Rowing in Eden (Thor, Avengers) 7/10

[ancarett]

"Where are we headed? Puente Antiguo?," Thor asked as the van rocked and rolled over the rough pavement of the busy highway heading north through the Bronx.

Jane spared a quick glance for her passenger as she steered the top-heavy research vehicle through the heavy traffic. "No, that'd be south and west. A long ways west! We're heading to Hartford or just a bit outside of the city."

"Oh," Thor said blankly, leaning back in the passenger seat as Jane accelerated into the passing lane. "This is one of the aurora sites?"

Jane grinned. "I think it's a good one to start with. In 1880, the telegraph lines in the city powered up without any current being fed into the system. This lasted for several hours before it faded. A similar occurrence happened two years later with an aurora 'in the shape of a boreal crown'. Or so the reports say."

Thor raised an eyebrow, "You think these were sites where we had a connection for the Bifrost, then?"

The van lurched as Jane steered them back across the highway, aiming for the exit that would take them out of the city and up across New England. "I'm hoping we'll find some proof of it. The old telegraph paths are still being used, though for telephones these days. We should be able to track along the path near the city and try to get some readings. If this was a place where the wormhole linked up, even briefly, we should find traces."

Thor smiled broadly as he surveyed the road rolling out in front of them. "It will be good to do something about this."

Jane nodded agreement. "It feels good to get out on the road. I could like New York but the city isn't a great place for astronomers. Too much light pollution and too many people."

She shot a glance over at Thor. "Not that I mind the Avengers, really. Steve's so earnest, nobody could hold a grudge against him. And Tony's a great inventor, even if he's like a squirrel on Ritalin some days."

Thor's brow furrowed in puzzlement at the description of Iron Man.

Jane laughed again and apologized, offering a better explanation. "Sorry! I mean that Tony's sometime crazy and unpredictable, like a small rodent who's been fed a stimulant."

Thor's look of confusion fell away with a shouted laugh. "Like Hammy from Over the Hedge! I see what you mean, although if you were on a surveillance mission with Tony, you'd see that he's not all get up and go. Steve despairs of him."

"Who doesn't?" Jane quipped. "Hey, speaking of them, you're good with the team, right?"

Thor touched the bulky case resting beside his seat in the research vehicle. "Mjolnir's here and the telephone device they game me doubles as a secure communicator. If I am needed, I can be there quickly. I'm just worried about you if I get called away."

Jane sighed. "We've gone over this. I'm fine. This is the stuff that I'm good at. Anyway, Agent Coulson has my van tracked and bugged every way possible as well as the fact that there's at least two vehicles shadowing us, right, Phil?" The last was said on a rising intonation as Jane double-clicked the radio volume button on the dashboard, activating one of the communications channels.

"We hear you loud and clear, Dr. Foster," Phil Coulson answered instantly. "And you're pretty observant. I only thought you'd see one of the four SHIELD details keeping an eye on you."

"Practice makes perfect," Jane answered, just a bit shortly. "I'd appreciate it if you'd not monitor us too closely."

"I, too," Thor added darkly.

"We'll keep to the parameters you set out with Director Fury. Oh, and don't worry," the transmitted voice assured smoothly, "Mr. Stark isn't anywhere near our monitoring center."

Before Jane or Thor could respond, the static cut out, signalling that Agent Coulson had terminated their conversation.

Jane glanced over at Thor, annoyance clear on her face. His expression seemed thunderous, a thought which made Jane snort with laughter. The van lurched a bit before she refocused herself on the road in front of them.

"What?" Thor asked with some concern, leaning across the space between them. "Is there a problem?"

"No, Jane answered, still laughing a bit to herself. "I'm just thinking back to a talk I had with Natasha before this all blew up. She told me I needed to take you on a road trip when I said I needed to get out and do some field research. And, look!, that's exactly what we're doing!"

Thor didn't laugh. "Is this all some set-up to get the two of us away? Is SHIELD seeking to hide us from Heimdall's regard and render me forsworn on my promise to my father?"

