Nome, Alaska

Jane wakes up with a pounding headache. She places her hand on the back her stiff neck and tries to rotate it. She learned in grad school that binge research nights never resulted in a pleasant morning, especially when concluded in an awkward sleeping position on the table.

She blinks and stumbles to the cabinet to feel for the bottle of aspirin. She takes several with a glass of water and prays the medication takes effect quickly.

She sets the glass in the sink and looks forward. The kitchen window is covered in condensation, but Jane can make out the temperature gauge outside. Vaguely recalling the events of a few hours ago, she glances at the mercury reading. But the gauge reads a perfectly average outdoor temperature of thirty degrees Fahrenheit.

Stupid thing is broken, she decides, and makes a mental note to buy another one when she is in town again.

Two hours and several cups of coffee later, both women settle themselves into the jeep. While was Darcy showering, Jane had packed what little equipment she had into the back of the jeep, which Darcy added to with snow gear and blankets. Just in case, she argued, and Jane yielded.

The Nome Observatory is a bit of a misnomer, as Jane learns the observatory, like her cottage, is well outside town limits. Darcy attempts to read the map while Jane drives, though after several wrong turns, Jane resumes navigational duties as well. This humiliating experience reaffirms that she is an isolated creature of habit (Darcy has a more colorful descriptions, Jane's favorite being 'freaky science hermit'). It's true enough, though. Other than Jane's few trips into town from her cottage and back, she has done zero exploring in the area.

"Travel beyond this point is not recommended," Darcy reads as they pass the yellow sign propped up with sandbags on the side of the road. "How reassuring."

The physicist throws the map down. "It will be fine. I bet we're almost there." Despite the aspirin, her headache is starting to come back full force.

She glances at the rear view mirror and blinks. Once, twice. Thor's standing in the road behind them, red cape flailing off his broad shoulders into the wind. Jane gasps and slams on the brakes, throwing Darcy and herself forward.

"What the hell was that?" Darcy sputters, looking at the physicist with bewilderment. Jane turns in her seat and looks back. There's nothing but an empty pavement.

"But…" she whispers, shaken and disappointed all at once.

"What are you talking about?" Darcy presses, her brows lifted. She follows Jane's confused gaze and see nothing.

Jane looks forward again, cheeks flushed. "I…don't know, I just thought I saw something." Someone. She looks over at her friend, defeated. "Are you ok?"

"Yeah, but my pants aren't." Darcy motions at her soaked lap with her now empty coffee cup. "Thanks."

Jane apologizes and the jeep starts off again. Sure enough, a few minutes later the observatory comes into view.

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Thor momentarily forgotten, the Ublureak telescope is everything that Jane hoped it would be. Encased in a massive white retractable dome, the telescope's metallic cylindrical body gleams in the low light. A marvel of engineering on a scope even beyond her, the physicist walks the gangway around it, her face lit with appreciation. Finally, she thinks.

Behind Ublureak is an upper level encased in glass where the computers that run the massive telescope are housed. Behind that, a small functional kitchen and meager dorm room for housing overnight visitors.

A lab technician with the name tag "Aaron" meets them and takes them up into the control room. Darcy gives Jane a sideways 'you've got to be kidding me' look after one glance at him. Jane stifles a grin. Aaron appears as stereotypical geek as they come—lanky with a shock of red hair combed back in a fashion last seen decades ago, a pallor that speaks of vitamin D deprivation, pants a bit too tight and a shirt with, Lord help him, a pocket protector and more pens than could be used in several years.

Lacking any enthusiasm, he presents them their IDs, which they hang around their necks.

"You must have some pull," he says, deadpan. "I've never seen anyone get clearance so fast."

Darcy smirks and Jane offers a modest grin. The technician motions to an empty chair toward the back of the room. "All yours. Where are we looking?"

Bristling at his condescending tone, Jane sits down on the edge of the chair and exhales deeply. "Carina Nebula."

The technician rolls his eyes. "Right ascension and declination?" he asks.

"10 hours, 43.8 minutes, -59° 52´," Jane answers without missing a beat.

