Title: Watchtower
Author: Serena

Summary: When research on the Tesseract begins, SHIELD recruits Jane Foster instead of Eric Selvig to harness the other-worldly artifact. When Loki raids the facility, he takes over the mind of the mortal woman his brother loves. The Avengers with Jane Foster in Eric Selvig's place. Very Thor-centric, heavy Thor/Jane ship, and some Thor/Loki brotherly angst.

Ships: Very Jane/Thor oriented, some minor Tony/Pepper and Natasha/Clint. Some Thor/Loki brotherly angst.

AN1: I was pretty surprised that no one had really done this yet, so I thought I'd take the leap and be the first one. I love Jane and Thor so naturally I was disappointed when we saw none of them in the movie. The picture doesn't count. I was pretty surprised actually when I really thought about it that they had Selvig get 'commandeered' by Loki rather than Jane. My theory was that the movie would've ended up too focused on Thor rather than the Avengers. Gotta give everyone equal screen time despite the fact that every fangirl just wanted to stare at Chris Hemsworth's arms. Thus, this story was born.

AN2: Some of the dialogue is different from the movie because that's how it is with a different character. I tried to preserve as much of the movie as possible, since it was totally epic on its own. Especially Loki's lines. This chapter follows pretty closely to the original script, but it will get different later on. Points of view will change as necessary, but it will remain Thor and Jane-centric. Plus, I wanted to get this chapter up and see if anyone's interested.

AN3: I do not own or am affiliated with Marvel, The Avengers, or any of the like. If I did, I wouldn't have to be writing fanfiction, now would I?

Not till we are completely lost or turned around... do we begin to find ourselves.
~~Henry David Thoreau

A freaking spontaneous event. This was not good. Dr. Jane Foster furiously tried to figure out what went wrong. She'd already told Coulson to begin evacuation a few hours before. "Are we sure there was no power surge?" she asked an assistant. Again.

The laboratory in the deepest level of SHIELD's base of operations smelled of water and mildew. Jane was halfway convinced it was an airplane hangar that was converted into an experimental astrophysics ground zero. The concrete bunker was perfect to shield the cube's distinctive energy signature, and to absorb any errant radiation. It was militaristic, unsuprisingly, and as dank and unwelcoming as it came. It wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a definite upgrade from where she had been. (What the hell was that old building anyway?) And the equipment SHIELD gave her was top of the line. And her paycheck had quite a bump as well. Like, pay-off-all-student-loans-and-have-some-left-over bump in the paycheck.

All the improvements aside, her current situation had her mood lower than the floor she stood on.

"Yes, Dr. Foster. All of our electrical stimulation has been holding steady. We haven't had any surges in the past 3 and a half weeks."

She logged into the data sets, looking at the power outputs that were steadily climbing into critical range. And none if it was from them. "Crap." If the Tesseract went critical, the whole base would come down. Possibly beyond that. Agent Hill had asked for a minimum safe distance, and she found that she couldn't give her one. That was a terrifying prospect.

And that was one thing that absolutely could not happen. "We've cut the power, so this thing is running off of itself now." Her mathematical mind paged through any number of things that could have caused the Tesseract to turn on, coming up blank. The only thing that she could think of was tampering from… the other side of space. Frick.

She'd agreed to work on this project on the basis that the Tesseract was pure, unlimited energy, and that was a potential she could not ignore, especially in her concentrated efforts to create her own wormhole so that she could finally, finally bring Thor back. And all of her possible design sketches she'd worked up required massive, massive, massive amounts of energy. Like, more energy than could be produced by human means. Even Tony Stark's famed Arc reactor wouldn't be able to generate nearly incalculable amounts of energy.

With the Tesseract, she'd hoped her problems would be over after she finally found what made this blasted cube tick. As it turned out, the thing was just plain frustrating. It seemed as if the thing was purposefully screwing with her. When those interesting thoughts entered her brain, she would become concerned for her sanity. Again. Her obsession with finding Thor often had her mind spinning with doubts. Doubts if they even had something, doubts if he even wanted to come back, doubts if he was even alive. The list of possibilities of why he hadn't returned yet tumbled through her mind whenever she stopped thinking. Nighttime was the worst.

At that moment, Director Nick Fury entered the room. Double crap."Hello there, Director." Her voice was flat.

"Doctor, what is going on?"

She glanced up away from the screen, seeing the stony face of the SHIELD director staring her down. She swallowed briefly, not quite nervous yet, as she strode out to meet the man with the Pirates of the Caribbean eye patch. "The Tesseract is… not cooperating."

"Is that supposed to be funny?"

Yikes. "That's actually the most apt description I can give you. It's… behaving. We turn off the power, it turns it back on."

"How soon can you pull the plug?"

