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."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This couldn't be a really real thing. Steve Rogers was like some fantasy Prince, the kind all little girls dream of. He probably had animal companions stashed away and sung songs about the love he would one day find. Tony didn't trust him, not even a little. Perfection usually was a mask for what was lurking underneath.

Even if his dad was the one that made that mask in the first place. Fuck.

He swiveled around in a chair made for someone much larger than himself and tried not to say or do anything with his face ath the 'pal.' Bucky said the same thing before dismissing him like some sort of beggar. If this constantly bombardment by the 40s Brigade kept happening, Tony was probably going to have to hang himself to be put out of his misery. And that was a shame. The world would mourn him.

But Tony was never good at keeping quiet. "The fact that you've come to apologize for literally nothing is just upsetting me more. If you'll excuse me, I have Canadians and maple syrup to liberate."

"It can't be nothing, Tony, people don't behave this way over nothing."

He was everything that some people hated. He was earnest and righteous and so keen to see the best in people and treat others kindly that he never really saw that the people around him might not live up to the same high standard. Tony couldn't hate him for literally nothing, who did that?!

"We've got off on the wrong foot, and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry you've had a falling out with Bucky too, it was-- good to see him make a friend after all that's happened, I hope the two of you can work it out."

He scrubbed a hand through his hair, already wishing he was back with Bucky.

"I'm not gonna stop you going down onto Canada, as long as you're in your armour, but maybe take Bruce with you?"

"Banner is busy making art projects," Tony said stiffly. "I've got this." He was trying not to start another war, he even smiled and managed not to tell Steve where to stick his Captain America leadership skills. Tony hadn't had a boss since he was in school and even then, he rebelled against authority. Being told what to do wasn't the way to handle him.

And trying to make play dates with his boyfriend was just plain weird. Tony couldn't see the good in what Steve was trying to do right now.

All he could see was meddling and self righteous control. He smiled through it so Steve would leave him alone, but his smile had cracks in it. Tony was a good liar when he wanted to be but he didn't like to put effort into causes that didn't matter to him.

Like making friends.

"Just have rooms ready. I'm seeing just over a thousand people down there in the subway."

Steve wasn't about to let Tony go down onto the planet alone. They worked in pairs or above, so there was always someone to help out if things got rough. He'd go down himself if he had to, though Bucky would probably kill him and he didn't want to refuse any request of Bucky's when the poor guy hadn't been able to make requests for so long, so he would just turn and go in search of Bruce.

An art project was not a good enough reason to beg off doing anything else.

Of course, he found out when he got there that Tony hadn't even asked Bruce for his help, and the other man was more than happy to leave the organisation in the hands of Mohinder and get ready to go down and help corral the Canadians into the skiff. He would approach the bridge just before they landed, voice deceptively mild.

"So we're a team down there today, huh? Pretty short notice."

Steve Rogers was a menace to society and should be stopped at all cost.

Tony imagined him on a wanted poster as he booted the still glitchy FRIDAY up inside the HUD of his armor. He did not flip up the face mask. He had been trying to get out of the skiff before anyone could decide that it looked cooler to march into a situation like this as a group, come to liberate the survivors. What a damned joke.

He made a show of testing the joints of his not quite repaired armor, not that he needed to, and huffed loudly. “Guess he wants to stay with tall, dark and holey,” he replied, as if Steve had been going to do this himself. It wasn’t exactly a lie. But it wasn’t quite the truth either. “I’ve got this if you want to stay. Suit of armor, see? I’ll be fine.”

"Actually, Steve told me to come with you and he's the boss, so I'll do what he says."

Bruce knew that this would wind Tony up, but that was the point right now. He needed to have a blow out and get some of this internal festering anger out, and better he do it at Bruce who knew the reasons and could take it, than vented any more of his impotent rage at people who didn't deserve it.

"Just take it slow, I'm not as fast as your armour, we can walk down to the subway tunnels where we've seen life signals."

Most of Tony knew that Bruce was pushing buttons. He respected that. On any other day, it would have gotten a laugh out of Tony, an eyeroll, and a promise to call Bruce ‘Star Spangled Banner’ from now on. The quip never came. And that anger, that growing mass of cancer festering in his gut, it just grew. Even if Tony didn’t immediately jump on the mild-mannered scientist, it was obvious in the silence that followed how bad off Tony was.

And how little he didn’t want to talk about it. Tony was used to fixing his own problems. Or drinking them away. Rhodey would have stories for Banner if he was here, and alive. Pepper would have even more, none of which would have cast Tony Stark in a positive light.

