Jane Foster is a renowned astrophysicist and creator of Foster's Theory of Inter-dimensional Travel. Her work has proven to be some of the most influential and insightful of the past hundred years. Jane Foster is one of the brightest minds roaming earth today, and she can't even pour a cup of coffee.

Jane jumped back as the hot coffee fell on her bare feet. After throwing the cup and pot onto the counter, Jane hopped to the sink. In a rush, she attempted to wipe the molten liquid off with a towel. This was somewhat successful but left the young scientist's skin pulsing in pain. These events are what lead to Erik Selvig, finding Jane sitting on the counter with her feet in the sink. Erik said nothing as he set down his briefcase by the couch. Jane hopped down and dried her feet. Neither Jane nor Erik spoke. Finally, after Jane mistook salt for sugar and attempted to put a large spoonful of it into her cereal, Erik spoke up.

"Jane!"

She jumped out of her trance in time to catch her mistake. She put down the cereal and salt, leaned against the counter, and rubbed her eyes.

"Jane," Erik started again "you need to get more sleep! I'm worried about you!"

Jane looked up, then turned to finish preparing her breakfast. "I can't" she replied.

She sighed and, once again abandoned her meal. "Erik, I can't do this!"

Erik raised his eyebrows in surprise and waited for her to continue.

"I can't do this" Jane said, a little calmer "A month ago I learned that other worlds exist! Other WORLDS!" she began to pace "I met a Norse god! And now, NOW, everyone just expects me to go back to the life I had before all this! I can't do it!" with this final statement she threw herself onto the couch and buried her face in her hands. Erik sat down beside her and stared down at his clasped hands. "So don't" Erik replied after a long pause. Jane looked up at this.

"Look" Erik began, turning towards her "like you said, these events change everything. They hold new scientific evidence, and, as with any new developments in science, we have to change our way of thinking. It would be impossible for anyone to forget recent events, let alone a hyperactive mind like your own." As Jane digested this new line of thinking, Erik stood up and prepared to leave.

"Where are you going?" Jane asked as he picked up his briefcase.

"Home" he replied. "You need to get some sleep and I can't do any work without you. And besides that, I have some work to do for the university."

…...

Because S.H.I.E.L.D had taken all of Jane's equipment she had to walk Erik and Darcy through the manual processes to gather the data she needed. Because this was so slow going, Jane was spending more time at her formal job, assisting Erik in his teaching duties at the university. Besides that, after the appearance of Thor, not much seemed important enough to study in depth.

With less research, Darcy was spending more time at school. The little time she did spend "working" with Jane she spent talking while Jane worked. Jane didn't mind. She preferred company, particularly when performing the tedious manual calculations.

The more time-consuming work, paired with insomnia, left Jane in a constant state of fatigue. Most nights, unable to sleep, Jane would venture up to the roof of the old dinner that was now used as a lab. After lighting a fire in the pit, she would curl up in a blanket and stare at the stars wondering how many billions of worlds there were for her to study. These thoughts usually drifted to Asgard and subsequently to Thor. Jane fell asleep to the memory of Thor explaining the nine realms. "There is Midgard, which is earth, Valleheim, Jotinheim, and Asgard. That's where I come from. When the sun is low in the sky the city seems to be a mass of pure gold. The golden flutes of the palace reach high into the near darkness."

Jane was disoriented. Screaming surrounded her. Whips cracked and chains slithered across cold floors. Jane was unable to focus, her entire world was spinning. The sounds of suffering and captivity filled her head. Then suddenly the sounds of prison ceased and a small broken whisper took their place "No, please. Help me. Help me please.". As the plea continued Jane's vision sharpened and she seemed to zoom down the hall to a locked prison door. Then, as quickly as they had ceased, the sounds of torture came back full force. Jane woke, covered in cold sweat. The sun was not up yet but the grayish light announced it's impending arrival.

Wanting a distraction, Jane had offered to grade Erik's papers for the next day. This was how she spent most of the day. Around three-thirty Darcy knocked on Erik's office door. Jane, who was sitting at her small desk in the corner, turned around too fast and almost fell out of her chair. After regaining her balance, Jane greeted Darcy who invited her to get an early dinner. As they walked, Jane's mind drifted to the strange dream that had woken her so early in the morning. Even stranger, she thought, was that she remembered the dream at all. Jane almost never remembered her dreams. Darcy said it was because her head was already too full of "numbers and sciency stuff". For the most part, this was true, Jane's mind was usually wide awake well before the rest of her. But something about this dream had stuck. Maybe it was that it was so out of place. Jane had always understood that dreams came from experiences or from memories. But this dream made no sense. Why was it even in her head? Jane had never been to a prison, nor experienced any similar situation.

