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 mumbled something incoherent and rolled a bit onto his side, though he still kept his head pressing down on Steve's chest as though he could keep him there through sheer will alone.

"No talking, no shower, just stay here."

He wanted to be selfish for once.

He knew they weren't allowed to be, that they had to see to duty and care for everyone else, but god-- he wanted to be selfish. He wanted his moment to spend all day in bed with the man he loved and do nothing except relax, he wanted to pretend that life could still be calm and peaceful.

"You don't smell that bad."

It took a little nudging, but eventually Bucky was on his side with Steve fitted against him, long legs pressing against the backs of his thighs and his arm around his waist. "It's not about smelling bad," Steve grinned against Bucky's ear as he set his chin against the curve of his shoulder. "It was just an excuse to stay close to you."

And hadn't they been making those excuses for most of their lives? Steve was always sick and so Bucky had to stay over. Bucky needed help with math and so Steve had to tutor him. Bucky had a date and so Steve needed to escort that date's best friend--

Never mind that they ended up mostly being on dates with each other, not that Bucky was neglectful of the ladies, but they couldn't help themselves.

"But I'll stay." He hadn't given Anthony a time. Morning was morning. He could spend the night here and talk to everyone first thing.

The last time they had lain spooning like this, it had been Bucky that was the big spoon. It had been the depths of winter in a particularly cold snap, they hadn't got much money and had used the last bit of their available heating. Bucky had been worried about the cold and damp going to Steve's chest, and so he had climbed in bed with him, beneath the scratchy blankets, and used his body heat to warm him from top to toe.

Even though he was a different size and shape now, even though Steve was the one holding on from behind, it still felt the same. Like coming home.

"M'glad I died," he muttered, not really thinking about how that would come out. "I don't think I would'a got here if I didn't."

Steve didn't like the sound of that. He was grateful for this Bucky, for one capable of letting himself be touched, but he also really didn't want to credit that with death. Steve exhaled slowly, a warm rush of air slipping over Bucky's cheek as he half curled around him, half laid over him.

"Do you remember it? What heaven was like?" Bucky, no matter his actions, could never go to hell. It wasn't his fault, what he was made to do, and God had to know that. Blue eyes closed, ready to be washed in soothing knowledge that there was more out there.

That he'd see their old friends again...his mom and dad too.

Bucky didn't reply at first because he wasn't sure if what he had to say would crush Steve or not. But in the end there was no way he could lie; not about this, not to Steve. He stayed where he is, cushioned in the comforting embrace of his husband, words soft as if he hoped that might lessen any blow.

"There was no Heaven, leastways not for me. It might exist out there, but I went to a place called Hel. There wasn't any of the fire and brimstone and nobody hurt me, it was just sorta... grey. There were Buckys there from all over; some of 'em like me, some died in the war. There were even a couple of dames."

It had been weird, but it had also felt natural.

"Between us we had every memory I could ever have had. I don't have them all back now but I'm more of me than I was and Steve... every one of them revolved around you. It's what made me realise I had to face my fears, you're my whole world even across universes and I'm lucky enough to have snagged you for a husband. I wasn't gonna waste that any more."

Steve was quiet. Not just quiet, but he stopped breathing for the moment, mostly to get all of his thoughts together. His conclusion was a very Steve Rogers one, in the end, after he weighed out every part of his life that had ever happened in a timeline of ever increasing What Even Is My Life moments. “School never prepared us for any of this.” Not for war, at least not for the actual fighting. It didn't prepare Steve for what would happen to him. Or for how he would nearly die in one decade and after being unfrozen, he would wake up and it wasn't illegal to love another man and very legal to marry one. No one taught them about aliens. Or alternate realities. And yet all of these things were real.

Now there wasn't a heaven, there was a place where all of these realities went when they died. Steve could barely get his head around that, try as he might, so he just accepted it as fact.

"Guess the translation between God and the people writing the Bible got messed up about that too. Not the first time that's happened." He wasn't an expert on the Bible but from what he saw, it could be a little off here or there.

