fossilised | Jotunheimr

Thor had just been ready to prompt Loki about the frost when Loki managed to reign it in himself. He didn’t feel the need to be patronizing and most of the mortals seemed distinctly unaware of how much danger they were in. Loki’s colour evened out and he was busy looking at the other when he felt the change in air around him. Thor lifted a hand to catch what was thrown in his direction and, ignoring the protests of both the son of Coul and Fury (how odd these mortals named themselves) and lifted the cube towards his face.

He could feel the power immediately, feel it tug at him, and he blinked away whatever sudden temptation he had to bust the tesseract from it’s containment cube.

“I know this,” Thor said, grip alone not enough to even dent the container. “I have heard of this in tales told when I was much younger. Soul gems, my teacher called them. Six, total. Space, mind, soul, reality, time and power-- Is that correct? I remember this from my father’s vault, too. Space. The space gem.”

Oh this wasn’t good.

Tony cleared his throat, mostly because he didn’t understand the suddenly esoteric Thor, and came to stand by Rogers. “I hate to agree, but maybe we shouldn’t take our chances.” Even if he really wanted to take a look at that thing. Badly.

Finally Thor seemed to understand the danger.

It was probably wise that the mortal had passed the cube to Thor, even though Loki was the one who could properly wield seidr, it would be in less danger there. Even though he had no intention of using it, it would whisper in his mind and he did not know if he had the strength to resist it.

"Rogers! What the hell do you think you're doing? You don't have the authority to--"

"Begging your pardon, sir, but I'm not actually under your command. Whatever authority I have is mine. I'm doing what I think is best."

"There are other factors here."

"The only factor I care about is the safety of my home."

Tony liked the bad boy attitude. He could respect that. Rogers wasn’t as bright and shiny and wholesome as his dad always made it sound in his anecdotes. What Would Steve Rogers Do? Evidently, it was hand over a questionable artifact to a questionable set of people without checking with the people that owned said artifact. It tickled Tony immensely, and he couldn’t help but smirk and give Rogers a nod.

“It would be best to remove this from Midgard now,” Thor said, ignoring the sudden in fighting. “But we would all like to return. Asgard has many things to offer Midgard should your Realm decide it is ready to join the Realm Eternal.”

To Tony, that sounded a little bit like a boxed response or a feeler. Joining some galactic community though? He wasn’t challenged on earth anymore. How awesome would it be to see what was beyond Earth?

He leaned a little towards Rogers. “What are you doing tonight? Want to go out for pizza?”

Steve had no idea what to make of Howard's son. First the man was actively glaring at him and talking to him as if he were his worst enemy, and now he was inviting him out to pizza with him? He glanced sidelong at the other man, but his sense of manners kicked in and so he shrugged and nodded with a quiet 'sure'.

Loki stood at Thor's shoulder, providing a unified front that perhaps Thor might remember in time to come, knowing that he and Loki had worked well as a partnership and that should be extended into other realms.

"This should be returned to the All-Father, all negotiations and treaties on the position of Midgard can continue when that is safely assured."

“I agree,” Thor said, though it pained him to have to take this artefact when he had all but promised not to. Loki had been correct, however. Sometimes one needed to complete a task that one hadn’t intended to simply because it was the right thing.

This was by far the right thing to do.

Despite the cold of Loki’s skin, which bled through his clothing, Thor set a hand on his shoulder. “We must return to our friends and seek Heimdall’s assistance back to Asgard. The moment we have information for you, we shall return to Stark’s Tower.”

No one would have the chance to challenge him if Loki was fast enough. Either way, Thor had nothing else to say.

When the room was cleared of alien life, Tony headed for the door. “Gotta go check on my house. Might have been kicked over. Coming, Rogers?”

He had a feeling his dad’s old obsession would. What was left for him here after giving away some homing beacon for a big intergalactic baddy?

Stark had little to do now but consolidate his data and wait for Loki to return. His sights were solely set on the stars.

Steve looked briefly over at Fury, but he fell into step beside Tony almost right away. As Coulson watched them leave, he looked almost orgasmic in his happiness; sure, he could have done without his hero leaving with Stark, but he just got to witness Captain America being the hero that Coulson always thought he was. Doing the right thing to protect, even when the right thing wasn't popular... god, today was a brilliant day.

Once they were out of the building and in the fresh night air, Steve sighed and set his hands on his hips looking pensive.

