Chapter 13.
Stark's ranch in Nevada was furnished with all the luxuries one could expect from someone as wealthy as him, but the feature that the millionaire valued most was that it was far, far away from any town or village, which allowed him to perform the most dangerous experiments without risking being sued for loud explosions and fire. Not that he minded being fined, but he sometimes wanted to tinker in peace, and if a missile went off course, there was no danger of destroying anyone's home.
The warehouse he had built after he had purchased the property had enough space to store a medium sized plane, and the ceiling had been modified so Stark could open it. It had been intended for Stark's personal projects but, since he found out that Malibu had better weather and even better parties, he practically abandoned the house. Consequently, his past plans for a second warehouse had been abandoned, thus making the first task of the newcomers to clear the building from metal girders (specially reinforced, per Mr. Stark's design) and other construction materials which wouldn't be used.
Tony's idea of synthesizing that new element in a bigger quantity was, in theory, an easy feat.
In theory.
What Stark never accounted for was the fact that he had been extremely lucky the time he "produced" the tiny triangle that now powered his portable reactor. After the first attempt inside the warehouse at the ranch resulted in an explosion and a small fire, JARVIS calmly reported the one in a billion chance of success in the first try, with that small quantity, and how such odds diminished exponentially with each additional milligram of metal to be transformed into the new element.
"We have to find the Tesseract," Thor said, leaving the fire extinguished he had used on a table. "We cannot tarry here any longer."
"JARVIS has yet to find anything," Stark mused, drumming pensively his fingers on a table.
"Can't we negotiate?" Loki asked.
"There's no talking with that guy, trust me," Tony said as he paced towards the desk where Jane hunched over a screen, her dark-circled eyes fixed on the information displayed there. Neither she nor Darcy had gotten much sleep the previous night with the construction of the reactor and the portal. "And getting on his bad side is not something you wanna do, unless you don't mind being painted as the villain of the story," then he pointed at something in the screen as he spoke to Jane. "Don't rack your brains over it," he told her. "Your numbers are correct. There's not enough energy."
"Is not that," she said. "While you were talking I asked JARVIS to make a search for Erik and-"
"Make a what?" he exclaimed in disbelief, then he told the computer. "JARVIS, since when are you working for others?"
"She asked me to do it, sir," the synthetic voice answered. "She argued, quite correctly, that Dr. Selvig would be a priceless addition to our project."
Loki had to suppress a smile when he saw Stark frowning.
"Ok, so, have you found anything?" the millionaire asked Jane.
"That's the thing, he seems to have vanished!" she exclaimed in frustration. "He resigned from his job two weeks ago and hasn't been seen anywhere since then."
"Two weeks, uh?"
"Erik told me once that he knew a man who was an expert on gamma radiation," said Jane. "But he ran into trouble with SHIELD and no one has ever seen him again."
"The guys at SHIELD aren't assassins, at least not with people like Dr. Selvig," Tony waved his hand. "You sure your friend didn't go on a vacation trip? I disappeared like that a couple of times."
"Why don't we search SHIELD for him?" Darcy said, her fingers flying over the keyboard of the laptop she was sitting at.
All eyes were on her, and Jane was the only one who showed a knowing smile. Stark shook his head.
"Well," he said. "I s'pose I could enter their system and…"
"JARVIS," Darcy ordered the computer. "Try to input these commands."
Stark edged behind Darcy with a frown at first, then he stared at the computer, and he seemed fairly pleased to see whatever the screen was displaying.
"What are they doing?" Thor murmured to Loki.
"Extracting information," he said in the same low tone. "I sometimes marvel how they can even do anything with such primitive devices."
Thor nodded, and added that he felt as if he was inside the museum they had at home.
"I found it!" Darcy called them. "We are in! But that's all I can do. We would need a higher clearance to read more. It's easy to enter, but I can't go up from here."
"And this is where daddy takes the reins," Stark said, sitting beside Darcy and dragging the laptop towards him. "That wasn't so bad, you know. I think there was a free post at our Cyber Security department if you are ever interested."
