Rowing in Eden (Thor, Avengers) 3/10
It took a long time after the feast had ended before Thor felt he'd mastered his anger sufficiently to think about confronting his father over his unilateral decision to close the Bifrost access to Midgard. He hoped that his discontent hadn't been apparent to many beyond his closest friends. Sif, certainly, had recognized the signs of his seething temper and had done her best to deflect the discussion at the table the five friends shared with a few other Asgardians. When the prince had risen from the table several times to seek out a quiet balcony, Fandral and Volstagg launched into noisy conversations that deflected any attention. Thor did his part to ensure that all went smoothly at the feast honouring the noble elf visitors from their sister realm of Alfheim but, all the while, a sense of urgency and anger roiled inside him.
From across the great hall, Loki arched one eyebrow enquiringly, sensing his brother's dark mood. Watchful in her seat beside him, Sif reached out to place a warning hand upon his forearm and the two dark heads inclined toward each other. Thor noted and then dismissed any thought of his brother: their dreadful clashes in Asgard and on Midgard had driven a wedge between the two men that Thor was in no hurry to address. Sif had become the one link between the two men: even more so now that Loki was confined to Asgard and stripped of his magical powers by the Allfather, himself, as partial punishment for his rampage that had threatened all of the nine realms.
As the crowds made their way from the feast hall and the dignitaries were properly seen off by the king and his family, the tense environment enduring between Odin and Thor was finally broken by Frigga's actions. "Here," the queen of Asgard commanded, leading the men of her family down the long, golden hallways of Asgard to end up at the royal apartments. "Now, you will speak and mindfully so that you do not rain fire and destruction down upon my home."
With one last twitch of her green-gold skirt, the queen made her way past the seats in their receiving room and sequestered herself in the bedroom. One heavy, gold-decorated door delicately but definitively shut behind her and Loki winced theatrically. "Now you've done it," he commented with a mocking bow directed at his brother and father. "There will be no peace in our family for months to come."
Thor spun on his heels, ready to unleash a furious torrent of words upon his brother when his father's upraised hand was almost in his face. "Silence," commanded Odin in a voice of command. "Both of you."
Turning to face Thor, the one-eyed king of Asgard seemed to swell in size and grandeur. "Do not pretend to be surprised that I ordered the Observatory closed. I told you of my decision before the feast began-"
Thor interrupted, "-your decision. You may be king but it is not yours to make alone. If I am your heir, if I 'think like a king' then why am I still treated as if I were a boy to be ordered about and matters decided behind my back?"
Loki draped himself across a large settee, putting his feet up on an ornately carved stool. "He's got you there, father!"
Odin spun to stare down his adopted son with a fierce glare but, even stripped of his powers, nothing seemed to intimidate Loki who cheekily grinned at the king of Asgard before rummaging in a golden bowl on the table beside him to grab a handful of nuts. He popped one in his mouth and chewed with gusto while his brother and father returned to their heated, hushed dispute.
"Oh, really," Loki grumbled eventually and rose from his comfortable seat to insinuate himself between the two tense men. "Much as it might amuse me to see this end up in a repeat of the argument that I instigated, I find repetition tiresome."
The god of mischief tapped his brother on the chest. "You are determined that you should have the freedom of action that a prince of Asgard deserves, not that I enjoy that at present but that's beside the point."
Turning to Odin, Loki stood with moderately more circumspection. "You seek to ensure that your heir is not lost to all time through some malfunction of the Bifrost and so you make him as much a captive of Asgard as I am. Ah, what irony!, particularly when neither of you are clear-headed enough to see the obvious solution."
Now that both his father and brother had abandoned their conflict to regard him with ire, Loki appeared only the more energized. He perched on the back of a massive, carved chair with a self-satisfied smirk dancing on his face.
Sparing a quick glance for his grim-faced father, Thor asked the question Loki was obviously waiting for. "What obvious solution?"
Loki clapped his hands once in seeming glee. "I thought you'd never ask!"
He strode across the room to open the grand door leading to Frigga's chamber and peeked around the corner. "Mother! I'm taking them to see the Norns!"
"I'm so sorry, Jane," Erik repeated. His tired image, projected larger than life on the main screen of Jane's lab revealed the familiar clutter of his university office surrounding him. Precarious stacks of papers and books vied with multiple computers for desk space. A few further computer parts were scattered on top of one case and from that selection, Erik picked up a defunct hard drive and waved it around.
He brandished the bits of metal and plastic at the screen. "All the observations I'd made on the localization of aurora borealis in the 1980s? They were in this old computer. I was hoping that I'd find an answer here but now I can't even look. The data's all gone and the drive's corrupted. Just old age, the technicians say. Kind of like me?"
