sakura_no_miko | Archived fic rec

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Thor/Jane

Warnings: mental illness and trauma, mind control, sexual harassment

Other notes: friendship, hurt/recovery,

Length: 107k

Summary: Thor returns to Earth a month after the Chitauri invasion to keep his promises – to see Jane again, and take her to see Asgard, even if the rainbow bridge is still undergoing repairs. Not that Jane is complaining about watching the repairs. But she wasn’t expecting Loki to be haunting the palace library, even in psychiatric care; and Loki wasn’t expecting to make friends with Thor’s mortal girlfriend.

This fic is drop-dead amazing.

Loki is twisted up, and he somehow becomes even more complex and troubled than he is in canon, struggling with his own memories and his new status as a constantly-watched, magic-less patient. He’s riddled with self-doubt and manages to feel helpless, even when his quick wit reminds us that’s he’s got a lot of power, even at his seemingly most powerless.

Jane–now, I don’t care as much for Jane in the movies. I get what they were going for with her, but I think she was underdeveloped, at best. I love what they did with Jane in Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. In five minutes they managed to show why her courage would attract someone like Thor. In the movies they went more for her being a bit aloof, a bit disconnected, much like Thor. In this fic we get such a better look at her character, at how she forms bonds with other people. This really shows us how she can be both the science-obsessed, bad-with-people figure who needs to learn a little more humanity, but also a person who obviously formed such a deep relationship with Selvig and Darcy.

Both of them feel so much more whole and vibrant–and it’s because they spend the entire fic together, slowly changing, slowly becoming friends. They bring out the best in each other, slowly, clumsily, but with this fierceness to their friendship, this protectiveness.

Even Thor, Odin and Frigga get a bit of development, and you finally start to see the beginnings of a family re-forming between them and Loki. There’s actual talking. About feelings.

The mythology is amazing. I’m not a big world builder, myself. I can do a fair amount of work with characters and backgrounds, but the amount of mythology that’s spun into this story–from the detailing on the Tesseract and Bifrost to Idunn’s garden and the origin of the Aesir–is so lush.

I remember first coming across this fic over at norsekink and reading the first few chapters, musing to myself, well, this is an interesting little ditty, interesting pairing of characters, interesting depiction of Loki’s madness. I was no prepared to come back to the finished product and find it so epic. So if I squee too much, it’s because I just sank a few hours into reading this fic and it’s a bit late.

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Originally posted on tumblr on 12/31/12

Archived fic rec - Overlapping Spaces