Beneath
Chapter Nine – Preparation
Trying to get used to the this-is-just-not-right feeling of her rental car extending out to her left instead of her right, Jane made her way back up northwest from coastal Akaroa to Christchurch. She had just added some seriously cool pictures to her phone and experiences to her life resume. She'd been able to sign up for a last-minute slot in the kayak of a tour guide leading a small group out into a protected area where she'd watched little white-flippered penguins and fur seals on rocky sea cliffs. They'd paddled into a cave and even out into the open Pacific where they'd seen two dolphins. She let her eyes flicker upward for a moment, thankful for yet another incredible experience. SHIELD or no SHIELD, the last few days had been full of "pinch me" moments.
This evening she would get a restaurant recommendation at the hotel, and tomorrow morning she was already booked for another tourist outing. At then at one o'clock she would take the first concrete step of the transition. She'd done online training. SHIELD had provided abbreviated fire fighting and medical trauma training at their Tromso facility – how they'd ever managed to put that together on such short notice and convince the USAP to accept it she didn't know, though she suspected sizeable donations were involved in the latter. She'd had psychological, dental, and medical evaluations; "Turning Japanese" had once popped into her head, after which she'd begun to sing it silently to herself each time a doctor took a new picture. (And she'd carefully avoided mentioning her complicated fledgling relationship with a man from another planet whom the ancient Vikings had worshipped as a god, figuring it might unduly impact the psychologist's opinion of her mental fitness.) She'd taken five airplanes across three continents and exchanged one season for another.
But tomorrow for the first time she was suiting up, as her new acquaintance Tony Stark had put it.
And then it was on to the bottom of the world.
/
/
"Can you see her?" Thor asked in the early afternoon of the next day.
"Yes," Heimdall answered shifting his gaze toward Midgard and instantly finding Jane Foster. "And four times more I sought and found her since we spoke yesterday."
"Can you send me to her?"
"Yes. If you go now."
Without another word Thor continued past Heimdall toward the tesseract, and Heimdall fell into step behind him.
"Just as with the Bifrost, call for me when you are ready to return."
Thor nodded, then paused, hand in mid-air to place it over the tesseract. "Has Loki called for you?"
"He has not. I have not seen him since the first day he spent on Midgard. He has hidden himself from me, as expected."
"If he was with Jane…"
"She would be hidden as well. He is not with her."
Thor nodded. "Do it."
"Do not be tempted to bring her back with you, my prince. It is not known how a mortal would fare on a journey enabled by the tesseract."
Thor could only open his mouth before Heimdall activated the tesseract and sent him hurtling through a path violently ripped open to Midgard. Blue lightning crackled around him and his stomach clenched while from his mind he could not purge the horrific image of him returning to Asgard with Jane dead in his arms. What if she had said yes…
/
/
Jane checked her watch as she walked back toward her car – 11:25. She waved goodbye to a retired couple from Wisconsin who'd wound up on the same tour with her, down in the same general area of Akaroa she'd been yesterday. They'd had some nice Americans-bonding-overseas moments. She unlocked the doors and pulled the handle, only then noticing she was standing on the passenger side. Just like she had almost every other time she'd gone to her rental car. She closed the door that she'd managed to open only partway, just as a thud and a crackle of energy sounded behind her. She whirled around, dropping her keys.
Thor was standing some three or four feet away in what she assumed to be his full battle armor and regalia, even a shining golden helmet with wings on the sides, reminiscent of some of the drawings she'd seen in Erik's library book on Norse mythology. When her brain caught up with her eyes she remembered Larry and Fern and spun around. They were in their car and just starting up the engine. No one else was in the little parking lot.
"Jane, can we talk?" he asked, closing the distance between them and wrapping his left hand around her forearm. She turned back to him and saw Mjolnir in his right.
"Uh," she began, struggling unsuccessfully for words.
"I'm sorry, Jane, I don't have much time. Only a few minutes."
His gaze, always intense, felt heavy now, like the hand that gripped her arm a little too tightly to feel comfortable. "Of course, um, why don't you get in the driver's seat. I mean the passenger's seat. This seat," she said, fumbling for the keys in her purse.
