fossilised | Jotunheimr

Jotunheimr

Thor Odinson was not ready to be King.

That much had become suddenly and sharply clear to Odin All-Father, a sharp pain that he would rather not have had. He had been blinded too long by love for his only heir, seeing only his affable way of gaining friends and his strength on the battlefield, but ignoring how he had become spoiled and arrogant. He had glossed over the reports from Thor's tutors that his son had not studied the other realms or the duties of a King as he should, and had instead spent much of his youth carousing with his favoured companions, hunting or getting into trouble together.

But this... this was beyond a childish scrape.

Egged on by his friends, or so it had come out since the act, Thor had decided to go to Jotunheim - a forbidden act - for the sole purpose of finding one of its inhabitants and slaying it. A proof of his mettle as a warrior, to kill one of the fearsome giants, the monsters of the icy realm. He felt ashamed, sick at heart that his only son could be so ignorant as to think that any race were just monsters. He might have hoped these were just rantings, but he saw preparations begin to take place and he knew that they meant to commit treason by disobeying his orders of no contact with Jotunheim and perhaps start another war.

Arrangements were hastily made, pushed through Frigga who had more goodwill remaining to her among the Giants, and when Thor arrived at the Bifrost, he would find Odin standing by the great sword rather than Heimdall, his one eye forbidding.

"Why are you so eager to seek out war, my son?"

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He wasn't entirely sure why he said her either, except that Stark reminded him in a very shadowy way of someone he had known a long time ago. Probably a memory thread better not followed to its natural conclusion.

There was a long silence before he finally slipped the knife back into its hiding place, although he didn't look any less tense than before.

"Maybe this was a mistake. I shouldn't have come, I'll hurt you."

Tony just rolled his eyes. Anyone else in this situation would be terrified and looking for a way to get Bucky out or to have someone come to help, but this was nothing compared to the danger he put himself in whenever he tried to shave off his landing time as Iron Man. It was getting a little hard on his knees and the plating he used to reinforce the landing dock upstairs.

“I hurt myself constantly. And I have a girlfriend.” Not that it made him a masochist but yeah. It kind of did. “You’re not worse than my usual safety retrofitting schedule.”

Which he’d been putting off for three years. Whoops. He’d just been busy!

“Sit back down. I’ll put on music and no more prying into your business. Okay?”

While the prying obviously wasn't something that he enjoyed, it was the working on his arm that had James the most on edge. He just couldn't separate Stark and the many years of HYDRA technicians, and so he expected it to hurt a hell of a lot, and even when it didn't, it just brought back bad memories.

He took a half step back and away from Stark, brow furrowed as his memory grasped after the 'her' that this man reminded him of. He shouldn't, he knew instinctively that it wouldn't end up in a good place, but-- he couldn't stop, it just happened automatically.

"Maria..."

The name escaped his lips all of a sudden, a hushed murmur.

Tony froze. Bucky knowing his father was one thing. That made sense. Howard palled around with Captain America and Friends during the war. But that was before his mother came along. Tony felt his stomach tie up in knots.

“Most people say I’m more like my dad,” Tony said, bitingly. ‘Maria’ was actually a very common name but that didn’t mean that Bucky wasn’t talking about the one that brought him into this world. And he had a really strong sense of that. There were too many questions left unanswered here. “Did you know her?”

And if Bucky did, and was telling the truth, what did that actually mean?

"Yeah."

Suddenly he really hoped that Tony took more after his father, as he said he did. Howard Stark might have been a cad and emotionally neglectful, but he had wanted to do the right thing for the world in starting SHIELD with Peggy Carter. Maria Stark, outwardly the kinder and gentler one, had been the one to help germinate the seed of HYDRA inside what Howard had created.

He frowned, mouth suddenly dry.

"It's best if you don't ask."

“You know what people do the moment you tell them not to ask something? They ask it,” Tony said, his jaw working hard to pop the line out from chin to ear on each side. His teeth actually ached before he forced himself to release the hold. “How did you know her?” he asked again, exhaling through his nose.

This was going to ruin Tony’s day. He could practically feel it. His mother had not been anything like his father. She was still somewhat neglectful, but she loved him and it was obvious. She hugged him. Later in his life, she tried to help him too, to steer him in the right direction.

He’d taken her death so, so hard, and maybe that explained why he was willing to listen to anything Bucky might have to say.

At least focusing on this tiny detail and Stark's reactions were helping to keep him grounded and less like he might lash out at any moment, it's why he had been capable of switching back to English, though it was almost an accentless voice rather than the Brooklyn twang.

