#fostersonweek2019

Years later, he marries Jane in the desert where they met. The marks of the Bifrost have long since blown away by the sharp winds, but it still feels as close to his first home as he can get. It’s a small wedding, made up of the few friends they have plus Jane’s mom and officiated by a local Native American minister.

She throws her arms around his neck when they are proclaimed man and wife, she kisses him like he is her anchor, and he wonders how he ever thought he’d been in love before. He dips her dramatically, and she giggles against his lips. Their small audience applauds, Darcy wolf whistles, and Thor would never have thought he could ever be satisfied, could be happy, with something so small and humble, but it’s perfect, it’s wonderful, and he gets to call Jane Foster his wife.

He takes her last name--she never asked him to, but it seems apt, to Thor, to do it. He is no longer Thor Odinson. The name no longer fits him. His father is gone; his last action had been to cast his son out. It seemed almost appropriate, honorable even, to respect that last ruling by giving up his name. On Midgard, he is someone new. He isn’t the crown prince, he is simply a man. (A man who loves a woman more than life itself.) A new identity, a new life, a new beginning.

And so they begin life as Mr. and Dr. Thor and Jane Foster.

(Distantly, Thor hopes Heimdall has told his mother that her son has happily wed.)

(Distantly, Thor hopes his father would’ve been proud of the small life he is building.)

(And a small life--)

(It doesn’t seem so bad now.)

THEN

SHIELD had left several months after Thor’s arrival. Packed up the facility after it became clear nothing was going to move Mjolnir, and no new data would be gathered from it. Coulson left them a business card, which Thor talked Jane out of throwing away outright. (He knows that having SHIELD on their side might prove useful in the future, even if Jane continues to grumble about jack-booted stormtroopers stealing her life’s work.)

After almost a year, the agent following them finally left too.

Jane rebuilt, Thor helping where he was able, happy to simply be around her. Her energy was unlike anyone he’s ever known, vibrant and frenetic and with an unbridled intelligence that he thought his brother would’ve liked.

Their first kiss was on the roof, late at night with a fire in front of them, Thor pointing out where his planet would be.

“The light from my sun hasn’t reached us yet,” he had said.

“It might in about two thousand more years, if my estimates were right about distance,” Jane had replied.

She’d been looking up, using her hand like a galactic wayfinder of old to measure the stars. The fire glowed orange on her skin, illuminating her eyes like coals. She’s a supernova of her own making, and he’d always known there was something special about her, but in that moment, he’d been struck not just by her beauty in the gentle slope of her nose and cheekbones, but the effortless way she’d folded him into her life, the way she accepted his story--she’d run an estimate on distance because he’d asked her to in a fierce bout of homesickness. (And even if the answer wasn’t great, it was an answer, and then she’d reached out and held his hand and asked him to tell her about Asgard.)

When he kissed her on the rooftop, she didn’t seem surprised--she just leaned into him and let the embers between them spark into flames.

NOW

“It’s a letter from SHIELD.”

“Oh?”

“They want you to advise on a quote ‘top secret project of high scientific importance’ unquote.”

Jane snorts. “They can eat my shorts. It set my research back months to rebuild all my equipment they stole.”

“Maybe you should read the letter,” Thor offers.

Jane waves him off, returning to the small piece of equipment she’s slowly soldering together. “Don’t need to.”

“Shouldn’t you be wearing a mask?” he asks, concerned. “Those fumes can’t be good for the baby.”

She sits up a bit. “It’s only a bit of copper. But I’ll wear one if it makes you feel better.”

“It will.”

Jane gives him a small smirk and a wink as she stands from her station. She’s not showing much yet--she’s just barely out of the first trimester, but Thor can’t help but glance at her belly, at their little miracle.

He looks back to the letter. When Jane returns, mask in place, he says, “How much did you say the university was paying you for your research position?”

Her snort is even more incredulous than before. “Not enough.”

Thor glances down at the letter in his hand, and counts out the zeros after SHIELD’s base salary for the offered ‘long term advisory and research position.’

“I do think you should read this.”

She sighs, and holds out her free hand without looking up.

He can tell exactly when she reaches the “we hope this to be fair and adequate compensation for the services you will provide” portion of the letter based on her eyebrows jumping straight up and the soft “Holy shit,” falling out of her mouth.

“We did need to get out of the one bedroom before the little one makes an appearance,” Thor offers.

“Shit,” Jane says again. “We could forget that shitty two bedroom place we were looking at in Santa Fe.” It’s a soft comment, more of an idle observation than a commitment.

“So you’ll call them?”

“I’ll think about it.”

(She calls them that night, and is on a plane for an interview within 36 hours.)