"That looks…uncomfortable. Let's go into the trees over there," he said, pointing to a lightly wooded area that would similarly obscure him from casual view but not require his knees to touch his chest. He realized what she was searching for and bent down to retrieve her keys from the pebbly ground.
"Thanks. Okay, sure."
He wrapped his arm securely around her back and led her into the trees at a pace that was merely purposeful for him but difficult to keep up with for her.
"Thor, what's going on?" He'd never been this protective toward her before.
"First you must tell me, are you well, Jane?"
She looked up at him in confusion. "Very well, yes…and you?"
"Heimdall said that sometimes when he looks down on you he cannot find you."
"Um, well…I'm sorry, I don't understand what that means. I wasn't hiding or something. I'm right here. What's wrong?"
"Have you been doing anything unusual since I left you? Have you gone to any unusual places?"
Jane frowned, trying to follow where he was going with this, still having little success. "I guess that's a matter of perspective. For me it's been pretty unusual. I've been traveling a lot, and I've been to a lot of places I've never seen before. Places that are a long way from home. And airplanes. I've been on a lot of airplanes. Maybe Heimdall doesn't see people when they're in the air instead of on land?"
"I don't know. We don't really have such things on Asgard. Were you on an airplane recently? In the last day or two?"
"Yes. From Australia to here."
"Perhaps that's it, then. If so then I've no cause for worry. Where is here? It's warm, and it was cold when I left you just days ago," he asked, taking in Jane's lime-green short-sleeved V-neck T-shirt with some kind of drawing and witty saying on it that he couldn't quite figure out.
"New Zealand. We're in the Southern Hemisphere now. The seasons are opposite." Jane grimaced, thinking she'd probably just insulted his intelligence.
"Ah. Asgard…functions differently."
So Asgard didn't have hemispheres? That would mean Asgard wasn't round…wouldn't it? Maybe that wasn't what he meant. In any event, Jane was sure he hadn't understood, and of course there was no particular reason he should – she didn't have a clue how Asgard "functioned." But normally Thor would have asked her to explain. "So tell me, what's going on, Thor? Why are you so worried?"
"Because of Loki, and because…things are…complicated on Asgard right now, Jane. A state of war has existed between us and Jotunheim ever since…" Thor paused and sighed. "Ever since I did something foolish."
"Was that why you were banished?"
"Yes. Yes, it was. But the Frost Giants have no might. Not without the Ice Casket, which is in our safekeeping on Asgard. They have no means by which to travel among the realms without it. They can only raise angry fists toward Asgard and rain curses down upon us. They cannot touch us, no matter how mighty an army they may cobble together from their ruins. But something has changed. Svartalfheim – do you recall? One of the nine realms."
Jane nodded quickly.
"Svartalfheim has sent a delegation of some sort to Jotunheim. We do not know their purpose. But it could indicate the beginning of an alliance against us. It's exactly the kind of thing the Frost Giants would seek out – an ally who could benefit from the Frost Giants' strength and who could provide them with the means to reach Asgard. It could presage actual war, Jane. And it falls to me. The burden is heavy."
Jane stared up at him, blinking, unsure what to say. She could plainly see the weight on him in his posture and in his unguarded face and unfocused eyes. "Thor," she finally began, as gently and softly as she could, reaching up to caress his cheek, her fingertips brushing the cool metal of his helmet, "has your father…is he gone?"
"No," he answered, shaking his head and straightening up. Odin All-Father had surely never shown weakness such as he had allowed himself to lapse into here with Jane, so far from home. "No, he lives. He is in the Odinsleep. It is…I don't know how to explain it to you, Jane. He is very old, and he wields immeasurable power. He is the wisest and strongest man in all the nine realms. From time to time he must replenish his strength with something more than normal sleep, a magical sleep. And he seems to need it more and more. We have all been under a great strain, my father more so than any of us."
"I can imagine. I mean, I think I can. So, you're kind of like 'acting king' now? Until your father wakes up? And you have to make all the decisions in the meantime, while your enemies may be plotting an attack against you."
Thor had nodded throughout her statements and questions. "Exactly."
