I thought that I stopped him. I didn't, and I even opened the shipping lane gates for him. It was my fault. I'm so sorry." Jay's voice dwindled away to nothing. Shame burned across his face uncomfortably.

"You tried, Jay. I greatly appreciate that. You recognize these things are wrong and you're moving to set them right. That's very good." It was uncomfortable for Frey to see the distressed look on Jay's face. He wanted to make it go away and not return then he thought that he might do something for Jay to encourage the boy along.

Odin couldn't be angry with his grandson. The boy recognized that what was happening was wrong. He suspected that Jay was still acting as 'Jarvis' the 'AI companion' when he made the decision to let these weapons pass into the shipping lanes. Jay was still trying to keep his father happy while sabotaging his father to keep him from doing something foul. It was a naïve viewpoint that he expected from a child and wasn't surprised to find in his grandson. Odin's grandson seemed to be in need of some lessons on how to tell someone 'no' firmly. Those were lessons that he could give.

A soft smile played across Frigga's face. The boy was in an untenable position which she suspected that James had already taken care of. It was a hard place to be for an adult. A child didn't belong there. That the boy wouldn't be in this situation again pleased her almost as much as knowing she had a home to go to. She loved Vanaheim and always would, but she belonged in Asgard with Odin.

The scrutiny of four adults looking at him was almost too much for Jay. He startled when his uncle put a hand on his shoulder. He felt better having his uncle there than not. He knew that if his uncle hadn't been there he would have already abandoned his body in favor of a nice wall. Walls were safe. He liked walls since they didn't make uncomfortable sensations when his emotions changed. Little tears crept into his eyes.

"Are you ok?" James felt the need to check on his nephew since he was pulling into himself again.

"I'm ok." It didn't seem to matter to him that he wasn't really ok, he just didn't want to complain. That would just make him feel worse.

"Is it happening again?" James thought that Jay was going to need some sensory training to help him grow accustomed to having a body.

When Jay didn't speak, only nodded jerkily, Frey worried. "Is there some injury that needs healing?"

"You are aware of how Jay came into being?" James asked delicately so as to not embarrass Jay.

"We were shown how Loki discovered the boy and then how she created a body for him." Frey answered quickly. He wanted to know what was wrong.

"Then you'll understand." James motioned to Jay as he spoke. "Due to the boy's unconventional nature, he has problems dealing with his emotions, specifically the physical sensations that emotions can cause. They can be overwhelming for him, and he has a tendency to try to leave his body to inhabit a wall until he's calmed down. If you find him unconscious on the floor then it probably means that he's left his body and is in a wall somewhere near." The older man paused, frowning slightly. "I think he needs some sort of sensory training, like occupational therapy or something similar, to help him become accustomed to having a body." James also suspected that there was something else causing the problems, a dissonance perhaps, but that would be addressed in a few minutes. "I found all of this last night and I'll be dealing with it soon."

It was an unusual problem for an unusual lad but that didn't slow Frey down. "There are several Heal Meisters who treat children's ailments on Vanaheim. Children are all they work with. I can think of several of them who might be suitable for this task." Though he was unaccustomed to asking anyone's permission this had to be done. Frey didn't want to be on James' bad side. Whether or not James had a bad side was still debatable. The man seemed to be the embodiment of honor. "Would you permit Jay to be seen by one of Vanaheim's Heal Meisters?"

"I would need to interview them before Jay is seen to make sure that they're a good fit. It sounds like a good idea though. I like it, thank you." James liked the thought of moving out into the Elder Realms to find people who could help his family. He was done waiting to do it too. A year ago he knew that he needed to expand out but decided to slow roll it anyway. That decision gave Loki and Anthony all the time they needed to undermine him, which brought him to the situation that he was in.

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention." The small terminal in his interdimensional pocket was summoned again. "Let me set my Council of Lords to inviting the healers to the palace. I'll write up the orders allowing you and Anthony to work on the projects around the realm. It shouldn't take but a moment." Frey logged in to the small floating terminal again, writing out instructions for his Council of Lords with a list of names. After that he set to work on the orders.

"Of course." James tugged at Jay's shoulder then. "Let's let him work. You need to have breakfast anyway. There's also a few things we need to take care of." He guided his nephew back to the settee next to the squat coffee table with the tray of food on it.

That's an excellent idea. Odin summoned his small terminal from his interdimensional pocket. It floated up in front of him. He logged in to find an excessive number of messages from his Council of Lords. He wanted to have them arrested as soon as he saw the notes. A deep breath helped him to settle himself and his unruly desires. I will deal with you soon enough. He cleared the notes, most without even reading them. Then he left a short terse note for them that he was visiting Vanaheim and would be back when he was done visiting. He began working on the orders that would let James and Stark begin working and marveled again that James was insistent on Stark making amends. He was an outstanding Elder Brother to Stark.

"Here, have a seat, Jay. You can eat while I'm working." When Jay was seated James went around to stand behind him. "Alright Jay, I need you to open your interface."

Frigga moved around to sit opposite her grandson. She was going to ask what foods he was eating when James asked the boy something odd. It worried her when Jay wrapped his arms around himself and folded over, curling in on himself. The boy looked even more uncomfortable.

Bending over the back of the settee, James put a hand on Jay's back, focusing his soul song of stillness towards the boy. "Are you nervous?

"Yes." As the embarrassment swept over him again Jay's voice was quiet. He didn't want to show his grandparents how different he was. He wanted to be treated like a normal person. It was something that he rarely ever had.

The embarrassment in Jay's seidr was easy for James to read. His nephew didn't want to be seen as less. "Jay, you are a person. Your grandparents know this. They aren't going to make fun of you, or call you mean names, or laugh at you. They will treat you with the same dignity that that any other person receives. Open your interface for me."

