Inner space
Jane jumped up when she saw Iron Man flying closer over the city on his way to rejoin her. His trademark red and gold armor was scuffed here and there, but considering the dangers of living on Earth these days, he looked surprisingly untouched. Jane decided to take that as a good sign and pushed the window open, beckoning for him to enter through it.
"Jane?" Darcy asked, looking up from the notes that Dr. Selvig was showing her when Jane suddenly backed away from the window.
"Mr. Stark is back," Jane explained just before the man himself flew into the room to land in front of them.
Tony pulled up his face plate and smiled at the gawking pair. "Um. Hi."
Darcy recovered quickly and wriggled her fingers in a half-hearted greeting.
"Where's Thor?" Jane inquired, stepping closer. Tony turned his attention back to the impatient astrophysicist.
"Right. Yes. He opted to stay with Reindeer Games, under the circumstances," Tony explained, ignoring her rudeness.
"The circumstances... What happened? Is he okay?" Jane demanded.
"Thor's fine," Tony dismissed in that deceptively light tone he used when he was minimizing.
Jane's gaze sharpened and she propped her hands up on her hips while, behind her, Darcy and Selvig's listening in became even more obvious.
"He might've gotten a bit carried away there for a minute-totally understandable- nothing big though. He just totalled a hover, and threw a couple of guys..."
"Mr. Stark-" Jane began curtly.
"Tony, please," Tony corrected in the same light tone that he'd been using up until now.
"Tony, what are you not telling me?" Jane persisted.
"It's nothing to worry about," Tony assured her, drawing the others' open interest. "Loki was injured during the battle, and we're taking him back to my tower to treat him."
"You can't just treat him here?" Selvig piped up, sounding skeptical.
Tony stared at him.
"Not that I want him around, but SHIELD did just betray us this afternoon," Selvig amended. "I'd like to know why."
"We can't treat this injury here," Tony admitted, adding at their expectant expressions "He's catatonic."
Darcy let out a loud huff while Selvig stated "Bullshit."
"Kinda multicolored now too," Tony continued, drifting off into his own consideration of the image. "Although, I'm not sure what that really... means. Hey! Do you think they're really weird-looking? Or maybe they're like british sci-fi with all the different faces... That reminds me: nice shirt by the way, to whoever owns what Loki's borrowing."
"Oh! Oh! Is it 'Vote Saxon'?" Darcy guessed.
Tony pointed to her, smiling in confirmation. "So perfect. "
"Yes!" Darcy said, doing a fist pump. Selvig rolled his eyes.
"Thor's going to stay with him then?" Jane asked Tony, bringing the conversation back down to earth.
"Most likely."
Jane nodded once and reached for her polar fleece. "I'm coming too."
Charles blinked awake to find himself back in his old bedroom in Westchester and frowned. He knew that he couldn't really be there. All the details were just as they were in his real bedroom, but Charles wasn't convinced. It seemed strange for Erik to change the dreamscape. He had every right to. Realistically, Erik was the one who was spending the most time in Charles' little corner of the astral plane, and therefore, was entitled to decide its final layout. Charles pushed himself up into a seated position on the comfy bed and looked around.
"Erik?" he questioned, getting no response. "Erik, are you there?" There was no reply from the mansion around him. Charles took in a deep breath and released it. He didn't have time for this, feeling certain that he was needed elsewhere. The last thing that he remembered before waking up was a fiery explosion. That seemed as dire a situation as any, considering Charles' 'host' and his temperamental biology. Charles pushed the blue and gold comforter off and moved to get out of bed, then froze. He tried again, but there was no change.
"No..." Charles muttered, trying and failing to avoid his rising panic. His legs wouldn't move. He ran his trembling hands over the misbehaving muscles, and blanched. He was paralyzed. Charles Xavier was now paralyzed from the waist down. "This can't be..." Charles whispered then caught himself and squeezed his eyes shut, focusing on calming himself. He jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder and whoever it was quickly retreated.
