fossilised | it's a new plot!

“I know what they’ll say. I know… It’s not something I can explain. It’s not just the whispers. You know that I used to know things before they happened,” he said, taking his hand back. “I don’t want to be that guy with late state mutant powers either. Can we just…keep this to ourselves?” He didn’t really mean to make that big of a deal about it. “They’ll fade. Sleep helps.” They did better with a lot of alcohol but that wasn’t really an option right now.

As much as he wished it would be. But keeping promises to people, especially Bucky, that was the most important thing to him right now.

“Why don’t you come with me? You don’t have to stay for long-- You’ve always helped, though. You make things quiet again. If you want. It’s always your choice.”

Even though it was obvious that Tony wasn't inviting him to his bed for anything other than fully clothed sleep, it was still a bigger step than they had gone to before. But Tony looked so vulnerable, backpedalling and insisting that Bucky needn't come with him, and his eyes were pinched with such discomfort that he found himself nodding.

"If I can help, then I will. Come on, let's take you to your bedroom in my house."

Not that this amused him or anything.

"But if it is a mutant power, then you should definitely still get help. There's organisations out there that help with people born that way; I know, I've infiltrated them a few times to get to targets."

“Pretty sure that I’m too old for Xavier,” Tony said as if he was lamenting it. He wasn’t. School had never been the best place for him, it had never been a place at all for him. Upstairs, in the room he’d picked for himself before he’d signed over the deed to James Barnes, Tony flopped down on the mattress and half across the other man after Bucky made himself comfortable.

He insisted on his hair being stroked, but that insistance would last all of five minutes before he fell asleep. Sleep opened his mind further to the lives he had lived or would live in one massive jumble, all centering around Bucky or around relationships that started out like Bucky’s did with him. There was just too much of someone foreign in them. Too much of Loki. It was no wonder that Tony didn’t get any rest that night.

And neither would Loki himself. He ought to have not dismissed his mother’s words so quickly out of hand, but he could not truthy know the reason behind whatever visions he was given, still high from his days of playing hero on the planet.

Tony did not know if he would wake up alone or with with James, but he grasped for something before his eyes opened, something real, to remind him that this was his life, and he wasn’t some man that built planets for a hobby.

It probably wouldn't be helpful, then, that his hands grasped hold of soft leather rather than any kind of fabric or human being. If he opened his eyes then he would find himself reclining in furs that seemed to be from a bear, if a bear were six times the size of any earth bears and twice as shaggy.

The leathers he had hold of were stained and bloodied. Nobody else was in the tent, fabric walls thin enough to see outlines of silhouettes by a flickering fire, two moons shining overhead, and people shouting to one another in a language that he probably wouldn't recognise.

Far beyond the tent the sound of battle waged, but the nearer sounds were of revelry, of soldiers who could have died that day, and might die on the morrow, but for now were perfectly and gloriously alive.

This was one hundred and ten percent par for the course lately. Tony often found himself with overlays of events that matched his current self in some ways and yet were completely different. He headed towards where the bathroom would be from the bed, mostly to wash his hands (yuck), and found himself still stuck in the moment. Nothing familiar flashed through. No sink. No expensive soap. No sound of the ocean... nothing. It was honestly a little strange to be caught in a fugue for so long.

“Hello...?”

One of the massive warriors turned towards him with a grin and shoved a horn of ale his way. There were cheers, a general drunken sort of behavior that followed when a newcomer was given something to drink. They raised their cups and in confusion, Tony slowly lifted his as well.

“Weird,” he said to himself before he sniffed the contents of the horn and felt his entire body crave it. The alcohol smelled like honey and like rubbing alcohol. That meant it would be sweet and strong. Exactly what he needed.

He did not, however, take a sip. He just carried it back towards the tent, slowly circling it. He should have bumped into a wall by now. Right?

He should have and, if this had been an actual dream, then he would have done. As it was, he would just find himself face to face with a green eyed woman dressed in black leather and high heeled boots. She gave him a smile, as though she were not at all surprised to see him there, and reached out to touch his cheek.

"You have travelled very far to see me, Anthony."

She had been waiting for this, though she had not expected it to come now when they were in the midst of battle. Still, it was no matter, the forces had been driven back for now and the fight would continue the following day, more than enough time for that.

"If we were not so pressed for time, I would take you to my furs and show you how pleased I am that you're here."

As much as Tony would have liked to give into the leggy, green eyed dream beauty, he was pretty sure that it would be a bad idea for many, many reasons. “Yeah so I was just in your furs. You left some blood there.” He needed a shower, no doubt about it.

