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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Bucky didn't care that others were looking at them askance, he had spent seventy years being tortured and he damn well deserved every tiny slice of happiness he could get now. If he wanted to see the man he loved bite into an apple pie made with the recipe from his mother, then he'd do it, and they could all go to hell if they didn't like it.

He grinned as Steve complimented him, wanting to get up but obediently remaining in his seat so that he didn't get any further telling off from the other man who was determined, apparently, to repay Bucky for all the mother henning that he had done when he was younger.

"Excuse me?" One of the young women in the kitchen asked, frowning. "Do you really think it's a viable use of supplies to be baking an apple pie?"

Steve winced just a little before he turned towards the woman and leaned on his elbow on the flour covered counter. "What I'm going to say ma'am, well it's going to sound a little harsh. And I want to apologize up front. But when a man risks his life and is shot bringing back eggs and a can of apples, as Bucky did back in Kansas when we tried to rescue a group of people just like we rescued you, then yes. I would say he's entitled to use that can however he sees fit. Luckily for all of all, there were a few pallets of canned apples from that barn and while Mr. Stark and Doctor Banner were saving his life, I pulled the whole of it in. I'm not going to be greedy here and say that no one is allowed to use any of what I've brought in, but it's best to use the perishables up first. Eggs, milk... Once they go bad we can't use them anymore."

The woman looked shocked. Not everyone had been saved on this vessel by captain America and not everyone really knew him, what he looked like or any of that.

She was also a little mortified when he was done speaking and apologized under her breath.

"It's all right. We all have a lot to deal with right now."

Bucky was actually kind of proud of Steve for not apologising for doing something selfish, because this pie was selfish no matter who had been shot bringing the ingredients back on board. Sometimes they all needed something for themselves, that was the nature of being human, and he loved Steve all the more for it. He didn't want a perfect paragon, Captain America, he wanted Steve Rogers and all his flaws.

"You don't have to be sorry, ma'am, but I'm also not going to be sorry for baking this pie. You see, I've lived through a period of history where loving someone of your own sex was criminally insane, I've fought in a war, and I've been a Nazi prisoner for a hell of a long time just to get to here. If I want to bake a goddamn pie for a man I can finally outwardly say I love, then I'm gonna bake a pie."

She looked even more mortified and backed up, red in the face, as Bucky stared her down and then looked around the rest of the kitchen.

"I'm not gonna steal supplies, this is a one time deal. Anyone else got any problems?"

Normally, Steve would try to diffuse the situation. This time, though, he was more flattered than he was flabbergasted and so he didn't say a word, save for: "make sure you use the perishables first everyone."

It might become a problem later when the super soldiers and Banner came to be seen as needing more food than everyone else given their metabolisms to feel full, but that time was not right now. And so Steve and Bucky could have their pie while the scientists worked upstairs and a few people decided to make some baked goods of their own.

They waited together until the timer on the oven went off and then he carefully took out the pie with a towel and vacated the area with Bucky and their prize.

It was truly decadent to eat pie on the floor with two forks. Steve had never done such a thing and sharing field rations really didn't count.

Bucky hoped someone had managed to somehow get a picture, because Steve carrying both him and an apple pie back to their little room was worthy of being immortalised forever. He actually looked near on peaceful when he got put down and dug in with his fork, looking up at Steve out of deep blue eyes.

"Tastes like home, Steve."

Maybe they'd never get to taste it again, but he wouldn't forget it. A new memory that nobody could ever take away from him, like the taste of Steve's lips, or the sight of the stars as they flew through space.

Opening his mouth to say something cheesy, Strve found himself pressing his lips together again with a brilliant twinkle to his eyes. "Almost said that you tasted like home but I haven't resorted to cannibalism yet. And if I did, you'd be the last to go."

Thst really wasn't all that romantic either, though, and so he shoved more than he needed to into his mouth, cheeks bulging from flaky crust and sugary apple pieces in a light syrup. He waited for Bucky to say something, but held up his hand under his could swallow under the pretense of wanting to excuse himself from being a moron. Instead, he set a hand to Bucky's shoulder and kissed him inside.