"A heavy burden," she said, reaching out for his hands and catching both of them in hers. "Do your friends help you? The ones who came to New Mexico?"
"Yes, they do," he answered with a proud smile. "The Warriors Three and Lady Sif. My mother as well. Volstagg is even now beginning to train our warriors for the types of battle we may expect if Jotunheim and Svartalfheim attack. He does this in my place."
Jane nodded, trying to force a smile. "You aren't supposed to be here."
Thor returned her forced smile. "No. But when Heimdall said he could not see you…I had to come. I had to be sure. There are only so many battles one man can fight at the same time."
"I understand. Now you know I'm safe, so don't worry about me. I can take care of myself. Focus your attention where it needs to be right now. On Asgard. On your people."
Thor bowed his head to her and brought her knuckles to his lips. He gave her goosebumps all over again – he was a sight to behold and she felt like someone forgot to inform her of the dress code.
"Will you be remaining here, then? In…Southern…"
Jane allowed a small laugh to escape. Thor normally paid much more attention to what she told him. "New Zealand. And no. I leave here tomorrow morning. I'm going to the South Pole. So I'll be on an airplane again. Tell Heimdall not to worry if he doesn't spot me. There's another airplane ride after that one, too. I'm really racking up the frequent flyer miles all of a sudden."
Thor wore his confused look again, which she found especially adorable with his winged helmet on his head. "You can explain that to me later. But you are going further south? To a pole?
"Ummm, well, yes, it's the…it's like…the planet spins on an axis…like a line that runs through the middle of it. And the axis is tilted so as Earth rotates around the Sun, half of the year one hemisphere is angled toward the sun and the other is angled away…" This was pointless. Thor was watching her with eyes narrowed in concentration, but it was clear he didn't understand and she knew he was too distracted this time to try to surmount the different language and concepts his people and hers used for such things. "There's a North Pole at one end of the axis, closer to Norway, and I'm headed to the South Pole, at the other end of the axis. It's kind of…beneath here," she said with a grimace. This was by far the worst supposed explanation of the poles and seasons and axial tilt she'd ever heard in her life. But Thor had more important things to do right now than wait for her to come up with a way to truly explain it in terms that would make sense to an Asgardian. Where things "functioned differently."
"You will show it to me later, yes?"
"Really? You'd want to see it?"
"Of course."
"Well…okay," she said with a grin that faded somewhat when she recalled they were talking about the South Pole here, not Hawaii. "Actually…it's not that easy. Well, maybe it is for you. With the flying."
Thor was smiling down at her; she could swear he was holding back laughter. Jane pulled her right hand away from him and drove a light fist into his arm. And it hurt. She stood there shaking her fist out in vain. She was certain that was going to bruise. Her knuckles, not his arm.
"Armor is not worn for decoration, Jane," he said, losing the battle to hold back his laughter. He quickly grew serious again though. "I must leave. Every moment I stay here is a risk for Asgard."
"I understand. Just…one thing, please?"
"Anything. Anything fast," he amended.
"I've never been kissed by a king before," she said with a boldness that surprised her even as the words were coming out of her mouth.
He circled his arms around her waist and easily lifted her to him, bringing their heights to the same level, and crushed his lips to hers.
"And see that I remain the only one," he said, putting her back down on the ground a moment later.
Jane just smiled at him as she tried to catch her breath.
He walked over to the edge of the trees, saw no one, and took a few more steps out into the grassy area between the wooded area and the parking lot. "Heimdall!" he called, his back to her. "I am ready!"
A second later he was gone in a bath of blue light.
/
/
Wow. Jane emerged from the trees, stared at the space where Thor had stood, looked around for anyone who may have noticed him. The only sign of life was a few sheep in the distance. Wow. There was so much to take in and it was swirling around inside her too fast to pin down. She just kept thinking, wow. She was pretty sure she said it aloud a few times.
"My life has gotten really…really…weird," she said aloud. Good weird, or bad weird? she could picture Thor asking her. And this time she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
Suddenly she remembered one of the other weird things in her life and looked at her watch. She ran to the car and opened the door, still unlocked from before, and stared at the space where the steering wheel should have been. She slammed the door and ran around to the other side of the car to better results. If she could shave just a little off the time into Christchurch she would still make it in time.
