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

Moving everyone from that little planet that they had colonized back in the first alternate universe that they had visited had been stressful and they had only been two thousand strong. Being here with a hundred thousand was mind boggling, let along knowing that the US alone had several million people back when their world had countries. He’d moved into this tiny room with Bucky just a few days before. They all were in tight quarters to allow the new comers as much room as possible, all in long buildings in the planes of Vanaheim. Steve had wondered how sound magical buildings were but he couldn’t hear his neighbors and they seemed sturdy enough.

He was stretched out on the small bed that took up half of the tiny apartment, eyes closed though he had a digital pad and was trying to sort through the names of those that had given them and cross referencing them with friends and family. It was starting to hurt his head, the task was frustrating even to someone with optimal patience.

Which was why he wasn’t paying much attention to Bucky when he came in, not until he simply stood there instead of crawling into bed with him.

“Buck?”

Bucky looked over at Steve without passion, without real understanding of who he was. He had been told to come here and 'act normally' by his handler, but he had no idea what was normal for this situation. The Soldier programming could not survive memories like Bucky's with Steve, and so they were suppressed right now, hidden underneath the orders and the trigger words that bound him like chains.

Steve might notice that Bucky had a smear of blood on his right knuckle, a leftover from his first orders which he had already completed before returning here. He didn't respond, merely stared at Steve as though at a stranger.

Steve was highly perceptive and he knew Bucky, his Bucky, better than anyone. He also knew the Soldier, having spent months staring at him and talking to him. He schooled his face to a cool neutral, though it had already clicked that he was dealing with the Soldier. He did not want to implant himself as the Handler, he needed to keep himself separate from that, and he didn’t want to implant himself as any fantasy member of this little drama he was going to have to play out here.

So he rose from bed, tilted his head in Bucky’s direction, and nodded at him to follow him into the hall.

“I’m glad you finaly showed up,” he said, as if this was a scheduled meeting. There was HYDRA in their midst but he needed to neutralize Bucky first before he found them. And that would require getting him someplace that he could be restrained until he fought off the programming.

He hadn’t been wiped, after all. He was triggered, but that would pass. Or so he hoped.

“I need all the help you’ve got making sure our silo is upkept. You said you could check the upper lofts? Just call down to me what you see up there,” Steve said, hanging out just inside the door of one of the grain silos that the Vanir had provided for them.

His every intention was to lock Bucky inside. It would hold. And then he’d have some work to do.

Normal was obeying orders.

Even if he didn't recognise this particular handler, or operative of HYDRA, he still knew that following orders was his purpose for existing and so he didn't argue when he was told to go to the grain silo and check the upper lots. He just nodded and murmured an agreement, before following Steve to the right silo and stepping inside.

It would be easy to trap him in there and the Soldier wouldn't even try and escape for at least an hour, for he trusted that he was doing his duty by checking on all the upper lofts and cataloguing what was up there. More than enough time for Steve to start work on whatever he thought he needed to do.

It wouldn't be long after locking Bucky in the silo that he would come across Bruce looking slightly harried. "Steve, do you have a moment? In private? It's urgent."

“HYDRA, I know, Doctor Banner,” Steve said, looking grim. “But we don’t have any good way of detecting who it is. Or who they are,” he said, falling into step beside Bruce before it dawned on him that there was something else.

Something somehow worse than having his husband triggered by operatives who were just trying to figure out how to survive in the new world order that Asgard forced upon them. The blond stopped in his tracks, a thoughtful look on his face when Bruce was left to blink at him about the revelation.

“There’s not a lot of private left, but come back to my quarters. The walls are thick,” Steve said, changing course again and walking just a little too fast for most people to keep up with him. They just were working on borrowed time.

As always, these days.

HYDRA would make some sort of sense, though it made his stomach sink. He had been hoping for something less insidious than an evil shadowy organisation and something more mundane, like traumatised people taking their anger out in ill-advised but ultimately understandable reasons.

He looked old and sort of tired as he followed Steve back to the tiny cramped quarters he called home for now, glancing about to see if his husband were anywhere about. Not that he didn't trust Bucky, but he would prefer to keep this as minimised as possible until they figured out what to do with it.

"Of the fifteen 'slaves' that were detained, seven of them have been killed. All of the ones housed in B block have been slaughtered, by the looks of it with some kind of blade. Nobody heard or saw anything, we were only alerted when someone took them some food and found the bodies. The detainees in A block are unharmed and know nothing of the situation."