Lines of commands ran up the screen as Stark typed. It took him some moments until the computer showed again any information that Loki could understand.
Stark stood up as he ordered JARVIS to project the information.
"Yes, sir," the computer answered. Immediately, pictures and paragraphs filled the space in front of them. One title caught Loki's attention: Joint Dark Energy Mission.
"The NASA appears to be also involved with SHIELD," JARVIS commented.
"But that alone doesn't mean anything at all," Stark said, still analyzing the data.
"Dark energy," Thor read aloud. "Father told me that it was used to replace the Bifrost in case it failed."
"That would explain why they hired an expert like Selvig to work for them," Stark said. He clicked his tongue. "They are trying to build their own portal, it seems."
"Can we assume that's where the Tesseract is?" Thor asked.
"Probably," Stark said. "99.9 percent sure."
"It's worse than that," Loki said somberly. "If they open a portal without the correct coordinates they could summon the very thing they want to avoid."
"Why?" Jane asked. They were all around Stark now, who had made the projections disappear.
"The Tesseract is more than an infinite energy source," Loki explained. "It can also be used as a door by itself, a two-way portal which can open to any place in our universe or any other dimension. When you open a door, you can cross it, but other things can enter too."
"How do you know that?" Thor asked him.
"Because I spent whole afternoons studying at the Academy's library," he said sharply. "While you were busy waving your wooden sword around with your friends."
"Wow," Stark chuckled. "It's also like that up there! All right, I might pull some strings, but you will have to wait," the he added to Thor, seeing that he was clenching his fists. "As much as I'd like to storm that place and teach Fury a lesson, these people have ties with the government and their agents mean business. One sign of aggression and they switch over to kill mode. There's another option: We keep working on our little project while we wait until Fury decides what to do with you. Worst case scenario, he summons some critter he can't fight and he has to ask you for help."
They kept discussing what would they do, but they always bumped into the same problem: Not starting a conflict with Midgardian forces.
Tired and disillusioned, they decided to continue the following day.
The Warriors Three and Sif insisted on staying up and patrolling the surrounding area, but Stark assured them that no one would set foot on several miles around without JARVIS warning them. Their more than apparent disappointment was balanced by Thor's words of gratitude for Stark's hospitality.
Loki, for his part, remained in the living room with Jane, who was too worried about Erik and everything that had transpired in the last days to sleep. She kept going through her formulas and numbers together with Loki, who humored her despite knowing that everything was correct.
The words from that strange woman kept playing in his mind, despite his best efforts to shut her voice down. What irked Loki wasn't that she had seen through him, but the fact that there might be a miscalculation in his plans.
It was true that he had devised a plan to keep Jane at his side, though he knew it had to be her choice. That was, of course, when he was human. Once he had his powers back he didn't have much time to rethink his long term plans, but it was true that he had pondered, if only for a moment, infiltrating Asgard and take a few of Idunn's apples for Jane. He had always thought she would be amenable to the idea of a long life; after all, most humans he had encountered wished for eternal life, and for power.
"What would you think of eternal life?" he asked, absentmindedly browsing through the reports on a tablet.
"What?" she raised her eyes from her notebook for the first time in an hour.
"Long life," he said, still pretending he read the long list of coordinates. "What would you think about living for thousands of years."
Jane pondered the question for a moment, but for Loki it felt like a very long time.
"That wouldn't be natural," she said a last. "Humans are made to live a century, more or less."
"But, what if you could override that condition?" he insisted, finally looking at her and offering an apologetic smile. "Humor me, please."
She frowned, looking at some point beyond the coffee table in front of them.
"It would be fine at first, I guess," she said. "Lots of time to study and develop your theories, or get better at a hobby. No one would have to leave a lifetime investigation for the next generation and pray that they do it right. But it would be nice only if everyone around you had the same life expectancy. Surviving everyone is not something I'd like to see."
"You would be the first human to reject eternal life," Loki laughed, while he felt quite the opposite inside.
She smiled briefly, but then she seemed to search for the correct words.