Jane smiled bleakly. "It's okay. I'm pretty sure that old data wouldn't have been very useful to us, anyway. You were only recording the ionospheric data and we're interested more in the geomagnetic interactions."
"You're right," the older physicist admitted. "It was a long shot, but I was hoping I could contribute something to the brilliant young Dr. Foster's research scheme."
Jane ducked her head, smiling slightly at his extravagant description. "If anyone's to be flattered, it's me. You're the distinguished professor of physics and I'm still the lowly research fellow, on leave, even, mind you!"
"But your research has come so far," Erik objected, "and it's had a far greater impact on the world than mine. Not that anyone's likely to know this as long as SHIELD keeps the lid on all of what you're doing!" The last was said in a grumbling tone and Jane quickly moved to smooth over his upset.
"It was just a longshot, anyway, Erik. And the rest of my research might turn up something useful. Who knows? Maybe Thor will come back from Asgard with the solution, even." Jane said the last with the desperate hope that ran beneath her increasingly fruitless research schemes.
"He didn't the last time," Erik observed dourly, then blanched. "I'm sorry. Not helpful."
"Not really," Jane sighed. "I keep feeling that there's got to be something that's happened before like this to the bridge. After all, why isn't it still somewhere in Scandinavia? We need a way to find a dataset to search for reasons behind the instability. I know the answer's there, I just have to take the time to find it. History will bear me out!" Jane's cheeks flushed with her emphatic flourish on the last bit.
"Not if you're buried in the history books," Erik glumly replied, then paused, seeming to ponder his words. Wordlessly, he spun his office chair and wheeled it over to a nearby bookshelf. The castors complained at the unaccustomed movement. Erik bent down, almost out of view of the webcam, then emerged, triumphant.
"Agnes Mary Clerke," he said excitedly, waving an old blue-bound book.
"Who?" Jane asked in puzzlement. "I don't know that name."
"You should," Erik retorted. "She's one of the great figures of nineteenth century astronomy. It was her accounts that had me interested in the aurora localization hypothesis."
He opened the book and then flipped that around so a title page was visible, albeit slightly shaky, for the webcam. "It's her History of Astrophysics."
Jane pursed her lips dubiously. "I'm not sure what some outdated textbook is going to do for our attempt to fix the Einstein-Rosen bridge. Anyway, they only thought about auroras as results of heightened sunspot activity, so what would their explanations do for me?"
"Don't think of it as a textbook, think of it as a set of historic data points," Erik countered. "Look, these old books has some of our first recorded scientific observations of aurora borealis. There were so many of these sightings in the late Victorian period and researchers like Clerke gathered them all together, and preserved them in amazing detail."
Jane leaned her forearms on her desk in sudden hope. "So, you're saying that we have a whole bunch of data just waiting to be mined from old books?"
Erik nodded eagerly. "Journals, too. As I recall, the mid to late nineteenth century was a gold mine for the start of a new era of aurora sightings."
Jane bit her lip thoughtfully. "Okay, but how am I going to figure out how to find all that data? I'm not exactly trained in textual studies."
Erik smiled broadly. "You need someone who has an arts background for researching in old books and journals but also appreciates something of the science you're pursuing. Oh, and who'll put up with your late hours and insane demands. Probably best to get someone who needs one more internship experience for her degree, while you're at it!"
Jane laughed breathlessly as she followed her old mentor's train of thought. "Darcy!"
"I'll put the book in my office mailbox," Erik advised, equally cheery. "You tell our Ms. Lewis she can pick it up in the morning and get cracking on her new research assignment!"
The trip to the roots of Yggdrasil went smoothly: the Bifrost flickering in rainbow pulses around them until they set foot on the home of the Norns. Thor refused to concede anything in comparison with his recent landings on Midgard, preferring to instead be quietly watchful of both his brother and the three women he'd brought them to consult. The three Norns had little love for the ruler of Asgard and his heir: the two had thwarted their fates too many times for the speakers of destiny to be content.
One of the Norns, Verdandi, to judge by the cask of water she balanced against one hip, stepped forward from her sisters. "What would you have of us, Asgardians?"
Loki, not his father, was the one prepared with the confident answer. "We have a stalemate between father and son that can only be resolved by consulting those who see the fates. Will you not agree?"
With a slow turn of her head left and right, the suspicious giantess received the grudging assent of her companions. "The Allfather and the wielder of Mjolnir surprise us with their wisdom in this."
Loki shrugged. "Don't give them too much credit. Coming to speak to you was my idea. And I will pose the questions for you."
With a suddenly vicious look, the god of mischief pinned each of the otherworldly figures in turn. "And tempt me not with misleading words. My magic may be contained, but my wits have lost nothing."
"One question for each petitioner, you know the rules, Loki," the shadowed figure to the left warned. At his nod, the three Norns put down their tools and patiently awaited his two requests.
"First, for Odin, the question he would ask is this: can the Bifrost's fault be corrected from Asgard?" Loki glanced over the women's head as if he cared nothing about their response. For all that Thor could tell, that indifference was genuine.
The Norns clasped hands together and from their mouths, in unison, came their answer. "Only in Midgard can the fault be found and remedied."
Loki shot a quick glance over at Odin, whose pursed lips suggested a temper held barely in check. Thor attempted to stifle his triumphant smile at the Norns' words but Loki was already forging ahead with the second question.
"For Thor, the question is simpler, befitting his simpler mind." Loki smirked again at that barb, then sighed as his brother glared at him. "All right, he would ask you this: will not the mighty Thor be the hero destined to repair the broken Bifrost?"
Again, the Norns seemed to silent confer before mystically intoning their words. "Thor Odinsson will not be the one to find the fault nor mend the Bifrost."
Now it was Odin's turn to smile in satisfaction while Loki sketched a mockingly, courtly bow to the three Norns. "We thank you, gracious ladies, for your clear and lucid counsel!"
"See how useful I am to the family," the dark-haired god commented as he looped one arm each with his father and brother. "What would you do without me?"
Thor wrenched his arm out of his brother's light clasp and angrily strode away. Odin simply pursed his lips and lengthened his stride. With a light sigh of disappointment, Loki turned to wink at the Norns then joined them as they readied to return to Asgard.
Once all three visitors were swept up in the rainbow light of the bridge, Urdr turned to her sisters. "Why would Loki query us when it was his actions set this all in motion?"
Skuld bared her teeth in something passing for a grin, her farseeing eyes focused endlessly on the future. "Even gods can be blind, sisters."
A wild storm raged along the northeast coast, whipping up waves that threatened to swamp fishing boats and coastal villages. Heroic acts of ordinary women and men prevented any deaths from the toppled trees and flood waters. The superheroes of the Avengers Initiative rescued a Coast Guard vessel run aground off the Maine coast before heading north, along with the stormfront.
Thor would have been in his element, with thunder and lightning raging around them. The team felt his absence acutely. Iron Man did his best to fill the gap, securing loose fishing vessels and once even diving deep into the frothing water of the Newfoundland bay where a quay had broken free, threatening to lodge itself beneath a bridge across the inner bay. On land, the other team members stopped a dam break from flooding the town below.
After working long through the night, until the remnants of the storm broke up and veered off with the Gulf current, the team regrouped. As they sailed over the rough waters of the Atlantic, somewhere not so deep under the water, an unearthly artifact glimmered and glowed, fully freed of the sandy silt that had long been its cradle.
Natasha, at the controls, raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow at the fluctuating instrument readings as they raced high across the southern coast of Nova Scotia. From the co-pilot's seat, Clint pointed to the manual compass with an arrow rapidly spinning.
"Magnetic anomaly," Bruce said from directly behind them. The physicist leaned his hands on the seats and watched the slowly subsiding compass arrow return to normal. "I'm not up at all on geomagnetic studies, but I'd guess there's some subsurface feature that's causing a localized magnetic disturbance: maybe a massive iron-rich outcrop. Less likely, an active igneous intrusion. Possibly a massively dense alien vessel but that's remote beyond reason."
Pilot and co-pilot shared an alarmed look at Bruce Banner's clinical listing of possibilities, particularly the last. Clint began to punch in queries to his console while Natasha started a slow curve to retrace their path.
As the plane started to pitch eastward, Tony joined his teammates in the cockpit area. "Relax! JARVIS tied into some satellites. Unless it's a teeny-tiny alien invasion, we don't have anything to worry about. There's nothing showing up underwater on any of the real-time scans of the area beyond the size of a basketball. And given that there are probably as many shipwrecks here as boutiques on Fifth Avenue, I think we're pretty safe with those statistics."
JARVIS's voice issued from the jet's speakers. "Mr. Stark is correct. A survey of military and civilian data would rule out any threat of the type that Dr. Banner posited." One screen to Clint's right flashed with a series of reassuringly normal satellite images.
The human aspect of the Hulk peered at the images and then raised his hands in innocent repudiation. "Like I said, I'm no specialist in geophysics. I suspect we just got to experience the mysteries of Mother Nature on that fly-through."
From the rear of the plane, Steve Rogers stepped forward to sternly regard his team members. "Colonel Fury would like to know why we're off the flight plan. Apparently the pilot and co-pilot aren't answering any hails from headquarters."
Clint and Natasha eyed him blandly. "The magnetic anomaly we flew over caused a slight instrument malfunction," Natasha finally explained. "We considered turning around to explore further but JARVIS investigated and we've concluded there was no threat."
Captain America leaned against the jet's curved side. "So, we're back on course then? Would someone like to get back in touch with the colonel and let them know so that we look a bit less like rudderless greenhorns?"
Natasha rolled her eyes but was already adjusting their course as Hawkeye thumbed a button on his headset and began to soothe their director's frayed nerves.
The staccato knock on her lab door was insistent and annoying. Jane frowned as she looked up from the calculations she was reviewing, wondering who'd be banging at her lab door this late on a Friday. Most of the team had called it a night, having been up straight through the night before with the rescues further north. Secure in the knowledge that no one else in the Avengers headquarters was likely to wander by the research sector, she'd let herself get lost in her studies. Now she started with a touch of guilt, wondering if she'd been ignoring a visitor. Given the rapid rhythm and high intensity of the banging, it sure seemed so.
She uncurled herself from the ball she'd wrapped herself into as she flipped through pages of print-outs and scribbled diagrams in her ever-present notebook. One foot was almost asleep and Jane lurched the first few steps as she stumbled toward the door.
"Darcy!" Jane's surprise was evident as she stood, slack-jawed for a moment, barring the threshold before which Darcy bounced impatiently.
"Yeah, it's me," her former intern said, "now let me in before Agent Scary comes along and threatens the integrity of my iPod again."
Jane belatedly stepped aside so that Darcy could enter the lab. "I'm sure that Agent Coulson's off duty by now. But what are you doing here? I thought you were just going to do some research for me down at the U-"
"Bag that," Darcy answered, dropping her hefty satchel on the floor beside the lounger she appropriated. "It's study week and Erik got the SHIELD guys to fly me up, saying that I'd be of more use here than there."
She scrunched her nose thoughtfully. "Or maybe that should be there instead of here. Oh, god, I'm turning into a post-modernist, aren't I? Or maybe just a seriously sleep-deprived mess. Senior year is kicking my butt."
Jane laid a reassuring hand on Darcy's hunched shoulder. "It's okay. I was just about to call it a night. Let's get you down to the apartment and you can sleep for a week or at least a weekend."
While Jane tidied her papers and picked up her notebook, Darcy slowly rolled off the lounger and hauled her bag back over her shoulder. "Lead on. You know, I haven't seen your place yet. I hope it's better than the trailer! At the very least, it'd better have more room. This place could swallow a dozen mansions and still have room for more."
"It's big enough and there's even a guest room," Jane said and headed to the door with Darcy close behind her. The two women stopped at the exit while Jane turned off the lights and then indicated, with a beckoning flick of her fingers, that Darcy should turn left and follow her to the dimly-lit elevator bank just down the hall.
They paused in front of the elevator and Jane pushed the 'Up' button. Then the two waited for it to arrive and whisk them up to the residential floor. Darcy yawned and pushed her glasses up her nose with one finger. "I got some good information out of that book that Erik gave me, you know," she said.
Jane quelled the rush of excitement that fired through her at Darcy's words. It was late and the younger woman was clearly exhausted. "That's good," Jane managed decorously, leading the way into the elevator as the doors slid smoothly open after a sprightly chime. "We'll talk about it after you've gotten some sleep."
Darcy blinked widely, trying to feign alertness. Her efforts foundered as she let loose with another ear-splitting yawn. "Okay," she said. "I had the SHIELD guys take my suitcase to your place. It's got Erik's book and some others I found in the library."
"Later," Jane reiterated. Shepherding Darcy into their suite, she got her younger friend settled, bid her goodnight with a heartfelt hug and then went into her own bedroom. Depositing her notebook on the nightstand beside their large, empty bed, Jane felt Thor's absence acutely. She stretched one hand out to stroke the smooth coverlet draped across the side of the bed he normally occupied. After a long moment, she forced herself to her feet and off to the bathroom to wash her face, brush her teeth and then change for bed.
One part of her wanted to do nothing more than run into Darcy's room and start pumping the no-doubt sleeping woman for details about what she'd found in her readings. But Jane had learned some modicum of wisdom about pushing others too hard in the long search for a way to restore the Bifrost after Thor had severed the bridge in Asgard. She sat on her hands in her lonely bed until the urge had passed, then curled herself up around Thor's pillow as she willed herself to sleep.
Chapter Four
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