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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If he had been wearing his signature shades, Tony would be looking over the rims of them at Barnes right now, eyebrows lifted. Instead, he just tilted his head down and quirked a single eyebrow. "Wouldn't have taken you for homophobic. But I keep forgetting you guys grew up in the golden age of the nuclear family and the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name."

Bucky was protesting too much. He'd called Bucky Steve's boyfriend a few times now and the blond didn't even bat an eye. But then again, Tony had been thinking that Steve wasn't too into the fairer sex. First the whole biting his tongue off rather than have sex with a woman thing. And then the whole muscle bound gym rat without a girlfriend... He'd never even had a girlfriend. And Tony knew that because Steve fed Bucky their life story constantly.

And looked at him as if he was all that mattered in the world.

Tony frowned. "Oh. Oh.. It's onesided. That makes sense. From what he told us all for months, you were quite the lady killer. That makes sense then."

Bucky knew it was entirely one-sided, he knew that Steve didn't return his affections, and that's why he had to step out with the women he had been expected to be with. Better to be free, closeted, and live next door to Steve to still have him in his life, than be hated and incarcerated for being a pervert. He didn't want Steve to figure it out even now, even with all the other things he had done, he didn't want that to come to light.

"I don't care what madness you're making up in your own head, you don't do it, understand? It's not respectful to joke about that sort of thing, especially not with a fella who doesn't dance to that tune."

He scrubbed his hand through his hair, looking more like the real Bucky of old in his awkwardness, than he had ever looked before.

"Give me your word, Tony. As pals."

Bucky's words were so very easily misconstrued as to being about Steve. He'd already thought Steve might be that way and Bucky's overt homophobia probably would keep him that way. And that was just so sad for Cap. Tony genuinely felt bad for him, to care so much for a guy stuck in a time that was only relevant to republicans.

"Hey. Dance to whatever tune you want. They're all pretty good. But I won't talk about your dance card if you have some issues with it." But as pals? That was strange to hear.

He went back to work.

He hadnt heard half of what had happened to Bucky but if he knew about the rapes during his conditioning, then he might understand why Bucky was so against the idea. Maybe he did have a little inkling though. Since Bucky bristled so intently.

"How about you start taking the furniture out of all he bedrooms? The boys might prefer real beds to whatever Cap flounced together in his Martha Stewart madness."

Bucky was grateful that Tony seemed to at least partially understand what he was getting at and agreed to stop it with the inappropriate jokes. He just didn't want to open that can of worms, Steve was all he had now, and he didn't want to lose him now that he had decided that he wanted to stay with him.

"Sure, I can do that. Thanks."

He turned and slopped out of the room to grab the first bed, easily lifting it up without any assistance, and got it out of the hatch and towards the main buildings. He'd work that way for the rest of the day, unless stopped, taking out all unnecessary but potentially useful things from the skiff and putting them into the main building. If this was going to be their base for the next few weeks, maybe even months, it had to be habitable.

Tony was thinking long term. It was something he made reference to when Clint announced that afternoon that I'd Bucky and Steve didn't stop racing to beat each other in the size of their piles of looted skiff remains and eat something, he wasn't cooking anymore. Sitting around the outdoor oven with the other three men, two shirtless and with three rippling biceps between them, gorging on rations, Tony laid it all out for them.

"If we go to Earth, they'll find us. They can even go back to our Earth in our dimension because their ship calculates absolutely everything. It's a problem. What I noticed is that this moon hasn't been inhabited in two thousand years so technically it's older than the bible." He mostly wanted to see Steve twitch. The blond didn't take the bait, he was just watching him with expectant eyes. No fun. "I can write a program that erases information of this place out of their navigation systems. As long as no one follows us, they'll have no idea where to look. And the place is pretty big. There's a hundred and fifty settlements like this one across the globe. And they're all set up like this too. Four or five multistory buildings around a center courtyard and surrounded by farm land overgrown by jungle."

"Uh. You want us to live here?" Clint wasn't pleased. "Listen man. I have to get home."

"There probably isn't a home left. And if there is, we can't lead them right back there," Tony scowled. "This is our best shot for a little while, okay?"

Bucky fully agreed with the sentiment that going back to Earth would be a terrible idea for the logical reasons laid out, though he also saw Clint's point of view. He obviously had someone or multiple someones that he cared about back there, and if it had been Steve there then Bucky wouldn't have rested.

"We can go back during the year."

He'd been thinking about this too, coming to much the same conclusions as Tony, though without the calculations or being able to erase this planet from anyone's navigation systems.

"I think the raid to rescue should be near the end of the year, to give proper time to plan, train, get weapons, and get reinforcements. I think we should take the skiff back to Earth soon and try to rescue anyone that can be rescued there, get materials and supplies, and come back here. We can then spend a few months in teams, depending how many we get - some focusing on reinhabiting this world and making it fit for us, some on fighting, some on building more skiffs or weapons. So when we go in, it'll be quick, brutal, and effective."

How awful was it that Tony Stark hadn’t once thought about ever returning to Earth? He scowled just a little, half in guilt and half in aggravation. “We had a few billion people on the planet when we left. Judging by the size of the ships in dock, maybe twenty thousand people from all across the planet were taken. Let’s say half the rest of the population was killed. We’re talking billions of people still left on Earth. Or little ship can take maybe five thousand at a time. My plan still requires as leaving over half of our people on that planet already. Even if we make dozens of trips to Earth, we aren’t going to be able to bring most of the people back with us.” He was pointing all of this out before Steve Rogers turned his hope filled, doe-eyes up at him. “So a few calculations. Let’s say each of these little settlements can hold roughly 500 people. We have 150 of them on this moon. That means that we have a capacity of seventy-five thousand people that we can bring here. Or, minus our one time pick up in the slave camp, seventy thousand people. Out of three to five billion.”

This wasn’t some great mass-exodus, the whole population couldn’t just go. Of course, no understood how unnecessary the rescue trip was at the end of the year. Asgard planned on taking the children and leaving the vast majority of the adults on the moon behind them to live out their lives however they saw fit, knowing that the warlike human race would end up dying out no matter how many resources they had available to them within two or three generations.

And they had no idea that Earth was currently a toxic wasteland either, countries deciding to wage war rather than ban together in the wake of the Asgardian culling.

“Who makes the choice on who gets to come? Because seriously? Not it.”

"There won't be that many left."

Bucky was unflinching in his assessment. He knew war, he knew what it did to countries that weren't prepared for it, he knew what would happen when the infrastructure of the planet just crumbled under the invasion of another force. True, he had mostly dealt with one country attacking another, but this still held true.

"There'll have been further fighting on Earth, there'll be disease rampant because of the damage and loss of infrastructure. People will have died of starvation, bad water, people not used to those conditions. I'd be surprised if at least one nuke hadn't gone off, triggered against the Asgardians even too late. If we get back to a planet of even a couple of million, I'd be surprised."

Maybe they couldn't bring them all, but they could do something. They could give hope that another world would continue on.

That assessment was sobering and Tony sat back against the low rim around the bench to do the calculations in his head. He had been in the weapon’s business for a long time. He knew how these things worked too, even if he buried his head in the sand. You can’t blame a bullet, he’d say, for a man being shot. And you can’t blame the man that made the bullet either. But could you blame the man that designed and smelted and engineered the first bullet ever? Without that, people wouldn’t have spent hundreds of years killing each other so efficiently.

“Nuclear payloads are tested all the time. Under controlled circumstances. With minimal environmental impact. But anywhere near a population center, or anything above the normal testing capacity… We could be going back to the start of a nuclear winter. Could be. If everyone is living all high on life though… I’m not responsible to making the choice on who goes and stays okay? I have enough on my conscience.”

Enough wars. Enough deaths. Tony stood and brushed his hands off.

“Give me two days and we can go.”

Clint actually gave a whoop…which was crazy. Tony didn’t know what the man had to live for.

Bucky knew that if the time came, the decisions would have to come from him. He could stand more blood on his conscience, but it would destroy all the others. Steve would never be able to live with himself if he had to pick and choose who would survive and who would stay, Tony had already said that he would wash his hands of it, and Clint obviously had a personal agenda to deal with.

But he didn't think it would come to that.

He had seen how close the world had come to nuclear war on many times, and that hadn't been with the stress of Asgardian invasion and many of the population being taken as slaves. He was almost sure that they'd get back to almost all the population dead, if not all wiped out by their own hand.

"Two days, got it. I'll load the skiff with medical supplies, food, and what weapons we have."

It wouldn't be ideal, but it was possible they might have to fight off survivors if they took offence to being left behind and tried to drag them down with them.

Without knowing what they were walking into, or what the full layout of the moon was since the images that he had at his disposal were thousands of years old, just before they lost the light of the double sun, Tony took the skiff up with Clint to survey the area. The approximately one hundred and fifty settlements would turn into just under a hundred after they noticed how far some of the buildings had crumbled, but the upside was that there were actually more spaces to build or rebuild, including a vast series of underground structures that might have once been used for storage that would need to be mapped on foot. Eventually.

It did give Steve and Bucky a little time to themselves, and Steve suggested that they walk the half mile to the next closest Village – as Steve was calling them – to begin to clear out the tall, six story structure and the three other outlying buildings. The spire was much larger than in the Village he had initially been dropped off at and as they moved their way from the top, down, throwing vines and muck out of windows, Steve couldn’t help but speak cheerfully about the live this place would see again.

“It’s a little like my old building… The rooms close together I mean. It’s going to be hard for people to learn to live so close together but I think it will be worth it. Maybe we could call it New Brooklyn?”

Bucky liked working alongside Steve on this, the manual labour wasn't hard when it was two super soldiers working on it, and the company was obviously the one he was the most comfortable in. The last rays of the dying double suns gave the evening a pleasant warmth, and he was almost contented as they began to strip the large tower.

"Because these are like the tenements?"

He grinned briefly, the first proper smile, though it was come and gone fairly swiftly.

"They're not as damp or falling apart as those. Don't you remember when Mrs. Havers got that new cabinet and it knocked a chunk of ceiling down on our heads when she tried to move it?"

“The only thing I remember about that was trying to convince Ma that you were my long lost brother when all of that particle board turned your hair white and she went along with it for a few hours until we got in a fight about who deserved to have the bed since you were long and lost and had this backstory that you were living on the beach on Long Island since you were a baby.” Steve laughed, hardly taxed at all by the exertion. There was dirt under his fingernails and across one cheek but he was otherwise in a great mood.

Minus the whole Earth had probably destroyed itself vibe that was running in the back of his mind, as far back as possible. He could think about it more in two days. But until then, there was some work to do.

Like tossing vines at the back of Bucky’s head as the violet and pink lights overhead started to warmly glow above them.

Bucky didn't have that particular memory, but it didn't matter because he had a lot of memories and it was nice looking at the way Steve's face lit up when he remembered. He smiled more genuinely this time, a slow and small little gesture that made him look a whole lot younger, and then whipped one of the vines towards Steve like a lasso.

"Don't start something you can't finish, Steve, we both know that I'll leave you tied up here all night begging to be let down."

He swung his vine again at bit teasingly, mocking Steve, waiting for him to make the first move.

“You know I don’t back down,” Steve warned playfully. They didn’t really have the time to be silly, but Steve had all the time in the world to make Bucky feel like a human being again and… And he hadn’t exactly had a good life either since Buck went down on the train. His experiences were nothing compared to his friend’s, but he had been terribly lonely and lost in this century with people that didn’t understand him and could never understand him.

And that was because no one ever had since he was a child. No one except the blue eyes man pretending he was a cowboy. Steve arched one perfectly sculpted eyebrow at the other, blocking that vine attack swiftly before he kicked up a bit of moss from the pretty tile ground, caught it in the air, and flung it at half strength at his friend.

“You’re the one getting tied up. But I won’t leave you here, Buck. I’ll carry you back to camp as proof that I’m no slouch!”

Bucky might not like what they had turned him into, but he knew after drinking that honey that it was a part of him for now and always. Bucky and the Soldier weren't two different people, they were the experiences of one man shaped by the life he had led, so he didn't feel any guilt about utilising the experiences he had with those things.

He dropped into a lower centre of gravity and punched the moss out of the air with his metal fist, even as he leaped towards his friend with a new vine lasso swinging to try and bind his arms together.

"Dream on, Steve. Which one of us was the champion boxer? And which one of us couldn't learn to dance without stepping on my toes? You're going down."

Catching Bucky was only the start of the scuffle, though Steve was able to briefly pin him before he wriggled free. “That’s the difference between us,” he grunted. “I learned a lot about all sorts of things by stepping on your toes!” He found himself with both shoulders on the ground a moment later and jumped back up to his toes, arcing his entire body to break the hold.

They were fairly evenly matched, and though Bucky had the discipline of a boxer, he was tempered by the freedom to use whatever was at his grasp. Steve fought a little more honorably, but he didn’t have a style. He’d learned early on to let his muscles move the way that they wanted to and that meant a lot of twisting and quick jabs.

That said, he knew Bucky’s signature move and, having used it a lot in the war, didn’t even think about it as he whirled and attempted to lay two punches to Bucky’s ribs. He felt fantastic doing this, on his toes, actually training again. He’d grown rusty in that cell.

Bucky felt the punches connect in just the way he had taught Steve to do it when they were much younger and sparring to keep warm on the winter nights when they had no fuel left and even all their clothes weren't doing the job. It was a much better hit than he had ever managed back then, this one nearly knocked the wind out of him.

But he recovered fast.

Instead of going down, he used his forward momentum to literally try and tackle Steve into the ground, attempting to use his superior weight and the strength of the arm to pin him while he used his other arm to hogtie him with the vines.

Since Buck worked so very hard to get him down, Steve just laid still until he was properly trussed up, laughing all the while. "These wouldn't have held me when I was eighteen, Bucky," he said, looking over his shoulder as Bucky tied the vines nice and tight. "They're not going to hold me--"

Steve paused as he pulled at the vibes and instead of snapping apart, they actually seemed to just stretch on him. It made his eyes narrow slightly and he rolled onto his side and bent his knees towards his chin.

The vines gave like one of those old Chinese finger trap toys he used to play with when they could get a few pennies together. The stretch made it impossible to allow him to actually break the bonds.

"Hey! Buck! Okay that was funny but you can let me go now!"

Bucky was expecting the vines to give pretty easily when he finished tying Steve up, so it amused him that this wasn't the case and his friend lay trussed at his feet without any hope of getting free.

"Aww gee, I'd love to, but it doesn't look like I have the key. Sorry, pal."

He flopped down on the ground about six feet away, leaning back as if he had all the time in the world to relax and nothing better to do than tease the shit out of his tied up best friend.

"Nice evenings here, huh? You think this is their summer season?"

“Should be hotter with two suns of this is summer,” Steve said, just as conversationally, as he tried to work his wrists free. The bonds held tight, never tightening to the point of discomfort, and stretching just enough to tease him with freedom. Steve was inwardly flabbergasted as how inept he was at the moment, picking at knots that gave and then snapped back the moment they were released. There were all sorts of ways to implement use of this material in the future, and while he’d bring it up to Tony, right now he was just trying to one up his friend who had played dirty and was just enjoying himself over there, smug and perfectly like the man he used to be. “Maybe spring? It is a nice night, though. Maybe we’re more on the northern hemisphere?”

