11. Rush

.

Luke listened raptly as she cautiously, haltingly elaborated on her little pronouncement,. He was hanging on her every word, silent and tense as a bowstring; she could have counted all the tendons in his hands. As if the fate of worlds depended on her story, his eyes seemed to will her to speak faster and faster, to finish at once and to go on forever.

Jane told him about the strange man who had materialised out of the desert, how he'd been babbling and disorientated and they had assumed he must be drunk. She told him about the unexplained markings and runes in the sand she had been unable to interpret, the sudden appearance of which had her so flabbergasted that she didn't even ping to how profoundly not kosher it was that an astronomical phenomenon had left intelligible symbols in the dirt at all until some time later. She told him about a shadow on an infrared camera that looked like a person falling, and an escaped patient built like a tank whose every utterance was worryingly odd. Words failed her then and she fell silent, watching him and waiting for the hammer to fall.

His throat worked as he swallowed thickly, then he closed his eyes and breathed deeply like he was trying to get a hold of himself. Nothing came. Concentration alone prevented her from hyperventilating.

"He was from another world," she said, plunging ahead through the last shred of her plausible deniability. "Another planet, another dimension- somewhere else. He came through the wormhole. SHIELD jumped in to try to cover it all up, stole everything I owned, but I wasn't going to lay down and die just because they wear black suits and say they're the good guys. He helped me, the traveller, he got me back enough of my notes to go on with my work. In the end, after he left, they seemed to decide I was the nearest thing to an expert on the Einstein-Rosen bridge phenomenon in the world and they've been funding me ever since. There you go."

Luke burst back into motion like he'd been freed from a spell, swooping forward to grab her hand so quickly that she startled at his touch. He lifted her fingers to his lips and pressed a dry kiss just below her knuckles. His grip on her palm and wrist was so tight that it was hurting her, but she couldn't pull away. His eyes shone as they met hers and he shook his head helplessly. "Thank-you, Jane."

She was completely lost, her stomach was still doing terrified little flips. "Thank-you?"

He smiled at her with an aching sweetness she couldn't fathom. "For trusting me."

Momentarily so gobsmacked that she couldn't react at all, she instead back-tracked over her own story and made a mental list of the many, many salient details which she had blatantly left out. The billions of questions that she would have had for anyone telling her something even a tenth as insane as what she had just told him- provided, of course, that she was at all prepared to entertain the idea that they weren't just full-on frothing crazy. She looked up at him, his face lit with some prodigious emotion and his hands still holding hers. "You believe me? Just like that?"

"Should I not believe you?" Luke was regaining his composure now, leaning back into the couch with something approaching the calm arrogance he affected when he thought he was in control of the conversation. Something had shifted in the balance between them, but Jane wasn't quite wrong-footed enough to let him get away with whatever he thought he was getting away with.

"No, you definitely should, because I am telling you the truth. I just find it a bit surprising how... You're taking it pretty in stride for something..." She was being non-confrontational, but there were questions and suspicions that she'd been suppressing for a dangerously long time at this point, and critical mass could very well be imminent. "You're taking aliens in stride. And yesterday you did the impossible using massive amounts of energy from thin air. I think I've been pretty patient and forgiving about it so far, but I really think you should tell me who you are now."

Jane released her breath and prayed this wouldn't be the end of the project. She had not yet been able to change her messed up priorities.

Luke's face had gone blank as he studied her, but he didn't seem offended or intimidated. His eyes slid sideways and he dropped his head to lean against his fist, a crooked elbow braced on the back of the couch: a posture of thorough contemplation, entirely directed at her. His hair, curling upward from the ends as it dried, fell forward and conveniently shaded his expression from close scrutiny, but she could still see him chewing the inside of his lip and was certain it meant his thoughts were racing behind the cool façade.

"My father lied to me all my life," he announced with chilling tonelessness, glancing at her with an intent but vacant look that transformed his handsome, youthful face into a desolate mask.

Her mouth opened to ask questions even as the breath to form them left her body.

"My- my-" he choked on his words, strangling in the grip of some fierce grief and his mouth twisting with horrible bitterness, "my adopted father. One might perhaps call him, more punctiliously, my kidnapper."