There was a full day of just existing on this ship left and no one needed the man in the uniform with the shield just yet.

Why not let the twenty-eight year old have a few hours to make out over apple pie with his... Uh.

He pulled back with rosy lips and cheeks. "Are you my boyfriend?" It sounded so naughty.

Boyfriend didn't sound right, but that was only because the word seemed so casual. He wanted Steve forever, he didn't care if this was technically a new relationship, he had been in love since his preteen years and he was damned if he wasn't going to spend the rest of his life with Steve Rogers.

It was stupid, and it was probably going to scare Steve off, especially since they had technically been dating for all of a few days, but Bucky didn't censor himself.

"I'd prefer husband, but I'll take what I can get."

Just saying.

There was one thing to be talking about titles in the middle of a little pie-kissing, but Bucky’s sudden drop of that had Steve’s eyes widening halfway in the middle of ducking in to kiss him again. He paused, holding his breath, and drew back. Bucky wasn’t joking. He might be in a little bit of pain, but he was clear headed.

And that meant that he was being serious about wanting to marry him. Two weeks ago, the guy didn’t remember him. And now he was living every moment like it was his last. Steve should shut it down, but he’d learned not to take anything for granted. He wasn’t special. Anyone or anything could be taken from you at any moment.

He loved Bucky. Bucky loved him.

And while the church didn’t recognize it and there was no such thing as a government anymore, no legal proceedings to make it official, did they need them? No. “Husband does sound better. Are you proposing?” Leave it to Bucky to make the one thing that was meant to be romantic, totally not. Then again, everything else he’d been doing for days certainly made up for it.

Bucky didn't care how long ago he hadn't remembered Steve, he didn't care that it had been a week or less since they even kissed for the first time. He remembered now, and that came with a whole lifetime of memories, he knew there was nobody else he wanted to spend the rest of whatever life this might be with than Steve.

So he nodded.

"I sure am, Steve. I don't want to fill my dance card with any name but yours, so why the hell not?"

Maybe not the most romantic of proposals (definitely not), but heartfelt all the same. There was no way to make it official, but if they wore rings from one another and named each other husband, then who was there to tell them that it wasn't so? Isn't that how it used to be done anyway?

“Let ‘s do it.” Hadn’t they wasted enough time? The answer was yes, a hundred, thousand times yes. All that Steve wanted was to be with Bucky so why not? “I’m not really sure where we go for rings though,” he rubbed the back of his neck and then lightly tipped the pie out of their nest-bed so he could be closer to his…uh… His fiancé? It felt amazing to say that. It made him feel giddy and his cheeks actually turned pink as he laced his fingers with the other man’s and leaned their shoulders together.

He’d had no trouble getting used to the metal arm. It was part of Bucky now and just as wonderful.

“Maybe…uh… I kind of hate to ask Tony.” After everything that had gone down, he really ought to be their last choice for ring-bearer.

Bucky raised an eyebrow, already imagining what sort of issues Tony might take with being asked to provide some rings for them-- or maybe he'd take Bucky by surprise and that would be what flattered him enough to bury the hatchet for a while. It was hard to tell with the engineer sometimes.

"We don't need 'em right away, we know, we can wait."

He might broach it with Tony at some point if he caught the man in a good mood, but they had a whole lot of shit to deal with that had nothing to do with their engagement and everything to do with the survival of the human race. Not least because, even if they didn't know it yet, they had a small girl on board who had the hibernating gene of a new super-virus.

"I don't know how long I can actually wait though, Buck," Steve said, free hand coming to rest on Bucky's thigh in probably the most off colored way he had ever managed to be and that effort alone left him more than a little embarrassed followed immediately by mortified. What had he just said?