"No, no, no," Jane quickly said. "It's just a fun coincidence that Natasha said that. As for the rest, well, let's not let SHIELD and all that ruin this, okay? We have something to do, something important. And Director Fury promised me that they'd confine their surveillance to the van and, I expect, our phones."

Thor scowled, clearly unimpressed by those promises.

Jane tilted her chin a bit higher and tipped open the pocket of her vest just enough to show the top of a small version of the device familiar to all of the Avengers. "Pepper came through," she said with a grin. "Tony's been preparing for just such an occasion."

Thor relaxed in his seat. "You know," he confided, "Hammy was my favorite character in that movie."

"Mine, too," Jane agreed.

In other circumstances, Jane might have enjoyed lingering in Hartford. They'd checked into an anonymous but easily secured hotel that Coulson's agents had scouted ahead of them. An equally unremarkable chain restaurant had sufficed for dinner but they had better luck in the morning, finding a small diner that evoked some of the homey atmosphere they'd both enjoyed at Izzy's back in New Mexico. Thor worked his way through a veritable mountain of food and even Jane cleaned her plate, enjoying the hearty, simple breakfast the cook served up from the grill behind the counter.

With a bright blue sky overhead, the autumn morning was brisk and invigorating. Jane parked the research vehicle near the historic city center. She paused for a few minutes to get her bearings: historic data overlaid on the current GPS map, allowing her to confirm that they were on the right track. With a quick glance around, they set off on foot, Thor carrying the two heavy scanning devices with Mjolnir in another sack over his shoulder while Jane slung hers into a canvas bag.

"We're going to track the original telegraph line as far as we can on foot," Jane directed. "Fortunately, Darcy did a bit of research and confirmed that the sighting matched up with this set of utilities, here. II should be able to pick up some low-level traces with my handheld. Then we can put the big boys to work."

From under the brim of his baseball cap, Thor assessed the busy cityscape. "These buildings, were they in place when the aurora was observed?"

"Good question," Jane said. "Some of them were but not all. The aurora happened over a hundred years ago. These glass-sided buildings" - Jane swept her hand to one side, indicating a couple of modern skyscrapers - "are all much more recent."

"Would their construction have destroyed the signs you seek?"

Jane shook her head sharply as they walked side by side. "No, but they certainly could have distorted them or partially obscured them. Just before you returned, Steve helped me to map out part of a runic mark near Ebbet's Field. It happened back in the 40s and he even saw it!"

Thor squinted toward the sun as they continued their walk along the busy city street. "That would be, what seventy years ago? I'm still not accustomed to how Midgard reckons time."

Jane shot a quick glance at her endlessly energetic companion. "That's about right. I know that you guys are always joking about how Steve's so 'well-preserved' but he grew up in a different time and that was pretty helpful. Nobody younger than ninety would likely remember that aurora event!"

Thor nodded. Jane led them around a street corner and towards an alley where the utility lines were clearly visible. "This is part of the old telegraph corridor. It should open up a little further along, but let's start walking along here and see what we see, okay?"

She pulled out her handheld scanner and thumbed a knob on the side that fired up the screen. A steady pulse cleared the screen as some sort of signal refreshed every second or so. Excepting for a few ghostly green markings, clearly signs of the metal framework in parts of the larger buildings, the screen remained disappointingly empty as they made their way along the alley.

"What do we say if someone stops us and enquires as to our purpose?" Thor asked after they crossed one street and continued the survey.

"I've got the documentation here that Colonel Fury provided. We're contract workers for an environmental agency, checking for buried fuel oil tanks that pose a threat to public health." Jane patted her bag absently as she continued to watch the screen held out just before her. "Your cap and my jacket have the agency logo so I doubt anyone will suspect anything."

Thor shot a glance right and left but the cityscape seemed blandly incurious. He shrugged slightly and followed Jane in her dogged survey.