At the press of a switch, the massive dome roof pulls back, revealing the telescope to the skies. Jane bites her lip as she watches. It seems almost unfair that she should make it this far only to become a spectator at the last moment. She stands up again.

"Can I?"

Frowning, Aaron backs up his swivel chair with arms raised and lets her take over the panel. Jane's fingers dance over the keyboard, and she can't help the smile on her face as the massive telescope shifts and points at the heavens.

She punches ENTER and waits.

"Images, both over the infrared and visible spectrum, wave frequencies, and electromagnetic pulse scans are coming in as we speak." He recites the list in monotone while flipping on another few monitors. "This will take a while. You sure you want to stick around? There's a fresh pot of coffee in the back." He shoots a questioning glance at Darcy, who is messing with her phone. She looks up and shrugs at being caught.

"What? I can actually get a signal here."

"Yeah, well, shut it off," he barks at her. "We can't have any interference when we're looking this far out." The intern begrudgingly submits, but not before sticking her tongue out at him.

Jane misses the whole interaction. She's unable to take her eyes off of the telescope. This is the first big break she's had since SHIELD stepped in and sabotaged her efforts on the Einstein–Rosen bridge, and nothing will tear her away from the lure of discovery now.

Hours pass. Darcy is sleeping on a cot and Aaron's still in his chair, head tipped back and snoring. Jane's staring at the monitors with compiled images, her head throbbing again despite another dose of aspirin. She wipes her eyes with the hand. It's torture to look at the bright screens, but she's scared to look away. If she does, inevitably, that will be the moment something will happen.

Jane glances at the clock. It's after 2 am. Maybe a small break, she decides. She'll make a cup of coffee, and then she'd be ok again.

A few minutes later, Jane's standing in the kitchen, listening to the gurgle and hiss of the coffee maker as it heats the water. She wavers on her feet a bit. It's so tempting just to close her eyes…

"You need to sleep." …That voice…

Jane stiffens and glances over her shoulder, her heart racing. "How can you be here?" she whispers.

The god of thunder smiles tenderly and takes a step closer. "I never left." His stunning blue eyes are kind and earnest, but Jane's too exhausted for sentimentality. She holds back a biting retort and looks away.

"This isn't fair to me," she says, her voice even softer than before.

Grief floods Thor's handsome face. "It's not, but you are strong. You are supposed to tread this path. There's much at stake."

The physicist's brow rises. "To what end? Becoming the long suffering hero?" She sounds as bitter and selfish as her words, and for the moment, she doesn't care.

"There is a reason for everything, Jane," Thor reaffirms, "but you are not alone. You will find me." She can almost feel him step behind her—tall, strong and reassuring. Warmth suffuses her worn body.

"Sleep, Jane," Thor whispers against her ear. She closes her eyes and relaxes to the sound of his voice.

{}{}{}{}{}

"Jane! Jane! Wake up! Jane!"

Groggy, the physicist props herself up on her elbows. "Huh, what?"

Darcy sits back on her heels. "Finally! What were you doing? Did you sleepwalk last night?"

Jane looks around. She's lying on the cold linoleum tile of the observatory's kitchen while both Darcy and Aaron look at her like she's grown two heads.

"No, I don't think so," she sits up all the way, "I was just tired."

Aaron frowns. Jane believes it must be his permanent expression. "In that case," he says, "the cots in the adjoining room are far more comfortable."

"Who would have thought?" Darcy growls at him while offering Jane a hand up.

Jane waves Darcy away and rises on her own. She's relieved her headache is gone.

"What did we get last night?" she asks.

Aaron stands back, arms crossed. "I didn't check yet, but you're welcome to look."

She pours over the graphs, star charts and images of the telescope's stunning images for the next several hours, rejecting Darcy's offer of getting breakfast (Jane at last settles on a granola bar). Trying to dismantle the mysteries of the universe has a way shrinking her appetite for food.

It's afternoon when the physicist finds her intern in the kitchen staring intently at a chess game with Aaron. She bites her tongue at commenting about the lab-help-not-at-his-post cliché and chooses instead to smile at them.