Devoting her full attention to the winding road and ignoring the views over the water and mountains this time, she made it out to the airport and easily found the giant blue hanger with "United States Antarctic Program" prominently written in white letters on it, along with the round map-of-Antarctica emblem. She parked across the street at her destination, the Clothing Distribution Center, marked by its similar blue and white sign. She glanced at her watch as she turned off the engine. Two minutes to spare. She scrambled out of the car and dashed over to the glass doors. About a dozen others were gathered in the front room; her eyes swept the room and found Lucas Cane – or rather the top of his head visible behind a couple of other people. She didn't think he had noticed her entry, so she stayed where she was, on the opposite side of the room.
"Headed to the Ice?" a woman with long braided red hair and numerous escaped curly wisps framing her face asked.
Jane nodded, grinned. "Yeah." I really, really am.
"McMurdo or Pole?"
"Pole. And you?"
"McMurdo. Morgan Reed," the red-head said, sticking her hand out.
"Jane Foster." Jane shook the woman's hand.
"First time?"
"Can you tell?"
Morgan laughed. "Only because I think your face might crack from that smile about the same time as mine. It's my first time, too. There's one other person here going to the Pole. The rest of us are stopping at McMurdo."
"Mmm. So what-" Another woman began to speak then – Jane couldn't see her from the back of the group – and Jane was interrupted from her attempt to distract Morgan from what she expected would have quickly turned into a friendly offer to introduce her to Lucas.
After a welcome and briefing from a CDC staffer, the group started to migrate over to the changing room to try on their pre-bagged ECW – extreme cold weather – gear. Madge, the woman who gave the briefing, stopped everyone with an announcement. "Can I see Lucas Cane for a moment?" Everyone else continued onward, except for Jane, who remained frozen, torn between her desire to keep separation between her and Lucas and her curiosity at why he was being singled out.
"Good morning, Dr. Foster," Lucas said as they both converged on Madge through the thinning crowd.
"Good morning, Mr. Cane," Jane said. She was dressed for summer in jeans and a new T-shirt, but he wore an expensive-looking shirt with navy, green, and white stripes topped with a two-button navy blazer with brown slacks she could swear were made of silk. "Business casual" for some Wall Street office; virtually a tuxedo here.
"Jane Foster? Our other winterover Polie?" Madge asked.
"That's right," Jane answered, although those words didn't yet feel like they applied to her. "Pleased to meet you."
"Likewise. Lucas, we don't have a questionnaire from you."
He hesitated a moment. "Questionnaire?"
"Yes, with your expected sizes for the gear? Your institution didn't give it to you? You're here with the same institution as Jane, right? We've got you on the list, but we never got your questionnaire."
"Right. This all happened very quickly. They must have forgotten in the rush."
"Well, never mind. Go talk to Gerald over there at the window," Madge said, twisting and pointing toward an opening in the wall, what looked like a split door with its top half open. "Tell him your sizes and he'll start pulling the things you need from the warehouse."
Lucas nodded and turned to Jane. "I'll catch up with you later."
Jane nodded back to him and headed over to the changing room.
Lucas watched her leave before going to find Gerald. The shopping trip at Queen Victoria Building was a fortuitous stroke of luck; without that experience he wouldn't have any idea about Midgardian clothing sizes.
In the changing room everyone else was opening up big orange bags and pulling out items to try on. Jane scanned the floor for unclaimed bags, but Morgan had spotted her and was waving her over.
"I found yours," she said, pointing to the two orange bags on her left. "Check these out. Have you ever worn these before?"
Jane laughed. "Nope. I can't say that I have." Morgan was holding up the kind of puffy-looking white – or formerly white – rubber insulated "bunny boots."
