Office Hours, Saturday

[ifwebeworthy]

Don hadn't listened to radio. Don probably should have listened to radio. But, well. It wasn't like he or Thor were expecting any visitors, so he'd had an afternoon of surgery after Thor's class yesterday, and then this morning they'd realized they'd need to hold office hours over the weekend and had to figure out how to make that work.

And now here he was, in his office, trying to catch up on some paperwork while he waited to see if anyone's parents would show up.

(Open office hours are open!

Comments

[if_she_be_worthy]

Neither did Jane, frankly. Look, she had tried to lift the hammer once, in the middle of the night while Thor was asleep. Everyone did it sooner or later. Curiosity was a bitch. She knew she couldn't budge the thing, much less pick it up and wield the power of Thor or at least she couldn't then. But she also knew that the multiverse was vast and contained all sorts of possibilities.

"It's great to see you, too," she said. "All alive and stuff."

[ifwebeworthy]

"It's...complicated," Don said in response to all the questions she wasn't asking. "I--well, I suppose we should start with, I'm not Thor."

[if_she_be_worthy]

Jane just stared at him for a moment, waiting for more, and when she realized it wasn't coming she said, "Yeah, Don. I know that." Had he thought-- "I was there the whole time, you know? I remember--I mean, it got messy for a while there, for sure, but you were always...very different people." She couldn't claim she'd always known when she was talking to Don and when she was talking to Thor, in whichever body they happened to be wearing, but she'd never quite bought that Don had been just Thor with amnesia all along. He'd persisted too strongly for that.

[ifwebeworthy]

"I--oh. Well." Don blinked back the urge to cry for some reason. "That's..." Just give him a second here.

[if_she_be_worthy]

Maybe a slight change of subject? She gestured to his walking stick where it was leaning against the desk. "So that was you?" she asked, because she knew that stick. "I wondered." People had been trying to get Mjolnir out of that field since Asgard fell, and then in a crack of lightning it was just...gone.

[ifwebeworthy]

"I couldn't just leave it there," Don said, his jaw set, anger in his eyes. "I was afraid they'd figure out a way for that thing to pick it up."

[if_she_be_worthy]

Jane shuddered at the mention of the simulacrum walking around wearing Thor's face. "It's been quiet for a while. I'm hoping they came to their senses and destroyed it." Probably not.

[ifwebeworthy]

"Probably not," Don said. "So how have you been? I heard through the grapevine--" Facebook stalking "--that you got married, had a kid?"

[if_she_be_worthy]

"Yes," Jane said, and--well, she'd been worrying this whole time about how much she should tell him, and now she decided, fuck it. "But six months ago I filed for divorce. Keith has our son while proceedings are underway, and I suspect he might end up with custody." She managed to sound calm about it, even though she was anything but calm. That was her kid.

[ifwebeworthy]

"Why? I mean, I'm sure you were a great mom." Six months ago...if Don's math on how time was running in his home universe was right, that would have been...oh. Oh.

[if_she_be_worthy]

"That's when the rumor started going around that you were back," Jane confirmed. "That you were alive. That you were real." Before Don could protest, could tell her she shouldn't blow up her marriage on his behalf, she stood up and started pacing around the small confines of the office. "You don't understand what it was like, Don. I spent all those years with you, then one day they were gone...as if they had never been."

[ifwebeworthy]

"I don't understand?" Don asked, incredulous. "Jane, I had to come back! To a world that had forgotten me!"

[if_she_be_worthy]

"Yes," Jane had to allow. "Yes. All right. That's fair. I don't know what--what happened there." They would have to talk about that. But she did have to get this out first. "There were night I thought I might go insane, when I really questioned if there had ever been a Donald Blake." And here he was, in the flesh. But I'd been exposed to Asgard enough times that I could still feel that you had existed. That you had been here. And that I had loved you." There it was. Do with it what you would. In the moment, Don just bowed his head, unable to keep looking at her when they were both in this much pain. She thought that was fair.

"Which prove that even a god can't just erase what he doesn't like and pretend it was never there. You can try to silence that voice all you want. Sooner or later it always comes back."

[ifwebeworthy]

Don tried not to believe that Odin had done it on purpose. He tried to believe that he hadn't known. He didn't know if he was doing it for Thor's sake, or for his own, so that he didn't have to accept that he'd been murdered on purpose. Somehow it was better if it was just...an unfortunate accident.

Jane clearly didn't believe that, but he did have to make sure she knew, "It was Odin, you know. Not Thor. Thor didn't--he didn't know I was real." He couldn't look at her while he said it, so he looked at his hands, and wondered where that pen had gone.

[if_she_be_worthy]

Jane sat back down and leaned over the desk to squeeze one of his hands. "I know, Don. And it's not--I'm not saying I expect anything. I understand why you didn't reach out to me." Rebuilding your life from the ground up had to be difficult, even when there wasn't the whole SHRA mess going on and you were known to be linked to a god. "I just--couldn't stay in something that was built on bad information."

Don looked up and gave her a weak smile, and she squeezed his hand one more time and sat back. "So. What happened?"

[ifwebeworthy]

"How much time do you have?" Don asked, and when Jane had indicated, wry, that she had cleared her whole weekend, he ran through the whole thing for her: how he and Thor operated, what Thor had done to break Ragnarok, their hopes to resurrect Asgard. When he'd finished, he paused, then asked as delicately as he could, "I know that...a while back Sif's spirit came to reside in you for a time."

[if_she_be_worthy]

In another timeline, Don would handle this poorly enough to get slapped for it, but happily this world was not that one. Instead, Jane sat, thoughtful, for several moments before she said, "I remember what it felt like when Sif's spirit was inside me. It was like...like a great, profound fire." She looked at Don, asking, 'You know?' with her eyes, and he nodded. He knew. It was different, of course, but. He knew. "If it was there now, I'd know. It's not. I'm sorry."

[ifwebeworthy]

"Nothing to be sorry about," Don assured her. "I just had to ask."

[if_she_be_worthy]

"I understand," Jane assured him. "Well. The other me offered to buy me a drink at the bar this evening, and I think I might take her up on that. I have to say, I look good in the armor. Maybe I'll see you there?" Or possibly the other guy, who was less dead than assumed, apparently.

[ifwebeworthy]

"Maybe," Don agreed. "And maybe...the next time I'm in New York, I could take you out for dinner and drinks? We could talk about old times. And maybe some new times."

[if_she_be_worthy]

"I think I'd like that," Jane said as she stood to go. "I'll see you around, Don."

(Some dialogue in this thread taken/adapted from Thor by J. Michael Straczynski, vol. 2.)