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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Steve had pulled himself out of Bucky's arms only with great reluctance and, after leaving him the pencil drawing with its little note, he slipped back out into the main skiff and began focusing on duty again. He spent his morning helping anyone who needed it - whether that was someone who wanted assurance about the new moon, people shifting things around, or just helping prepare food for the thousands on board.

It wouldn't be long before the population of the new moon loved him with all their hearts, he had a way of inspiring that sort of loyalty and devotion even though it was unintentional.

He was just spending a few moments eating his own lunch when Tony showed up. He had a cheese sandwich in one hand, and one of Bucky's letters in the other, smiling with genuine fond affection as he re-read it for the fifteenth time.

"Is it good news?" He was off his game, leaning in the doorway. There was no one but Steve around at the moment but Tony wasn't sure if that made him feel relieved or annoyed. He did like a good audience. "Or should we start a fundraiser? I think a beef and beer sounds the most appropriate but we're going to have to settle for a boar-cat steak. Cows are in short supply."

He pushed away from the door and half sauntered into the kitchen and around where Steve was sitting. The Asgardian ship had a galley that seemed out of the Middle Ages. It was mostly just storage and much of the dried goods had been transferred to the moon already. Tony had hooked up a few salvaged fridges but that was it for the cold storage.

He didn't bother with them and just grabbed a box of mini cereal to munch out while he chatted to Steve.

"So uh, evidently I owe you an apology?" No. Tony, he a grown up. "I definitely owe you an apology. You're not the cause of any of my problems."

Steve folded the letter carefully and put it away as soon as he realised he wasn't alone. Those were for him, private, and he didn't want to share them. He knew that Bucky had written them because of how upset he had been over other people remembering those other letters better.

He hadn't been expecting an apology from Tony, and as soon as he realised what it was, he beamed. Genuine happiness on an earnest face that didn't do lying well, he held out his hand for Tony in the offer of a shake.

"Forget it, we're square. But I'm glad to hear you say that, because I really was hoping to rely on you when we got to our new home. Sure, leadership is important, but I think the tech crew are going to be even more vital. We'll need heating, refrigeration, protection-- and we need to do it all without endangering the ecosystem. I can't think of anyone better to find and lead a team of scientists and technicians than you."

Where the hell was Banner? Why did he think this would be a really good idea to just traipse up to Steve alone and have a little chat with him? He should have stayed in the doorway and said his piece because now Steve was being Steve and Tony felt the need to hit him again rising like bile in his throat.

He had no intention of being a leader. He'd been leader enough for awhile to know how awful that was. He didn't want to be relied on. Ever. Not for the things that leaders were at least.

After a moment of silence, Tony stood. "You got it. Make a list. Digitally. Send it to FRIDAY and I'll get right on what you want."

Agreeing was better than violence right? He'd need time to figure out how to deal with Rogers.

Okay... so apparently they weren't fine if the way Tony was now reacting was any indication. He had no idea what he was doing that kept setting things wrong, but it was tiring and upsetting. He had no issue with Tony and he did want them to work together, but he didn't push it. He just nodded and took a half step back.

"Pen and paper okay? I haven't quite got around to that whole-- digital list, thing."

Fury had been talking about getting him up to speed with the technology of the world, but then Loki attacked, the Avengers formed, and the Asgardians invaded. Not a whole lot of time for learning email.

Steve was just too much, too fast. He was too good, too willing to overlook a few nasty comments and forgive. Tony wanted that awkwardness. He wanted s chance to see something more than perfection from Rogers.

So every conversation was just tainted with so much goodness. He hated it.

"Okay, first," Tony said, pulling the chair back out again. "We have limited supplies on manufactured goods. There's no more paper once you use it up. No more ink or graphite. So you have to be sparing with it. We can make supply runs to Earth but after the next one or two, everything will be so radioactive that we won't be able to get anything else from there. Not just people. Everything. So no. Pen and paper isn't okay. You just dictate. FRIDAY?"

"Yes, boss?" His new AI was no JARVIS but she was happy to help.

"Make sure you compile a list of demands from Rogers. If he asks you to put something on the list, do it."

"Sure, boss. Captain America's list has been created in the data files. Ask any time and I will add your demands."

Unfortunately for Tony, Steve didn't believe in holding a grudge. He had seen too many bad things happen and lost too many good friends to want to waste his life being angry when someone had already apologised. So Tony wouldn't get his awkwardness here, much as he might wish for it to be different.

"Oh, uh, thank you, ma'am."

"You don't have to call me ma'am, Captain Rogers, my name is FRIDAY. I'm an artificial intelligence system designed to assist Mr. Stark with anything he needs."

"Well, thank you anyway."

"I guess you never got to know JARVIS... His program was corrupted in the attack but you and Bucky brought my server back and found my personality chips so... I don't think I thanked you for that." Tony wasn't trying to make it a big deal here. He was still trying to be a better teammate though, and maybe since he knew he could still school Blondie here, he felt better capable of dealing with the situation.

He sat with Steve for awhile as he made notes with FRIDAY on what they were going to need to do back on the moon. He even interjected with a thought of two for the AI to record. Every so often, they were joined by lingering refugees who all wanted to personally express their thanks before wandering out again.

It was only when they were alone for an extended period of time, silence passing between them as they tried to come up with a settlement plan, that Tony carried on with what he had wanted to say at the first go.

"I'm trying not to hate you. It's not your fault and I know that but I'm really fucking mad at you for not having to go through what we did. So I'm going to need some time and some space to get over that. I've been living in your muscled shadow my entire life and I'm having a hard time coping with the fact that I couldn't fight them and save those woman."

Steve really didn't understand that mindset. He had been through some pretty rough things, fighting in World War II as Captain America, and never once had he been angry at someone for not having to get shot at. Why would Tony be angry at him for not getting violated? That seemed... disgusting, actually.

He frowned, but he managed to keep himself from saying all of that, because apparently he didn't understand how things worked any more.

"You're not in my shadow, and if you are then take a couple of steps to the left and there's the sun. I'm not going to apologise for fighting, and I'm sure as heck not trying to overshadow anyone."

These all sounded like Tony's issues.

"But if you need me to give you some space, then done."

"Finally. A little chink in your perfection armor. And thank god for that." Steve's usual abundance of empath seemed to have fallen a little to get mired in dust and dirt. And it made him more human, though it annoyed Tony too. He'd opened up. He had actually wanted just s little bit of understanding. Evidently thst just wasn't going to happen.

He took that as his cue to leave. Steve agreed to what he wanted and that worked out just fine for him.

And honestly, it left Steve fuming a little too. He knew Tony to be arrogant and self absorbed but he never thought the engineer would go so far to place blame. He felt pretty bad about it now, a little dirty really. He kept trying to be friends with Tony but Stark made it so hard.

He worked with FRIDAY a little more before headed back down to check on Bucky, peanut butter and jelly sandwich in hand for his healing... Lover. Was that the right word?

Bucky wouldn't be there when Steve got back.

He never dealt well with bedrest, even in their little quarters, and so he had staggered away. Though he had to use the wall for support more than he'd like and move relatively slowly, he still managed to be near silent on bare feet and avoid most scrutiny. It was just a shame that when he got to the kitchens, it was about the same time that Tony got there too.

He had no idea that the engineer had just spoken to Steve, that it hadn't gone exceptionally well, and that he had been looking for Bucky too. He nodded, wary but not rude.

"Tony."

Tony rolled his eyes. “Do you two come in pairs? I just…” He glanced over his shoulder to see if Steve was coming up from behind him. He really wouldn’t be surprised if he was. They were going to tag team the shit out of him. Just great. He was already working through his anger here because Steve had almost led him to a mellowing catharsis only to pull him right on back again like whiplash. He could still feel it in his neck and he hoped there was a chiropractor on duty. “Never mind. Have you come to pop me one for offending your boyfriend again? And by the way, I’m allowed to say that because half of the ship is saying that and I watched him kiss you so--“

He didn’t know where he was going with that so he stopped, rubbing a hand over his eyes.

“I don’t want to fight with you. I just don’t know how to say the right thing because it keeps evolving into fights. I’m going to be the bigger man, not spatially of course, you’re huge, but metaphorically, and high-tail it out of here with all of my teeth intact. All right? Also you should sit down, you look like hell-- Okay, see, there I go again, always running my mouth.”

Bucky had no idea that Steve had just spoken to Tony and so he frowned slightly when he was asked if they were a tag team, or even if he were about to punch Tony's teeth out for annoying Steve. The engineer was just a big old ball of confusing issues at the moment, even for Bucky.

"I'm not about to punch you, why the hell would I? You helped save my life, I owe you a thanks for that."

That's not to say he wouldn't punch him later if he deserved it, but he wasn't about to forget that if it hadn't been for Tony then he would have been face down in an unmarked grave somewhere on an increasingly radioactive planet.

“Really?” Color Tony Stark confused. When people thanked him, it tended to be in that backhanded way. Or he knew it was coming because people were scared or had just been saved and were being polite. But this meant something from Bucky and Tony felt the corner of his lip turn up. “I’d do it again, no questions asked. But I really do not want to be involved in another surgery any time soon so take care of yourself.”

At least this encounter with Bucky wasn’t ending in a further dollop of anger on top of resentment on top of despair. So that was a good thing. He felt a wave of what he could only assume was some sort of good will connection (it was friendship, something he hadn’t forced onto the other person, just a mutual understanding and partial like shared between two people) He was about to excuse himself before he ruined the moment when FRIDAY chimed in.

“Hey boss? I can no longer detect the Earth we came from since moving through the breach,” she said, sounding only mildly concerned. “I can’t detect the breach at all. I’m ending diagnostics.”

Bucky leaned himself more completely onto one of the cabinets in order to keep himself upright, frown at his brow almost as soon as FRIDAY had finished speaking. He didn't fully understand what was going on, but he knew that it couldn't be a good thing.

"What does that mean? We just left it, how can we no longer detect it?"

There hadn't been a lot of people left on it, but he knew that Steve had at least intended to bring the skiff back once or twice more to make sure that they rounded up all possible survivors. And if there was no breach, then did that mean there was no way to get from their new moon back to the training moon to save the people there?

"Tony?"

He was the genius here, he had to understand this better.

The news was actually not all that unexpected. Tony had heard Loki and his own self mention how they wanted to destroy the poisonous realm that they had accidentally stumbled upon. Tony hadn’t thought it possible, but then again, he didn’t think cross-dimensional worm holes to be possible either and yet there the were, already having traveled through one to leave their own space behind and relocate in the crazy Asgardian universe where everyone was far too interested in slavery.

“I’m coming up to the Bridge. Get Banner.”

“Right away, boss.” FRIDAY left them to bother Bruce during the downtown he’d so severely needed after nearly a full day with Tony. They were still a day and a half from their moon, after all, so trouble could be bad.

Tony glanced over Bucky and sighed, offering him his shoulder. “Come on, Sarg. You can come too.”

When they arrived, the truth would be looking them in the face. They were stranded. The hole to their old universe had collapsed. The Earth in this universe had no knowledge of them and considering the periodic cullings from Asgard, it was likely that their technology kept them in the Dark Ages. Perhaps early Rennaisance. Tony was just speculating there. But this also meant that they had no where safe to run if Asgard found them. Their little moon was a full day from the training moon but that was not a lot of space in the grand scheme of things at all.

Bucky hadn't believed that their old Earth would ever be a fallback solution anyway, not with how irradiated it was. It would take lifetimes to become safe again, and maybe it never would, nuclear energy was extraordinarily long-lived. It was a sad thing that the wormhole had collapsed because it meant what they had on board was all the people they would be rescuing from there - but several thousand was better than none.

He had to sit heavily on the floor in the corner of the bridge, chest and stomach feeling on fire, but his eyes were still sharp as they took in all of the information brought up. Not that he got chance to give any of his opinions before Bruce came jogging in as requested. It didn't take him long at all to reach the same conclusions.

"We had a few months before we were going back to the training moon, it might be possible to find another, better fortified and further distance moon or planet to inhabit before then."

Oddly quiet, Tony just stood at the controls. He’d been ridiculous. His own issues help them all up and now they were stuck. They could have salvaged more, saved more people… There were priceless pieces of art, cultural objects, books-- Pepper had been fantastic curating a collection for him, and FRIDAY’s servers had a lot of information stored digitally for her to access, but it wasn’t the same and—

No. He was not falling down this rabbit hole again. It was just too easy to do it. It was too easy to let himself be swept away.

And that’s where all of the trouble started. Straightening up, Tony nodded at Bruce. “From what I gather, when these two busted out the first time, they’d looked for inhabitable moons within a day or two of the prison moon. That’s really not going to be good for us. We can salvage technology from it, and use it as a base or a pitstop if we have to, but we have to find somewhere else. Within reason. These skiffs don’t run on air. We still have a little over half power left and that’s with a few trips. Which is good. But we have to conserve.”

"I've been thinking about that, we're going to have to find a way to refuel on the little moon. Whether that's refitting, or creating something entirely new. I know it's a big ask, but this is life or death for us all."

Bruce knew that Tony would thrive under the pressure, just as he had done in that cave in Afghanistan. The suit had been an impossibility before that, the arc reactor just a pipe dream, and he had created both because his life hung in the balance. Now it did again, Bruce was confident that Tony would find a way to power the skiff so that they could take it as far afield as possible.

"We should also use the moon to lay false trails. They'll pick up on it after we're gone, obviously, and so we should make sure to leave information pointing in different directions to where we've gone."

Steve watched the commotion through the doorway as Bruce, Tony, and a few other scientifically minded people who had answered the questionnaires as to their education or work experience were left standing around the bridge, going through files, and arguing. Tony didn’t like to work with out people but Bruce seemed to have put his foot down about that and they were ‘discussing’ viable moons and planets in the skiff’s databases with possible layovers or trail blazers to throw anyone off of their scent. Steve was pretty sure that they didn’t need him poking his nose in on that one and was going to leave again when he spotted Bucky sitting on the floor, listening intently to the conversation.

Steve scoffed. “You’re so nosy. Let other people do something and stop getting out of bed. Every day just prolongs your whining,” he said, though there was worry in his eyes as he crouched down beside his friend and checked over his wounds. “Buck. If I have to promise that I’ll let you get my back, you have to promise to do everything in your power to let yourself get my back. I’ll bring you word searches or you can play FRIDAY at chess…whatever will keep you in bed.”

Bucky looked up at Steve with a slightly sheepish expression. There were small spots of blood on the bandages where he had tugged a couple of stitches, but nothing overly worrying especially with super soldier serum to fall back on. His wasn't as refined as Steve's, wasn't quite as powerful, but he was still better off than someone without any at all.

"I didn't exactly mean to be in here, pal, it just happened. Tony ran into me in the kitchen, I was gonna-- I remembered something, I wanted to test it out."

Even though the Asgardian honey had helped give him back huge chunks of who he was, the finer detail of exact memories were still fragmented and coming back in pieces.

"I wasn't about to go on a hike, cut me some slack, Steve."

"You don't get slack when you're bleeding," Steve said sternly, his hand splayed so that the red rosettes of blood spread neatly between them. He didn't want to apply too much pressure, though he was about to play field surgeon. Banner was busy and Steve could take care of some stitches thst the cauterize took hadn't fully singed closed.

He slipped his arms under Bucky and climbed to his feet, hauling the other man with him.

"You can tell me all about it in a minute. I don't have anywhere else to be except with you. And the sandwich I made for you," Steve grinned, holding Bucky close.

Was it odd that this had become his favored method of getting around the ship? He just liked carting Bucky everywhere.

"Woah, where do you get that from?" Tony was saying in the background, and was replied to that the woman who made the suggestion was a geologist.

"Let's hurry up out of here, pal," Steve chuckled.

Despite the fact that it wasn't the most manly way to get around, Bucky didn't really mind being hauled with Steve either. It meant that he could rest his head on Steve's chest and hear his heart beating, probably the most comforting sound out there, and just be reminded with every step that this was real.

Sure, the world had gone, humanity was endangered, but he was happy. Was that wrong?

"C'mon, Steve, I really want to try this out before all the ingredients I remember are gone forever. Take me to the kitchens?"

It was a recipe that he remembered Sarah Rogers teaching him before she died, in the months when she'd been sick. She passed on her apple pie to him so that her Steve would always have someone to make him the food he liked best when he was sick, and he just remembered it.

“I kind of feel like you’re trying to trick me,” Steve teased, taking Bucky to the kitchen. There were a bunch of people there, most of whom were poking around, looking at the PLEASE TAKE ONLY WHAT YOU NEED signs that graced every cabinet. They hadn’t really come up with a rationing rule yet but that didn’t mean that they should all just take whatever they felt like. A few were trying to cook large pots of pasta or make casseroles for their groups of the blocks of rooms beside their own. For now, everyone was working together.

Steve figured he would too.

After he sat Bucky down on a backed stool, he leaned against the counter, arms crossed over his wide chest. “Tell you what. You tell me what you need and I’ll play gopher for you. You have to stay seated or we’re out of here.” He wouldn’t actually realize what Bucky was doing until he was right in the middle of it. And then his eyes would widen and his heart would beat in his chest a little more rapidly.

How’d he live without this numbskull for as long as he did? Bucky was sweet. Even when riddled with bullet holes and half a fragmented memory.

Bucky kind of wished that he could do this himself so that he could have presented Steve with a fully made and ready apple pie, but this was good too. He saw the moment that Steve realised what he was making, but he didn't let on, just kept giving instructions from his seat.

A few of the other people on board looked askance at Captain Rogers using some of their limited supplies to bake an apple pie, but he was respected enough at the moment that nobody called him out on it. Yet.

"Smell familiar, Steve? Your Ma taught me to make this."

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