Title: Laughing As I Pray
Rating: PG-13
Author's Notes: Third in the series The Great Subconscious Club, sequel to A Villain State of Mind and directly follows Cover Up the Sun.
Thor reunites with his beloved Jane. It doesn't quite go as planned.
He had been wrong about Midgard, Thor thought as he watched the landscape scrolling under the tiny window in this small metal craft. It was not all cities and wastelands, after all; there were great expanses of verdant greenery, as well. It was comforting to Thor's eyes, accustomed as he was to Asgard's temperate climate, to see such abundant plant life outside the mortals' sprawling metal and concrete cities.
The small craft he rode belonged to Tony, Thor was given to understand; Iron Man had loaded him aboard it and bid him goodbye in a nearly nonstop flurry of chatter, pausing only to give a quick spate of instructions to the servants. Thor did like Tony Stark, but it was exhausting to be around him, at least if you wanted to get a word in.
Now he was descending onto the blacktop of a small airstrip, only a handful of other such vessels waiting on the ground or circling for their chance to land. The crew of the airship ushered him onto a gangplank, directing him down a long bare hallway until he approached a metal gate; there, he saw a welcomingly familiar figure. Dark-haired and petite, with liquid eyes and a smile that lit up her face when she saw him, clutching a large paper sign that said THOR on it; Jane.
Two familiar figures, for Jane had brought Darcy with her - jumping up and down and tugging her friend's arm, pointing at Thor as though the older woman could possibly have missed him. They both greeted him with glad cries of welcome, and as he strode past the flimsy barrier of the gate he swept them - first Jane, then Darcy more briefly - into an engulfing hug.
It was good to see Darcy again, as she was one of his first friends on Earth and an unending source of fun, but even more so to see Jane. Her kindness to him in his first days on Midgard stood out in his memory, engraved in stone as some of the most important days of his life. And it didn't hurt, of course, that she was very, very beautiful as well.
He was a little curious about how they are going to get to their end destination; as it turned out, Jane had her own car. It was one of the things he admired about her, that she was not only clever, but very competent and self-sufficient in many ways that most women Thor knows in Asgard (with the exception of Sif) were not.
"It's about an hour's drive from here to Green Bank," Jane said as they fussed around making various preparations within the vehicle. "It's way the heck out in the middle of nowhere, which I guess is the point... SHIELD likes it because they can keep everything secret, and well, at least light pollution isn't a problem. It isn't quite as clear a view as you can get out in the Southwest - the elevation is much higher there, the air thinner and clearer - but it's still pretty darn good. It can get a bit lonely, though."
"At least there's internet," Darcy chipped in. "And we get a huge house all to ourselves. Wait till you see it. It's even got a hot tub out back!"
Jane laughed. "Better than a trailer in the middle of a field, that's for sure!"
By mutual agreement Thor took the back seat of the car, as it would provide him with the most room - plus Darcy claimed she got "carsick," although why she would want to ride at all in a vehicle she was allergic to Thor did not know. Jane started the car and they made their way quickly out the airport - truly, once they had left the facility behind, there was not much else to the village, and they were soon out of the buildings on wood-flanked roads.
From a ground-level view, the green forest was even denser than Thor had thought from the air; the ground was rolling and hilly, forcing the road to wind among shadowed valleys to make its assent. The green was not only in the canopies of the trees but in the undergrowth below - even the tree-trunks were covered in green growing moss. As they crested a ridge and passed for a moment through a flat, empty valley Thor caught a glimpse of a massive, metallic disk like a coin or bowl standing off to the left, needle-like antenna stretched towards the sky. "That's the Green Bank telescope," Jane commented proudly as they passed it by. "Strongest radio telescope in the world!"
"This is a fair land," Thor remarked, admiring the verdant landscape as it scrolled by. He would have liked to bring the Warriors Three hunting here, although he doubted the landscape could support much larger than an elk or small mountain cat - some hunting trips were more for the scenery than the hunt.
"It's better than some places we've been, that's for sure," Darcy said, and made a sour face. "Last October we schlepped out to London, and it was rain and fog the whole time we were there. Except for when it was freezing fog. I didn't even know fog could freeze."