"How old were you?" Jane's mind spun, much bigger questions too numerous to force into words clattering around in her brain. It was typical that the most mundane objection made it out first. She was running back over the things he had told her and was coming up with a few other equations that wouldn't balance. At all costs, she must keep him talking. He was being candid again, writhing in discomfort all the while, and she would use it to get this ridiculous situation under control. She would be where she belonged, in the driver's seat of this magical mystery tour, even if she had to lose all grip on Earth Logic to get there.

"I know that I told you..." he read her mind, "I made it sound..."

"Which parents were killed?" She tried to actually feel as calm and collected as her voice sounded. "More keep popping up."

"All of them, they're all dead," his acerbity was ugly, his usually smooth voice ragged and guttural. "One way or the other."

She got the impression that they weren't talking strictly literal death in all cases.

Her silence in the face of this high melodrama seemed to eat away at what was left of his equilibrium and he watched her like a field mouse watches an owl. She wasn't sure what the least preposterous course of action would be at this particular juncture, wasn't at all sure of how she should take the turn of the subject to his troubled youth. Whether it might be construed as a tenuous step in the right direction. She wished Darcy were there. Darcy's wasn't necessarily the most 'normal' point of view, but she was aggressively practical and Jane occasionally found it a useful reference to know what a sensible person would do in her place. She sighed and Luke frowned, clearly thinking it was directed at him.

"I am a refugee, Jane," he said at length. It was both a legitimately painful truth and an attempt to get one over on her- she could see it all on his face. "That's who I am."

She took a calming breath and instructed herself to recall that patience was a virtue she'd long been intending to cultivate. "That kind of answer is really not going to cut it this time."

"I was scavenged by my father as a child, plucked up from the conquered ruins of my blood kin and led to believe I belonged truly to my saviours when I was young enough to be thoroughly convinced. They were the elite and the highest authority in their domain, they gave me status, brought me up in their ways, educated me in much not known to your people. I was not told what I was. I most wretchedly discovered. It is perfectly true what I said to you before, I know nothing for certain of what their purposes were and now I never shall. I cannot give you a more satisfactory answer, because I do not know of one."

What the hell was she supposed to make of a line like that? She'd had Thor, God of Thunder, eating her stash of Pop-Tarts and clandestine, secret-technology-having SHIELD field agents stealing her research; both entities had been more or less telling the truth when they were at their most vague and crazy. How was she ever supposed to make a reasonable decision about who to take at their word ever again? Who the hell was he even talking about: who were his biological parents and who were the ones who'd adopted him, and had one set killed the other- was he still saying this was an Africa thing or was this finally an admission that there was more to it than that? Did she want to know? Well, of course she wanted to know, but did she have to know so badly that it was worth digging herself even deeper into whatever his deal was?

Right, because there was ever a chance you were going to let him go without getting into his head. Why do you lie to yourself, Jane, you are a terrible liar.

"Look, I'm not going to ask you to tell me everything straight out, coming from my side of the room that would be a little bit rich. But there is a certain level of candour that I'm gonna need and..." She took a second to count to ten. "Luke, are you in any sense super- or non-human?"

There. It was out in the world now, her wildest and most staggeringly unlikely suspicion. The one that had fluttered up into her consciousness in the most fleeting wisps at the oddest times, and which she had pointedly discarded. It always, even in the circus her life had turned into, seemed the least plausible option to explain any given thing and she had been trying to hold onto the slippery slope that was her logical reasoning ability.

Luke's gaze froze on her a moment, his surprise that she'd said it flat-out briefly evident, then his eyes darted around the room and she observed his muscles tense as if anticipating the need for a swift reaction. He focussed on her again and smiled tightly, but the crinkles around his eyes hinted that some genuine amusement was bleeding through the tension and she didn't know how to feel about that.

"If I said I were, would you be able to contain the questions you would inevitably have? For the sake of knowledge?"

Well, that was a non-answer. She raised an eyebrow at him. "It is a lot to ask."

He nodded.

"I'm not totally without self-control, you know." She felt hard done by. She had been perfectly able to prevent herself from harassing Thor for every single detail of Asgardian cosmology he had ever been exposed to even after he had whetted her appetite by explaining the World's Tree. Though she had to admit that she regretted it and would never have held back if she'd realised he'd be gone before she got another chance.

"That may be so, but given that the evidence has generally been inclined otherwise, I'm confident you will forgive me if there is some doubt." He was reading her mind again. He knew she was admitting it in her head.

