9. Tear

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The junk shop was most of an old, two-storey hardware store and the fenced in lot behind, both stuffed to the gills with all kinds of random crap. There was everything from nineteen-fifties era appliances to auto parts to a working soundboard. Jane once found an old Macintosh II in there and had barely stopped herself from lugging the thing home just for the fun of taking it apart, of trying to make it work again. Organised, approximately, by wherever there was room when it was brought in, the stock teetered almost to the ceiling in vast, filthy columns. Pretty much anything could eventually be found there if one was willing to look hard enough.

The more practically useful, modern stuff was kept in a locked side room, significantly less dusty and better lit than the rest of the dingy old place, and was replenished mostly by the cast-offs of an aerospace research team who operated not far outside of town. Jane had her suspicions that the program director was throwing her a bone where he could, because they'd let go some very workable computers and seismic equipment which she'd easily been able to refit for her purposes.

She grabbed Luke's hand to pull him toward the door and tried not to be offended by his violent flinch as her grasp closed around his fingers. Apparently she'd just surprised him, as he allowed her to lead him inside and didn't shake off her grip even as they crossed the antique threshold. It was probably happy for all concerned that the peeling paint rubbed off on Jane's sleeve and not his when she held the door open for him.

He must have been surprised anew when a mound behind the counter that gave every indication of being a heap of old clothes with a baseball cap and newspaper on top shifted and grunted at them as they came in. A wizened face appeared from behind the paper. "If it isn't my best customer, Dr. Foster. I was beginning to think you'd skipped town on me without saying goodbye. You find out about that freak storm yet? Maria thinks it's an omen, she always does."

Jane smiled fondly as she watched the owner get up, dust off his overalls, and smooth his work-stained hands over his prodigious belly. "Afraid not, Lucio. I'll let you know. This is Luke."

"Sir," Luke said, practically dripping civility. Jane bit her lip to keep from giggling.

Lucio eyed him and grunted again, neutrally. "Looking for anything in particular, Jane?"

She chattered a bit about hoping to cannibalize a few more of the old aerospace sensor set-ups and hoped Luke would realise that they had never established what he actually needed and step in to offer some additional direction. He carefully followed them into the locked side room, struggling to maintain his personal bubble of cleanliness in the cramped and dirty surroundings. When she glanced back and caught his expression of discreet distaste at his surroundings, it made her want to laugh out loud. He could be such a little princess.

"You said, Jane," he finally interrupted, his eyes carefully surveying the racks and piles, "that we might build a small vacuum chamber in the laboratory?"

"Yeah, yeah!" She pointed at him enthusiastically, glad he had brought it up because she'd completely forgotten. "Lucio, you have something for me in the way of a robust, air-tight tank? About yea big?"

She felt almost giddy with excitement to be building something, readying a practical experiment. There hadn't been any for quite some time, what with her portal-research at a stand still and her data crunching starting over fresh with the insights she'd gathered from Thor. She wasn't certain where they would go from here, but there was no point getting ahead of something that her rational brain was telling her wasn't terribly likely to happen in the first place.

"Got an old pressure washer, could work. She's junk, but with a will and some elbow grease, I figure she still got some fight in her. You got flanges and pumps? I have whole rooms of that kind of thing, practically free. You need tubing and pressure readers: I got that, too." He waved them out of the way and pottered into the next room, the sound of shifting rust and clanking parts drifting after him.

"He's quite a salesman, isn't he?" Luke remarked conversationally.

Jane ignored him and followed Lucio's beckoning shouts.

They really should have brought the van.

She refused to feel sorry for Luke and his nice clean clothes and his perfectly put-together, tightly wound, touch-me-not-ness, because it was really his own fault that he had to carry a bunch of filthy, heavy metal. Uncomplaining, though looking offhandedly aggrieved in her direction when he thought she wasn't watching, he bound the big pieces of steel in a complex polyurethane sling that he lifted, one-handed, like he was picking up an enormous snotty hanky. He wrinkled his nose at it and slung it reluctantly over his shoulder. The thick tubing and huge copper flanges he had stashed in a canvas bag that dangled from his other hand. She chose not to wonder how much all that stuff had to weigh, because he let show no sign of exertion and she had no problem leaving him to his martyrdom.

