fossilised | I come from a land of ice and snow

I come from a land of ice and snow

Asgard sat atop the branches of Yggdrasil since time began, and little had changed in their society in the years since. Each Asgardian was long-lived into the millennia, their lands were fertile, their people brave and strong. They had their vassals, their allies, and their enemies. Yet even those who opposed them respected the might of the Golden Dias, and the royalty who sat upon it. Currently that was Odin Borson, though he grew weary more easily now and had begun to consider passing the throne to his eldest son.

He had been blessed with many children, but only two that he considered worthy of his lineage and status. His firstborn, Thor, strong and honourable and everything an Asgardian warrior should be. His second son, Loki, was not natural born, though none knew that but his wife. He was different, a creature of magic and mayhem, of sharp intelligence. Both were worthy, but together they would take Asgard to a new prosperity, he was certain of it.

Midgard, where the mortals dwelt, was a land raided every few centuries for stock. It was seen as a breeding ground, much like a corral for cattle. Mortals were lesser, short-lived and weak, they were fit only as slaves. The last raid had taken place when Loki had been but a baby, nearly a thousand years ago, but the mortals that had been taken had been bred and cared for so that a healthy slave population still thrived. Slaves were given a weakened mixture of Idunn's crop with their food, to extend their natural lives to at least a few centuries in order to make them worth the effort to train. They had no rights, but they were taught well that this was their natural position.

All slave children were raised in a central pen and taught the same when small, those that then displayed talent at cooking, riding, hunting, housework, artisan skills, or singing were then measured off to be specially trained for higher masters. Every five years those who could afford to buy a slave, or those of high enough status to simply demand them, came to the corral and chose. Those who were chosen were special, were envied, and those who were not ended up working the fields out in the far reaches of Asgard, the most menial of work.

Anthony and Steven had been friends since they were little and being raised in the large pens together. Both had excelled, Anthony at crafting and Steven at warrior's skills, but neither were chosen when they were five, nor ten, nor even fifteen. Now, at twenty, it was their final chance to be chosen before they would be assigned to one of the meanest farmers beyond the borders of the great capital. Steven woke Anthony as the dawn rose, mingled excitement and nerves on his face.

"Anthony! Wake up, I've got news! I heard the overseer talking to one of the passing guards, and Princes Thor and Loki are coming to the corral today."

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He didn't realise that Stark thought that he had been sent after him to keep him safe by Steve, and he wouldn't have corrected the false assumption even if he had. He had just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and considered that the risk to himself was worth saving one of the meagre people left free.

"I don't need weapons to kill animals."

Gesturing back at the very dead boar creature as if to prove his point, he bent and shifted to lift it up and across his shoulders. It was so big that it made even him look diminutive.

"You shouldn't stay out here, more might come."

And he wouldn't be around to help out if they did.

"Isn't this enough meat?" The dead and pulped up creature was easily Tony's size and though he wasn't sure how he felt about alien boar-cat hamburgers, or eating something that had been about to eat him, he could use an escort back to the overgrown city of Real Life Pandora.

Tony grimaced at how blood soaked Barnes was but just gestured at the carcass.

"I would offer to help you drag it back but... You're already bloody and much stronger than I am." He wouldn't protest his manhood here. He didn't want to be dirtier than half an hour in the jungle already made him.

It didn't take Clint too long to realize that Tony wasn't in any of the buildings surrounding the small plaza where Steve's home base was. He stood in the center courtyard surrounded by the purple glow of foreign, possibly bioluminescent light.

So what did he tell Steve now?

The hope for humanity had wandered off somewhere. Great.

He would have liked to have got something else as well, just in case the boar turned out to be inedible for some reason, but obviously Stark was in no position to go back on his own. He had the slightly wild-eyed look of someone who has been through too much too fast, and he obviously wasn't prepared to defend himself against anything without his signature armour.

So he just jerked his head to indicate that Stark should follow him, and that he would indeed provide an escort back to where base camp had been made.

"Why were you out there?"

It's the first thing he's said in about fifteen minutes of walking, but he just can't seem to puzzle out why Stark would have left the relative safety of their little camp and gone off alone just to get nearly mauled.

"Don't know. Maybe to get swallowed up by the jungle... You ruined that for me by the way." It was said with his signature snark but there was just no joy in his voice, not the way there usually was when he was trolling someone. A switch inside him had been thrown and there was a disconnect between his brain and his body. He was still a genius, but his already present issues with touch and intimacy had been completely stopped on and stretched out under the sun.

He'd snap eventually. He was already worn much too thin and the edges were peeling. Bucky, though he probably didn't quite know it was because of his own experiences, would recognize it more than Steve ever could.

And Steve meant well, thinking Tony to be more resilient than he was, but the engineer wasn't conditioned. He wasn't hurt for a purpose. There was no one to shape him back again into whatever mold was wanted because this had been just abuse without thought of the toll it took.

The Asgardians wanted the offspring. They did not care much about the adults of those plucked from their world.

Most were never expected to leave the training facility, though Bucky and the rest wouldn't know that.

Tony needed structure. He needed support. He needed Bucky of all people.

Bucky... the Soldier... whoever he was, he barely knew how to cope with his own issues yet, but he recognised another man breaking pretty easily. Tony had that same disconnect in his eyes that he knew from his own experiences, and he knew that Steve wouldn't get it. The other man was too-- good, too secure in his own skin. He meant well, and he cared deeply, but he didn't get it.

So he stopped and let the dead creature fall to the floor, taking a seat next to it and stripping off his shirt without explanation or delay. The bloody gash on his ribs looked nasty, but he ignored that.

"I need your help," he said, voice low. "My arm isn't working right now, maybe the boar bit through some electrics, I can't carry it the rest of the way yet."

He would get Stark doing something useful, something focused, and then talk to him. He wasn't even sure why, just that a tiny spark inside of him desperately wanted to do something good for once.

While Tony rolled his eyes at the audacity of some people breaking down right in the middle of the jungle with a boar-cat strapped to their backs, covered in blood and bleeding, he stepped right up to get to work. “Aren’t you more worried about the fact that you’re getting alien spores and blood in your wound? What if you get infected? I’m an engineer, not a doctor.” He didn’t expect Bucky to get the reference. Team Rogers didn’t seem to get anything really.

He kicked at some of the tougher looking scrub, steered clear of the mutilated skull of what was evidently going to be dinner tonight (yum), and took a look at the puckering skin between natural Bucky and artificial Bucky.

“This is pretty top notch. I didn’t know that the Germans or Russians had this sort of technology. Good sports cars and cold winters with a dash of communism to warm up the proletariat but this? This is beautiful. The articulation alone is outstanding. Make a fist?”

He had already located the access panel, almost immediately. That was pretty outstanding for a guy who had never worked on Bucky before.

He didn't particularly enjoy anyone working on him, all that dredged up in his mind were HYDRA laboratories where the technicians were only interested in getting things fixed without any care for the comfort of the one being worked on. But he was well disciplined, so he didn't move when Stark went for the access panel, though he did obligingly make a fist so that the many overlapping plates of vibranium shifted and scraped over one another elegantly.

"It got upgraded every few years, but it wasn't much worse than this when they first attached it in '45."

He doesn't know who designed it or made it originally, only that Zola had been in charge of having it fitted and training the Soldier to be what they needed him to be.

Though he didn’t take back how beautiful it was, or make another comment on the construction, he felt a little saddened by the fact that the inventor of the device was now lost to time. Maybe that would be him. He would have children who would never know him. His armor would be taken apart by people that didn’t understand it and no one would remember that he was the one that put it together. And back on earth, his tower was already crumbling to dust. When it was gone, he’d be too.

That his life had been reduced to sand had him overlooking the fact that nothing was wrong with the arm at all. It articulated just fine, the joints moved perfectly and the pneumatics were clean and precise, moving with little effort.

He got lost in following wires until he noticed little etchings on the inside compartment housing the main power source for the thumb.

Initials, probably. He could barely make them out, though. That was even more sad.

“So what’s wrong exactly?”

"Nothing."

Lying still wasn't exactly high on his list of skills, and making out that there was a problem when there wasn't one had pretty much exhausted his capabilities in that area. He had got Stark to calm down a little, to focus, and that was what he wanted.

"But you needed something to look at. You're caught in your head, falling apart. It's no good."

His words are said bluntly, but not harshly. He's not intending to be cruel, he just doesn't know how to say things with more compassion yet. The fact that he's even trying to help at all is a big step for him.

A little flabbergasted, Tony’s initial thought was to deny, deny, deny. It worked for politicians. But he’d never been the political sort. He gave them the finger, he screwed them over, he tried to be better than his lawyers and the people that made laws in this country or around the world. He wasn’t good at lying. He never saw the need to. And a denial would be a sham. He wasn’t all right. Anyone with two eyes could see that.

And he needed that recognition. No wonder he’d just walked away from Steve, who seemed to want to get right down to business, defeat the Huns, and live the typical Disney Prince charmed life that he always did.

Tony slapped the access panel closed and sighed. “You made me sit in boar-cat blood to distract me from being in my head. Okay, so now we have mental cases leading mental cases. We’ll probably end up blowing this little moon up with our efforts.” But he was thankful. And he said as much in his eyes and he looked up at a purple tinted sky through broad, overhanging foliage.

It was beautiful here. He hated how perfect and isolated it was.

“You’ve been through way worse,” Tony muttered. “I don’t need to be your project.”

"You're not my project, I don't have any projects."

He wasn't nearly human enough for that yet, there was just that tiny spark that wanted to help. He probably would have done it for any of them, and still not been sure as to why exactly he was wanting to help.

Had he been through worse? It was strange trying to apply that sort of language to himself when he still thought of himself as a weapon. Weapons didn't have traumas, they didn't get emotional, they just functioned or they didn't, that was as simple as it got, no need for anything deeper.

"But if you're going to break, do it now and get it over with."

“I don’t cry on command. I mean, I used to. When it could get me something I wanted…” Tony looked smug, but that smugness melted away into an apathy that was, at least, getting closer to where he needed to be to have his breakdown. It still didn’t work the way that Bucky wanted it to, however. Tony watched the side of Bucky’s face for a moment before he shrugged and stood up. “Come on, Robocop. Let’s get dinner back to the poor women and children waiting on us for sustenance. I hope you know I’m going to take all the credit for this.”

Bucky’s approach helped. Barton could compartmentalize, and didn’t really want to be a shoulder to cry on. Steve was just a mess when it came to using his old fashioned methodology and the character flaw of being perfect on regular, ordinary people. How could Steve help anyone when he used to be the sort of guy who was physically falling apart and yet never stopped going? Hell, even when he thought Bucky was gone, both times, he never actually stopped.

Tony brushed his hands off and started back towards the little village.

“I’m going to see what we’ve got for cooking. If they have embedded lights with night time sensors, I’m going to guess that they have ovens too. Or maybe barbeque grills. I’ll leave you to the easy part of making burgers and I’ll get the fire started… Oh. And you’re definitely going to want to get that gash cleaned out. Nasty.”

Perhaps it would come to pass that Bucky would become the one that Tony bonded with here the most. He wasn't perfect and, though he did compartmentalise in ways that Barton could only dream of, he didn't do it on purpose. He was obviously broken in a lot of ways, but he could acknowledge that and keep going, maybe that was what Tony needed, the quiet support of a near-stranger.

It might not be the breakdown he needs to start to heal, but it's a step in the right direction and Bucky certainly doesn't know enough to keep pushing yet. So he just stands and pulls the boar back onto his shoulders and sets off.

"Don't think we have any medical supplies, I'll wash it and it'll heal itself."

Honestly, he wasn't worried, he didn't even think that it was possible to get an infection. It wouldn't be long before he caught sight of the little settlement rising up beyond the trees.

“You know Big Brother is going to fuss over it. Just saying. You might want to get that taken care of before he goes all OH NO MY BESTIE!” Tony shook his head. He wondered if Rhodey ever felt that way when he was missing. Likely, he probably just hated him for failing to attend dinners and award presentations. You know, the usual. It was the first time that Tony had actually spent real time thinking about his friend in weeks, not since between the torture started.

Hopefully Rhodey and Pepper were doing all right. Happy was probably protecting them in the ruins of New York right now, fighting off feral dogs and rebuilding civilization—

The thought made his blood run cold and he hastened his step.

As the tall building that Steve claimed as his castle came into view, though, that quickened pace fell abruptly. He watched Bucky sidestep him and drop the carcass on the ground just within splash radius of Clint’s legs.

“Been looking all over-- HEY! Hey man, you could have put that anywhere.” The archer was not pleased.

"It needs to be cleaned and separated, then a small portion cooked and tested for poisonous effects."

Bucky nudged it towards Clint, clearly giving that job over to him, and glanced sidelong at Stark before deciding that the other man was probably alright for a while now that they were back at base camp. His side did hurt, and he looked more of a mess than he really was because of the boar blood all over him as well, so he wanted to wash off.

He left the carcass with Barton, assuming it would be dealt with.

It was to Steve that he looked now, to see if he had organised a place to watch and to enlist him in stitching the skin back together again. He didn't think that it might not be a nice sight to be confronted with for poor Steve, his friend all bloody.

It had been a difficult few hours for Steve, worse than when he had been alone. Bucky wasn't right about Tony being broken because no one could be so far gone, but now he was wondering how he could handle it if Clint failed. He decided that they should have seperate areas first so he worked hard to clean out additional rooms. Clint and Tony might need the privacy so he hung up fabrics from the skiff, tunics and robes and furs. He was no decorator but the place looked less like a hovel by the time Bucky came back.

He'd been scrubbing a window down when he caught the reflection of the man from the lights of the room against the night-dark glass. "Oh my God, Bucky what happened?!"

Dropping rag and cleaning solution, Steve was at his friend's side in a moment, trying to glimpse the goring along his side without getting further dirt in the wound.

Bucky froze when Steve reacted so immediately and strongly to his arrival, only relaxing a little when he realised that he'd come over out of concern and not anger. His handlers might have been angry at him for being wounded, or wrecking his clothes, and especially for getting hurt in the line of protecting someone uninvolved to his mission.

"I told you, I went hunting."

He lifted his arm a bit so that Steve could get a better look at where the tusk of the creature had gone in. It was deep, but not life threatening unless it got infected, which was highly unlikely with the serum to bolster his immune system.

"Barton is preparing the kill, Stark is finding a method of cooking it."

"I know, Buck, it's just that when you say that you're going hunting, I don't expect you to come back looking like you were almost eaten." Steve tried to calm his reaction since he saw what it did to his friend. He wanted to hug him suddenly, the sort of reaction he usually had at only the most inappropriate of times when his emotions were about to get the best of him. Steve was exhausted, not because he was sleepless, he'd gotten plenty of rest yesterday despite all of the work he'd done around their current camp, but emotionally, he was tapped. It read clear as day in sky-blue eyes.

The think was, Bucky could take care of himself. He wasn't the sort of person he'd used to be, but he was still more than capable of doing that. It just made Steve feel even more like he needed to be protective, though, and the flux of need and want and true, genuine terror at losing what little he had left scratched at his usually thick skin until it was like a wafer.

"I'm guessing you're a little like me. Never since a day since..." Steve found himself bowing his head. He'd paid his dues already on that front, no need to feel guilty about it. "I'm not going to bet on infection, but you should still bandage it. It will heal faster." He wasn't sure if he should offer to help.

At least he had stopped protesting that Steve should stop calling him Bucky, it seemed like a losing battle and, even if the name scratched like steel wool under his skin, it also felt oddly familiar and comforting. He still wasn't used to this strange mix of fear and familiar that happened around Steve, but it was getting at least slightly more bearable.

"I wouldn't have been hurt, I had to push Stark out of the way," he clarified, for some reason not wanting Steve to think that he was a poor hunter or couldn't even take down one creature without injury was unacceptable. "I want you to help."

It was the best gesture of growing trust that he could offer, he wouldn't let himself be vulnerable easily. "It needs cleaned, and stitched, are you capable of that?"

What was Tony doing out in the jungle? Steve had watched him head to one of the other buildings, but he must had gone right passed it. He should have kept a closer eye on the man. He knew he was unstable, but... Now this really worried him, probably a whole lot more than it should since Tony was a capable fighter too--

In that armor. Without it, he was just a guy. A painfully, annoyingly smart guy, but he was still a regular person skin deep. This would add to the guilt when he gave himself time to think about it. That time, however, was not right now.

"Never had to act like a field medic," he admitted, surprised and pleased when Bucky asked for his help. He just wanted to wash his bands first, but he was already re-rolling his sleeves up his biceps. "But I used to darn all of my socks." And hem all of his pants. And sleeves. And shirt tails-- He could have gone into tailoring if the art and war thing didn't work out for him. "But I think it's the same principal. And this is going to sound weird, but I actually found a sewing kit two days ago. So we're in luck if you don't mind purple thread."