Tony glanced to either side of the woman in annoyance, mostly felt for himself, but also towards the jeering, randomly celebrating warriors that reminded him all too much of Thor and—

Oh shit.

He could almost hear the tail end of whispered chanting just inside of his range of hearing. Loki. Loki. Loki.</>

“You’re... Loki. Why do you have tits? I mean, they’re nice tits but... normally, not so much.”

Loki laughed as though every word out of his mouth delighted him, though there was a tonal edge of sadness to her voice as well. Such as one who had found old images or stories of a friend long dead and, though they might laugh at the fond memories, felt grief for their passing.

"I am not the Loki you know, but I do not have time to tell you our full history, only to do what has been preordained for many years. Come, we have until the sun rises and no more."

She held out her hand to him.

"The whispers of your mind have been leading you here, and it is time to gain some answers."

“As nice as that sounds, you’re pretty hot and creepy at the same time. That never bodes well for me. I do a lot better with old, ugly people.” Tony glanced at the offered hand, tried to seal out the whispers prompting him to take it, but he ended up just giving in. It was always so much easier to do that anyway and so his larger hand slid into hers. “I like you better than the other one,” Tony said, feeling a wave of nostalgia that he didn’t know he could actually feel.

Not for Loki, though a few stray memories came to mind of times when he had been in the presence of this beauty.

He could almost feel his heart break as they touched, as if he could feel Loki’s pain and enjoyment too.

Tony didn’t really care for that.

“How did my hallucinations teleport me to wherever this is?” Two moons? Definitely wasn’t Earth.

"Your hallucinations, as you call them, are a gift. They are no wanderings of a disturbed mind, but rather a gift of one who has lived many lives on many branches of Yggdrasil. You are given to see the heart of someone you may have only met in other lifetimes, and see the possible futures that can come."

It is a gift that few have had. Asgard has had a few Seers, Frigga had the gift herself, but for it to be given to a mortal was an odd sort of cruelty.

"You are here because it has taken a toll on your health, and because the time has come for you to learn to master it before it destroys you. That is the path we must set your feet on before the dawn takes you away from me again."

She leaned in to press a light kiss to his forehead as if she could not resist herself.

"One night is too short a time, my Anthony, but know that seeing you again is a gift I will not forget lightly."

Tony didn’t know what was worse: that there had been a way to control or even stop this thing or that they only had a night together. He’d never felt much more than loathing for Loki, but this felt right, like he’d been searching for a connection like this his entire life. “You could have shown up, or brought me here, thirty years ago. I don’t have to go back either,” he mused, though he knew that what had brought him here was purposefully temporary.

That was harder to understand than he’d thought and he felt, for a moment, zealously capable of clinging to Loki so he would never leave her side. And yet... she wasn’t his. She’d had two Tonys. And suddenly, he was aware of something else—

“Another me is coming. And he’ll be staying for awhile... so I guess my name is off of your ticket.” Wait. “You know what I mean. All right. Let’s get read the manual and figure out where the shut off valve is. I have a world to help save from this guy named Thanos.”

"You are not for me to keep, you belong to another and I lost my Anthony many decades ago. Though you share much of the same personality and physical appearance, you are not him. You are your own man, just as the Loki in your world is not me, and never shall be."

It was something that many universe hopping people had issues with, separating themselves from their other selves, or the people they knew. It would be a hard lesson for Anthony to learn himself.

"Mastery shall not come tonight, but if you continue the fundamentals I give you, in time you will have a great power. Enough to influence the time stream itself, and pluck from realities what you wish to be true, and help give them form in your world."

She led him back into her tent and to the blood stained furs, sitting in them without care for the mess.

"First, you must find an anchor. It will be personal to you, something that will call you back to you no matter what. It can be a person, an object, a memory-- even an abstract concept, as long as it anchors you to who you are."

“I saw this movie,” Tony quipped. “I didn’t really like it. Not because I didn’t get it. Dream within a dream—. The South Park parody was better. Got it. So I find a little metal top to spin.” It wasn’t that he couldn’t be serious, but it was really pretty difficult to be sometimes when faced with the craziness that was his life.

All it took was Loki to frown for Tony to change his tune. So he sat beside her, elbows on his knees, and huffed.

“I used to have something... here.” He placed his hand over his heart. Now all he had was a significantly weaker sternum. “It was me so for long. I still keep it with me.”

Usually in his back pocket. For sentimental reasons.

"May I?"