Her shoulder bag she filled with bits of old motherboard, some sensors, solder, a giant tangle of various wires, and useful switches. Its straps dug into the flesh of her arm as she hefted it, and she sighed at herself for ever thinking of coming here without the van no matter how much its existence seemed to offend her new partner in crime.

"I would've gone back for the car," she said again. They walked along at the same brisk pace as before, but his burden barely shifted with the motion of his stride. He'd wrapped it with precisely perfect balance.

"So you said, and I informed you then that it was not necessary." He managed to sound exactly as prim as ever. "I assume that you heard me? That perhaps you might even heed me this time?"

Jane grinned to herself as she shifted her bag to the other shoulder. "Oh, absolutely."

"Excellent."

She thought of saying something about pride going before the fall, but decided not to tempt fate. If he tripped because of all that crap he was pretending wasn't- but obviously had to be- excruciatingly heavy, it would serve him right. Though she had the feeling he would somehow contrive to consider it her fault if she dared to mention it before it came to pass. So she just whistled a cheery tune and ignored the affronted glance he sent her way.

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

"Good freaking grief, this is heavy," Jane groaned, trying to slide the now mostly in one piece, more-or-less-a-vacuum-chamber into the corner near the pumps. She really needed to get more physically active, because this was damn sad considering someone had carried all the parts for miles. "Luke, could you-"

He'd been hovering pretty closely throughout the whole operation, ready to hold things in place or lift heavy objects for her, and swept in to help before she could finish her whine. With the end-table sized chamber pushed into place against the west wall of windows and the connections securely tightened, it all began to look like a coherent design. They glanced at each other over the thing and smiled, Jane slightly wearily, before going back to their remaining piles of bits and bobs.

Luke had watched her setting up computers and making small readers and sensors like an apprentice watching Da Vinci, peering at her quick, capable little fingers as she soldered and screwed and ran wires. She showed him how to crimp connections properly and was vaguely amused by the determined furrow of his brow as he copied her movements. It wasn't exactly rocket science, though she supposed he did have the way about him of someone who'd never had to hold pliers before, and he might as well get it right the first time. Watching his fingers in turn, deft and clever in their work, she noticed a healed line across the inside of his left grip; like a callus had once been there.

Forbidding herself from falling into further speculation about his person or history, she reached out to guide his hand when it looked like the solder was in danger of going awry. His shock at her unexpected touches had dwindled to a barely perceptible twitch as the afternoon wore on, but she still felt him move as her fingers curled against his knuckles. She'd say he needed to cut back on caffeine, but he didn't seem to consume any; his jumpiness was apparently an all natural feature of being so hopelessly uptight.

Satisfied he was getting the hang of things, Jane left him to it. When he finished with the various tasks she'd set him, he turned back to his own strange components and frowned ferociously at them with a new kind of edge to his concentration.

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

"Right, so these rings in the chamber are going to function as storage rings and theoretically- if your stuff works the way it should- we'll be able to accelerate two beams today, keep them here all night, and collide them tomorrow in the same device without losing inertia. Thus, making this thing the itty bitty atom-smasher that could." Jane counted off stages on her fingers and only just prevented herself from scratching nervously at her hairline as she looked to him for confirmation.

"Correct." Luke grinned at her triumphantly, then turned to gesture to the device as he recapped the details. "We'll create anti-protons in this section, which functions as a proton synchrotron and uses an iridium screen to cause the reaction, the anti-protons being collected in the vacuum chamber synchrotron, here. Tomorrow, we will create complete antimatter atoms." Looking lit from within with simmering excitement, he crossed his arms in satisfaction.

Jane just shook her head. "Alrighty." She was beginning to seriously question whether she actually hadn't caused Darcy to crash the van when they were chasing weirdness in the desert the previous spring- maybe she'd been in a coma this whole time. It would make her life a lot easier to understand.

Luke narrowed his eyes at her, somewhat playfully and somewhat dangerously, she thought. "You are not pleased?"

"I'll be pleased when it works." Maybe. It was hard to determine how she would feel, it was too large to properly contemplate. It was as if she'd been wading in the ocean and gotten swamped by a big wave that carried her away to parts unknown before she'd really realised what had happened. When had this project slid out of her usually vise-tight control?

The grin returned, wide and wicked. "Not doubting me, are you Jane? It would not be wise."

"Oh, I don't doubt you." She checked over the last of the many hookups for the observational array and wiped her hands on her jeans. "That's what scares me."

He laughed and it was the first time that she could remember him ever having done so. It was a light, tinkling laugh, much more boyish than she would have imagined if she had thought to imagine what it would sound like. It felt like progress, and she found herself smiling at him, feeling that they were heading off on some kind of adventure together. They were bound to discover something.

Even if they just discovered that she was ridiculous to expect this to work and he had simply been fundamentally confused about names and concepts.

"So," she said, running her hand along the (somewhat haphazard) surface of their Frankenconstruction and checking it over for basic soundness. It wouldn't do to blow up the lab, and while she didn't see how they could achieve that with what they'd put together, it felt like a possibility. "No external power."

"Well..." He was rubbing his thumbnail, she couldn't decide if the presence of his nervous tic in this context was a terrible sign or not. "There is an external source, but it... I could not make it clear to you, Jane. You must trust me."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

She wriggled her fingers at him. "That's what I said. Do whatever. I'm ready for something to happen, I'll catch any reaction that goes on with this set-up. If this all falls apart, we're just going back to stellar dynamics 101 next week. We can build a miniature radio telescope. It'll be fun."

Luke looked enchanted by her hyperactive, pre-emptive disappointment blocking and seemed on the cusp of laughing again. "This is an extremely interesting side of you, Jane. I had not thought you would become so ambivalent at the moment of truth. Are you afraid we will fail or afraid we will succeed?"

She did laugh, but it was a bubbling giggle that basically answered his question. "I am so ready for this to work, really. I- for some reason- actually think it will. And I worry about myself for thinking that."

"Just for yourself? Am I beyond saving, then?"

"I can't be worrying about you any more than I already am, sunshine. You are such a problem, I've decided to just completely believe in your sanity and fly into this thing on a wing and a prayer. This is rock of ages cleaving faith, Luke. I'm committed to you knowing what you're doing so hard, because you said you'd bring in imagination and you certainly have and you've certainly proven you can take us new places with it. I've nailed my colours to the mast of innovation, here." She huffed out a breath and tried to stop hyperventilating. "This was supposed to sound more inspiring and less like you've dragged me into a cult."

He huffed out a breath, amusement sparkling in his eyes. "Your confidence is tremendously comforting."

"So is your flippancy... let's- let's do this." Jane pretended she didn't feel like a complete tool for using those words, but Luke, in his tragic ignorance of any and all cliché, didn't even react. She was kind of glad Darcy wasn't around for this, because if Darcy were here, there were so many things about her behaviour that she would never, ever live down.

"Prepare yourself, then." He gestured her toward her station with a haughty flick of his elegant fingers and she noted that the trend of dictatorial hand motions was continuing.

"I am prepared, you have permission to launch."

He raised an eyebrow at that, either because he recognised that he was being told off in an incredibly soft, some might say passive-aggressive, manner or because he didn't understand the reference; she wasn't going to quibble.

"All systems go," she added, by way of not clarifying.

Ignoring her- or figuring it out- he turned to the machine and ran his fingers along a line of writing on some raised silver material that covered the top of the exotic cylinder part from its centre to where it joined to the steel pipe that formed a section of the beamline. The noise of the vacuum pumps was the only sound for a long moment, but soon she seemed to hear- perhaps to feel- a hum inside her own head. Her vision blurred slightly, as if the whole room were suddenly subtly oscillating very fast. There was a dim light in the cylinder and for half a breath she thought she saw a purple-green haze form, thin tendrils of dark smoke winding all around the machine like vines. Luke's hand came to rest on the raised lip at the end furthest from the vacuum, just the very tips of his splayed fingers touching it. He stared down at the spot where his flesh met the metal, his mouth slightly open and his shoulders noticeably rising and falling with his quick, shallow breathing.