Steve liked school, he’d been good at it too, and he picked up a lot of science and art since sports were pretty much out for a boy with chronic asthma who lived in a house with a woman who suffered from tuberculosis.

On his stomach now, Steve tried to leverage the toe of his boot into a groove between tiles on the floor, but the vines still wouldn’t budge. He could almost hear the gleeful lilt to Bucky’s voice before he even opened his mouth next.

“You think you have me on the ropes? A Rogers doesn’t give up!” And he wouldn’t. Not even after it had grown dark and the sound of the skiff landing a mile or so away reminded them that their teammates had returned.

Bucky was having more fun now than he could ever remember having clearly, he had some memories of long ago years laughing with Steve, but this was real and present and sharp. It made him think that maybe there might be light at the end of this very long and dark tunnel after all.

Which, of course, meant that he had absolutely no intentions of releasing Steve at all.

He just sat and watched him struggle as the suns went down properly and night filled the air, making it a bit cooler. The distant sounds of animals and birds, completely alien, made for a comforting backdrop. This could be a good place, the foundations were here, they could really help make something worthwhile and healing.

"Too late, Steve, your time is up." The skiff had returned, and that meant that they needed to head back to camp too. Not that he untied, Steve, he just hauled him up over his shoulder, still tied up like a prize captive, and started hiking back. "I've got you more than on the ropes, pal, you're being counted out."

“Woah!” This was more than just unexpected. Steve hadn’t been carried around since he was younger and very, very ill, too ill to stubbornly force his legs to move. Longer and far broader now, for Bucky to fireman-carry him down the stairs of the tower they had been cleaning out put his head within half a foot of the stairs preceding them and though his friend came close to swinging him a few times into physical obstacles, he managed to come out unscathed and laughing breathlessly. “Hey, can we talk about this?”

Steve wasn’t exactly idle the entire march through the jungle towards the brightest beacon of light over the trees. He still worked at the knots that hadn’t budged since Bucky tied them and he periodically made a grand wriggling movement to try and get his friend to drop him. If he had, though, Steve might be crawling like an inchworm back to the small patch of civilization they had cultivated.

As they neared the Village, though, Steve tried a different tactic.

“You know, this is nice. I think I’ll just have you carry me around everywhere. I mean, it’s strange staring at your butt for long stretches of time…. So maybe there’s a downside to this. But it certainly beats walking everywhere!”

Steve certainly weighed a hell of a lot more than he used to, no longer that skinny little punk who couldn't let himself show weakness; but then, Bucky was also a hell of a lot stronger than he used to be as well, so it all evened out in the end. He wasn't tired, despite lugging Steve for more than a mile through the jungle, though he did have to stop every so often to laugh when his dumb friend tried to wriggle loose.

"Okay, that sounds good. I'll make sure to tell the others that your feet are too delicate to touch the ground any more... nice try, Steve, but nothing is getting you out of being presented to them all tied up."

He jostled Steve a bit on his shoulder in tease, and then hiked up the small slope that led up to their little village.

"It's just Barnes coming in," he called out, having agreed the day before that they should identify themselves when approaching so anyone there didn't think a giant creature was about to attack. "I've caught something you might wanna take a look at."

Despite how this would look, despite how much Steve protested, he was a fantastic sport about the whole thing. Barton and Stark were on his team, but the word ‘team’ was a sort of loose term and he wasn’t exactly their leader. It was all right if he looked a little foolish here, especially if it made Bucky happy. Steve was a tough guy. He could sustain a little egg on his face here and there.

Tony was the first out, having ducked into the tower in their Village to use the restroom and wash his hands, and he stood with his hands on his hips watching the man slip into the light of the courtyard. “I really don’t think I can handle anything weirder than a boar-cat. Do not say your arm isn’t working unless it’s hanging out of it’s-- Oh.”

He blinked, mouth open, and then snapped that mouth shut again immediately.

“So okay. You’ve caught a Disney Prince. Well, Barton will dress him and I’ll get the oven on.”

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