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*****
"Of course! He absolutely loves his hammer, has a head of blonde hair, and though he looks incredibly imposing, his brain is actually a bit lacking!"
"Yes, that's him!"
Hearing Fini's description, Jane Foster blurted out the confirmation.
The moment the words left her mouth, she felt a bit embarrassed, but excitement quickly overrode her self-consciousness. Grabbing Fini's arm, she asked eagerly, "Where is he right now? Did he send you to find me?"
"I don't think this is the best place for a conversation," Fini replied, shrugging his shoulders as he gestured to the growing number of curious stares from the surrounding students.
---
"Follow me!"
Jane noticed the onlookers as well. She immediately led Fini away from the classroom and guided him to a secluded, quiet corner of the campus.
Unable to contain her anxiety any longer, she asked, "Who are you? And where exactly is Thor right now?"
"My name is Fini Halsey, a sorcerer of Earth. As for Thor, he was in Vanaheim not too long ago, and by now, he has probably returned to Asgard."
Fini introduced himself plainly, leaving Jane staring at him in a bit of a daze.
"A sorcerer!?"
Seeing Jane knit her brows with a look of profound skepticism and bewilderment, Fini sighed. He tried a different angle: "You should at least be familiar with the Silver Knight, right?"
"You're the Silver Knight!?"
This time, Jane was genuinely shocked. There were very few people left on Earth who hadn't heard of Fini's alter ego.
"Even though my actual profession is a sorcerer, that is indeed what a lot of people on Earth call me," Fini nodded, confirming her suspicion.
Despite her shock at learning his identity, Jane wasn't a die-hard fan like Helen Cho or Shuri, so she didn't press him for details about his heroics. Her focus swiftly shifted back to what mattered most to her—Thor.
"How do you know Thor? Did he ask you to come look for me?"
"If we don't count the battle back in New York, we actually became friends quite recently when I visited Asgard as a guest. And yes, you could say he requested this," Fini said, reflecting on the encounter.
Technically, Fini had made the promise while chest-thumping drunk, but if Thor hadn't been weeping and pouring his heart out over his long-distance relationship woes, Fini wouldn't have bothered taking on the task.
---
"Then why didn't he come himself?" Jane frowned. She was not a fragile, helpless woman; if she were, she wouldn't have achieved what she had in her scientific career.
"There are a lot of moving parts to that question."
Fini spotted a nearby bench and led Jane over to sit down. He then gave her a brief, simplified summary of what had happened—how Loki had destroyed the Bifrost after Thor was exiled back to Asgard, which subsequently plunged the Nine Realms into a state of chaotic warfare.
Listening to Fini's explanation, Jane could somewhat understand why Thor had been absent for so long. However, she quickly spotted a flaw in the timeline.
"But isn't the Bifrost already repaired by now? Besides, he clearly managed to come to New York a while ago!"
"The reasons behind that are even more complicated," Fini sighed, momentarily debating whether he should expose the raw reality to her.
Noticing Fini's hesitant expression, Jane's chest tightened with sudden anxiety. "What reason?"
Instead of answering directly, Fini countered with a question of his own: "Do you know what the average lifespan of an Asgardian is?"
"I heard it from Thor himself. He mentioned they live for at least five thousand years," Jane replied immediately, recalling her past conversations with the thunder god. She then looked at Fini with a confused frown, not understanding why he was bringing this up now.
"Then you should also know that Thor is actually over a thousand years old right now, yet he views himself as having just reached adulthood. Do you think a normal human on Earth would look at time the same way?"
Jane began to grasp Fini's underlying meaning. Because of their entirely different environments and species, their fundamental perceptions of time were entirely mismatched. To her, a couple of years felt like an agonizingly long separation, but to Thor, that same amount of time might feel like the blink of an eye.
In truth, as so much time passed without a word, Jane hadn't completely ignored the issue of their differing lifespans. However, the blindness of love had driven her to consciously suppress those doubts. After all, when looking at the hard facts, she and Thor had only actually spent a handful of days together.