"Hi."

Darcy waves absently.

"Anything interesting?" Aaron asks on autopilot. Jane collapses in the chair between them. She picks up one of the captured pawns on the side of the game board and rolls it in her palm. "No," she says, more to herself than to her companions, "in fact, everything is rather mundane so far."

"You expected differently?"

Is she that easy to read? "Well, yes," Jane admits. "The findings here don't support the data I've already collected. On my own, I found these anomalies, and even though they're probably equipment related, I was hoping—"

The technician looks completely uninterested, so she stops. Darcy sends her a brief half smile before she focuses her queen on the attack.

Jane sighs and gets up. That's the thing about spending so much time alone—she has an acute sense of knowing when she's wanted.

{}{}{}{}{}

Days pass with little incident. With Darcy hovering nearby, the physicist continues to analyze every bit of data she can get her hands on, but she has the gnawing sense that she is overlooking something important. Or perhaps that she is just going crazy.

She certainly looks it. Once glance in the dreary bathroom mirror and Jane does a double take. Her hair is dirty in its scraggly ponytail, there's dark purple smudges beneath her bloodshot eyes, and her cheekbones are more pronounced than she remembered. To make matters worse, the on and off again headache she's been fighting with for days is back with a vengeance, its dull throb radiating behind her temples.

It's then, and only then, that she allows Darcy to drag her away from the observatory and into town, where she finds herself seated at a diner not unlike the one she frequented in New Mexico (with the exception of unnerving taxidermy bear and moose heads staring down at them).

"It's never too late for breakfast," Darcy insists, so Jane has a platter of scrambled eggs, buttered toast, and bacon in front of her. She picks at it with her fork. She's so lost in her thoughts that eating seems an unnecessary hindrance.

"You trust me, right?" the intern interrupts.

Jane looks up, startled. "Of course."

"Then would you mind coming clean about what is going on with you?" Darcy takes a sip of her orange juice. "You've always been a bit off—I mean that in the most adorable-nerdy-scientist kind of way—but something is clearly messing with your head."

Jane takes a deep breath. Exhales. Where should she start? That her lingering sense of self-doubt is so overwhelming she's contemplated picking up and leaving? (Maybe finding a nice teaching position at a college somewhere wouldn't be so bad…if any would have her). That she's so besieged by questions, she just needs a few answers, and she tired of fighting for them? Or that her whirlwind affair with a demigod—alien, whatever—still hangs over her like a vampiric specter, draining her?

Darcy waits with uncharacteristic patience. Jane bites her lip. She feels like a diver on the high board, looking down. All she has to do is close her eyes and leap.

"I've seen Thor." It's easier to admit than she thought.

Orange juice sputters out of Darcy's mouth. "What?! And you were planning on mentioning this to me when?" Several patrons look over at her, and she waves bashfully before refocusing on Jane.

"Seriously, what the heck, Foster?" she says, her voice a notch lower.

Jane shrugs. "It's different this time. He's more…" she searches for the word.

"God-like?" Darcy inserts sardonically.

"Well, yeah, in an omniscient kind of way."

"Still all muscle-y and yummy?"

Despite herself, Jane laughs. "Of course," she replies, picturing his appealing form in her mind. Her smile flattens. "Sadder too, maybe."

Darcy stabs at the food on her plate. "When did you see him last?"

Jane thinks. "A few nights back at the observatory. He was talking to me while I was making coffee."

"Before we found you asleep on the floor?"

Jane nods.

Her friend makes a face. "Did you guys…?"

The physicist's face reddens at Darcy's implications. "No, no, nothing like that! Just talked. I was just really tired I guess." She pauses, her memories of the event muddled, and it makes her nervous. "It's all kind of a fog, really."

"Weird."

