2. Salve

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It had been almost a year since her sojourn among the gods.

Jane had never previously believed that her life could be radically altered by a brief meet cute and a whirlwind adventure full of hijinks and heroism- she didn't think much of that kind of romantic comedy, to be perfectly honest- but here she was, living a life forever changed because some guy had accidentally stumbled into it. For three days.

Of course, he was a superhuman, possibly immortal, technically alien guy, and they hadn't fallen into True Love Forever or run towards each other across an airport after a last minute epiphany or anything.

So there was that.

Not that she could have really held it against herself if she had fallen hard for Thor, even in three days. He was pretty much a literal knight in shining armour, and he had the comportment to match. He was the human (or Asgardian, rather) avatar of all her dreams about the endless possibilities of the unexplored universe, and his very existence was proof that her wildest and most daring theories were plausible. He had a huge home team advantage in winning her heart. Without even getting into the whole blond Adonis with sparkly, summer-sky-blue eyes part.

But she was a grown woman and getting super giggly and really liking the guy were not love, and emotional outbursts fuelled by extreme circumstances were not a good basis for a lasting relationship. She had no expectations about what they would mean to each other in the future.

If she ever even saw him again. It was kind of academic at this point.

She did have an unbelievable, charming memory of being swept off her feet, and she'd probably never have to deal with the harsh reality that jocks with hero complexes were not her type, there were issues underlying most societies with chivalric codes, and that she and Thor were unimaginably unlikely to have anything in common after the wonder and giggles wore off.

This way, with a kiss goodbye and a promise that he might not be able- but definitely intended- to keep, the wonder didn't have to wear off.

It was enough for her to know that her research was absolutely heading somewhere and somewhere worthwhile. Somewhere actually totally, ridiculously incredible. No one had that in her field. The certainty, the marvellous certainty, definitely provided a balm for all the years of academic embarrassment, the alienation and frustration, the being called either a surprisingly young crackpot or a surprisingly old naïf.

Jane considered herself pretty grounded, really. Maybe she was a little impulsive, but her head was in the stars not the clouds.

Not that the research was going particularly amazingly great just at the moment, but at least it was going on in a well-funded manner. At least Erik was with her and she wasn't entirely by herself staring at data until it blurred, kludging together equipment that only half worked, trying to get colleagues to substantiate her hunches over the phone without asking revealing questions, and beginning to wonder if anything was really out there or if the sleep deprivation and Darcy's coffee were finally rotting her mind.

She'd learned that a girl should not science in isolation for too long at a stretch, and she should definitely not then try to explain her totally valid and realistic theories of possible inter-dimensional, almost certainly intra-dimensional, wormhole travel to a poli-sci major who hates math.

It was probably silly and sentimental of her to think so, but she suspected part of the decline in her progress might be traceable to Darcy's needing to go back to classes and normality in the city in a few days. The stimulating aggravation, growing fondness, and occasional stunning insight Darcy cheerfully provided was well worth the so-strong-it'll-roll-you coffee she made.

Jane might even miss her coffee, when it came to it.

A knock on the wall of her trailer broke her thoughtful stupor, and she startled so violently that she smashed her hand into the cupboard at the edge of her tiny bed. Yes, this was about the size of Jane's life lately. Getting sadder and more clumsy all the time.

"Yeah?" she called, shaking the injured hand and wincing to herself.

Darcy's muffled voice answered, "There's a guy here."

She stuck her head out the door. "Guy? What guy? One of those SHIELD guys?" Jane wanted nothing to do with any more SHIELD guys on her turf. She preferred they stick to the telephone and mailing her cheques. The cheques she was fine with. Even if nothing came of the project that they were interested in, they still owed her for pain and suffering.

Darcy was popping her gum in her usual impossibly relaxed fashion, shaking her head no. "Umm, I don't think he's just a SHIELD guy. He's wearing what has to be a bespoke designer suit and he's, like, unrealistically good-looking. I mean at the- I mean, he's not the same type, but he's at a Thor-like level. You should be open to variety, Jane, especially god-like variety. I don't know what he wants, but he can have it if he's asking me."

She grabbed hold of Jane's sweater and tugged her off the trailer steps. "Go check it out before he has to go back to the Hugo Boss walk-off or whatever."

.,.,.,.,.,.,.

Jane smoothed her hair and shook the worst of the cereal crumbs out of her cardigan as she walked toward the lab. It was probably good to seem at least as professional as any given reclusive mad scientist from a monster movie. The guy might be one of those eccentric billionaires she was convinced had to exist to be helping fund SHIELD's barrage of weirdness-detecting equipment. In which case, she should try to make a good impression and maybe cut out the middle man.