Four miles along, as the city streets around them changed dramatically, opening up to an older urban residential neighbourhood, Jane bounced excitedly. "Up ahead," she directed, "looks like just past that school!"

Almost jogging, she walked along the right-of-way underneath the looming utility towers. Thor could see that her scanner was filling with a bright green glow in the upper right-hand quadrant. He quickened his step and they were soon on the back edge of a fenced parking lot beside a boxy brick school complex. The parking lot was half full of cars but empty of people. Jane pointed over the fence.

Without effort, Thor vaulted the six-foot barrier and put the equipment down on the asphalt. He reached over a hand to help Jane. She put one foot in the chain-link and then was lightly pulled up in the air and over.

"Oof!" Jane blinked up at Thor who smiled broadly at the woman he loved, held close in his arms.

Jane blushed. "So unprofessional!" She clambered out of his arms but, seeing his hurt expression, took pity on Thor. "It would look strange to be some sort of government investigators mooning over each other in the middle of the work-day, that's all."

Thor's look of hurt faded. "Ah, I see," he replied. "The customs of Midgard seem less enjoyable than those of Asgard. There, a man and woman may be close and also carry on their duties without it causing comment."

"I'd better not hear tell of you and some Asgard maiden 'being close'," Jane began heatedly before losing her assumed anger at Thor's look of shock. "Kidding, sorry! Okay, could you take those two rigs out of their bags? They'll need to be pulled across the open sections. Pity the cars are parked over there but we might get lucky and not need to go that far."

Thor effortlessly pulled the heavy equipment out of the bag. Jane telescoped out the long handle and indicated how he should pull it. "Slowly," she repeated as he started off with a quick step, "it needs to send a signal down into the earth and back to my recorder!"

They hadn't been at the process long before an officious looking woman approached from the school. "I'm May Wesson, principal of North Hartford Secondary. We're wondering what you're doing on our school property?"

Thor halted at Jane's raised hand. Jane smiled brightly and stepped up to offer her hand to the older woman. "Oh, I'm sorry! I'm Jane Fielding and this is Tom Thorson. We're with the urban remediation team of the EPA. There are reports of buried oil tanks on this site. We need to scan with this ground-penetrating radar to see if they're here and then the agency will figure out a strategy to remove them. Wouldn't want them to leak and contaminate the soil, here."

The white-haired woman raised a hand to her throat in seeming shock. "Buried oil tank? Heavens no! You can find them with those devices? And get them out?"

Jane shot a warning look to Thor who widened his eyes innocently. He knew enough not to open his mouth and blow their cover and let Jane carry on. "We can't remove them by ourselves if they're here, but we can find out if the reports are substantiated. It might be nothing: maybe the crews who built this school actually dug down deep enough to remove them. You never know! Just let us carry on our survey and, if we need to, we'll ask you to clear the western side of the parking lot so we can scan there."

"Oh certainly, certainly," the flustered woman agreed. "Oil tanks! Contamination! I hope not. The parents would be all over this! Just come by my office there, just inside the blue door up there, if you need us to arrange to move the cars or if you have any news."

"No problem, ma'am," Jane answered smoothly, "we'll do that." She watched as the older woman whirled and strode quickly to the office, muttering under her breath about parents and risk.

Jane reached into her pocket and pulled out a sleek cellular device, putting it to her ear. In a few seconds, she'd checked to see that their SHIELD handlers were already on the job. Ending the call, she smiled wryly and filled Thor in. "Those guys are good. Apparently they're filing review paperwork now and it's already uploaded into the local school board's database of ongoing projects. So let's get back to work!"

Thor grinned and continued to pull the scanners, one after another, across the open area. They broke for lunch, pulling store-bought sandwiches, bags of chips and drinks out of Jane's canvas satchel. When they returned to the job, the cars had been moved from one side of the parking lot to the other, courtesy of Principal Wesson's efficient staff. By one o'clock they had completed the readings and were packing up Jane's equipment.