"I guess that could've gone better." Sometimes he should really think through what he did before he did it. "Aliens and magic, it's like some kind of really bad dime novel."

“Only worse,” Tony said as he waited for Happy to pull the car around. It was much less of a mess with only Thor and Loki to ride in it with him on the way here but he was pretty sure that none of his things would ever be the same again. “The blue one changes gender. And shape. And... how up are you on Disney Princesses?” He’d imagine that the answer was ‘very’ considering how perfectly Rogers parted his hair.

He would have loved to see him with some scruff and better fitting clothes. The guy standing beside him (and towering over him) was pretty much a Ken Doll. It was unnerving.

The car pulled up to the curb and Happy hustled around to get the door for him— And then guppy mouth at Rogers. “I... Hello, Sir. Captain. Sir—“

“Cut it out. We’re going to the pizza place in Brooklyn. Happy. I said stop. Seriously. Get in the car and drive. How is this weirder than aliens?”

Steve smiled warmly at the stranger and offered his hand out, shaking Happy's hand as the man continued to stare at him as though he were some kind of god walking among men and Tony was white noise in the background.

"Pleasure to meet you, sir. I appreciate the ride."

He slipped into the back of the car and grinned at Tony, a small lift to one corner of his mouth that suggested how bewildering he also found it when people treated him like he was some sort of celebrity.

"I think Mr. Stark was going to take me for some pizza."

“It’s really just Tony.” He didn’t even make the people he did business with, or employ, call him Mr. Stark. He didn’t like the formality, which he understood was weird considering the amount of money and power he wielded. As he climbed into the car, still not his style but necessary for transporting Asgardians, he noted the marks, the torn consoles, the seats… And with a sigh, he just sat next to Rogers on the back bench. His feet crossed at the ankles, knees apart, and as Happy shut the door, he wondered just what he was doing and why he had yet to call Pepper. She would probably have been delighted to meet Steve Rogers.

Just like everyone else.

Which was why he was not calling her.

“So what happened? Cliff Notes version. You went down. Dad never found you. You woke up. I get that. How long ago? And what have you been doing? Living underground? Lab rat?”

Steve settled back onto the leather of the seat and allowed himself just a moment or two to revel in the luxury of it all and the quiet noise of the engine. The world, the technology, everything had moved on so fast that it felt as though he had been catapulted centuries into the future rather than decades.

"I woke up only about three months ago, I'm still adjusting to-- well, everything. It's a whole different world to the one that I went to sleep in. SHIELD have been doing their best to get me up to speed, gave me an apartment and a gym to use, but that's about as far as I've got so far."

He didn't know how he fit into this place, what his purpose was.

"Not that thrilling as a story, is it?"

“Three months?” What the hell was he doing for three months that he failed to find out something this big? Tony had half a mind to sue SHIELD, but that was just a knee jerk reaction and would only make enemies of everyone and open cans of worms that would never be able to be sealed again.

Steve had an apartment. He went to, or used, a gym. He was out and about in a city that was literally under Tony’s nose. They merged into traffic and Tony felt an annoying pit of anger and jealousy well up in his gut.

“You’re the only person alive whose been legally dead for sixty years. You haven’t been tainted by the Back Street Boys or Jazzercise. You missed the Cold War and the pants suit craze. That’s pretty thrilling.”

Had Steve known about him? Wouldn’t he be one of the only links left to his old life, other than a woman who had loved him and moved on? Or what about the kids of the commandos he used to have follow him around?

“You’re kind of a big deal and you’ve just been hiding away. My dad spent the rest of his life looking for you, you know?”

For a moment Steve just looked deeply and achingly sad. People kept seeing him as this symbol, and like the pain of losing people sixty years ago should be gone for him. But it wasn't. It had only been a few months since Bucky died in his life, and now he had lost literally every single other person that he knew. It hurt so much that sometimes he wished he had never been found.

But he forced a smile to his face again, that sort of melancholy was his to deal with, and it wasn't the fault of anyone else here.

"Is that so? Sounds like he should have been doing something else with his time, but it's good to know that he never gave up hope. I never imagined he'd get married and settle down, but I'm glad about it, and it's an honour to meet his son. A weird honour, since you look older than me, but an honour nonetheless."