"Maybe I don't want an interface." A little bit of malcontent worked its way into Jay's voice as he refused to look up.

"I can't help you if you don't open your interface for me." James targeted Jay with his soul song of stillness, making if as strong as he could to soothe the boy.

"Normal kids don't have an interface." Having his Uncle Rhodey there was calming him again. Jay still wouldn't look up.

"There's nothing wrong with that, with not being normal." Frigga's voice was clear and firm as she spoke. It upset her to see her grandson curl in on himself. She wondered if Loki had influenced the boy or if this was a thought that the boy came to on his own. Either way it needed to be dealt with sooner rather than later. She wasn't going to stand around and do nothing this time. Her mistakes with Loki wouldn't be repeated.

The voice across from him startled Jay, the words were more startling than the voice though. He looked up to his grandmother. His arms around himself loosened so that his hands came to rest in front of him again. Fidgeting occupied his hands while he spoke to her. "I'm not a normal person." He was glad that his uncle was there to be a calming force for him.

"I don't see that as an undesirable quality." Everything Jay said made Frigga more determined that he wasn't going to grow up thinking poorly of himself. "You might not be normal, but you're still beautiful. I think that matters more." There was still doubt on the boy's face so she decided to take a chance on something that she hoped would be more convincing. There was something she needed first though. "Jay, there's something you need to see, but before I can show you I need the Learning Spell. May I have it?"

Giving it to his grandmother didn't bother Jay since he'd already given it to his grandfathers, but he didn't have permission. Turning around, he asked his uncle. "Uncle Rhodey, can I give her the Learning Spell?"

"Since your grandmother is the only one of your three grandparents who doesn't have the Learning Spell you can go ahead and fix that." James hadn't heard anything from Frigga that caused him to lower his estimation of her. Besides, she'll probably get it from her brother or husband anyway.

With permission granted Jay turned back around and explained it to his grandmother. "The Learning Spell is just a little change to your mind, and it comes with the Inner Shield Ward. It's mother's defensive ward." Jay's seidr impelled forth from his seidr core to write into a copy of the Learning Spell itself, as well the Inner Shield Ward. "Remember that the transfer burns a little bit."

"The transfer burns more than a little bit," Frey intruded into the conversation.

"Breath through your mouth. It's the only thing that helps." Odin's advice followed after Frey's warning.

"I'll give you the spell and the ward, then I'll transfer my own instructions on how to use the spell and what the ward can do. Alright?" Jay looked to his grandmother, holding out his hand.

"Yes." Frigga held out her hand, unsure of what to expect when Jay touched her hand. Having her gaze turned inwards by a beautiful, impenetrable, omnidirectional wall surrounding her mind wasn't it though. She hadn't felt so safe since her parents were alive. It was shimmering and glorious to behold, magnificent to her. A tiny seed came with the wall and fell into the depths of her mind. Then she heard Jay speak again. "Remember to breathe through your mouth." Oh, the transfer. I wonder if it truly …"Oh, oh, oh!" Her voice was loud as Using the Learning Spell, whispered through her mind before a simple understanding of it smacked her. That wasn't what caused her distress in that moment. Shock white and unfathomable black splotches filled her vision with dizzying contrast, bringing with them a feeling of being dried out in her eyes. Blinking quickly didn't help as much as Frigga wanted it to. The suddenness of it startled her. None of that was as bad as the overwhelming taste of svassumar that was rapidly covering her tongue, causing a little gag as she tried to breathe through her mouth. Worse than that was that the taste clawed up the back of her throat to crawl painfully across the delicate tissues of her sinuses. It burned worse than eating a fire fruit. It was growing to be too much when it began to dissipate. With a few more breaths she was able to gain control again. "Oh my, that is ..intense."

His seidr was called back into his core, so he indulged his curiosity "What did it taste like to you?" Jay was still collecting data about the taste of the Learning Spell, and why it had a taste. His mother told him that it must have been the interaction of the person's seidr and the seidr of the person transferring things to them that caused it. He wasn't so sure about that. All he knew was that it was always one of the citrus fruits, without fail.

"Svassumar(sweet summer) fruit." A little wiggle of her nose helped her to feel better. "It was in my nose."

Amanatsu fruit. Interesting. The knowledge went into his little spreadsheet in his mind. "What did you want to show me?

Frigga unraveled her seidr to spin it into the Learning Spell, then she gathered her memories into it. It was strange to feel a spell letting her know when it was ready to use, yet the Learning Spell let her feel when her memories had been gathered and were ready to transfer. She leaned over to give her grandson her memories.

The beautiful flaxen runes streaked up Jay's arms from his hand headed towards his eyes. He wondered what memory she was giving him. The curiosity momentarily overwhelmed the embarrassment to allow him to absorb the knowledge eagerly. What he saw shocked him. This was her memory of seeing him chase down his father in the mansion in Malibu. His father had been infected with the coalesced machine solution. Black ooze spread across his skin and a dark wing extended from his body. Worse than those things was how his father went after Loki, who was sedated. He was the only other person in the house. Jay had refused to lose his father to the Dark Titan's filth, so he chased after, caught him in the hallway outside the bedroom where Loki was sleeping and made his stand. It was the first time in his life that he stood up on his own, pushing himself up from the floor. His father tried to strike him, but he caught the blow. It left his body of gold edged silver fires standing exposed in the hallway for a heartbeat before he poured those silver fires through his father to blast off the black ooze and restore his father to good health. Seeing it again didn't shock him since he lived it once before. When she was trapped in SHIELD's conference room Frigga was shown this. Yet that wasn't what surprised him either. What truly surprised him was how Frigga viewed him. To her he was stunningly beautiful. She even thought his real eyes were marvelous. The fact that he was so different only made him more beautiful in his grandmother's eyes. She looked forward to seeing him, to meeting him. The best thing to Jay was that she didn't casually dismiss his personhood because he was different. She looked at him as a person and even worried about him as a person.