This was a problem. Vigilante justice was not something that they could allow to continue, or even start. This was a different situation, not like the Polish or French collaborators during the war. They needed to speak with them and then set up rules for what to do with the people that facilitated their capture and the rape of their people.

Steve rubbed a hand down his face. "How many people know? The Council?" It seemed that only a few people knew and that was something to be thankful about. People felt very strongly about this issue after all. And Steve couldn't even blame them for it. "Okay. All right. I think I know what might have happened. Buck's been triggered. I have a feeling whoever did it might have used him as a weapon, or might be behind what happened. He was never known to use a knife when he could use his hands. We need to double the guards on the rest and-- Doctor. The dead. Was one of them your double?"

Did Bruce even know he had one here? Surely Tony told him about his double since they'd been rescued at least.

If Bucky had been triggered to become the Winter Soldier, then Bruce would bet good money that he was behind the murders there. Not directly, someone else was aiming him as a weapon, but it would be his hands that held the knife. Why he used a blade wasn't important right now, or he didn't think it was, just containing the situation.

He shook his head, expression grave.

"No, and that's probably a good thing because some small conversation with him reveals that he also has a state which makes him strong and fairly invulnerable, if not quite to the level of the Hulk, we don't need that unleashing on the village. Of the seven casualties, three were men who had identified themselves as kitchen workers, and the other four were women who identified as warriors."

Poor Anthony when he did eventually find out. He had been responsible for those taken, as the highest ranking slave, and now almost half of them were slaughtered in ignoble fashion.

Edited 2017-08-22 19:58 (UTC)

"It seems reasonable to expect something like that. Damn it," Steve muttered, wetting his lips. "Where's Tony?" He still didn't believe that Bucky had been tasked to slaughter the slaves. He would have completed the job and killed them all. And most of the human's hadn't even realized that a few of the slaves had come back with them. There had been too many and people all looked like people. It was only Loki's ability to know who was from what world that made a different at all.

Steve was beside himself.

"Buck will be all right where he is. I'll ask one of the sorcerers to keep the building secure. Their magic should hold him. And if not-- I'll be ready. If you can find Tony-- Proncess Loki is usually with him. We might need her help here."

Being in charge was miserable. So miserable.

Especially when Steve was all alone again.

"We need to keep all of this as secret as possible, Doctor. I don't want to hurt our own people for lashing out."

"I agree, the last thing we need right now is a panic. However, if this was the work of a HYDRA operative, we need to figure out who they are and flush them out. We can't afford to let an organisation with those ideals grow inside our new society again."

Perhaps it sounded heartless, because whoever this person was they had obviously been through terrible things as well and it was understandable to want revenge, but life had to be heartless sometimes to protect everyone.

"I know you won't enjoy this, Steve, but I think the easiest way would be to use Bucky. We could release him from the silo and keep a watch on him 24 hours a day, see where he goes and who he talks to. That way he should lead us to the culprit and someone will be in place to stop him if he tries to attack anyone else."

He didn't want to do that. He didn't want to make Bucky their tool and their weapon. But what was the choice? Banner had made a good point. He'd not come up with any other options himself. It would be too daunting to interview everyone and HYDRA was capable of hiding. He knew it for a fact. He'd thought that they were long gone. If he hadn't met Buck on that training moon, if he hadn't been told HYDRA was still alive and well, he would have never believed it.

That was the big problem here. HYDRA ideals could wipe them out.

"You're right." Buck wouldn't hate him for this but their trust would be gone. He was ruining his relationship with his best friend and husband in one fell swoop.

He exhaled slowly and nodded to Bruce before he went back to the silo where Bucky was still counting and stood at ease in the light of the doorway.

"Soldier. You're finished that task. We need you to return to your handler to await further instruction."

The burdens of leadership were never fair and Steve was having to find out that sometimes the choices he had to make weren't ones that had any good outcome at the end. He just had to see what was the lesser evil and do that, in this case that was hurting one person, even if it was one person who he loved dearly, in order to save hundreds of thousands more.

The Soldier stepped out of the silo as soon as he was called and stood at attention while Steve talked to him. For some reason there was the tiniest flicker of doubt when he was given the order, as if it didn't sound right coming out of that mouth, but he didn't argue.

"Sir."

He nodded respectfully and then turned to immediately stride towards the residential buildings. He didn't even try and hide where he was going, slipping into the fourth one and stopping before the pallet of a woman in her mid thirties who was fast asleep.