A selfish man like Tony Stark paid exactly no attention at all to the look of pain on Steve’s face. It didn’t really occur to him what it would be like to suddenly lose everyone. That was partially because Tony already had so few people and he was actually used to people he cared about up and leaving…or betraying…him.

“I don’t know if I would say that he settled down,” Tony quipped, leaving his words open for interpretation. “He was always more worried about what’s in your veins than how to be a dad or a husband. Probably why SHIELD is all over you too. You’ll be happy to note that despite multiple attempts to make other people like you, you’re still the only one.”

Rude, probably, to try to illicit a guilty response for something Steve had no bearing over.

“That’s probably what makes you so popular.”

"I'm used to that."

It wasn't something that he enjoyed, having people fawn over him either because of his physique or because of what was inside his veins, but he accepted it as the price he had to pay to be strong enough to protect the people that he wanted to be able to protect.

"I think it's something I'm going to have to get more used to, seems like all the people that thought of me as plain old Steve are gone now."

He was going to be Captain America to everyone, and that was depressing.

“Plain old Steve has two sentences in the history books. Captain America has full chapters,” Tony had to point out. He pulled the phone from his pocket and after a moment of searching Wikipedia, handed it to Rogers.

Steven G. Rogers was born in 1918 in Brooklyn, NY. Sickly as a boy, he was brought into the Super Soldier Program just after the start of the war and once given an experimental serum, turned the tide of war as Captain America. A little further down, under ‘Early Life,’ the website merely mentioned the names of his parents, his art classes (which would eventually lead him to produce several books available as thumbnail images or on display at the Smithsonian), and his desire to join the Army after his best friend was drafted. Obviously, that last part was wrong.

But that was Wikipedia for you.

“You have a good legacy and your estate has some great merchandise tie ins already. Hm, J, remind me to get some additional contracts drawn up? You’re alive again, royalities probably should be filtered back to you. We do have a Peggy Carter Foundation fully funded out of that… I’ll get my lawyers on it. As a brand, you’re pretty lucrative.”

"That's as maybe," Steve said, glancing over the article handed over to him and then passing the phone back. "But I'm always going to be Steve Rogers first. The world can write whatever articles about me that they like, I'm just another guy, and I intend to find a way to live a life that reflects that."

He'd not give up being Captain America while people needed him, but if he had to be that and nothing else then he'd go insane. He'd feel like that performing monkey on a tightrope, like he was nothing but propaganda and he didn't want to be that. He had to have moments of Steve.

"I'm not a brand and I don't intend to be, I'm nobody's marketing ideal. No offence, Tony, but that's how I feel. If it means I need to get a job bagging groceries to pay my way, then so be it, I'd rather that than be paraded around for something that might not be my ideals."

“It’s impossible to steal all of the action figures and trading cards and t-shirts out there, so I think you’re stuck. You’re a role model. And you can’t be a role model bagging groceries.” Even if Tony really wanted to see that right now. He felt decidedly repulsed and amused by the man sitting next to him. One might think someone in Steve’s position would be awkward, but he wasn’t. He just seemed distant and alone. And that, for Tony, was relatable.

And it also prompted a guilty feeling for his initial reaction to Steve Rogers. The guy was infuriating.

“You’re sort of like a more heroic Santa Clause to most people. Minus the gift giving-- But you actually exist, so that’s a big plus.” Tony was mostly yammering away to avoid any quiet that might stretch. He already knew it was going to be uncomfortable. “But anyway, none of that matters any more now than it did three months ago. Why haven’t you officially come back? Pretty sure that the world is a little shittier than it used to be. And that’s before you add in the aliens. SHIELD probably is dying for you to join the band.”

"Because I'm not sure what they're fighting for any more. I'm not going to mindlessly fight, that's not who I am, I promised someone a long time ago that I'd only use this strength to protect the people weaker than me."

He had respected Erskine a lot, the man had given him the chance that everyone else seemed eager to deny him, and he wouldn't spit on his memory by becoming just another cog in the machine.

"I need to understand how the world works now, so that I can find my place in it and know who I should be fighting for."

That's right, the stories were all true, he really was as earnest and good as they say and it wasn't just made up to make him more popular. Steve Rogers, literal puppy of a human being.

Tony was staring. His already huge eyes looked even wider than usual, lips slightly agape and brows lifted. He could feel the freeze of his muscles and he cleared his throat. “Okay.” Short. Simple. Not at all like him. “People like you just don’t exist,” he said, without a hint of anything but honesty here. “No wonder the world either hates you or loves you.”