"It was a great trip though," Jane said animatedly. "We went out to Edinburgh to check out some really incredible readings. Resonance spikes, gravity subluxations, alterations in the boundary components like I've never seen before, from sources that I never even imagined - we're still crunching through the data on that."
Doing some quick calculations in his head, Thor was startled to realize that the date of their wet journey coincided with the Convergence - that must have been the source of Jane's amazing phenomena. At the time, of course, Thor had been a little more preoccupied with Malekith the Accursed, who sought to use the moment of harmony between the realms to spread the Deepness all throughout the Nine Realms and plunge the lighted universe into darkness.
Would have succeeded, too, but for the aid of Loki.
He wrenched his thoughts away from these familiar, morose maunderings. "That sounds exciting," he said instead. Somehow he doubted it would please Jane to hear that her wonderful research data had near come at the cost of the end of the universe. "It is always good to travel, to have adventures and make new friends."
"Oh, um, yeah," Jane said, sounding a little startled. "Making new friends, I'm - I'm all for that."
Darcy laughed out loud. "As if," she said, turning in her seat to perch upon the back and grin conspiratorily at Thor. "Jane isn't into the whole 'meeting new people,' scene - not when she's been pining for you."
In the small rearview mirror Thor saw Jane's face turn bright red, even as she sputtered a denial. "I have not been pining!" she protested.
Darcy scoffed. "Please, you haven't been on a date in three years," she said. "What would you call that?"
"I would call it 'I've been focusing on my career!' " Jane replied hotly. "Because I have! It's not like I NEED a man in my life to - to complete me, or anything like that. I've been just fine by myself. Focusing on my work. Work!"
Darcy caught Thor's gaze, still grinning, and mouthed clearly to him Pining! before she turned back around in her seat.
The atmosphere inside the car was tense and awkward for the next few minutes, but Thor couldn't but smile, fueled by the small warmth that bubbled up from inside him without cease.
They rolled up at last to, as Darcy had promised, a fairly grand structure for this Midgardian village (though still quite modest by Asgardian standards;) it was a rambling wooden building with three stories under steeply peaked roofs. A number of vehicles were scattered around on the grass and gravel in front of the house; a few of these were sleek, black and sinister-looking, leading Thor to suspect they were of SHIELD make.
"Well, home sweet home," Jane remarked as the car doors thunked shut behind her. "Don't worry, it's actually completely modernized on the inside - pretty sure SHIELD revamped it for their own uses before they decided to install us here."
Since it was already growing dark, they headed into the house to attend to dinner. Jane and Darcy prepared a feast of rice, diced meat in sauces, and little bread-wrapped dumplings of meat and vegetables. The girls ate theirs with pairs of small wooden sticks, although they gave Thor a fork for his. Darcy also produced a jumbo-sized box of pop-tarts for dessert, and begged Thor to eat them all so she can record the event for posterity.
After dinner was finished it was still too early to retire, so Jane suggested they could all watch a movie together. Darcy seconded this idea enthusiastically, and ran off to her room to emerge with a small flat box. "I brought my copy of 'The Lion King!' " she exclaimed. "We've got to get you started on Disney, Thor, and you're just gonna love this one. It's all about kings and succession and stuff. It's basically Hamlet with lions."
"Or we could just show him 'Hamlet' instead," Jane objected, "I mean, if we want him to get a positive impression of Earth culture, Shakespeare might be a better place to start than Disney."
Darcy scoffed at that notion. "Well, I don't have a copy of 'Hamlet' in my bags," she said, "so let's just stick with Disney, okay?"
"I would much like to see this king of the lions," Thor put in peaceably, and the matter was settled.
Darcy put the movie on, and the three of them settled into the couch before the viewing box - Thor in the middle, Jane and Darcy on either side. Thor found the bright colors and stylized animation disorienting at first, but the rhythm of storytelling was familiar to him and he soon found himself drawn into the tale being told. There was a kingdom of animals, and a lion was indeed king - he had an heir, Simba, whom he was trying to teach the ways of kingship. Despite the alien setting, Thor found it easy to relate to Mufasa and his son.
There was also a brother - Scar - whose presence in the movie made Thor feel vastly uneasy. The scene where Mufasa indirectly egged Simba into disobeying his father the king reminded Thor uneasily of when Loki had done the same to him, invading Jotunheim, and it came as no surprise shortly afterwards when Scar revealed his wicked ambition.
