Thor's nervous.

Thor doesn't get nervous. He's a god; he's one of the most fearsome warriors in the Nine Realms.

But right now, Thor's nervous.

He doesn't know what to expect. It's been over a year since he spoke to her, and so much can change in a year. What if she's changed her mind? What if those few days they knew each other are nothing but a strange memory for her? What if she hates him? What if she thinks he abandoned her by choice? What if she's moved on?

Maybe this is a bad idea.

Maybe he should go.

But then the door opens.

And it's Darcy.

Her eyes light up when she sees him. "Hey, you're alive!"

Though that does little to calm his nerves, it does put a small smile on his face. "Hello, my friend." She'd been the last thing on his mind when he finally had the opportunity to come here, but it's wonderful to see her nonetheless.

"Jane's gonna be thrilled," she tells him. She looks over her shoulder, cups her hands around her mouth, and yells, "Jane! You have a visitor!" Then she turns back to him with that same big smile on her face. "What are you doing here? It's been, like, a million years!"

"Only one," he says, though it's felt like much longer. "I had to destroy the Bifrost. My brother–"

"You know, your brother is a perfect answer in itself," Darcy interrupts. "I saw that video of him in Germany? And then what he did in New York, too? Like, are we sure he's your brother? 'Cause he's kind of..." She circles her ear with her finger and mouths, "Crazy."

"He's not, actually," Thor says. He understands why she'd think that, but he's not. "He's actually–"

Jane steps into the room, and Thor's heart stops.

She's as beautiful as ever. Even in her sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt; even with her hair in a very messy bun; even without any makeup on and with faint bags under her eyes, she's beautiful. He knew she would be. She always is.

Her eyes go wide when she sees him in the doorway. "Thor," she breathes. "You're..."

Thor smiles warmly. This is what he's been waiting for. "Hi, Jane."

Her gaze flickers between him and Darcy, and the longer she just stands there, silent, with that deer-in-the-headlights look on her face, the less certain he becomes that this was a good idea.

Until finally, she blinks a few times, reorienting herself. "Uh, come in," she says, clearly flustered.

Darcy steps out of the way, and Thor does just that, stepping into the room so that Darcy can close the door behind him.

Jane smiles, much more awkwardly than he did. "Well, um... Hi."

"Hi," he says again, because he's not sure what else to say right now. It's beginning to feel kind of uncomfortable. This isn't quite the warm, heart-felt reunion he'd hoped for.

Darcy may be a strange person, but she's not an idiot, so she wastes very little time in excusing herself – because, she claims, she has laundry to do. Obviously, this is laundry that could not be done at any other time. This is very time-sensitive laundry. And he appreciates that the laundry is time-sensitive, except it means that when Darcy leaves, it gets very, very, quiet.

Thor clasps his hands in front of him and looks around the room. "This is a nice place." It's a very empty, undecorated place, but a nice one nonetheless – certainly better than the vehicle she was living in a year ago.

"Oh, thanks," she says. "It's not much, but the camper was getting a bit small, and..." She shrugs awkwardly.

"I think it's nice," Thor offers. As far as human homes go, this doesn't look bad.

It's quiet for a few moments more, until Jane clears her throat. "So, um... What're you doing here?"

Thor shrugs uncomfortably. "I promised I would come back," he says. "And now that the Bifrost is fixed..."

"Oh."

Silence.

This was a bad idea, wasn't it?

Jane clasps her hands behind her back, and she almost looks... nervous. That doesn't bode well for him. It doesn't bode well for them.

"Um, Thor?" Jane says cautiously. "There's something I need to tell you."

Thor furrows his brows, face creased with concern. "Of course," he says. "What is it? Are you alright?" Heimdall didn't tell him that anything was wrong. What could this possibly be about?

Oh, no.

A terrifying thought occurs to him.

Does she have a new boyfriend?

He doesn't know what he'd do if that was the case. He's spent the last year mourning that love he thought was lost forever. If he finally has this chance to have it back and he can't... He doesn't know what he'll do.

Cry, probably, if he's being realistic.

"You, um..." She takes a deep breath, fighting a losing battle to meet his gaze. "You left something here."

He furrows his brows. "I did?" But he didn't bring anything. Odin banished him with nothing but the clothes on his back. "What did I leave?" What could he possibly have left?

"It might be easier if I show you," she says.

That does nothing to answer his question or to calm his nerves, but he follows her through the house anyway. It's smaller inside than it looked from the outside, so there's not very far to walk until they've reached whatever room she wants to show him. She stops outside the door and looks up at him warily.

