fossilised | it's a new plot!

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.

While Tony might be excited about the direction that his powers had suddenly taken, Bucky could see things getting harder. Headaches and a craving for alcohol to stop the whispers would probably be replaced with distrust from people around them, and feeling even more isolated because of what he could do. He'd need protecting even more, and that was where Bucky came in.

"We don't happen wherever there is, there isn't here, and they aren't us. We've already happened, so screw them."

He leaned in and pressed a sudden, impulsive, passionate kiss to Tony's lips. He wanted to fight for it as well, fight for the man who made him feel human and could stop him panicking when even Steve set him off.

That was unexpected enough to cause Tony to lose the ability to breathe for a moment. He almost whined at Bucky’s mouth, which was hardly dignified and he was much too old to be turned on so completely by a kiss, certainly, though his eyes closed and he gave back as good as he got.

Tony was mindful of force when it came to Bucky and so where he might normally kneel and bear the other back onto the mattress, Tony lightly tugged Bucky over him instead. He could yield when it came to someone like this man, who had been protecting him for years now. There might have been a small gap in the center, but Bucky needed that gap to find himself.

And now they could find themselves.

And Steve Rogers didn’t always have to win. Petty, thinking that now as his hand lightly stroked the back of Bucky’s neck as they made out like teenagers. But Tony couldn’t change his stripes.

There were so many factions of Bucky always warring for upper place. There was the man he had been before all this happened - confident, flirty, happy, loyal. There was the Soldier - disciplined, blank, ruthless. There was the tortured prisoner of war - traumatised, frightened, wary. There were all of these things and more, but slowly they were gelling into a cohesive being again.

Right now the old Bucky was on top, fuelled by the desperation of the broken Bucky not to lose someone important to him. The kiss deepened as he lay on top of him, the cold digits of his metal hand sliding up Tony's thigh slowly. His voice was husky when he broke away, teasing look in his eye.

"You think I haven't seen how you look at this arm? You think I don't know that you're imagining how it feels."

“I like both of your arms,” Tony said, trying not to sound as wary as he felt. Whichever version of Bucky was currently dominating was one of the better Buckys (though Tony loved them all). He didn’t want to offend or chase him away again. His brief evening with Loki had set fire to certain parts of his body and Tony couldn’t help the amorous purr that slipped from between his lips as he groaned up towards those teasing fingers. “But I do have an engineering degree and what good is that if I don’t use to carry along sexual fantasies?”

No. Tony had never built a sex robot. Not exactly. But when you’re seventeen and smarter than all of your fellow students and teachers, you aren’t invited to many parties and you don’t have a whole lot of opportunity to meet people that will give you handjobs. So you get creative.

He lifted his shoulders off of the bed to lightly press kisses up Bucky’s throat.

“But all right. You caught me. Maybe I was... a little... wondering what... that might feel like...”.

Bucky knew that if he overthought this then he would end up retreating again, and maybe even panicking. It helped, oddly, that Tony was a brunet. Most of his handlers had been blond, most of the people who had dominion over him had been chosen because of their resemblance to Steve, tapping into that subconscious loyalty to make him more malleable and easier to control.

So instead of giving himself time to think, he pushed his left hand underneath the pants Tony had on and wrapped cool metal fingers around him carefully. The hand was odd, in that it was clearly mechanical in nature, but it moved with a pressure and fluidity that even the most sophisticated of robots couldn't possibly achieve.

This had a tender edge to it, but Bucky was going for speed and passion rather than sweetness and affection. He wanted to show Tony how much he cared, but he also needed it to not last too long so his brain caught up with what he was doing.

Though the word that left Tony’s mouth was probably ‘James,’ he hadn’t been expecting a touch like this, even if they had been joking about it, and so he needed a moment for his brain to catch up with his mouth.

There would be a lot of kissing while Tont enjoyed the exacting precision of a hand he used to trace when he was little and try to break into when he was older. He wrapped well muscled, toned arms around Bucky’s neck and breathed against his cheek in rapid, quick bursts.

Oddly, Tony wasn’t a talker in bed. He was present, completely focused, but he didn’t feel the need to run at the mouth with dirty talk. And when he came? It was mid-kiss, whimpering and then grinning against Bucky’s lips.

Feeling Tony orgasm was-- different to any other time he had felt someone orgasm. Those times he had felt powerless and used, like a tool that had served its purpose; but here he felt wanted, cared about, and in control. He had guided this whole process, and it made such a difference to what he had suffered through before.

He found himself grinning as if he were the one in afterglow as he slid down to lay his head on Tony's chest and listen to his heart jackhammering in his chest.

"...consider that me fighting for us."

Tony lightly laid a hand on the back of Bucky’s neck and closed his eyes, stretching his fully body like a cat as he settled the other man against him. “Shots fired. Warning read loud and clear,” he murmured. “FRIDAY, we’re gonna have breakfast in bed today. And lunch in bed. And dinner-- Order from the usual places and have DUM-E bring the food up.”