There were many, many other people around. If Steve caused a scene, she could react by sending the Soldier to fight for her and if that was the case, people would die. Steve knew all about tough choices as a commander and he knew all about collateral damage by now too.

So he scooped the woman up and glanced at Bucky. "Follow me."

They could do this in a less heavily populated area. Steve needed to subdue her And he needed to get her to talk. But he wasn't an interrogator.

Hopefully Bruce would have located Tony by now. Or Barton. Steve didn't quite know his skill set of course, but surely an agent was trained at least a little in it.

"I need you to tie her up," Steve said once they were more or less alone. "I have questions."

At least the woman didn't stir much when Steve picked her up, just snuffling slightly and then dropping back off. The Soldier followed obediently, seeing no issue in this, but when he was ordered to tie her up then he baulked. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly in suspicion, though everything else stayed neutral.

"She's my handler."

The implied 'not you' was in there. She had been the one to say the trigger words, therefore her orders and her safety took precedence over anyone else's. Even if he did feel a strange compulsion to do as this man said, it wasn't enough to override his orders yet.

"I'm not planning on hurting her. Right now, we are under strict orders not to hurt anyone. But she needs to stay put." Steve could do his captain impression here. There was no such thing as rank anymore since there was no longer an army but Tony still called him Cap and It has been such a big part of him that he had no trouble tapping into it.

If Bucky was going to be insistent about not doing what he wanted, Steve would do the tying. If Bucky tried to stop him--

Well he was ready. He'd come with his shield. He could defend himself until Bruce could get Tony to stop playing teenager and help him out.

Unfortunately for Bruce, he didn't exactly have a way to get to the Free Market quickly from where their temporary camp was being housed. He had been forced to ask one of the Vanaheim helpers how to get a message to Tony, and they had sent off a hawk trained to find its particular recipient among the markets, but it could take up to a couple of hours. In case it was intercepted, he just wrote: RETURN IMMEDIATELY. BRUCE.

After that, all he could do was wait. But he did at least hurry back to where Steve was trying to persuade the Soldier to tie up his current handler, worried frown at his brow as he related the delay.

The Soldier wasn't sure what to do. He wanted to obey Steve, though he didn't understand why, but he should protect his handler. In the end, he shook his head and took a step closer. "Any questions can be asked without the need for restraints, I can guard and protect."

"I need to know the number of current operatives," Steve said bluntly, not waiting for the woman to wake up. "We have reason to believe that there are a few rogue agents within the group. Someone authorized a hit to our prisoners outside of protocol and I believe this agent knows why and who ordered it."

Steve stood tall and angry, gazing down at Bucky with harder eyes than he would like. But this wasn't an act. Dealing with the Soldier was not dealing with his husband and he just wanted the man back.

"Do you know what happened to the Asgardian slaves that were in the far left prison?"

Ah, well this wasn't so unheard of. HYDRA was an operation of many self serving people, and occasionally that meant someone would go rogue. It disturbed the Soldier slightly that he may have been following rogue orders, it would mean he would likely be punished and-- His mind wrenched firmly away from that topic.

"Do you have proof that my handler is rogue?"

He wasn't exactly refusing to answer the questions himself, but he needed that proof so that he could act obediently to this operative. Otherwise it was just one word against another.

"Not until my questions are answered," Steve snapped. It was frustrating and he let that ought almost without a filter. None of this was directed at Bucky, however and he could use that to make it even more believable. "You weren't supposed to be woken up. The Asset was not authorized. I did not authorize it," he grunted between clenched teeth. "I don't need to offer you any proof. Don't forget your place."

Now that hurt. Steve kept his back towards Bucky as he bent to tie the woman up. He wasn't sure if the other man would attack him. He acted as if he wouldn't, though. Confidence went a long way.

"Wake up," Steve spat down at the woman. He did not touch her again, but he imagined she would wake up. And, indeed, she did. With a shriek, no less.

Seeing Steve Rogers standing there didn't go well with her. Not when she had been forcefully impregnated by his double and made to bear and then give up the baby.

It was completely fair that she should be so terrified, but that did not make what she had done any better either. Seeing the Soldier, as well as the man who now haunted her nightmares, she reacted on instinct and spat an order at him in Russian. "Kill him. Kill him now, Soldat!"

