3. Consultation
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Darcy still thought it was a fantastic development, the interference of perfect serendipity rescuing Jane from the oncoming tragic loneliness of a life without Darcy in it. She conceded that Luke was awfully mysterious, that there was definitely something strange about him, and that he had arrived with suspiciously convenient timing, but she thought these were relatively minor points. In light of her departure and Jane's ensuing sadness, there had to be priorities.
"Jane, you once made out with a Norse god of thunder. How normal can your life really be, after that? I think you're marked for all time. Touched by Vorlons."
Jane turned a corner and shot Darcy a look as her signal clicked off. "Whatever that means."
"Didn't we have this conversation the last time?" Erik was pretty mad about what he saw as history repeating. In his own quiet, white-lipped, Erik way, he'd been fuming. Days into the argument, he was just getting madder. "Do we remember what happened then?"
Darcy hummed in thought and shook her head. "I thought that turned out pretty awesomely except for SHIELD managing to lose my iPod and nothing else, then trying to tell me it wasn't on purpose. Coulson smirks when he lies. I almost punched him."
"It did not turn out 'awesomely', Darcy," Erik was not budging from the topic at hand, "And the fact that it didn't turn out a lot worse is not because it wasn't a terrible idea."
"Which part?" Jane threw in, not meeting his eyes in the rear-view mirror even though she could feel the reflected heat of his glare.
She did catch a glimpse of his deep frown and the thundercloud brewing on his brow. "Everything after I told you to stay away from that guy and you didn't. Maybe some of the stuff before that."
Jane huffed. Thor had turned out to be noble and heroic and super nice, not to mention telling the truth and not at all crazy. So Erik was still completely wrong even if she probably should have listened to him. Her instincts must be decent, because what were the odds? "It's because of that terrible idea that we all still have jobs. And funding. And any hope of this research ever seeing the light of day and being something other than a laughingstock when it does," was all she said.
"Don't tell him the truth." Erik was using his most serious of serious faces.
"Not right away," Darcy agreed.
Erik clutched his brow. "Darcy-"
Her hand went up in the universal sign language for 'not listening'. "What if they get serious? She can't be lying to him about something this big. Eventually it will come out, probably because Thor shows up randomly the day before their wedding and thinks he's still in like Flynn. It'll be drama-city and betrayal and angst. Jane will be all devastated. Giant huge enormous mess."
"Darcy!"
"Don't look at me like you're not going to fall for him! You've been moping over Thor and your Einstein-wormhole-whatever machine going bust for months, and you're bored to death. You're barely even working any more. This guy was lovingly sculpted out of rainbows and bunnies and smarts by your fairy godmother to be both exactly your perfect type and exactly what you legitimately need right now for your super-important science stuff. The universe has clearly aligned itself specially just to get you out of this funk, and no one should fight the universe, Jane."
There were no words.
Apparently of the opinion that they just weren't getting it, she reiterated her point, "The Thor thing would never have worked out long-term, you're hung up because you totally know that and it bums you out, and suddenly his staggeringly hot exact opposite wanders into your life begging you to talk science to him? Hello? That is not a coincidence."
"Darcy, if you don't stop talking, I will plug the hole." Jane knew her cheeks were even redder than Darcy's lipstick, and she stared determinedly at the road ahead.
"I'm gonna miss you guys." Darcy smiled beatifically at them both, her eyes shiny with feeling. "Bros for life."
They were almost at the bus station, too. Jane was not going to cry. She was not losing her lovably grating, hilariously practical assistant, because Darcy would torture her again the following summer. This was just a hiatus until their further adventures.
"For life," she agreed, totally not crying. She could hear Erik sighing heavily in the back.
.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.,.
When she pulled up to the lab after dropping Erik outside the dingy basement apartment a local had been nice enough to rent him, it was only just lunchtime and she was planning on making the rest of the day a little vacation for herself and some Ben & Jerry's. She needed the comfort and probably the calories, as she seemed to be worrying herself out of her favourite jeans. It was just possible that man was not designed to run on coffee alone. Maybe Darcy was right about this funk she wasn't in. Maybe it was getting kind of bad. It was true about the work slipping, too, she was barely pulling eight hour days of late: all desk jockeying. It wasn't like her.
As she got out of the van, however, she immediately knew that her afternoon would not be as uneventful as she had planned.
Luke sat on the concrete lip of the overgrown planter out front, his elbows resting on his parted knees and his hands clasped between them. His head came up as she approached and he squinted at her against the desert sun. She guessed it was in concession to the heat that his full-length overcoat was off and folded neatly beside him, but he still wore a black wool suit and he didn't look as though he felt one bit discomfited by the soaring temperature or the glaring sun. She thought the shivery material of his shirt must be actual silk, a terrifically clingy fabric in the presence of moisture, but it floated as diaphanously over his broad shoulders and slim chest as if he were a boutique mannequin rather than flesh and blood. Some people must have fewer sweat glands. Or none. It was the only answer. Darcy usually looked annoyingly fresh in the desert, too. Not that Darcy wore silk and wool. There madness lay.
"Jane Foster," he said by way of greeting, smiling slightly as she reached him. "It occurred to me that at our first meeting I said I would await your word, but I gave you no means by which to send it. I hope I haven't disrupted you in your duties?"
It took a second to parse what he'd said, then she waved away the polite concern. "Not at all. I'm kind of taking the day off. Wanna come in?"
Now was that smart, Jane? The mysterious dude just shows up again and you invite him in knowing that you're all by yourself and no one will be coming to check on you until at least tomorrow? Jane. We've got to fix this decision making, Jane. Erik would have an utter cow if he knew.
"I would be most honoured," he said, bowing his head as he gestured her ahead of him to the door.
She set about unlocking it, but she was still busily regretting the impulsiveness she was beginning to recognise was bound to get her into trouble one of these days. If it hadn't already. She was far too curious about this overly formal, overly smart, overly helpful weirdo to make a sensible decision and tell him to gather some credentials for a few months, then maybe they'd talk. Like she'd been far too curious about unexpected stellar phenomena and what a person-shaped shadow was doing inside of it, about that person himself. Just because that hadn't ended badly, she found herself taking up Erik's mantra, didn't mean she could keep her messed up priorities.
Curiosity, the cat, etc.
He did look so forlorn, though, when she caught him out of the corner of her eye. Forlorn and tense. She wanted to know why he supposedly didn't have anything else to do, why this was important to him in a way that it had previously been important only to her. What did he see in the project? Was it what she saw?
It wasn't like she didn't realise he was hiding something. She'd just keep an eye on him. She really needed someone new to talk to who was close enough to her level that they could point out things that her months of intense focus had blurred beyond seeing. Fresh eyes without too many preconceptions.
Jane went about turning on the lights and the kitchen fan, aware of Luke somewhere behind her. He had a way of lurking just on the edge of her vision that was mildly disconcerting. He was a large presence, figuratively as well as physically, but his personal magnetism seemed slightly off. His graceful, dramatic figure and penetrating, measuring gaze drew attention, but his closed body language and forebodingly chilly manner also repelled it; so you looked at him but your eyes slid away quickly. He was like a lone grey cloud at the edge of a perfect blue sky.
Now she felt uncharitable.
"Would you like some tea?" Jane could not make coffee. She'd flooded the counter three times and then Darcy had said she wasn't allowed to touch the machine again until she'd been to see someone about the Voodoo curse under which she was obviously living.
Startled from his examination of the Energizer Bunny wind-up toy he'd found on her desk, he stared at her a moment. "Beg pardon? Tea?"
"I've got regular or some herbal kinds without caffeine. Fruit and mint and things."
He looked almost annoyed, but his tone was unfailingly polite, "I will take what I am given."
Well. That was a pretty winning attitude in an assistant, she had to say.
Finally settling them at the table with steaming mugs and some crackers she'd dug up, she looked over at her strange caller. He smiled mysteriously, and she started waffling again about whether it was a good idea to keep letting strangers into her lab. She was like a crazy cat lady, adopting the town strays. Except both of her strays were tall, handsome men who gave off- in different flavours- the air of being Totally Able to Take Care of Themselves. Still, somehow, she felt a certain responsibility. Much less so for Luke than Thor, obviously, but she had a similar feeling that he might not be Okay Out There if she didn't help him find his feet. At least she hadn't hit him with the van yet.
"Have you considered my proposal, Jane Foster?" Luke was asking, giving her what he probably imagined was a pleasantly curious look over the top of his tea cup, but which seemed to her more like a cat who knew you had bacon on your plate and who was too proud to beg.
She decided to stall. "What did you have in mind? For you to do, I mean. For me."
"Whatever duty you require of me, I should be pleased to perform, Jane. I am prepared to follow you most slavishly. However, I think it would be in our mutual best interest for me to help you direct your research at its most fundamental levels into avenues you may not have considered. The new interpretation of basic concepts and their application in light of your theory, which would change in cascade all previous exegesis of observed data. I have tremendous imagination, Jane. A quality which, perhaps, has been lacking?" He spread his hands on the table and she eyed the outward splay of his long fingers, like a spider's web against the linoleum. "Your ambition and desire have driven you to great insight and given you the purpose to pursue it, but perhaps you are still tethered overmuch to the earth? To a certain 'way'. Is that so?"
After a moment he raised his eyebrows and she realised it was an actual question he was expecting her to answer.
"Maybe," she hedged, not given to self-reflection. She wasn't particularly offended by the idea that she wasn't radical enough, either because it might be a bit ass-backwardly true or because she'd spent so much time trying to defend herself as not being very radical at all if you'd just give her a chance please listen it's not like I'm saying there are Atlantians among us- fine! I'll take this to a competing journal!
There was no point in getting pissed off until she'd established whether Luke's supposition had any validity.
However, he didn't know that she hadn't just made the leap to believing in the viability of the Einstein-Rosen Bridge as a theoretical concept, she'd also been quick to the idea that the bridge could actually lead Somewhere Else and that Someone could come across it. That took kind of a lot of imagination for a scientist raised in her academic climate, or really most academic climates. Well, it took courage anyway. The lingering dogma of logical positivism still haunted her quite often. It was occasionally an effort to remember that she wasn't crazy and openness to the unexpected was what science was all about.
It didn't stop it stinging that she was technically a True Believer and might need to rethink her stance on alien abduction stories.
She had empiric evidence, of course, but habitual trains of thought died hard. And she didn't like to think of Thor as 'an alien', per se, even though it had to be conceded. She'd made out with an alien.
"I think I've got a lot of imagination," she said. "But I could definitely use a different way of looking at things."
"You have laboured almost alone for a long time."
Jane nodded. Glancing out the glass walls to the horizon, she quietly added, "Not the best way to work."
There was a silence.
He stared down at his hands in his lap for a long moment, his right thumb rubbing over his index finger anxiously, his angular face slightly pinched. "You are thinking of accepting me, then?"
"I'm thinking of it."
His eyes were huge with some subtle emotion when he looked up, turned an icy pure blue by the sunlight hitting them. "My mother once told me that instinct is born perfect, until the habits of deliberation learned by the childish mind corrupt it. In maturity, we seek only to hear again the truth of will our upbringing has tainted. I see very little corruption in you."
Jane didn't know what to say for a second. "Are you telling me to follow my heart?"
Luke seemed a bit amused, though his tone remained serious, "I am suggesting that your first impulse, whatever it may have been, was likely the correct course. Because I suspect you have never taught your impulses to be wrong. A young child knows what it wants. An adolescent thinks he does and is mistaken. A man is never certain."
"First I have no imagination and now I'm immature? You're not making friends here."
He didn't rise to it, merely smiling coyly at her.
"You're pretty weird, do you know that?"
He looked pained. "I have learned it, yes. It is not something I expect to be able to correct."
She had to laugh and he eyed her warily. "Stop trying," she said sincerely, "weird is good."
"I shall endeavour to accept it- under your tutelage?" he added, hopefully.
He was right, though. She'd never spent enough time second guessing herself to get a complex into her instincts. She was a damn the torpedoes kind of girl. Always had been. That was the whole reason she was here in the middle of nowhere working on something mad that had turned into something impossible which had turned into this ridiculous meeting. Everything in her life was way too far left of normal for her to ever start being sensible.
"Sure," she said, shrugging. "When do you start?"
After all, she found herself rationalising, if it all went screaming to hell and he was some kind of spy or crazy person, she could totally count on SHIELD sticking its nose in to rescue her. That was, perhaps, the one upside to having a shady government agency interesting itself far too much in your research.