"I said no," he repeated, and he would have headed for the door to escape the conversation if it hadn't been for the fact that his left arm was still wholly inactive and hanging limp at his side. "She's dead, what I know about her, or how we knew each other, it's not important any more."

He had caused so much suffering in his life, he'd rather not cause more if he could help it. And this truth would definitely cause suffering, he could tell.

“Actually, you said that I don’t want to know and not to ask you,” Tony pressed. It didn’t matter anyway. Either Bucky told him or he went looking himself. When his mind was on something, fully, he didn’t let himself be easily deterred.

It was little wonder that just about everyone found him insufferable really, for that reason alone.

Tony crossed his arms over his chest.

“She is dead. So anyone that knows anything about her is important to me. Finding out everything about her is important to me,” Tony stressed.

"And what if those things aren't good things?"

It wasn't hard to see that Stark idolised his mother, it was evident in the way his expressive dark eyes were shining with determination. That was the look of someone who had deified a dead woman in his mind, and James didn't want to be the one to destroy that.

"You should just hold onto what you already have, don't go looking for trouble."

“Now you sound like my mom,” Stark snapped and then threw his hands up. “You’re trying to psyche me out for absolutely no reason,” he complained. “I didn’t hurt you and if you don’t want to be fixed, cool. I’ve got other work to do.”

Like digging into this. His mother’s past was strange to him. He knew she was a scientist, that she traveled with his father, but Tony spent much of his youth isolated from his family. He had absolutely no way at all of knowing what had gone on with his mother and father since most of it was classified.

It was going to take some work to hack it but Tony was up for the challenge.

James didn't know Stark well enough to know that he would obsess about literally anything given the opportunity, but even he wasn't emotionally maladjusted enough to not figure out that a kid would dig into their parents' lives. Not good. If he found out what she had been, one of the founders of HYDRA and designers of 're-education' techniques, it wouldn't be pretty.

He didn't want to be there when that happened, but he also couldn't leave yet. If he walked away with his left arm still deactivated, he would be immensely vulnerable.

"You can't leave me like this, you have to make it work."

“You’re the one who told me to back off. And you’re not playing fair. You want me to finish fixing you, no more death threats and you get to talking. I’m not willing to wait for little tidbits that you can’t help but spill in Russian.” Tony knew that Bucky was damaged, emotionally, mentally, but he was also a dick and sometimes (all the time), he didn’t care how he came off.

He wasn’t here to make friends. He had friends. Pepper. Happy. Rhodey. Steve, weirdly enough.

Maybe that blue alien binary gendered royal that visited to break stuff and kill people sometimes.

He didn’t need Bucky.

It wasn't kind, but it wasn't exactly unexpected or unfair. Stark was going to be fixing him, providing him with a service, and he had the right to demand a fee. James just wished it wasn't this fee, because it would get ugly fast. It was more than likely, he thought, that Stark simply wouldn't believe what he had to say and would get angry or even violent at this asshole besmirching the memory of his Mom.

But what choice did he have?

He couldn't just walk out of here with one arm fully out of commission, that would likely lead to him dead or recaptured in no time at all, so this was the lesser of two evils.

"I'll answer your questions after you're done."

Because otherwise there'd be the danger that it wouldn't get done.

Rolling his eyes, Tony appeared to think about the deal for a moment, though he has always been ready and willing to fix that arm. It was new technology. It was a challenge. And he really, really wanted to do it.

That was why he didn’t wait too long before he returned to his rolling stool and patted the table for Bucky to drop back down on.

“You’re probably going to feel some tugging. I’m pretty sure all of this is connected to your nervous system,” he said, starting right in on things. It would be a few hours or work before he finished, happy with his work and the result, cold pizza waiting for them both downstairs.

It wasn't any more pleasant the second time around, he spent much of those hours staring into the middle distance and breathing in short, shallow pants. But he didn't lash out and he didn't lose himself, and eventually he was able to sit up again and move his arm with a loud whirring noise as it reactivated.

"...thank you."

Even if this was now a business deal with a payment at the end of it, Stark still deserved thanks for helping when he didn't have to.

"Okay, so-- your Mom, what do you want to know?"

To be honest, Tony had forgotten that they were going to talk about his mom. His mind had boxed that up for later and he was still sorting through the feelings of elation seeing that arm up and working properly again. He blinked, long eyelashes momentarily covering up his confusion before it clicked again.

