Unexpected

Interviews and Reports

Unlike the interviews I ran after the Mandarin Incident with Pepper, Tony, and Rhodey, which had each been run separately, it seemed that Selvig, Jane, and Darcy all wanted to run it as a group. I sat there with my laptop open to several pages with all three of them sitting around the kitchen table with me. I held my hands over my laptop keyboard ready to start typing.

Jane spoke up first, "Well, if you want to start at the beginning, I suppose it all started with Selvig. He called me about some sort of phenomenon that he was observing, which we now know was the beginning of the Convergence, so I pa ked up Darcy and we moved over here to study with him, but then Selvig sort of went off the charts over the last month or so and, well, before I came here to help Selvig I'd been searching for evidence of more Einstein Rosen bridges... trying to look for Thor to return."

"And your relationship to Thor?" I asked, hating to interrupt her so soon into her side of the story, but I needed it for the report and to clarify my own understanding of her and Thor.

"It's complicated." She sighed, "But I was discouraged because he'd disappeared about two years ago or so, promising to return, then he reappeared for a hot second last year in New York only to disappear once more, so I really wasn't interested in searching the skies for a while if there was nothing to find..."

I could understand where she was coming from. How long had I myself been discouraged by my distance from Loki, the seeming impossibility of us ever being together again, and living day to day unsure if one of his illusions would pop up or not? I wondered for a second if this was the curse of Midguar- er, human women falling in love with the princes of Asgard, to wait and wonder like the women whose husbands would go off to sea on dangerous fishing trips or on long expeditions, wondering if they would ever truly return.

This line of thought led me back to the question aching in my heart. Where was Loki? Why had he disappeared in the night? Had it been his choice to leave me? Was he in trouble? Well, he always seemed to be elbows deep in trouble of some kind... but that was beside the point. Was I supposed to wait for Loki again, waiting for some explanation? Would he come back to me? Would I have to go back to waiting whole months only to receive a holographic stand-in once again? Could I bear that? Could I bear this kind of mental torture of simply not knowing? Could I bear this intense worry and confusion that plagued me?

I mentally shook myself, focusing back in on Jane's words. "That is until Darcy came to me with a piece of my equipment that had detected anomalies-"

"Yeah, I interrupted her date." Darcy chimed in almost proudly.

"So you'd truly given up on Thor?" I breathed, my tone sad and curious at the same time.

Jane's eyes widened and I noticed a blush had risen on her cheeks, "No... it's just- uh, look. This report isn't about my love life."

"I know. I apologize if I was prying." I sighed, blushing a bit. I hadn't realized that my sighed question had been loud enough for her to hear and now I was embarrassed, "Uh, so what happened next?"

Jane went on to describe her, Darcy, and the Ian fellow all going to this warehouse area where they'd seen some of the effects of the Convergence's thinning of the dimensions. She then explained how she'd somehow slipped between earth and the place where the Aether had been hidden millennia ago by Thor's grandfather, Bor. She then described her return and how Thor had reappeared having noticed through the eyes of Heimdal apparently that she'd disappeared. Apparently Thor had taken her to Asgard with him after that to try to heal her, but then the Dark Elves had attacked, leading to the death of Frigga that Jane had witnessed and to her funeral. She'd then been put under house arrest in the palace until Lady Sif had broken her out as a part of Thor's plan with Sif, the Warriors Three, and Loki.