THEN

In the early days of their courtship, he’d tried every job available to him. He’d worked construction, waited tables at Izzy’s, bartended, answered phones at the sheriff’s office, and sold secondhand furniture. In truth, he did not particularly hate any of these jobs--they just hardly seemed worthwhile to do for the rest of his life.

He’d been used to being significant in a way that being a human man couldn’t quite match. Going from galactically known prince and military leader of a planetary superpower to a small town bartender was a jarring transition, to say the least.

The only place he’d found where that feeling of insignificance faded was at Jane’s side. He’d never had an eye for the technicalities of magic, but he remembered enough from his schooling to be able to help her interpret some of what she was looking at; she was certainly clever enough to fill any gaps in his own knowledge.

“I could use another intern,” Jane had mused one day. Darcy had gone back to Culver after her semester with Jane had finished with six college credits under her belt and a promise to stay in touch.

(“How do you feel about student-teacher relationships?” he’d asked cheekily later on.)

(She’d slapped his shoulder, but given her lips on his not a moment later, he supposed that was his answer.)

NOW

Their new home is lovely. Jane had been added to SHIELD’s payroll two months ago, and they’d collected enough savings to put down a sizable down payment on a nice three bedroom house about a twenty minute drive from SHIELD’s base.

She still hasn’t managed to talk SHIELD into letting her bring him with her.

“They’re fishing for information about you, I know they are. They keep saying shit like ‘oh, your research assistant hasn’t cleared our background checks, but if you help us fill in the gaps, we can do something for you.’ Pffft. Like I’m going to fall for that.”

“And I’m only the research assistant?” he asks from his place by the stove, tossing his chopped bell peppers into the frying pan with the onions.

Jane rolls her eyes and plops down at the kitchen table. “Right? It’s not like they don’t know we’re married.”

“They literally helped me get my driver’s license that lists my name.”

She gives him a helpless shrug. “They have a lot of questions about where you come from.”

“Perhaps we tell them everything. Phil Coulson isn’t so bad, despite what you think.”

Jane growls. “Why you insist on being friends with him I’ll never understand.”

Thor shrugs and bends to check his roast in the oven. “He is a nice fellow.”

“A nice fellow who stole all my research.”

Their doorbell rings. Thor moves to answer it, but Jane flaps a hand at him. “No, no, I’ve got it. You’ve got dinner going.” She slides up behind him and hugs him around the waist, kissing his shoulder blade before stepping away. “Love you. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he answers as she leaves the kitchen. He takes two plates from the cupboard and wonders who could be at their door. He has invited Coulson for dinner in the past (hoping that his wife would bury the hatchet once she got to know him), but he hardly seems like the type to show up if he hasn’t informed the hosts of his arrival.

He’s in the midst of carrying the plates to the table when Fandral, Sif, Hogun and Volstagg walk into his kitchen.

The plates slip right out of his fingers and smash against the tile floor.

(Once the fragments are cleaned up, his friends tell him what has transpired on Asgard in his years of absence. Loki lied, his father was never dead, and a few months ago emerged from the Odinsleep. Loki disappeared soon after, and they’ve heard disturbing rumblings about Loki partnering with the Mad Titan.)

(“We have reliable sources saying he’s hunting for something called the Tesseract,” Sif says.)

(“This Tesseract,” Jane says, “wouldn’t happen to be like… a small-ish, blue, glowing cube would it?”)

(“Yes, that exactly,” Sif says, surprised.)

(Jane winces. “I think I know where you can find it.”)

THEN

Jane liked to cuddle. Especially when she was sated and sleepy, her limbs would tangle around him like an affectionate octopus. It was one of those nights when she asked him, “Would you go back?”

“Hm?” he asked, mind addled by sex and the late hour.

“If you got the chance to go back to Asgard, be who you used to be. Would you take it?”

“I doubt I’ll ever get that chance.”

“Humor me,” she said, insistent in a way that tells him this is far more important to her than she’s willing to explicitly vocalize.

He stared at the ceiling in silence for a long moment, considering his answer, because she deserves a fully honest one.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “I don’t think I could ever be who I used to be. I haven’t used magic in so many years, I feel like I can’t properly imagine it anymore.” He shifted to look at her. Her head was on his chest, and she steadily met his gaze, brown eyes wide and accepting. “The only way I can imagine going back is if I go back with you,” he said.

(Not long after that, they said I love you for the first time.)

(A half a year after that, Thor asked her to become his wife.)

(Inscribed on the inside of their wedding bands is the phrase Home is wherever you are.)

BREAK

When Jane shows up to the SHIELD base with her husband plus four honest-to-goodness Viking warriors at her back and requests to speak with Agent Coulson the agent on gate duty scrambles to fulfill her request.

While Jane handles the particulars of getting several guests in past security, his friends encircle him, staring at him like he’s a headless banshee. “What?” he asks.

“You’re married,” Hogan states, as though it’s obvious.

“I am.”