Jane was sure she was pulling a weird face, but she couldn't tell if he was deliberately teasing her or not. He could be genuinely, politely matter-of-fact to the point of astounding obtuseness and he could be sarcastic with such a precise, razor-edge of dryness that he could have split an atom with a well-chosen word. The difference between the two was a slight smirk hidden in his right eyebrow. She couldn't always tell. That was what made it irritating.

"Luke, if you swear to me that you will eventually tell me absolutely everything there is no compelling reason for me not to know, then I can promise to hold back until you're ready. Those are reasons that I would find compelling. And you have to promise me that'll you'll always share your science knowledge. That can't be off limits."

"I did not say that I met either criterion, Jane. It was a hypothetical question."

She crossed her arms and stared him down, totally unimpressed. "Oh, so you're not?"

"I have not said."

"Unless you're Swaziland's own bigger, better answer to Tony Stark and your village is aware of its own branch of physics, I think you've kind of given the game away with whatever that stuff is you put in our atom smasher. A hypothesis of quantum consciousness and the theoretical abstract mind's real interactions with matter is not an explanation for what that thing did, even if it were provable." Her thoughts started to drift along that track, trying again to put the pieces of his badly inadequate attempts to explain it to her together with something familiar enough for her to recognise the mechanism. The substance he'd brought, the properties it would have to have to behave as a replacement for so many integral components of the atom-smasher. It was too nebulous, and the dark fringes of quantum mechanics were hardly her area; she packed it away for later. She had to stay on target.

He was waiting patiently for her attention to come back to him. When it did, he picked up where she had left off, "Yet you have reservations about your assumption, you still think perhaps it is possible that I am with a foreign government."

"I always seem to have some reservations. Not that it usually stops me."

Luke snickered and then grinned at her, apparently charmed. "You are very fascinating to me, Jane Foster."

"Feeling's mutual," she muttered, utterly unselfconscious at this point in the tortured jumble of the conversation.

"How do you contrive to think so deeply about everything and remain so impetuous?"

Jane snorted in derision. "I don't know. Have you ever asked a mirror that? You could tell me."

He went still for a long moment and she felt the hairs on the back of her neck lift. His eyes flicked over to her. "How astute," he said, almost at a whisper.

"Used to reading and not being read, are we?" Jane guessed, pleased with the look of mild disconcertion on his face. He was so expressive, but still such a mystery. His heart on his sleeve when it came to his emotions and an enigma machine when it came to his thoughts.

Luke just looked at her with burning eyes and she knew she'd guessed right for the second time that day. She had a gratifying inkling that she had put him off his game. He dragged a hand through his long hair and his slim fingers snagging in the curls seemed to give him momentary pause, as if he'd forgotten it wasn't glued into submission as usual. Jane wondered if he'd ever allowed it free reign in public on purpose before and added an item to the list of things that weren't going his way in this encounter.

"Jane…" he changed tack, his voice gentle and silky with intimacy, "I sought you out and came to you because… at first it was simply because I needed an occupation. A goal. I came to you, knowing who you were, knowing you were the only person- the only connection of which I knew, the only lead toward something in which I could invest my powers and expect a challenge. There is nowhere else for me in this world or in any other: I entirely meant that and I am not at all fond of how often you have forced me to reaffirm it. It is, in fact, one of the more wholly honest and wholly unpleasant things I have ever said. And I said it to you, Jane, because there was nothing left for me to begrudge and I profoundly desired that you feel obligated to indulge me. I was not, at that moment, in a position to suffer your rejection, so I offered up the lamentable truth in hopes you would sense its gravity and not deny it."

"One of the most honest things you've ever said. So not just literally true but, I don't know, metaphorically true, as well. Like, it actually meant what it sounded like, right? As opposed to the literal truth that you use to make it sound like something else. I am familiar." Jane was quite familiar, she had secured multiple research grants in her time after all. "And your big moment of honesty was so you could manipulate me into giving you what you wanted. Are you painting this picture of yourself so I'll feel sorry for you and stop asking questions about your background?"

His mouth hung open and it was like his face couldn't decide between rage and shock. Finally, he threw himself to his feet and paced quickly away from her with his hands clasped tightly behind his back.

Either you're wrong and it hit a nerve or he really doesn't appreciate you catching on. I have no idea which.

