Work Text:
The dress she wore out of Asgard stills sits in a crumpled heap in her closet. She cannot bear to look at it. The armor is discarded, sitting in with the metal scraps shoved in one corner of her small room.
Remembering gives rise to some awful, twisted, unceremonious emotions, and Jane would care not to dwell too long on them. She knows those things might unmake her.
The war is won, short-lived thought it might have been. The battle for her however, is lost. Thor returns to Heavens above, bids her fond farewell. In the blinding surge of light and power that takes him away, she swears she sees the funeral boats. Those flickering points of light on dark water…soldiers who died because of her. Jane dives right back into her work after that, with renewed fervor it seems. But she cannot hold her equipment steady. Her hands shake, her eyes fail her. She cannot find it in her to even breathe. The lab is dark. No work gets done.
Days pass, the symptoms cease. It is partially because she denies their presence. Work begins again, and she uses it to define her progress. Jane writes the tremors off as residual stress. “There is nothing wrong.” becomes her lifeline, repeating it to herself almost constantly.
The first time it happens is the worst, by far. Two weeks and a day after the Convergence, the shaking returns. The house had been empty at the time, Heimdall’s eyes turned elsewhere. Nobody sees her collapse; nobody hears her sobbing. All Jane feels is shame. The pyre lights dance in her eyes, and she sees the visions of the world smothered by the Aether play on loop. The reaction lasts for hours, utterly helpless to stop reliving what she has seen.
The second and third attacks are far less severe, happening in the dead cold of the London night. The only detail of which is thankful is how easy it is to conceal her distress from everyone around her. Jane Foster does not weep! The world can fly to pieces around her, but Jane always has a way to fix things, and to carve a path for herself. So why she cannot do it now, when it is most critical, is a mystery to her.
After the third time, Jane loses count of how often they come. Soon, the fear of wondering when the next attack will come interferes with her work. She finds more errors in her work, needing more coffee in the mornings, and sleeping through the day. When Darcy asks after her well-being, Jane finds herself unspeakably angry. She is just fine, and she cannot understand why Darcy would be so concerned! She knows she aggravates Darcy with her vague, contradictory answers. But eventually, the girl leaves her alone. “Good riddance”, she thinks, but she knows she is lying to herself.
Her luck runs out on the first sunny day since the Convergence. It is late morning, and she accidentally cuts her hand with the bread knife. It all happens very suddenly, a regular turnabout defeat. The sight of her own blood is not something that affects Jane. But is not her blood that she sees. It’s the queen’s.
Vaguely, she remembers hearing a clatter in the sink. Darcy is screaming her name, but her voice drowned out by the sound of crashing thunder... The tall, elegant image of Frigga is standing over her and Darcy, the wound over her heart weeping red down the front of her pall gown. Jane hears herself scream; an awful, keening sound that she has a difficult time believing is hers. Or maybe it was just in her head, because Darcy does not seem to react to what Jane hears. The image has fled. But then again, everything is muddled together in the blur of tears. Stars dance across the indistinguishable room, the world slipping dangerously in and out of darkness.
By the time she comes down from the panic, hours have passed. Darcy, bless her heart, manages to move Jane into her room and refuses to leave. Jane cannot find it in herself to care. At some abstract point, Thor arrives. The look in his eyes is the same when he looked upon his dead and dying family members.
“How can that be?” she thinks. “Everything is fine?”