His nose pressed into the back of Bucky's neck.

"Guess if your life revolves around me, though, I gotta be more careful with making sure that we stay together."

This was what made Steve Rogers much more than the average man. Not the serum, not the muscles, not the costume. It was the tenacity of his spirit, the way he fought back even when the odds were stacked astronomically against him and never gave up hope. Bucky should have known that even pulling the rug out from under his faith wouldn't do much more than make him all the more determined to live a good life.

He snorted quietly, smile at his lips that Steve couldn't see from behind him, and raised his left arm to thread metal fingers carefully through blond hair.

"You better believe it, pal, because I don't want to be apart from you again. Not until we both have to go on to the next life, wherever that turns out to be the next time it happens."

"Not for awhile. Not for a real long time, Buck," Steve said, as if he could cement that reality into place with just his words. Unfortunately, his stomach had some ideas it wanted to express as well and though Steve was remembered what it was like to be hungry all the time, he wasn't used to it.

Not anymore. His metabolism demanded high quantities of food and demanded it loudly, stomach rumbling against Bucky's back.

"Stay here. I'll get us some sandwiches," he said. It was still light out so he'd be able to get into the kitchens without having to explain himself.

Steve genuinely felt as though he were walking on air as he left the little room he had shared with Bucky, like he was a new man. He had never really believed what all the fellas said before, that losing your virginity made you a different person, but they were right... and wrong, too. Steve didn't think it would have changed him if it had been anyone but Bucky, but that had been the last barrier between them and now it was gone.

Despite everything wrong with the world, he felt right.

He meandered to the kitchen and got a huge quantity of sandwiches for them both, but seeing the low buildings where the prisoners were being kept pricked at his conscience. He should be in there talking with that version of Tony, so... he flagged someone down and asked them to take half the sandwiches and an apology to his husband, and he walked through the guarded door and looked around for Tony.

"...Hey? Uh-- I'm here as we agreed, to talk about everything."

It had only been a few hours. Anthony hadn't been expecting a repeat visit from the man that was not really Steven until the following morning but when he walked into their prison house, Anthony was immediately on his feet instead of curled up with Bruce like he had been during the time that Loki had been banished for that long year. He pressed a hand down over his hair when he heard that man with the familiar voice call out "Tony," and rushed to meet him.

He didn't want to look weak.

"My name is Anthony. An-thow-knee. Not Tony." That was such a harsh bastardized version of his name and he didn't like it. "And you are Steve-barnes." He didn't question the oddly long name.

These Midgardians were backwards.

Perhaps a part of why he had felt compelled to come now was a selfish desire to not have it hanging over him; he wanted to go back to his husband's arms and stay there for a long time, thinking about nothing except how damn lucky he was to have someone like Bucky at his side.

"Okay, Anthony, I think I can manage that. You know, that's actually our Tony's name as well, Anthony Edward Stark, but he doesn't like it. And you can just call me Steve."

He had decided he would be as kind as he could, but that didn't mean that he would be a pushover.

"Are you ready to talk to me about our views on slavery?"

"I'm ready to try to have you understand my way of life and why it's right for our people," Anthony said. He had come to realize over the last few hours in Bruce's arms that they were never going to agree. The Midgardians here had been free for too long. They might not have a history of slavery at all (he didn't know that they had enslaved each other for centuries). Freedom could corrupt, it could make a purposeless people try to eek out their own lives without stability. Sometimes Anthiny felt that way about the Asgardians but he knew that even they were not free. They lived their lives to strict codes and hierarchies as did the other Realms under Asgard. Not even the All-Father was truly free, tied to his throne though he was.

All living creatures needed structure and guideance. Asgardians had to expend more energy to police themselves. Midgardians, Anthony truly thought, were the luckiest of all. They always had enough to eat and always had a place to sleep. They led lives full of meaning.

And that was a great gift the other races of the Realms did not have.

He gestured to the other room where the dining room table laid unused. They had all eaten together in the back room on the floor.

"You must keep an open mind. And... I will do the same."