"The Tesseract is a power source. You can't exactly get it to shut itself off, Director, and if it reaches peak level-"

"We prepared for this, Dr. Foster," Fury interrupts, well aware of the ramifications, "Harnessing energy from space."

Jane sighed, "I could try, but since my algorithms aren't complete, there's no telling what might happen. We could blow this joint to Asgard if we're not careful."

Foster was one of the few who casually acknowledged the existence of the other 'realms' as she'd once said they were called. The other scientists were still tentative in grasping the idea of other living beings out there, some quite hostile. But many refused to outright disagree with her since Jane was the head researcher on the project. Phase Two was their way of combating that. Dr. Foster was very hesitant on that part of the project, constantly saying that SHIELD can only use the weapons if they were invaded by another realm, and not on other human beings. She'd made them sign a legally-binding document that made sure they could not use her calculations in a war with another nation on Earth. Or Midgard, as Fury remembered that she'd so gleefully joked to many people's discomfort.

She tucked a pen behind her ear, "It's throwing off some radiation interference. Just low-levels of gamma rays."

Fury gave her a pointed look, "That can be harmful."

She would've chuckled if the situation were not becoming exponentially more dangerous, "No shit, Sherlock," but she waved a hand, "it's dissipating too quickly to do any real damage." She headed back to the data collecting station, behind a computer screen where she would fruitlessly search for an answer.

"Understood," Fury said, and glanced around, noticing the absence of one of his most trusted agents. "Where's Agent Barton?"

Jane didn't even have to look around for the reclusive SHIELD agent as she ventured over to where the Tesseract was being held. "As usual, the Hawk's up in his nest." Fury called Hawkeye down from his post, and the two walked out of Jane's earshot. She was glad, since distractions were pretty detrimental to her fixing of this thing. If it even could be fixed. Which she was beginning to doubt as she gently tried to prod the cube with an electrical probe. She felt the jolt and immediately yanked back. This thing had created its own energy-force field. Cool didn't even begin to describe that statement. She couldn't allow herself to get excited however, as her concern began to grow at the possibility of this thing going critical. She paced in front of the cube for a few minutes, occasionally writing down a few observations on a clipboard.

She set it down on one of the desks and looked around or a lab assistant. She had an idea she needed to bounce off someone. "Can we check the relays? If we overload the circuits, it might give us enough time to figure out-"

Her sentence was left unfinished as the glow of the blue cube intensified. "What the hell?" Crap. Crap, crap, crap. "Everyone get back!" Jane shouted, shoving her assistants off the platform. Not that a few feet would do them much good. She rushed to one of the computers, seeing that the energy was off the charts. Literally. The program was crawling, trying to handle the influx of readings.

She heard a tremendous noise, like the most bizarre tearing sound she'd ever heard, looked up to see a blue stream of light, creating what looked like a shimmering doorway to somewhere in outer space.

The theoretical physicist in her swooned.

An Einstein-Rosen bridge. She finally had one.

She couldn't help the thrilled grin that spread across her face. Success. She could taste the wonderful feeling on the back of her tongue.

She could only hope that the data was being recorded so that she could replicate it later on. She had the data. The fact that she had it thrilled her to the toes, that she had almost everything she needed to bring Thor back. Her heart fluttered excitedly at the thought of seeing tall, blond, and dangerous (as Darcy had so succinctly named him) again.

Her mind was so awhirl with what this meant to her research, she barely noticed the black and blue-clad figure coalescing from the window.

As suddenly as it had happened, the window closed, and the Tesseract let off a wave of intense blue energy that made Jane's hair whip around her face, and wash over the rest of the SHIELD employees. She didn't miss the blue energy rise, gathering at the apex of the massive dome above them. Jane marveled at the swirling mass of blue as it roiled, curling and dipping with no detectable pattern. She was seeing energy. Seeing it. Absolutely unheard of. A demonstration of the physical properties of energy. She felt another science swoon coming on.

Her eyes snap to the figure that appeared on the platform. Not only was that an Einstein-Rosen bridge, but something, no, someone, had crossed it. She prayed again that the computer had recorded the data. Her mood was in the clouds. Her research had been advanced years in the matter of forty five seconds. Her eyes flicked away from the figure (she still wasn't exactly absorbing the ramifications of what was happening on the platform) and to the computer screen. Elation when she realized that she had all the data.

She looked back up only to wish that she hadn't.

The figure rises slowly, and for the first time in a long time, true and complete fear grips her as she sees the man's terrifying expression. She forgot all the physics. Whoever this was, they were clearly not friendly. Cold aqua-green eyes. Dark, shoulder length hair. Long, lean build. Angled features, sharp nose and chin. Who the hell is that? Questions race through her mind, but her body is paralyzed with the uncertain fear. In fact, his eyes were filled with such coldness she felt fear thrill up her spine.

"Sir, please put down the spear."

