Avengers missing scene...just cause I don't want to wait till Thor 2 to find out what's going to happen between Thor and Jane. I get the feeling she'll be pissed he came back and didn't visit...unless it was a deleted scene/off camera that we didn't see...that would be good but doubtful! I wrote this ages ago when the Avengers came out and then forgot about it...might add another chapter where he goes to see her and take it into AU territory or I might leave it at this...I don't know yet.
Disclaimer – I don't own anything except Andrew :)
"Okay, I've got to ask. What is an astrophysicist like you doing all the way up here?" Andrew pushed himself away from the computer and spun his chair around to face Jane. "You're thousands of miles away from anything mentioned in your research."
Jane looked up from her calculations at his sudden outburst. If she was being honest with herself, she had no idea how to answer that question. Three days before, SHIELD had stormed into her apartment in the middle of the night and told her that she was no longer safe. Thirty minutes later, she, Darcy and their laptops were on a private jet heading north and were still none the wiser as to what had happened. All she'd managed to pry from the agents guarding them was that the research facility had been compromised and she was to continue her work at a secure facility until further notice.
And by secure facility, Nick Fury meant 'obscure little observatory'. In Norway.
Oh yeah, she felt perfectly safe. Especially when she discovered that only one SHIELD agent was stationed there. The observatory was merely a front for SHIELD, employing scientists who were average at best and had no knowledge of who they really worked for or what their work was really for. Glancing at some of the research they were carrying out, Jane guessed they were working on simplified versions of past SHIELD projects. Or extremely basic first stage projects. Not that their work could be deemed 'easy' by any standards...it was just less complex than what she or SHIELD normally undertook.
However, she couldn't fault the observatory staff in the slightest. They had been more than welcoming towards their unexpected guests, and no one had caused a scene when she told them she couldn't share the details of her research quite yet. She and Darcy had been left alone to continue their work. There had been no suspicion, no aloofness, no hidden agendas...and it was definitely different from working with SHIELD.
The only person at the observatory who even seemed to be overly interested in them was Andrew. The rest of the staff (all five of the scientists, the one SHIELD agent and the janitor) had their own jobs to do and were content to leave her alone and only interact in the break room. Andrew, on the other hand, was the head scientist's nineteen year old son. He had just finished his first year of college and was spending an obligatory two weeks with his mother (he lived with his dad and brother in LA, his mom spending between eight and ten months of the year in Norway).
He didn't get the science. He was training to be a journalist. Apparently he'd taken Biology in his junior year to please his mother and it had put him off the whole trade for life. For him, Jane and (mainly) Darcy were a welcome distraction. Within half an hour those two were sitting in the corner giggling like old friends and discussing their mutual crush on Tony Stark.
At that moment in time, Darcy had disappeared off to find lunch for the three of them, so Jane had been expecting Andrew to make a comment sometime. If she'd learnt anything about him in the last fifty six hours, it was that the boy didn't do silence.
"Honestly?" Jane sighed as she stretched and spun herself around to face Andrew, "I don't have a clue. My sponsor wanted me to come here, so I got on a plane."
"I bet your boyfriend loved that..." Andrew muttered as he leant forward to pick up a pen. As he sat back in his seat he caught sight of Jane's confused expression. After a moment he realised that Jane had never actually told him about her boyfriend, so he explained, "Darcy told me. Besides, no guy could miss it. You just give off this vibe that says 'I have a big scary boyfriend, get any closer and he'll crush you like an ant'."
"Oh." Jane whispered, completely blindsided by his observation. She'd never thought about it like that. Sure, she'd noticed that on the rare occasions Darcy dragged her out at the weekend men always seemed to give her a wide berth, but it didn't exactly bother her. She was working day and night to get back to the man she loved. (It had been a year and she was still searching. It had to be love. Either that or she had some kind of unhealthy obsession which Erik and Darcy really should have put a stop to...) She wasn't overly upset about the lack of interest. If anything, it made her life easier.
And if the stories about Heimdall were true...well she really didn't need Thor getting the wrong idea.
But discovering she was sitting under a sign that said 'Property of the God of Thunder'? That she didn't expect. Nor did she expect the warm, fuzzy feeling that came with it. It was similar to the one she got when she heard thunder rumbling in the distance. There was no guarantee that it was Thor, but it was nice to think there was some link between their worlds. Like he was watching over her...
Every thunderstorm always resulted in a renewed energy in her work. Yesterday's storm had been particularly violent, with the thunder rolling on for at least an hour, the rain battering off the building and lightning splitting the sky every few minutes. If Thor was the cause of that storm, he was definitely going all out.
Before Jane could even begin to formulate a response to Andrew, Darcy burst into the room screaming. Andrew, unacquainted with Darcy's theatrics, thought something was wrong. He jumped out of his chair and spun to face the unknown danger, holding his pen out like it would protect him. Jane, on the other hand, knew the difference between Darcy's hellhounds-are-chasing-me screams, her a-spider-in-the-bathroom screams and her screams of pure excitement. This was the latter.
