For a love of the stars

Tony scratched his jaw absently as she spoke, picking up his glass of juice to take a sip. “It’s unsurprising, really. Given your choice of company.” He commented, setting it down on the bar as he turned his head to watch her make the pretend horns with her fingers. he shook his head at her question, though, tapping a finger against his glass.

    Jane didn't know how to feel about the idea of him getting into contact with her again. After everything that had happened, and what he did to Erik, what he did in New York. She just wanted to hate him. To throw him out of her life and be the good person and do the right thing. But she remembered the man she had met in New Mexico all too keenly. How lost and hurt he had been.

Tony’s lips lifted upwards when he felt her fingers curling into the back of his jacket so that she could keep hold of him and move through the crowd behind him, and easily picked his way through the people, giving a brief nod and hello to a few people he knew along the way.

    Jane settled on a bar stool, arranging her skirts around her legs as she did so. "No," she murmured, not able to meet his gaze. "I guess I sort of have a stigma on me after the S.H..." She glanced around. "Seeecret stuff that happened in New York. With..." She lifted her hands briefly to make two horns above her head with her index fingers. "El Oh Kay Ai."

Put one of these in my askbox to see how my Muse reacts.

"On the contrary—" he tutted, raising a finger in protest. "Miss Lewis is the one who seems fixated on annoying me, with her endless drivel of pop-culture references. It’s hardly any wonder that the mind of the modern man has been transformed so thoroughly to mush.”

    Jane smirked, inwardly amused by the idea of Darcy, who was a genius in her own right, turning all that mind-boggling energy on to Loki. Of course, Jane did not see her own single-minded hyperactivity in regards to science as anything other than normal, so she was slightly unaware of the hypocrisy of that thought. But then Jane sighed as she flopped back down onto her jacket, winced, and then sat up to move a rock out from under her. "Ow." When next she lay down, it was far more carefully.

Loki couldn’t grow comfortable with this landscape.To eyes accustomed to the splendor and opulence of Asgard, Midgard seemed by comparison a dull and barren wasteland, devoid of color and beauty. The desert was nothing but an ugly patch of brown as far as the eye could see, and the sky was no better— a black, inky canopy speckled only with the most pitiful suggestion of stars.

    Jane was wholly unaware of Loki's approach, so lost in the spectacular starscape above her head, and the layout of the universe in her mind. But she heard the scrape of his boots and his pants as he sat down, and her eyes flickered as she returned herself.

Magic and Science

Oh, god. It was like the sun. But not the kind that evoked wonderful rays that sparkled through the trees. The kind that made it hard to see when driving and made you want to turn away from it. A half-invisible curl came from Churchill’s lip, fading almost immediately as he fought through the childish urge to glance away from the young woman. He’d meant what he said— the results he’d found in Jane’s work had been impressive, especially for a student not familiar with the things S.H.I.E.L.D. and S.W.O.R.D. were.

    Employment. The word danced in Jane's mind like fireflies, spelling out the letters to distant chimes. Employment, job security was something academic pursuits never guaranteed. Even with Jane's achievements and scores, she had never been able to score that dream job where she could research to her heart's content.

“It is difficult, when faced with a situation you cannot control, to admit you can do nothing.”