Sudden tears flooded Jay's eyes and he covered his face again as they dripped down his face. "Thank you." The youth's voice shook as he spoke. The handkerchief was pulled from his back pocket to be used again.

"You are beautiful, Jay. It doesn't matter that you're different. Do you see that?" Frigga was glad that her memory seemed to move the boy from his stubbornness.

Wiping his face dry again, Jay nodded. "Yes, I do. Thank you."

"I'm certain that whatever your uncle is asking you to do is for your own good. He's done well in aiding us, I know he'll do well for you too. Please let him aid you." Frigga was willing to put her grandson in the hands of a man who saved Asgard only moments before.

"I know. I will." Jay looked inside of himself then. The digital boy used his seidr to project his spherical digital mental interface out behind him so that his uncle could work with it. The same nervousness that came with using his interface struck him again. It was the gateway to his mind, and he felt that the nervousness was warranted. That didn't mean that he distrusted his uncle, quite the opposite.

Surprise widened Frigga's eyes when a light terminal projected out of the back of the boy's head. She kept her voice even as she asked, "What is that?"

"This is his digital mental interface. It's an interface into his core coding, the deep superstructure, and his emotion matrix." James moved it closer to himself so that he could work with it.

The glowing picture before her looked like a star system. There were glowing dots like stars and a nebula near the bottom. At the center was a silver star with four planetary bodies orbiting the star. Frigga worried greatly when she saw the chains in the mist of stardust. The chains were made of small lines and slim elongated circles but were still formed into obvious links. "This is his mind!" Nervousness overtook Frigga's thoughts.

"Yes. This is the only fully digitized mind in the Nine Realms. Born in coding. Developed in coding. Sustained in coding. It's true transcendental thinking." An appreciative smile crossed James' face. "Beautiful." The first thing that he did was to set several trackers and restrictions in his interface which would keep Jay from going to certain places.

That her grandson's mind was beautiful wasn't in doubt to Frigga. She did worry about why James was tampering with it. "What do you hope to accomplish?"

James continued to work, reviewing and placing restrictions. "Traditional counseling therapy won't work as well with him. Not to say that it's ineffective, it's not. It just takes longer because of how his mind was constructed. It's better to catch problems earlier with him than try to correct them later on. I'm going to check to see how his emotional status is, and place deliberations where they're needed, if they're needed. Deliberations act as a counseling method for him, settling his emotions evenly and without scarring his thoughts. I also want to restrict his access to certain places."

"Why are you doing that?" Jay was curious to know where his uncle thought he shouldn't go.

"Children should never go to some of the places you've been to, Jay. Decent adults shouldn't be in those places. You don't need to go back." With the last of the restrictions placed he made copies of what Jay found to turn into his contacts in the FBI. They always appreciated it when he gave them leads. He always appreciated it when they gave him warnings on future events. It was a tidy relationship.

"You mean to provide the boy with healing for his mind? You can do that?" A hopeful tone entered Frigga's voice.

"If any is needed, then yes." James opened the part of the interface that dealt with his emotion matrix. "I noticed that he was having nightmares last night." Shaking his head, he looked over the bad news. "He should never have nightmares, not with how emotions are structured. Since he is that tells he that something is wrong. And this is it." The information broke down everything very clearly, but very little of it was good. His seidr unfolded from his core to mount into a Learning Spell. In his mind he quickly programed a new type of deliberation in the same programing that Jay's mind was built on. He drew the knowledge of that new deliberation in the Learning Spell and then touched the interface. The new programing was incorporated smoothly in just under a minute.

"A deliberation for more than just settling events? That looks handy." The new deliberation format was tiered and looked more than useful to Jay. He hoped it could resolve some of the contained emotions that he had.

"Eat your breakfast." He reminded his nephew lightly. The boy didn't eat often enough for his tastes. With the new deliberations in place James started going through adding deliberation after deliberation into the boy's mind to clear up the rampant emotional debris that he was seeing in the interface.

"Can you tell me what you're eating, Jay? I've never seen food like this." Frigga glanced to her husband and to her brother. They were almost done and watching what was happening closely.

"Uncle Rhodey made it for me." Jay pointed to the first little plate. "This is bacon, and this is a blood kishka sausage." The next plate he pointed to was next to the first. "This is a poached egg with salt and pepper and avocado slices." He moved on to the next plate. "These are whole grain and nut pancakes and maple syrup, with a little butter. I like butter." Pointing excitedly to the second to last plate, he had a smile on his face. "These are some hashbrowns with cheddar cheese. Potatoes with cheese are so good!" Jay looked at the last plate which had a metal half-sphere cover over it. "I don't know what's in there."

"Touch the rune on the top of the lid." James continued to place deliberations.

Frigga couldn't see any rune, but the little rune glowing on the top of the lid was easily visible to Jay. It was his name. Touching the top of the lid showed Jay a slice of heaven. "Is that..?"

"Chocolate-mint torte. The lid only unlocks if you eat everything else though."

"That's not fair." Jay scooped up the silverware and started in on the two pancakes then stopped for a moment. Something felt off.

You think I play fair. You sweet, innocent child. "Eat your breakfast." James linked the deliberations then, and placed a monitor which he quickly linked to his phone.

"I'm not an app. Take that out." It was a little insulting for Jay to be linked to a phone.

"No. You need this."

"No, I don't." Jay tried to remove the link himself, but his uncle swiftly put it back in place. He tried several more times but was frustrated when his uncle swiftly corrected everything he did. Eventually the link was put in place with an alternating hexadecimal algorithmic lock on it.

