Asking Gramma about science.
And then, something not so science.
"Gramma, tell Loki Dad's not part elf."
"I'm not sure I particularly need to say something like that," Mittens stutters.
With Percy, she was honest about the subject. With her grandchildren, she decided to let their father say something. Or not say something. She glances distractedly at Tiberius. What would most people think about the truth? Would they think she'd lost her mind?
All those people on TV are going to be eaten, Loki predicts.
The grandchildren are so different from their father. As a child Percival would have nightmares for a week after a violent movie like this; Parsley and Loki don't bat an eye.
Chervil at play while Basil tries to sleep.
Loki isn't ready to sleep, either, but he's also not playing.
The smiles don't reach his eyes. The haircut helps hide that.
Loki is feeling uneasy and would like to be comforted by his parent, but Percival is at the film studio, still. So Loki sits in Percy's room and waits for his return.
"Sick things have happened in this room," Loki announces to no one.
He interrupts his grandmother's late night TV-watching marathon.
"What are you doing up?" she asks cheerfully.
"I'm not sure I particularly need to say something like that," he says slowly.
Mittens turns off the television and frowns at him. She always hated when her father would only half pay attention to her, so she makes sure to let the kids know they have her full attention.
"Because I don't want to hide things from you," Loki tries again. "And you said... so, stop. And then... he says, if I tell you, you have to promise not to tell anyone. Or else I'll be in trouble."
"If there's something wrong, you can tell me, kiddo."
Loki clenches his fists. He tells her things, word for word, that she said as a child. Secrets she told her father, secrets she told Reggie. Secrets Reggie told her.
Mittens laces her fingers together. "How do you know all this?"
"Because I've seen it happen a bunch of times, Gramma. I see things happen that already happened."
"I don't understand how you're pulling things from my memory."
"I'm not! I can be anywhere, and what's happened there, I see it." He digs his fingernails into his cheeks and growls, frustrated. His fingernails are chewed very short, she notices. "Please believe me, Gramma."
"You're telling me absolutely the truth, Loki?"
"Get out of my house you scoundrel fishpaste! I'll rip out your lungs punk! Get out!"
She leans back in her chair. Arjun strung those bizarre sentences together, once. She does not remember when or for whom. She remembers being there. "Okay. Deep breaths. Don't shout."
"But he was shouting." Her grandson looks like he's going to cry. "Please tell me why I'm messed up."
Mittens pulls the boy into a hug. "I'll tell you what I know," she promises.
So she does—tell him everything she knows about magic powers—which is more than nothing, but less than enough. Loki already knows some of what Reginald told Mittens over the years, but he's pleasantly surprised to find he doesn't know everything. His ability to perceive past events seems linked to being in the location they happened, so he can't have overheard things said in places he's never been.
Mittens ultimately cannot help Loki control this odd ability he has, but she can believe him when he tells her it exists, and she can promise to try to find help, and that's enough to get real smiles out of him.
By the time Mittens is able to send the kid to bed, it's Sunday morning.
Tiberius subjects Mittens and Percival to food tasting.
His next job depends on perfecting this dish but, being a vegetarian, he won't take a bite of it himself.
"It's very good!" Mittens assures him.
Tiberius steps out of the room to take a phone call, leaving Mittens alone with her son.
"You should have told them about their heritage a long time ago," she chides, after the necessary preamble of informing him about last night's surprise.
Percival is at first shocked, and then defensive. "Why should I have done that? Why should I have made them feel different?"
"So they wouldn't feel so bad when they realize they are different."
"I grew up knowing there was something odd about me, and without anyone to turn to to talk about it," he argues.
Mittens frowns, unable to understand why he's glaring at her so intently. There must be something she's missed. Some pain she doesn't know about. "Loki can't pretend this isn't happening," is what she hears herself say. "He needs help."
"It seems so," Percy relents. "How am I supposed to get help?"
Options are limited. Reginald and his mother have passed away, no one knows how to contact Greta, and the ice elemental folk around town don't seem to know very much about magic.
They can't exactly take the boy to a therapist. He's a curiosity, the sort of specimen Thalia Verona might have wanted to run experiments on. Nobody wants something like that to happen to him.
"I'll talk to Pauline," Mittens offers.
And she does, talk to Pauline. Pauline gives her a name for Loki's ability—it's called psychometry, and it's classified as a psionic ability—but it's rare enough and outside of her wheelhouse enough that she won't be able to find anyone to help him learn to control it. According to Pauline, psychometry comes from a connection to the etheric underpinnings of reality; elf mages have a limited access to that, whatever that means, so Mittens was right to suspect which genetics were responsible for this.
Pauline doesn't have many contacts these days. That whole conflict with the mummies left her isolated out here, and unable to leave, as she must guard the portal.
Percy thought he was doing alright balancing work and childcare before.
But now, he keeps an even closer eye on the kids. He begins taking more and more time off to spend it with his sons and daughters, even though he has the workaholic trait.
He has so much money, he thinks, but he can't figure out who he has to pay to make his son better.
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Etc.: Percy is still worked to death. With so few working hours, and also a poor rating on the celebrity job requirement, I have him on the computer working from home almost constantly in order to get to the top of his career. (Though for the story, I pretend he's out doing actor things.) I thought Percy and Tiberius would have more of a social life than they actually have... oh well... parenthood changes people I suppose!