By the time Scar banished Simba into the wastelands, Thor was fuming over his cruel treachery. "What a vile, traitorous beast this Scar is!" he exclaimed angrily. "A deceiver and a kinslayer who seeks to steal what he cannot gain rightfully, and allies himself with such wicked, debased creatures!"
Unexpectedly, Darcy voiced a disagreement. "I dunno. I always thought that they maybe had a point, you know? I mean, Scar's kind of a dick, but I felt sorry for the hyenas."
"I do not," Thor scowled. "I feel no pity for those who would harm a child."
"Yeah, but, think about it," Darcy said. "They're going along with Scar because he offers to give them what they want - and what is it that they want? Food. They're literally starving. I mean, there's the lions sitting fat and happy at the top of the food chain, who get to eat all the antelope they want, and the hyenas get, what? Banished to live in a shitty pit of rocks in the ground for the crime of wanting to eat?"
Thor frowned deeply. "But the lions are hunters, who must work for what they eat," he said. "The hyenas are gluttons and thieves, who take what belongs to others."
"Well, that's not actually how it is in the wild," Jane spoke up, from her vantage cuddled against Thor's side. "Lions and hyenas are actually both opportunistic scavengers - when you live in the wild you can't be that picky about food. Hyenas are actually quite efficient predators, who can bring down prey in packs with a better success ratio than lions. Lions will scavenge from a hyena's kill just as often as the other way around."
"Really?" Thor blinked, surprised. That was quite different from how the movie showed.
"Either way, the hyenas are part of the whole 'circle of life' too, aren't they?" Darcy added. "They're part of Mufasa's kingdom, so doesn't he have an obligation to them too? Where does he get off, condemning an entire species to slow starvation just because he doesn't like the way they live?"
"I..." Thor started to say, then his voice failed. Perhaps it was because the characters put him so much in mind of his own home - the wise king, the prideful prince, the sly, scheming brother - but his mind immediately leapt to Odin and the Jotnar.
Thor had always known that at the end of the war against Jotunheim, Odin had taken the Casket of Endless Winters away from the Jotnar. There had never been any reason to think, even for the moment, that this had not been a wise and just act - preventing the Jotun from spreading their evil across the other Realms.
Yet only since Thor had gone to Jotunheim in person, on that fateful disaster last year, had it ever occurred to him that that equation had another side. That removing the Casket had direct effects on the Jotnar themselves - not only passively, no longer allowing them to act as they wished, but actively, devastating their world and culture. Once he had returned to Asgard, he had through questioning confirmed it - without the Casket the Jotnar could not heal, could not repair their crumbling buildings, could not thrive. Without the Casket, they were consigned to a long cold decay.
If the Jotnar were part of the Nine Realms, and under the All-Father's authority, then did he have not the obligation to see to their welfare? If they were not, then by what authority over them could he dictate their actions? Surely it was not right to, as Darcy would say, condemn an entire species to slow starvation?
But... it was also true that Asgard had obligations to the other realms, to defend them from Jotnar aggression. Which duty took precedence? Odin-king was wise, far wiser and more experienced than Thor; surely he had a plan.
And yet... and yet...
Thor sat and struggled with these unaccustomed thoughts for the rest of the movie, and saw little of it.
Despite his stormy thoughts it was a very pleasant evening in the company of his friends. After the movie finishes, Darcy begged off and excused herself to her room to, as she put it, get a jump on tagging everything. That left Thor and Jane by themselves on the couch, staring at each other over a small pile of throw pillows.
"Um, we don't actually have a guestroom, sorry," Jane explained shyly, pulling the pillows and quilts into a stack. "I mean, we have spare rooms, lots of them actually, but they don't actually have any furniture in them. Just Darcy's room and mine. Anyway, my bed is a full, so we can probably both fit if... you know, unless you'd rather sleep on the couch here. Or if you'd rather I did."
Thor had no intention of putting Jane out of her own bed, and said as much. She gave him one of those sweet, face-transforming smiles, and the conversation stuttered momentarily to a halt.
Truthfully, Thor found himself somewhat at a loss for what to say. Throughout the evening they had kept to light, easy topics, and Darcy's presence had offered a buffer (and an unending source of conversational topics without either of them having to exert themselves.) Now she is gone, and they are alone, and Thor is not entirely sure what to say.
It's not that he didn't know how to act around women - or even how to talk with them. It's just that he and Jane were from such different worlds, with so little, he was forced to admit, in the way of common ground. Most of the conversational plots that would draw out a lady of Asgard would mean nothing to Jane, and most things of Midgard Thor did not know enough to speak of. Nor did he suspect, the longer he got to know Jane, that she would be particularly interested in a detailed, graphic retelling of his hunts and battles.
Besides, he had at Darcy's prompting told many stories of Asgard in the car and over dinner. He didn't want Jane to think that he was capable only of talking or thinking about himself.
"How fares your research?" he said at last, before the silence between them could get too uncomfortable, and Jane's face lit up.
"Oh, I'm so glad I got a chance to tell you!" she exclaimed excitedly. "I finally pinned down how to universalize the microportal generator! With the right coordinates and a sufficient power source - we can bounce a signal not just to Asgard, but anywhere in the universe! Anywhere we can see, at least," she amended.
Thor found himself smiling, infected by her enthusiasm. "And this is a good thing?" he asked.
"Are you kidding? This is great news! This is FTL communication, right here! Maybe it's not such a big thing here on Earth, where the distances aren't really big enough to cause a time lag - but this'll be huge for NASA, and when we finally get to the point of sending out manned expeditions beyond our own solar system - well, this is solving a huge problem before it even begins!"
"That is wonderful," Thor told her warmly.
"Of course..." Her face fell. "It would have been nice if we could use the same technology to actually transport people, and things, not just signals. But I keep running up against the boundary constants... I haven't made any progress in months, not since the microportal breakthrough. I'm beginning to wonder if this is a dead end." She sighed. "Guess we won't be beaming people up and down between here and Asgard anytime soon. I had really hoped..."
She seemed so despondent, Thor looked for a way to reassure her. "Don't fret, Jane," he said in a comforting tone. "That is nothing for you to worry about. Now that the Bifrost is repaired, there is no need for you to have a Bifrost of your own. I can come and go at any time I wish, without needing anything from you."
"Oh." Jane's expression fell like shutters closing, face going expressionless and blank. "Right. I forgot."
Abruptly she rose from the couch, scooping the popcorn bowl up and making for the kitchen. "This gets really gross if it's left out," she said over her shoulder.
Confused, Thor waited on the couch for a few more moments, but Jane did not return; at length he rose from the couch and followed her into the kitchen, only to see her climbing the stairwell up to her room. "Jane?" he called after her. "Is something wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong," Jane told him, but her voice lacked conviction. "I'm just tired, it's getting late. We should go to bed."
"Jane..." Thor followed her up the stairs, catching her arm halfway. "It is not nothing. You are offended. Why?"
Jane huffed out an exasperated breath, reaching up both hands to run through her hair, pulling it back away from her face. "I'm not angry with you," she told him, not entirely convincingly. "It's just... this is my life's work, you know? It doesn't feel very good, to be reminded that I'm just - drawing on cave walls, compared to what your people have already accomplished. That I could spend the rest of my life laboring to hack out a crude version of the technology that Asgard has already perfected. My whole life, my whole civilization - just a footnote when compared to yours!"
"That is not true," Thor protested. "Midgard has come astonishingly far, in the last few hundred years. Your people have done incredible work, considering your limitations."
"Limitations?" Jane repeated in a disbelieving huff. "Thanks for that, Thor. Thanks a lot."
"Jane, all things have their proper time and place in the order of things," Thor tried to explain. When Thor had been born, Asgard at the height of its power, the mortals had still been living in thatch huts and farming with sticks. They had come far in merely Thor's lifetime, but there was still so much further to go. "Your world is still untried, still young and immature in the wider scheme of the Great Tree. There are some things that you Midgardians simply cannot hope to do.
"Truthfully, perhaps it is better so," he added, thinking gloomily of the wreckage of Jotunheim, the terrible scar that the Bifrost had torn across that dreary planet. And that while it was under the command of Asgard itself! "It is a great and terrible power, a heavy... burden of responsibility. Midgard is not ready for this knowledge."
