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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"I cannot offer you that," replied Loki at once, eyebrow raised. "Any son I might bear will be his own man and I cannot take his accomplishments from him. Should he win the right to reside in Valhalla, then it is not for me to have already taken that from him before he has even drawn breath."

But Hel had opened the bargaining, which meant that there was still hope to find a wager they might both agree upon.

"I can offer you myself, for it is the only life that I hold dominion over. No matter how gloriously I die, should I lose this bet, I shall come to your home and reside here with you."

"The majority of you already does," Hel said, not worrying about whatever secrets she might give or how it might sound intimidating. "One more guaranteed piece of a soul I already have ownership of is not much of a bargain." Especially since she was more than likely going to have this version of her father as well. Lokis tended not to do well with the general order of things and she ruled the chaos of this realm.

But at least they were both up to negotiation.

"Rather than bet something likely already destined to come to me, bet instead your freedom. Should you lose, for one hundred years, you shall rule Helheim and I shall dwell upon the other Realms. I will take payment at my choosing."

It was no shame to end in Helheim, Jotnar did not have the same strive towards Valhalla as those of Asgard did, but it was interesting to know that many iterations of herself had not found themselves glory in battle at the end of their lives. She hoped that meant they had lived long and wise lives, and died in their beds surrounded by a life of accomplishment and loved ones.

But that wager... well, her eyes gleamed with interest. A century was not too great a term that it would be the worst to give her time for that long, and she could not deny that it would be fascinating to rule Helheim should she lose. Not that she planned on doing so.

"You have my agreement, daughter of mine. Bring forth James Barnes and I will find the one I seek."

With a bargain struck, Hel transported them to her palace, as lavish as it was lonely. Though there was a feasting hall nearby, and full, her private quarters stayed austere without any visitors. And she preferred it that way in all honesty.

A little smile touched her lips as she gestured for Loki to sit. There was a table set for two with finery and a feast of fish and root vegetables waiting for them.

Hel sat as Loki did and clapped her hands. Plucked from his repose, James Barnes, called Bucky, appeared before them, looking a bit younger than he had when alive with clear eyes and pale skin, his hair clipped short. "Ma'am?"

He looked more handsome now to her eyes, more complete as a person, but that was not who she had come for. She needed the specific James Barnes that belonged where she lived, and she had only three questions to find him.

"I have come to take a specific iteration of you back to life," she said, very carefully phrasing none of her words as a question. "You must look inside yourself and find a way to separate this man from you. He was married to Steven Barnes and lived on a small moon, having just been moved to Vanaheim. He died at my hand, and his final words were: "Steve was HYDRA?"."

She believed this would be specific enough for the man to know what was needed.

"He is still desperately needed, his husband cannot continue without him and the mortals need Steven Barnes to be strong. I tell you now, James Barnes, to step forward and leave with me."

All with no questions.

Loki might be surprised to find herself none too unique. In an infinite universe with infinite possibilities, for some of those possibilities to overlap was expected. The James in front of her aged and his shoulders slumped. His eyes saddened and hardened at the same time. The bulk of his metal arm appeared under one sleeve.

That man stepped forward but there were still too many version of that man to count. At least Loki could see that she got gotten rid of a great many versions, versions of James where he had died young, as a soldier.

Those hard and sad eyes glanced up towards Hel and then to Loki. "I can go back?" There would be many, many disappointed James' to hear the truth. And disappointment in death was a dangerous thing.

"One of you can go back."

Loki would not lie here, it would not do her any good. She had not used any of her questions yet, only statements, and she had already whittled the count down significantly. She would not give up until she had the right one and had been successful in this.

"I cannot take you all back to the lives you should lead, but allow it to comfort you that one of you can return to the husband left behind. Think now, the death occurred only sixteen hours hence, you are new here, and the death was by my hand. Tony Stark lay amongst the ruins of a bed, his leg lame from a previous battle, and the sun was almost set."