Bucky had been raped as part of his torture. He'd been raped as part of his duties to his handlers. And here was Steve, trying to push marriage onto him as a way to facilitate love making. The girl on the ship was a problem for another time but at the moment, still tasting of apple pie, Steve Rogers was feeling a horrible sense of guilt wash over him.

"No. Forget there was any meaning on that. We don't ever--". He ripped his hand away, cheeks red. "We never have to-- I can be married to you without. I've gone this long, I don't need it. Just you."

Bucky's expression went very blank very quickly. It wasn't that he didn't trust Steve, and he sure as hell had imagined them together in all sorts of non-family friendly ways when he was younger, but for some reason he hadn't even thought about it now. Of course Steve would want sex, and he had every right to assume someone who wanted to marry him would want to sleep with him.

He did want to... didn't he?

And now Steve looked mortified, as if being suggestive with his own future husband was a crime to be guilty of, and not something perfectly reasonable. He had no idea what to say because he both wanted it and he didn't, he desired Steve and he was scared as hell about anything physical there.

"Quit apologising," he said, trying not to sound too hoarse. "We'll work it out, it'll happen someday. I'm not letting them take this from me."

That might actually be fairly similar to what Loki might be saying right about now as Anthony knelt on the bottom of his furs and sat back on his heels. They still hadn't been able to find that skiff and now with the poisoned world cleansed from the branches of Yggdrassil, forever closed off and set to collapse, it was unlikely that they ever would find it.

"The scouts returned from their hunt around the breach in the void," he said, not sure what Loki's mood was going to be. "We don't think they made it back through." And that was disappointing. Thor was already angry about losing James. Again. And Bruce was really making progress with the genetic testing of their doubles.

Anthony felt sad for all of them.

The one silver lining was that they had the children two of them sired. The women were very round with child and it would only be a few months now before the first of the children were born.

Loki had been furious at Thor for allowing several of their slaves to escape and even to steal one of their crafts, just to save his own pride in not telling anyone the moment they had slipped their bonds. His older brother was in disgrace, even those left on the training moon had seen their crown prince fall a little from perfection. Not that he had fallen far, he still had loyalty and love for all made mistakes on occasion, but this was no small mistake.

Naught had been found of them, or the skiff, which meant a loss of four interesting subjects. Still, they would doubtlessly perish out there, the skiff was not intended for long distance voyaging and they were both unprepared and ignorant of how the wider universe worked. They may already be dead.

"Then we must forget them. We have cleared the cancerous Midgard from Yggdrasil and must turn out attention to their Asgard, which has clearly also fallen from what it should be."

"Yeah so there's no activity," Tony relayed to the staring behind him on the bridge of the skiff. "They haven't found us, at least to in any way our scanners can detect. Pretty sure we can land safe."

"Do it," Steve said, his arms crossed over his chest so he didn't feel the inappropriate need to lace his fingers together with his fiancé. Right now he needed to work and work meant no distractions.

The bridge was tense as they broke the atmosphere of the moon and, as expected, their power supply dropped significantly. If Earth was still there, if the ability to get back to their universe was still there, they wouldn't have the power to do it. Tony's mind was already working on that problem. They had decided yesterday that it was better if he wasn't in the new planet committee since he made everyone angry at him and that suited the engineer just fine. He would rather do what he loved. Build.

"I'm giving us a week on the surface," Tony said. "It's going to be cramped with eleven hundred and thirty-two people in what we have cleared but remind everyone that this isn't about being comfortable. It's about a pit stop."

It would take just under a week. Six days, in fact, for Tony to incorporate a version of an arc reactor into the skiff, powered by space radiation. It was probably his finest work ever. He just didn't feel like it was. In fact, he was pretty sure he was coming down with a flu. And he wasn't the only one. Sequestered away, he emerged to find almost half the population in the early stages of a flu. It didn't worry him so much, though, but he didn't see what Bruce and Mohinder were seeing as the first few children died.

Bruce was exceptionally worried as he watched children, who should have thrown off a virus like this if it had been a normal flu, begin to die. It brought to mind the great influenza epidemic that hit Europe straight after the first world war and killed more people than the war itself. It had been war that did that then, and war that might have brought something now.