It was so very strange to hear Tony-- Anthony talk that way, he was used to the brash and arrogant way that his Tony bulldozered through any opposition to his point of view, rather than agree to be calm and measured during a conversation this heightened in tension.

"I will do what I can."

But he would never be able to see slavery as anything but abhorrent. Even if he hadn't thought that way anyway, seeing what being forced under someone else's yoke had done to Bucky would have cemented his views. He just couldn't understand how these people could be happy to be slaves; even when slaves had been kept throughout human history, they had always fought to be free.

"So-- uh, who should go first?"

“I’m the prisoner here. I requested the conversation. I’m the one who wants to learn something.” He gestured to Steve, following tactics he’d seen Loki employ many times. Flattery, but only just so, was immediately followed up by setting the stage for the other person to lay their entire selves and their arguments bare. He could pick things more easily apart this way and hopefully offer rebuttals or learn the way to get himself into the good graces of those holding them here. And that was all that mattered at this early stage of the game.

He could not risk losing any more of his people. Not until they knew their likely fate.

Anthony sat not at the head of the table, but close to it, hands folded. He never cared to be at a table, it felt unnatural to him, especially when there weren’t benches but individual chairs.

Nothing about this felt communal and that was what his life had always been.

He doubted Steve would understand so he did not offer this to him immediately, even if presenting a vulnerability could work in his favour here.

"Alright, I guess I can roll with that."

Steve took a seat a bit further down the table, not even thinking about their relative positioning. He laced his hands under his chin and thought for a moment, wanting this to come out right, eyes earnest and sincere.

"You probably don't know, but we have a history of slavery too. We enslaved each other sometimes because of stupid reasons, like the colour of our skin being different, or just being from another place. But it was always ended because-- because every person deserves the right to live their life how they want to live it, not forced to be what someone else thinks they should be."

He frowned, though more out of eagerness to get his point across than anger.

"Nobody should ever be thought of as property."

"Everyone person also has a right to shelter and to sustainance and to have worth," Anthony said, carefully trying to keep his anger and disbelief at this backwards thinking to himself. "Midgard enslaved other Midgardians out of a need for power, dominance, or because they thought themselves better than their peers. But where I'm from, every Midgardian starts the same. Everyone has the same opportunity to find worth in their life and if they can not, they are given worth. And food. And shelter. And work....we don't pay for it. We don't subjugate others to get it. The price of freedom is extremely high. You can be free and nothing. The vast majority of your people probably are nothing. Their lives have little meeting. but each one of my people have a place and a purpose. That's because Midgardians deserve it. Asgardians, Vanir, Jotnar...they're not better than we are. Everyone is the same that lives in the branches of Yggdrassil. But we all have our place. Asgard rules and protects. The Vanir have their magic. And Midgard serves."

Anthony sat forward, watching the frown on Steve's face without understanding it. He'd been in many verbal sparring matches before, but never with this particularly blue pair of eyes gazing at him.

And maybe he ought to start there.

"Steven and I were born around the same time and brought to the Training Village. I've known him my entire life. As a child he was very sickly. He could hardly breathe, his eyes were terrible and he was forever catching colds. After a few months of watching this progress, our Trainers brought him to the city and he was given healing honey." Steve would know what that was from Bucky's imbibing of it. "And when he returned, he was fit and fall and he didn't get sick anymore. If we were merely property, he would have been discarded to make room for another, healthier Midgardian who could learn to read and write and fight without any of that. Yes, Steve, we may have masters, we may be owned, and we may be property, but we are well cared for. Even those of us who are not lucky enough to be chosen as part of a personal slave stable and who do other tasks around the Realms are cared for until they die."

It makes a horrible and twisted sort of sense, but he really doesn't like it at all. He can't deny that food and shelter for all is something that the human race on his version of Earth really hasn't managed to perfect yet, but having it come at the cost of freedom is far too high a cost.

"And what about if someone decided they didn't want to do the work assigned to them?"

This was where it all fell down, because there was no way that he believed there weren't cruel masters or punishments, he didn't believe that they were all just pampered and treated for their illnesses and valued as something more than property.