She held out her hand and, if Tony should deign to hand over the arc reactor, a green glow would appear around it. A shard of it split from the rest and pushed down into Tony's forearm; oddly not painful, though it sunk enough to look almost like a tattoo if it weren't touched and revealed to be anything but flesh.

"There. Now it will always be with you, and you can touch it to anchor yourself, a physical reminder of who you are. Anthony, my Anthony, I know that you jest much but you must be serious for a short time, for what I am about to teach you is dangerous. Close your eyes and centre your breathing."

The blue triangle with the jagged piece of metal casing around it, was consoling. He let the remains of the reactor slip from his fingers. Why would be need it when it was part of him again? His fingers ran across the surface, reverent, excited almost in the haste they made to memorize the outline immediately. He could almost breathe again, like he did when the voices were leaving him alone, at least until Loki asked him to turn his mind inward.

He didn’t hate it when Loki said his name. He’d yelled at his own universe’s Loki but now that he thought about it, it made him feel the same way. He was going to have to talk to him.

Which sucked.

Loki was an asshole.

Tony did as he was told, a thousand voices rushing inward, and on instinct, he pressed his hand to his forearm and they drifted away. Of all mortals to be gifted this power, Tony was uniquely suited. He’d always been good at figuring out a situation.

Loki was not the best tutor for this, that would have been her mother, but Frigga had long since passed beyond mortal concerns. She was, however, better suited for it than most of her counterparts. She was more mature, more grounded, and better versed in all magic than she had been all those centuries ago when her heritage first came out.

"Good. Now that you have an anchorpoint that is you, see it within your mind. See the bright paths and threads that spiral away from you. Be careful not to become tangled in them. It will take time for you to be able to recognise which paths lead where, and to know how to find what you seek. For now, just pick one and carefully travel it. Witness what it wishes to show you and, if you feel able, gently try to guide the vision to answers that you seek. Do not tarry long, and then return to yourself."

Tony had no idea what form of measurement a long tary was so he didn’t exactly know how long it was safe to ‘follow’ one of the whispers. Or even if he could. Thankfully, however, one whisper was stronger than the rest and Tony reached out to it and let it tug him along. It made life easier when he wasn’t trying so hard to repress the hallucinations and though he had a build up of them now, the others gave way to just this one.

Tony was in darkness and then bathed in a golden light and wrapped in warmth. He found himself suddenly with his arms around a little girl with long hair and bright blue eyes, though she was a little too big now to be held. And Loki was there too, laughing as a boy seemingly about the girl’s age popped into and out of view or existence around the room while the child in his own arms clapped in appreciation.

The thought faded for him before he needed to even think it was time to return and Tony sucked in a breath and grabbed the furs he had been sitting on.

“Ola...?”

Loki sat in silence as Anthony took his first foray into trying to guide and control the whispers of his mind. If he learned how to do this properly then what had been a burden would become an asset, he shouldn't be bothered by the pain of headaches and whispers, he should be able to find answers and even directly affect the future based on what he saw.

She was there to wind her arm around his shoulders when he first came back looking shaken, sweating and trembling, and brushed her lips through sweat-dampened hair.

"A child of yours in some worlds. A spirit in others. A child of others in yet more. Anthony, listen to me, you must practise this frequently and with a discipline that I know you possess even if you pretend otherwise. You could save whole worlds and change the fates of many, or you could end destroyed by what should be your greatest gift."

Over the next two hours, Tony simply followed the whispers. Most wanted to show him little scraps of nothing, little insights into himself and connections he had missed out on. He learned quite a bit (mostly about Banner and Loki) but there was no control in where he went or what he learned. Thankfully, this Loki was right about what Tony could do when he set his mind to it. Little by little he was able to remember that he was viewing happenings that had or would occur, but nothing that was directly attached to the present. He latched onto to older versions of himself, though, and he learned how to pick tidbits of their memories or their ideas out of the situation he was viewing through their eyes.

By the time dawn approached, he was by no means an expert in what he was doing, but the voices were left to only be there when he called them. They would continue to offer themselves up when a particular memory needed insight but for the most part, he had seeded through all of those with little or lesser consequence.

And he had a few ideas on what his next couple of projects would be.

The last trail of the evening led him to this Loki. He could tell. The woman in his vision was familiar. The love he felt for her, not his own of course, was more real and true.

He pulled himself through flashes of moments his other self spent with this woman and when he fell back into his consciousness, his eyes were wide.

“He’s not dead. Your me. He’s not. That’s what I felt before. That’s why I said another me was coming to take my place here. Does Sakaar mean anything to you? Trash planet?”