She saw him before she was even half way there, silhouetted in the centre of her odd little open-concept lab, and a shiver of nerves went through her. Why couldn't strangers in ominous dark suits call first and warn people they were coming? The men in black had already shut down her operation once. She told herself to get a grip and reached for the door-handle. He turned around to look at her as she came in.

Well, he was certainly striking. Very tall with long, lean limbs and perfect posture, he had an effortless natural poise that made him seem sort of stately. This was someone more than used to the finer things in life, she'd bet, probably old money. The obviously expensive suit and full-length overcoat he wore were the kind of definitive black you rarely saw in fabric, a coal-edge black. Even his hair, all smoothed back from his face and combed practically to a point at the nape of his neck, was so black it was almost blue with the sun on it. The contrast made his pale skin look startlingly white and his large, grey-blue eyes seem almost colourless. Like mirrors.

He lacked the warm, inviting handsomeness she remembered in Thor, the quality of his beauty having instead a certain chilly severity to it, but Jane could still see why Darcy had drawn a comparison. Something in the degree of his charisma, something in how he held himself, also reminded her of their otherworldly house guest. Besides, as she took in the painfully sharp edges of his cheekbones and how the vaguely triangular slope of his archless eyebrows gave his neutral expression a melancholic cast, she decided he looked more vulnerable than aloof. A little fragile.

"Hi," she said, feeling impossibly awkward now that she'd had this thought about him. Men didn't appreciate that kind of sentiment, generally.

"Hi," he repeated, tonguing the word too deliberately, like he didn't make a habit of using it. "Jane Foster?"

She flushed, embarrassed that she hadn't thought to introduce herself. "Um, yes. And you are?"

"Luke Wodenson, Dr. Foster. My apologies for the intrusion." He made to take her hand, but at entirely the wrong angle for a handshake. Seeming to catch himself off of her expression, he just splayed his fingers in a kind of contrite wave and dropped his hand again, muttering, "Beg pardon," like he felt like the biggest idiot who had ever lived.

He sounded not a little like a Jane Austen mini-series. His accent might have been even a bit more posh than Thor's was, come to think of it, which hardly seemed possible. For a moment she felt an outrageous suspicion building. "Where are you from, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Swaziland," he said with the air of a man who knew you wouldn't have a clue what he was talking about, "it's in Africa. Ex-British protectorate."

"Oh." She blinked. The suspicion passed. Jane admonished herself for getting too caught up in conspiracy land lately. "I'm sorry, what did you want with me, exactly?"

"I read about you in Les étoiles scientifique. I'm something of an amateur astronomer, I'm afraid, and something rather more of a semi-casual student of quantum mechanics." This was all smooth as silk and his slightly shy smile was winsome as all get-out. He'd thought about this, rehearsed it maybe. She felt oddly floaty. "I think you have hit upon one of the dangling threads which can unravel the untold secrets of the universe, Dr. Foster. I would like to offer my services to you, in any capacity which you require assistance."

"Really."

He looked the tiniest bit thrown by her nonplussed reaction, uncertain of himself. "Yes."

"Do you have any formal qualifications?" She seriously had to be dreaming this; the universe could not expect her to believe something so helpful would just happen, no strings.

"I attended Oxford University for a little less than two terms."

"And you read?"

"Physics."

Jane stared at him, not knowing what the hell to say, and wishing he'd lean against something or slouch instead of standing so ram-rod straight. She was used to a lot of people being taller than her and wasn't usually intimidated by it, but with his rigid posture he was not just tall, he was towering. Standing at a polite conversational distance was giving her a crick in the neck, and his formal stance was making her tense. "Uh, come with me, would you? Just over here." She gestured him over to the kitchen table they had on the far side of the lab and towards a chair. Her plan had been to stand while he sat and get the high ground for a while, but he seemed to have no intention of sitting before she did. So she did, and then he did: his legs so long that he had to cross them at the ankles, camp fire-style, to fit his knees under the table. For Pete's sake.

"Okay. Um, Luke. I'm just... no one ever takes my theories seriously. It does all sound kind of crazy when you say it out loud, even to me. Why are you here? Be totally honest."

He met her eyes and there was something in his expression which suggested to her that he didn't actually know the answer, but he glanced down and the fan of his eyelashes masked the clarity she'd just glimpsed.

"Miss Foster, your thoughts are almost wholly original, unparalleled in their boldness. You are an intensely intriguing scientist with a perhaps world-changing discovery in your grasp. I am a life-long hobbyist, I crave the novel. Do you begrudge me my instinct to seize upon the most potentially interesting opportunity I have ever come across?"

