Fic: "Caduceus" 14/14 [Thor movie]
title: Caduceus
author: perletwo
fandom: Thor [2011 movie]
words: 18,343
rating: PG
disclaimer: Not mine. All Marvel's.
a/n: Done for a prompt at norsekink (as genfic, not kinkyfic):
I found it a little bit insulting that Jane was 'updated' from a nurse to an astrophysicist in the film, because nurses are amazing. They have one of the hardest jobs around. They work long hours in conditions that can be extremely confronting (and on occassion, dangerous), and they care a huge amount about helping people.
On that note, I would really love an au of the film where Jane is still a nurse.
Chapter 13
“So now what do we do?” Darcy asked of no one in particular.
“Well, if you work for the government, you settle in here to wait and see what happens.” Agent Coulson looked around. “The rest of you are under no obligation to join us.”
Nobody moved, and Dr. Selvig shook his head. “I want to study those markings, compare them to the ones at the site where we found Thor, and I’ll need Darcy’s assistance. Were there runes where the hammer landed, I wonder…?”
“The hammer landed on a bus, Doc,” Darcy pointed out. “It’s probably too mangled to tell. But yeah, I’m stickin’ too.”
Coulson looked over at Jane. “I’d say Ms. Foster there’s pretty much a given. Ms. Foster? You never did say what you want for your reward.” Darcy snorted, and Selvig slapped her shoulder lightly.
“Hmm?” Jane turned her head from its position studying the clouds. “Oh. I don’t know. A new job, maybe? Because if you guys are going to Asgard, and of course you are, hell yes I want in on that. Even without Thor for incentive.” Coulson stared at her curiously, but said nothing. “What? Too much to ask?”
“…I’m not sure. I’m authorized to say no to a request like that, but I’m not authorized to say yes. As with Dr. Selvig, there’s a protocol before we can get to yes.” He tilted his head to study Jane from another angle. “But I’m not saying no. I judge you’re a woman of odd and varied talents, and while I don’t see just where you’d fit in to the org chart offhand, I’m sure we’d find a good use for you. I’m inclined to recommend in favor of your request when I put it in to my superiors.”
“Gee, thanks.” Jane shrugged.
“You’ve done a one-eighty in your attitude toward the government,” he observed drily.
She shrugged again. “You’ve got something I want. Again.”
Coulson sighed and put on his sunglasses. “Well, since we’re all in for the long haul, we’d better prepare. Jameson, would you pass out the sunscreen and bottled water to these nice civilians? And Barton. Do you still keep a deck of cards in the glove compartment?”
Agent Barton blinked. “Uhm. Yessir?”
“Get it please, and start teaching this woman the fundamentals of poker, would you?” Nonplussed, Barton looked from Coulson to Jane, then shrugged and made for one of the cars.
***************
An hour later, they were still waiting. A third black sedan rolled up to the site, and from it emerged another SHIELD agent and Marjorie Wheeler. “Jane! Finally, I’ve been looking everywhere for you since you disappeared yesterday!” She went to hug her friend, who was deep in a card game with Agent Barton, while her driver went in the opposite direction to speak to Coulson.
“Hey Marj. Sorry, things started happening really fast. Did you come through the center of town? You can’t have missed it if you did.”
“We did, though I had to practically beat these spook types over the head before they’d bring me out here. Where is Thor? What the hell happened out there?”
Jane looked stricken, and tears welled in the corners of her eyes. Coulson stepped up. “Doctor? I think I can answer all your questions, if you’ll just step over here…?” Jane shot him a grateful look as he steered her friend away, and then struggled to focus her eyes on her cards.
“Uhm. Three cards. I think.” Barton took the discards and dealt her new ones. “Aha! Two pair.” He shook his head and revealed his hand: three of a kind. “No, but, wait, why does three cards alike beat four cards alike? I don’t get it.”
“…so that’s where we are now, waiting to see what happens next. If anything,” Coulson finished.
“Fine, yes, but what is your man doing with my girl over there?”
“Teaching her to play poker. Obviously.”
Marjorie took a step deeper into Coulson’s personal space. “Are you out of your mind?” she hissed, and the low voice was somehow more intimidating than a shout. “That girl is an adrenaline junkie. She’s a risk addict. And you’re teaching her to play cards? She’ll disappear into Las Vegas and we’ll never see her again!”
“Doctor, that woman can bluff like a pro. She faced me down with a pack of lies and never so much as blinked. That’s a rare talent and one worth developing. Cards are a good training ground for that,” he answered, then raised his voice to normal volume. “Besides. I think Ms. Foster’s got a new gold standard for adrenaline rushes now.”
“If that’s some kind of sexual entendre…”
Jane turned around, and carelessly let her hand of cards fall face-up into her lap. “Marjie. Thor - I - we flew.” She beamed, and at Wheeler’s skeptical look added, “He saw. Ask him.”