"Anthony has been dead for several decades now, even if he had somehow survived the incident that took him from me as a companion, he would have aged and died long before now without the apples of Idunn to keep him young."

Loki would greatly have loved to see her Anthony again. Though she had the companionship of Thor, with who her relationship had greatly improved over the years until they were closer than they had ever been, she had lost a huge piece of herself when she lost Anthony.

"He died not long after we wed, he fell to an attack on Midgard as he fought with his team. Thor brought me the news of his passing."

She stood, eyes hard in order to keep herself from breaking down. It was an old wound, but still a sore one.

"You do not yet have control over your visions, you have seen another time and another place."

“Maybe... but time works weird there. It’s almost outside of time. Stuff comes. And stuff goes...”. Tony shrugged. “What do you have to lose? There’s a reason I came here. Not just to learn from you but to help you too. I think that’s what all of those little strings were about with the voices. That’s why those voices would bog me down sometimes. I missed a lot of opportunities. So. Think of this as payment, okay? And if you don’t find him... well then you’ll never have to wonder. And you can just remind Magni that his dad loved him and is proud of that teleporting thing he does.”

Dawn was already cresting over the hill and Tony could feel himself pulled back, his bones tingling.

“I think I’m missing out, not having you as a friend. I’ve git to change that.” He didn’t bother to hug her. He just watched her fade away more slowly than the tent around her was fading. He lifted his hand, however, and pressed his fist against his heat before he bowed.

When Tony woke, It was with a start, and a yell.

“Oh shit!”

This time, at least, it would be in his own bed.

He might just get to see half a second of Bucky sleeping next to him, actually relaxed despite being in bed with someone else, before he went from 0-fully awake in about half a heartbeat with that yell.

Bucky was out of bed in a second, immediately scanning the room for any threats or intruders, looking somehow intimidating despite wearing oversized sweats and a t-shirt with Hulk's face on the front of it. Only when he realised that they were still alone did he turn back to Tony, brow furrowed in concern.

"...you okay?"

Dumb question, probably.

“No... Wait.” Tony fought with the blankets to look down st his arm. The tattoo was still there and he touched it to make sure that this was real and he was really him. He hadn’t been sure with Bucky wearing that ridiculous sweatshirt, pale, muscular legs spread out from beneath. The sudden urge he had to see where those legs went had him squeezing his eyes shut and nodding his head. “Yeah. Yeah I am. Come back and sit down. I have so much to tell you.”

The telling took the better part of an hour, with Tony shooting off to recount this half seen memory of a different life to another.

“There’s a cabin, where it all connects, and I thought Loki was there opening doors but he’s not. It’s me. Some other version of me. And it explains my weird attraction to Banner’s chest hair—. Oh god, those versions of me were so weird. “And I saw a lot of versions of you too. Mostly happy. Once a sort of warrior slave which.. okay that’s probably usual. Never mind. That life was really... wow. I’ve just had so much sex.”

For some reason, that made him laugh.

Bucky would be lying if he said that he believed Tony right away and he wasn't just worried that this was an extension of hallucinations into some sort of psychosis. How was he supposed to tell if this was mental illness or a genuine otherworldly ability? Luckily, sharp eyes caught the new addition to Tony's body during all the tales, which pretty much guaranteed this to be real.

Which was scary. Very scary.

"So-- what exactly does this mean? You can predict the future now, or just that you can see what's happened in other lives that aren't actually ours?"

He wasn't sure that he liked the idea of other hims out there, especially not if they were slaves. He had dealt with being a slave long enough, thanks.

“I’m supposed to practice. Evidently I can use knowledge from other realities to shape this one. Or I can actually find answers. Not like before when I was a kid and sometimes the whispers would tell me secrets. I can use them. Find them all out on my own, maybe? James, I don’t know. They’re useful for Thanos, probably but the most important thing is that they can stop. That’s all I’ve wanted for forty years.”

No more headaches. No more hallucinations showing him realities that couldn’t be, confusing him, making him feel things he hadn’t before.

Tony winced a little at the last part of his excitement and lifted his knuckles to Bucky’s’ cheek.

“From what I’ve seen, you and me... we don’t happen. You’re...” He chewed at the inside of his lower lip for a moment before he slipped a hand from cheek to the metal fingers that rested on the bed. “But I want us to happen this time. I’m going to fight for us. This is precious to me.”

It was probably the first time Tony had been selfish to Bucky’s face about the matter.

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/makes things mysterious as I have to fuck off to the game

Tony does not thank yku

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