Fury's command seemed to go absolutely unheard. The man contemplates it briefly, the glowing staff in his hand, before looking back up at the SHIELD agents currently cornering him. With a quick gesture of his hands, a pulse of blue that looks scarily alike what was just released from the Tesseract blasts several SHIELD agents.

Chaos.

There are people firing at him, and the bullets bounce off of him as he takes down more agents. Jane was in motion by then, her breath coming in quick pants as she desperately tries to get as much data off of the computers as possible. What she was going to do afterwards is a little more fuzzy. Run with it? Probably not with those glowing pulses taking down man after man. She wouldn't get five feet.

She watches as Barton leaps at the man who'd just entered their realm, obviously trying to subdue him. He's stopped, almost effortlessly, and that scares her a lot. She'd seen Hawkeye fight once or twice and she'd never seen him just... stopped. "You have heart." His voice is soft, calm, made it all the more cold and terrifying. His accent sounded so much like Thor's she felt a pang in her chest. The nostalgia was forgotten as she felt panic rise in her gut as she saw him raise his spear, preparing herself to see it driven through Agent Barton's chest. Despite his aloof, reclusive persona, she liked the man. Instead, the tip was delicately placed against Barton's chest, and she saw a flicker of the blue energy sink into him, flickering up his body to his eyes, where the pupil dilated much farther than physically possible, and then changed from his normal gray to unnaturally pale blue. Barton holstered his gun, standing at attention to this man as though he were awaiting orders. What the hell is going on?

"Please don't. I still need that." Her focus is averted from where Hawkeye is still standing stock still, eyes trained on the man who'd just killed nearly all of the security, to the platform. She sees the Tesseract is no longer on it, and Fury is holding the briefcase that she knows has the technology to safely hold the cube.

"This doesn't have to get any messier." She recognizes Fury's 'try-to-diffuse-the-hopeless-situation' tone.

"Of course it does. I've come too far for anything else. I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose-"

Paying no mind to the fact that she was interrupting him, she couldn't stop herself from saying, "Loki? You're Thor's brother." She remembered Thor's words about his brother, traded between them as they discussed their families after the Asgardian had explained Yggdrasil to her, He's one of my best friends, but we are polar opposites. She could see why. Loki's slim build and narrow features were in sharp contrast to Thor's broad body and strong facial features. The physical was only the beginning. Thor's presence was one of warmth, sans the blustering and egotism, and could take command of a room's attention by only breathing. Meanwhile, his brother's presence was almost small. Not exactly small, just... elusive. And cold. Very, very cold.

Her words drew his attention to her. His eyes flaming ice, a twisted smile creeped across his face, as if he'd just lain eyes on an unexpected prize. "And you must be the mortal harlot that has so ensnared my brother's lustful attention. Jane, isn't it?"

She swallowed thickly. She didn't know how to respond, and tried to not let the words lustful attention get to her. Fury responded for her, "We have no quarrel with your people."

Loki turned from Jane slightly, but still made his way slowly towards her. Her joints were locked. "An ant has no quarrel with a boot," Loki suggests nonchalantly, and she didn't miss an underscore of delightful superiority to his words. He turned back to Jane, carnal smile wetting his lips, "I could not have planned this better. Ah, the opportunity in coincidence."

She didn't understand his words, "What are you talking about? What the hell are you doing here?"

"I come with glad tidings," the Jotun brother of Thor said, as though everyone in the room should be as thrilled as he, "of a world made free."

"Free from what?" Fury asked. His voice was colored with an emotion of the same name.

His response implied that the answer was utterly simple. "Freedom. Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart-" he whirled to Jane, and places the tip of his staff against her chest.

She only felt a moment of panic before she felt a cool hand cradle her, sweeping away her ethical inhibitions, and she knew then that she had to help Loki, and sweeping away any thoughts of helping Thor. Thor, who'd betrayed the man who'd shown her how to validate her research. Who had promised her that he would return but he didn't. For all she knew, she was just a fun fling for him. Meanwhile, here was his brother, offering her every single thing she'd striven to prove her entire life. To hell with the man she'd known for a week. She could feel exactly what Loki wanted of her, how righteous he was in his purpose. The freedom, the truth she experienced was liberating.

"You will know peace."

There was Fury's voice again, and Jane remembered that he had the Tesseract. She needed it to help Loki. "Yeah, you say peace. I kinda think that you mean the other thing."

Barton finally spoke after his lengthy silence, pacing over to Loki, "Sir, Director Fury is stalling. This place is about to blow and drop a hundred feet of rock on us. He means to bury us."

Fury stared hard at Barton, obviously trying to figure what the fuck had happened to his most trusted agent.

Loki seemed amused. "Like the pharaohs of old."