“Straight vertical takeoff from a standing position. It was very impressive,” Coulson said with a smile. “And they beat us here by a good ten minutes.”
Marjorie stared at him blankly, then sorrow flashed across her face. “I’ve lost her, haven’t I?” she said in an undertone, and Coulson just shrugged. Then she went back over to Jane and hugged her again. “Oh honey. You are so gone over this man, aren’t you?” Jane nodded and rested her head on Marjie’s shoulder. “Well, you could do worse. And have, that’s for sure.” Jane laughed and tightened her grip on her friend.
“Uh, guys?” Darcy pointed upwards. The clouds were shimmering, and bolts of colored light broke through at random. The clouds seemed to ripple, and a strange sound like the echoes of an ice floe cracking made all of them shiver. Then light exploded through the clouds and rained down across the desert. All present ducked and tried to shield themselves from falling shards of - something.
When the phenomenon ended, they all rose and looked around. The desert was littered with thick fragments of a glassine substance that shimmered and changed color like a holograph, or a fiber-optic light.
Jane gasped. “The bridge.” She ran to the nearest piece of glass and picked it up, turned it this way and that in her hands. “It’s got to be the rainbow bridge.”
Selvig hurried over to her. “Jane, dear, I don’t think you should be handling that.” He took hold of her arm and tried to lower it to the ground.
“He’s right, Jane, we don’t know what that thing’s made of or what kind of biohazard it might present.” Dr. Wheeler turned to Coulson. “You wouldn’t happen to have a Geiger counter in those cars of yours, would you?”
“Case like this? We don’t leave home without ‘em.” He gestured to an agent near one of the cars, who fetched a metal box with a sensor wand attached to a cord. Selvig took it and scanned the piece he’d finally persuaded Jane to drop, while Wheeler pulled Jane a few steps away and examined her hands. Selvig looked up. “It’s giving off broad-spectrum radiation as the hammer did. But the gamma radiation is well within the safe zone for bioorganisms,” he reported. “This is absolutely fascinating. The shards seem to be composed of non-ionizing radiation - it’s made of light.”
“I thought the rainbow bridge was the - beam - jeez, I sound like a Trekkie - that took them back to Asgard,” Coulson said.
“Yes, yes. But you see, light can be both wave and particle. That was wave. This is particle - somehow reified into a solid,” Selvig answered. “Please, please, you must let me study these phenomena further!”
“Wheels are in motion, Doc,” he replied, and looked to Dr. Wheeler. “She need transport to the hospital?”
“Yes,” Marjorie said, and Jane’s “No,” overlapped it. “Now you listen, young lady. You’ve given me the scare of a lifetime - the last 24 hours even tops the skydiving incident of 2000 - and you are coming in with me for a thorough exam.”
“Marj, I can’t leave -”
Darcy cleared her throat. “Ah, guys? I think you’re missing the big picture here. If that thing is the rainbow bridge, then the rainbow bridge is broken.”
“And nobody’s coming back through it anytime soon,” Coulson finished. Jane’s intense expression crumbled into grief, and he took a step closer to her. “Go to the hospital. Get checked out. Be with your friends. Do some work if that’ll help. But there’s nothing more you can do here.”
“You promised,” Jane started, clutching at her last hope.
“I haven’t forgotten. Wheels are in motion.”
**********
EPILOGUE
Back in town, other wheels were in motion.
One of the falling beams of light contained something larger than a shard of the rainbow bridge. It carried Loki back to Midgard, and he landed rather painfully behind Smith Motors.
“Damn it.” He rose and rubbed his side. A noise caught his attention, and he ducked into the building’s shadow as a SHIELD agent rounded the corner. Loki pulled a handful of useful spells into the front of his mind. He sent a burst of eldritch power full-force into the man’s skull; it radiated through his gray matter and absorbed every bit of neural information stored there, then haloed out through his scalp, consolidated into a ball and flew back into Loki’s hand.
With his other hand he shot forth a frost giant’s ice blade, using his inborn gifts rather than magic, and skewered the man through the heart. He kicked and shoved the corpse back into the shadows and cast a veiling spell over it to ensure it would remain undiscovered for at least a few days. He took the man’s wallet and SHIELD badge, and shapeshifted into a perfect physical duplicate of the agent. Then he absorbed the ball of neural information into his own mind, keeping what seemed useful in the forefront, and shoving the rest down into his subconscious.
“Well, Agent Mark Dixon of SHIELD. Let’s see what we have here.” He entered the makeshift laboratory, nodding briefly to “his” colleagues, and studied the star charts, meteorological data and other random printouts tacked up to the wall. Several appeared to Loki’s eyes to point the way to naturally occurring rifts between the Nine Realms.
“Well now. I’d say that’s worth a closer look,” he mused.