There was a nod. Just a nod. A little bob of a metal encased head. And then Tony was moving down the ramp, Iron Man clunking down to the city where the buildings had mostly been toppled but the radiation had not hit too badly yet, like in Iowa. The air was clean and safe, no where near the deadly levels gathering on the East Coast and borne by the super squad of super soldiers at their disposal.

Canadian subways were clean, nothing like their American counterparts, and Tony switched on the lights in the eyes of his mask to provide more light than the reactor could. As expected, there were sentries posted, but unlike the fear they saw with Captain America approaching, Iron Man coming for them, with a human being at his side, brought a cry of delight instead of wariness. There was no need to explain away the doubles. “Hey folks.” Tony let his mask slip up into the helmet. “Autographs later. We’ve come to rescue you. How many do we have?”

It would be the easiest rescue so far, with the most people at once. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as cathartic as Tony might have hoped. Playing savior did not negate his pain. In fact, it brought it all back up as he took the armor off when Steve Rogers took over the settling process inside the skiff and thanked him for a job well done.

For some reason, Tony felt the need to bust open Steve’s jaw. His hook, though, barely made the super soldier’s head jerk back.

"Don't fucking touch me!" Language.

Bruce knew how it was to be a festering ball of issues and anger, and it had taken him a long time to learn how to not direct that at people who didn't deserve it. Tony needed to learn that lesson and, sadly, he needed to learn it soon. If he didn't then he'd end up isolating the friends he had, and where he could have been a leader in the new community, he'd end up resented and avoided.

So he would continue the whole mission just casually pushing buttons as they got people onto the skiff and towards their new quarters, right up until Steve came over and got socked in the jaw. He looked surprised, but he didn't hit back, just sighed as if Tony were a dumb kid.

"If you have a problem with me, Tony, then be a man and tell me about it."

Bruce slipped forwards to stand almost between them, arms folded.

"Come on, Tony, we need to talk this out. Last chance."

Little Bruce, stuck between a guy half in armor and a super soldier, was almost laughable. Then again, seeing as how the guy could become literally indestructible at a moment’s notice, perhaps it wasn’t too far off having him be the mediator. They had a small audience by this point, like that sullen teenage kid from the farm house and Mohinder, who’d come to check in on Doctor Banner, but for the most part, Tony’s little breakdown was contained with the two Avengers currently staring him down.

“I’m not talking to him,” he said with more venom than he knew what to do with. Steve was just an easy target. It wasn’t his fault, exactly, it was just what he stood for, and how happy and well adjusted and patient he was that rubbed Tony the wrong way and set everything he was on edge.

He didn’t try to attack anyone again, at least, he didn’t shove Bruce despite wanting to do so. He simply worked on getting to the manual release button to set the rest of the Iron Man armor falling into various pieces before he stalked out of the bridge. Steve knew better than to follow. He did lightly rub his jaw, but it barely stung. He was just shocked by it, and maybe a little emotionally hurt. He thought he could guess what was eating Tony, but in all honesty, he hadn’t gone through it. If anything, he’d gained more than he lost. So much more.

Bruce murmured something to Steve about going to talk to Tony and went after him. He tracked down the other man in one of the small rooms, alone, and shut the door behind him as he came in so that they were private. There was probably nobody in the world who looked less like a man with anger issues, even his tone of voice was calm and not at all indicative of the things that he was talking about.

"I was raped," he said. Maybe a shocking way to start a conversation, but that's what all of this was about. That Tony had been violated into violating other people. "My Dad, between the ages of five and eight; he went to jail after that, he murdered my Mom in front of me."

These were not things that he generally shared, and they stirred up terrible feelings, but they were all controlled under the surface for now.

"I was a horrible kid for a long time, messed up by what had happened, and I took it out on the people around me. They hadn't hurt me, but I hated them anyway, because they didn't have to go through what I went through. When I saw a kid at school with a good dad, I hated him just because he had what I didn't, and he never had to go through what I did. But that wasn't right. I was turning into my Dad piece by piece, alienating all the people who cared about me. That sort of anger never goes away, you just have to find a way to direct it at the people who deserve it, because otherwise it'll destroy you and anyone who might have come to care for you."

Though he'd been expecting Banner, or maybe that soft spoken English accented Indian man to come and talk to him, he hadn't really expected those opening lines. Tony stiffened, the thought of what Bruce lived through clawing at the inside of his head. His own father was abusive, mostly neglectful, and Tony understood what it was like to see other families that seemed to genuinely love one another and be jealous.