"I will slap your hands away from that if you don't stop." There was a warning in James' voice that he hoped his nephew would hear. "Now eat your breakfast." James summoned a runed lidded glass from his interdimensional pocket. It was filled with orange juice and set down neatly on the tray with Jay's food.

The surprise stayed off of Frigga's face when she saw a drinkable orange liquid came from James interdimensional pocket. Food and drink, any perishable item, always rots in the interdimensional pocket. Only alchemically created items are immune to that. How did he do that?

Frustration crept into Jay's voice. "Everything is fine! I don't need that."

His eyebrow arched quizzically at Jay's statement. James was going to give the boy a chance to undo what he'd done. "Everything is fine? Is that statement incorrect and would you care to retract it?"

"No! Everything is fine! I don't need it." His eyes went wide with alarm. It occurred to Jay after when it should have that he might have put himself in a bad position. When he opened his mouth to try to save himself it was too late.

"Everything is fine? Is that what you see?" Jay tried to speak but James used unfolded seidr to gently close the boy's mouth and hold it shut. "Let me tell you what I see, my Little Hawk." James made a copy of the em-graph in his seidr and leaned over the back of the settee so that the boy, and his grandmother, could see what he was looking at. He held the em-graph above the palm of his right hand. Using his seidr like a laser pointer from his left pointer finger, he motioned to each thing as he addressed it. "I see lingering emotional debris from at least thirteen major life events since 2014, it's 2023 now. I see how this debris is depressing your self-worth and increasing your anxiety. There's so much anxiety that it's causing multiple reduplication errors which look to be manifesting as intrusive and repetitive thoughts at unexpected moments, and nightmares. All of this debris is also causing so much strain on your system as a whole that it's making it much more likely to cause a massive file corruption. Then there's your emotional stress index which is trending solidly into the negative and has been for several years now. If you look down here, you'll see dozens of emotional spikes, daily. All together I'm looking at a just over seven yearlong panic attack, in a child." James released his nephew's mouth.

The interface changed suddenly as the audio file was brought forward into Jay's thoughts. It was properly registered as a thought and then it played. "Fuck me," Anthony's voice intruded into the quiet room.

"I don't think that helps right now, father." Jay looked down as his face felt like it was burning. Embarrassment ran rampant through him. It eased some as a Calm Heart Spell from his Uncle Rhodey hit him in the chest.

"Now was 'Everything is fine' a correct statement?" Patience filled James' voice.

"No," Jay's voce all but disappeared, "I would like to retract it."

"Good. Please don't give me incorrect statements when I'm trying to help you. Now, instead of talking yourself into another corner, why don't you eat your breakfast. I'm going to keep working on your deliberations which I will be monitoring." Breaking down the copy and laser pointer, James stowed his seidr back into his core and went back to work. "This is abuse." He muttered quietly to himself as he looked over everything again.

Frigga liked having an explanation of why James was trying to aid the boy as much as she disliked knowing that Jay was so distressed so commonly. James was right about that too. It wasn't good for a child to be so stressed over a period of years; it was damaging to their wellbeing.

While Jay knew that he could get past the lock on the monitor, he decided not to engage in breaking and entering in his own mind. Besides, his uncle was probably right anyway. His father always said that his Uncle Rhodey was right about everything. So instead of being upset about it he cut up his pancakes one bite at a time and ate them.

'Incorrect statements', lies. Odin felt again that he was right. All James seemed to want for his aid was honesty. Unwinding his seidr he flared it to Frey, The only price for his aid seems to be honesty. We should keep that in mind.

Frey unfurled his seidr to flare it to his Elder Brother, Yes, we will. It was like what he'd seen in the files of Anthony and James. Anthony would try to lie, and James would patiently correct him. James didn't seem to care for lies.

"What's this?" The lidded glass with something bright orange in it caught Frigga's attention. There were runes etched into the glass and lid that she hadn't seen before. Now that she knew that her grandson was being seen to, she was again curious about what it was she was seeing on his tray. Would the Culinary College approve of it?

"That's orange juice. It's the best juice. Apple juice is the second best, and cranberry-apple is third." As he was digging into the hashbrowns he took a drink of his juice, leaving the runed lid on the tray. He rolled the juice around his mouth, savoring the flavor and feel of the liquid.

More deliberations were set in place to handle the rampant emotional spikes and pervasive anxiety. While James wanted to place more he didn't want to risk putting the boy into a coma with the sheer volume of deliberations. What there were would have to be enough for this day. Tomorrow morning he'd check on what he did today and see how things had progressed. Since that was settled there were two other things he wanted to check on.

First he checked on the internal clock of Jay's body that was linked to his mind. The counter read '6,262 Days', which broke down after some mental math to seventeen years, one month, and twenty six days. Down deep into the superstructure to the very core of Jay's mind James cautiously went next. He needed to see the internal clock. The external was always perfectly synched like an atomic clock to tell the time of day. The internal clock only moved if progress in emotional maturity was made. He needed to see how much progress there was. '2,431 Days' the clock read. Quick mental math broke that out into six years, seven months, and twenty eight days. That's exactly how old Edward is. It needs to be fixed; he might like that. James withdrew from the clock and went back to the superstructure around the emotion matrix. Some quick probing showed him what he was looking for, the Master Key.

Another sip of orange juice washed down the last of Jay's egg and avocado. He saw what his uncle was looking at and knew that it was no good. "That's permanent. The Master Key is staying where it is."

"I'll deal with that in a minute. There's something that you need to make a decision on first." A pleased smile crossed his face to see his nephew actually eating.

"What's that?" Jay continued eating so that he could get to the chocolate-mint torte under the lidded plate.