Right. His mother.

Tony stood to get himself a rag for his hands. He’d wash up really good in a little bit but the whole room would be sanitized when they left so it didn’t matter. His shirt and his jeans had little flecks of red all over then anyway.

“Everything. How did you meet her?”

"I don't remember."

That much, at least, was true and not an avoidance of answering. He didn't remember the exact instance when he met her, and he hadn't known her that well, but what little he did remember was enough.

"The first time I remember meeting her, she came for an inspection. It was in the fifties, I think."

Fifties?

It should be a lot weirder to be talking to a guy who looked younger than he was about meeting his mom before he was born, but it wasn’t. Stranger things had happened before and it wasn’t like Bucky was the first army officer from World War II suddenly back from the dead, right?

Maybe this was a start of a new World War II zombie uprising? Tony would be awesome at that game because Steve wouldn’t want to play it and kick his ass with his superior hand-eye coordination.

“Inspection of what?”

Why did Bucky think that he might be able to get away with just leaving it vague like that? He should have known that Stark would press, and he couldn't even just up and leave without breaking his word that he'd give answers in exchange for the fix job on his arm. It was odd, and probably stupid, that he cared about not breaking his word considering everything else he had done.

It just seemed like a connection to being human that he didn't want to lose.

"An inspection of me. She was involved in the Winter Soldier project."

Please let this be enough. Please let Stark see where this was going and not push out of respect for the memory of his dead mother.

“Winter Soldier?” Tony has absolutely no idea what that was. He settled back, arms crossed over his chest. “That sounds like some sort of Disney Princess movie,” he mused. “Elsa meets Mulan. Huh. I probably should not be able to name the Disney Princesses.”

He shrugged as if that was that.

“Did she work on cryostasis? Is that why you still look like you’re in your late twenties after a few decades?”

It was actually a little bit comforting that Stark didn't know about the Winter Soldier project, it really cut down on the tiny possibility that he could be HYDRA just trying to fool him. A scientist of Stark's reputation and prowess would definitely be working high enough up to know about that.

"Yeah, I think she had something to do with it. But she specialised in behaviour modification-- you know-- you know the Winter Soldier project was a HYDRA project."

Which means Maria Stark was HYDRA, that leap isn't hard to make, please don't make him spell it out.

Behavior modification sounded like something you do to rats. Or maybe gorillas if you needed them to learn sign language so you could make a name for yourself and get lots of grant money to enslave indigenous people. But what did Tony know? He was more interested in the hard sciences.

He wanted to make a joke but Bucky just kept going. He said HYDRA. HYDRA of all things. And that scared him, not because Bucky might have been abused or that the driving force of the Nazis had been alive and well at least into the fifties (and probably the seventies and eighties and nineties too considering his mother was still alive during those decades), but because that meant something no one could ever be asked to accept.

“So are you telling me that you’re HYDRA?” It was better to compartmentalize.

"I was."

It still felt sort of unreal to make that statement, because he had started to regain some vague memories of a man who had fought against HYDRA and would never have chosen to join their ranks. Of everything, even if it had been forced, that felt like a personal betrayal to Steve.

"I'm not now."

He was going to have to spell this out, wasn't he? Voice and eyes hard. "But she was, and she was the whole time I knew her."

Tony wanted to hit something so very, very badly, and Bucky was right there to lash out at. He’d often wondered what hitting Steve would be like and this was probably as close as he could get. He knew it wouldn’t do much. If Bucky let him connect, and that was a big if, he very much doubted that his would go anywhere other than having his own jaw dislocated.

Worth it. So worth it. And it was much better than thinking that his mom was a Nazi.

Anger seeped out of him, collected on his skin, and forced the tension in his arm. He drew back. He clenched his fist. He swung.

The outcome wouldn’t matter, though the aggression would indeed trigger a call to Steve Rogers. Not that the blond could possibly get there in less than half an hour, even on his motorcycle.

JARVIS put in an emergency call to Steve Rogers, but he was discreet about it as usual. He merely said that Mr. Stark was engaged in a fight and could use assistance, not who that fight was with. It was possible that such sensitive information was not something that he should share, so he didn't.

James allowed the punch to connect.

He had been hit by much worse than an ageing inventor without his power suit, and it barely even registered to him even though his jaw would bruise. His arms snapped up after that to attempt to grab Stark by the upper arms and hold him still.

"You asked for what I knew, I told you not to dig down that hole."

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let's ruin the one person Tony loved mwahaha

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