"Just, promise you won't freak out?" she asks.

"Of course," he says immediately. "Why would I freak out?"

Jane bites her lip, glancing between him and the other room a few times before she finally opens the door.

There's not much to see. Part of that may just be because it's dark, but the room really does seem to be largely empty. There's a rocking chair, there's some sort of big, weird box, there's...

Oh, she's going to the box. Okay, then.

He follows her cautiously, and it's only as he gets closer that he realizes it's not a box. It's... a crib? Maybe? The Midgardian equivalent of one? But why would she...?

Unless...

Is this...?

Thor pokes his head over it.

It sure is a crib.

And there sure is a sleeping baby in it.

He looks at Jane, puzzled. She stands a few feet away, watching him nervously and waiting for his reaction. He suspects 'complete and utter confusion' was not what she expected.

"You have a child." That's what she's saying, isn't it? This is her child. Unless it's Darcy's, of course, but he has a hard time imagining her as a mother, so this must be Jane's. Right?

"Kind of," she says. "We have a child."

Thor just looks at her.

And looks at her.

And looks at her.

Until that finally sinks in.

They have a child.

This child is theirs.

This child belongs to them. This child exists because of them. It shares his blood, her blood, their love. That night they spent together, that night when he realized he could never love anybody but her, it became something more. It birthed a child – she birthed a child...

And he wasn't there to see it.

It seems he's been silent for too long, because Jane says, talking a mile a minute, "I'm not asking you to do anything. I know you didn't expect this and I'm just kind of throwing it at you, and I'm sure you have better things to do than–"

"What's their name?" Thor interrupts, his voice barely a whisper. He's not sure he could contain his emotion if he spoke any louder.

That puts a soft smile on her face. "Angel," she says. "Her name is Angel."

"Angel," Thor repeats quietly. He looks at her, all curled up in bed, and he can't help but smile, too. "She's beautiful."

"Isn't she?" Jane says.

"How..." Thor swallows hard, fighting back the lump in his throat. "How old is she?"

"Fourteen weeks."

"Fourteen weeks," Thor repeats softly. Fourteen weeks, she's been here. Fourteen weeks, Jane's had this child – his child – and fourteen weeks, he hasn't known; he hasn't been here with her, with them.

He's been a father for fourteen weeks, and he didn't even know.

He turns and walks out of the room as quickly as he can, not speaking another word — not able to speak another word. Jane rushes after him, and when they're standing outside Angel's room and he sees the heartbreak on her face, he only feels worse. He wasn't trying to hurt her. He just doesn't want to wake the baby — their baby — up from her nap. He doesn't know how much longer he can stay quiet.

"I'm sorry," he says softly.

She furrows her brows. "What?"

"I'm sorry," he says again. "I wish I could have been here. I should have been here." His voice breaks, and he has to clamp his mouth shut before he starts crying. His little Angel is worth the tears, but Jane shouldn't have to deal with them.

"No, no, it's okay!" Jane says quickly. She steps closer and rests her hands on his arms, a comforting smile on her face. "You're here now! And you're not running away and vowing to never come back, so we're doing good!"

He gives her a small smile for that, but it doesn't make him feel much better. The tears welling up in his eyes make that known.

"Hey, stop, it's okay!" Jane insists. "You couldn't be here. I know that. You don't have to worry about that. You didn't even miss anything! She's just been eating and sleeping and crying all day, anyway!"

He shakes his head. It's not that. It's more than that. It's...

"I can't believe I'm a father."

He was right to think he shouldn't speak. The moment the words leave his mouth, he begins to sob, quietly but uncontrollably, tears of love and despair.

He's a father.

He's a father.

He can't believe it.

"Oh, Thor..." Jane wraps her arms around him. "It's okay. Don't cry."

"I can't believe we have a daughter," he whispers through his tears. "Our beautiful, beautiful angel."

Without breaking their hug, Jane says, "I just want to make sure – these are happy tears, right?"

"I truly couldn't be happier."

"Good." With that settled, Jane snuggles up closer, resting her head comfortably against his chest. "Because Darcy is not cut out to be a father."

Thor laughs quietly, a nice reprieve from his tears. And to think he'd feared he'd been replaced; that she'd moved on from him and found someone new. She still wants him, just the way he wants her, and he's never had more reason to stay.

"She should be waking up in half an hour or so," Jane tells him. "Do you want to go sit somewhere and talk?"