"Sorry, Professor, I didn't mean to startle you," a familiar feminine voice apologized as Charles turned his head to regard its owner. She was not what he was expecting to find when he heard Wanda's steady and calming voice. Her dark auburn hair was pulled back in a tight french braid, and the all-black buisiness suit that she was wearing was a far cry from the bursts of color that she had favored during her stay at his mansion. This Wanda's countenance wasn't nearly as self-assured or jovial as he'd come to expect either. Wanda frowned slightly, studying Charles' face before gesturing to his bedroom door. "I heard you shouting from out in the hall. Is everything alright?"
"I..." Charles flicked his gaze over this new, alien version of Erik's daughter and decided to play his cards close to his chest for now. "I'm merely disoriented. There was an explosion. I was expelled by the shock of it."
"Is this one of ours?"
"I'd rather not risk more Agency involvement," Charles hedged, causing a faint smile to quirk the corners of Wanda's mouth.
"I keep telling you: Pete's the spook, not me," she told him, sounding as though she had made many similar assertions in the past.
"I still don't like that word," Charles noted and Wanda shrugged, pulling the folded up wheelchair from its place against the bedside table.
"Do you know where it was?" She tried. Charles watched Wanda unfold the chair and click the seat into place with a sort of haunted resignation. She noticed but misunderstood the cause-as would be expected- explaining. "Sorry, Hank's still working on repairs. You'll have to go low tech for a while longer."
"Of course," Charles acknowledged and did his best to smooth out his facial expression.
"So... The channel you experienced this through, was he our guy?"
"Our guy?" Charles echoed, raising an eyebrow.
"Or girl," Wanda amended.
"I'm afraid it's a tad more complicated than that."
"And you have no location for us to start from?"
"Britain?" Charles replied, climbing clumsily into his chair.
"Cerebro it is," Wanda concluded and steered him out into the corridor.
Jane stayed silent for the majority of the flight to New York. It turned out that Tony Stark already had his private jet ready to fly them back, just in case. Well, actually, he'd had it prepared to fly him back to New York alongside one female guest of his choosing, but Jane doubted that this was what he'd had in mind. Her silence seemed to bother Tony more than anything else going on at the moment, and he insisted upon filling that silence with his sometimes tactless, but persistent attempts to strike up a conversation.
"We visited a blackhole before we came here," Jane said, deciding to throw the man a bone before he talked himself into yet another hole. The latest, 'did you go anywhere interesting?' question was at least fairly innocuos even if it wasn't well thought out.
"A blackhole, you say..." Tony responded interestedly, his gaze becoming both calmer and sharper.
"I say we visited a blackhole, but well, you know that's impossible..." Jane admitted. "The Dark Elves' homeworld-I'm still not sure how to pronounce the name. It doesn't matter. Anyway, it's nicknamed the 'Dark World' by Thor's people, because the planet isn't orbiting a star, but a singularity. Time flows slowly there because of it, and the sky is always glowing with that low, faded light, like the sky here gets near the end of a sunset. It still seemed like a terrible place to live, but it was sort of hauntingly beautiful, once you got past the barren landscape and all of the sandstorms."
Tony's brow crinkled and he rubbed his chin. "Then, how did you guys get there? I mean I know the demigods love preaching about their 'magic tricks', but how the hell does their rainbow road get around the gravity-well?" he thought aloud.
"I know. I asked about that too. Apparently, Loki's not aloud to explain it to me until we solve the conversion problem, and Thor doesn't know."
"So you're saying that Mr. Wannabe-King-of-Earth pulled the old 'Prime Directive' card and you didn't call him out on it?" Tony countered, taking another sip of his scotch on the rocks.
Jane shrugged. "It seemed believable enough, especially having met Odin."
"Stingy guy, huh?"
"Not so much stingy as... He isn't a big fan of humans. I don't think he considers us to be worth his notice either way," Jane clarified. "We get sick and die too often."
"Hmm. How inconvenient for him," Tony said drily.