Though it would be in her right to be angry over this, Hel found the way that Loki, even at such a young age, could be so clever rather hopeful. She did not despise her father in the least, after all, and his or her accomplishment added honour to herself as well. She sat back and drank her wine as Bucky’s face turned angry, the sadness leaving him as if the name of Stark filtered out even more of his personality.

“I feel like I’ve always been dead,” he stated, because in this Realm, time could not be measured. One day or a thousand, they all felt the same. An ounce of joy could last forever year, but so could an ounce of pain. The Buckys that remained seemed to be incapable of anything but anger. “But I remember Stark. He can never keep his mouth shut.”

And that was true here as well as in any other Realm.

The anger was a sad thing to see after the way this man had started the conversation, younger and calmer and polite. But she was not here for an idealised version of James Barnes, only the correct version. It would be wrong to take back a facsimile of the husband that had been lost.

"I have seen you sit companionably together. There is one of you who has some tender feeling for him as well as anger."

She considered how next to phrase her words to whittle still more down and hopefully gain the right one.

"I have met you personally four times. The first you were standing guard behind your husband and said few words, the second you were making a stew in the kitchens and offered me some, the third you were assisting wounded to Vanaheim, and the final you were fighting to kill."

Though there was not much outward change on James Barnes, Loki likely had still cleared out a few of her choices, but there were still far too many for her to definitively pick just one. Gone were the versions of James that knew only Loki as male, or who had met him more then four times, and most of those who could bear the thought having any other version of himself returning to his Steve while they languished alone. Of the few that lingered, they were the selfish. They believed themselves all to be the Barnes that would be selected to return home.

It was not a good spot for Loki to be in. Already, the spectre was changing, warring with itself. As the goodness that remained through the abused vanished, the hostile, ready to kill Barnes that Loki mentioned remained.

She had her magic here, but the ghosts and spirits of the lost were stronger in this Realm. She would not be able to stop him if he attacked, and it was likely that Hel would not either.

"Take hold of yourself."

Loki's voice was commanding and firm, she would not brook any selfish anger from a spirit when she had risked much to come to his aid. She did not know all of his story, but she thought she knew enough to say the right words to appeal to him. After all, she had always been good at targeting another's weak spots and manipulation points.

"If you fight for naught else, fight for Steven Barnes. He awaits you, and if you love him as truly as I had believed so, then you will fight your way to the surface. If you hold love for the Stevens of your lifetime, then you will step aside so that one may be made happy once more, even if it is not your own."

Appealing to Bucky’s generous side would have been pointless, but appealing to Steve? That was enough to push the majority of the sludge from his soul and he stood with but a few variants left within him. Each were subtly different in ways that Loki herself might have difficulty sorting without the use of questions. For instance, only six were married to men with blue eyes, only five with blond hair. Three had been friends with their Steve since they were teenagers, ten met him in the Army already. One had a Steve that died trying to protect Stark before Loki stepped in. Two were actually female that had posed as James Barnes to be allowed into the Army. And one had been trained by a HYDRA that had been an American institution all along with Russia and Germany as red herrings.

How Loki would manage to sort out just the one he needed was a mystery even to Hel, but she was dreadfully interested in this little game and would not even mind if she lost. Loki had been a very worthy opponent and thought this version was not as of yet destined for her halls, she would have loved to have her just the same.

Hel should not be surprised that this iteration of Loki did not yet seem destined for her halls; of all the many thousands of versions that there were there, the ones raised Jotnar, or raised aware that they had come from Jotunheim from an early age, were the ones least likely to end here.

Loki did not know enough about James Barnes to know the minutia of his relationship, such as the age they had met, and so such questions from her would be pointless. She stood and weighed the man in front of him, momentarily at a loss for how to proceed. But she had come so far, and there were so few left. Finally, she decided on an idea that may well be impossible, but she had to try.