He pulled Mohinder aside, gentle brown eyes concerned, and gestured to one of the little huts slightly off from the others.

"I think we need to get Tony to set up a barrier around one of these huts, and quarantine the sick. Only I should look after them because I've-- uh, got a strong immune system, and they're not going to get me ill."

It was an extreme measure, but the population was already so depleted that they could hardly stand to see a wave of sickness wipe out what they had left. It could be that he worried over nothing and this was just a flu, and those children just susceptible, but he would rather be safe and not need the quarantine, than bury his head in the sand and watch everyone die when it became too late to contain it.

"I think we need to tell people what is happening." How Mohinder made it as a field agent was anyone's guess. The man was so mouthy, so overly willing to discuss anything. He sighed, glancing over his shoulder at the single story building that they were using as a hospital of sorts. Everyone had fanned out into the settlements within a mile or so walk of the central hub, the one where Steve initially claimed the five story tower like building as his head of operations.

Jungle had been cleared from the roads. People were working on rationing systems and trying to figure out how best to handle their new lives with Steve Rogers as defacto mayor. No one challenged him. Not yet at least.

A half smile to the Indian's lips came with a sigh.

"Doctor Banner, I know what you are. Who you are. I was on the extraction team, remember?" Was be that forgetable? Actually, Mohinder didn't want that one answered. "And I agree. You're the best man for the job. It helps that you have medical knowledge too. The rest of us can consult from a safer location. I think-- oh god-- Mr. Stark?"

Tony looked worse than horrible. His skin was gray and his eyes were too dark, glassy. He stumbled towards them, trying to grin. "Any pepto docs? I'm not feeling great hwre."

"There might be nothing to tell," said Bruce, though he obviously didn't believe that. "The moment we start telling people that we could have a deadly virus on our hands, we'll have anarchy. Our quarantine will be flooded with people who don't have it, but think they do and are desperate for a cure, some of the actually ill people won't come for fear of being locked away, and it might turn the healthy on the sick out of fear."

Trust him. It might not have been like this, but he had been in small villages before where outbreaks had reacted like that on a smaller scale. He wanted to keep this as calm as possible.

"We just tell everyone that the virus is contagious, that's why there's a quarantine, and we urge everyone affected to come to us for help. No panic, but help."

And that was when Tony showed up, and Bruce swore under his breath, having to take a couple of deep and calming breaths. "Alright, Tony, looks like you've got this flu bug going around. Don't worry, we're working on an antidote, but right now you just need to come rest in the main medical hall, okay?"

“Oh great. No really, perfect. So happy. I’ve been hoping I’d catch some space virus. Is this one going to bring out all of my animalist tendencies? Will I want to oil up and run around with a sword like Sulu or just smash things? Mmmm… I should leave the smashing to you,” Tony said, letting Mohinder get under his arm to keep him up. He didn’t really like how Mohinder encroached on his territorial friendship with Banner, but he did feel like he was going to fall over.

“This isn’t good, Doctor,” Mohinder said in Tamil. He doubted that Tony understood or spoke that language. “He has not been around anyone, just refitting the ship that brought us here. How could he have caught this so quickly?”

The answer, once Bruce saw it, would be obvious. The parentless children and the two women that had been looking after them had made their home in one particular part of the ship. So far, the people that were sick were those that had either helped out, or had bunked around them, and of course, all of the kids. Tony had been doing his retrofitting in the same area.

Asgardians didn’t like their things stolen. And children, known for being grabby little things, had disturbed whatever had given them the illness down in the hold.

It wasn't for another four hours, as Bruce puzzled through where the virus could have come from, that he realised it was probably to do with the ship itself. Suddenly excited, he leaped up and called out to Mohinder to stand outside the quarantine zone and to send a runner for him if anyone went into an emergency state, he had to go and investigate the ship.

If he could find what had caused the illness, isolate it, then it should be the building blocks for both a cure and a vaccine. A vaccine first, in order to help others from catching it and be able to work on assisting the sick, and then a cure.

The more he learned of the Asgardians, the more he detested them. What monsters to leave a pathogen on board to hurt others, to enslave, to rape and kill... It was enough to have his hands tinging green as he worked desperately through the night.

All of the children that first contracted the illness died by morning. The adults, with stronger immune systems, were holding on a little better, but by the following evening, and just before Bruce would be able to find a substance to base his vaccine on, they had died too. They’d been exposed to the substance for at least three days longer than Tony had in total, however. Rogers and Barnes had too, since their room had been in the bowels of the skiff as well, but their immune systems were stellar.

Mohinder had initially promised Bruce that he would get him if any of their patients in quarantine took a turn for the worse, but instead, he’d gone through the barricades on the building instead to try and ease the suffering of the others. He held their hands as they died and sang to some of the children. It just was not easy to watch them all go.

At least Bruce would discover that the pathogen did not spread to others second hand. It had to be absorbed into the skin through touch directly, a strange virus that hardly seemed like an evolutionary organism so much as a manufactured one. A vaccine, therefore, wasn’t necessary. For the moment.

When he finally returned to the quarantine, Mohinder looked ragged. “Mr. Stark is the only one left. There have been no new exposures reported and I suppose I’m living proof of that.” He did not apologize for being here despite orders. Mohinder had never been great with orders anyway. “He’s not quite to the delirium stage of the illness. But he’s been asking for you.”

Nearly four dozen people dead.

That might not seem much, it wouldn't have been even seen as an epidemic only a few short months ago when the world had no idea that Asgardians were real, but now it was a desperate situation. Bruce was angry as hell that Mohinder had ignored him, not because he needed to seem like the boss, but because it was a reckless endangerment of life when there had been no need.

"Get into bed."

His words were clipped and annoyed. "You probably have it too, and I need to work on a cure. Tony will thank me more if he's cured than he will for my presence."

He turned without another word and sequestered himself in his small room to work frantically on the cure. God, if he didn't save Tony, they might well be fucked, they relied on him for many engineering solutions to help save their lives.

The arrogance of the Avengers always hit Mohinder so hard. Banner was an expert on many things, a genius in his own right, but Mohinder was far more experienced with viral infections and genetic diversity than Bruce was. He’d been studying the incubation period of the infection and the way it shut the body down so easily. There were no catastrophic organ failure, the fever was never extreme. It was like the people here were just giving up and laying down, closing their eyes. It seemed almost like the Hindu tales of curses more than an illness. It sapped a person’s will to live.

But Bruce wouldn’t listen to him. He decided to try and do everything on his own. And Mohinder yelled at the door Bruce had sequestered himself behind trying to make a vaccine for an illness that did not need a vaccine.

Tony, however, wasn’t really growing worse. He was still sick, still groggy and whiney, but he wasn’t shutting down like the others. He had filled four notebooks up already, just trying to get all of his thoughts and ideas down so someone would be able to carry on with him. “Tell Banner these are all for him when I go,” Tony said, coughing up some phlegm before requesting more paper. “And do not tell Rogers about this. I yelled at him about paper being a commody a week ago. He’ll never let me live it down.”

When Bruce finally emerged, Mohinder were there to tackle him if need be.

“You idiotic man, you will listen to me!” Mohinder never came on strong before. This was sort of liberating.

Bruce didn't think it was arrogance to tell someone with a normal immune system to remain out of the infection zone. Much as even in a hospital, an expert doctor would not be expected to simply expose themselves in order to find a cure, Bruce wasn't discounting Mohinder's expertise. He was so short with him because he was worried, because he felt that would be another person lost.

When he came out and Mohinder accosted him, he did stop though he looked flustered and angry still.

"What is it, Mohinder? Why aren't you in bed like Tony?"

There was less of a snap to his voice, harried and concerned rather than furious, but he was an angry man by nature so there was, of course, still some anger there.

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