"So," the worried principal asked when they stopped by the office on their way out, "what's the verdict."

"No oil tanks or any signs of contaminants under the soil," Jane said reassuringly. "It's all good!"

The seated woman almost melted into her chair with an audible sigh of relief. "That's such good news. I was terrified I'd have to circulate a letter to the parents and there'd be such a ruckus at the PTA. I called the board and they sounded surprised we were being surveyed but then they confirmed there was an agency request on the books. I guess you were just faster than the paperwork."

Jane smiled perkily. "Sometimes the government's almost a step ahead! Well, we've got to go and check other risk sites. Have a good day!"

Thor and Jane made their way out of the school and threaded their way through the streets toward the long-parked research van. "You're very good at this," Thor observed.

"Impersonating a federal agent and terrifying innocent people with imaginary threats? Yeah," Jane chuckled, "I should ask Natasha to train me as an agent!"

"No," Thor corrected as they walked along the quiet sidewalk, "I mean that you're good at the research and the puzzling matters out. If you and I had never met, I expect you'd be a prominent scientist, just like Erik."

Jane rolled her eyes. "Not likely in today's market. You could discover a whole new solar system or prove a new theory and still not be able to do better than adjuncting at a community college. I'm lucky that SHIELD funds my research."

Thor stopped in his tracks and put down his burdens. Staring intently into Jane's eyes, the sheer force of his regard stopped her, too. "They, and I, are fortunate to have benefited from your studies. I owe my life to you, nay, my redemption. And so many others would have fared far worse had you not enabled my return, not least of all myself."

"Shush," Jane said, blushing, tangling one finger in her hair. She turned away from Thor's steady contemplation. "We're both lucky, let's put it that way. And maybe we're extra-lucky with this data. From what I saw, there's a pretty clear pattern available and I'd like to review the data back at the hotel."

Thor nodded agreement and they made their way quickly back to the van and onto the downtown streets already filling up with afternoon traffic heading out from the city core.

"Take-out," Thor proclaimed happily around a mouthful of roast chicken, "is a marvelous idea. I'm only glad that Volstagg isn't around or I'd never get a bite." The small table near the window of their hotel room barely offered enough room for the two to set out their food, especially with all that Thor had deemed necessary to satisfy his hunger. The Asgardian overwhelmed the small upholstered chair he'd pulled up to the table while Jane perched on the comparatively dainty desk chair across from him.

Jane chuckled as she ate her own portion with a bit more decorum. "I don't know, big guy, I think you could hold your own."

She made a feint over her cardboard container as if to threaten his whole roasted chicken and fries. Thor playfully growled as he swatted her hand away.

"So," Thor said as he swallowed his next bite, "has our work born fruit today? How are the readings that you took?"

"Good," Jane answered brightly as she stabbed her plastic fork into the tub of salad, spearing some lettuce and a bit of cheese, "really good, even, but a bit interesting. I'll show you after we've finished and tidied up since this table's the closest thing to a desk we have."

"Mayhaps we could sit on the bed," Thor suggested with a sidelong look at the king-sized bed that dominated the main part of the hotel room. "I'm afraid this chair won't hold me for long!"

Jane arched an eyebrow incredulously. "Don't I know what you'll start thinking of as soon as we're there," she responded. "We need to get some work done, first."

Thor grinned cheekily as he went back to devouring his dinner. "When that's done?"

"Early to bed, early to rise," Jane promised throatily. Thor finished his meal in short order and did the clean-up by himself, freeing Jane to pull her computer out and show Thor the image she'd pulled together from the scanners' recordings.

"It's the Bifrost pattern, almost," Thor said thoughtfully, "but it's missing a section here-" one finger rose to trace a section, almost a quarter of the circle that was utterly blank.

He stared at it for a while. "And something else. . . ."

Jane looked up from her notebook to type a couple of quick strokes on the keyboard. Another scanner image appeared, similar to the first, and then a photographic image of a sandy landing site with another partial pattern. "This is what I got with Steve, the day you returned. It's also missing a section, but a different orientation and piece of the pattern. And I got this picture from where Sif came down before you in Mexico."