“And you’re expecting a child,” Sif says.

“Is there a point to stating the obvious?”

They all look at each other, and then back at him as though he is missing the obvious.

“The only one who was less likely to settle down was me,” Fandral says, an emphatic hand placed over his chest.

Thor shrugs. “I’ve changed.” He looks past them, to where Jane is emphatically gesturing at the agent who is clearly not moving fast enough in getting her what she wants and smiles. “She is everything I never knew I needed in a package I never expected.”

“I think it’s a good change,” Volstagg says proudly. “Becoming a father does tend to mature someone quite rapidly.” He steps forward to give Thor a hearty slap on the shoulder. Forgetting that his friend is no longer Aesir, the gesture nearly dislocates the joint and Thor struggles to stay on his feet.

“This new Thor, I like him!” Volstagg crows.

(The other three don’t look entirely convinced yet, but seem more or less willing to accept him as he is now.)

(Thor loves his friends--he knows them as well as anyone, and thinks that they will come to understand his new life.)

(He knows they want to ask if he will come home.)

(He knows what he will answer.)

THEN

“You don’t have any strong feeling about flower arrangements for the wedding, do you?” Thor asked.

Jane looked up from the book she was reading with a quizzical look on her face. “Uh, no? We’re getting married out in the middle of the desert.” She pauses. “Why? Do you?”

Thor had been idly browsing online and-- “This flower,” he had turned the screen to Jane and she leaned forward. “What is it called?”

“I think it’s a calla lily?” She squinted a little. “Definitely calla lily. They’re a pretty popular wedding flower.”

Thor hummed softly in contemplation. “Do you like them?” he asked.

“They’re pretty and they smell nice, so I guess.”

Thor went quiet for a moment, his eyes unseeing, and Jane bookmarked her book and set it aside. She scooted into his side on the couch and seemed to wake him from whatever spell he’d been under.

“Where did you go?” she asked.

“Just remembering,” he answered. “My mother liked to raise flowers. The palace gardens were almost entirely her handiwork. She was a talented sorceress, so she could’ve easily used her magic to make her garden as beautiful as it was, but she never did. She told me that sometimes the easiest thing isn’t the right thing.” He chuckled a bit at that. “She had lots of gardening life wisdom for us.

“Anyway, her favorite flower was the Queth Blossom. They look almost just like these,” he said.

“Then let’s get them for the wedding--I changed my mind, I have a very strong opinion about flower arrangements and I think they should be calla lilies.” Jane had said; he still remembers the way his heart leapt, and then melted, at her simple declaration. The way she simply said of course to something to remember his mother by. The way she could make him happy by just existing, by just being who she is.

(Jane would eventually tell everyone at the wedding who would listen that the flower arrangements were done in memory of his mother.)

(He loves her.)

NOW

The Tesseract is underwhelming at first, a shiny bauble like millions of others across the universe. Then it opens a portal and Loki emerges from the other side.

Underwhelmed is suddenly the least of Thor’s emotions.

Before Loki can stand and take in the room, Thor shoves Jane under a desk, praying to any deity that will listen that he doesn’t notice her. He can’t bring himself to hide with her. He has to speak to his brother, he has to know what--

“Loki!” Sif shouts.

Loki looks surprised, his attention pulled towards where the Warriors stand in formation with the SHIELD agents who approached the portal.

“Sir, please put down the spear,” calls out Fury.

A blast from the weapon takes down three agents before Thor can say anything.

“Loki! Stop!” Thor shouts, running from his meager cover behind the desk.

Loki knocks back the last of his opponents, downing even Sif and the Warriors with a power that is absolutely beyond anything he knew Loki possessed.

Loki’s eyes find Thor, and Thor barely recognizes the unhinged look in his eye.

“What happened to you?” Thor asks, a soft and genuine query because his brother looks unwell; gaunt, tired, and plain rabid.

Loki doesn’t answer immediately, just stalks forward like a predator.

“I started to see clearly for the first time in my life.”

There are other words, calmly spoken about a world made free from freedom, then Loki drops the visage Thor knows, his skin goes blue and his eyes go red and oh.

(Oh, Loki.)

Thor refuses to falter under the weight of this new truth that he can feel in his bones. He is not mine in blood, but he is my brother. “We were raised together, we played together, we fought together. Do you remember none of that?” Thor asks.

“I remember a shadow,” Loki says softly, stepping closer, skin still blue. “Living in the shade of your greatness.” He laughs. “And who could blame anyone for treating the Frost Giant like an invader who does not belong in his own home?

“And now you are but a man.” He snorts. “A pathetic, human man who can be killed just as easily as everyone else in this room.”

“Spare them,” Thor says. “If you want to take my life as recompense, then--”

(Just his small life. Just his small life with his wife, who he loves, and his unborn child, who he would do anything for. Just his one small life as Thor Foster seems--it seems too big to give up. His heart screams at the unfairness of it all.)