Not everyone was lucky enough to spend the day in bed, however, because there was still a lot of mess to clean up from the Earth’s second alien invasion in the last decade. Thor left the ship to assist his compatriots to prepare for Thanos days before, leaving Valkyrie in charge, and was still out when Iron Man came knocking on the door, so to speak. He was here to see Loki, which he wasn’t particularly fond of himself for deciding to do, in all honesty, but what he’d felt when he met the other in his journey more or less demanded he come out here.

And that left Bucky to do whatever he wished. Tony didn’t encourage him to see Steve Rogers, but he couldn’t and wouldn’t stop him if he wanted to do so.

He was just hopeful that Bucky was still willing to fight for them both when he returned.

Loki had spent much of the past few days trying to figure out his place in things again. He was accepted again as worth something by the Asgardians, but what role did he have there? Asgard was no more, despite the people who kept saying that Asgard was a people and not a place, the shining realm completely eradicated by Sutur's fire.

What, then, was their place? They were not a kingdom, and Thor was king of hardly anything. Were they to become annexed on Midgard, no longer sovereigns of their own realm? Intolerable. But where else would he go? Who else could he be? He was not Aesir in truth, but he knew less than nothing about the Jotun side to himself, so he could hardly seek shelter in Jotunheim. There would be no shelter, anyway, not when Thanos properly arrived.

He had no real wish to speak to any of the mortals, but one of the surviving Einherjar showed the man into his chambers anyway, to a slightly unimpressed look.

"You wished to speak with me?"

Tony was unimpressed, or at least he looked that way. He was singularly annoyed by Loki’s presence anywhere on his planet after what he had done, but people had been forgiven for more if they were truly helpful and Tony himself knew that first hand. This Loki was nothing at all like the polished, refined woman he had met the night before and that annoyed him too.

He paused for a moment, fingers just under the lump on his arm, and tried to call up some of the whispers to give him a little insight. They were being stubborn, however, and Tony didn’t push it this time around. He dropped both arms to his side.

“Actually, I came here to compare you to someone else. You’re probably used to that. I don’t wish to do anything with you, but I don’t have a choice.” He stepped into the room and closed the door the old fashioned way. So weird. He expected these to have sliding doors, not hinged ones. Some space ships just didn’t compute. “I met a prettier version of you. She helped me with a thing. I helped her with a thing. Now I think we can help each other.”

"Is that so?"

Loki's gaze sharpened on Stark with a weighing sort of interest. He didn't much care for the mortals at all, even with how fond Thor was of them, but his mother's words rang in his mind. There was someone who he had a suppsoed bond to, who he should seek out and befriend, and it would be small minded and short sighted to completely rule out the mortals.

If this one had met another version of himself, then perhaps this was the person he was meant to find. Or perhaps this was just a coincidence.

"So-- in what way do you believe we could help one another?"

“Actually, I just need you to help me. You can get brownie points.” One night, a few hours worth of work, was not going to help him out here. Tony had absolutely no intention of letting his gift go, but he didn’t really have time to spend weeks and weeks locked in constant meditation. As usual, he wanted to and thought he could actually find a short cut.

Loki might not be old enough to really understand, but he felt basically the same way that the other version of him did. They didn’t have the same immediate connection, but he could feel countless connections between countless other versions of themselves and that was good enough for him.

“I need you to help me learn to guide my way through all of my lifetimes, through all of the branches of Yggdrasil that I’ve sat on. Some of those branches probably have versions of me that helped to defeat Thanos and I need to find them. That work for you?”

It was not a task that was out of the realms of possibility for him to be able to accomplish, but it was still an unusual request. Especially for one such as a human, when most humans didn't have aught but the scarcest connection to the seidr of Yggdrasil to call on.

"Tell me for what reason I should help you, rather than simply find a branch of my own that connects to a defeat of Thanos?"

He had not that capability, he was not a Seer as his mother had been, but he also sincerely truly doubted that this mortal could have the same gifts as Frigga either.

Tony rolled his eyes. He’d just told this crazy loon that he’d met another version of him who helped him work on whatever weird gift he was forcefully given a few years after he was born. If it was as simple as Loki doing this him or herself, either would have. “Yeah, so I already know you can’t,” Tony complained, helping himself to whatever strange fruit was hanging out in the bowl on one of the tables next to the apples. He just really hoped that it didn’t taste like melon. He was not a fan.

Thumb breaking through the peel, Tony watched Loki, curious to see if he would lose his charm as he had at the Tower all those years ago, when he had gone from amused to furious in the span of a second.

“We need to work together. Well. Need. We don’t, but it would be easier. Pretty sure you want to meet up again with Thanos even less than we want to. Did some bad things to you right? And don’t ask how I know. You know how I know.” He stuck some of the purple fleshed fruit in his mouth and nodded in appreciation. It tasted like chocolate. Very nice.

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