Bucky could have told Steve why Stark was in the jungle; not out of any real need to kill himself or something similar, but because he felt stifled around the other people who either couldn't understand his circumstances, or who couldn't bond with him about them. He was jealous of Steve for not going through what they had, but hated himself for such a horrible thought, and also was grateful he didn't have to suffer that way.

He knew, because that's how Bucky felt too. In the small slivers of memory he had recovered, he was angry that Steve had never come, bitter that it had been him that fell, glad that Steve didn't fall, and relieved he'd never had to know what it was like. It was a sick mess that wasn't easy to live with, it was no surprise that Stark needed to wander for a while.

"The colour doesn't matter, long as it sews the skin together."

He took a seat fairly nearby, pulling off the shreds of his blood soaked shirt, and sat there patiently to wait for Steve to tend to him.

"I remember bits more of you, I'm not sure I like it."

A quick hand wash and a basin filled with warm, soapy, clean water set at his feet, Steve was just about to sit down and thread the needle when Bucky made that confession. He'd wisely not tried to make any other jokes about Purple Hearts or anything else to do with the color and instead nearly jabbed himself in the thumb. He was usually a lot more graceful, but Bucky had a way or ruining that for him somehow.

"I don't--". He cleared his throat and slipped the thread through the eye of the needle without touching the metal edges. His eyes sight was fantastic and his oorindation, when he was paying attention, even better. "I don't know what to say about that, Buck. I'm sorry that... We don't have all great memories. I was sick a lot. And let you down a lot too."

He hadn't been there to say goodbye to Bucky before he shipped off. He'd been taken away immediately to Camp Lehigh instead. He hadn't written as much as he liked (or at all) because he was so secretive those early days of boot camp, right until he started doing USO shows. And by then, he was moving around so much that he could never be sure any of his letters got out. Or before any of that, he couldn't always adventure with Bucky the way he liked to. He was on the verge of dying every winter. And when his mom passed, he was a bear to deal with. He never did well on double dates. He always left early...

It was pretty hard being friends with him, he knew that.

"You could have done a lot better with friends. Don't know why you stuck with me, pal."

He didn't realise that he hadn't been clear at first, until Steve started apologising for what he had been like. It was hard to rebut anything he was saying, because he still didn't remember enough to really argue with someone who remembered everything. But it didn't seem right all the same.

"I don't like it because it's not what I'm meant to be, it's making me feel-- things."

Bucky still felt mostly like a weapon and like these were malfunctions. He had spent so long being trained not to feel, being punished when he did, that this just tore him apart from the inside.

"But I think if you were so bad, I wouldn't have remembered you at all."

What he could remember was tinged with affection, and his instinct was still to protect Steve no matter what, it had been even before the memories had come.

Oh. Well. Steve wasn't sure what to say to that. "You're...you're a human being." He used a lighter he found to sterilize the needle, despite not really thinking he needed to. The thing looked like a zippo, but the fire melded blue to purple, obviously artificial, and it seemed to know what to heat and what not to heat. Again, that was magic, but Steve didn't want to make any grand assumptions here. "I know it's not going to be easy for you to realize that and I'm not pushing you to remember anything. I'm just-- I'm here for you. Whatever you need."

As long as Bucky didn't ask the impossible...like for Steve to take a step back or treat him like he was nothing but an object.

"Because I'm not going to expect this to just work out. We're never going to be like the kids we used to be. War changes folks. And... I think for us both...it's never been peacetime since the Nazis invaded Poland."Steve came to terms with that a long time ago. "We just have to focus on keeping what we have. And if we can add to it, great."

But he missed Bucky. Tony wasn't the only one who couldn't connect here. No one alive could ever understand what it was like to be him or experience what he did. His time was gone and he was just a relic.

"Hold still."

Between one second and the next, Bucky is simply gone. His pupils blown wide, his jaw set into a sudden grimace, and a single long shudder running through him before he does, indeed, go perfectly and completely still. Even the rise and fall of his chest was minimal, barely visible, and he gave no sign that he would move again even if Steve asked him to.

It wasn't his fault, he couldn't have known.

That was the problem with the Soldier, with the long sleep in the ice, with all the other million things that had happened to them both in the long years and left fractured chasms between them, it was hard to tell what the wrong thing to say would be. Hard to protect one another properly.

Hold still, Steve said, and the Soldier did. He knew that command well, and he was powerless to do anything but obey.

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