Due to the need for plot advancement, we're starting to set aside actual prompts and move on to specific event choices. That being said, very soon we will be reaching situations wherein I will be asking for a whole new set of prompts… because REASONS.
Wherein there is motion beneath the surface. (Drama. PG.)
Newton's First Law of Motion: an object in motion stays in motion.
This holds true for events, as well.
Her new algorithms are working so well that Jane thinks she might shake apart with excitement. The potential locations of future atmosphericanomalies are popping up with dizzying speed. She can barely keep track of them all. There's no guarantee that they'll pan out — she has to leave guarded uncertainty in the hypotheses, she is an astrophysicist, after all — but if she's right, the Einstein-Rosen bridges will be opening soon. Very soon. And nearly on top of Puente Antiguo. They won't even have to go looking.
When she tells Loki, he smiles for the first time in three days.
That's good. She was starting to worry. Aside from turning up in the middle of each night to fuck her as though he'll never have another chance, he's been weirdly standoffish. If he's changed his mind when she's so close to realizing all of her dreams…
She has no doubt he could block her from the Bifrost if he wanted to. He knows how to cross it; she doesn't.
"You're still going to take me with you, right?" she asks him anxiously. "You're not going to jump through the wormhole without me."
Please, let him not have changed his mind.
But Loki shakes his head, pulls her close, presses cool lips to her temple, and takes deep breaths that ruffle her hair on exhale. If she didn't know better she could have sworn she saw tears in his eyes. "I will not leave you behind," he says, and there's iron in his words. "There is no dilemma I have yet failed to solve to my satisfaction, Jane Foster. You will join me in Asgard, and I will allow nothing to take you from me."
This again. "No he-man possession thing," she warns him, though she's weak-kneed with relief.
His mouth curves into a smile against her skin. "As long as we are on Midgard," he agrees, "we will play by your rules. As promised."
There is so a slave Leia costume in her future.
She… might enjoy that a little.
When his hand goes to cradle the back of her head, Jane's left wondering where the line is between need and the entirely irrelevant (entirely irrelevant) L-word. Because there's a strange feeling here. She's not great at reading people, but… she's beginning to suspect Loki is losing track of the difference.
Or she's just overthinking things the way Darcy's always lecturing her about. That's possible
"And if," Loki murmurs, almost reluctantly, "I have difficulty solving this particular dilemma… perhaps you may be able to do so."
Jane knows him well enough to understand what an incredible compliment that is.
Maybe she's losing track, too.
She can swear she feels sparks under her skin when he begins to stroke her back. Which makes no sense. But real or imaginary, those sparks feel incredible, and before long Jane's not thinking at all.
"There they are again," says the S.H.I.E.L.D. technician, watching purple spikes jump all over the screen. "Either the diagnostic stream is malfunctioning, or something's up."
Given all the dispatches Agents Hakim and Dion compiled before their transfer, Coulson's willing to bet more than one thing is 'up'. "Do we know what it means yet?"
"No, sir. There's been no reply from the Triskelion."
"Then send this reading to them along with the rest." Coulson pauses.
There's been nothing to indicate anything out of the ordinary from S.H.I.E.L.D. command. Neither Fury nor any higher ups are required to relay information they've garnered from field reports — if there's any information at all.
But Agent Phil Coulson hasn't gotten to where he is by ignoring his instincts. And his instincts tell him something is rotten in the state of Denmark — or rather, New Mexico.
"Print hard copies of all of this," he tells the technician. "And back it up on multiple flash drives too."
"Yes, sir."
Thor uses his earnings to pay for six new porcelain mugs (the store owner sighed when he produced the silver, an odd reaction) and brings them to the tavern belonging to the wench — no, woman — Isabella. "As replacement," he says solemnly as he hands them to her in a carefully padded box, "for those I so thoughtlessly destroyed."
"It's okay," says the woman Isabella. She sets the box upon the counter, adjusts her spectacles, and smiles. "You meant no disrespect, right?"
"Indeed I did not."
"Good. Want some pancakes?" When Thor glances in his sack to count his remaining silver, she waves him off. "On the house. Consider it a trade for all the entertainment. I've never seen anything so funny as Kyle chasing that snake down the boulevard."
"Then I accept," says Thor graciously. "And you have my gratitude."
It doesn't take any technicians for this one. It only takes Barton's hawk eyes to notice the little engravings that crawl across the theoretically solid surface of their spooky hammer — engravings that vanish again just as quickly.
A pebble dislodges from the hammer's stone pillar. It drops silently to the sand.
Huh.
He snaps on his radio. "Tell Coulson he'd better get his tremor sensors in place, 'cause we've got some weirdness here."
Twenty minutes later the Triskelion receives another report.
Erik Selvig hasn't seen the sun in months.
At first this bothered him, but now… well, though his drive has been tempered with age and wisdom (life is not all about research), he is first and foremost a scientist, and will be until the end.
So living in a secret base under a hundred feet of rock and sand? A small price to pay to examine the cube. To learn its limits, its powers. Its secrets.
Sometimes it even feels as though the cube is whispering to him.
In recent weeks his analysis has advanced by leaps and bounds, as though the cube is reaching out, searching, hunting for something familiar (which is ridiculous anthropomorphism on Selvig's part, maybe he has been below ground too long). It fairly crackles with energy. And the first time he manages to synthesize just a bit of that energy, to pry it off and transfer it to the miniature generators provided by S.H.I.E.L.D. (why did he ever mistrust them?), he imagines he knows how Oppenheimer felt after the Trinity test.
Except he, of course, is not about to destroy the world.
The cube will bring an unlimited power for all to share.
And this is the third report received by the Triskelion.
Alexander Pierce smiles when he reads the file. It is the kind of smile Nick Fury would question on anyone else — but if there is one thing Fury will bet his life on, it's that Pierce can be trusted.
But just because someone can be trusted doesn't mean they can't be wrong.
"Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S. is progressing faster than we anticipated," says Pierce, turning over the last page.
"Too fast," replies Fury, "since we still don't know what we're dealing with." Playing around with something you don't fully understand is a really excellent way to wind up surprised, and, well… Fury has made his thoughts clear on surprises.
Pierce pushes his chair back from the desk and stands. "You're right," he says. "We don't. But I suspect our subjects in Puente Antiguo will have a few helpful answers for us. Perhaps it's time we stop observing and asks the direct questions."
Fury raises an eyebrow. "Based on their interactions with us in the past, it sure doesn't seem like they're the talkative types."
But Pierce just laughs, shakes his head, and claps Fury on the back. "My friend," he says, "as though persuading people to talk has ever been a problem for S.H.I.E.L.D."