"Yeah, tell me about it." There's something dismissive in Darcy's tone, and truthfully, Jane is more than willing to drop the subject. Her pathetic love life, with all its yearnings, ambiguities and failures, is still not a topic she feels comfortable discussing. She takes the opportunity to take another aspirin. Please work quickly, she wills it. Of all the times to feel like dirt…

A voice crackles over the TV in the diner, and the forcibly-neutral face of the news anchor appears with the subtitle Breaking News Report scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

"We have received reports of a severe winter storm stretching all the way from Nome to the westerly parts of the Yukon Territory. The National Weather Service is advising residents in the path of this storm to find shelter immediately—"

Darcy takes another bite of her French toast. "Seriously?" she grumbles, despite having her mouth full, "it gets even colder here?" She swallows. "You really couldn't have found a research station in St. Kitts or something?"

Jane ignores her, instead watching the broadcast of the shaky video taken from a fisherman's boat. It shows a whirlwind of snow and water barreling toward the boat that's already bobbing helplessly in the choppy waves. She can hear the crew's screams in the background. The news anchor prattles on about "— possible evidence of an extremely rare meteorological phenomenon called an arctic cyclone—"

"Jane? Jane!" The intern looks at her like she's lost her mind.

Reverie broken, Jane's eyes go wide. "Oh my God." Like a lightning bolt, connections race through her mind, almost too tangled to make sense of. Her headache pounds fiercely in her skull, almost to the point the diner lights are wavering, but she breathes in deeply and tries to focus.

She looks at Darcy. "I need your phone." Darcy slides it across the table, watching Jane all the while with furrowed brows.

The physicist gaze darts up at the TV while she dials, watching but not listening. "Hi, Aaron, it's Jane Foster. I need you to do something for me." She rolls her eyes at his unintelligible whiny protest before continuing. "Get someone—no, I don't care who or where—to look at Ceti Alpha coordinates. Yes, right now. Call me back when you do." Her voice holds that nervous excitement Darcy hasn't heard in ages.

"What's that about?"

Jane's fingertips drum a quiet beat on the table in sync with the pulsing in her head. "A crazy hunch," she answers.

The wind picks up outside, howling past diner. Sea water sprays against its windows like rain.

Darcy's phone rings a few minutes later. Jane listens to the technician's spiel and suppresses the hints of a grin. She hangs up and returns the phone to her intern.

"Ok, seriously," Darcy says, "what is it?"

Headache forgotten, Jane pushes away her plate and stands up. "I think I get what's going on. Maybe. I have to get back." Her words are rushed as she scrambles to gather her things.

The revelation falls on deaf ears. "Are you crazy?" Darcy cries. "Did you hear what the news just said?" She waves her fork at the screen. "Rare cyclone. No thanks. I'm staying." She crosses her arms and settles further into the booth, as if to further emphasize her point.

Jane digs in her pocket and throws several bills on the table. "Look," she argues, desperately racking her brain for a reason—any reason—she could use to convince Darcy, "do you really want to stay here?" They both glance at the world-weary locals seated at the bar. Jane continues, "We have nowhere else to go except the cottage, and I think we both can agree that the heat works better at the observatory."

The intern pouts, unconvinced. At then, as if providence chooses to actually favor Jane, the power flickers out in the whole diner as another gust of sea water smacks into the windows.

Darcy picks up her purse. "Ok, I'm going."

{}{}{}{}{}

The observatory's technician all but pounces on them when they get back. "Where have you been?" he barks.

"Why? Miss me?" Darcy winks. Aaron turns red from his neck to his ears. "Uh…no…I just thought—"

"Is the roof secured?" Jane interrupts, her authoritative tone redirecting technician's attention. "Yes, of course," he stutters. "I heard there's some pretty crazy weather out there."

"Understatement," Darcy confirms. They can hear the wind beat against the side of the building. The walls are composed of reinforced concrete, but nevertheless, it's an unsettling sound.

Jane pulls her laptop out and turns it on.

"Can you get your friend back from Keck 1? I need those results."

Aaron gives her a look like she asked him to donate a kidney, but he sighs and goes to a computer and starts typing. A video window opens on the screen, revealing the face of an equally sun deprived scientist in horn-rimmed glasses and Flash Gordon t-shirt.

The man frowns. "Can't leave me alone…can you?" His voice is choppy from the weak feed.