"What about if someone assigned to... I don't know... farm? Decided that they wanted to blacksmith instead, or someone assigned to fight decided they wanted to sew clothes. Can you refuse an order your owner gives you if you think it goes against your morals and beliefs?"

"No everyone gets to be what they want to be," Anthony admitted. "Tell me, Steve, is that how it worked for your planet? At any time, if someone wanted to change their lot in life, did they have the ability to do it? I'd like to take the word freedom off of the table. I have only felt less than free three times in my life. Each time, I was separated from my Master."

He wouldn't go into details. Being away from Loki was like missing a piece of himself. Even the kitchen slaves with them felt that way. They served a household, not just one person. And yet they felt as if the household might suffer while a new slave was trained. And it was true. The household would.

Slaves might seem expendable but they truly were not.

Anthony exploited how uncomfortable Steve looked by upping how depressed he looked on his face. He felt it deeply and endlessly but he was measured in how much of that he showed.

"Midgardians typically have short lives. A hundred years if they are lucky, seventy or so on average. Much of that time is spend in learning. And after that, working at how they learned. I do not believe that your people have experienced the ability to be anything they wanted. There is demand for some fields. There is more work in some industries. Some can never achieve their potential. That is the way of all Realms no matter their roles. I need not know about yours entirely to know that truth. At least for my people, we all have meaning. We have vocation. And while a field hand might not care to toil, she knows that she is feeding the Realm and that brings happiness."

"No, not everyone can be something that they want to be, but I come from a country where the ability to make that choice is at the core of who we are. If I worked on the field and I didn't want to, then I could choose to try and do something else. Maybe I wouldn't succeed, but I'd have the same shot as anyone else, and I'd at least be able to follow my dreams."

He hated how logically Anthony laid it all out, because the arguments he made had a sense to them even if it was twisted and warped by the Stockholm Syndrome that they were all clearly suffering from.

"Doesn't it bother you that even your body doesn't belong to you? That your master could tell you to have children with a stranger and you'd have to do it, whether you wanted to or not? Do you think your master hasn't already got a new slave by now?"

He refused to believe loyalty could be shown both ways, anyone who could keep a slave must see them as pets at best and property at worst.

In a way, Anthony was touting a sort of communism. Maybe even a form of fascism that worked in theory and in practice, unlike it had on Earth. He did not believe that anyone could do anything. Kings were born and not made. Farm hands were strong. Warriors were brave. Kitchen help could cook. "A person is suited to only a few lives. I might long to be a warrior like Steven, to protect my master and his possessions, but I was not born to that. Many of your people were not born to what they would want to be. I do not believe you when you say that everyone has the same advantage. I saw how your people scattered when we came. Had it been reversed, my people would have come together to protect the weak. We studied your world from a far. Midgard was broken. Her governments, her people... Everyone hated everyone. So many were starving. Here I am, the Prince's personal slave. I want for nothing. And so many of you were dying. Every. Day."

It was getting to Steve. The logic. But he needed his heart strings tugged too. And that Anthony could do easily with the questions presented to him.

"If my master wished for me to mate, I would. It is my duty. But I was glad he did not want me to. I am not interested in securing my line. That's selfish of me. My children would be able to serve Prince Loki when the apples cease to keep me young and I pass to Hel or. Valhala. One day he will ask me to give him my progeny and I will do as he wishes. Or I will ask him to allow me to have get. And he will allow this too."

He exhaled slowly and tried not to let the thought of being replaced make him angry. But he was hot headed and his eyes flashed Amber as he looked at Steve.

"My prince is looking for a way to come for me. I am not replaceable. Not easily. None of us are. We have centuries of training, our skills can not just be transferred. And he trusts and cares for me. One day he will need to find another but that is not today."

It was getting to Steve, the idea that anyone could be happy in their slavery was abhorrent to him, but it was getting harder and harder to deny that this was what Tony was-- Anthony, not Tony, it was hard to remember. Perhaps this was harder from a selfish standpoint of seeing someone he cared about espouse these sort of things, when he knew how much damage had been done to one of his friends.

