Chapter Text
When Jane talks about London, it varies. Her co-researchers get stories about the pub culture and the requisite “our-lab-is-better-than-their-lab” exaggerations. Eric hears about Darcy and how much Jane misses her, and the near constant rain and how little Jane misses that. The series of bad first dates, none of which seem to transition past that, hear about how lucky she was, what a wonderful opportunity, absolutely you should totally go if you get a chance. Her therapist listens to her fractured recitations about Thor and Frigga and how survivor guilt should have the decency to stay within the Odinson family. Each and every one of them responds appropriately, whether with smiles or head-shaking bewilderment or kind words of affirmation, and Jane appreciates it immensely.
When Jane talks about London, she tells herself that she’s telling the whole story. Self-deception is one of her strong suits.
Any yet.
More often that she’d admit, she dreams about London. And in her dreams, there are no smiles or affirmations, kind or otherwise. In her dreams, there are no stories either. She dreams in images, impressions. The smell of pencil shavings. The sound of glass breaking. A cool hand gripped hard on her hip. A grinning mouth pressed against her neck.
At first when she wakes from these, she’s confused by her room, the absence of rain pattering against the window, the pre-dawn heat a promise of another white-hot day in Puente Antiguo. If she keeps her eyes closed, she could be back in her dingy student flat, Darcy shouting back at BBC Radio 3 in the kitchen, cupboards rattling in the search for instant coffee. If she keeps them closed, she can almost smell him on her skin.
Months pass, then seasons. Then it’s been a year and London is more memory than fact. Some days Jane thinks it’s entirely possible everything from that semester happened to someone else. It’s like a story someone told her that she doesn’t quite believe. Her days are filled with data, collecting and compiling, and her nights, as always, are filled with stars. She’s happy here, in the desert, thousands of miles from the person who stood in an airport security line and thought, only a fool would stay, and thought, you said it out loud and ruined everything, and thought, maybe.
Jane Foster is a scientist, and what is science but humanity grasping at certainty with sticky fingers, the endless pursuit of theorem over theory, the bottomless desire to be sure of something.
Jane Foster is a scientist. And when she dreams of London, that’s the only thing she’s sure of.