Seeing Jane fall into a heavy silence, Fini sighed once more. "But that's really just one part of it. There are other factors at play that aren't my place to talk about. It's better if he explains those to you himself in the future."
Hearing this, Jane took a deep breath, her eyes steadying as she asked in a quiet tone, "So, did he have a specific reason for asking you to come see me this time?"
Looking at her stoic demeanor, Fini worried that his reality check might accidentally break the couple up prematurely.
He scrambled to fix it, adding, "Actually, Thor misses you terribly. Every single time he comes back from quelling a rebellion, the very first thing he does is ask Heimdall to check on how you're doing."
"Then why doesn't he just come down and see for himself!" Jane looked at Fini, her calm expression veering into a territory that was somewhat concerning.
"Ahem, well, you know what his personality is like. I already chewed him out over this exact issue. My visit this time was a personal favor to him, mostly to serve as an advance notice."
Jane didn't say anything more. She simply stared out into the distance, her gaze drifting into a vacant daydream.
---
Seeing her spacing out, Fini didn't dare push the topic of Thor any further. He quickly changed the subject, asking, "I recall you being close friends with Erik Selvig. How is he doing these days?"
"We haven't been in touch for quite a while," Jane replied, snapping out of her thoughts to look closely at Fini. She had been so consumed by thoughts of Thor that she hadn't paid much attention to Fini's presence. Now that she thought about it, the person sitting right in front of her was one of the most enigmatic figures on the planet.
Feeling a bit awkward under her sudden scrutiny, Fini pressed on with his questions. "I remember you used to have an intern assistant as well. Where is she?"
"She graduated from working under me a long time ago, too."
Jane suddenly realized that ever since she had crossed paths with Thor, her personal and social life seemed to have steadily deteriorated.
"Uh..."
Fini felt a wave of awkwardness wash over him, suddenly at a loss for words. His primary motive for tracking down Jane wasn't driven by any grand agenda; he simply wanted to introduce himself ahead of time and lay some groundwork for future interactions.
In the original timeline, Jane stumbling upon the Reality Stone had been a massive stroke of cosmic coincidence. Fini was terrified that if he interfered too much right now, it might cause a butterfly effect that would prevent her from discovering that specific dimensional anomaly, causing him to miss out on the Aether entirely. Trying to track down the Reality Stone without that anchor would be infinitely more difficult.
Seeing Jane drifting back into her own thoughts, Fini decided it was time to wrap up the conversation.
"If you don't mind, let's exchange contact information. If you ever run into any major trouble, you can always reach out to me for help."
"Oh, oh, right, sure!" Jane blinked, offering an apologetic glance before pulling out her phone and reciting her number.
---
"Alright then, I have some other matters to attend to, so I'll take my leave!"
With the phone number secured, Fini prepared to depart. Before walking away, he offered one last piece of reassurance. "Thor really does miss you. I truly believe he'll come down to see you sooner rather than face your wrath."
The attempt at comfort only managed to elicit a forced, strained smile from Jane, her eyes clouded with complex emotions.
After parting ways with Jane, Fini returned home, only to find himself sinking right back into boredom. Just as he was debating whether to go track down his parents and Skye, his phone began to vibrate with an incoming call from an unknown number.
Glancing at the screen, Fini curled his lip in amusement. Out of all the people in his contact list, there was only one person capable of overriding system protocols to flash an unknown ID like this. Displaying it as a hidden number was functionally no different from putting his actual name on the caller ID.
He pressed answer and brought the phone to his ear. Predictably, a familiar voice echoed from the receiver: "When did you get back?"
"Just a few days ago. What's on your mind?"
Hearing Nick Fury's gruff voice on the other end, Fini's mind raced as he began plotting the best way to broach the delicate subject of Hydra's infiltration.
(End of Chapter)