The Tower: Happily Ever After

Getting Out of His Head

The trip Thor, Steve, and Wanda had taken to find out what was causing the strong sense of dread in the farmers who lived by the western wall of the city had been fruitless. They had found the same things that Rebecca, Riley, and Billy had found - a feeling of oppressive fear that got stronger in a certain spot and then ended - but they couldn't find the source. In the end, Thor had ordered livestock to be moved to the farms on the eastern wall, and that the families living there would be housed at the palace until he could get to the bottom of the problem. In the meantime, guards were set out around the perimeter of where that feeling occurred in the hopes it would if not find the thing causing the problem, it would at least stop it from spreading.

Each day Loki and Thor would go out to see what they could find, sometimes taking Heimdall with them, and other times Wanda, Sarah, or Billy. Yet each day nothing had been found.

Meanwhile, we were also moving toward something exciting coming up too. Edwin would be arriving for his first six-month stay at Asgard. It would be the feeler for Rory and Lyra to see if they too might be okay living here, away from their own families and their world. It was a lot of pressure, and we wanted things to be perfect for them. Unlike Rose and Billy who had ended up with people who weren't rich or powerful - Rose had met Paul in college and Billy had first met Teddy when Teddy had been his personal trainer - Lyra and Rory were both from money. Lyra was an heiress to a media company, though one of three children who stood to inherit the multibillion-dollar company, they'd met at a gala in New York and what had started as the two of them just being seen out partying together had ended up being something deep and long term for both. Rory was from old English money. He had a title and everything; Lord Roderick Ainsworth. His family owned a manor in England as well properties around the world. There were several different companies under his family's name and while we knew he was involved in the running of them, we weren't exactly sure if it was much more than as a figurehead, because he certainly seemed available for any reason at the drop of the hat. Edwin and Lyra had met Rory a few years into their relationship and if anyone asked how they met, they just vaguely said 'in Paris'. Later when we were alone and Steve brought up how odd it was that they never specified how they met, Tony had said 'sex dungeon' and as none of us actually wanted that piece of information confirmed, no one had brought it up again.

Because of their own experience with wealth and fame, we hoped that fitting in as royalty wouldn't be such a big learning curve for them and it would just be getting used to living on another planet that they had to live with.

So to that end, we were in full-on preparation mode for them. Their chambers had been prepared and decorated. They had offices that they could conduct business from, and Tony had made sure a lab adjoining his, had been readied just in case Edwin wanted to get into the lab.

Eddie was the only one of our kids that had shown interest in engineering. Most of the other kids had been more interested in arts or physical pursuits, and aside from Marya, none could really keep up with the advanced genius of either Tony or Bruce. Marya still hadn't chosen a thing to focus on but she'd been more interested in life sciences than engineering so far. So Tony was excited to have one of his kids around that shared his passion again and was really hoping they'd stay.

"Maybe I should send a message to Eddie and see if there's any hobbies or anything that Lyra and Rory have so we can make sure they have access to them here," Tony said as he paced the room, holding Nova as Inky gamboled about at his feet. Nova seemed to be liking his dad's nervous energy and was babbling along with him and trying to pull on Tony's beard.

"That's a nice idea," Bruce said. "You should do that, but you also need to calm down a little. Remember how you picked up Nova to settle him down to sleep?"