The Soldier twitched. He looked between the woman and the blond man who he felt an odd connection to, and who spoke with the authority of a true handler, and shook his head. Mind made up, because no true HYDRA agent would make such a spectacle of themselves. Instead, he planted his feet firmly and merely looked at her. "I am here to observe the questioning, ma'am. Until the investigation is complete, I am not authorised to take any new orders."

Whatever surprise that Steve had, he expressed it with his back towards Bucky, face lighting slightly before he schooled it back into place. He took a step back, feet apart and arms held behind his back. He watched the woman for a moment. He didn’t know Russian, but he did know that Tony did. He was a man of many languages.

Luckily, Bucky had stuck to English and the woman likely understood English so Steve kept with it too. He could have muddled through German…a little. Maybe.

“I need to know all of the current HYDRA operatives that you are aware of from those kidnapped initially by the Asgardians,” Steve said, only to be spit on again. This one hit him in the chest, but he ignored it. “I know agents operate in the shadows, but you must have seen several during your time at the camp.”

“I will not speak to you,” she bit back and once more implored the Soldier to complete his mission. It was only when she had finally calmed down and Steve had asked his question over and over (as he’d done to Bucky before his programing broke) that she finally answered. “The Asgardians rounded up an entire base. There are hundreds of us. Hundreds.”

That’s what Steve had been afraid of. “Good,” he said, though he didn’t feel good at all. He needed to make her want to give them up. And that meant playing along as an operative himself. “Hail HYDRA. Cut off a head—”

She looked surprised. Red eyes lifted towards him. “You…?”

“Yes,” Steve confirmed falsely. “I need to know who we have left.”

Even though the Soldier knew that HYDRA was who he served, making the world a better place for the people who lived in it and he was a tool to shape that future, somehow hearing those words out of that mouth made him take a physical step backwards. Behind Steve, the other man might not notice, but Bruce certainly did and he stepped forwards with his usual mild manner.

"Captain, I'd like to take the Soldier away for debriefing and maintenance."

It was his way of trying to convey that this was probably very damaging for Bucky in a time when he would already be hurting. God only knew what this would do to their trust and their marriage, and it hurt his heart just thinking about it.

The woman didn't know whether to believe Steve, but she certainly wasn't idiot enough to just give up any names she knew to Captain America just like that. "Who were-- who were your contacts?" Surely they'd know at least a name in common, a small bit of proof he really was working for their side.

It was damaging to Steve too, but he was a guy that threw himself on grenades and a guy that put the greater good above the rest. He loved Bucky, but he knew that Bucky would understand why this was happening. Even if it was killing them both and setting their relationship back.

Steve was grateful to Bruce, nodding as he stood with his arms crossed behind him. "Good," he said, verbally, because this play act meant that he needed to give audible responses to his men.

Tony would be staying with him, leaning on his cane as he watched Bucky leave with Bruce. The two of them had made up over the course of the last week (sex helped Bucky calm down even if it was just Steve receiving without reciprocation for now). He arched an eyebrow at Steve, but said nothing.

And it was Tony that rattled off some names he had dealt with adversely from various state and federal governmental boards. He had no idea that HYDRA had infiltrated the government, but if HYDRA existed in secret then of course it had.

This whole thing hurt Steve's heart. He had never wanted to be the person to cause Bucky any kind of pain or fear, not even for the greater good, but sometimes the world just had a way of making those wishes impossible to come true. It was sickening to hear the level to which HYDRA had infiltrated the government, infiltrated the world, and it made him feel like a bit of a failure.

What had all of their sacrifices been for if not to stop Red Skull and the planned march forwards of hatred?

None of that showed on his face, though, as the woman nodded to at least two of the names. "I don't know, I don't know all the people here." But she did at least give them a few names, fifteen of them in total, which was a fraction of the number held here. "I'm no traitor, I activated the Soldier in-- it was a mistake. Please."

Fifteen names was a lot. HYDRA was dangerous and if even just a few of those names of top politicians were actually HYDRA, like in reality, then Tony thought that they were screwed. The organization would grow. Chaos would reign-- so they had to do something about it. Something drastic.

"You activated the Soldier accidentally?" he asked. "I don't buy that. It's not like you get a black trench coat, spy glasses and the codes to the Asset at your first Hail HYDRA. You knew he existed. You had access to the trigger words. You used them. And then you sent him to kill people. Not cool."

Tony glanced at Steve. The blond's face was unreadable. He didn't like it.

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