"You know? When I was still mourning my father I talked to someone, to help me overcome it, and I said something about that. She told me that we don't actually want eternal life, but to preserve a moment in time: Maybe our childhood, a really good summer, the first years of a marriage or the first time you met someone, that sort of thing. She told me that life changes, whether we want it or not, and that living longer would only mean having to put up with even more changes."
"So death is the solution?"
"No!" she laughed. "Just… adapt, and live with whatever life throws at you until you are done," then her smile vanished, and the look she gave him made his heart stop. "Is it because you will live longer than me?"
"I… yes, in a way," he said, mastering his voice not to stammer. "There could be a way to prolong your life, if you wanted."
Jane fell silent, and Loki could have sworn he could hear his own heart thundering inside his chest.
"I don't want eternal life," she said without looking at him. "I wish I could…"
Loki realized his mistake too late. She had told him what had happened with Donald Blake and how he pressured her to follow his every step, forfeiting whatever project she might have for herself. And there he was, asking her almost the same thing.
Jane chuckled, still not looking at him.
"Sorry," she said, rubbing her eyes. "It's not like me to get so emotional."
"We just had too many long days," he said, a bit befuddled of what she considered being emotional. "And you pulled two all-nighters in a row."
She nodded, but then she passed a hand over her face.
"I'm just so worried about Erik," she confessed. "And I want to help you, and-"
"You have done far more than I would have expected of anyone," Loki tried comforting her, though his words felt clumsy and out of place. "We have faced worse odds and come out victorious. Have faith in us."
A pious lie. They had never confronted such a threat, and Loki had no idea of how they could come out on top.
She claimed the emotional outburst had left her exhausted, and said she wanted to turn in. Loki accompanied her to her room, to ensure that she actually went inside instead of sneaking into the warehouse to keep working. But before saying goodnight, he had a question burning inside him: What would have she done, had he remained a human?
Her answer didn't come easy: she blushed and looked the other way, the hint of a smile playing on her lips.
"I wanted it to be a surprise," he confessed. "But, what would you say if I purchased some land here in the States, somewhere quiet where the sky is clear, where you could install your laboratory and work in peace? Would you have accepted my invitation?"
Jane looked at him wide eyed.
"I…" he forced himself to stop talking when he sensed he could stammer. Instead he used that beat for effect. "I wanted to offer something to you as a sign of appreciation, and that was all I could do as Robert Norwood."
She seemed taken aback and he couldn't read or understand her gesture: she covered her face with both hands and, after some seconds which felt like centuries, she slid her hands until her palms were together, as in praying, as tears rolled down her cheeks. A ragged sigh was the only sound that came out of her at first, then she took a deep gulp of air, as if building up the courage to speak. She croaked the start of a word, cleared her throat while wiping her tears, and said:
"You kept asking me why I never gave up on you. I just wanted to study you. I was…" she swallowed hard. "I wanted to make a discovery, to prove my father's theory through you. At least at first. Then you pulled off the lost heir trick and suddenly you were thousands of miles away from me, but never wanted to break contact, despite you being all rich and famous. And then it turns out that you are an ancient god from the myths, with powers and everything, and you have to go to war to save your home that is in another planet."
She stopped, biting her lips.
"Your family needs you, and here I was wishing you hadn't recovered your powers, and then you come and drop that bomb offering me my own land and I don't want to burden you with my own worries and…"
He almost burst out laughing, not because he found her comical, but out of pure relief.
Relief at seeing how much alike they were and had been from the start, and because he had suspected of her intentions from the very first moment.
He had wanted her near, that was the truth, and his plan involved a mutual material benefit: he would finance her endeavors once SHIELD was a hindrance and would protect her from them, and in turn she could do all the leg work at recreating a Bifrost for him.
There had been nothing altruistic in his offer: he only intended to give her something she would be amenable to and, given how SHIELD acted, she was likely to seek his protection.
Such had been his plan, and she seemed not displeased with it. And so they played along, keeping contact almost every day. The conversations they had proved to be a much needed relief for him some days. After a time, her questioning about Asgard and its technology became non-existent, and instead they talked about many other things that had nothing to do with other worlds. He firmly believed that said conversations were also a simple exchange of information, and so he never let his guard down, carefully curating every piece of information that came out of him.