"And what about my people?"

Steve's expression darkened, but he kept his anger under check.

"What about the way my people were treated? Maybe you and yours accept slavery and are happy to be born into it, but you can't look at the suffering caused to my people and say that it was the same thing. You captured and abused them, don't you think that was wrong?"

He had no idea what he was going to do with this if Anthony really did believe that they hadn't done anything wrong to the people of his Earth.

"You wiped out our home, you slaughtered thousands, and made thousands more into traumatised people far from their families."

"Do not try to find a moral high ground with that argument. We watched transmissions from your world. We saw all of the ways that one group tried to pressure and control and destroy another. Your planet has wiped out whole settlements and whole groups of people over something as idiotic as skin colour!" He was getting fiery now. He could taste his temper rising.

But Anthony was so young. So impetuous. He had a master who brought out all of the chaos within him. And he had a difficult time holding his tongue. Always.

"We wanted to save you from yourselves. What we did was the same as what you've always done to yourselves. Except we have given your children the keys to happiness. Your world was not destroyed when we left it. The people we took were to be left on the training moon with food and water and shelter to sustain their population for centuries. But this is what happens when Midgard is left on their own. They destroy themselves. Is that what happened to your planet? We took a mere twenty thousand of your eight billion citizens. Did the rest destroy themselves? Likely. Just as we know that the twenty thousand we took would eventually slaughter themselves too. Midgardians without direction are brutal and horrible to each other."

"You're speaking of your own people."

Steve's own anger was bleeding through as well now. It made him literally sick to his stomach to hear Anthony talk about what they had done as though it had truly been a favour and not a sick kidnapping and torture that had ruined an entire planet. Perhaps there had been war, perhaps they had wiped themselves out after, but the Asgardians had been the catalyst.

"And if you insist that you helped them of your own free will, then we really will have no choice but to try you all for the war crimes against our people."

He didn't know whether execution would be a thing in their new society, he assumed a vote would be had on it. But they would all surely either be executed or kept imprisoned for the rest of their lives.

What was a life anyway without Loki? Anthony had no purpose here other than to try and keep and comfort his people. Perhaps Bruce had been right to worry for Anthony had had the upper hand until his temper burst out and his I know everything attitude took over. Anthony slammed his hands on the table and stood. It would have been threatening if Steve had been anyone else…or if Anthony had been taller.

“Do whatever you must,” he said, his English thick with that British accent he affected to speak it in All-Speak. There were angry, hurting, lonely tears just behind the corners of his eyes but he could not weep for what he had lost.

After all, he’d lost Loki before. And Loki had always returned to him. Loki plucked him out of nothing and made him who he was. He would not embarrass his Master by weeping openly.

“If you think any of us are afraid of your threats, you’re wrong. If you think this makes you better than us…you’re wrong there too. We gave your people a future with meaning. And you’re offering us nothing but a death sentence.” There were not many prisoners on Asgard. The Realms tended to snuff out those that they felt were criminal. It was just how Anthony assumed it would be.

"I'm not threatening you, I'm telling you what will happen because even if you're a criminal you have the right to know what's happening with your custody or trial."

Steve had already come to the conclusion that this wasn't going to get him anywhere. As much as he hated to fail, he wasn't so arrogant as to think that he never would or never could. These people likely would never have integrated well anyway, their own people were too hurt and fractured from what had happened and would never have trusted them. Perhaps, in some ways, it was better this way.

He had just stood up, preparatory to leaving, when an enormous crash shook the ground so much that he stumbled. The accompanying boom was loud enough that he could only hear a dull ringing when the dust cleared, showing that the wall had actually cracked. The apple-fed Midgardians might be hardier with their hearing, though, and so Anthony might hear a familiar pair of voices shouting in Aesir and the unmistakable feel of Loki's magic mingling with that of Mjolnir to create another localised blast.

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True rp love is fighting through a phone tag. I SUCK at the bone tags

<3 That IS love

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