But the specifics of Bruce's trauma eventually had Tony sagging. Bruce had admonished him for saying that Steve had it easy in captivity. And no one saw Barton moping around even if he'd gone through exactly what Tony had. So trying to explain it all without going into detail himself was going to be impossible.

He opted not to say anything to Bruce for a long while. Not about the other man's ordeal. Instead, he decided to tell him about the training moon. Just shallowly at first.

"There's a version of you working for the Asgardians. Evidently that Banner is concerned with sorting out slaves and helping the Asgardians get some new blood for their stock. The invasion? That was just a way to inject some new DNA into their herd. I guess their Banner was supposed to do the math. Like how dog breeders and horse breeders run the numbers to figure out which animals will produce the best offspring. Human beings just don't go at it when they're locked in a pen together though. So they force you to drink this stuff, and okay, in all fairness, it doesn't taste half bad. It's what it makes you need after that-- that's the problem. It's five on one after that. Whatever is in that drink, and I don't know exactly, it's like you're just mindless."

He kept using that othering word. You. Not me.

"You're mindless. And the women they bring in are mindless. A bunch of people just stand and and watch and if one woman is getting too much attention, they pull her out. Or another woman shoved her aside and-- Well what can you do, right? You want and they want it and it should be just fine in the end. But it's not fine, Banner, because it happens every few days. And then sometimes a smiling face of the only person you know shows up congratulating you on getting some poor woman pregnant and how lucky the kid is gonna be because they'll be trained right and sold to a good home."

Disassociating was just making he feel even angrier, though.

"Guess I'm a good stud. I've got at least seven buns in various ovens up there."

Bruce let Tony tell him everything that he needed to. He understood, their experiences were different, but the sort of trauma left behind was much the same, and he knew how tempting it was to disassociate from it all. Not that it was possible, not when he had to work around everyone else and their issues too.

"I'm sorry that happened to you."

Simple, but true.

"Nothing I say will make it any easier, and I know that when we get to the moon to rescue the others, it'll be hard. For you, for them, for everyone."

He had said all he had to say about blaming others for what wasn't their fault and he wasn't going to hammer it home. Tony had to come to that himself, and he either would or he'd finish the implosion he'd started and go down in flames.

"But you're not alone, everyone here has been through their own issues."

“You think I’m selfish.” Tony hadn’t looked at Bruce since he’d come in. “People have it worse than I do, right? Whatever happened isn’t going to effect me at all, not like it will those women, right? I should be happy that Rogers didn’t have to do it. And Barton…it’s not ruining his whole life so what’s the big deal? It’s nothing like the trauma you went through. Or what each one of these people suffered through. I know I’m being irrational, and that pisses me off too. I just want Rogers to fall down a peg for once. For once. He’s the only thing dad ever spoke about. He collected all of his stuff and told war stories and spent his whole life developing new ways to make him all over again, or to find him because he was sure that Steve was still alive somewhere.”

Once he’d started to talk, it just seemed to keep going.

“I get it, I really do. The rich kid who had everything is complaining now that he doesn’t have anything. I spent forty years happily getting my way on almost everything so boo-hoo to me, pal, right? Just go. I don’t feel the need to whip out pints of ice cream or hug it out, Banner.”

Except he did. He really wanted to hug it out and be told that he wasn’t the monster he really felt like he was. Rogers bit his own tongue off to keep from being forced to harm anyone. And Tony? Tony didn’t put up a fuss at all. His dad would have thought that typical. Once again, his unwanted son was a disappointment. It didn’t matter what that video reel said.

"Thank you, for telling me what I think," he said, tone just slightly dry. "But it's not right, because that's not what I think at all. Sure, you can be selfish in some ways, but this isn't one of them. There is no worse or better, what happened to me doesn't negate what happened to you... it's not a competition, Tony, there's not a finite amount of compassion to go around, it's infinite."

He spread his hands and remained right where he was, not giving Tony his space despite being basically asked to go.

"This kind of trauma, any kind of trauma, effects people differently. It doesn't matter how Barton is handling it, it doesn't matter how anyone else is handling it, that doesn't make your feelings less valid. Just like some of the women will cope by focusing on their kids, some will be angry, some will be scared, some will campaign for the safety of others, some will retreat. None of those are the wrong way to cope."

He hesitated a moment, before pushing on.