Jane and Morgan went through their bags together and slowly but surely added layers over their own clothing, checking the fit and testing the zippers, stopping occasionally to laugh and take pictures. Finally, with long underwear, a black sweater, insulated black Carhartt coveralls, gray wool socks, bunny boots, a black neck gaiter, nose and mouth mask, black balaclava, glove liners and heavy dark green gloves, the insulated "Big Red" hooded jacket, and, last, goggles over her eyes, not one bit of skin was exposed. Feeling like she'd just doubled her weight, Jane experimented with walking, bending, and stretching. She got down on her knees and Morgan had to help her get up. Morgan called over someone she'd met earlier to take a couple of pictures of her and Jane together and they tried out Hardy Mountaineer, Antarctic Hitchhiker, and South Pole Charlie's Angels poses.
Just as she was starting to feel light-headed and drown in her own sweat, Jane started yanking off the layers. She hoped that with practice she could get it all on and off more quickly than she was able to now. The sleeves on Big Red were long for her and in general the jacket was too large, so she went over to the window Lucas had been sent to in hopes of exchanging it for a size smaller. He passed her on the way, smiling at her but saying nothing.
Loki set his orange bags down on one of the blue benches that lined the walls and began pulling out articles of clothing that he saw others around him taking off. He caught himself staring at them in amazement and forced himself to focus on the contents of his own bag. He pulled on item after item. The saleswoman at Queen Victoria Building would not approve of this attire, and neither did he. Asgardian attire was complex and layered, but Loki had never worn so much clothing in his life, not all at the same time. He'd gotten the sense that this clothing did not have to be worn all the time, but he wasn't certain. He wondered just how susceptible these humans were to cold. He felt like he could lie down on a block of Jotun ice for a year straight and never even get a chill.
He looked at himself in the mirror, only his eyes visible through the goggles and everything else hidden from view. At least he didn't have to be concerned about anyone recognizing him like this. Over his shoulder in the reflection he saw Jane was repacking her clothing. He turned and approached her.
"How do I look?" he asked.
Tucking in the caps and extra mittens and gloves and liners and hats she'd picked up along with the smaller jacket, Jane glanced up at him quickly. "Pretty much like everybody else here," she said.
"I suppose so," he agreed. Appearances can deceive, he thought. They had no idea they were letting a monster into their midst, and dressing it up to look just like them.
/
/
Loki wandered Christchurch's Central Business District, bored with the obligatory wait for his next conversation with Jane. He had two cards left to play and was confident one if not both would be successful. Of course, he'd been confident in his original plan, too, less so in his second try. If plan three and plan four failed, he would be forced to get truly creative. But for now, there was nothing left to analyze or figure out. There was only the wait.
Around him were broken buildings, empty lots, buildings under construction, and the occasional odd structure that apparently had escaped all damage from the earthquakes the city had suffered. And yet the area was far from dead and abandoned. People still strolled the streets and laughed, a few cafes here and there were open, and on one street a whole series of crude temporary structures had opened as a kind of outdoor bazaar.
With Canadian-turned-Australian-turned-New Zealand dollars Loki purchased a copy of the local newspaper, The Press, and a cup of tea, then took a seat in a plastic chair at a plastic table at the shopping bazaar. He leaned forward and shrugged out of his blazer and swung it over the back of his chair, took a sip of the tea, and unfolded the newspaper. Narrowing his eyes, he looked more closely at what appeared to be the front page, then flipped it over and scanned the other side, then back to what was indeed the front again. The lead story was about sheep being mauled by a dog. Then there were stories about the trial of a bank robber, a missing child, and the city's reconstruction. He read each article quickly, with little interest, until he turned to the world news section.
His eyebrows shot up and a bemused smile settled on his lips. A grainy black-and-white image of himself radiating confidence and power stared out at a kneeling crowd of terrified men and women. He remembered every detail of that moment. The intoxication of it. How he'd cowed them into obedience with a few acts of unexpected violence, a few simple illusions, a few words of truth once he had their attention. He'd sought out the faces of those whose body language indicated they were wavering between obedience and defiance and helped them make their decision with a moment of eye contact. Only one had crossed that line, and it would have remained at only one if he'd had the chance to make an example of that foolish man.
He'd known that moment could not last; it was never intended to. But he'd relished it while it had.