(It is too much to give, it is too much to lose.)

(But if he doesn’t offer to lose it, then everyone will die. He knows that.)

(There’s no such thing as just a small life, Thor knows in that moment. No life in this room is any smaller or bigger than his.)

(He feels like he wants to cry, but he will do it.)

Loki says, “Oh, but I could do that anyway. Besides,” a poisonous grin seeps over his face as he glances over Thor’s shoulder. “It looks like your wife is trying to make trouble for me.”

The floor drops out from under Thor as he looks back to see Jane typing furiously on the control unit that directly affects the Tesseract’s behavior. It’s sparking, just like it did when it opened to bring Loki here, and his brilliant wife is this close to being able to send him away--

Loki sends Thor into a wall with a flick of his fingers. Dazed, possibly concussed, but otherwise unhurt, Thor tries to stand, feels a scream inching out of his throat as he watches Loki magically drag Jane from behind the station.

Thor has never understood what made him worthy of Mjolnir in the first place.

He’d first picked it up in his youth, when he’d been emotional and his magic had been out of control-- Mjolnir had been a focusing point, something to channel himself through, something that felt like an extension of his connection to a storm. He’d been so busy trying to be the best warrior Asgard had ever seen, he’d never stopped to really think about what being worthy meant.

He learns what worthiness means in the space of a heartbeat.

He learns what it means the instant Loki turns his sight on Jane.

He reaches out, instinct, need, his magic reawakening, he does not know.

Mjolnir answers.

The hammer rips through the domed ceiling above them, and flies straight to his hand. The storm fills him once more and it’s only now that he has it back that he can feel the ache of its absence.

Loki, for the first time since he stepped into the room, looks scared.

Jane just grins.

(Later, when she gets the chance to examine the armor up close, she asks, “Is this how you normally looked?”)

(He answers, “More or less.”)

(She smiles like a woman who is absolutely going to ask him to wear his armor in bed later.)

“I’m on it.” Jane moved to take the phone and open the camera app. “Do you guys want video or photo?”

“We can do video?” the second girl asked eagerly.

“Of course you can. I’m guessing you want ‘let’s go, lesbians?’” Ever since Darcy had shown Thor Billy on the Streets, he’d latched onto that phrase, and Jane had grown fond of it. If nothing else, he’d had fun at Pride events.

“You would really do that?” the first girl asked in amazement, and Jane hit record just before Thor gave the answer that he’d gotten down to an art at this point.

“I am Thor, God of Thunder and Lesbians, protector of the Sapphics, of course I would do that. Now, look at the camera, and let’s go, lesbians—”

“Let’s go!” the girls finished the shout with him before bursting into giggles and Jane ended the video, passing the phone back.

“Actually, do you mind taking a picture, Dr. Foster?” the second girl asked, suddenly timid and Jane blinked in surprise.

“Wait, for real?”

“Yeah, I, um,” the girl blushes and pulls a thick stack of papers, holding them out to Jane. “I wrote one of my term papers about you. Would you mind signing this draft too? Please?”

“I mean… I’m…” Jane sputtered a little, trying to make her brain work through her shock at someone actually wanting her autograph.

“Give her a moment, she’s unused to this sort of attention,” Thor chuckled as he took the phone from the girl and retrieved a pen from his pocket. “But that is part of why I love her.”

Oh, my god, THOR. Jane cleared her throat as she managed to take the pen and look at the girl. “What’s your name?”

“Roz.”

“Roz,” Jane repeated, scribbling her name on the front page of the paper, along with ‘Roz, keep aiming for the stars.’ “This is… really gratifying, thank you.”

“No, thank you,” Roz said, hugging the paper to her chest.

“Jane, look at me,” Thor coached. “Both of you say Nobel.”

“Nobel!” Roz said more enthusiastically than Jane, who was still kind of processing everything, but managed to smile. As Thor took the picture, then gave the phone back to the two girls with one last energetic hug, Jane took the moment to collect herself.

“They were delightful,” Thor said cheerfully as they resumed walking.

“Yeah, they were.” She looked up at him. “But was it your plan to tell two complete strangers that you loved me before you told me?”

“Jane Foster, if you didn’t know how deeply I loved you before this moment, I have utterly failed as a boyfriend.”

“I mean, the issue could just as easily be my performance as a girlfriend.”

“Nonsense,” he chuckled, bending down to kiss her forehead.

“Oh, yeah, it’s definitely my fault,” she laughed. “But for the record, I love you too.”

“I know,” he grinned.

“Oh, my god, do not Solo me!”

“You should not have shown me the movies.”

“I hate you so much right now.”

“No,” he paused to brush back her hair with a smile. “No, you don’t.”