Rowing in Eden (Thor, Avengers) 5/10
"It's good to be back," Jane said as a couple of SHIELD operatives unloaded her equipment beside the maze-like marker burned into the New Mexico desert.
"If you say so," the Black Widow replied doubtfully, looking out across the arid landscape. "Remind me again of why I'm here?"
"Because Director Fury wants someone to report back on whether or not my ‘cockamamie idea’ has any merit? And you said you wanted to help, especially if it meant a chance to get out of headquarters for a while," Jane answered drily.
Turning to the black-suited agents, she raised her voice. "Thanks guys, I'll take it from here!"
Jane pulled out a small electronic device, about as long as her forearm and not quite as thick. Holding it in one hand, she adjusted some slider bars with the other. A small screen, mounted near the top, came to life, showing a ghostly miniature image of the pattern they stood beside.
"Perfect," Jane pronounced. "Now I need you to help me calibrate these detectors by pulling it back and forth over the entire pattern until we have that fully recorded in the system."
Hands on her hips, Natasha glared down at the smaller woman. "You want me to do what?"
"You said you wanted to help," Jane repeated, clearly amused. "And after this, we have to do the same thing at the other recorded landing sites to incorporate that data."
Poking at the handheld unit, Jane frowned minutely, running her thumb across one of the sliders. The screen flared slightly brighter. "And don't move them too quickly. They're delicate instruments and if they get roughed up too much, they'll stop working and we'll have to start all over again."
Thor plunged across the galaxy riding the inexorable flow of the Bifrost. Grinning at the heady sensation of speed, he let Mjolnir, held before him, blaze the path. As the blue, green and white sphere of Midgard hove into view, his smile widened.
Then, with a sudden crack, the Bifrost seemed to shift wildly to one side and then the other. Flung like a leaf, Thor's head snapped up and down. Mjolnir remained tethered to him only by the wrist strap as the rainbow effect dissipated with a catastrophic wave of unseen force rising up from Midgard to envelop Thor.
In the sudden darkness, a silent and unmoving figure began the long fall to earth.
"It didn't look like this," Steve said sadly as they walked up Sullivan Place closing in on a group of high-rise apartment buildings. The blustery late October day blew bits of newspaper violently around the telephone pole and, in the distance, a fire engine's warning siren signaled.
He wore civilian clothes with a military man's unease. A leather bomber jacket was all the protection he conceded to the weather, while both his hands were full with heavy bags of Jane's scientific equipment.
Jane trotted alongside him, carrying one bag with her laptop and the handheld detector wand. Unlike her superhero escort, the scientist was bundled against the cold from wool knit hat on her head to insulated boots on her feet. The days since Thor had left for Asgard had been long for her: only by burying herself in her work had Jane been able to keep herself from fretting endlessly about Thor's absence. Now she was following up a lead and that sense of purpose was even more energizing than pouring through her astrophysical data had been. The whole scheme was a long shot, sure, but anything was better than punching in endless series of numbers back in the lab or twiddling her fingers in the too-empty apartment.
Jane had thought she'd have everything ready in just a few minutes but the reality of managing her field equipment by herself was more daunting than she'd expected. Steve had appeared beside her van as she struggled to load up the equipment and immediately offered to help her. Jane wasn't sure if she should be happy for the assistance or annoyed at being managed but it was hard to get up any ire against the original Avenger, she had to admit.
Right not, it looked as if this outing was a bit of a challenge to him. The neighborhoods of New York had obviously changed a lot since he'd known them as a young man. This part of Brooklyn had been built up at least once or twice over since World War II. A lot had to have changed and the memories couldn't all be easy to dismiss.
Steve's eyes narrowed as he took in the addresses on the street signs. "That would have been Ebbets Field, over there," he advised, pointing to the stretch of apartment buildings bounded by some sad trees and a bit of anemic turf. "I used to get seats so high they'd give you a nose bleed, not that that was hard for me back in the day."
Jane shot her companion an assessing look. "Hard to believe," she commented, taking in his tall, powerful form, on a par with Thor's. The thought gave her a pang. He'd been gone for weeks, now, with no word. She glanced up skywards, hoping that, as Thor had promised, Heimdall could still see all of them down here, even if no one on earth could contact Thor or the other Asgardians.
"Believe it," Steve said with a self-deprecating shrug. He glanced up and down the streets to get his bearings. "You wanted to know where the radio announcer's box was?"
"Yes," Jane agreed, "since the major report we have of this was the radio outage, I thought I'd start there."
Steve looked assessingly at the radically changed landscape. "Well, that would've been over here," he said, sweeping one arm out to the right. "But I think you'd be better off to start over there." His other arm, still holding the heavy equipment, pointed straight down the street.
"Why's that?" Jane asked.
Steve glanced down at the petite woman. "Because I was there at the game that night against the Pirates. I saw the lightstorm in the sky that the newspapers told us the next day caused the radios to go out. I guess that was the magnetic effect you were talking about. But I saw something more: a strike, like lightning, but not so bright, just over the wall. It may have been what you were looking for."