The article was not about Stuttgart at all, but about progress in dealing with the damage to Manhattan following the battle there. Apparently there were no good images of him from New York, not publically available ones, anyway. If this was the best they had – this low-quality image of him in his Asgardian attire and his helmet obscuring so much of his face and hair – it was little wonder no one had shown any sign of recognizing him. No one but Jane, who had clearly had access to recordings made by SHIELD. That bit of information made the whole afternoon worthwhile. He relaxed into his chair, felt a bit of the tension dissolve, tension that had been with him ever since lights first approached him on a lonely northern Saskatchewan road.
He narrowed his eyes again and turned back to the front of the paper. Some three weeks ago he'd nearly conquered New York, an opening act to claiming the entire realm. This city, too, would have fallen to him, or else faced devastation surpassing any earthquake, and yet he was a tiny picture in the middle of the newspaper. The front page was occupied by sheep.
/
/
After leaving the CDC, Jane grabbed a sandwich from a convenience store, returned her rental car, and accepted a ride from the rental company to the Christchurch Botanic Gardens. She had to be back to the little terminal next to the CDC at 5 AM for the flight to McMurdo, so she'd decided to have a restful, relaxing day, taking a leisurely stroll through the gardens with some considerable bench time as well. Now February 7th, it would be her last chance to spend time out among trees until sometime in November.
She also needed the downtime to be able to think.
Thor had brought a lot of heady news on his latest visit and she hadn't had time to process any of it. She'd tried, a couple of times, during the drive from Akaroa back to Christchurch, but had found it too distracting at a time when she really needed to focus on the road.
It was easier here. Unlike in Sydney, she didn't bother with trying to learn about everything she was seeing; she simply strolled around and enjoyed the flowering gardens, crossing the little Avon River at one bridge and back again at the next, then wandering into the central part of the gardens, admiring the beauty and serenity around her.
She walked under an arched trellis covered with pink roses and found herself in the rose garden; the hotel receptionist had told her it had over 250 varieties of roses. Jane found a bench and sat down, breathing in the nearly overpowering scent. Her mother had kept about a dozen varieties of roses; Jane had thought they were pretty but was put off by the thorns, not to mention her other interests demanding her attention. Another thing she wished she could do over. Her mother would have loved it here.
Jane shook her head and gave a small laugh. She wondered what her parents would have thought about her life now. They'd expected academic success from her – not because they were pushing her on a particular path for her life, but because she had always wanted it herself. Her dad was a professor, and she'd always assumed she would be, too. It hadn't worked out that way. She liked to think that they would be proud of her for her pertinacity in the face of the establishment's rejection, but sometimes, in a darker and sadder part of her she rarely allowed anyone to see, she wondered if they would be disappointed that her doctorate had gotten her no further than living in a trailer and – for all the academic world thought – tilting at windmills.
And what would they think of Thor? Well, Erik had come to like him, but really, that was just too hard to wrap her head around. Her parents came from a pre-Thor world that was hard to reconcile with the post-Thor world.
She took a deep breath. She was dating a king. Sort of. An acting king. And they hadn't really gone on a date, unless you counted that night in Tromso. It counts, she decided. What was a date if not cheesecake and coffee and romantic moments on a rooftop watching an aurora? So what if it wasn't penciled in on the calendar? Thor didn't seem to really do calendars.
She wished she could see what Thor's life in Asgard was like; maybe it would help bridge the gap she now felt between them. After looking at Erik's library book she'd figured Thor to be a prince, and he'd confirmed it in Tromso. But she'd met him as "just Thor"; he'd never referred to himself as a prince or his father as a king. He acted like kind of a jerk at first, and in retrospect she could imagine him as a prince used to a silver spoon. And there was something…something regal in his bearing.
But a king. That was something else altogether. It shouldn't seem like such a big difference, but somehow, to her, it did. And that helmet. He looked less like a man and more like that mythological legend with it on. Even his kiss had been different. Less gentle…more urgent. Maybe because he was in a hurry. Or because it was their third kiss. Maybe that's what it was like to be kissed by a king who was facing the outbreak of war.