If they'd really been in danger, Darcy would have tasered the poor bastards.
Darcy had already dragged Jane and Andrew out the door and halfway down the hall before Jane had figured out that her friend's high pitched squealing consisted of repeating the same four phrases.
JaneJaneJaneJaneJaneJane come on come on come on you are never going to believe this! oh my freaking god!
Jane hadn't seen Darcy this excited since Jane had agreed to take the weekend off and have some girl time. And somehow, Erik had managed to convince SHIELD to foot the bill. She's still positive there's something not quite right about that, that they were hiding something from her. But they were helping her get Thor back. She wasn't going to cause waves over a hunch.
After all, SHIELD had a lot of sub-projects when it came to the Tesseract and if Erik was going along with it then it couldn't be that bad...
In an effort not to stumble, she looked down as she was pushed over the threshold into the break room. That split second change of focus meant that she heard the chaos before she saw it. She heard the carnage coming from the three monitors and the plasma TV screen, and was suddenly transported back to that damn dessert in New Mexico.
Thor was battling the Destroyer. Debris flying everywhere as the wind whipped up around them. The metallic noise of Mjölnir hitting the Destroyer...wasn't quite right.
Jane's head snapped up as the realisation hit. The sounds filling her mind weren't that of her memory, they were coming from the monitors.
A gasp slipped through Jane's lips as she started towards the nearest monitor. Grabbing it and turning it towards her, she split her attention between trying to understand what she was seeing and staying upright. Hopefully, someone would fill her in without her actually having to ask. If they didn't, one of her objectives would have to give. And she was pretty sure that her legs would give out before she looked away from the screen.
Thor. Thor battling an army of...things in the middle of some city. As she searched the screen for clues, she caught sight of Stark Tower in the background. New York. He was in New York. Thor was fighting monsters in New York.
...She wasn't sure how she felt about that.
"That's the live feed." The grim voice of the SHIELD agent cut through Jane's reverie. She nodded absently to show she was listening, but was still reluctant to tear her gaze from the screen. Thor was standing back to back with the Hulk, swinging Mjölnir as he picked out his next target.
"That screen shows what Director Fury is looking at now, those three," the agent nodded to the two computers next to the one Jane was currently holding onto for dear life, "are showing the rest of the feed SHIELD is monitoring. The plasma has the raw news feed from CNN."
Jane briefly turned away from Thor to check the other screens – he seemed like he was handling himself pretty well so she could justify viewing the rest of the situation for a few moments. They were divided into multiple smaller windows, each showing the city from a different angle. One gave a birds-eye view of the carnage, several others seemed to switch between the different streets and highlighted where the response was needed most, another was dedicated to tracking Ironman – it was affecting his business, so Jane was unsurprised at the billionaire's involvement. The remainder of the screens were apparently dedicated to each member of the team, and Nick Fury could choose which one to pay most attention to.
Tony Stark. The Hulk. Agent Barton. Black Widow – a stab of jealousy. Thor. Captain America.
Jane felt her stomach drop as the full scale of the situation hit her. Downtown New York was a warzone. And Thor was right in the middle of it.
She knew he was capable of defending himself – he was the God of Thunder for godsake! And if even half those legends about him and his hammer were true, then he could probably keep mowing down those things at the rate he was going at for hours. But that knowledge still didn't quash the fear that bubbled in the pit of her stomach. She loved him. She admitted it, even if only to herself. She was pretty sure that worrying was allowed. At least by human standards...maybe not so much on Asgard.
She could still remember the look in Sif's eyes as she tried to convince Thor to let her die a warrior's death.
And then there was Tony. Even with that suit he was only human, and he looked pretty beat up. Jane didn't know the 'billionaire/playboy/philanthropist/genius/superhero' that well, his time at SHIELD every other Thursday was usually spent with Fury or in the R&D department, but she was close to Pepper. And if anything happened to him, Pepper would be inconsolable. The redhead was probably the only one who understood what Jane was feeling at that moment.
Jane could only hope that Pepper had gotten on the plane to DC that morning like she was supposed to. She didn't need her friend in the middle of that chaos.
As that thought crossed her mind, Jane's brain finally caught up. Everything clicked. Suddenly being shipped off to the middle of nowhere. The violent thunder storm. Erik not returning her calls. SHIELD refusing to give her answers when she tried contacting them. There was a war going on, and she'd been shipped off to safety.
Again, not too sure how to feel about that.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jane saw Thor jump onto one of those snake-like flying...things and her attention was brought back to Thor's role in the fight. She could figure out her feelings later; when everyone was safe.
"You know him?" Andrew finally broke the silence in the room, voicing the thought that was on everyone's mind. Even the SHIELD agent was confused over her reaction, but he was too well trained to let it show.
Again, Jane just nodded. Darcy happily stepped in to give more of an explanation, turning to Andrew with an almost manic grin as she proclaimed, "He's the boyfriend!"
As if on cue, Thor launched Mjölnir and took out three of those things, turning to deck a fourth before the hammer had returned to his hand.
"Oh."