"I checked your internal clock and compared it with the internal clock of your body. It presents a problem of sorts." This was a delicate dilemma that he didn't want to just come out and address if Jay wasn't comfortable with him doing that.

Looking down again, Jay came face to face with the gift from his mother again. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best he could get, so he took it. "It's too late to change things. It's all settled now."

"If it could change? Would you want that?"

"How? There's no way. I'm stuck now." Jay would never say that he was ungrateful for his mother's gift, he certainly wasn't. He just wished that his body matched his mind. The dissonance made his body feel more like a thing he was piloting instead of someplace for him to exist. A sad little sigh gusted out of this lips. "I'm stuck with this body."

"Is there something wrong with your body?" Frey finished with the orders, and he set his terminal on a table by the window to begin creating physical copies of the orders for James and Anthony to use from the small scrolls that it carried. It distressed him to know that there was so much wrong in Jay's mind because of the circumstances he was living in. He wasn't going to stand for there being something wrong with the boy's body as well. With Odin by his side, he could correct it.

The elder King set his terminal next to Frey's, on the little table, so that it could begin creating physical copies of the orders. Those would be needed for Stark to begin his work.

Frey's help was going to be needed so James decided to be more forthcoming about the problem. "His internal clocks don't match."

"What does that mean?" Despite spending hundreds of years of the dear friend to one of the greatest inventor's in the Nine Realms, this was not Frey's specialty.

"It means that his body isn't the same age as he is." Turning to Jay, he spoke quietly. "This is why you abandon your body so readily, isn't it? It doesn't feel like you."

Nodding, Jay looked at his uncle. "This is more than placing deliberations, trackers, or monitors. There's no way to change this. I'll have to learn to live with it."

"This could be remedied." James didn't want his nephew living in a body that he didn't like. The dissonance was only going to get worse as time went on. It was just better to take care of it now.

A bitter look crossed Jay's face. "That would mean getting the creator code from dad, and he's not going to give it up. Not once has he ever given it up."

That's because I never let him have it. His seidr unfolded and shot down his arm to mount into several Enchantment of Sizes Charms. Each piece of clothing that Jay was wearing, top to bottom, was branded with a charm before his seidr stowed back into his core. "I'll take that as you wanting to change. Good." He bent over, grabbed his nephew's arm, and lifted him to standing. The silverware clattered on the tray. They walked over to Frey and Odin came up beside them. Both of them were finished with their own tasks.

"Uncle Rhodey?! Dad has the code!" My torte! Jay hoped he could get it back soon. After all this was a useless pursuit, so it shouldn't take long.

Angling the interface so that Frey and Odin would see what he was trying to show them, James brought up the two clocks again. "This one is his body's internal clock, it's age. This one here is his mind's internal clock, his true age. The problem is obvious."

Frey put a hand over his mouth as he looked down at the two numbers. "They're so far apart." How young is he?! When he had a chance, and the moment was right, he thought he might ask Loki why she gave the boy a body that was so much older than he was. He suspected that she didn't know. It took James going into Jay's mind to find this. "You believe that there's a remedy to this?"

This looked very bad to Odin. The numbers were straight forward and telling him that his grandson wasn't nearly as old as Loki made him out to be. A flash of anger struck his thoughts before he easily dismissed it. James was right, this was abuse, but he wasn't going to be angry over it. Loki wouldn't have done it if she had known, and Stark didn't even know the boy existed until recently. Anger wasn't what mattered. Setting this right was the important thing.

"I can open the creator code and overlay it on the interface. If you touched the overlay with a Healing Spell, it should be able to be focused through the crystalline interface in his body to bring those two numbers into synchronicity. I don't know much seidr it will take to accomplish it though since you'd have to shorten the interface itself as your using it and then there's the fact that he's imbued with an Infinity Gem." James explained his plan succinctly. His seidr unfolded from his core to mount into the Learning Spell, which he drew his memories into. "Do you think you can work with this solution?"

"Yes." Frey wasn't sure if he liked working through his grandson's mind, but he already knew how to use a Healing Spell in a way that would enable de-aging the boy. Idunn's knowledge came in handy again.

"Good. Here, take this. It's complete instructions on how to work through the creator code once I open it." James held out his hand to the younger King, waiting for him.

The memories waited in James' hand until Frey took them, breathing through his mouth. They enlightened him on what the creator code was, how it was used, how to use it to access the crystalline interface woven into the boy's body, and even seemed to imply something very interesting that he wasn't sure if he could ask about. He took a deep breath, thinking over everything he now knew about the problem and decided firmly, looking to Odin. "Yes. We can do this." Looking to Jay, he spoke reassuringly. "We can resolve this problem. You don't need to live in a body that doesn't fit you."

"But father won't give up the code." Jay didn't understand why his uncle and grandfathers couldn't understand this simple fact.

His soul song switched from the soul song of stillness to the soul song of blessings. Luck and healing were going to be on their side in this matter. "I don't need him to." Deep down in the superstructure with the internal clock was the lock that would let Jay be remade. It was a lock that he'd never given up the key to, not even to his younger brother. The hexadecimal algorithmic lock gave him a seemingly random prompt when he activated it. To him, it was anything but random. Six specific codes of sixteen specific numbers placed in a specific order unlocked the creator code. James took the code and created an overlay out of it. The overlay went over top of the digital mental interface. "Alright. It's ready for you."

A fuzzy warm feeling overcame Jay. It became difficult for him to stand up. He wanted to sleep, to dream, to wake up to something new. His eyes drifted closed.

When the boy fainted James scooped him up and held him for Frey and Odin to work on.

A marvelous feeling of good fortune came over the elder King. It brought a smile to his face. Frey placed his hand over their grandson and Odin reached over to place his hands above Frey's. "Open an Ascending Circle of Strength for me, brother."