"We're probably unsanitary," Jane conceded and Tony reeled back in mock offence, placing his free hand over his heart.
"Why, I'll have know, I am absolutely pristine!" he stated in a posh accent, rolling the 'r' in pristine. Then he glanced down at his hand, noticed the sizable smudge of engine-grease across his palm, and wiped it on his shirtfront with a haughty air. It turned the lighteningbolt on his AC/DC shirt almost completely black on contact.
"Do you believe that time-travel is possible?" Jane asked out of nowhere, surprising herself as much as Tony.
He arched his eyebrows at her in surprise before shrugging it off. "I'll believe it when I see it."
"And if you did. Maybe you didn't travel in time yourself. Maybe you just encountered someone who seemed to be the genuine article, and they knew things, told you about things that were going to happen to you, and those things happened," Jane rambled, becoming nervous as she went. She still wasn't sure if she should be telling anyone about this, and certainly not a near stranger like Tony Stark. "What do you do with that kind of knowledge?"
"Ask about the stock market?" Tony offered flippantly, setting his empty glass down and reaching for the bottle of scotch that he'd set aside without missing a beat.
"I'm serious. What if you could change the fate of the people around you. If you were given the chance to save your future, could you afford not to listen?"
Tony poured his next glass of whiskey, not regarding the subject the gravity or consideration that Jane felt it deserved. "Is my future in trouble?" he asked, lounging back into the plush, white leather of his seat.
"Look at the world around us Mr. Stark-"
"Tony."
"Sorry. Tony. Of course our future's in danger! The question is what do we do about it?"
"Invent time-travel apparently," Tony quipped.
"You're not taking this remotely seriously," Jane noted, looking away out the window in hopes that the fluffy clouds would calm her frayed nerves. They didn't, merely reminding her of the depressing amount of pollution that they were leaving behind in the UK. New York's air quality would only be a minor improvement, even if the pollution was far less visible.
"Is this about funding?" Tony asked after a brief silence.
"Excuse me?"
"Just... people who call me 'Mr. Stark' generally want something from me. That's usually money, unless it's weapons. You don't want weapons."
Jane regarded him with a flat, vaguely affronted expression. "I already have your funding."
"Oh uh, good."
Jane continued to give him the look, making him barely able to keep from squirming in discomfort.
"How's it going then? Working on the-uh..."
"Matter-energy conversion."
"Right."
"Progressing. Slowly."
"Oh. That sounds... Do you need anything?"
"Let's just stop talking for a while, if that's alright with you."
"Good idea," Tony agreed with a tense nod and shifted all of his attention to his drink.
Wanda waited for the last two students to exit the lift muttering 'goodnight' to them before turning to Logan. He'd been standing in the back with an annoyed expression on his face when the lift had arrived and had almost exited before he saw Wanda. Instead of leaving, he was now lingering on the left side of Charles' chair with his leather jacket draped over his shoulder.
Wanda stepped over to the pannel on Charles' right, but didn't press any buttons. "Weren't you going somewhere?" she prompted instead.
Logan's mood was definitely cheering as he nearly smiled, replying "I've got time."
Wanda crossed her arms, looking stern.
"It's allright, spatzi. Logan, won't cause any trouble," Charles assured, looking poinedly at the surly regenerater.
Wanda's eyes flitted to him in surprize at his using the old endearment out loud. She accepted his point anyway, even if she didn't seem to like it. "Fine. He can wait outside this time," she amended, starting the lift.
"Cerebro. You got another one for us, Chuck?" Logan said, ignoring Wanda's warning look.
"Perhaps."
"I know that it's your thing and all, but you might want to cut back a bit. It's starting to get crowded around here," Logan advised gruffly. Wanda and Logan both grabbed the wall, anchoring themselves with practiced ease as the lift dropped the last few feet too rapidly, issuing a loud 'clunk'.
"We all know what you think," Wanda stated cooly as the lights flickered out then back on. The door opened halfway and stuck, but she slipped through the opening before Logan could respond.