Jane cast a nervous glance at the rolling, waving mass of energy that was becoming progressively more tumultuous. It didn't take a theoretical physicist to take a gander at what would happen next. The estimated time was another matter, but she easily calculated it. "The portal has inverted and is collapsing in on itself. We've got about two minutes before the shit hits the fan." She looked up at Loki, "This thing might go critical before we can get out."

Loki doesn't argue with her conclusion. "Well then." With only the barest of gestures from their new-found leader, Barton whipped out his sidearm, and nailed Fury in the chest. Jane didn't react. Loki's staff had made her see that his way was right, and Fury was standing in the way. She wouldn't mourn the SHIELD director. He lacked the idealistic vision of Loki.

Hawkeye snagged the case which Fury had dropped when the SHIELD sniper had taken him out, and turned to exit the laboratory. Jane followed, wanting to stay close to the object that had validated her entire life's work. Tremors shook the base, and Jane places a hand on the wall to steady herself."We've got to move faster," she declared, urgency rising in her gut.

Barton picked up the pace, navigating the halls of the base like it was his own home. The tremors were increasing in frequency and force.

She followed the two men out of what was essentially SHIELD's basement, and got to the parking garage. Jane saw Maria Hill there, obviously trying to get the last of the agents out of the base. She turned to their motley crew, and her eyes were drawn to Loki. "Who's that?"

Barton didn't answer a moment. Jane took the Tesseract from Barton as they headed for one of the SHIELD pickups. "He didn't tell me."

Jane got into the vehicle cab, placing the case on her lap.

Barton was headed for the driver's seat when Hill's radio crackled to life, "Hill do you copy? Barton- has turned." She thought that the voice sounded like Fury. A rain of gunfire follows, and she saw Hill dive behind a wall. She distantly realizes she's never seen Hawkeye miss so many times before. She doesn't think about it now. The only thing she could think of is that she hoped they got away soon because she knew the base was probably coming down soon.

"Hurry the hell up, Barton, unless you have a thing for getting buried alive."

"Got it." Despite not hitting Hill even once, Barton slid into the driver's seat, and gunned the engine. They took off speeding through the underground tunnel that would lead them out of the facility.

Jane tugged the silvery case closer to her chest as Hawkeye edged the pickup over 80 miles per hour. She heard another hail of gunfire, and she turned out of sheer curiosity to see that they were being run down by more SHIELD agents.

She saw that it was of no consequence as Loki fired off another blast from that glowing staff of his, effectively demolishing two wheels of the vehicle, making it flip into the other pursuers. She didn't rejoice in the loss of life. Jane hated violence, but now... suddenly it all seemed logical. Logical, and even necessary. They were preventing Loki from completing his plan. She couldn't quite figure out what the entire plan was, but she knew that she had to build Loki an Einstein-Rosen bridge.

So, with a deep breath, she turned back to the road in front of them. They were nearing the end of the tunnel, the seemingly endless nighttime desert stretching out before them. Jane could even smell the sage and cacti through the ventilation in the cab. She then heard a massive sound- crashing, moaning, breaking, smashing, just plain explosions rocking through her. She could feel the vibrations through her entire body, like feeling the bass of an intensely cranked up song on the radio, times about thirty thousand.

For a panicked moment, she thought they weren't going to make it. Alas, they were soon under the broad, dark blue sky instead of the imploding tunnel of SHIELD headquarters. The moon watches as the explosion pulls the base into the depths of the earth.

Jane allowed herself to think they were in the clear, she had her cube and her research. She was content as far as she was concerned until she heard the unmistakable thwump-thwump-thwump of whirring helicopter blades.

Out of some strange fright, she tucked the case holding the Tesseract underneath the dashboard. Barton was still driving with a one-track focus, his now-blue, steeled eyes slicing into the darkness. His face was perfectly blank.

Jane leaned her head out the widow, unhindered by any thoughts of personal safety. She watched Nick Fury, still standing and very much alive, nearly hanging out of the chopper. He was squeezing off rounds at the car, and for the first time she ducked behind the protective roof of the truck, hearing bullets skim off the black surface.

The shooting didn't last long. Loki fired another blast from that scepter of his, taking out the rear blades. The craft spun out of control, getting closer and closer to the unforgiving desert floor. She ducked back inside the cab to watch as Fury leaped from the dying helicopter, tucking and rolling himself in a way that seems entirely too graceful for someone his age and size. Jane found herself thinking that it was probably mostly luck.

There was not a lot of doubt in her mind that they'd escaped. Honestly, the pursuers hadn't been much of a concern to her through the duration of their insane race through the base. She didn't really know why. Her emotional centers seemed dulled, unreachable. She'd mull over it later, she decided, as the truck's wheels churned through the thin desert sand, and silence permeates the air.

Please leave a review! If you want to see something in particular, let me know. If you absolutely hate it, let me know. If you like it, let me know. A few words can mean the world :) Keep in mind this chapter was pretty basic, and things will get different from here on out.