"We are all bound by the magic that runs through the branches of Yggdrasil, fuelling life on each of the realms even if you personally cannot wield it. Each Yggdrasil is different, but I have been around many from your Yggdrasil and become close with one. I know the reverberations of it, I know the ebb and flow. Open your hearts to me, think to your core, and let me see if I can feel which of you is the one I seek."

This would have been impossible with so many at the start, the vibrations of each would drown out one another in a cacophony, but with so few... it might be possible.

The twenty of so overlapping personalities all rang a different resonance and Loki, smart as she was, would pick out the feel she'd gotten from Stark easily. There were no other Barnes even remotely similiar in taste to her friend and though she herself came from other universe entirely, that didn't mean that her time with the mortals had been ill spent.

She was left with the Barnes who had made her something to eat and smiled at her. The one who was friends with Stark despite his tongue even if he still wanted to strangle him. The one that saved his Steve enough times now to write a book if he wanted to and yet still credited his husband for so much more than he'd ever done himself.

"I know you came for me," this Buciy said. "But... Do you know...? What am I supposed to do if Steve was HYDRA the whole time? How can I go back if he's my enemy?"

Loki allowed herself to feel the swell of triumph at accomplishing her task without a single question asked, a task that Hel herself had called impossible, a smile spreading across her face even as she stepped closer to James Barnes and bowed her head in the apology she owed him.

"He is not. He does not know that you died believing him so, Tony explained to me that he had been pretending to be so in order to gain information about the enemy. I believe he is true."

She held her hand out to him.

"You may come with me without fear, the Lady Hel has graciously granted permission for me to take you until your natural life ends now that I have found you."

An hour might have passed for Loki, who was gently smiled at by her half faced future daughter and bid a fond farewell until they might meet again, who managed to come out of her ordeal without needing the assistance of any of the gifts granted her by the All-Mother, mere moments of grief had passed for Steve. He'd been left alone for less than a minute and hadn't come to grips in the slightest about what to do with Bucky as he possessively held his body, much less what he'd do with himself, when the corpse in his arms drew in a startling breath.

Steve would not be ashamed to admit that he had screamed a little, and possibly even dropped Bucky. He did scoop him up a moment later, hands trembling and sure he was going mad.

Bucky couldn't be alive. He hadn't felt a pulse since he'd come into the room. He was kneeling in nearly all of the man's blood!

"Oh God, pleas-- Buck!"

That first breath that Bucky drew in felt like many others, like each time he had been pulled out of cryogenic storage in time for another mission. But unlike with the others where he had been disoriented and confused, this time he was clear... clearer even than he had been when he died because mingling with those other versions of himself had given him some of who he used to be back.

His chest was sore but no longer split open, though his clothes were soaked in blood, and Steve's face made his heart ache as though it still had the blade in it.

"...Jesus, Steve," he murmured, hardly the most auspicious words. "It really worked, I'm really alive."

Jesus, coming from a guy who just came back to life after having his chest pierced, really was not the first word that ought to have been uttered. Not that Steve was looking for divinity here. He pressed a hand to his mouth, momentarily tasting blood that was not his own, as Bucky pulled himself up. He had to be nuts. This stuff just didn't happen. People did not just breathe after they had bled out!

"H-How...?" If he was dreaming or if his mind had broken, he hoped he stayed just like this. Maybe it was selfish, but for a guy who was never selfish, exceptions had to be made from time to time.

He swallowed and moved a little closer, sliding in the blood. Blood soaked into his pants.

"No. Don't care. Just be real."

How and why could come afterwards because they were mind boggling enough in themselves, let alone for a man who had always been religious and might not take well to knowing that the afterlife truly wasn't heaven and hell as they had always been taught in Sunday school when they were boys.

"I'm real, this is real."

Bucky reached up and cupped Steve's cheek with a hand smeared and slick with red, the whole room just coated in his life.