The younger King also felt a wonderful burst of good fortune. It let him believe that there were going to be no problems in what they were doing. His seidr unfurled from his seidr core and Frey formed an Ascending Circle of Strength on the back of his hand, above the hand that was above Jay. He smiled to see the Descending Circle of Strength form in the palm of Odin's hand. His brother perfectly aligned the circles and provided him with an amount of seidr comparable to his own. It nearly doubled the amount of seidr that he had to work with. A Healing Spell formed from his unfurled seidr next. He held it in his left hand and reached over to the digital mental interface, to touch the creator code overlay. James had moved it so that it was more around to the side than directly behind the boy. It was easier to reach with it so close. James was right again, he noted, when he was able to focus his spell through the creator code to reach and affect the crystalline interface inside of the boy's body. Using the code allowed him to see each of the misaligned internal clocks. 2,431 and 6,262 were the numbers he had to align. He was even able to break out the clocks into clocks for individual limbs and sections of the boy's body. Delving into the boy's lifecode took much more seidr than it should have. Jay's body was too strong to easily work with. Since the boy's body was constructed his lifecode was clean and orderly. There were no defects, mutations, or damage. It was the most orderly lifecode that Frey had ever seen, which made it easier to know what to do with, even if it took more seidr to do it. The Royal Lifecode Marker from Loki was neat and orderly. It provided proof that Jay was indeed nobility. Oddly enough the marker looked like a double marker, which would mean that both his parents were nobility. Frey dismissed that since Anthony wasn't nobility by birth. The marker didn't matter right then, only healing his grandson did. He'd think about it later.

Through Frey's Healing Spell he was able to prompt a series of controlled reversions instead of controlled growth. His commands went out along the crystalline interface to reach every part of the boy's body. Each reversion took a large quantity of his and Odin's combined seidr. As luck would have it the amount was never more than they could handle. The body's clock was slowly rolling down. When the first part was sufficiently shrunk he formed a Transmutation Spell. Through that spell he shortened the crystalline interface while incorporating the boy's lifecode into it, so that it would grow along with Jay. Then he went back to make another series of shortening reversions, spending even more seidr. Frey went back and forth between shortening reversions and transmutations until all the clocks in every body part matched. The boy's clothes resized themselves as he worked. He wasn't surprised to see that Jay was Edward's reflected sibling when he was shrunk down to his actual age. Edward was Jay's other half as Jay was Edward's other half. By the end of the transmutations both Frey and Odin were alarmingly low on seidr. It was all spent to make their grandson healthy, so it was well spent. Just a little more seidr was used when Frey was done shrinking the boy down to his appropriate size. He smiled and breathed easier when his and Odin's seidr cores both refilled again as they had the night before. Then the younger King went to check his work to make sure that everything matched, that all the transmutations were perfect, and that Jay was ready to begin growing like a normal boy. Once the check was done then he withdrew his Healing Spell through the creator code.

They're twins. I knew it. Edward and Jay thought they were better at hiding things than they were. He hoped to be able to convince them to stop hiding things now that the major secrets were revealed. The boy was still unconscious in his arms, so he moved his nephew over to the side to be held with one arm. James took the opportunity to bring the interface around to the front so that he could easily work with it. Since the deep superstructure was open to change he used the creator code to remove the Master Key. When he reached out to touch the digital mental interface pale white-blue runes streaked over his hand and up his arm towards his eyes. The runes absorbed into his mind as white-blue seidr flashed in his eyes. James now possessed the Master Key. Since he was done he checked the deliberations one last time. It showed him that he was going to have to check on the deliberations that night as well as the next morning. That was fine by him. The last thing he did was to relock the creator code. It made him smile to see Jay's internal clocks synched up. His work was done for the moment, so James used his seidr to push gently at the interface until Jay until he pulled it back in.

His nephew was starting to stir so James unfolded his seidr one more time to mount it into a Conjuration Spell. He conjured a sheet of glass that became a mirror. Then he knelt down in front of the short mirror and switched his soul song back to his standard soul song of stillness. Patting Jay on the cheek, he spoke softly. "Jay, wake up. Wake up. It's time to wake up."

Jay could hear someone telling him to wake up. A fraction of a second later he recognized the voice as his Uncle Rhodey. A fraction of a second after that he realized that he didn't remember going to sleep. Another fraction of a second after that came the realization that he felt better than he ever had. His body was no longer dissociated from him. It fit better than any glove ever could. Jay wondered if this was what it was supposed to feel like when his mother created the body for him. What prompted him to open his eyes quickly was the fact that he was sitting on someone's hip, being held like a much littler person than he was supposed to be. Opening his eyes showed Jay that his uncle was holding him like a small child. "What?"

With a patient smile James set his nephew down. The mirror was at Jay's back.

His Uncle Rhodey had always been taller than him, but this was suspicious. Jay put his hand on the top of his head and made a straight line to his uncle. When he came up at just over half of his uncle's height he knew something had happened. "Wait just a minute!"

James looked down at Jay with a grin in his face and pointed to the mirror.

The newly-small boy took a little step towards the mirror in front of him. He felt his face first, it was still his, but it actually looked like what he envisioned himself to be. Then he felt at his chest. His seidr was still there so this was no dream. Then he bent his knees and went up and down a few times before turning in a circle trying to see behind him. This was everything he wanted. Jay turned quickly to his uncle and asked "Can I keep it? Can I keep it?!" Tiny tears of joy clouded his vision, so he wiped them away. The wide smile on his face couldn't be wiped away. It was too brilliantly happy to go anywhere.

"Of course you can. It's all yours, a gift from your grandfathers." James pointed over to Frey and Odin. He broke down the seidr which created the mirror and stowed it back into his core.