Admittedly, Thor would have no objections to staying here in her arms until Angel wakes up, but it will probably help him stop crying if he doesn't, so he reluctantly agrees. She leads him to a nearby room – her bedroom, he'd guess, though it's a bit of a cluttered mess. There are maps and charts of the stars all over the place; notebooks and scribbled-through papers on every surface.

"Oh, sorry," she says quickly, scrambling to clean off her bed. She hastily stacks all the papers together and tosses them on her desk. "Okay, there we go." She smiles awkwardly – but a cute awkward; a fun awkward – and sits down on the edge of her bed, then pats the spot next to her, gesturing for him to join her.

Thor's still drawn to the mess that is her room. "You're still looking at the stars," he observes, taking a closer look at the photos on the bulletin board in the middle of the room.

She shrugs. "I wasn't going to stop just because I had a baby." With a small smile, she adds, "Eric thought I was crazy, but this was the only thing keeping me sane those last couple weeks when I was on bedrest."

That makes him smile, too. That doesn't surprise him one bit. He sits down next to her on the bed and looks down at her, and she looks back up at him with a soft smile that makes his heart flutter. He missed this. He missed her.

"How have you been?" Thor asks. She's grown an entire baby inside of her since they last saw each other. This feels like a good question to start with.

"I've been good," she says. "I've been busy. I've never had a hard time finding a work-life balance before because work was my life, so this is..."

"It's different," Thor finishes for her.

She nods. "It's really different. But I love it. I really do."

"That's good," Thor says. He's glad she loves it. There'd be a bit of an issue if she didn't love it. This is their child, after all, and all the life changes that come with her.

"How about you?" Jane asks. "How have you been?"

This has genuinely been the worst year of my very long life.

"I've been fine," he lies. "I don't have much to tell." It's easier this way. She doesn't need to know all that's transpired.

"I saw you on the news," she tells him – what she doubtlessly thinks is a helpful conversation starter, though it very much isn't. "In New York the other day."

Thor sighs, his head hanging low. "Yes, that was... unfortunate," he says, a vast understatement of the feelings he can't yet put into words. "But I retrieved the Tesseract and now the Bifrost is fixed, and that's all I choose to think of it."

She frowns sympathetically. "I'm sorry, that was probably... I shouldn't have brought that up. 'Cause that was your brother who..."

"Who will now spend the rest of his days in the dungeon," Thor finishes with a solemn nod. "Well-deserved, I may add, but painful nonetheless to know that I put him there." He lifts his head to look at her again, and this time, he tries for levity in his voice. "But in losing him, I gained a child. How can I be upset about that?"

She nudges his shoulder with her own playfully. "Yeah, you did."

"I still can't believe it," Thor tells her. "We have a daughter?"

"We have a daughter," she replies with a smile. She looks up at him hopefully. "Does this mean you're going to stay?"

"Of course," he says without hesitation. "I'll have to go back to Asgard to tell my parents, of course, and there's a lot that must be sorted out amongst the Nine Realms that I may be called away to help with, but I won't let it take long. This is where I want to be – with you and with Angel. There's nothing that could be more important to me than my duty as a father."

Jane hugs him, a little bit awkwardly with how they're seated next to each other, and he rests his head on top of hers. He's missed his little love. It's been a long year.

A loud crying interrupts their moment.

"Oh, she's awake!" Jane says eagerly, jumping to her feet. "C'mon, you can meet the baby."

Thor wastes no time following her back to Angel's room. Jane turns the light on, and as they approach the crib, he can see their little girl sobbing, her face flushed red and tears streaming down her face. His heart breaks for her. He knows that this is what babies do, but it hurts to see it.

"Hey, shh, it's okay," Jane coos, reaching in to pick her up. "Mommy's got you."

Angel's crying fades as she gets situated in her mother's arms. Thor can't help but smile at the sight. The two loves of his life, right there in front of him. How did he get so lucky?

Jane looks over at him, a soft smile on her face. "Do you want to hold her?"

Thor's eyes go wide at the prospect. But he could drop her! Or he could squish her too hard! Is she even a god? Could she survive an Asgardian hug? How is he supposed to know how hard and how gently to hold her?

Jane just holds Angel out to him. "C'mon, hold her."

Thor hesitates, but he can't exactly refuse, and he'll have to learn one day, anyway, so he might as well try now. He takes her from Jane's arms and carefully lets her rest in his own. She fits so well, her head nuzzled up against his bicep, and she looks up at him with her big, blue eyes – eyes she got from her father, no doubt.

She's really, really his child, isn't she?

Thor leans down and presses a gentle kiss to her forehead. "Hello, my little angel," he coos. "I'm your father."