"It was Loki she came for me, she told me that you weren't really HYDRA and I fought, I came back. It's my job to watch your six, Steve, God only knows what stupid stuff you'd do without me here."

It turned out that when Steve wasn't sad, but was too filled with emotional not to cry, he managed to look dazzling just the same, smiling through his tears. There were no ugly hiccups, no red, puffy cheeks to overlook, just happy, relieved, blissfully thankful tears. He sent off a silent prayer before he hugged Bucky, not aware that the Loki that had brought him back was the same Loki still escorting Tony to his room and the same Loki back on Asgard chatting with the All-Mother.

Time acted strangely and seemed very Realm specific. Luckily, Loki would catch up with herself later, after she was finished telling her future mother by marriage all about her feats.

Frigga looked exceptionally proud of her, beaming with interest and intelligent questions as they sat side by side.

This time, Thor was none the wiser and miserably waiting the return of his future bridge by smacking the Warriors Three around.

Bucky allowed himself to be held in Steve's arms, just listening to the beat of his heart as though it were the most glorious music he had ever heard in his life. Explanations, proper ones, could wait until Steve had calmed down a bit and they had been allowed some hours on their own to clean up.

Loki too was being sequestered by the All-Mother until the timeline caught up with itself, allowed to leave her presence only once Loki herself had already travelled to Hel in order to not damage the fine threads of time. Not that Loki minded, she was full of her triumph, a battle won with wits and wisdom rather than brawn.

The Lady Sif, who had just taken a more vicious beating than usual, set down her sword and folded her arms. "What has become of you, Thor? You have a face set like a thundercloud and you have no reason to be so ill of temper. Is your Jotnar truly such a sight?"

"You need to stop speaking of our future All-Mother that way," Thor commanded, his tone dark. "I will not have it. Not now and not later. Certainly not in front of Princess Loki. She is far more than a Realm. And you would get on with her. You both feel it necessary to sass me."

He grinned and made a play lunge at Sif without going through with it. She was unarmed and he was not willing to risk her injury even if he wanted to smash something.

"She may well be lost. She would not have me journey with her. It's as if she does not care for me at all."

Perhaps nobody knew Thor better than Sif, they had been companions ever since they were tiny children and she had watched him grow so she knew how easily he gave himself over to the passions of the moment, but this worried her. Though she of course wished him happiness with his bride (with perhaps a small amount of jealousy) she did not wish to see him a puppet to a Jotnar witch.

"She has only met you twice, and both times briefly, that is not enough to grow affection. It should not be enough for you, Thor, you do not know who she is at all."

The others looked slightly discomforted, though all were friends of the prince, it was only Sif who ever spoke this way to him, so bluntly.

Dropping Mjolnir to cross his arms, Thor gave Sif a curious look. “Why are you so against the princess when you’ve never met her? My father says he loved his queen the moment he laid eyes on her and she sent him on many adventures to prove his love for her before she would give it back. You wouldn’t reproach the All-Father would you?”

Thor wanted to be just like Odin. Just about everyone did. That he felt this way for Loki was just proof that the love was true and worth it.

“I value your friendship and your counsel but hold the latter until you’ve had the honour of her company. She will join our band soon enough.” Of course he assumed Loki would want to spend time with him in everything!

"Of course I bear no malice to your bride, but you must see that true love cannot come from one glance alone. Even the All-Father would admit that love, true love, comes from a deeper understanding of the other person."

Sif wouldn't let Thor bully her, she knew the crown prince was a lot of bluster and was unlikely to truly take offence to her. If he did, then they would make up before too long, they were too close companions for anything else.

"I am glad you are fond, I wish you happiness, but she may respect you more if she feels your love is not just an affectation that you feel obliged to show due to your arranged union."

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hope things are going well for you dear <3

Mostly meh but thank you for asking. <3

if you ever want/need to talk I can hope onto plurk or skype just lmk

Thanks!

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