There was no middle ground with Steve Rogers. The guy was unreal. And Tony could never, never hope to compete with that. His dad should have told him that a long time ago. They would have come to an understanding much earlier.

“What’s first on the agenda of getting to know the world? If you haven’t discovered the internet yet… Don’t.” For whatever reason, Tony just sort of wanted to protect whatever spark of innocence Steve had.

And…he kind of also wanted to be the one to ruin it.

That was bad, right? Yeah, that was bad.

"I've been introduced to the internet, it's been helpful in trying to read up, but I don't think anything can make it easy to go through that many years of history and politics."

It's been a nightmare trying to even understand the state of his own country in the broadest sense of the term, let alone the smaller details or what's going on in the rest of the world.

"There's so many people out there who need help, that I don't know where to start, or even how to. Seems to me you need to be part of the military to fund that sort of thing these days, and then the choices are taken away from you. SHIELD might be looking into saving people from things like these aliens and magic, but they also want to use it for their own agenda. There's nobody just looking out for the welfare of the little guy any more."

“There are a lot of people who help the little guy,” Tony said. “Police. Firefighters. Anyone that works in a hospital-- The little guy doesn’t need help from people like you.” It would have been easy to add a ‘Cap’ to the end of that, but he had a feeling that Rogers wasn’t really digging the Captain America moniker right now. “So scale it up. Think about the little guy as a group of people that can’t help themselves. Come with me next time I head out.”

What was this? Tony wasn’t looking to make friends of old enemies. And yet here he was, offering more than just an olive branch. It was honestly annoying.

“I’m a little like Batman. Handsome. Rich. I just stick to activities outside of Gotham. Like fighting terrorists that the government is too busy playing politics with while everyone else is dying. I’ve never wanted a Robin, but you’ll do.”

Luckily for Tony's references, Steve vaguely had an idea who Batman was thanks to some comics left around in the SHIELD medical offices that he had scanned while he had been waiting for a physical. He wasn't completely up to date on what was going on, but he sort of thought that Tony might be calling himself a vigilante superhero.

Which sounded sort of good.

"I don't really want to be a Robin or a Batman, but I'd be interested to work with you for a mission or two and see if that's where I fit in the world."

More of a partnership than one leading the other.

How was it that Steve got to be such a good guy and such a fair one? Tony couldn’t help but smile, one of those rare, genuine smiles that never, ever ended well. “You’ve got a deal.”

The scene on Asgard was much more tense, though Odin and Frigga had taken the Space Gem out of the room and left the six younger warriors behind to await a decision that Thor was certain he would not like. Hogun and Fandral had left relatively quickly, excusing themselves to the garden for awhile. Volstagg went off to find something to eat. That left a very Third-Wheel Sif behind to stand guard over Loki and Thor.

As if anything would happen. They were still in public. There were guards at every door. They were being watched.

Thor crossed and recrossed his arms, leaned back against a column, and tried to look bored instead of on edge.

Loki had taken the opportunity to rid himself of mortal clothing and become Jotnar in truth again, skin and clothing and all, and then settled himself at Thor's right hand to watch over him while pretending not to.

"You made a wise choice today, I know you fear becoming what your father was to Jotunheim, but there is a difference between protection and plunder. The All-Father took the Casket to cripple our realm, you have taken the Tesseract to protect Midgard."

It was difficult to make those sorts of decisions, they would always leave some unhappy and Thor was too big hearted to not take it hard when he couldn't please everyone.

As if Thor hadn’t already been looking in roughly Loki’s way, he made a big show of lifting his eyes fully towards him before he nodded, a gracious thank you without the words. Though Sif frowned slightly, she echoed the sentiment. She had not been there to see what had happened, and Thor had been surprisingly mum on the subject, but he’d had the item in his hand and Loki had made haste to call to Heimdall and free them from Midgard’s oddities.

It was good to be home, but Sif has less reason to be Thor’s shadow here and it showed by the way he more or less ignored her.

“What can I get for you, Thor? We could join Volstagg before he consumes all of the feast—“

“You go.” Sif winced. It had been a miscalculation. “I will remain here.”

She couldn’t argue, though she could absolutely warn. “Remember what I said,” she murmured as she passed him, looking directly into eyes that were angled towards the other prince. Thor simply nodded but she knew her words went unheeded.

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