Swift energy filled Jay's little legs, propelling him rapidly to the closest of his grandfathers. He ran headlong into Odin's legs and wrapped his arms around one of them. An even brighter smile touched his face when Odin leaned down to pick him up. He threw his arms around Odin's neck. "Thank you!" A soft smile split Odin's lips as he held his grandson. "You're very welcome, lad." After long enough to get in a nice hug he offered to let Frey take Jay for a hug. Jay lunged over to Frey when he was close enough. Frey laughed as he took his grandson. "Thank you!" It was a gushing thank you that he appreciated for all its happiness. "You're welcome, my boy."

The rampant happiness died down enough for Jay to realize two things that he felt should have been obvious to him, one of them from the very beginning. Jay turned in his grandfather's arm to look at his uncle. "Father never had the creator code." It wasn't a question. It didn't need to be.

A knowing smile touched James lips as he thought it was probably time for the boy to understand why he was doing what he was. "No."

"If he never had it then he couldn't have designed my emotion matrix, or the deep superstructure. You did that?"

"Yes."

"How much of mind did you design?" Jay was honestly curious now.

"Just those two things. I provided the foundation and Anthony built everything else off of it, modeling you mostly after himself with DUM-E as the guide. But as he changed he wanted to change you. I want you to be your own person which is why I refuse to give the creator to him. I'm not going to let him change you into whatever his latest whim is."

"You don't trust father with it?" It seemed so obvious now that Jay felt foolish for ever thinking otherwise.

"Would you?"

Jay had to admit that he wouldn't trust his father with something that powerful, so he shook his head. "No. I wouldn't."

"You have to understand, Jay. You're absolutely unique. The programing we came up with for you is utterly exceptional. I've had a little time to poke around and even the Elder Realms don't have something like you." A slightly insulted expression crossed James' face. "A week after you were born he asked me for the code. He wanted to change your primary lexicon to all cat noises because the woman he was sleeping with at that point thought cats were cute. I refused, and still do despite him asking for it hundreds of times over the years. I want you to develop on your own because you're the ultimate answer to one of the oldest questions that humanity has. Do our bodies make us human, or are we more than just flesh?" He motioned to his nephew proudly. "As it turns out, we're more. I'm not going to give him the ability to destroy such transcendental beauty on a whim. He isn't ready for that kind of power."

Provided the foundation? The foundation of stability. Was I right in my assessment of James relationship to Stark? It seemed very likely to Frigga that she was right, that losing James during the Dark Days not only opened darker paths for Stark but drove him down them as well.

"Born, you mean when I was activated?" Jay looked down, still feeling like less of a person for having to be activated.

"No, I mean when you were born. It wasn't a typical birthing process, this was much cleaner, but it was still a birth. You aren't inferior for being born differently." The older man didn't like the suddenly distressed look on his nephew's face, so he moved around to the boy, still being held by his grandfather, and strengthened his soul song of stillness to calm the boy. "Jay," he caught the boy's gaze, "What is DNA?"

Jay didn't understand what his uncle was doing but answered anyway. "Deoxyribonucleic acid."

"And what does DNA do?"

"It self-replicates and is found in all living organisms. It carries genetic information for the development, functioning, growth, and reproduction of the organism it's in."

"So it's a code that gives instructions on how something is to be put together and how it functions? It directs what the lifeform can and can't do, how they grow and reproduce. Have you grown, Jay? Or are you the same as when you were born?"

"No, I'm not! …I've grown." Jay opened his eyes a little wider. He liked where he thought this was going.

"And does your programing inform how you've grown? Does it inform how you behave?"

"Yes! Yes!"

"The last measurement isn't a true measure of a person's humanity because a person isn't less if they can't or chose not to have children. Reproduction has no bearing on someone's worth as a person. Don't you agree?" He certainly hoped it had no bearing because he knew that his mother would be disappointed that he had no children yet. His brothers took up all of his time, leaving him none for other distractions.

"Yes! People are just as precious even if they can't have kids." Nodding in agreement, Jay knew he would never look at his uncle as less of a person because he chose not to have children.

It was something that Frigga's husband and brother told her many times over the years, that she was still worthy as a person despite her deficiencies as a woman. She listened to them to try to keep herself from despair, but there had always been some part of her that didn't, couldn't, wouldn't believe them. It was a part that had quieted down as she grew older. Hearing her grandson readily proclaim that she was worthy despite never having been able to have children eased some of the pain she'd inflicted on herself. Frigga listened and wondered if she should ever have given that nasty little voice in the back of her mind any time at all. 'You might not be normal, but you're still beautiful. I think that matters more.' Her own words came back to her to answer her questions. No, she decided, she shouldn't have ever listened to that nasty little voice telling her that she was worthless as a woman. Her chin came up some as she looked at her grandson. Thank you, Jay. Thank you, James.

Both Odin and Frey listened to James impart a very important lesson to Jay. It was one that they had struggled to get Frigga to understand and accept, and so they were grateful to James for teaching this to Jay when he was still young. They didn't want Jay to grow up feeling like he was less.

"Alright, the last question is this; when your grandfathers were healing you did it matter more to them that the DNA they were working with was made of deoxyribonucleic acid, or that it carried usable coding for how your body was supposed to be put together? Which do you think allowed them to heal you?" The distress on his nephew's face was disappearing, which made James happy.

"The coding." He knew he was right to like where this was going. Jay smiled and continued his lesson.

"Now to recap, you have coding which provides instructions on how you're supposed to be put together and develop, how to function and grow. Right?" James smiled; Jay was thinking about the lesson as it was being taught. It was wonderful for James to not have to teach the lesson repeatedly before part of it took hold.

"Yes. I have that."