"But yeah, if you want my opinion, I think you owe Steve and Bucky an apology. Steve doesn't deserve your hate for not being raped or for being the guy your Dad was obsessed with, none of that was his doing, and I sure as hell think you wouldn't appreciate him judging you based on Howard. I don't know what happened with Bucky other than you argued, but he also didn't do those things to you. What I'm telling you is that anger is normal and valid, but you have to find a way to not unleash that on people who don't deserve it, or you become the bad guy. You're not the bad guy now, Tony, and I know you don't want to go down that route."

Slipping further down into the chair so that only his shoulder and a tuft of hair was visible over the edges, Tony found himself rubbing at the sleep in his eyes. “This is exhausting,” Tony admitted. Hating someone was really tiring, it tore at the inside of your skin, it nibbled on your bones and it made you just want to sleep. He knew Steve didn’t deserve the hatred, but he was the only person Tony had in front of him to hate and there was little else he could do about his feelings other that tough it out, swallow it, and figure out a way to move passed it.

He wanted to tell Bruce off, to mind his own business, and he wanted to reiterate that he needed to be alone, but that was exactly what Tony did not need and all of this acting out was a sure sign of that.

“Can you just tell him to back off me for awhile? I don’t want… Those grand gestures, the desire to make up… I just don’t want that. I shouldn’t have to move at anyone else’s pace, Jesus, Banner. And I don’t need someone telling me what to do. I just—“

Tony reached over and pushed the other chair out.

“Can you just sit here with me. And not talk?”

Whether or not Tony manages to learn how to funnel his anger into something productive and stop taking it out on people who don't deserve it, he will have to learn how to take orders. Especially from Steve, who had already become the unofficial leader among the survivors and would no doubt be officially voted as such before long.

Bruce sighed, but he sat in the chair obligingly in silence.

If this was what Tony needed in order to get his head together then he would be here for him for as long as it took. He meant what he said about everyone's trauma being valid, but he hadn't quite got around to the second part of that, which he was sure Tony would see as an attack again. That trauma didn't give you a pass to be a dick, you still had to take responsibility for your own actions.

That was what had made Bruce finally change his world view. He suddenly realised that he was becoming a bad guy, making the lives of others miserable, and he didn't want to perpetuate that cycle.

It was going to take Tony a little time to come to the same conclusion. It wasn't a good idea for him to be alone while he came to it, but he needed a little more space than this skiff. He turned his chair just a little towards Banner before he reached out to take his hand and pull it back into his own lap. He just wanted to hold it. And honestly, that was a really big step for him right now.

Given that Tony and Bruce had locked themselves away, and since a particular someone who was going to be so mad at him when he woke up was asleep, Steve requested Barton for backup on the last group of people they could bring back with them on this trip. While they had estimated about five thousand souls to the skiff, that really was just if they were all expected to stand side by side. They were rapidly losing space on board and though Steve was planning on returning to search for more people, there was very little liveable places left on this planet.

After he returned from a harrowing mission to Montreal, where the radiation had spiked drastically at the tail end of their loading mission and he had to send Clint back inside and carry a few kids at top speed back to the skiff due to the oncoming storms, Steve showered down and put on a fresh t-shirt before he stopped by the infirmary--

Only to be met with accusatory eyes.

"I'm sorry, pal. We had to move. The storms are bringing the radiation in from the East, Clint came with since Tony tried to knock my teeth out. How're you feeling...?"

Bucky had woken up about an hour since and been told by one of the volunteer medics that Steve had completely ignored their conversation and gone down onto the planet anyway. She had had to call in four other people to stop him getting up, suiting up, and going after them. He had only stopped struggling when Steve had been confirmed for back on board, then it was just a case of waiting.

He had obvious fresh bandages around his torso, and his entire expression was one big glower.

"Like I want to knock your teeth out too," he said. He understood why Steve had done it, but that didn't mean that he had to be happy about it. At all.

The guilt Steve felt was intense. He knew what new bandages meant. And he knew that blank expression meant that he'd just cut apart the trust of a person who needed to be able to trust him more than anything else. But Bucky's happiness and his pain for a few minutes really had to take a backseat to saving people that they already knew they could save. The broadcasting had worked. There was no struggle save for baggage and people with mobility issues.

Letting them die would have been wrong. And he couldn't just lock himself away like Stark evidently could.

Steve pulled up a chair and leaned his elbows on Bucky's mattress before he lightly tapped himself on the jaw. There wasn't a mark there from Tony at all. "Here's your chance. I'll even sit still for it. And then I'll work on regaining your trust back."