Jane looked to her instruments and felt a numbness creep over her whole body, her arms suddenly heavy and her knees weak. It was working. It was making anti-protons at a rate that should not have been possible. None of it should have been possible: the energy needed, the magnets needed, the coolant needed, nothing of what should have been indispensable was there in any form she recognised. Everything she had ever known about particle physics and the limitations of the technology was melting in on itself.

She'd thought she had been absolutely prepared for this to work, cavalier in her approach to the game-breaking innovation it would comprise because she'd already lived through the most stunning game-changer it was possible to imagine and she'd taken it in stride. She had thought that she genuinely believed Luke when he said he could do this, because he was just off enough from all her experience, just crazily brilliant enough, that it seemed like anything and everything could be within his reach. She knew now that she hadn't believed. Not for a moment- until this instant- did she truly understand and accept the implications, the massively far-reaching madness, that this would actually entail. The world had realigned itself and she too had begun walking a path from which there was no turning. Not back, not aside.

For the second time in two years, she felt her mind expand.

She returned her attention to Luke's broad back, his sharp shoulder blades outlined by the taut fabric of his shirt as he held one arm out stiffly at his side and the other toward the device. Her vision narrowed to a pin-prick, all of her awe and uncertainty and wonder concentrated on this person who had needed only a little guidance, some pretty minor professional assistance, to bring science as she knew it to its knees.

Who are you ?

Time seemed to stop; her breathing was deafening, her own heartbeat echoing in her ears. The moment stretched on and on, her equipment buzzing with impossibilities and his stillness like a touchstone around which the world now turned. Then it was suddenly over. The air thinned to a normal density and the afternoon sun that she last remembered streaming in cheerfully at the windows had, in the interim of lost-endless time, dimmed to twilight.

Luke glanced at her over his shoulder and started to say something as he made to turn around, but instead he staggered involuntarily backward, catching himself against the device. Bluish smudges of fatigue marred his fair skin and his eyelids drooped very low. Reacting on an instinct that cut through the paralysis of shock, Jane rushed over to support him and nearly buckled under his weight as he slumped against her. Gritting her teeth, she half-prodded, half-dragged him towards the couch and guided his collapse so that he landed on it more or less comfortably. His long body was sprawled across the cushions, twisted awkwardly because of his feet still being on the floor, and with his inky black hair spreading like an oil slick against the white vinyl, it wasn't exactly the picture of his usual dignity.

She lifted his legs onto the couch, though they overshot the end by quite a ways, and tried to shift him off of his arm and onto his back so that he wasn't cutting off the circulation. Her dazed brain was grateful for the mundanity of that concern, the little problem giving her something to look after which was easy to straighten out.

"I didn't realise..." he murmured to her, sounding very sleepy, "I didn't realise I'd been awake so long. It's night."

"Yes," she said. She didn't know what else to say.

He hummed sweetly in response, a high tenor note. "Were we successful?"

"We were."

He smiled tiredly, his eyes already closed. "Did I not promise you, Jane? Did I not promise?"

She straightened his over shirt, pulling it closed again where it had fallen open around him, and watched as his breathing became slow and deep. Even passed out with exhaustion, there was still tension in his face, some unmet expectation.

"You did," she said, and she stared at his sleeping frown, his sad young face, forever weary with expressing all that vanity and terrible, vicious insecurity. Always awash in his pervading arrogances and inferiorities, an open book of his emotions that told her everything and nothing. A perfectionist and a defeatist, he'd been at once so certain and so despairing of all those things he had fiercely promised her were possible. "You're a man of your word."

She touched a lock of his hair, silky-soft and strange between her fingers, and felt desperately alone.