END
Start back at 1
author: perletwo
fandom: Thor [2011 movie]
words: 18,343
rating: PG
disclaimer: Not mine. All Marvel's.
a/n: Done for a prompt at norsekink (as genfic, not kinkyfic):
I found it a little bit insulting that Jane was 'updated' from a nurse to an astrophysicist in the film, because nurses are amazing. They have one of the hardest jobs around. They work long hours in conditions that can be extremely confronting (and on occassion, dangerous), and they care a huge amount about helping people.
On that note, I would really love an au of the film where Jane is still a nurse.
Chapter 13
“So now what do we do?” Darcy asked of no one in particular.
“Well, if you work for the government, you settle in here to wait and see what happens.” Agent Coulson looked around. “The rest of you are under no obligation to join us.”
Nobody moved, and Dr. Selvig shook his head. “I want to study those markings, compare them to the ones at the site where we found Thor, and I’ll need Darcy’s assistance. Were there runes where the hammer landed, I wonder…?”
“The hammer landed on a bus, Doc,” Darcy pointed out. “It’s probably too mangled to tell. But yeah, I’m stickin’ too.”
Coulson looked over at Jane. “I’d say Ms. Foster there’s pretty much a given. Ms. Foster? You never did say what you want for your reward.” Darcy snorted, and Selvig slapped her shoulder lightly.
“Hmm?” Jane turned her head from its position studying the clouds. “Oh. I don’t know. A new job, maybe? Because if you guys are going to Asgard, and of course you are, hell yes I want in on that. Even without Thor for incentive.” Coulson stared at her curiously, but said nothing. “What? Too much to ask?”
“…I’m not sure. I’m authorized to say no to a request like that, but I’m not authorized to say yes. As with Dr. Selvig, there’s a protocol before we can get to yes.” He tilted his head to study Jane from another angle. “But I’m not saying no. I judge you’re a woman of odd and varied talents, and while I don’t see just where you’d fit in to the org chart offhand, I’m sure we’d find a good use for you. I’m inclined to recommend in favor of your request when I put it in to my superiors.”
“Gee, thanks.” Jane shrugged.
“You’ve done a one-eighty in your attitude toward the government,” he observed drily.
She shrugged again. “You’ve got something I want. Again.”
Coulson sighed and put on his sunglasses. “Well, since we’re all in for the long haul, we’d better prepare. Jameson, would you pass out the sunscreen and bottled water to these nice civilians? And Barton. Do you still keep a deck of cards in the glove compartment?”
Agent Barton blinked. “Uhm. Yessir?”
“Get it please, and start teaching this woman the fundamentals of poker, would you?” Nonplussed, Barton looked from Coulson to Jane, then shrugged and made for one of the cars.
***************
An hour later, they were still waiting. A third black sedan rolled up to the site, and from it emerged another SHIELD agent and Marjorie Wheeler. “Jane! Finally, I’ve been looking everywhere for you since you disappeared yesterday!” She went to hug her friend, who was deep in a card game with Agent Barton, while her driver went in the opposite direction to speak to Coulson.
“Hey Marj. Sorry, things started happening really fast. Did you come through the center of town? You can’t have missed it if you did.”
“We did, though I had to practically beat these spook types over the head before they’d bring me out here. Where is Thor? What the hell happened out there?”
Jane looked stricken, and tears welled in the corners of her eyes. Coulson stepped up. “Doctor? I think I can answer all your questions, if you’ll just step over here…?” Jane shot him a grateful look as he steered her friend away, and then struggled to focus her eyes on her cards.
“Uhm. Three cards. I think.” Barton took the discards and dealt her new ones. “Aha! Two pair.” He shook his head and revealed his hand: three of a kind. “No, but, wait, why does three cards alike beat four cards alike? I don’t get it.”
“…so that’s where we are now, waiting to see what happens next. If anything,” Coulson finished.
“Fine, yes, but what is your man doing with my girl over there?”
“Teaching her to play poker. Obviously.”
Marjorie took a step deeper into Coulson’s personal space. “Are you out of your mind?” she hissed, and the low voice was somehow more intimidating than a shout. “That girl is an adrenaline junkie. She’s a risk addict. And you’re teaching her to play cards? She’ll disappear into Las Vegas and we’ll never see her again!”
“Doctor, that woman can bluff like a pro. She faced me down with a pack of lies and never so much as blinked. That’s a rare talent and one worth developing. Cards are a good training ground for that,” he answered, then raised his voice to normal volume. “Besides. I think Ms. Foster’s got a new gold standard for adrenaline rushes now.”
“If that’s some kind of sexual entendre…”
Jane turned around, and carelessly let her hand of cards fall face-up into her lap. “Marjie. Thor - I - we flew.” She beamed, and at Wheeler’s skeptical look added, “He saw. Ask him.”
“Straight vertical takeoff from a standing position. It was very impressive,” Coulson said with a smile. “And they beat us here by a good ten minutes.”
Marjorie stared at him blankly, then sorrow flashed across her face. “I’ve lost her, haven’t I?” she said in an undertone, and Coulson just shrugged. Then she went back over to Jane and hugged her again. “Oh honey. You are so gone over this man, aren’t you?” Jane nodded and rested her head on Marjie’s shoulder. “Well, you could do worse. And have, that’s for sure.” Jane laughed and tightened her grip on her friend.
“Uh, guys?” Darcy pointed upwards. The clouds were shimmering, and bolts of colored light broke through at random. The clouds seemed to ripple, and a strange sound like the echoes of an ice floe cracking made all of them shiver. Then light exploded through the clouds and rained down across the desert. All present ducked and tried to shield themselves from falling shards of - something.
When the phenomenon ended, they all rose and looked around. The desert was littered with thick fragments of a glassine substance that shimmered and changed color like a holograph, or a fiber-optic light.
Jane gasped. “The bridge.” She ran to the nearest piece of glass and picked it up, turned it this way and that in her hands. “It’s got to be the rainbow bridge.”
Selvig hurried over to her. “Jane, dear, I don’t think you should be handling that.” He took hold of her arm and tried to lower it to the ground.
“He’s right, Jane, we don’t know what that thing’s made of or what kind of biohazard it might present.” Dr. Wheeler turned to Coulson. “You wouldn’t happen to have a Geiger counter in those cars of yours, would you?”
“Case like this? We don’t leave home without ‘em.” He gestured to an agent near one of the cars, who fetched a metal box with a sensor wand attached to a cord. Selvig took it and scanned the piece he’d finally persuaded Jane to drop, while Wheeler pulled Jane a few steps away and examined her hands. Selvig looked up. “It’s giving off broad-spectrum radiation as the hammer did. But the gamma radiation is well within the safe zone for bioorganisms,” he reported. “This is absolutely fascinating. The shards seem to be composed of non-ionizing radiation - it’s made of light.”
“I thought the rainbow bridge was the - beam - jeez, I sound like a Trekkie - that took them back to Asgard,” Coulson said.
“Yes, yes. But you see, light can be both wave and particle. That was wave. This is particle - somehow reified into a solid,” Selvig answered. “Please, please, you must let me study these phenomena further!”
“Wheels are in motion, Doc,” he replied, and looked to Dr. Wheeler. “She need transport to the hospital?”
“Yes,” Marjorie said, and Jane’s “No,” overlapped it. “Now you listen, young lady. You’ve given me the scare of a lifetime - the last 24 hours even tops the skydiving incident of 2000 - and you are coming in with me for a thorough exam.”
“Marj, I can’t leave -”
Darcy cleared her throat. “Ah, guys? I think you’re missing the big picture here. If that thing is the rainbow bridge, then the rainbow bridge is broken.”
“And nobody’s coming back through it anytime soon,” Coulson finished. Jane’s intense expression crumbled into grief, and he took a step closer to her. “Go to the hospital. Get checked out. Be with your friends. Do some work if that’ll help. But there’s nothing more you can do here.”
“You promised,” Jane started, clutching at her last hope.
“I haven’t forgotten. Wheels are in motion.”
**********
EPILOGUE
Back in town, other wheels were in motion.
One of the falling beams of light contained something larger than a shard of the rainbow bridge. It carried Loki back to Midgard, and he landed rather painfully behind Smith Motors.
“Damn it.” He rose and rubbed his side. A noise caught his attention, and he ducked into the building’s shadow as a SHIELD agent rounded the corner. Loki pulled a handful of useful spells into the front of his mind. He sent a burst of eldritch power full-force into the man’s skull; it radiated through his gray matter and absorbed every bit of neural information stored there, then haloed out through his scalp, consolidated into a ball and flew back into Loki’s hand.
With his other hand he shot forth a frost giant’s ice blade, using his inborn gifts rather than magic, and skewered the man through the heart. He kicked and shoved the corpse back into the shadows and cast a veiling spell over it to ensure it would remain undiscovered for at least a few days. He took the man’s wallet and SHIELD badge, and shapeshifted into a perfect physical duplicate of the agent. Then he absorbed the ball of neural information into his own mind, keeping what seemed useful in the forefront, and shoving the rest down into his subconscious.
“Well, Agent Mark Dixon of SHIELD. Let’s see what we have here.” He entered the makeshift laboratory, nodding briefly to “his” colleagues, and studied the star charts, meteorological data and other random printouts tacked up to the wall. Several appeared to Loki’s eyes to point the way to naturally occurring rifts between the Nine Realms.
“Well now. I’d say that’s worth a closer look,” he mused.
END
Start back at 1