Near the end of this train of thought, Jane realized that Darcy had been speaking and she hadn't heard any of it.

"...and then I realized that I hadn't screwed up the calculations and this would totally work!" Darcy, slightly out of breath from talking so fast, smiled at Jane expectantly.

"What?" Jane looked at Darcy for a few minutes before rubbing her eyes. "Sorry I haven't been sleeping very well lately." Darcy blinked a few times before picking up her coffee.

"Wow, you are so whipped. Tall, blond, and muscley really got under your skin." She took a sip of coffee. "I still can't decide if you actually like him or the science behind him more..."

"I...What? I...He...I think..." Jane stuttered for a few minutes. Darcy smiled and looked at her phone.

"Oh shoot I gotta go! See you tomorrow Jane!"

…..

Over the next few days, Jane spent every night working hard on replacing her equipment. On one such evening, she was dozing in her chair. Thor's voice echoed in Jane's head again as she faded between consciousness and sleep.

Jane was walking down a long hallway. When she reached the end she saw the same locked prison door as before.

"Hello?" She asked, inching closer.

"Jane Foster," a calm, warm voice came from the darkness of the cell. "glad you could make it."

A sudden rush of wind threw Jane to the floor as thousands of images surged through her mind.

Jane woke on the floor of her lab with her desk chair lying about three feet away. Overwhelming pain shot through Jane's head as she sat up. The pain subsided as she made her way to her feet. Exhausted, Jane resolved to turn in for the night. As she began to put away some of her papers, one chart caught her eye. She had looked at that chart a thousand times just in the last few hours, but as she looked at it now, she saw something new. She jumped to work in a hope that this fresh revelation wouldn't dissipate too quickly.

…...

Darcy walked into the lab at 8:15. Papers were everywhere. Half finished cups of coffee and devices balanced precariously on mounds of papers.

"Jane?" Darcy picked her way through the mess. It took her half an hour to look through all the crowded rooms before determining that Jane must be on the roof. The door opened to reveal an enormous telescope with the large end facing the viewer. Jane walked around from the side fiddling with knobs and fishing out wires to fuse together.

"Jane! What on earth are you doing?" Jane didn't turn around.

"Hi Darcy." She continued to mess with the machine.

"What is this thing?" Darcy crept around the side to stand next to Jane. "And what is that smell?" She looked over at Jane who had her hair in a bun and looked like she hadn't done anything but work for days.

"Darcy, I've figured it out! I know how to travel between the realms! I know how to get him back!" An overpowering smell wafted toward Darcy as Jane grabbed her shoulders.

"When was the last time you took a shower? Or brushed your teeth for that matter?" She took a few steps away from Jane.

"Come on I'll show you what I've found!" Jane grabbed Darcy by the wrist and dragged her toward the door.

"Whoa, I'm not going anywhere with you until you take a shower Princess of the muck." Darcy pulled her hand away and fell back a bit as the pair descended the stairs.

…...

Darcy sat in a lawn chair as Jane continued to fiddle with the backward telescope.

"...So you see, this will open an Einstein-Rosen Bridge, then we will just have to lock on to him and voilà, Inter-dimensional travel!"

"Okay, but how will we KNOW it's him and not some, what did he call the things with the horns?" She flailed her fingers around her head like Thor had done.

Jane stood silent for the first time since Darcy arrived. "Uh, I haven't exactly gotten that far yet." Jane didn't know how annoyed Darcy could look until this stare down.

"Well, I have a theory..." Jane turned back to the machine and pulled a panel away. "Okay so right here is where the whole thing is controlled. My theory is that if we can pinpoint what realm he is on with this," She pointed to a screen with nine large blobs circling each other. "Then all we would have to do is look for a massive power output and that...must...be...him?" She looked down at her blobs. "I mean he is the god of Thunder right? He has to have a lot of power around him at all times." Darcy nodded slowly. Encouraged, Jane began to push buttons around the screen. "I think I have already found him actually, right," She slammed a button and one blob took over the screen and a large purple dot in the center pulsed. "here." Jane smiled at the screen.