"Unbelievable," Logan objected, beginning to wrestle the malfunctioning doors the rest of the way open. "He still hasn't bothered to fix this damn thing!"
"I'm sure that he'll get around to it eventually," Charles said, only half listening. He had caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the glass of one of the display cases that held the x-suits. He was old now, his face wisened by years he didn't remember living through. His head was bald, and what hair he had left was cropped short in a wreath of white. Charles glanced down at his hands. They were the same hands that he remembered having, young, unwrinkled. He looked at the reflection. How odd. Could the explosion have knocked me into the other Charles' body somehow? But why the distorted perception, I wonder... More importantly: how do I get back?
Jane followed Tony out of the plane and saw a shiny, red (of course) lamborghini glide up to wait for them. The driver got out and took Tony's suit-become-case for him with a smile.
"Welcome back, Sir," he took Jane's backpack and slung it over his beefy shoulder with the same cordial grace when she caught up with the two of them. "Miss Foster."
"Oh. Thank you," Jane said politely.
"Yeah thanks, Hap," Tony echoed, sounding eager to get back home.
"Where do you want the suit, Sir?" Happy verified as he oppened the car door for them.
"The back is fine this time. I'm feeling lucky today." Tony remarked, though neither Jane nor Happy could tell whether it was a joke. "Any news on our patient?"
Happy tucked their luggage away in the trunk before he answered, "Dr. Banner was just starting to check him over when I left. He seemed to be stable from what I could gather on my way out. "
"Bruce is back? Since when?"
"He arrived a few minutes after you headed out. He didn't seem keen on getting involved in any action," Happy explained, steering them away from the airfield towards the Avenger's Tower. "Hey, so why are we helping this guy anyway?"
"It's the right thing to do," Jane stated simply. She thought she saw a spark of amusement flash in Happy's blue eyes, reflected in the rearview mirror. She blinked rapidly, doing a double-take. His eyes weren't blue when I met him, were they?
"No offence meant, Miss Foster, but the guy did trash Manhattan. I'm not exaclty looking forward to a repeat performance." Happy's kind, brown eyes looked back at Jane from his reflection and she brushed off her unease. She had been through quite a lot over the past few days. It was probably just the stress.
"There won't be one," Jane affirmed. For a second, she thought she saw the briefest flicker of blue across that little mirror.
"You sure about that?"
"Even if Loki wants to, we won't let him destroy anything. This time we're ready for him," Tony added, ending the discussion.
"Hey. Whatever you say, Tony. You know I trust you."
The conversation wandered through safer, and more boring territory for the rest of the drive. Mostly between Tony and Happy since Jane had decided to take this last, fleeting chance at rest while she still had it and could barely be considered conscious from that moment on. In fact, she was so out of it that she didn't notice the Sentinel that marched across the road behind them. Nor did she note the way that it stopped for a moment to scan their car with inexplicable interest before carrying on. Tony did notice, but he said nothing, as he was not yet sure what to make of it. Hopefully, it would turn out to be nothing. Jane startled when Tony tapped her shoulder.
"We're here," he informed her redundantly.
"Right," Jane cleared her throat as she sat up. Happy came round to open her door now that she wasn't leaning on it. "Thanks."
ASTRAL PLANE
Erik looked up from his book when another ripple warped the bookself behind him and dropped a couple books, along with a few fragile-looking trinkets. Raven's antique, china babydoll fell past his left shoulder and he caught it without looking in order to save it from breaking on the floor. Francis' red rubber ball rolled off of its perch and bounced away off the top of Erik's head, as if to spite him. It ricocheted off of the far wall and shattered Charles' half-empty glass, spilling brandy all over their chess game.
"That's enough!" Erik commanded and struck the misbehaving wall which promptly solidified for fear of invoking his wrath. He glared pointedly at the chess table, prompting the liqour to retreat from his treasured chess set. He should probably clean up the mess of broken glass, but he wasn't quite feeling trusting enough in his surroundings.