Jane frankly didn't know what to think. Was he trying to imply he was willing to give her crackpot ass the benefit of the doubt because he was being smothered in ennui and he had a crush on her brain? She'd think he was seriously nefarious, but she could taste the truth of what he was saying about chasing novelty. That part she unquestioningly believed. In addition to which, she might add, the last time she had impulsively trusted someone saying something crazy it had been completely true and everything had been pretty awesome. In the traditional sense of the word.

"Why didn't you finish Oxford?" she asked. Sensibly.

He ticked his chin to the side, his mouth pursing in brief disdain. "I became bored."

How had she known he was going to say that.

"The span of my attention is very great when its object is worthwhile," he added, borderline defensively.

She smiled at him, mildly charmed by his apparent insecurity in spite of his fancy clothes and his posturing. "Luke, here's the thing, some kinda heavy stuff is at stake in my work and there are interested parties who worry I might not be crazy. I kind of need to know that I can trust the people around me. And here's you, apparently a rich, super-smart anonymous guy with no day job in the way who just wants to help. I mean, should I be reporting someone for a poorly-planned attempt at scientific espionage?"

He stared at her, his lips in a tight, unhappy line. "I could acquire a 'day job', if it would make you more comfortable."

"Where does your money come from?" She blushed at her own bluntness and played with her hair as she avoided his eyes. "I know that's a super rude question, but I'm serious. I sort of have to ask. You seem more than a little too good to be true. I'm losing my grad student this week and everything would be so much more convenient if there were someone..."

His upraised hand drove all words from her mouth. He seemed to take her obedience for granted, because he was already talking, "To answer your question, Miss Foster, I am independently wealthy. It is not obscene, but my parents left me an adequate living. They were killed. At home. In Africa."

Jane bit her lip. She should ask for proof of some kind, but either he was a brilliant actor or there was real pain in his voice. And he was obviously trying to cover it, veins stood out on his elegant hands as his fingers clenched around the word 'killed'.

"I'm sorry."

He gave a weak smile, looking at the floor. "As am I, Miss Foster."

She should at least ask him how they died, but she knew she wasn't going to. "Please call me Jane."

"Jane," he said, surprising her. She would have thought he was the type to whom the invitation would have made no difference. He seemed so formal, so tightly laced. So ill at ease.

Then again, he had stopped calling her 'doctor' when he started complimenting her.

"And now you... what? Sit around reading scientific journals and hoping for something amazingly interesting to fall into your lap?"

"Something like that." He grinned at her suddenly and it made his eyes spark in a way she wasn't entirely sure she liked. "I wouldn't say I sat around. More interesting things tend to happen when you make them happen, don't they, Jane?"

The impulse to ask him what he would know about it was strong- but he didn't know anything, even if he was a science spy and thought he did. Unless he worked for SHIELD after all. No one else in the world could possibly know anything.

"Did I not read in your author blurb that you once caused three hundred thousand dollars worth of damage to your undergraduate biochem laboratory because you ignored the express precautions of an experiment in order to 'see what would happen'?" Now his eyes twinkled playfully at her, and this she did like.

"The damage wasn't that bad."

His close-mouthed smile gave him ridiculously endearing dimples, and she found herself wondering how old he was. She couldn't begin to guess and would have believed anything from twenty-one to thirty-five.

"It's the truth!" she protested against the knowingness of the smile. "My professor exaggerated the whole accident so the school would give him more money than the repairs cost and he could get better equipment than the junk he was replacing."

Luke nodded diplomatically. "Admirable motivation whilst having one's sport, I'm sure."

"Let him have it. It's not like that's the thing that's ruining my reputation."

He reached across the table and covered her hand with his much larger one. The slight touches of his slender fingers were cool against her skin and tingled alarmingly. He leaned forward and her attention shot back to his face, his pale eyes. "Let me help you, Jane. Whatsoever I lack in patience and formal education, I promise you I make it up with cleverness. Keenness."

"And modesty?" She wanted to kick herself for throwing out that mouldy old chestnut.

"My mind is my one gift and I am certain of it. As I am certain of you. I believe in your work, Jane. That is the truth."

Damn it, this was too weird for tact. "Why are you so desperate to be involved?"

His mouth opened, but he paused and shut it again, his fine brows knit with consternation as he studied her. A moment passed, then he sighed through the fingers of the free hand which had come up to cover his mouth, his index finger worrying his Cupid's bow. "Alas- in very painful honesty indeed, Miss Foster- I have nothing else to do in all the world."

"Jane," she said again, feeling vindicated.

"Jane."