Thor leaned back in his chair, which groaned alarmingly. "I see. It's the same pattern but with even more missing."

Jane nodded soberly. "At first I thought that the missing section of the resonating pattern was the result of disturbance after the fact. They built some pretty big buildings, dug pretty deep!, when they tore down the old Dodgers' stadium. But here? It's the same kind of partial pattern and it doesn't look like the school went down too deep. When you put that up against the third version. . . . Augh! I don't know!"

Thor put one hand over Jane's which had been worriedly picking at the seam on her jeans. "Do not, what is the expression Clint uses?, 'borrow trouble'."

Jane sourly regarded the cryptic images, then tapped the keyboard a few more times. "You're right. I need more data. Tomorrow, we'll head to another aurora site. It's only a few hours drive away. If we collect enough data, a pattern should be clear."

She powered down the laptop and then shut the lid firmly before turning to Thor with a pleading expression. "I'm sorry, it's just that I'm so frustrated with this. I want the research to go faster!"

"We could ask SHIELD for a Quinjet," Thor suggested. "That way we would travel very quickly."

Jane bit her lip. "I don't think the time we'd save would be worth the hassle. All the newspapers, wanting to know why the Avengers are showing up in all these small towns. Right now, travel time isn't slowing me down, so much as I'm just not 'seeing' what I need to see. Darcy and Erik are also working on this, so I'll touch base with them tomorrow and maybe we can put our heads together."

"It's just," she sighed gustily, "we're running out of time. How I wish I could harness that wormhole effect and stuff some extra hours into each day."

Thor nodded. "Heimdall said that time moves differently between the realms. I have always known this. My father, for instance, was last here on Midgard over a thousand of your years ago."

Jane dropped her gaze to her fingers, stroking the lid of her laptop. "You know, I haven't really thought about it, but your life and mine, they're very different."

Thor leaned closer. "But we have bridged that distance, more than once, Jane."

She laughed, but not lightly. The sound had a bitter edge. "You're a god, Thor. Your father's lived for at least a millennium. I don't even have a clue how old you are compared to me, but I'm pretty sure that you'd have a lot more candles on your cake than the one everyone got for Steve last year."

The memory of a cake topped with dozens of candles brought a smile to Thor's lips, quickly extinguished when he saw how worried Jane appeared. "I have not counted the years of my existence in any way that relates to those here on Midgard. I was but an infant when my father made his last trip to Midgard."

Jane regarded him gloomily. "So you're at least a thousand years old, yourself?"

Thor shook his head. "As I said, time passes differently. We may age more slowly than the people of Midgard, but I don't have the memory of a thousand years of passing time, although my brother and I had a long childhood, filled with escapades that would have horrified my mother if she ever knew of them."

Jane allowed herself to be distracted by Thor's change of subject. "Like what?"

Thor leaned back on his elbows, staring off into empty space. "There was the time Loki and I moved all the books from the library into our tutor's chamber. He woke up literally surrounded by thousands of volumes and could not move out of his bed until help arrived!"

Jane chuckled at the image. "You hated reading?"

Thor nodded. "I preferred swordplay. Sif would join us at practice and Loki would tease her. You know he was the one to cut off all her hair?"

Jane's eyes widened as she pictured the beautiful warrior with shorn hair. "I bet she was mad!"

Thor laughed loudly. "She was furious! Before that day, her hair was more fair than mine in hue. After Loki sheared it, her hair grew in black as night. He tried to apologize to her but I remember she threw the offerings in his face and he had to hide his face for months from fighting practce, ere she cut him down where he stood."

Jane put her laptop over on the nightstand and curled up against Thor's warm, solid length.

"I want to hear every story of your childhood," she said, trying her best to keep the tone of fear and desperation out of her voice.

"And so you shall," Thor promised indulgently.

Chapter Eight

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