Her body language made him suspect that her emotions could be turning into something else: centuries might have passed, but human relationships had barely changed, and her excuse to make a discovery might have been true at first, to slowly become a front, for others and for herself.
What troubled him was his own reaction when he finally acknowledged that those feelings could be sincere, once he had his powers back and his identity as a Jotun hybrid had been discovered. He felt confused, and so he decided he would recoil from any affection she might display towards him. He almost did it that night at the rooftop, when she kept holding his hand; but he gave in and let her lean on his shoulder instead. More than her encouraging words, it had been the time they had spent in silence what made him reconsider many of the things he had planned about Midgard and Jane.
Part of him cursed that woman from the temple, that Sorcerer Supreme, for her words and her questioning. He had always had a plan for every contingency he could think of. Now he was lost, and he didn't know what to do. But another part, the sensible one, knew this possibility could exist, however small it might have been: that all his plans could end in nothing because, for him, other people's hearts were still a mystery.
He was sure and had been extremely careful not to encourage her in that way, and he didn't understand what was happening; every time he had procured himself a partner had been after a display of either wealth or power, or both. Wasn't that what humans were after? Wasn't that what most sentient creatures were after? Because, what was what they called affection if not a transaction? That was, at least, that was what he had learned through his life: It had to be earned and kept by means of your merits, which always were either a display of force, wealth or loyalty. And if one of those disappeared, it flew away. Or so it seemed to him.
Jane did prove him wrong on his assumptions about her right at that moment, exactly by confessing what she deemed as egoistical impulses. Ironically, that confession made this relationship one of the most sincere of all the ones he ever had with anyone.
That was what nearly made Loki laugh. He wondered how she could have survived for so long with that kind of conscience, and understood why Selvig was so protective of her. True, she was intelligent, she was brave and unyielding as the Shieldmaidens of the stories but, feeling guilty of only wanting something? It was like seeing a child confessing as the most heinous sin that he had wanted to spend the afternoon playing instead of doing his homework, right after finishing said homework.
Had it been the other way around, Loki was sure he would have done everything in his hand to keep the other at his side.
Nevertheless, he felt a growing uneasiness at her words, and he didn't know why. It was like stepping into a dark room in an unknown place, which made a weight settle in his chest. Quite the opposite for Jane, seemingly; her tears had stopped once she had delivered her confession and now she offered an apologetic smile as she said:
"I just want you to be okay, no matter where or how. So I hope you all survive this in the end."
He had been leaning against the doorframe of her room, and it had been a good thing. Those words felt like a blow, for it had been the first time someone had ever said that to him with complete sincerity.
That was what mystified him the most about her: that Jane wasn't a stranger to using duplicity when it was appropriate, but she had always been candid with him. Perhaps not with herself, and that was the origin of her inner turmoil, but she was always forthright with those she held dear. It takes a trickster to know one, and he had always prided himself of being especially good when dealing with Midgardians.
It was that moment when he understood how she really saw him and where he stood in her regards. He also realized that those might be the last days he could spend with her, and fear began to take a hold of him.
How can you love something if you never harbor the fear of losing it?
It had been a rhetorical question for Thor, but now it kept echoing in his mind, and he remembered the early days of summer in London, when the possibility of knowing a mortal's life at her side felt almost intriguing. Almost.
And against his better judgment, he embraced her. Far from resisting, Jane slid her arms around his waist and buried her face on his chest.
"It's not egoism, to want to keep…" he paused very briefly, almost imperceptibly. "… those you care about near you. It's in our nature, no matter where we were born."
He had been about to say another word, one he had used many times in the past but, for some strange reason, now it carried a weight he wasn't sure he could bear.
Then he kissed her hair, and silently cast a subtle spell which would help her have a full night's rest, despite how near dawn was. Then he promised he would do everything in his hand to return to Midgard, a promise he had given far too many times, never to be honored. Not this time. He would return, if he still drew breath.