"Sir, there's something of interest coming in on the satellites I customarily monitor," JARVIS reported.
Tony glanced up from the bank of computer screens where he was working on a new iteration of the Quinjet's engine design. "Well? What?"
"I'm not sure," JARVIS continued delicately, "It appeared above our satellite's range shortly ago and I've tracked it on several. Possibly some space debris heading to earth."
Tony frowned. "Not a junked satellite if it's up above ours since they're in pretty high orbit. Maybe a near-earth asteroid that's not yet been recorded?"
"I don't think that's possible," JARVIS's voice conveyed doubt in the most polite manner. "The readings are. . . unusual."
"Let me see," the industrialist demanded and instantly several of the computer banks before him flashed with trajectory information and other details about this plunging object.
Tony levered himself away from the table. "Let's suit up," he commanded. "And get Fury on the line!"
As gyros whined, lifting the red and gold suit into place, JARVIS asked "What should I tell him?"
Tony's voice boomed through the speaker system as his helmet snapped into position. "Tell him I think Thor's coming back and he may make a big splash, like right into the Pacific."
With that, Iron Man roared out of the workshop and heavenward.
"So that's where the scoreboard was," Jane repeated, as Steve set her equipment down on the bleak bit of turf beside one of the apartment buildings. A security guard had strolled over to enquire about the two strangers but the IDs that SHIELD had provided them substantiated their cover of environmental researchers.
Jane took over from Steve once he put the heavy cases on the ground. She pulled back the covers, flicking a couple of switches on one of the machines and extending a long handle, then plugging her handheld detector into a port on the second.
"This one is a variant on ground-penetrating radar," Jane explained, patting the first box. "I need you to drag it across this open area so we can get some better readings. This other allows me record the different intensities from the first, putting them together for a three-dimensional picture."
Steve smiled politely. "Just tell me what to do, Dr. Foster. I want to get this solved as much as you do."
Jane looked up from her perch, crouching over the heavy cases. "Really, Steve, after all this time, you keep calling me Dr. Foster? Jane, please!"
"Jane," he corrected, a bit awkwardly. "And I need to?"
She straightened. "Pull this on a line along the ground where you think you saw the strike."
"Yes, ma'am," Steve said, grabbing the handle with one hand and pulling it across the unyielding ground. "But won't all the construction, you know, since, won't that have destroyed any data?"
Jane shook her head as Steve continued to walk easily backwards, pulling the equipment. "No, these strikes go deep. Back in New Mexico, we found traces going down about six hundred feet."
Steve opened his mouth to say something but Jane interrupted. "Stop," she ordered as a high-pitched squeal came from the detector she held.
Obediently, Captain America stood stock still. Jane twisted a knob on her device. "Hold it there for a bit. . . okay, can you take it about twenty feet to your left, right up to the sidewalk?"
"Sure thing," he offered easily. For the next half hour, he moved the heavy detector back and forth across the narrow strips of open land.
"Okay, that's it," Jane finally advised. "Let's pack up and head back in."
Steve hefted the heavy mechanism back over to where Jane had crouched over the second device. The wind had picked up and she shivered.
"You're hypothermic," Steve said with worry as he watched her stiff fingers struggle to fasten the case closed. "Let me help you with that."
Jane looked up and fell back on her haunches. "Um, sure, thanks," she agreed. Steve gallantly helped her to her feet, then hefted the rest of the equipment.
"Was it worthwhile?" Steve slowed his pace down to match Jane's stiff strides as they turned down Bedford Avenue.
"Most definitely," Jane answered between breaths directed at her gloved hands. "The pattern we mapped? It's identical to the runic circle from down at Puente Antiguo, at least a quarter of the same before we lose it under these apartment building. I can still get a faint trace there, so we know it extends farther, but this is good enough."
"So," Steve said, "all you have to do is figure out why the Bifrost showed up here, in Brooklyn, in 1941."
"Yeah," Jane agreed drily. "That's all."
Steve's communicator flashed a single alert. He placed Jane's equipment on the sidewalk and flipped open the device. "Yes, Colonel?"
Jane stomped in place, quietly, beside Steve while he finished his conversation, conducted all in quiet monosyllables against the other New Yorkers passing by.
"Yes, sir," he finished, ending the call and turning to face Jane.
"There's a car coming to pick us up and take us to HQ. There's a Quinjet waiting," Steve said. Over his shoulder, Jane saw a black SUV racing their way.
"That's okay," Jane offered. "You have a mission, I'll just load my equipment up and take it back to the lab."
"No," said Steve, as the SUV pulled up alongside them. "It's not for me. It's for you. Thor's returned, but nowhere near Puente Antiguo and he's a bit beaten up by the experience. They said he wasn't conscious when he hit a bluff in Malibu not far from Tony's place and left a crater sixty feet across."
Jane was grateful that Steve rode with her on the frantic transcontinental flight. The Quinjet went supersonic as soon as it rose high enough but time still moved too slowly for her to endure. Throwing off her seatbelt, she paced the small passenger area impatiently.
"No news," Steve advised when she paused briefly to stare his way.
Jane resumed her pacing, rubbing her hands against each other in a kind of involuntary reaction.
"Are you cold?" The captain moved to shed his leather jacket.
Jane focused on him briefly, just enough time to shake her head. "No," she managed, "I'm fine. I'll be okay."
Steve shook his head sadly. "No, you're not. You're in shock."
"Of course I am," Jane said in exasperation, "my boyfriend, who took off across the galaxy weeks ago has just returned but we don't know if he's dead or alive."
Steve grabbed her hands and pulled her back down to her seat where he helped her to fasten her seatbelt. "He's unconscious, Tony said. Not dead. Just unresponsive. We don't know what happened."
Jane stared off vacantly at the Quinjet's prosaic interior.
Captain America sighed. "Our ETA is five minutes. Going subsonic to make our descent shortly," he advised. He doubted the physicist heard a word he said, consumed with worries as she was. He had to admit, he was worried, too.
"Jane," Thor said, his voice uncharacteristically weak. But he was clearly gaining strength as he sought to rise from the poolside recliner which he more than filled up. Jane rushed to perch on the edge of the frame, picking up one hand to lift it to her lips.
Beside them, Iron Man stood, his helmet lifted to reveal a worried expression.
"Stay down for a minute there, bud," the dark-haired man advised. "Let JARVIS finish checking you out."
"Report," Captain America commanded tersely as he took in the scene.
Tony stared at him in confusion. "You mean me, right? Because until just a minute ago, Blond Boy here, was out for the count."
Steve sighed. "Right."
"Okay," Tony grinned. "So we figured out this mystery bit of debris was the original fighting Viking, I suited up and tried to give him a hand. Got him as he was entering the atmosphere and I was able to slow him down and direct him."
Crossing his arms, he stared down at the couple, engrossed in each other's whispered words. "If he didn't have that wrist strap on him, I'd have figured he was a goner. That hammer? It was like it was directing him as much as it could. Thank god that wrist-strap worked so I could fly him back to the house, here."
"Interesting," Steve said. "So you were able to intercept and assist?"
"Yeah, after we really pissed off the Malibu Nature Conservancy by leaving a crater as big as a bus just a mile further north. We avoided all the populated areas, though."
"Good," Steve said. As he spoke, Thor levered himself slowly off of the seat and stood. It was clear that his strength was returning.
"Thor?" the Avenger's leader waited for his newly returned team-member to speak.
"What Tony here said is true far as I know. The Bifrost failed while I was yet far from Midgard. The last I remember was as if some great force jerked me first one way and then flung me the other. I have not felt such a mighty blow from any battle foe," Thor exclaimed.
Jane intervened. "I suspect it was the bridge, itself. I've been studying it since you left and we think there's something causing interference with the connection. It appears to be gaining power, somehow, and that's what made this failure so catastrophic."
Thor's brow knit with concern as he leaned forward to lift Mjolnir from where it had rested on the concrete pool deck beside the recliner.
"I understand my absence was prolonged here on Midgard," he said. "I returned to Asgard and my time there was not more than two days, to my reckoning."
"It's been, what?, five weeks," Tony interrupted. Steve's confirming nod made Thor's expression cloud further.
"That might be the bridge, as well," Jane explained. "Wormholes change the laws of space and time and a distorted wormhole could affect both factors in unpredictable ways."
"But more, ere I forget," Thor said, forestalling the rest of Jane's assessment. "We consulted the Norns-"
"The wha?" Tony asked, plopping himself down on another poolside lounger with a clank.
Jane sighed. Time spent with Erik and Thor has brought her up to speed on the stories of old Scandinavia and Asgard's culture. "They're like the fates, Tony."
"Cool, so did they tell you your destiny?" Tony turned his head to ask Thor.
Thor arched one eyebrow in amused consideration. "No, but they did reveal that the problem lies here on Midgard."
He sighed. "Further, I have but one month as Midgard time is reckoned, to see this solved or return to Asgard, permanently."
Jane felt her breath catch in her throat. "One month?"
Thor nodded. "My father fears the Bifrost will be unusable if the problems continue to mount."
Steve crossed his arms. "I don't want to lose you and I can tell you don't want to go back. So we're going to get behind this 100%."
He nodded impatiently toward the front of Tony's mansion where the Quinjet sat waiting with the SHIELD pilots on standby. "Come on, let's head back to New York. Colonel Fury will want to debrief you and I'm pretty sure he'll call a team meeting after."
"JARVIS?" Tony called.
"Yes sir?" the AI responded.
"Tell Pepper I'll be home late. Guess she'll have to cancel that meeting with finance, again," Tony's grin conveyed mischief and satisfaction as he followed Steve toward the waiting jet.
"I will tell her you were devastated, sir," JARVIS replied as Jane and Thor followed the rest of his teammates past the pool entrance and toward the waiting transport.
Chapter Six
X-posted from Dreamwidth. (
comments there.)