"You already have my trust, you idiot, you always have."

That was what made things like this more annoying, because he would never lose trust in Steve and he knew that the only thing that ever made Steve break his word was a greater need. He knew that his happiness didn't weigh against hundreds of lives, even if a part of him did value Steve's life above all of those.

He reached out, though, and tapped Steve very lightly on the jaw.

"I get it, but I'm mad at you. You're all I have Steve, if you're gone, I have nothing. I don't care about myself, about the new world, I just care about you."

Maybe that would change one day and he'd be able to find happiness in other things, but Steve was his lifeline at the moment.

Steve understood Bucky's selfishness, but he didn't want to give into it. He could just put himself in a glass case of on a self to be taken down when the all clear was sounded. Steve sighed and looked at his friend, at his....more then friend. He set one large hand on Bucky's thigh, respectfully over the blankets. It was s comfort, nothing romantically inclined.

"I'm going to work on that. But you're in luck. I'm pretty indestructible already. So you can let your guard down just a little. I'm not going anywhere without you again." There were people milling around all over the place now but Mohinder had assigned s good number of them to various odd jobs. "We're on our way back to our new home. And it's gonna be a whole lot of work once we get there but you have a few days for those holes in your chest to close. Maybe tonight-- if you don't go getting them pulled all out of whack, you can come back to the room tonight? It'll be weird sleeping without you in the cot beside mine."

Bucky wanted to sleep in the same damn cot. Not even for anything sexual, but because when Steve was close and he could feel his heart beat, that's when he could relax enough to actually sleep and maybe avoid the nightmares that always seemed to stalk him through each night.

"Help me up now, I'm ready to get outta here."

He had been ready to be out of the medical bay as soon as he had woken up, he hated places like this. Even the Soldier had been wary of medical procedures, that's where the deepest pain was often caused.

"You're impossible. And stubborn. I want you to know that." But after he'd gone against his word to stay on the ship, Steve wasn't about to tell Bucky to lay back down again. So he stood and instead of helping his friend to his feet, Steve swept him up in one fell swoop and cradled him close.

Was is strange to feel so good like this? Because right now, Steve felt amazing. He had no right to considering what he put Bucky through, but this was one of this moments that never happened outside of a fantasy or two. In the last few days, a lot of those daydreams kept becoming reality and though he felt a little guilty being so happy, he couldn't stop that happiness.

"I thought you might be the one carrying me for the rest of my life," Steve joked so he didn't get too wrapped up in his emotions at the moment. "I think I'm finally getting to like this role reversal."

Bucky could remember all the times that he had lifted and carried Steve back in their younger days, when the guy's lungs just flat out failed to work and left him a wheezing mess on the stairwell, or when he had pneumonia and couldn't even get out of bed to wash himself or use the bathroom. He had never seen Steve as lesser because he needed that help, so he didn't fight it now.

He just laid his head against Steve's chest to listen to his heart beating a solid and comfortable rhythm. A few of the people they passed looked at them in interest, and one young lady in her mid twenties waylaid them before the quarters they'd claimed for themselves.

"Um, excuse me, Captain America? My name is Chelsea Lane and I'm a-- I was a student of LGBTQ+ History, we studied, uh-- I just want to ask... are you two a couple?"

Bucky was a solid and oh so welcome weight in his arms. This was just as good as those hallway kisses, the kind that still surprised Steve thst he was allowed to have now. And it was as good as the way Bucky looked at him sometimes, a look he had gotten for years without knowing the meaning of, thst filled him up with warmth.

He was careful with his friend, though Bucky was pretty resilient, standing aside to let people move opposite them at a junction in the hall. He smiled back and gave little nods since he was a polite young man, even if he wanted to ignore the world and maybe keep right on holding Bucky like this once they were alone. Was that too forward? People slept together without knowing each others' names these days but Steve was worried if holding his friend as he slept would be inappropriate.

Bucky could laugh at him later for that.

At the moment, the blond was dumbstruck. He blinked at the girl who was barring the way with her slight body and well defined arm muscles. Steve liked that women worked out and grew strong these days. Everyone should be allowed to be whomever they wanted and this was proof that women weren't regulated to wives and mothers for a profession any more.

"Uh... Well first, nice to meet you, Chelsea. You can call me Steve and.. Are we... Yeah. Yeah you can say that--" Steve was surprised by the question... And the implication that his relationship with Bucky and not just his missions during the war had been a topic of discussion in class.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject