Marvel's Strongest Mage

Most people who know Dr. Donald Blake would describe him as a good man. Quiet, principled, maybe a little too selfless for his own good. They'd probably mention his limp, the cane he leaned on more out of habit than necessity, and maybe his past in medicine—how he left a top hospital under murky circumstances. But almost none of them know the real reason he walked away from it all.

Not even Jane Foster.

They say he left because of his disability. That a surgeon with a limp couldn't be trusted when it came to split-second decisions with a scalpel. That it crushed him, and he gave up.

That's a lie. A convenient one, sure, but still a lie.

The truth is, Blake had already long since beaten back the limitations of his body. What forced him out wasn't weakness—it was conviction. He performed an unsanctioned operation on a dying nine-year-old boy. No insurance, no guardian signature, no green light from the board. The child's life was hanging by a thread, and Dr. Donald Blake, cut through red tape the only way he knew how: with his own two hands.

The surgery was a success. The child lived. But the hospital didn't see a miracle. They saw liability. And so, despite the outcome, Blake was fired. Not because of the $9 medical bill the kid couldn't pay. But because he dared to act without permission.

That was the day the system failed him—and the day he decided he wouldn't let it dictate who deserved to live.

He left the hospital. And not long after, as if guided by some cosmic irony, he met Jane Foster. She was running in Central Park, headphones in, red-faced from a morning sprint. He was brooding on a bench with a coffee gone cold. Two strangers, pulled together by fate or gravity or some forgotten god.

They talked. They kept talking. And eventually, they fell in love.

Blake had money. As a former top-tier neurosurgeon, he wasn't exactly living paycheck to paycheck. He even had dual citizenship in Norway, and somewhere in the fjords, an ancestral castle that sat empty. Still, he stayed in New York. He opened a clinic—a modest practice specializing in neurology and psychology. And Jane invested a sizable chunk into the venture too. Not because she had to, but because she believed in him.

Millions went into that clinic. Between her research grants, speaking honorariums, and award money, Jane Foster had put more of herself into that place than anyone realized.

But the clinic never turned a profit.

Blake refused to charge full price. Some days, he didn't charge anything at all. When patients couldn't afford their meds, he bought them. When someone needed therapy but had no insurance, he sat with them anyway. It was noble and foolish, but it was him.

Now, standing outside that worn, weathered clinic door, Jane Foster took a deep breath.

She knew what she was about to do. And she hated herself for it.

"Hi, Lina," she greeted as she stepped inside, nodding to the receptionist-slash-nurse with a tired smile. "He in?"

"Yeah," Lina whispered. "He's got a patient. But Jane—did you two break up again?"

That word again. Jane winced. It made it sound petty. Like all their fights were the same. But this time... this time it was different. Jane had new data. New theories. New frontiers in the New Mexico desert. And Donald Blake—bless him—just couldn't follow her into the stars.

She needed her money back. She needed to pull out her share of the clinic. For her research. For the truth she was chasing.

And that would likely mean the end of everything between them.

When his patient finally left the consulting room, Jane nodded to Lina, stepped past the next person in line, and reached for the door.

She hesitated.

Then, with the same resolve she used to break down interstellar particle readings, she pushed the door open.

"Don," she said softly. "We need to talk."

He looked up. For a moment, she saw something flicker behind his eyes—hurt, maybe. Or just tiredness. But then he nodded.

"We really do."

—

They walked through Central Park, slowly, like old memories retracing their steps. The silence between them was suffocating.

"I'm withdrawing my investment," she said finally. "The New Mexico research... I need the capital."

She tried to sound clinical, detached. But even she could hear the tremor in her voice.

She expected anger. Accusation. But Donald Blake surprised her.

He nodded.

"You're right," he said. "This place… it's run its course."

Jane stopped walking.

"What? This is your dream. Why would you say that?"

"Because I'm not fit to run it anymore." His voice was flat. Hollow. "This place needs a doctor. Not a man losing his grip on reality."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, alarmed now. "Don… what do you mean, losing your grip?"

He exhaled sharply and turned away. "I think I'm going insane."

"Don—"

"I think I have another personality inside me. Something... ancient. Something powerful."

And then, slowly, he told her everything.

The trip to Norway. The aliens. The cave. The crutch that transformed into a hammer. The lightning that shot from his hand. The voice in his head that wasn't his own.

He described how his body changed. How he felt like a storm incarnate. Like his blood had turned to thunder and his bones to iron.

"I remember his voice," Don said quietly. "He said, 'You ask who I am? I am the noise of the rain, the will of the wind. The world calls me the messenger of thunder, the singer of lightning. I am the son of Odin, the next god-king of the Aesir—I am Thor.'"

Jane's face had gone pale.

Because only two days ago, she had touched what she thought was Thor's Hammer. Had studied it, analyzed it.

But if Donald Blake was telling the truth—if he had been transformed, if his crutch had become the hammer—then that meant what Daniel said in New Mexico was true.

The hammer they were studying wasn't the real one.

The real Mjolnir... was in Blake's hand.

"Jane," he whispered, voice shaking, "it felt real. All of it. I could feel the raindrops falling before they hit the ground. I could hear the wind before it moved. I was the storm. It was too much—I couldn't hold onto myself. He swallowed me."

She stepped forward, gently catching him as he wavered.

"You need rest," she murmured. "Come sit."

"No, listen—" he grabbed her hand, gripping it tightly. "I've been trying to understand. Maybe it's radiation. Cosmic rays. Maybe like the Fantastic Four. Maybe it mutated my mind, made me create this godlike persona."

Jane stared at him.

And for the first time, she truly didn't know what to believe.

Not because she doubted him. But because some part of her didn't.

Because some part of her knew.

That deep down, inside this quiet, broken man... Thor was waking up.

And that scared her more than anything.

 --

If you want to read 20+ chapters, visit my Pt..t.t.n.

pt.t.tn.com/MiniMine352