"What is this?" Jane demanded. "What are you even saying? You don't get to make that call. You don't get to decide what technology - what knowledge - we are and aren't allowed to have!"
"I only speak out of concern for you," Thor said, hurt. He'd had first-hand knowledge of just how deeply the wrong technology, in the wrong hands, could scare.
"Well this 'concern' is sounding an awful lot like 'control!' " Jane said, exasperated. "We're not children, Thor! We're not children, and you're not our parent. You don't get to make decisions about my safety and my person without even consulting me first -"
The conversation seemed to be veering wildly away from him, but Thor did not miss the shift of pronouns, from we to I. "What is this about, Jane?" he demanded.
"This is about Tromso!" Jane shouted, one hand yanking at her own hair in nervous frustration. "This is about you - and SHIELD - shuffling me off in a corner and not telling me what was going on, while my world was in danger - while my world was under threat that I could have done something about! Nobody on this planet knows more about portal energies than me. But they'd apparently rather let uncontrolled portals rip the world apart than ask for help from Thor's girlfriend!" She pulled her wrist free from Thor's grasp and stormed up the stairs.
Thor was stunned; he had no idea Jane still carried resentment over that incident. They had spoken through the communications device since then, after all, and Jane had made no mention of it. He'd assumed she had understood the necessity, understood the risks involved. "Jane, Loki had made threats against you," Thor tried to explain, pursuing her once more. "I only wanted you to be safe -"
Jane stopped in the door to her room, whirling to face Thor again. " Stupid isn't safe! " Jane nearly screamed. "Yeah I've heard about your brother, Loki, god of lies? The one who's a shapeshifter, and a liar, and an illusionist? It never at any point occurred to you to think that I might be better able to protect myself from him if I had any idea he was back on the planet - so that I'd know to be on guard if he approached me disguised as a stranger? I guess I'm just lucky that he apparently considered me beneath his notice, just like everybody else did! "
For a moment Thor was breathless, at a loss for words. He'd never thought of such a danger, although truthfully he should have; he had been utterly oblivious to this possibility. As, it appeared, he had been oblivious to Jane's deep-buried hurt. "I... I never meant -" he began, stammering.
"Yeah Thor, you didn't mean a lot of things," Jane shot back; her voice was more controlled now, although her eyes glistened with angry tears. "I get that. Like you didn't mean it when you said you'd be back for me, when you promised to come see me as soon as you got back to Earth. Like you didn't mean it when you pretended that you cared about stupid little Earthling me."
"I do care about you!" Thor protested. "Jane! I -"
Jane slammed the door in his face. Thor stood dumbfounded, words dying in his throat. He could have kept the argument going, of course; could have shouted through the door, or even forced the door open and barged in. But even he was wise enough to know what a mistake that would have been, so instead he retreated back downstairs. Tomorrow he would try again, try to explain to Jane that she was mistaken.
Darcy was lounging on the couch; she was wearing the same shirt as before, but her stiff blue pants had been replaced with a pair of fluffy slippers and felt trousers, decorated with pink hearts, white kittens, and writing that Thor could not read. She raised her head as Thor wandered disconsolately back into the living room. It was too much to hope that she had not heard that argument; and that was confirmed when she said, "Sooo, trouble in paradise, huh?"
"I do not believe this," Thor huffed, seating himself also on the couch with a thump. "Has all of Midgard gone mad? I have been here less than two of your days, and so far every one of my allies has found reason to be angry with me."
Darcy opened her mouth to say something, then closed it and cleared her throat. "Yeah... y'know, I could say something here, but I'm not gonna," she said, obviously untrue, since she was already saying several things. She added, "I'm just going to point out something you might want to keep in mind."
"And that is?" Thor demanded.
"The common factor in all of your fuckups is you. " Darcy pushed back up from the couch and headed towards the room that was reserved for her. "Just sayin'."
She closed the door to her room behind her, leaving Thor alone in the living room with a jumble of pillows and blankets. It was clear he was not going to be welcome into anyone else's bedroom tonight; it would not be the most unpleasant night's sleep he had ever spent, but somehow one of the loneliest.
Thor slumped against the back of the couch, and buried his head in his hands.
~to be continued...