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“Looks like your ride’s here,” Aeslin told him, glancing out the window near the front door.
“Right on time,” Loki replied, taking the travel mug she handed him and kissing her cheek. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. Stark said it might take most of the morning.” She picked up her bag and keys and followed him out the door, and he glanced down at her.
“My appointment’s in less than an hour,” she explained with a shrug. “Might as well make sure I’m on time. Who knows how much paperwork’s involved?”
He gave the back of her neck a gentle squeeze. “Good luck.”
An answering grin. “You too.”
***
Stark didn’t look up from the light table he was scribbling on when Loki walked into the conference room.
“When’s your birthday?”
Loki flopped into one of the chairs across from him, spinning gently. “I have no actual idea, but my guess would be sometime in winter.”
There was a pause, and then the other man looked up at that with a slight grin. “Ice realm. Always winter. Well played, sir. Well played.”
“On Asgard it was celebrated a little after Mabon; it coincided with the celebration of the successful campaign against Jotunheim. I’ll just let that bit of irony sink in for a moment.”
“Yeah,” Stark agreed, drawing out the word thoughtfully. “Well, you kind of need a birthday to get anywhere on this planet. Any preferences?”
“What about the day I was banished? That was certainly a birthday of sorts.” A faint smile touched Loki’s face. “I don’t know the exact date, though. It didn’t seem important.”
“Ace’ll know,” Stark replied easily. “She’s good like that. And if not, Jarvis can always check the records.”
“What’s the plan, then?”
“We’re going to build you,” came the reply as Tony pushed a pile of paper toward Loki. “Turn you into a person. Birth certificate, education, background, the works. Jarvis has already started on the basics, but I need your input, too. Translate your life in Asgard to a life on earth. College? Trade school? Trust fund kid? Favorite color, criminal record, all of that. I want you to help me build yourself, because you’re the one who’s going to have to remember it. There are ways around everything, but you need to have a history.”
“Very well,” Loki said, flipping through the top few sheets. It seemed to be a series of tests and questions, and he neatened the stack. “I’ll start today.”
“There’s also the matter of what you’d like to do once you’re a person, or at least after you’ve got a good start,” Tony went on. “Once you’ve got a driver’s license and don’t set the kitchen on fire every time you try to make pancakes.”
Loki rolled his eyes. “One time. One time. Gods, that woman is such a tattletale.”
Stark grinned. “And I hadn’t laughed that hard in days, so thanks to both of you.” Loki cocked an eyebrow at him, and he raised his hands innocently. “It was the hand motions. The flailing. Holy mother of pearl, the oh-so-regal flailing.” Stark laughed for a long moment, easy and free. He wiped a small tear away. “She’s got you down pat, kid. You’re doomed.”
“Oh, I’ve know that for weeks now,” Loki replied. “But back to your question. I’m not sure, not yet, but I’ll wager that you’ve got some ideas.”
“Let me ask you this first,” Stark said, flipping the light pen idly through his fingers. “You. Your brother. Which of you sat on Odin’s councils?”
A shrug. “Both of us. It was part of being sons of the All-Father. We were on every council, in almost every meeting, at every treaty signing, you name it. It was rare to have one of us without the other.”
“Uh huh.” Stark tapped the pen thoughtfully against his lower lip. “And which of you was allowed to talk?”
“Well, you’re about as subtle as a bilgesnipe.” At Stark’s patient look, he smirked a little. “We both were. Thor always just required a little… coaching first.”
Stark tossed the pen onto the table, then picked it absently up again as he started talking. “Thor might not be the most reliable of narrators, but I know how to read between the lines. The way I see it,” he said, “I’ve just had one of the smoothest negotiators in the known Realms dropped smack into my lap. Sure, you don’t know much about corporations or takeovers or any of that jazz, but I guarantee once you get enough knowledge, you could raise some epic hell in a boardroom.” He shrugged. “That might not be your thing anymore, but if you’d at least put it on your short list, I’d appreciate it. Wouldn’t even have to be full time. Swoop in, swoop out, problem solved. Better than Batman.”
“Who?”
Tony looked at him with wide eyes. “You’re kidding, right? She’s fired. Completely fired. Not even a severance package, and I’m confiscating her geek license on top of it. Sweet Saint Jerome in a breadbasket. Give me that phone.”
***
“You’ve got a visitor, Sir,” Jarvis said as Tony strolled through the front door. “Doctor Kindle’s here. I believe she’s waiting near the pool.”
“Already? That was fast.”
“She wouldn’t talk about it, Sir.”
Tony frowned as he made his way to the pool area. He stepped onto the balcony, the ocean spread before him, to see Kindle lying on her back on the diving board, knees bent and staring up into the sky.
“Do you know there’s not a word for what I am?” she asked in greeting.
“You’re going to have to be more specific, Ace,” he said, tucking his hands in his pockets.
“Blood all over me. It wasn’t enough. I had to stand there and watch Phil die, feel my heart die right along with him. Ripped out of my chest, easy as you please, and there’s not a word for what’s left over.”
“Widow?” Stark asked hopefully.
The look she gave him made him wince. “We never even dated, weirdo. He was my brother, but not through blood. It didn’t count. I couldn’t get bereavement leave for him even if I wanted to. Nothing on paper. Nothing real. There’s nothing to call it. Why isn’t there anything to call it?”
“I don’t know.”
A shrug. “It was kind of a rhetorical question.”
They stayed silent for a moment. “So I take it the appointment didn’t go well,” Tony ventured at last.
She chuckled mirthlessly. “Do you know what she told me?”
Tony dragged a chair to the edge of the pool and sat down. “Nope.”
Aeslin lifted her hands, mimicking a marquee against the bright blue sky. “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”
He stared at her, momentarily speechless. “Holy sh- I paid her four hundred dollars an hour to tell you that?”
“Nope.” She rested her hands back on her stomach. “You paid her four hundred dollars for twelve and a half minutes to tell me that. I sort of left.”
“Damn. I’ve had cheaper hookers.”
“Good lord, Tony. Have you learned nothing from our discussions about tact? ‘A is for appropriate’? ‘T is for timing’? Really? Nothing.”
“Sorry. I just… I’m sorry, Ace.”
“If it makes you feel any better, she said it twice, so not a complete waste of time.”
He put his head in his hands. “It doesn’t. Jeez, kid. Do you want a puppy? I’m running out of ways to apologize to you.”
“I don’t want a puppy, but I might later, so don’t forget you said that.”
“Roger that.”
“And now that we’ve established that your idea sucked, can we please try mine?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, we absolutely can.”
“Thank you.”
“And… uh, just for future reference,” Tony said, “what kind of puppy?”
***
She sits on the counter, ankles crossed and bracing her hands on the edge. He drops two bags of tea into his cup, then pours boiling water slowly over them.
“Stables,” he says thoughtfully.
“Mmhmm,” she replies. “Tony’s mom started them back in the early eighties, mostly for rescue horses. It was sold off after she died, but he bought it back after Afghanistan. It’s one of the premier equine facilities on the West Coast now.”
“For what? Riding? Training? Showing?”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” she tells him with a shrug. “I won’t be the one in the saddle, anyway.”
His brow knits. “Then what will you be doing?”
A grin. “What else? I'll be working.”