"I hadn't planned to paint any image for any benefit," Luke muttered harshly to the wall in front of him, "I was being candid."

He was clenching his fists, one around the other, and she could see the muscles bunching all the way up his bare arms. That right there was another piece that didn't quite fit the puzzle. It struck her that he was, though lean and graceful, awfully solidly built for the lonely intellectual type. She'd seen him display surprising strength, but she'd dismissed it as coming from good genes or his sheer size. He had looked genteelly sophisticated dressed to the nines in his suits and appeared to have a wiry physique she could easily believe from a rogue academic, but now that some of the layers of clothing were gone, she could see that the muscles of his arms and chest were actually deeply carved by a constant, practical use. She couldn't exactly imagine him pumping iron, like ever, and wouldn't explain the functional, compact fitness he'd been hiding. It seemed, therefore, ever more reasonable to assume that he was more than one breed of dangerous. Questions and questions and no answers.

"I am weary of acting at present," he added with finality.

"Me too." She rubbed the bridge of her nose and tried to tell herself she wasn't having any fun chasing him around verbal corners and picking apart his contradictions.

He crossed his arms over his chest and squinted at her. "Do you realise, Jane Foster, that I have personally disclosed to you more about myself than I have ever willingly allowed any but kin to know? You are insidious, creeping curiously beneath my wariness."

Now that was very sad. He'd told her practically nothing.

He smiled coyly at her look, apparently sensing her train of thought. "Facts are not everything, Doctor."

"No," she agreed, feeling drained, "but some of them are pretty important. I need to know for a fact that you're working for- with- me, and just me. Do I know that? I can't tell any more. Have you been trained to fight, by the way?"

"Of course. What is the significance?"

Jane blinked. He seemed really puzzled. Suddenly, she actually felt better. "I guess nothing."

Bemused, he shook his head at her. She'd distracted him from his anger without even meaning to (again), because his arms loosened and then fell to his sides as he tried to work her out. "I have no ties, Jane. This project, you: these are the only things that matter to me. You will know if that should change. I venture a prediction that you shall know immediately."

"Oh, that's not ominous at all." Jane rolled her eyes.

Called on being a drama queen, he looked a tiny bit embarrassed. "I did not so intend."

"Well, you know, I said I'd trust you. That doesn't mean I always believe you, but it does mean I have to take your basically honourable intentions on faith. So I guess you've decided to make it hard for me." She picked up her plate, brushing strudel crumbs from the coffee table, and walked past him into the kitchen area to wash it. "You will explain your mojo to me. It's a question of when."

"Is it, indeed?" He didn't sound impressed by her order.

She shot him a look over her shoulder. "Yeah. You owe me. You owe me big."

"I have propelled you forward generations in your research."

"You did that for yourself as much as for me. Anyway, not enough. I'm holding back a third degree I have a perfect right to and you know exactly how much that sucks for me, because you're just as nosy as I am."

He had strolled up behind her, silent as a cat, and he peered over her shoulder at what she was doing. "I can't apologise for pointing out that I conceal that trait far more successfully than you do."

"Because it's a wild understatement?" She suppressed a shiver of surprise as his shirt brushed against her back. He was crowding her a little and she fancied she could sense his body heat. "Fair enough. But I still see through you."

"It seems you do, yes." His mouth was just above her ear as he spoke and she practically felt the hum of his low murmur reverberating through his chest. He drifted away, laying hands on the atom smasher and seeming to become instantly absorbed in it.

You're a tetchy, cocky mutant-alien-supergenius-test tube baby and you're full of shit; stop being tragic and mysterious so I can get properly pissed at you.

"So, antimatter today?" She followed him and would have deliberately copied his rubber-necking stance at the sink if she could've stretched tall enough to see anything over his shoulder. She came around his side instead and watched the scratchings on his special components glow slightly as he touched them. "What does all that say, anyway? I don't recognise the language."

"I wrote the purposes for which every piece must channel energy. To keep direction clear and conserve effort." He motioned her out of the way as he circled to the other side of the device, totally ignoring her hint. "The beams have lost no velocity and the machine is prepared to function as a collider. We may complete the experiment whenever you are ready."

That reminded her. She really had to call Erik and tell him... something. Something that made it sound like this was okay and totally a reasonable working relationship to pursue. After antimatter. Then she would call him.

In for a penny...