Erik knew that something had gone wrong. He couldn't tell what it was for certain. Time doesn't flow consistently on the astral plane, so he had no way of measuring the length of time between Charles' visits. He had no contact with Loki's timeframe without Charles, and returning to their own time would mean abandoning his telepath. Most likely to his doom. Erik was not prepared to risk that. Something big was happening. He knew that much. Loki had probably gotten himself into trouble and dragged them both along for the ride, but Erik doubted that he was responsible for this.
Erik looked up with no small measure of disdain when the lamp on the wall past his feet abruptly became a fluffy, grey kitten. It tried to claw its way up the fine, engraved wallpaper with its tiny kitten paws, but only managed to get a quarter of the way up before it lost its grip and slipped haplessly down the wall. It bailed out at the last possible moment, dropping onto his feet, to stare imploringly up at him with wide, tawny eyes.
"Mew!" It squeeked.
"No," Erik denied and opened his book to continue reading, as if there wasn't a tiny grey lamp-turned-three-month-old-cat rubbing adorably at his socked feet. He simply wasn't going to put up with such nonsense. Erik found the last paragraph that he'd been reading and read it over from the beginning. When he got to the point at which he'd left off, however, he was met with another reality problem: the rest of the text had ceased to exist. Erik dropped the tome into his lap and flicked through the rest of the pages. Blank. He went back to his place in the book. The pages were now entirely blank. He fanned through the entire book and back. All blank. He glared accusingly at the lamp. It purred, eyeing the swish of paper intently as it crouched down in preparation for a pounce. Erik slapped the book shut and the lamp mewed dejectedly at him for usurping its prey. Erik smiled wolfishly, but the effect was ruined somewhat when the tiny creature yawned at him and began cleaning itself. He opened the book back up, considering what this latest development might signify and his eyebrows almost melded into his hairline in response to his discovery.
Jane and Tony stood side by side in the elevator in awkward silence.
"Listen. About what I said on the plane. I didn't mean anything by it. I just, well, I'm an ass sometimes and-"
"No. You're okay," Jane said quickly, shaking her head at his attempted apology.
"Really?"
"It's been a long day. A few long days, in my case. There's bound to be some friction. I probably could have handled it better."
"Oh, yeah. I mean no. You're fine. You were... fine." Tony turned to stare at the metal doors in front of them. "Yeah, sleep would help."
"Mm hmm," Jane agreed. Thankfully, they were saved from further discomfort by the ding of the elevator reaching their destination.
When they stepped out Steve and Natasha were already heading towards them from the far end of Bruce's lab. It had been cordoned off by a hanging veil of thin, white cotton. Jane could make out two silhouettes waiting on the other side around what was either an elevated lab table or a steel medical bed.
"Dr. Foster," Agent Romanoff acknowledged with a nod.
"Agent Romanoff," Jane returned not unkindly.
"It's good to meet you properly, Dr. Foster," Steve greeted more warmly, offering Jane a hand shake.
"You too Captain. Please, call me Jane."
"Yes ma'am, if you'd like to go on ahead of us. I think Thor could really use your company right about now."
Jane looked at the muscular silhouette sitting hunched over the medical bed and nodded absently. "Yes. Um, thanks..."
Thor looked up at the feel of Jane's hand on his shoulder and she noticed the redness around his eyes immediately. He looked years older than he had that morning. He reached out with the hand that wasn't holding Loki's and pulled her close. Jane placed a kiss on the top of Thor's head.
"You okay?"
"This is my fault," Thor said darkly.
"Hey. Come on, what happened?" Jane coaxed, running a hand through his hair.
"I was distracted. I got caught up in the battle and Loki was hurt, just as it happened in Jötunheim. "
Jane and Bruce exchanged a look. Bruce returned to whatever those readings were that he was sorting through, looking extremely out of place.
"Thor, I don't think that this is like Jötunheim. You were trying to rescue him this time," Jane reassured, running her gaze over the prone form lying in the bed before them. Loki's skin had turned completely blue and there were ornate, raised patterns gradually spreading over it as she watched. They reminded Jane distantly of some Maori tribal tatoos that she'd seen during a visit to New Zealand when she was in her teens.
"He doesn't appear to have any physical injuries," Bruce reported, pushing his glasses back up his nose as he straightened his posture. "I mean, sure there are a few bumps and bruises..." he gestured to a scattering of whelts on Loki's arm that were rapidly diminishing. "All healing at an elevated rate. Nothing that would explain these readings."
"So, as far as you can tell-Oops, hello there," Tony interrupted himself, giving Jane's shoulder an apologetic squeeze. He'd accidentally whipped it with the curtain on his way in. "You're saying Rock of Ages is comotose for no reason?"
"I'm not even sure if this qualifies as a coma," Bruce corrected. Tony arched his eyebrows at his science bro, then looked at Jane and Thor.
"What do you mean?" Jane inquired while Natasha strolled up behind them to stand at the corner of Loki's make shift room.
"Here," Bruce beckoned for her to join him at the console. "JARVIS, could you bring up those brain scans that I was comparing. Ok, thank you," he caught Jane's eye and gestured to the first of the three brainscans. "Ok, so these two scans, although different are the ones we took of Loki's brain activity when he was last here during," he indicated the one on the far right. "And after the battle."
"And the fabled Hulk-smash," Tony amended, holding up a finger. Thor gave him a whithering look.
"Tony," Natasha warned.
"I didn't think you'd have time to take those," Jane said, unsure of whether to be impressed or creeped out.
Tony shrugged. "JARVIS is good."
"Thank you, Sir."
"Why do they look so different?" Jane asked after a pause, eyeing the brightly lit areas in the first scan with interest.
"I don't know yet, but look. Here's where it gets really weird." Bruce dragged the third, ongoing, scan to the forefront and enlarged it.
"What the..." Jane muttered and leaned in for a closer look. "That's not a coma."
Loki's brain was lit up like a chrismas tree, every section of his brain had gone into overdrive, hard at work on... something.
"It's not just that," Bruce added, drawing her attention back to him. He waved a hand over Loki's deceptively unconscious form. "Go ahead. Reach out to him, but keep your eye on the scan."
Jane frowned at him, but did as he'd suggested. Before she'd even initiated any contact, the pattern on Loki's brainscan altered to acknowledge her. When Jane gently grasped his wrist she jumped at a sudden flash of activity in two seperate sections of the scanner. "Whoa."
"JARVIS?" Tony questioned.
"I am unfamiliar with Asgardian biology, Sir."
"How about an educated guess?"
"The main portion of the brain is the one asociaciated with human motor functions."
"Huh."
"Perhaps my brother was attempting to reach back," Thor guessed with a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
Jane considered him for a second then reached out to grasp Loki's hand, much more carefully this time. Without warning she felt herself yanked forward to rush out of the room, faster than the eye can track, then dropped just as suddenly onto the soft, snowy ground. She jerked upright with an undignified yelp, beginning to shiver at the intense cold.
She was in a forest full of massive, alien trees. Their bark was smooth, like that of a birch, but black. Their leaves ranging in color from saffron to the same vivid green as Loki's eyes. Jane glanced back and noticed with regret that she appeared to have landed on the only cheery pink flower in the entire place. It was now thoroughly squashed. Her head jerked up at a soft thump from in front of her. Loki had landed, catlike on the roots of a massive tree at her feet and was currently making himself comfortable against its trunk.
"It's about time," he remarked, looking annoyed. "Just don't-"
Jane gasped in surprise and vanished.
"-lose your grip," Loki finished. Letting out a put upon sigh, he fell back against the tree. "Typical."
A/N: I wrote this one right before I fell asleep so it might not be what you're used to. I hope it's still entertaining though. This one turned out to be kind of an in between chapter, but it still has a lot of clues and nerdy references crammed into it. I apologize for nothing. Anyway, thanks for reading this, special thanks to my dearest icanhearthedrums for reviewing. As usual, feedback is welcome.