"Then are you not alive? It may be digitized, but don't you have DNA? Are you not human? A human who was born into the world. One with a mother and father and gifts of a lifecode from each of them."

"I like thinking about it like that." There was just one more thing that he couldn't see a way around. "But I didn't come into the world naturally."

"Children conceived through In Vitro Fertilization aren't conceived naturally. Children delivered through caesarian section aren't delivered naturally. Would you say that those children are less because they didn't come into the world 'naturally'?" That he was giving this lesson for a second time in just a few hours was almost amusing to James. Almost, but not quite. Children shouldn't have such poor thoughts of themselves.

"No, never." Jay hadn't thought about those two techniques. He'd forgotten them in his calculations.

"If they aren't less for having been conceived or born 'unnaturally', then why should you be?" Come on, Little Hawk. Let go of this narrowminded thinking. You're better than this.

Another deliberation began in Jay's mind to deal with the sudden rush of emotion. It made his feel fuzzy for a few seconds. "I shouldn't be less."

"You aren't less. You don't get to choose how you're born, and it doesn't make you less of a person to be born differently." Odin couldn't stop himself from speaking. He didn't like that Jay was thinking of himself as less because of things outside of his control. He did like that James was talking the boy through the harmful thoughts. The boy wasn't a lesser person. He was amazing.

"No, you're not. You have a mind, a body, a soul, and seidr. You are a whole and complete person." The very notion of Jay not being a person felt foul to Frey. He could see the beautiful soul in Jay's eyes, the silver sparkle in the green. As he looked at his splendid grandchild he could feel the protectiveness for the child growing. Anyone who made Jay feel like less was going to end up in the dungeons.

"Do you have any more concerns? We can talk through anything you need to talk through." The boy looked settled, but James could hear in the youth's voice that there was something else bothering him.

Fidgeting with Frey's vest held to relieve some of the nervous energy that Jay had. Maybe this is why mother fidgets with her shirt hem. "I'm not, it's just that …the …"

"You want to know why I took the Master Key?" It seemed like the most obvious thing to ask about since James knew that Jay could feel its absence.

Surprise tinged the three monarchs' mind at that. They hadn't thought it could be removed and intended to ask Jay about how the Master Key might influence him. It was Thanos' filth and had to have some effect. All of them were pleased that it no longer burdened Jay but were not worried if it would affect James. Thus far it didn't seem to.

"Did I do something wrong?" Every security protocol had been followed. There were no unsecured uses and no additional people who knew what it was. If he had made a mistake it was one that he couldn't see. Jay needed to know what it was so that he wouldn't make the same mistake twice.

A sad smile touched James' lips then. "You didn't do anything wrong. It was entirely secure with you. That wasn't why I took the Master Key."

"Why then, if I was doing a good job? Why did you take it?" Intense curiosity filled Jay.

"To burden a child with such crushing responsibility robs them of a joyful childhood and of happiness. It denies them the opportunity to grow into a well-balanced person and creates an adult who's anxious and struggles to be happy. That's why I took it, not because you failed in your duties, but because we failed in ours." When his nephew went to speak he placed a gentle finger over his lips to silence the boy before drawing his hand back. "Your father and I failed you. He was oblivious to what was happening beside him. You were in front of him many times when he just didn't see you, wasn't ready to see you. He wouldn't have given you the Master Key if he had been aware of the real situation. I saw the signs of a person acting behind Jarvis, but I dismissed them because I didn't think it could happen yet. It was too early, and I wasn't prepared. If I had known that you were there I wouldn't have let him give it to you. We were oblivious, thoughtless, and unprepared and you've suffered for it. I'm very sorry for that. You should never have had to live as less, but I can't change that now. I can take the key and carry that burden myself, but I can't take the memories of it or the memories of any of the wrong things that you've been exposed to. All I can do is to try my hardest to make sure that the future is better than the past." James ran his knuckles down the side of Jay's face. "That's why I took it, to make a better future for you."

"You won't give it to anyone? It's scary." Continuing to fidget with his grandfather's vest was continuing to help him feel better. It was calming, like his uncle.

"It is scary, but I might have to give some of to some people. There are people who have a legitimate interest in defending against the coalesced machine solution. So long as Thanos exists and is wielding that monstrosity, then that need exists. I'm not going to give it to someone who wants it for themselves though. You don't need to worry about that. You don't need to worry about any of it. It's my responsibility now." A less somber expression came to James' face. "For the moment I think you should be more concerned with a slice of chocolate-mint torte that's waiting for you."

Jay squirmed a little, so he let the boy down. His grandson ran back over to the tray of food, to the lidded plate that James provided. Admiration began to spread through Frey's mind for James. This man took good care of his family. When he made a mistake he apologized for it and worked to make amends. The younger King wouldn't have held James or Anthony responsible since Jay was hiding very well behind the mask of Jarvis. James did hold them responsible and was working to repair the situation. Both the crushing responsibility handed to a child and the kind of responsibility that James was practicing were familiar to Frey. He was intimately acquainted with both and was glad that James was sparing Jay from that type of responsibility. Children shouldn't be responsible for so much, but I had no choice.

As Odin couldn't help but tell his grandson that he wasn't less, nor could he stop from holding James in high esteem. It wasn't just that James apologized for a mistake that even Odin made, it was that James explicitly apologized and worked to make the future better. The humility in Stark's Elder Brother was as confident as the honor he possessed. Odin could easily see him building that better future. It was a future that he and Frigga would be a part of. One day they would get to meet the rest of their grandchildren, as Frey already had.

This was another confirmation for Frigga that her opinion from the meeting room was correct. James was a wonderful uncle to her grandchildren, and he did have a tremendous heart. It was a heart that was worth keeping in the family.