She could imagine Thor fighting. She had seen it with her own eyes, and later on television. She couldn't picture him leading some kind of interplanetary war in Asgard though. She didn't even know what Frost Giants looked like, other than that they were quite likely larger than your average Midgardian or Asgardian. Or Svart…Svartalfheimians? Svartalfians? She didn't know what they looked like either, or anything about them at all. In many ways she felt she knew Thor really well, well enough to be comfortable telling him just about anything. But there was so much she didn't know. A thousand years' worth of things. She would live some 70 more years, maybe. He would live…700 more? 7,000? He hadn't really answered her question about how long his people lived; had he been avoiding it?
If they lived for thousands of years, how long did they go to war for? Could Thor be leading a war against Jotunheim and Svartalfheim for the rest of her life?
She jumped back to that kiss that took her breath away. See that I remain the only one. Was he just being funny, teasing her? Or did he mean something more serious by that? The kiss certainly hadn't felt like she was being teased. She hadn't seen anyone else or been interested in seeing anyone else since meeting Thor. But then, it wasn't like she was a hit on the date circuit anyway. Strange how many men lost interest when they heard words like "astrophysicist" and "doctorate," and how many more followed suit when they found out she actually liked talking about her work. She hadn't seen anybody since Don, one of the few who hadn't been intimidated by her degree (probably because he thought his own "outranked" hers), and that was over a year ago.
She could seriously drive herself nuts with these questions, and there was no point because there was no way to get any answers to them. You don't go bugging a king who's preparing for a possible war with questions about your relationship.
Her thoughts drifted back to the Earth-bound part of her life. To how much time and energy she'd spent worrying about Lucas Cane. That particular problem seemed insignificant compared to what Thor was having to deal with, and her anger seemed petty. She of all people should know life was too short to spend it getting upset over things she couldn't change. She couldn't help laughing then; maybe if she had Thor's lifespan she would come to a different conclusion. Then another laugh. Actually, this could work very well. She could try to make that proverbial lemonade out of this situation. When it hit -100 Fahrenheit and she needed to check on her equipment she could send her trusty assistant out to do it for her. It wasn't like anything she was doing was secret, anyway, not from SHIELD. They were sponsoring her for this trip, through a research institution Tony Stark had set up; she would be keeping a journal of her work and writing up all of the results for them when it was over. It was just the principle of the thing. A principle she happened to feel exceptionally strongly about.
She would try to be more civil. To not get so worked up about it. She would try.
Jane got up and started wandering the gardens again, letting her imagination run amok about Frost Giants AKA Jotuns and Svartalf-whatevers. After a while she found a place in the downtown area to pick up a couple of containers of long-lasting milk and a couple of bottles of nice red wine for sometime down the line, the pair of flip flops that Morgan had recommended, and the extra chapstick someone else at the CDC had recommended. She got a nice dinner at a newly opened Thai restaurant on Victoria Street – her last actual restaurant meal for a very long time – savored it as long as she reasonably could, then got a taxi back to her hotel room to do a final arranging and packing of her suitcases for the early start. As she was getting ready for bed, she glanced around the room, regretting that she'd forgotten to ask what "hobs" were; the hotel had advertised having them but she had never noticed anything that looked particularly "hob"-like in the room. She smiled and turned out the light. She would ask in November.
/
So did anyone guess where Jane was going? They really *do* conduct astrophysics research at the South Pole, BTW.
I do hope you enjoyed the chapter and would appreciate hearing from you in a review, it's such an energizer to hear your thoughts. (Estonians, I'm also talking to you! Very unexpectedly for me, in August Estonians are the most common nationality to be reading this story, after the US. That's awesome! I love that this website is a worldwide thing.)
Teasers for "Chapter 10: Ice": Jane gets invited on a hike again; Loki's still annoyed about those sheep; and, oh, yes, TABLES TURN.
Excerpt:
[Loki] didn't actually care why any of these people looked or behaved the way they did. There was only one person on this flight who held the slightest interest for him. Indeed, there was only one person in this entire realm who held any real interest for him now. She was seated near the front of the plane, facing forward, her small body entirely hidden by her seat. He had arrived here so distant from her, had circled this globe in one direction while she circled it in the other, until their paths met, joined, intertwined. Perhaps they were not intertwined just yet, he admitted to himself, but they would be. Of that he had no doubt.