"Yeah, whatever." Aaron rolls his eyes. "I need a hard copy of what you saw."

"Are you sure…" they can't make out what he says, "…the correct coordinates? …nothing's there." His image wavers as the connection deteriorates.

"Exactly. Just send what you have."

"Dude, I really can't. We're under contract…if my boss found out…"

Jane goes over to the path of the web camera and smiles. "Hi, I'm Dr. Foster. I really appreciate your help. We just need another pair of eyes for a moment." Darcy comes up behind her and waves.

The scientist's mouth drops a bit, and then he nods. "Uh, yeah, sure." He types something. "Ok, results sent."

A mail icon pops up on their screen. "Got it," Aaron confirms.

"Can you check the outdoor temperature?" Jane knows she is pushing her luck, but she really needs answers.

The man nods. "Uh, sure. Give me a minute." He reappears after a minute. "Steady sixty nine point two degrees Fahrenheit."

"Thank you for your help."

Aaron cuts the feed. "Happy?"

Jane nods, her lips flattened as she inputs the data into graphical form. "How are the temperature gauges here?" she asks without pausing her typing.

Aaron folds his arms and shoots Darcy a questioning look. The intern shrugs.

"State of the art," he answers at length. "This is location actually houses one of the official NOAA weather stations."

"So you have really good records."

"Yes, of course. Why—?"

"Send me all the temperature data you have, graphed, for the last twelve months." When he hesitates, Jane looks up. "Now!"

The technician scrambles for an empty workstation and types madly on the keyboard for a minute. He looks over his shoulder. "Ok, done."

Jane rubs her aching temple, struggling to focus. She pulls up her months' worth of data points, beautifully graphed, and then overlaps it with the record of the observatory's tracked temperature readings.

Resting her palms on the table, she stares at the data, her mind trying to make sense of it all. "That's it," she says quietly.

"All this time, I thought it was equipment error. But it's not."

Darcy peers over one shoulder; Aaron gets up and looks over the other. The physicist points at the graph. "When Ceti Alpha 7654.4 "vanishes,"" she uses air quotes, "the temperature drops, often followed by bizarre weather patterns. Specific to Nome, as least." Jane sits back in her chair, baffled and triumphant all at once.

Aaron shakes his head. "To start with, you're implying a causal relationship with an event that's random chance."

Ready for the verbal blow, Jane parries. "No. The temperature shift follows the disappearance consistently. Look. The correlation is 97.86%. That's unheard of." She pulls up the data from Keck 1. "Even your friend on a different telescope can't see Ceti Alpha right now."

"The weather is great in Hawaii."

"But rotten here. We can't use Ublureak right now because of the weather, but if we could, I bet we wouldn't see anything either."

The technician shakes his head, still unwilling to accept the results. "It's just not possible," he argues. For a moment, Aaron seems to be channeling Erik as the voice of critical discernment. "No ordinary star from that far away will have any impact on Earth's climate."

"Two years ago most of us didn't think there was alien life out there either," Darcy points out. Jane shoots her a quick grateful smile.

"That's right," she adds. "Everything I've ever studied, mainstream science has called outlandish or impossible." She takes in a breath and taps the screen with her fingertip. "Numbers don't lie. This is something, and we're going to look into it further."

"Still doesn't explain why your star can't be seen— sporadically, at that—by some of the most advanced telescopes in the world."

Aaron continues arguing, Jane isn't listening to his rant any more. Something akin to thunder echoes in the distance. Her heart beats faster.

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A/N Hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday!

The road sign mentioned in this chapter is real, at least according to Google. Crazy. I couldn't imagine seeing that as I'm driving. Keck 1 is indeed a real telescope in Mauna Kea, Hawaii. On that note, I should mention that while I'm not pretending to write 100% factual science, I try to inject as much as I can from reality. Of course, any errors are mine.

In response to some reviews, I hope the answers to this story's many ambiguities continue to become clearer. I hate quick reveals, so answers will come gradually and probably not before a lot more questions surface (think X-Files format here). There is a vision, I promise.

I continue to write with your support. Please let me know your thoughts, questions, and comments.